Five discussions

When I review my life, or rather the timeline of my life, I find there usually are five conversation topics that exhaust me immediately. The kind of arguments that either can't be solved, require a lot of research/thought to get right, or isn't really a discussion if you sit down and look at the facts. Fortunately, these topics change over time (perhaps its seasonal, but I have no empirical data), but the number of them persists.

This thought came to me I ran a 5K yesterday at the Zoo (finished in 30 minutes, which I thought was a good time first time out). As it was a long run, I also updated the current list:

1. Lower taxes, same services -  Every political discourse I follow (federal, provincial, municipal) there is always a discussion of how I can get the same level of service for less taxes and the government is wasting my money. I no problem with this thesis, its just exhausting because no one ever says what exactly is wasting my money. If you're going to cut waste, maybe you should provide a list. This also is part of a greater argument that government sucks given by people who don't follow politics at all. I keep my mouth shut on European fashion as I don't know anything about it. People should apply this principle to governmental operations.
2. Death of the Book/Novel/Television/Science Fiction - Constantly predicting the end of something does not mean you get points when it actually happens, or that people magically forget when you turn out to be wrong. I hate reading articles about the death of some element of culture when I could have spent time actually consuming that elemental of culture.
3. The best game system is - Games are what matters not the hardware system or added features (like watching movies). At the end of the day, I remember the games played more than what system it was on. Frankly the older I get the less time I have to play, I care less what I am playing on.
4.  What is Canadian Art  Maybe I missing something but to put it simply; it is either a) written by a Canadian or b) set in Canada. You can talk about influences (as many Canadian writers consume a lot of US or UK culture) but they are still Canadian. Its my least favorite question on Canada Reads.
5. Existence of God - For me the existence of God is a matter of faith (either you believe or you don't; can't be proved empirically).  I am more drawn to a discussion of ethics, the logistics/operations of faith, then the meta-nature of the universe. Of course this is a completely different headache.

Despite this thought, I actually enjoyed my run and thought of several books that I need to read on these topics to assure myself hat I'm not an idiot when I'm forced to discuss them.
S