Many commentators write about the “two-party system” as if it were enshrined in the Constitution. Actually, the writers of the Constitution feared factionalism. They thought their document would bring about a system of considered deliberation and reasoned arguments.
Unfortunately, factionalism reared its ugly head quite quickly. John Adams, a signer of the Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, a non-signer, soon fell into animosity about the direction of government. They did reconcile their differences in their elder years, but their dispute lingered in the Whig and Democratic parties.
The Whig party went into decline when several Whigs formed the Republican Party, partly because of opposition to the extension of slavery and partly because of support of modernization. Ironically, one of the Republican slogans was “Free Labor” as opposed to slave labor.
Over time, the parties’ basic tenets changed with changing times. The Republicans essentially became the party of Big Business and the Democrats became the party of the People. But these were not fixed ideologies. The parties adjusted their ideas to the times. Republicans put forth ideas that favored a “government for the people” and the Democrats put forward ideas that were corporate-friendly or status quo. Many commentators referred to the two parties as “big tent” parties; that is, all were welcome if they held loosely to a few basic tenets.
Then somewhere in the eighties or maybe even earlier, the Republicans morphed into a hard-nosed, doctrinaire party. The days of the RINO (Republican in Name Only) began. Some very stellar Republican politicians who got things done for the greater good were no longer welcome. The Republicans also drew in many evangelicals who knew exactly what God wanted; just the kind of religious influence that the signers of the Constitution worried about. The signers were very aware of the differences among denominations and didn’t want to favor one over the other.
The result of all these changes have left many would-be voters, and even regular voters dismayed. As the parties have hardened in their stances, many people see government as dysfunctional and more partisan than deliberative. Remember that phrase describing the U.S. Senate as “the greatest deliberative body in the world”? I’ll agree to the “deliberate” part, “deliberate” grandstanding for minor electoral advantage.
Back to the signers of the Constitution: I think they had in mind a constituency who knew the men they were electing, if not personally, at least by reputation. Now we know our candidates by the slick literature they send out and the amount of TV exposure they get. Unfortunately, third parties spend millions smearing the candidates based on private interest, not the public good that the candidates may promote.
My solution to all this mismatch of ideas and actions is either all candidates are independents selected on the merits they project or candidates are loosely organized into parties that reflect their own interest.
My choices for parties would be Libertarian, Business, Evangelical, Charity, and Common Good.
The Libertarian Party would be almost anti-government. To them, the individual is primary, government just gets in the way of freedom. Taxes are just stealing money. Laws are for other people.
The Business Party would be all in support of large corporations with a bit of a sop to small businesses. Taxes and regulations just get in the way of corporations “returning value” to their shareholders.
The Evangelical Party would be Bible-centric and would pass laws pushing for more religion in government and for how all should behave, both in public and private.
The Charity Party would take up the causes of those groups who they feel are disenfranchised by government or society. This Party is difficult to criticize because there are many people with problems that they did not create. On the other hand, many people in a given group have managed without the Charity Party’s help.
Finally, the Common Good Party is my party (if I were to cease being a Party of One). This is the party that takes seriously “General Welfare” and “Common Defense” in the Constitution. The Common Good Party is concerned with infrastructure, safety regulations, commercial laws, and many other laws and expenditures that help promote a prosperous society.
The Libertarian Party ignores how much it depends on government. What if a libertarian had been defrauded. Would that person depend on a tax-supported court to seek reparation? Or would the Libertarian have it out with six-guns on the streets of Laredo?
The Business Party is similar to the Libertarian Party with the emphasis on large organizations rather than individuals. But would a modern corporation survive without public schools to train a large number of people in increasingly complicated skills, without roads to move its goods around, without police and courts to seek redress for those who would harm the corporation?
The Evangelical Party seems to pick and choose what Bible verses to use. Two that it seems to me that they ignore most are “Be not like the hypocrites who pray in public to be seen by men…” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” One could also say the writers of the Constitution were all to familiar with the picking and choosing done by various sects; that’s why they wanted “no religious test”.
The Charity Party’s hearts are in the right place, but the number of problems is so large that many people can’t put their hearts and souls into all those the Charity Party thinks are important. Government does need a few members of this party just to keep some of issues on the table.
We probably will never have a single Common Good Party because people never agree on the priorities. This gets back to the Constitution which didn’t really define “General Welfare”. We do need to have more people who run for office speak out for the common good rather than promote a private interest.
Mel keeps wishing for a majority government, but he keeps seeing a minority voting.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
It’s around here someplace! Redux!
My wife’s iPhone “disappeared” before she went to Japan at the beginning of the month. She retraced her steps and checked with many places. No luck! I asked again at some of those same places. No luck!
I checked her account and there had been no usage we couldn’t account for.
I was just about ready to order a used iPhone from eBay, and transfer her number form Virgin Mobile to Consumer Cellular.
This morning I planned to go to the Essentia Fitness Center and then to Whole Foods Co-op for some groceries. I was being fussy about which bag I took; as an old grocery packer I don’t care for floppy bags. I want semi-rigid sides. I took the larger of the two of these we have, and I emptied it of all its jars and plastic bags.
When I got to the co-op I looked in the grocery bag for a produce bag. There were none. But I noticed a piece of red embroidered cloth underneath the bottom flap. It was the cover that our daughter had given my wife for her phone. The phone was in it, but its charge was depleted.
When I got home, I plugged her iPhone in and only got the little red bar. After about an hour it was 1/3 charged. Eventually it was fully charged and fully functional. In fact, I sent her email from her iPhone to her iPad.
I read up on Find My iPhone, but this feature would not have been of any use. My wife keeps her phone off unless she wants to make a call, check email, or do some other thing. So calling the phone didn’t help us find it in the hallway where we keep the grocery bags.
She wrote me that she had checked the bags several time, but I think she didn’t find it because there were so many other smaller bags in that particular one. Besides, how many of us would think to lift the flap at the bottom of the bag?
So, just in time I saved $100 to $400 on a replacement phone and the hassle of changing carriers.
Now if we could only find the AA/AAA battery charger that disappeared about the same time.
I checked her account and there had been no usage we couldn’t account for.
I was just about ready to order a used iPhone from eBay, and transfer her number form Virgin Mobile to Consumer Cellular.
This morning I planned to go to the Essentia Fitness Center and then to Whole Foods Co-op for some groceries. I was being fussy about which bag I took; as an old grocery packer I don’t care for floppy bags. I want semi-rigid sides. I took the larger of the two of these we have, and I emptied it of all its jars and plastic bags.
When I got to the co-op I looked in the grocery bag for a produce bag. There were none. But I noticed a piece of red embroidered cloth underneath the bottom flap. It was the cover that our daughter had given my wife for her phone. The phone was in it, but its charge was depleted.
When I got home, I plugged her iPhone in and only got the little red bar. After about an hour it was 1/3 charged. Eventually it was fully charged and fully functional. In fact, I sent her email from her iPhone to her iPad.
I read up on Find My iPhone, but this feature would not have been of any use. My wife keeps her phone off unless she wants to make a call, check email, or do some other thing. So calling the phone didn’t help us find it in the hallway where we keep the grocery bags.
She wrote me that she had checked the bags several time, but I think she didn’t find it because there were so many other smaller bags in that particular one. Besides, how many of us would think to lift the flap at the bottom of the bag?
So, just in time I saved $100 to $400 on a replacement phone and the hassle of changing carriers.
Now if we could only find the AA/AAA battery charger that disappeared about the same time.
Laundry: how times have changed
As I folded the fourth load of laundry today of six loads, I pondered how laundry has changed over time from a energy-consuming chore to a time-consuming chore.
I put a load of similar laundry in the washer, drop bit of detergent in, twist a couple dials, flip a switch, and walk away. When the washer beeps and I am good and ready, I come down, move the laundry from one machine to another, put in a drier sheet, twist a couple of dials, and push a button. If I am so inclined, I will start another load in the washer.
After less than an hour, the clothes in the drier are ready for folding. After putting those clothes in a basket, I’ll repeat some of the previous steps. I’ll bring the dry clothes upstairs, fold them, and put them away.
Today I have six loads, including washing my chain saw chaps. It’s only a bit more work than going downstairs for another snack.
When we were first married, it was a slightly different story. We only had a wringer-washer. After each load was washed and rinsed in the tub, we had to put each piece of clothing through the wringer. (We was generally my wife and only occasionally me.) Then we had to hang everything on a line in the back yard or in the basement.
But even that work was a “piece of cake” compared to what many, almost always women, suffered in the nineteenth century and even now. In “Mina Drömmars Staden” (“City of my dreams”) by Wilhelm Möberg, one of the protagonists did laundry out on the ice. I vaguely remember that she died doing laundry for others; if not died, it severely impacted her health.
Imagine taking every piece of clothing, getting it wet, soaping it up, beating it on a rock or the ice, rinsing it multiple times, and then finding a place to get it dry. All on a subsistence wage, if that.
Unfortunately, there are still women all over the world that have to clean their families clothes this way.
I don’t think we should “count our blessings” as much we should appreciate that our complaints of how tough we have it are petty compared to others in other places and in other times.
I put a load of similar laundry in the washer, drop bit of detergent in, twist a couple dials, flip a switch, and walk away. When the washer beeps and I am good and ready, I come down, move the laundry from one machine to another, put in a drier sheet, twist a couple of dials, and push a button. If I am so inclined, I will start another load in the washer.
After less than an hour, the clothes in the drier are ready for folding. After putting those clothes in a basket, I’ll repeat some of the previous steps. I’ll bring the dry clothes upstairs, fold them, and put them away.
Today I have six loads, including washing my chain saw chaps. It’s only a bit more work than going downstairs for another snack.
When we were first married, it was a slightly different story. We only had a wringer-washer. After each load was washed and rinsed in the tub, we had to put each piece of clothing through the wringer. (We was generally my wife and only occasionally me.) Then we had to hang everything on a line in the back yard or in the basement.
But even that work was a “piece of cake” compared to what many, almost always women, suffered in the nineteenth century and even now. In “Mina Drömmars Staden” (“City of my dreams”) by Wilhelm Möberg, one of the protagonists did laundry out on the ice. I vaguely remember that she died doing laundry for others; if not died, it severely impacted her health.
Imagine taking every piece of clothing, getting it wet, soaping it up, beating it on a rock or the ice, rinsing it multiple times, and then finding a place to get it dry. All on a subsistence wage, if that.
Unfortunately, there are still women all over the world that have to clean their families clothes this way.
I don’t think we should “count our blessings” as much we should appreciate that our complaints of how tough we have it are petty compared to others in other places and in other times.
The perfect test for “blasphemy”
A Saudi blogger has already suffered fifty lashes for "blasphemy" by asking for more discussion of religion in Saudi Arabia. But can his accusers really know that he has committed "blasphemy" against Allah or that he is only disturbing their world view?
I propose the following test of blasphemy.
If a person is accused of blasphemy, he or she should be staked out just after sundown on a clear night in a field that is at least one hundred feet from any structure. If the person has actually insulted Allah, then Allah will send a lightning bolt to kill or injure the "blasphemer". After all, did not God send down fire to light Elijah's water-soaked offering?
If the accused is not harmed by a lightning bolt from Allah, then the accuser should undergo the following. The accuser should be tied to a ten-meter metal pole on the night of prolonged thunderstorms. If the accuser is killed during the night, then we can assume that it is Allah's will. If the accuser survives the night, then the accused and the accuser should ask forgiveness of each other.
And forgiveness is the basic tenet of all religions, irregardless of how the "believers" ignore this bedrock principle.
I propose the following test of blasphemy.
If a person is accused of blasphemy, he or she should be staked out just after sundown on a clear night in a field that is at least one hundred feet from any structure. If the person has actually insulted Allah, then Allah will send a lightning bolt to kill or injure the "blasphemer". After all, did not God send down fire to light Elijah's water-soaked offering?
If the accused is not harmed by a lightning bolt from Allah, then the accuser should undergo the following. The accuser should be tied to a ten-meter metal pole on the night of prolonged thunderstorms. If the accuser is killed during the night, then we can assume that it is Allah's will. If the accuser survives the night, then the accused and the accuser should ask forgiveness of each other.
And forgiveness is the basic tenet of all religions, irregardless of how the "believers" ignore this bedrock principle.
Thursday, April 09, 2015
Wild about wild animals
The people of the world seem to be going wild with various ideologies that are harmful to others, and I need a break from writing about these foibles. So, why not write about wild animals I’ve encountered?
My first close encounter with a wild animal that I remember was on a Boy Scout camping trip. I don’t remember if I was a junior or an adult leader at the time. I was sharing a tent with one of the scouts when we heard scurry along a bottom edge of our tent. I got out a flashlight and we saw a mouse running around.
Without thinking, I grabbed the mouse and stuck it in my shirt pocket; the shirt was on a hanger on a rope at the top of the tent. Then I started worrying that the mouse might gnaw a hole in my shirt, but I did nothing.
In the morning, I found my shirt pocket intact, but with the mouse dead inside. I don’t think I injured it when I captured it; I think it died of fright. I felt sad, but I felt it was a territorial dispute.
A much later animal intrusion ended more happily. A bat went down the chimney at our cabin and rustled all night trying to get out. Lucky bat, it was not cool or cold weather when we would have had a fire below. I managed to get it out with chimney cleaning rods and duct tape. I gave the rods a couple of taps on the roof and the bat went gliding off.
I’ve encountered bears many times, and my first Reader submission was a compilation of bear stories. Black bears are more likely to turn and run when encountering humans, but don’t count on it. My latest encounter was a bear in our cabin yard. I stepped outside to take its picture, but I made the mistake of clicking my tongue to catch its attention. I got its attention, but it chose to run the other way from that eight-foot tall animal standing to the top step.
We’ve seen moose tracks around our cabin, but these have all but disappeared as the trees have grown bigger. A DNR forester told us that if we want moose we should clear cut. The moose like to munch on young aspen. Maybe we’ll have more moose as our recent clear cut fills in.
The most moose I’ve seen was on the Kawishiwi River in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. My son and I must have seen fourteen moose in one day. We were at least three canoe lengths from one grazing the water plants. I wonder if I’ll ever find those pictures in my jumbled archives.
Among the most skittish animals are woodpeckers. Even if they are twenty feet up in a tree, they often will fly away. I did manage once to get some pictures of a pileated woodpecker a lot closer than that. Within a block of our house one was battering away, and I took several pictures almost level with it.
I did sneak up on a sapsucker drumming on the aluminum vent stack of our outhouse. I guess it was so lovelorn that it didn’t notice me sneaking up on it to within eight feet.
Probably the least shy animals are wild turkeys. Or is it most dumb? A few years ago I saw one strutting around on the shoulder of Hwy. 44. I stopped and took several pictures of it. It would walk toward me and then back off. I almost thought it was a domestic turkey.
But this past weekend I missed a flock of turkeys. I saw a single turkey on the opposite side of the road. I decided not to stop. Then I looked to my right and saw about a dozen turkeys on my side. Thank goodness they were on the shoulder and not on the pavement. I slowed down but didn’t stop. I was too tired from cutting up firewood.
One animal that I had to stop for was a huge snapping turtle. Its shell must have been two feet or more front to back. I stopped and took several pictures as it made its slow way across the road. I doubt that anybody would have hit it; the damage to their car would have been considerable.
I do wish that I had stopped for another turtle crossing the road. I was staying with my sister-in-law in a small town while I attended a conference several miles away. As I drove to the conference I saw a turtle crossing the road. I thought of stopping and carrying it across but didn’t. When I came back in the evening, there was a broken shell only a quarter way across the road.
Another amphibian that fared better was a green toad that got caught in our rain gauge. I tried shaking it out, but its sticky feet held tight. I laid the gauge down on the ground, but it still didn’t leave its “shelter”. I stomped or banged the ground behind it, and it darted out so fast that I almost couldn’t see it.
Deer are both curious and skittish. I have taken pictures of them as little as thirty feet away looking right at me. Other times I only have to wave a hand while I’m in the cabin and they will bolt.
I rarely see wolves, but we hear them or see their kills. We came across a deer carcass on one of our trails. The next time we passed the spot, the carcass was almost gone except for an organ and some hair.
I did get a great “video” of a wolf howl. You can listen to it on YouTube; look for “Wolves Howling in Brimson”.
You can also find some of my animal photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/28887068@N00.
Some year Mel will be organized and find all of his notes and pictures.
This version has a few corrections from the original article at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/08/5095_wild_about_wild_animals.
My first close encounter with a wild animal that I remember was on a Boy Scout camping trip. I don’t remember if I was a junior or an adult leader at the time. I was sharing a tent with one of the scouts when we heard scurry along a bottom edge of our tent. I got out a flashlight and we saw a mouse running around.
Without thinking, I grabbed the mouse and stuck it in my shirt pocket; the shirt was on a hanger on a rope at the top of the tent. Then I started worrying that the mouse might gnaw a hole in my shirt, but I did nothing.
In the morning, I found my shirt pocket intact, but with the mouse dead inside. I don’t think I injured it when I captured it; I think it died of fright. I felt sad, but I felt it was a territorial dispute.
A much later animal intrusion ended more happily. A bat went down the chimney at our cabin and rustled all night trying to get out. Lucky bat, it was not cool or cold weather when we would have had a fire below. I managed to get it out with chimney cleaning rods and duct tape. I gave the rods a couple of taps on the roof and the bat went gliding off.
I’ve encountered bears many times, and my first Reader submission was a compilation of bear stories. Black bears are more likely to turn and run when encountering humans, but don’t count on it. My latest encounter was a bear in our cabin yard. I stepped outside to take its picture, but I made the mistake of clicking my tongue to catch its attention. I got its attention, but it chose to run the other way from that eight-foot tall animal standing to the top step.
We’ve seen moose tracks around our cabin, but these have all but disappeared as the trees have grown bigger. A DNR forester told us that if we want moose we should clear cut. The moose like to munch on young aspen. Maybe we’ll have more moose as our recent clear cut fills in.
The most moose I’ve seen was on the Kawishiwi River in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. My son and I must have seen fourteen moose in one day. We were at least three canoe lengths from one grazing the water plants. I wonder if I’ll ever find those pictures in my jumbled archives.
Among the most skittish animals are woodpeckers. Even if they are twenty feet up in a tree, they often will fly away. I did manage once to get some pictures of a pileated woodpecker a lot closer than that. Within a block of our house one was battering away, and I took several pictures almost level with it.
I did sneak up on a sapsucker drumming on the aluminum vent stack of our outhouse. I guess it was so lovelorn that it didn’t notice me sneaking up on it to within eight feet.
Probably the least shy animals are wild turkeys. Or is it most dumb? A few years ago I saw one strutting around on the shoulder of Hwy. 44. I stopped and took several pictures of it. It would walk toward me and then back off. I almost thought it was a domestic turkey.
But this past weekend I missed a flock of turkeys. I saw a single turkey on the opposite side of the road. I decided not to stop. Then I looked to my right and saw about a dozen turkeys on my side. Thank goodness they were on the shoulder and not on the pavement. I slowed down but didn’t stop. I was too tired from cutting up firewood.
One animal that I had to stop for was a huge snapping turtle. Its shell must have been two feet or more front to back. I stopped and took several pictures as it made its slow way across the road. I doubt that anybody would have hit it; the damage to their car would have been considerable.
I do wish that I had stopped for another turtle crossing the road. I was staying with my sister-in-law in a small town while I attended a conference several miles away. As I drove to the conference I saw a turtle crossing the road. I thought of stopping and carrying it across but didn’t. When I came back in the evening, there was a broken shell only a quarter way across the road.
Another amphibian that fared better was a green toad that got caught in our rain gauge. I tried shaking it out, but its sticky feet held tight. I laid the gauge down on the ground, but it still didn’t leave its “shelter”. I stomped or banged the ground behind it, and it darted out so fast that I almost couldn’t see it.
Deer are both curious and skittish. I have taken pictures of them as little as thirty feet away looking right at me. Other times I only have to wave a hand while I’m in the cabin and they will bolt.
I rarely see wolves, but we hear them or see their kills. We came across a deer carcass on one of our trails. The next time we passed the spot, the carcass was almost gone except for an organ and some hair.
I did get a great “video” of a wolf howl. You can listen to it on YouTube; look for “Wolves Howling in Brimson”.
You can also find some of my animal photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/28887068@N00.
Some year Mel will be organized and find all of his notes and pictures.
This version has a few corrections from the original article at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/08/5095_wild_about_wild_animals.
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
The myths of fighting terrorism
President George W. Bush used “War on Terrorism” over and over again, and, like many before and after him, thought that military might from air or ground could stop the terrorism. But these actions only foment more terrorism. In fact, these actions in and of themselves are terrorism.
Just what is terrorism? Governments generally define it as lethal attacks on civilians or governments, often perpetrated by a small number of people. Terrorism really is any act by any group, government or not, meant to reinforce an agenda. Torture by any government is terrorism. Invasion of one country by another that leads to the deaths or injuries to the unarmed civilians is terrorism. Pilots deliberately crashing airplanes is terrorism. Gunmen shooting people on buses or in theaters is terrorism. People blowing up mosques, churches, or temples are terrorists. Governments dropping bombs on civilian populations is terrorism.
Terror has been a part of our country from the beginning. During the Revolution, mobs of “Tories” or “Patriots” would tar and feather and ride out on a rail those they suspected of supporting the other group. The tar was very hot and the rails were triangular; the victims were probably made to sit with the triangle facing up.
Slaves knew the terror of being whipped by a ruthless owner or overseer for the slightest infraction. If that weren’t enough, many owners justified the whippings with verses from the Bible.
The end of slavery didn’t end the terror for former slaves or their descendants. The Ku Klux Klan hung those they disagreed without any benefit of trial. Others were “lucky” to “only” have crosses burned in front of their houses. The Klan made “Christianity” just another example of a violent religion.
The Klan and its ilk have not been eradicated, but their influence has been greatly diminished by a more just civil society.
Unfortunately, civil society has been under attack since the writing of the Constitution. Slavery was permitted in the Constitution with the onerous counting of slaves as three-fifths of persons. Slavery was further strengthened by the Second Amendment, “the right of the People to keep and bear Arms”. For many, the purpose of this was to protect slave owners if the Federal government threatened to take away their slaves. Civil society is also under attack by those who want to consider corporations as “persons”.
Terror by “civil society” continued after the abolition of slavery with the forced relocation or slaughter of aboriginal peoples. The U.S. Army wiped out several villages including women and children. The Cherokee and others, successful farmers who dressed the same as their neighbors, were forced off their land and told to move to Oklahoma. Many did not survive the trip.
I could go on with several other instances of the U.S. being involved in violence against the populations of other countries, but I don’t have space to examine the pros and cons of these interventions. But, there are many people who remember these interventions and still hold grudges about them.
Let’s examine one chain of events that got us to the messes of today.
The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan to protect the Communist-led government. Afghanistan, being the tribal country it is, had many who attacked the Soviet occupiers. The United States, being engaged with its own battle with “godless Communism”, aided and abetted the resistance. One of the most deadly weapons the U.S. arsenal was Stinger missile. The U.S. supplied Stingers to the mujahedeen fighting Soviet helicopters, the deadly Hinds. The new weapons turned the battle around and the Soviet Union eventually left. But many of the Stingers did not return to the United States.
Then the United States decided to take on Saddam Hussein when the latter invaded Kuwait. As part of the military arrangements, Saudi Arabia allowed the U.S. to base troops in their country. A big mistake to make. Many Muslims consider Saudi Arabia a holy place that should not be “overrun” by an infidel army. One of these objectors was an Arab who had been very active in helping the mujahedeen repel the Soviet invaders: Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden decided to make a big theatrical demonstration of his displeasure, the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York after some practices in the Gulf of Aden and other places. George W. Bush fell into bin Laden’s trap and escalated the conflict, invading both Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing “freedom and democracy” to both countries. Both countries may have “elected” officials, but the fighting still goes on and has brought in a third party: the Islamic State in Syria. ISIS or ISIL or IS has thousands of Muslims, traditional or new converts rushing to join their cause.
The United States, under a President who wanted to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is sending jets to attack ISIS in Iraq. Do you not think there are a few Muslims who are thinking of ways to attack the U.S. for its “attack on Islam”? On top of this, thousands of those fighting to expel ISIS from Tikrit have withdrawn because of the U.S. attacks. Can the jets occupy Tikrit? I think it is Sunnis who have withdrawn; Tikrit is a predominantly Sunni city.
What frosts me is that the U.S. gives billions of aid each year to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but neither has put much effort in expelling ISIS from Iraq. Saudi Arabia has probably put more effort into Yemen than it has into Iraq.
And now we have a Congress that wants to spend even more money on the “defense” of its world view while protecting the “rights” of our home-grown terrorists.
Pete Seeger’s lament is still relevant: “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”
Also published in the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/01/5049_the_myths_of_fighting_terrorism.
Just what is terrorism? Governments generally define it as lethal attacks on civilians or governments, often perpetrated by a small number of people. Terrorism really is any act by any group, government or not, meant to reinforce an agenda. Torture by any government is terrorism. Invasion of one country by another that leads to the deaths or injuries to the unarmed civilians is terrorism. Pilots deliberately crashing airplanes is terrorism. Gunmen shooting people on buses or in theaters is terrorism. People blowing up mosques, churches, or temples are terrorists. Governments dropping bombs on civilian populations is terrorism.
Terror has been a part of our country from the beginning. During the Revolution, mobs of “Tories” or “Patriots” would tar and feather and ride out on a rail those they suspected of supporting the other group. The tar was very hot and the rails were triangular; the victims were probably made to sit with the triangle facing up.
Slaves knew the terror of being whipped by a ruthless owner or overseer for the slightest infraction. If that weren’t enough, many owners justified the whippings with verses from the Bible.
The end of slavery didn’t end the terror for former slaves or their descendants. The Ku Klux Klan hung those they disagreed without any benefit of trial. Others were “lucky” to “only” have crosses burned in front of their houses. The Klan made “Christianity” just another example of a violent religion.
The Klan and its ilk have not been eradicated, but their influence has been greatly diminished by a more just civil society.
Unfortunately, civil society has been under attack since the writing of the Constitution. Slavery was permitted in the Constitution with the onerous counting of slaves as three-fifths of persons. Slavery was further strengthened by the Second Amendment, “the right of the People to keep and bear Arms”. For many, the purpose of this was to protect slave owners if the Federal government threatened to take away their slaves. Civil society is also under attack by those who want to consider corporations as “persons”.
Terror by “civil society” continued after the abolition of slavery with the forced relocation or slaughter of aboriginal peoples. The U.S. Army wiped out several villages including women and children. The Cherokee and others, successful farmers who dressed the same as their neighbors, were forced off their land and told to move to Oklahoma. Many did not survive the trip.
I could go on with several other instances of the U.S. being involved in violence against the populations of other countries, but I don’t have space to examine the pros and cons of these interventions. But, there are many people who remember these interventions and still hold grudges about them.
Let’s examine one chain of events that got us to the messes of today.
The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan to protect the Communist-led government. Afghanistan, being the tribal country it is, had many who attacked the Soviet occupiers. The United States, being engaged with its own battle with “godless Communism”, aided and abetted the resistance. One of the most deadly weapons the U.S. arsenal was Stinger missile. The U.S. supplied Stingers to the mujahedeen fighting Soviet helicopters, the deadly Hinds. The new weapons turned the battle around and the Soviet Union eventually left. But many of the Stingers did not return to the United States.
Then the United States decided to take on Saddam Hussein when the latter invaded Kuwait. As part of the military arrangements, Saudi Arabia allowed the U.S. to base troops in their country. A big mistake to make. Many Muslims consider Saudi Arabia a holy place that should not be “overrun” by an infidel army. One of these objectors was an Arab who had been very active in helping the mujahedeen repel the Soviet invaders: Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden decided to make a big theatrical demonstration of his displeasure, the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York after some practices in the Gulf of Aden and other places. George W. Bush fell into bin Laden’s trap and escalated the conflict, invading both Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing “freedom and democracy” to both countries. Both countries may have “elected” officials, but the fighting still goes on and has brought in a third party: the Islamic State in Syria. ISIS or ISIL or IS has thousands of Muslims, traditional or new converts rushing to join their cause.
The United States, under a President who wanted to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is sending jets to attack ISIS in Iraq. Do you not think there are a few Muslims who are thinking of ways to attack the U.S. for its “attack on Islam”? On top of this, thousands of those fighting to expel ISIS from Tikrit have withdrawn because of the U.S. attacks. Can the jets occupy Tikrit? I think it is Sunnis who have withdrawn; Tikrit is a predominantly Sunni city.
What frosts me is that the U.S. gives billions of aid each year to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but neither has put much effort in expelling ISIS from Iraq. Saudi Arabia has probably put more effort into Yemen than it has into Iraq.
And now we have a Congress that wants to spend even more money on the “defense” of its world view while protecting the “rights” of our home-grown terrorists.
Pete Seeger’s lament is still relevant: “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”
Also published in the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/01/5049_the_myths_of_fighting_terrorism.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Arriving as soon as I leave
I was noting a trip to the Twin Cities on my calendar. To verify the times, I asked my wife, “We want to leave at 12 and arrive at noon.” I meant to say “leave at 9 and arrive at noon.” I think my eyes were focused on the second time on the calendar item, and so I blurted out that number.
Corporations and governments: can’t have one without the other
Considering some of the shouting, one might think that politics has divided into two camps: government is bad and corporations are for the common good, or corporations are greedy and government is for the common good.
As too often is the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
First, let’s look at the similarities.
Corporations and governments are organized by people for a large number of reasons. The people who organize these entities do so to provide goods and services, to make money, to be famous, or to push certain views, both altruistic and selfish. Neither type of organization is any better than the people who run the organization. Success depends more on the leadership and the resources available than on the form. Success also depends on the circumstances of the time. If a large segment of the population is not interested in an idea, it will take a lot of effort to promote the idea, whether a new product or a new law. On the other hand, if a very large segment of the population is interested in an idea, somebody in corporations or government will be working overtime to fulfill the population’s wishes.
The big difference is that the corporations are run by the few and governments are run by the many, if the many show up and vote.
As many misinterpret Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, many misinterpret Milton Friedman’s the only purpose of a corporation is to “increase profits”.
“[t]here is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." - Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
Many interpret this as the only purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder value. Unfortunately, they ignore “rules of the game” and “without deception or fraud”. But what is shareholder value? Is it a continued gain in stock price? Is it a continuous stream of increasing dividends? Or could it be the long-term provision of a good or service? For example, do investors want to create a product that could take years to bring to market? Do investors want to insure that medical services can be provided to a community for decades rather than maximize profits for the short-term and destroy the community long-term?
Many point to the problems of MNSure and ObamaCare as examples of government inefficiency. But guess who provided the computers and software for these health insurance programs? Private companies!
And private companies have not been known for efficient, trouble-free rollouts of new products. How many auto recalls are there every year? Has every computer program or system you purchased or downloaded been free of bugs? It seems every time I get a notice of an app update, the description includes “bug fixes”.
In the “bad old days” of mainframes, it was really a major milestone when a computer ran a whole day without a crash. Now things are much better. My laptop, which is more powerful than any mainframe I worked on, might go a whole week without some kind of frustrating error, including freezes.
MNSure and Obamacare are massive systems requiring massive co-ordination of many pieces. As we don’t give up on our computers, we shouldn’t give up on massive projects that don’t work perfectly on the first day.
"I'm as confident of this as I would be that when the first cars didn't work well, it wasn't time to return to horses and buggies; it was time to improve the cars. This is the new technology; there are kinks to it and it's going to take some time to work them out.”
Joel Ario, quoted in “Contractor’s report slams MNsure weaknesses, readiness”, Elizabeth Stawicki, MPRNews, 2014-06-18
Are you collecting Social Security? Is your check posted to your bank account on the promised day every month? But it was not always so. Like getting computers to not crash, the rollout of Social Security was not without glitches or without critics who claimed dire consequences. Like “nationalization of wheat fields would soon follow” and Americans would be reduced to passive servility. It would take forty years of tinkering to have ninety percent of Americans covered by Social Security.
See “What about Social Security’s rollout?” Bruce J. Schulman, 2013-10-29, Reuters
An interesting contrast to the call for less regulation and taxes is the call by some of the same people for government subsidy. How many stadiums for billionaires have been built without government subsidies? How many companies have chased after the best subsidies and tax breaks to determine the location of a new office or factory? Are these the same people who say government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers?
Consider the big howl from Congress when Solyndra collapsed. But nothing was said about the success of Tesla. Both received start-up subsidies from the Federal government. Tesla paid its loans back! Also among those who received subsidies were Compaq, Intel, and Apple. Now Apple is the largest company in the world in capitalization! And looking for ways to avoid paying back its benefactor through taxes.
For a lot more on how government has fostered many other successful innovations, see “The Innovative State: Governments Should Make Markets, Not Just Fix Them”, Mariana Mazzucato, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2015.
- Mel wishes a few far-sighted Republicans and Democrats would start a Pragmatic Party.
This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2015-03-26 at 2015/03/26/5005_corporations_and_governments_cant_have_one_without
As too often is the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
First, let’s look at the similarities.
Corporations and governments are organized by people for a large number of reasons. The people who organize these entities do so to provide goods and services, to make money, to be famous, or to push certain views, both altruistic and selfish. Neither type of organization is any better than the people who run the organization. Success depends more on the leadership and the resources available than on the form. Success also depends on the circumstances of the time. If a large segment of the population is not interested in an idea, it will take a lot of effort to promote the idea, whether a new product or a new law. On the other hand, if a very large segment of the population is interested in an idea, somebody in corporations or government will be working overtime to fulfill the population’s wishes.
The big difference is that the corporations are run by the few and governments are run by the many, if the many show up and vote.
As many misinterpret Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, many misinterpret Milton Friedman’s the only purpose of a corporation is to “increase profits”.
“[t]here is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." - Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
Many interpret this as the only purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder value. Unfortunately, they ignore “rules of the game” and “without deception or fraud”. But what is shareholder value? Is it a continued gain in stock price? Is it a continuous stream of increasing dividends? Or could it be the long-term provision of a good or service? For example, do investors want to create a product that could take years to bring to market? Do investors want to insure that medical services can be provided to a community for decades rather than maximize profits for the short-term and destroy the community long-term?
Many point to the problems of MNSure and ObamaCare as examples of government inefficiency. But guess who provided the computers and software for these health insurance programs? Private companies!
And private companies have not been known for efficient, trouble-free rollouts of new products. How many auto recalls are there every year? Has every computer program or system you purchased or downloaded been free of bugs? It seems every time I get a notice of an app update, the description includes “bug fixes”.
In the “bad old days” of mainframes, it was really a major milestone when a computer ran a whole day without a crash. Now things are much better. My laptop, which is more powerful than any mainframe I worked on, might go a whole week without some kind of frustrating error, including freezes.
MNSure and Obamacare are massive systems requiring massive co-ordination of many pieces. As we don’t give up on our computers, we shouldn’t give up on massive projects that don’t work perfectly on the first day.
"I'm as confident of this as I would be that when the first cars didn't work well, it wasn't time to return to horses and buggies; it was time to improve the cars. This is the new technology; there are kinks to it and it's going to take some time to work them out.”
Joel Ario, quoted in “Contractor’s report slams MNsure weaknesses, readiness”, Elizabeth Stawicki, MPRNews, 2014-06-18
Are you collecting Social Security? Is your check posted to your bank account on the promised day every month? But it was not always so. Like getting computers to not crash, the rollout of Social Security was not without glitches or without critics who claimed dire consequences. Like “nationalization of wheat fields would soon follow” and Americans would be reduced to passive servility. It would take forty years of tinkering to have ninety percent of Americans covered by Social Security.
See “What about Social Security’s rollout?” Bruce J. Schulman, 2013-10-29, Reuters
An interesting contrast to the call for less regulation and taxes is the call by some of the same people for government subsidy. How many stadiums for billionaires have been built without government subsidies? How many companies have chased after the best subsidies and tax breaks to determine the location of a new office or factory? Are these the same people who say government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers?
Consider the big howl from Congress when Solyndra collapsed. But nothing was said about the success of Tesla. Both received start-up subsidies from the Federal government. Tesla paid its loans back! Also among those who received subsidies were Compaq, Intel, and Apple. Now Apple is the largest company in the world in capitalization! And looking for ways to avoid paying back its benefactor through taxes.
For a lot more on how government has fostered many other successful innovations, see “The Innovative State: Governments Should Make Markets, Not Just Fix Them”, Mariana Mazzucato, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2015.
- Mel wishes a few far-sighted Republicans and Democrats would start a Pragmatic Party.
This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2015-03-26 at 2015/03/26/5005_corporations_and_governments_cant_have_one_without
Sunday, March 22, 2015
I found “around here someplace”.
Whenever my wife or I can’t find something that we know should be in plain sight she often says “It will turn up” or “It’s around here someplace”.
A few weeks ago while we were at our cabin, my carabiner of keys attached to a belt loop was no longer on my belt loop. Fortunately, I was at our cabin with my wife who also had a set of keys. I searched all the obvious places, including aiming a flashlight down the outhouse. At the time we had about eight inches of snow on the ground, and so the keys could have dropped anywhere.
So we had a new set of keys made and I bought another carabiner to hold them.
Yesterday, I was heating up the sauna to wash up later. As I walked out the door, I scanned the area for my missing keys. Lo and behold, there in the snow was a metallic orange device; it was my missing carabiner and keys. The snow had melted enough to unhide them.
So, now I know “around here someplace” is just outside our sauna:)
A few weeks ago while we were at our cabin, my carabiner of keys attached to a belt loop was no longer on my belt loop. Fortunately, I was at our cabin with my wife who also had a set of keys. I searched all the obvious places, including aiming a flashlight down the outhouse. At the time we had about eight inches of snow on the ground, and so the keys could have dropped anywhere.
So we had a new set of keys made and I bought another carabiner to hold them.
Yesterday, I was heating up the sauna to wash up later. As I walked out the door, I scanned the area for my missing keys. Lo and behold, there in the snow was a metallic orange device; it was my missing carabiner and keys. The snow had melted enough to unhide them.
So, now I know “around here someplace” is just outside our sauna:)
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Hubris is ruinous
Hubris is overreaching pride and arrogance. Many Greek tragedies have the gods punishing those like Oedipus. Shakespeare tragedies have circumstances punishing those like MacBeth and Othello. It seems that rarely do the electorates punish those with overreaching pride and arrogance. They do it by not voting and those with hubris never count the non-voters.
Scott Walker is one who is showing overreaching pride and arrogance in his abilities.
He touts his electoral success but ignores that he won with a low turn-out. Many other newly-elected Republican governors won with higher vote counts (of those who bother to vote). Those who signed the petition to recall Walker but then didn’t show up to vote were also arrogant.
He talks about the “invisible hand of the free market”, but ignores Adam Smith’s admonition of trusting those who live by profit.
He is proud to have passed a “right to fire” law, but ignores Smith noting that the masters could organize to keep wages down but it was illegal for the workers to organize to raise wages. If workers can refuse to pay union dues, is there a complimentary law that businesses can be part of Chambers of Commerce without paying dues?
He thinks that facing down demonstrators qualifies him to take on the likes of ISIS. Facing demonstrators armed with pizzas is not same as facing a few thousand jihadists armed with AK-47s, rocket launchers and more. Also, he ignores the history of meddling in the Middle East; it has always backfired, maybe not right away, but within a few years.
I only have my keyboard against Scott Walker’s many microphones. If you are a Wisconsin voter who didn’t show up in one of more of Walker’s election “landslides”, please show up the next time.
Many politicians other than Walker cite their belief in American exceptionalism. Sorry, but many people in other countries, well-governed or not, believe their countries are exceptional. The difference is that many of these people don’t think their exceptionalism gives them the right to tell other countries how to conduct their own affairs. Those who believe in American “exceptionalism” refuse to see how often the “gods” have punished this hubris: Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and more. The proponents of the “domino theory” seemed to have ignored that a game of dominos can go off in unexpected directions.
The hubris of the jihadists of ISIS and other terror groups make the hubris of American politicians look like a parlor game. The jihadists claim they are doing Allah’s will, but how do they know this other than repeating it to each other? Where is their forgiveness to others that Allah gives them? And if they believe “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”), can’t Allah right these “wrongs”.
If God could flood the entire world, killing thousands of pregnant women and their unborn children, couldn't God send a lightning bolt to strike “blasphemers” dead? If God could destroy the tower of Babel, built out of bricks, couldn’t God bring down the skyscrapers of steel in all the cities of the non-believers? If God could destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because the residents were sinful, couldn’t God destroy all the much larger cities of today where there is much “sin” according to purists who believe in an Almighty God?
The greatest hubris of all is that of countries with nuclear weapons. They want to prevent other countries from having any capacity to build nuclear weapons, but they seem very disinclined to reduce the number of their own nuclear weapons. These nuclear countries are ready at a moment’s notice to cause more death and destruction than the God of the Old Testament did from the beginning of the world.
Mel wishes the pen were mightier than the sword far more often than it has been.
Scott Walker is one who is showing overreaching pride and arrogance in his abilities.
He touts his electoral success but ignores that he won with a low turn-out. Many other newly-elected Republican governors won with higher vote counts (of those who bother to vote). Those who signed the petition to recall Walker but then didn’t show up to vote were also arrogant.
He talks about the “invisible hand of the free market”, but ignores Adam Smith’s admonition of trusting those who live by profit.
He is proud to have passed a “right to fire” law, but ignores Smith noting that the masters could organize to keep wages down but it was illegal for the workers to organize to raise wages. If workers can refuse to pay union dues, is there a complimentary law that businesses can be part of Chambers of Commerce without paying dues?
He thinks that facing down demonstrators qualifies him to take on the likes of ISIS. Facing demonstrators armed with pizzas is not same as facing a few thousand jihadists armed with AK-47s, rocket launchers and more. Also, he ignores the history of meddling in the Middle East; it has always backfired, maybe not right away, but within a few years.
I only have my keyboard against Scott Walker’s many microphones. If you are a Wisconsin voter who didn’t show up in one of more of Walker’s election “landslides”, please show up the next time.
Many politicians other than Walker cite their belief in American exceptionalism. Sorry, but many people in other countries, well-governed or not, believe their countries are exceptional. The difference is that many of these people don’t think their exceptionalism gives them the right to tell other countries how to conduct their own affairs. Those who believe in American “exceptionalism” refuse to see how often the “gods” have punished this hubris: Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and more. The proponents of the “domino theory” seemed to have ignored that a game of dominos can go off in unexpected directions.
The hubris of the jihadists of ISIS and other terror groups make the hubris of American politicians look like a parlor game. The jihadists claim they are doing Allah’s will, but how do they know this other than repeating it to each other? Where is their forgiveness to others that Allah gives them? And if they believe “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”), can’t Allah right these “wrongs”.
If God could flood the entire world, killing thousands of pregnant women and their unborn children, couldn't God send a lightning bolt to strike “blasphemers” dead? If God could destroy the tower of Babel, built out of bricks, couldn’t God bring down the skyscrapers of steel in all the cities of the non-believers? If God could destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because the residents were sinful, couldn’t God destroy all the much larger cities of today where there is much “sin” according to purists who believe in an Almighty God?
The greatest hubris of all is that of countries with nuclear weapons. They want to prevent other countries from having any capacity to build nuclear weapons, but they seem very disinclined to reduce the number of their own nuclear weapons. These nuclear countries are ready at a moment’s notice to cause more death and destruction than the God of the Old Testament did from the beginning of the world.
Mel wishes the pen were mightier than the sword far more often than it has been.
Monday, March 09, 2015
Do you reflect your god or does your god reflect you?
George Washington and others have stated that we cannot have morality without religion. On the other hand, how often do we have religion without morality?
Too many people who proclaim adherence to one religion or another have no morality; that is, they think it is perfectly all right to kill those who do not believe as they do: from the Inquisition to ISIS. And the lack of morality seems to be worse the more these people claim they have the “true religion”! Morality is basically do unto other as you would have them do to you.
I just read in Sharon Shinn’s “Dark Moon Defender” the following:
“The goddess abhors mystics. The goddess demands of her faithful followers that they eradicate magic from the land.”
“Any goddess who demands wicked behavior is wicked herself. Why would you choose to serve a deity like that?”
Shinn’s book was published in 2006. I wonder if she had any particular groups in mind that want to kill those who don’t believe as they do.
Too many people who proclaim adherence to one religion or another have no morality; that is, they think it is perfectly all right to kill those who do not believe as they do: from the Inquisition to ISIS. And the lack of morality seems to be worse the more these people claim they have the “true religion”! Morality is basically do unto other as you would have them do to you.
I just read in Sharon Shinn’s “Dark Moon Defender” the following:
“The goddess abhors mystics. The goddess demands of her faithful followers that they eradicate magic from the land.”
“Any goddess who demands wicked behavior is wicked herself. Why would you choose to serve a deity like that?”
Shinn’s book was published in 2006. I wonder if she had any particular groups in mind that want to kill those who don’t believe as they do.
Thursday, March 05, 2015
George Washington: Ignored Father of his Country
The United States Senate reads “George Washington’s Farewell Address” every year, alternating between the two parties. It was read by John Hoeven, R-ND on February 23, 2015. The House of Representatives last read it publicly in 1984. You can find a copy at http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/WashFarewell.pdf.
Whether Congress listens to the reading or not, I think they often forget what George Washington wrote, maybe within hours of the reading.
Washington warned again and again about faction. One example is:
“[The obstructions of constituted authorities] serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests.” [page 14]
He went on about how unprincipled men could actually take over the government, subverting the will of the people.
In the same month that a Republican Senator read “Washington’s Farewell Address”, the Republicans went right back to factionalism, finding all kinds of fault with President Obama and pushing a corporate agenda.
As General of the Continental Army, Washington provided lessons that we have not learned about wars but “insurgents” in many countries know only to well.
Washington and the Continental Army knew the country; the British did not. Boxed in several times, Washington managed to escape with his army. For example, he was in Manhattan and Brooklyn when the British invaded Long Island. He commandeered every boat he could and took all his men, cannon, horses, and more to Manhattan on a foggy night and then on to White Plains..
"I am well convinced myself, that the enemy long ere this, are perfectly satisfied that the possession of our towns while we have an army in the field will avail them little.” Think Baghdad, Kabul.
He predated by almost two centuries Mao Zedong: “enemy advances, we retreat; enemy retreats, we pursue.”
George Washington also stuck to the task from 1775 until the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. What is the average tour of duty of a general in Iraq or Afghanistan? And of course, every general has a different idea of what to do. Oh, yes! Washington would let himself be outvoted by his officers.
As President, George Washington was for efficient government, not necessarily for limited government: “for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable… It is indeed little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.” [pages 15-16]
“[The spirit of party] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.” [pages 17-18] Does this apply to the Congressional invitation for the prime minister of Israel to speak before it?
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” [page 20] Note that he doesn’t specify what religion, one of the numerous Christian sects or one of the many non-Christian sects.
Washington wrote a section on the need for public credit and to use it sparingly by “cultivating peace”. If war is necessary, the burden should not be put on future generations. “[Y]ou should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes…” He followed this with a discourse about the problem of selecting what to tax. I wonder what he would think of all the highways that we demand, the degree of safety oversight we want, and the research we want.
He wrote a couple pages about the necessity of treating all nations the same. “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, in is some degree a slave.” What would Washington say about our relations with Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt? All of them manipulate us more than we manipulate them. George Washington considered those who resist these entanglements as the “real patriots”.
He also extended this view to commerce: “our commercial policy should hold an equal hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences…” [page 28]
As much as we have put Washington on a pedestal, he is more modest: “I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”
He looked forward to enjoying “the benign influence of good laws under a free government…”
Sorry, Mr. President, but fools have rushed in where heroes fear to tread. We have many bad laws under a bought government.
Mel votes in almost every election, mostly in the hope of avoiding really bad laws.
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-03-05 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/03/04/4899_george_washington_ignored_father_of_his_country
Whether Congress listens to the reading or not, I think they often forget what George Washington wrote, maybe within hours of the reading.
Washington warned again and again about faction. One example is:
“[The obstructions of constituted authorities] serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests.” [page 14]
He went on about how unprincipled men could actually take over the government, subverting the will of the people.
In the same month that a Republican Senator read “Washington’s Farewell Address”, the Republicans went right back to factionalism, finding all kinds of fault with President Obama and pushing a corporate agenda.
As General of the Continental Army, Washington provided lessons that we have not learned about wars but “insurgents” in many countries know only to well.
Washington and the Continental Army knew the country; the British did not. Boxed in several times, Washington managed to escape with his army. For example, he was in Manhattan and Brooklyn when the British invaded Long Island. He commandeered every boat he could and took all his men, cannon, horses, and more to Manhattan on a foggy night and then on to White Plains..
"I am well convinced myself, that the enemy long ere this, are perfectly satisfied that the possession of our towns while we have an army in the field will avail them little.” Think Baghdad, Kabul.
He predated by almost two centuries Mao Zedong: “enemy advances, we retreat; enemy retreats, we pursue.”
George Washington also stuck to the task from 1775 until the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. What is the average tour of duty of a general in Iraq or Afghanistan? And of course, every general has a different idea of what to do. Oh, yes! Washington would let himself be outvoted by his officers.
As President, George Washington was for efficient government, not necessarily for limited government: “for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable… It is indeed little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.” [pages 15-16]
“[The spirit of party] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.” [pages 17-18] Does this apply to the Congressional invitation for the prime minister of Israel to speak before it?
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” [page 20] Note that he doesn’t specify what religion, one of the numerous Christian sects or one of the many non-Christian sects.
Washington wrote a section on the need for public credit and to use it sparingly by “cultivating peace”. If war is necessary, the burden should not be put on future generations. “[Y]ou should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes…” He followed this with a discourse about the problem of selecting what to tax. I wonder what he would think of all the highways that we demand, the degree of safety oversight we want, and the research we want.
He wrote a couple pages about the necessity of treating all nations the same. “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, in is some degree a slave.” What would Washington say about our relations with Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt? All of them manipulate us more than we manipulate them. George Washington considered those who resist these entanglements as the “real patriots”.
He also extended this view to commerce: “our commercial policy should hold an equal hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences…” [page 28]
As much as we have put Washington on a pedestal, he is more modest: “I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”
He looked forward to enjoying “the benign influence of good laws under a free government…”
Sorry, Mr. President, but fools have rushed in where heroes fear to tread. We have many bad laws under a bought government.
Mel votes in almost every election, mostly in the hope of avoiding really bad laws.
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-03-05 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/03/04/4899_george_washington_ignored_father_of_his_country
Government efficiency
I am working on my taxes and wanted to find the Minnesota state forms online. The main page had a link for business taxes but not individual taxes. I sent a message to the help desk and received a response within two hours.
I had a problem with some commercial software about ten days ago. I received an acknowledgment within two hours, but I have yet to receive anything further. Sometimes I receive a good response from companies; sometimes I receive inadequate responses; and sometimes I receive no response. Ditto government offices.
Efficiency does not depend on the form of the organization; it depends on the leadership of the organization.
See also "Excessive Corporate Inefficiency".
I had a problem with some commercial software about ten days ago. I received an acknowledgment within two hours, but I have yet to receive anything further. Sometimes I receive a good response from companies; sometimes I receive inadequate responses; and sometimes I receive no response. Ditto government offices.
Efficiency does not depend on the form of the organization; it depends on the leadership of the organization.
See also "Excessive Corporate Inefficiency".
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Party that wants government to live within its means doesn’t?
“Republican consulting firm demands Minn. GOP repay overdue bills”, Patrick Condon, Star Tribune, 2014-03-02
It took a call from the founder and chairman of Arena Communications to get the Minnesota Republican Party to promise to pay immediately for work done on political campaigns last year. The party had claimed "[w]e were able to support our endorsed candidates through the Primary and with a statewide victory program, while simultaneously meeting our financial obligations and paying down debt."
See also “Mills advisor: GOP activists ‘have been misled about party’s debt”, Michael Brodkorb.
It took a call from the founder and chairman of Arena Communications to get the Minnesota Republican Party to promise to pay immediately for work done on political campaigns last year. The party had claimed "[w]e were able to support our endorsed candidates through the Primary and with a statewide victory program, while simultaneously meeting our financial obligations and paying down debt."
See also “Mills advisor: GOP activists ‘have been misled about party’s debt”, Michael Brodkorb.
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
Proof that Muslims do speak out
The Huffington Post has a blog by Sophia Jones, “’SNL’ Has Nothing On the Way The Middle East Mocks ISIS”. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/03/mocking-islamic-state_n_6790254.html. Many of the YouTube videos use the music from ISIS videos to mock ISIS.
Oh, yes, many are not anonymous. The poster’s name and picture accompany the YouTube snippet.
See also “Muslims do speak out. Are you listening?”
Oh, yes, many are not anonymous. The poster’s name and picture accompany the YouTube snippet.
See also “Muslims do speak out. Are you listening?”
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Muslims do speak out. Are you listening?
A few weeks ago a letter writer to the Reader stated that “ALL Muslims” must speak out. He stated this over and over again.
Should others claim that “ALL Christians” must speak out about slavery, lynchings, or discrimination? In an ideal world maybe “ALL” whoever would speak about crimes committed by some of their “co-religionists”, but we live in a complex world where people’s abilities and wishes vary.
Many Christians didn’t speak out about slavery or lynchings out of fear for themselves and their families. Many Christians didn’t speak out because they were far removed from where these crimes were being committed. Many Christians didn’t speak out because they had other concerns that were more immediate to them.
Are not many Muslims in similar situations? Are those in areas controlled by the Islamic State or by dictators going to speak out against injustice and be killed, imprisoned, or tortured for their opposition? Are those far from these awful situations going to spend all their time speaking out against injustice instead of going to work or caring for their families?
Well, if you have several news sources you will find that many Muslims are speaking out. The Duluth News Tribune of Sunday, February 22 had a story headlined “Norway’s Muslims form protective human ring around synagogue”. This was in reaction to a Danish Muslim killing two people at a synagogue in Copenhagen; the synagogue was holding an event to promote free speech. The Star Tribune has published several stories about the concern of Muslim parents that their children are being seduced to join ISIS.
Remember that one of the first people killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack was a Muslim police officer. Remember that in the attack on the Kosher grocery one of the people who led some people out was a Muslim employee.
Remember that Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses”, condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini for blasphemy, is still speaking out against injustice.
Remember that Egypt struck back against ISIS in Libya because of brutal beheading of Coptic Christians, Christians who were Egyptian citizens.
Note that Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish journalist and Muslim, has been writing about the need for toleration by Muslims for the New York Times. You can find two of his latest columns at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/opinion/mustafa-akyol-a-letter-concerning-muslim-toleration.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/islams-problem-with-blasphemy.html. See also his TED talk at http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2011X/None/MustafaAkyol_2011X-480p.mp4.
He also wrote Islam without Extremism, A Muslim Case for Liberty. Here are two notable quotes from his book.
“In all these cases, the Muslims who reacted with anger and violence probably were sincere in their zeal to defend their faith. Yet, alas, the practical result of their actions was to vindicate the very accusation brought against them—that Islam is an intolerant and aggressive religion. So, if they really want to change that negative perception about their religion, they must begin by changing their course of action.” p. 252
“Beyond the Hadith literature, a response to blasphemy that is more compatible with the liberal standards of the modern world actually comes from the Qur’an. The Muslim scripture not only lacks any suggestion of earthly punishment for blasphemy, it also advises a nonviolent response: ‘When you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.’” p. 254
My notes for this column include many more quotes about the tension among various Islamic schools of thought. I’ll try to summarize some of the highlights.
After the death of Muhammad, politicians dictated Islamic thought. They interpreted it to increase their power rather than to increase the welfare of the people. Sounds like something that has happened and is happening in Christendom.
A tool to increase political power were the Hadiths, “a collection of literature that claims to communicate the Sunna (tradition) of the Prophet Muhammad.” Many of them are contradictory to the Qur’an and to each other. Unfortunately, a number of historic events squelched the more liberal schools of Islamic jurisprudence and strengthened the more illiberal school.
“In 1258, the Mongols sacked Baghdad–then the most vibrant and polished city of Islamdom, if not the world.” The Mongols were so destructive that “that the river turned black for the ink for days on end”, ink from all the documents the Mongols destroyed.
Other invasions followed that weakened liberal Islamic thought and strengthened conservative thought.
Turkey allied itself with Germany in the early 20th century as a counter to its old rival, Russia. Poor choice! The defeat of Germany led to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Allies slowly broke the Empire into pieces and installed leaders they chose. This continues today with the West trying to decide who should be rulers of these pieces. These actions certainly aren’t Christian: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
A second invasion was of oil men. Keep the flow of oil in our control and keep local leaders who support us in control. This strengthened those who supported Wahhabism, a very strict form of Islam that Akyol calls more of the desert than of Muhammad.
But beware, it can happen here in the hands of those who call themselves Christians. Jacques Berlinerblau warns in How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom that the “Revivalists” who claim that the United States is and has been a Christian nation really don’t want a pluralistic Christianity, but a Christianity as they interpret it. They ignore that the Founders were concerned with any given Protestant sect taking control and limiting the freedom of other sects.
Should others claim that “ALL Christians” must speak out about slavery, lynchings, or discrimination? In an ideal world maybe “ALL” whoever would speak about crimes committed by some of their “co-religionists”, but we live in a complex world where people’s abilities and wishes vary.
Many Christians didn’t speak out about slavery or lynchings out of fear for themselves and their families. Many Christians didn’t speak out because they were far removed from where these crimes were being committed. Many Christians didn’t speak out because they had other concerns that were more immediate to them.
Are not many Muslims in similar situations? Are those in areas controlled by the Islamic State or by dictators going to speak out against injustice and be killed, imprisoned, or tortured for their opposition? Are those far from these awful situations going to spend all their time speaking out against injustice instead of going to work or caring for their families?
Well, if you have several news sources you will find that many Muslims are speaking out. The Duluth News Tribune of Sunday, February 22 had a story headlined “Norway’s Muslims form protective human ring around synagogue”. This was in reaction to a Danish Muslim killing two people at a synagogue in Copenhagen; the synagogue was holding an event to promote free speech. The Star Tribune has published several stories about the concern of Muslim parents that their children are being seduced to join ISIS.
Remember that one of the first people killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack was a Muslim police officer. Remember that in the attack on the Kosher grocery one of the people who led some people out was a Muslim employee.
Remember that Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses”, condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini for blasphemy, is still speaking out against injustice.
Remember that Egypt struck back against ISIS in Libya because of brutal beheading of Coptic Christians, Christians who were Egyptian citizens.
Note that Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish journalist and Muslim, has been writing about the need for toleration by Muslims for the New York Times. You can find two of his latest columns at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/opinion/mustafa-akyol-a-letter-concerning-muslim-toleration.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/islams-problem-with-blasphemy.html. See also his TED talk at http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2011X/None/MustafaAkyol_2011X-480p.mp4.
He also wrote Islam without Extremism, A Muslim Case for Liberty. Here are two notable quotes from his book.
“In all these cases, the Muslims who reacted with anger and violence probably were sincere in their zeal to defend their faith. Yet, alas, the practical result of their actions was to vindicate the very accusation brought against them—that Islam is an intolerant and aggressive religion. So, if they really want to change that negative perception about their religion, they must begin by changing their course of action.” p. 252
“Beyond the Hadith literature, a response to blasphemy that is more compatible with the liberal standards of the modern world actually comes from the Qur’an. The Muslim scripture not only lacks any suggestion of earthly punishment for blasphemy, it also advises a nonviolent response: ‘When you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.’” p. 254
My notes for this column include many more quotes about the tension among various Islamic schools of thought. I’ll try to summarize some of the highlights.
After the death of Muhammad, politicians dictated Islamic thought. They interpreted it to increase their power rather than to increase the welfare of the people. Sounds like something that has happened and is happening in Christendom.
A tool to increase political power were the Hadiths, “a collection of literature that claims to communicate the Sunna (tradition) of the Prophet Muhammad.” Many of them are contradictory to the Qur’an and to each other. Unfortunately, a number of historic events squelched the more liberal schools of Islamic jurisprudence and strengthened the more illiberal school.
“In 1258, the Mongols sacked Baghdad–then the most vibrant and polished city of Islamdom, if not the world.” The Mongols were so destructive that “that the river turned black for the ink for days on end”, ink from all the documents the Mongols destroyed.
Other invasions followed that weakened liberal Islamic thought and strengthened conservative thought.
Turkey allied itself with Germany in the early 20th century as a counter to its old rival, Russia. Poor choice! The defeat of Germany led to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Allies slowly broke the Empire into pieces and installed leaders they chose. This continues today with the West trying to decide who should be rulers of these pieces. These actions certainly aren’t Christian: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
A second invasion was of oil men. Keep the flow of oil in our control and keep local leaders who support us in control. This strengthened those who supported Wahhabism, a very strict form of Islam that Akyol calls more of the desert than of Muhammad.
But beware, it can happen here in the hands of those who call themselves Christians. Jacques Berlinerblau warns in How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom that the “Revivalists” who claim that the United States is and has been a Christian nation really don’t want a pluralistic Christianity, but a Christianity as they interpret it. They ignore that the Founders were concerned with any given Protestant sect taking control and limiting the freedom of other sects.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Do you give elections away?
Are you going to be in the 40% who lets the 31% decide who's going to be elected?
If you are among those who stay away in elections, then a majority of a 60% turnout is less than 31%. Too many media outlets use "landslide" when the victor receives 55% of the vote. If the turnout is only 60%, then the victor only received 33% of the eligible vote.
If these figures were reported more often, then maybe the "winners" would have less hubris when they take office.
Always vote because all votes count!
If you are among those who stay away in elections, then a majority of a 60% turnout is less than 31%. Too many media outlets use "landslide" when the victor receives 55% of the vote. If the turnout is only 60%, then the victor only received 33% of the eligible vote.
If these figures were reported more often, then maybe the "winners" would have less hubris when they take office.
Always vote because all votes count!
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
The sound of Scandinavian languages
John McWhorter writes that the Scandinavian languages are dialects of a common language. I know from personal experience that Norwegian and Swedish speakers can easily communicate. To me Danish was quite a bit more difficult to understand because it is very guttural. The Swedes even call it “a throat desease.”
But Sweden has its own “throat speakers”, those from Skåne, the area around Malmö, across the channel from Denmark. Listening to some Skånsker reporters on a Swedish podcast led me to “Skånska is understandable Danish.”
But Sweden has its own “throat speakers”, those from Skåne, the area around Malmö, across the channel from Denmark. Listening to some Skånsker reporters on a Swedish podcast led me to “Skånska is understandable Danish.”
Monday, February 23, 2015
Voting choices
As I was balancing my checkbook, I noticed that a payment that I had sent last week had not been debited to my account. I wondered if it was corporate slowness on the part of the recipient or a less efficient postal service. That led me to think how too many Republicans are trying to make the postal service inefficient.
From that I thought about the voter mantra of “choosing the lesser of two evils”. Isn’t that a bit harsh? Shouldn’t it be “choosing the lesser of two incompetents”?
From that I thought about the voter mantra of “choosing the lesser of two evils”. Isn’t that a bit harsh? Shouldn’t it be “choosing the lesser of two incompetents”?
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Religion, politics, and corruption
Mustafa Akyol in Islam without Extremism wrote that when politics interfered with Islam then Islam became narrow and restrictive. When politics let Islamic scholars have more open discussions, then Islam, culture, and commerce flourished.
In the United States we have restrictive religions corrupting politics, and many believe that if they get their way, the U.S. will be a less pleasant place to live for those who don’t hold to these restrictive religions.
For the latter, see How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom, by Jacques Berlinerblau. He doesn't call for no religion, but asks that people be tolerant of other religions and wary of religions that want their way for everybody.
For the latter, see How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom, by Jacques Berlinerblau.
In the United States we have restrictive religions corrupting politics, and many believe that if they get their way, the U.S. will be a less pleasant place to live for those who don’t hold to these restrictive religions.
For the latter, see How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom, by Jacques Berlinerblau. He doesn't call for no religion, but asks that people be tolerant of other religions and wary of religions that want their way for everybody.
For the latter, see How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom, by Jacques Berlinerblau.
Excessive Corporate Inefficiency
This afternoon I got a call from the Essentia Health Fitness Center that I have not made the annual payment for use of the facility. We never received any notice that this was due. Last year we were told at the reception desk, and we were able to pay there.
This year, the phone call was my first notice from anyone, Essentia, Medica, or Silver&Fit. The administrator said we had to pay Silver&Fit directly.
Now the fun begins.
I called the 800 number for Silver&Fit. I was told by the pleasant recorded voice that there was a very long wait. Have you seen anything in the papers about this like you’ve seen about MNSure’s wait times?
I went to the Silver&Fit website. When I began the registration process, it knew my address and phone number just from my name, but then efficiency disappeared.
I had to enter my birthdate in a specific format; the format was not described next to the box. I was asked to select a security question and give the answer. I clicked “Next” and then I was told how to enter my birthdate. But then it would not go any further until I selected a security question again. It showed my answer, but it wouldn’t show the drop-down list again. It said I needed to select a security question??
I gave up and started a new session. I ran into similar problems again. On the third try I found the form for paying by money order. No form for check or page for using a credit card.
I gave up on that and sent an email of dissatisfaction. At least there was a link to do so.
I went to the Medica website and managed to find a form for paying by check.
So we each filled out a form, wrote our checks, and put them in a single envelope. That will probably screw things up at Silver&Fit. One of us will be credited with another year’s membership and the other not.
With Congress screwing up the Postal Service, it will probably take more than three days to arrive at Silver&Fit, two more days to get to a clerk to open the envelopes, and two more days for Silver&Fit to notify Essentia Health.
It is not the form of an organization, it’s the personnel and management. Good and bad of these are found in both government and corporations.
BTW I went to St. Louis County Auditor’s License office last week to renew my driver’s license. The longest part was filling out the form. Somebody waited on me right away, had me sign the form, took my money, gave me a copy, and asked me to step over to the eye exam device and the camera. It took me longer to take off my coat than to have my picture taken. And all this was done with cheer and courtesy.
This year, the phone call was my first notice from anyone, Essentia, Medica, or Silver&Fit. The administrator said we had to pay Silver&Fit directly.
Now the fun begins.
I called the 800 number for Silver&Fit. I was told by the pleasant recorded voice that there was a very long wait. Have you seen anything in the papers about this like you’ve seen about MNSure’s wait times?
I went to the Silver&Fit website. When I began the registration process, it knew my address and phone number just from my name, but then efficiency disappeared.
I had to enter my birthdate in a specific format; the format was not described next to the box. I was asked to select a security question and give the answer. I clicked “Next” and then I was told how to enter my birthdate. But then it would not go any further until I selected a security question again. It showed my answer, but it wouldn’t show the drop-down list again. It said I needed to select a security question??
I gave up and started a new session. I ran into similar problems again. On the third try I found the form for paying by money order. No form for check or page for using a credit card.
I gave up on that and sent an email of dissatisfaction. At least there was a link to do so.
I went to the Medica website and managed to find a form for paying by check.
So we each filled out a form, wrote our checks, and put them in a single envelope. That will probably screw things up at Silver&Fit. One of us will be credited with another year’s membership and the other not.
With Congress screwing up the Postal Service, it will probably take more than three days to arrive at Silver&Fit, two more days to get to a clerk to open the envelopes, and two more days for Silver&Fit to notify Essentia Health.
It is not the form of an organization, it’s the personnel and management. Good and bad of these are found in both government and corporations.
BTW I went to St. Louis County Auditor’s License office last week to renew my driver’s license. The longest part was filling out the form. Somebody waited on me right away, had me sign the form, took my money, gave me a copy, and asked me to step over to the eye exam device and the camera. It took me longer to take off my coat than to have my picture taken. And all this was done with cheer and courtesy.
Petting someone else's pets
I was going to title this “Interaction with animals”, but decided that the above title was snappier. I will write about pets this time and write about some of the interesting interactions that I’ve had with wild animals another time.
My family has had goldfish now and again, but none have been memorable. The first pet that I remember was when I was in elementary school. I met a stray cat that welcomed the food that we gave it. I remember feeding it by the icebox on the back stoop. Yes, ice box, one that was filled by an iceman. Like most cats it spent time roaming the neighborhood. Then one day my friends on the next block said they thought their dad had run over “my” cat in their driveway. It was hard to tell, but “the cat never came back”.
We didn’t have any more pets until I was in college. My mother and stepfather bought a dachshund. Somewhere there is a picture of me on the kitchen floor playing with the dog. I think they had two more dachshunds after that.
My mother’s aunt and uncle had a parakeet that they would let fly loose in the house. I think they called it Petey. It would land on extended fingers or even on Uncle Clyde’s bald head. One day somebody opened a door at the wrong time, and Petey was never seen again.
My wife’s family favored boxers. When we started dating, they had one called Grig. Grig liked to “fight”. If one put on a leather glove in the back yard, she was happy to jump up, grasp one’s hand in her teeth, and hold on as one swung the gloved had every which way. She would even hold on while being lifted into the air. I think I usually wore out before Grig did.
After our daughter was born, I bought a black spaniel mix from a shelter; my wife named him Jynx, word play on ink. We moved with him from Cleveland to Minneapolis. We moved to Minnesota partially for the canoeing, and we took Jynx with us on many of our trips. We often put a white sheet around him to keep him cool. We gave him away when we moved to Europe, and he went to the new owners like he belonged there.
When we moved back to the United States, my wife and kids chose a puppy from a pound. They named her Silky because her hair was so fine. She was sort of a wild one; she would often slip her leash and run around the neighborhood. This went on her whole life.
Our son also picked up a stray cat that he named Ralph; it too was run over. Shortly thereafter my wife brought home Felicia from a co-worker. Felicia and Silky got along for the most part. We have a picture of them curled up together on a cushion. But they had their tussles; Silky would try to eat Felicia’s food, and Felicia would ambush Silky.
We had to put Felicia’s food up on a counter to keep it safe. Felicia needed to leap up to the counter to get to it. Actually she didn’t so much leap as do a fast climb. The tops of the cabinet drawers showed how she had clawed her way up.
Felicia had a litter box in the basement, and so she didn’t go out as often as Silky had to. Many times Felicia would wait around the corner from the stairs for Silky to come in. She would pounce, startle Silky, and then walk away.
I would play my own mind games with Silky. She would bring a ball for me to throw down the hallway. Sometimes she would chase after the ball and bring it back. Sometimes I would only make the motion of throwing, and she would chase after the ball and wonder where it went. But these tricks did not deter her from asking to play another day.
Going outside was Felicia’s undoing. I had let her out and went back to my home office. Suddenly Silky, who was inside, started barking angrily. Two stray dogs had attacked Felicia in our back yard. I chased them away, but they had already seriously injured Felicia. I took her to a vet, but she was too gravely injured to have any surgery. For a long time after, Silky would wander the house looking for her buddy.
Silky’s turn came a few years later, not by attack or accident, but by old age. She had difficulty controlling her hind legs and neighboring parts. We took her to the vet. The vet shaved a leg, put a needle in, and Silky collapsed.
Over twenty years later, it is hard to write about these two buddies with dry eyes.
Since then, I have decided that pets are for other people to care for. You feed them, take them outside, and vacuum up all the shed hairs. I’ll happily scratch ears, necks, and chests. It’s surprising the number of dogs who poke their noses at “strangers” for this affection.
Mel has learned to ignore the “dog that wants out”, aka robo-calls.
This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-02-19 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/02/18/4836_petting_someone_elses_pets.
My family has had goldfish now and again, but none have been memorable. The first pet that I remember was when I was in elementary school. I met a stray cat that welcomed the food that we gave it. I remember feeding it by the icebox on the back stoop. Yes, ice box, one that was filled by an iceman. Like most cats it spent time roaming the neighborhood. Then one day my friends on the next block said they thought their dad had run over “my” cat in their driveway. It was hard to tell, but “the cat never came back”.
We didn’t have any more pets until I was in college. My mother and stepfather bought a dachshund. Somewhere there is a picture of me on the kitchen floor playing with the dog. I think they had two more dachshunds after that.
My mother’s aunt and uncle had a parakeet that they would let fly loose in the house. I think they called it Petey. It would land on extended fingers or even on Uncle Clyde’s bald head. One day somebody opened a door at the wrong time, and Petey was never seen again.
My wife’s family favored boxers. When we started dating, they had one called Grig. Grig liked to “fight”. If one put on a leather glove in the back yard, she was happy to jump up, grasp one’s hand in her teeth, and hold on as one swung the gloved had every which way. She would even hold on while being lifted into the air. I think I usually wore out before Grig did.
After our daughter was born, I bought a black spaniel mix from a shelter; my wife named him Jynx, word play on ink. We moved with him from Cleveland to Minneapolis. We moved to Minnesota partially for the canoeing, and we took Jynx with us on many of our trips. We often put a white sheet around him to keep him cool. We gave him away when we moved to Europe, and he went to the new owners like he belonged there.
When we moved back to the United States, my wife and kids chose a puppy from a pound. They named her Silky because her hair was so fine. She was sort of a wild one; she would often slip her leash and run around the neighborhood. This went on her whole life.
Our son also picked up a stray cat that he named Ralph; it too was run over. Shortly thereafter my wife brought home Felicia from a co-worker. Felicia and Silky got along for the most part. We have a picture of them curled up together on a cushion. But they had their tussles; Silky would try to eat Felicia’s food, and Felicia would ambush Silky.
We had to put Felicia’s food up on a counter to keep it safe. Felicia needed to leap up to the counter to get to it. Actually she didn’t so much leap as do a fast climb. The tops of the cabinet drawers showed how she had clawed her way up.
Felicia had a litter box in the basement, and so she didn’t go out as often as Silky had to. Many times Felicia would wait around the corner from the stairs for Silky to come in. She would pounce, startle Silky, and then walk away.
I would play my own mind games with Silky. She would bring a ball for me to throw down the hallway. Sometimes she would chase after the ball and bring it back. Sometimes I would only make the motion of throwing, and she would chase after the ball and wonder where it went. But these tricks did not deter her from asking to play another day.
Going outside was Felicia’s undoing. I had let her out and went back to my home office. Suddenly Silky, who was inside, started barking angrily. Two stray dogs had attacked Felicia in our back yard. I chased them away, but they had already seriously injured Felicia. I took her to a vet, but she was too gravely injured to have any surgery. For a long time after, Silky would wander the house looking for her buddy.
Silky’s turn came a few years later, not by attack or accident, but by old age. She had difficulty controlling her hind legs and neighboring parts. We took her to the vet. The vet shaved a leg, put a needle in, and Silky collapsed.
Over twenty years later, it is hard to write about these two buddies with dry eyes.
Since then, I have decided that pets are for other people to care for. You feed them, take them outside, and vacuum up all the shed hairs. I’ll happily scratch ears, necks, and chests. It’s surprising the number of dogs who poke their noses at “strangers” for this affection.
Mel has learned to ignore the “dog that wants out”, aka robo-calls.
This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-02-19 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/02/18/4836_petting_someone_elses_pets.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Terror as theatre
I heard a piece on a Swedish Radio program about terrorists not being generals but theatre producers. They are not trying to win battles as put on theatre to gain maximum effect. If we could only think of some way to make each of their productions a flop in their own eyes.
I followed up the information on http://sverigesradio.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=438. The program interviewed Yuval Noah Harari, author of “the theatre of terror” in The Guardian, 2015-01-31. Read the full article for more.
I followed up the information on http://sverigesradio.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=438. The program interviewed Yuval Noah Harari, author of “the theatre of terror” in The Guardian, 2015-01-31. Read the full article for more.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
The crime of war
"That’s because war — no matter how justified or unjustified, noble or ignoble — is always a crime."
David Brooks, "The Moral Injury", New York Times, 2015-02-17
The victims of war are not only those who are killed or maimed, but those who were put in a position of killing.
David Brooks, "The Moral Injury", New York Times, 2015-02-17
The victims of war are not only those who are killed or maimed, but those who were put in a position of killing.
Are atheists their own worst enemy?
“This is why the more extreme atheist groups, with their penchant for mocking all believers, are so hazardous to secularism’s already failing health.”
Jacques Berlinerblau, “How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom”, p. 196, section “Understand the Value (and Etiquette) of Coalitions"
Jacques Berlinerblau, “How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom”, p. 196, section “Understand the Value (and Etiquette) of Coalitions"
Monday, February 16, 2015
“Blasphemy” cuts two ways
Many Muslims complain about the “blasphemy” of cartoonists’ and others’ depictions of Mohammad. More extreme Muslims consider any non-belief in Islam as “blasphemy”.
What if non-Muslims considered any slanderous statements about their beliefs as “blasphemy”? What would Muslims think of non-Muslims shooting or blowing up Muslims who made these slanderous statements. Unfortunately, too many non-Muslims commit these heinous deeds against Muslims, and generally these Muslim victims never made any such statements.
One of the phrases many Americans consider annoying is one made by the Iranian revolutions is “Marg bar Amrika!” “Death to America!”
Fortunately, there are Iranian politicians who would like to see this phrase fall out of use. They figure it is counter-productive to reaching an agreement with the West about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. See
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10390938/Iran-attempts-to-silence-its-Death-to-America-chants.html
What all those hardliners who profess Christian or Islamic values is a key value of both religions is forgiveness.
What if non-Muslims considered any slanderous statements about their beliefs as “blasphemy”? What would Muslims think of non-Muslims shooting or blowing up Muslims who made these slanderous statements. Unfortunately, too many non-Muslims commit these heinous deeds against Muslims, and generally these Muslim victims never made any such statements.
One of the phrases many Americans consider annoying is one made by the Iranian revolutions is “Marg bar Amrika!” “Death to America!”
Fortunately, there are Iranian politicians who would like to see this phrase fall out of use. They figure it is counter-productive to reaching an agreement with the West about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. See
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10390938/Iran-attempts-to-silence-its-Death-to-America-chants.html
What all those hardliners who profess Christian or Islamic values is a key value of both religions is forgiveness.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Disappearing Server Tips
Friday night I went to a neighborhood restaurant for dinner. I put the bill on my debit card and included a tip.
Saturday I stopped at an ATM to get some cash and asked for a balance also.
When I got home I updated my checkbook application* and things didn’t look right. The balance in my checkbook didn’t match the balance given by the ATM. I couldn’t find any sales slip that matched the discrepancy.
Today as I looked at my sales slips I recognized the discrepancy. It was the tip on the sales slip. When the restaurant takes my card, it puts a hold on the amount on the slip. When I add the tip, the hold isn’t taken off, but the total is submitted. Given that I was checking on Saturday, when my account would not be updated, I was unable to find the restaurant charge in the online list of transactions. But the ATM slip did show the balance with the hold on the printed sales slip.
I will get verification of this on Tuesday. Monday is Presidents’ Day and I assume the online data will not be updated during the day.
But it did spoil my Saturday evening as this control freak tried to get everything balanced.
*The checkbook application is Checkbook Tao for the Mac, no app version yet. You can find it in Apple’s App Store.
Saturday I stopped at an ATM to get some cash and asked for a balance also.
When I got home I updated my checkbook application* and things didn’t look right. The balance in my checkbook didn’t match the balance given by the ATM. I couldn’t find any sales slip that matched the discrepancy.
Today as I looked at my sales slips I recognized the discrepancy. It was the tip on the sales slip. When the restaurant takes my card, it puts a hold on the amount on the slip. When I add the tip, the hold isn’t taken off, but the total is submitted. Given that I was checking on Saturday, when my account would not be updated, I was unable to find the restaurant charge in the online list of transactions. But the ATM slip did show the balance with the hold on the printed sales slip.
I will get verification of this on Tuesday. Monday is Presidents’ Day and I assume the online data will not be updated during the day.
But it did spoil my Saturday evening as this control freak tried to get everything balanced.
*The checkbook application is Checkbook Tao for the Mac, no app version yet. You can find it in Apple’s App Store.
Horsing around
I had originally planned this column to be “Interaction with animals”; I forget what triggered the idea. One of the subjects was horses. Since most of us consider pets as those animals we keep in our houses, I thought I would make horses a separate column. The only people I know of who keep horses in their houses are Pippi Långstrump and Danae of Wiley’s “Non Sequitor”.
My first memory of riding a horse was from when I was 10 or 11. I went to camp where one of the activities was riding in a group. i was riding at a walking pace in a line of horses and riders. Suddenly my horse lay on its side. One of the leaders said that horse often did that. Memory stops there, but I assume they got the horse up, I remounted, and we continued on.
I’m sure that I rode a few more times as a teenager, but I don’t remember any.
I don’t remember if I was a member of a youth group or a leader at the time of the next incident. We were in a field where a horse was grazing. It was standing near a platform and I decided to get on it bareback. The horse tolerated my intrusion, but it soon trotted off to another part of the field with me still on its back. It then proceeded to eat grass without any mind of me, and I could do nothing to make it move. I managed to dismount without falling and walked away.
The next riding experience was the most complex and exciting. We went to a hotel in Tällberg, Sweden for a week. One of the activities that the hotel owner arranged was horseback lessons at a nearby stable.
Most of our activity was in a paddock. We rode around in circles at various paces. One of the things we had our horses do was run up a ramp and jump off, only about a two-foot drop. But what excitement for us novices! We also had some boring time. One rainy day those of us who cared to mounted up. Our horses just stayed put in the middle of the paddock. Probably on the last day we did something I wouldn’t have dared do alone or with friends. With a trainer, we took our horses into the woods. One part was on a trail where we had the horses walk, canter, and gallop. My horse also liked to stop and eat blueberries. The real highlight was riding down a rocky slope. The rocks were slabs that probably were at a twenty to thirty degree angle; to me they felt like they were at a forty-five foot angle!
I should add here that I don’t think I ever learned to ride properly. When the horse went up I went down; when the horse went down I went up; not very nice to the horse.
One ride where I had no ups and downs was on a donkey in Rhodes. Some in our party opted to take a donkey ride up to the temple at the top of the bluff. The rest of us walked up and maybe took a donkey down. The donkeys are led by guides and the ride is very stable. Somewhere I have an “official” picture of me on donkey back, smoking a pipe.
One summer, probably in the early eighties, my wife’s cousins arranged a big family get together at Jackson Hole for the fiftieth anniversary of their parents. One of the activities that I did was the trail ride. I think we did nothing but walk through grassland, but it was really something to do it within site of the Grand Tetons!
The cousins also organized a reunion on Mackinac island. Most of our exercise was walking to meals and to miniature golf. There were a couple of stables and I envisioned riding all the way around the island. Nobody else in our party was interested in even getting on a horse, and so I made a reservation for myself.
When I showed up for my ride, I was surprised that the stable assumed I could ride alone, not in a group. My wife took a picture of me on the horse, and armed with a trail map, off my horse and I went at a walk. Once we were off the city streets I became a bit uncertain of where I was, even though the trail was marked. I think some other riders passed us and my horse cantered for a bit. When I determined that half the time was up, I turned my horse around and returned to the stable.
I did have to be a control freak at one point. As the horse turned left onto the street where the stable was, it wanted to cut the corner. I made it stay in the “proper” lanes.
Our son organized a ride somewhere in Minnesota. I remember that we had to cross a road, most of the trail was sandy, and that when we got back to the stable as soon as I wrapped the bridle around a post, my horse locked its legs and went to sleep.
My last ride was about ten years ago in Iceland. An Icelandic horse is not much bigger than a donkey, one almost feels as if one’s feet are dragging the ground. We went on a group ride to the top of a bluff up a rutted road and back down again. This time I remembered to ask for a carrot at the farm-stay kitchen, and I gave it to my horse when the ride was done. Even if Iceland is mostly a no-tip country, it is a good idea to tip your horse.
Mel's high horse is now his column.
My first memory of riding a horse was from when I was 10 or 11. I went to camp where one of the activities was riding in a group. i was riding at a walking pace in a line of horses and riders. Suddenly my horse lay on its side. One of the leaders said that horse often did that. Memory stops there, but I assume they got the horse up, I remounted, and we continued on.
I’m sure that I rode a few more times as a teenager, but I don’t remember any.
I don’t remember if I was a member of a youth group or a leader at the time of the next incident. We were in a field where a horse was grazing. It was standing near a platform and I decided to get on it bareback. The horse tolerated my intrusion, but it soon trotted off to another part of the field with me still on its back. It then proceeded to eat grass without any mind of me, and I could do nothing to make it move. I managed to dismount without falling and walked away.
The next riding experience was the most complex and exciting. We went to a hotel in Tällberg, Sweden for a week. One of the activities that the hotel owner arranged was horseback lessons at a nearby stable.
Most of our activity was in a paddock. We rode around in circles at various paces. One of the things we had our horses do was run up a ramp and jump off, only about a two-foot drop. But what excitement for us novices! We also had some boring time. One rainy day those of us who cared to mounted up. Our horses just stayed put in the middle of the paddock. Probably on the last day we did something I wouldn’t have dared do alone or with friends. With a trainer, we took our horses into the woods. One part was on a trail where we had the horses walk, canter, and gallop. My horse also liked to stop and eat blueberries. The real highlight was riding down a rocky slope. The rocks were slabs that probably were at a twenty to thirty degree angle; to me they felt like they were at a forty-five foot angle!
I should add here that I don’t think I ever learned to ride properly. When the horse went up I went down; when the horse went down I went up; not very nice to the horse.
One ride where I had no ups and downs was on a donkey in Rhodes. Some in our party opted to take a donkey ride up to the temple at the top of the bluff. The rest of us walked up and maybe took a donkey down. The donkeys are led by guides and the ride is very stable. Somewhere I have an “official” picture of me on donkey back, smoking a pipe.
One summer, probably in the early eighties, my wife’s cousins arranged a big family get together at Jackson Hole for the fiftieth anniversary of their parents. One of the activities that I did was the trail ride. I think we did nothing but walk through grassland, but it was really something to do it within site of the Grand Tetons!
The cousins also organized a reunion on Mackinac island. Most of our exercise was walking to meals and to miniature golf. There were a couple of stables and I envisioned riding all the way around the island. Nobody else in our party was interested in even getting on a horse, and so I made a reservation for myself.
When I showed up for my ride, I was surprised that the stable assumed I could ride alone, not in a group. My wife took a picture of me on the horse, and armed with a trail map, off my horse and I went at a walk. Once we were off the city streets I became a bit uncertain of where I was, even though the trail was marked. I think some other riders passed us and my horse cantered for a bit. When I determined that half the time was up, I turned my horse around and returned to the stable.
I did have to be a control freak at one point. As the horse turned left onto the street where the stable was, it wanted to cut the corner. I made it stay in the “proper” lanes.
Our son organized a ride somewhere in Minnesota. I remember that we had to cross a road, most of the trail was sandy, and that when we got back to the stable as soon as I wrapped the bridle around a post, my horse locked its legs and went to sleep.
My last ride was about ten years ago in Iceland. An Icelandic horse is not much bigger than a donkey, one almost feels as if one’s feet are dragging the ground. We went on a group ride to the top of a bluff up a rutted road and back down again. This time I remembered to ask for a carrot at the farm-stay kitchen, and I gave it to my horse when the ride was done. Even if Iceland is mostly a no-tip country, it is a good idea to tip your horse.
Mel's high horse is now his column.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Only the quiet ones have true religion
I am listening to the ecstatic singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the CD is called “Shahen-Shah”. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan leads a group of Muslim singers from Pakistan. The words are in Urdu.
My own meditation as I listen is the variety of beliefs around the world, even within religions considered complete. For example, the CD would be banned by the Taliban because they don’t like singing.
I would say that the “true believers” are those who hold their religion in their hearts, not those who are willing to kill those who hold different beliefs. The latter are the insecure ones who can only believe if everybody believes exactly as they do.
My own meditation as I listen is the variety of beliefs around the world, even within religions considered complete. For example, the CD would be banned by the Taliban because they don’t like singing.
I would say that the “true believers” are those who hold their religion in their hearts, not those who are willing to kill those who hold different beliefs. The latter are the insecure ones who can only believe if everybody believes exactly as they do.
Thursday, February 05, 2015
People, government, and spending money
“The people know how to spend their money better than the government.” Really?
A Minnesota politician was quoted last month stating some variation of this Libertarian statement, but I can’t find it in a search of the Duluth News Tribune or the Star Tribune. This mantra keeps popping up when a Republican doesn’t like a particular program or a given tax. Funny how they rarely apply it to the bailout of the big banks. And it never applies to any government activity that they support.
Let’s start with the military budget. Do the people really know how to spend their money on the military better than the government does? Those who spout my introductory statement seem to want to throw even more money at the military budget. Regardless of your attitude toward the military, it is in the Constitution that the government should spend money on the military: “provide for the common defense”. I don’t think the signers meant for the government to take up a collection to support our numerous wars. Wars are often strongly supported by those who make the claim about the people knowing best how to spend money.
If your house were burglarized, would you want to be responsible for paying for an investigation, a trial, and a prison term for the culprit? Would you want to have to buy insurance to ensure the thief was brought to justice? We buy insurance to cover the loss, but we pay taxes for a criminal justice system. Who runs the criminal justice system? The government. Who runs on platforms of “tough on crime”? Those who are first to put government down.
If your neighbor’s house catches fire, do you want to pay for your private fire department to ensure the flames don’t reach your house? Government pays for and organizes fire departments that are a phone call away for taxpayers and tax dodgers alike. Even when local fire departments are all volunteer, they seek support from local taxes and state and federal grants.
We complain about the condition of our streets and the congestion of our freeways. If we know best how to spend our money, do we want to be responsible for the condition of the streets in front of our houses? You pay for a nicely paved street in front of your house, and your neighbor leaves the street a muddy mess. We need government to co-ordinate this so we don’t get our cars stuck in the mud.
We go to restaurants and buy groceries without giving any thought to the cleanliness or condition of the food. Most restaurateurs and grocers are scrupulous about what they provide, but they aren’t in control of every step of processing the food or even have the time or means to give a thorough quality check. Government provides some oversight with food inspections, for example, in meat-packing plants. Many corporations complain about this government “intrusion”, but without it we would have many more food-borne illnesses. Think about Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. Think about the City of Duluth closing a couple of local restaurants because of numerous health violations. Would “the people” have all the resources to make these checks?
Corporations complain about the lack of “qualified” employees, but they complain about the taxes to train these “qualified” employees. Industrialized countries invest heavily in public education supported by taxes. And they provide a range of subjects that provide skills to learn more about technical subjects and about subjects that make for better informed citizens. What if education were only supplied by parents, either directly or by paying tuition to schools. First, few parents know enough about all the subjects to fully education their children. Second, many parents don’t have the resources to pay tuition for professional teachers. Think of the literacy rates in countries where parents must pay school fees. Only the well-off in these countries are sufficiently literate.
Speaking of education, a parallel statement to the one about spending money is that “parents know best what is good education for their children”. A close example is the sweeping generalization that “Parents know kids don’t need Common Core, so politicians should listen”, Ben Boychuk, republished in Duluth News Tribune, February 1, 2015.
We were involved in helping our children with schoolwork, but we didn’t even pretend to know how to teach them the various subjects they took. Except for the six years we lived in Europe, we sent them off to the local public schools. In Europe, we sent them to Anglo-American schools because we expected to be in a given country for only two years. About the only curriculum shock I had was when our daughter showed us the catalog for American history. Rather than an overview, she had to select one or two narrower subjects, such as Andrew Jackson.
My own education experiences were more self-directed or teacher-encouraged than parentally involved. My mother encouraged my brother and me to do well, but I doubt she knew much about what we learned or how we learned it. For the most part we went to schools in the neighborhood. However, we rarely stayed in the same neighborhood for more than three years. When we moved after I started high school, I selected an out-of-area high school to be with friends who I had known before. And as Robert Frost wrote, “that made all the difference”.
It was Mr. Rush, a math teacher who punctuated his remarks with “when you go to Case”. Six of us in my class went to Case Institute of Technology. It was Mr. Cameron, the assistant principal who recommended that I apply for a Huntington Fund scholarship, which paid full tuition my first year.
Thank you, government, for spending so much money on me to get to that point.
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-02-05 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/02/05/4777_people_government_and_spending_money.
A Minnesota politician was quoted last month stating some variation of this Libertarian statement, but I can’t find it in a search of the Duluth News Tribune or the Star Tribune. This mantra keeps popping up when a Republican doesn’t like a particular program or a given tax. Funny how they rarely apply it to the bailout of the big banks. And it never applies to any government activity that they support.
Let’s start with the military budget. Do the people really know how to spend their money on the military better than the government does? Those who spout my introductory statement seem to want to throw even more money at the military budget. Regardless of your attitude toward the military, it is in the Constitution that the government should spend money on the military: “provide for the common defense”. I don’t think the signers meant for the government to take up a collection to support our numerous wars. Wars are often strongly supported by those who make the claim about the people knowing best how to spend money.
If your house were burglarized, would you want to be responsible for paying for an investigation, a trial, and a prison term for the culprit? Would you want to have to buy insurance to ensure the thief was brought to justice? We buy insurance to cover the loss, but we pay taxes for a criminal justice system. Who runs the criminal justice system? The government. Who runs on platforms of “tough on crime”? Those who are first to put government down.
If your neighbor’s house catches fire, do you want to pay for your private fire department to ensure the flames don’t reach your house? Government pays for and organizes fire departments that are a phone call away for taxpayers and tax dodgers alike. Even when local fire departments are all volunteer, they seek support from local taxes and state and federal grants.
We complain about the condition of our streets and the congestion of our freeways. If we know best how to spend our money, do we want to be responsible for the condition of the streets in front of our houses? You pay for a nicely paved street in front of your house, and your neighbor leaves the street a muddy mess. We need government to co-ordinate this so we don’t get our cars stuck in the mud.
We go to restaurants and buy groceries without giving any thought to the cleanliness or condition of the food. Most restaurateurs and grocers are scrupulous about what they provide, but they aren’t in control of every step of processing the food or even have the time or means to give a thorough quality check. Government provides some oversight with food inspections, for example, in meat-packing plants. Many corporations complain about this government “intrusion”, but without it we would have many more food-borne illnesses. Think about Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. Think about the City of Duluth closing a couple of local restaurants because of numerous health violations. Would “the people” have all the resources to make these checks?
Corporations complain about the lack of “qualified” employees, but they complain about the taxes to train these “qualified” employees. Industrialized countries invest heavily in public education supported by taxes. And they provide a range of subjects that provide skills to learn more about technical subjects and about subjects that make for better informed citizens. What if education were only supplied by parents, either directly or by paying tuition to schools. First, few parents know enough about all the subjects to fully education their children. Second, many parents don’t have the resources to pay tuition for professional teachers. Think of the literacy rates in countries where parents must pay school fees. Only the well-off in these countries are sufficiently literate.
Speaking of education, a parallel statement to the one about spending money is that “parents know best what is good education for their children”. A close example is the sweeping generalization that “Parents know kids don’t need Common Core, so politicians should listen”, Ben Boychuk, republished in Duluth News Tribune, February 1, 2015.
We were involved in helping our children with schoolwork, but we didn’t even pretend to know how to teach them the various subjects they took. Except for the six years we lived in Europe, we sent them off to the local public schools. In Europe, we sent them to Anglo-American schools because we expected to be in a given country for only two years. About the only curriculum shock I had was when our daughter showed us the catalog for American history. Rather than an overview, she had to select one or two narrower subjects, such as Andrew Jackson.
My own education experiences were more self-directed or teacher-encouraged than parentally involved. My mother encouraged my brother and me to do well, but I doubt she knew much about what we learned or how we learned it. For the most part we went to schools in the neighborhood. However, we rarely stayed in the same neighborhood for more than three years. When we moved after I started high school, I selected an out-of-area high school to be with friends who I had known before. And as Robert Frost wrote, “that made all the difference”.
It was Mr. Rush, a math teacher who punctuated his remarks with “when you go to Case”. Six of us in my class went to Case Institute of Technology. It was Mr. Cameron, the assistant principal who recommended that I apply for a Huntington Fund scholarship, which paid full tuition my first year.
Thank you, government, for spending so much money on me to get to that point.
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-02-05 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/02/05/4777_people_government_and_spending_money.
Memory’s strange behavior
Today I had an annual physical that included a “Wellness Visit”.
The Wellness Visit was an interview with an RN who asked various questions about my health and made some recommendations. One of the first items was for me to memorize three words: apple, table, penny. I tucked "ATP" in my brain to help remember them. A few minutes later I could only remember apple and table! Fortunately my total score for all the cognitive tests was fairly high for my age.
Later I told the doctor about this, but forgot “table”. As soon as he left the room, I remembered "apple, table, penny".
After the visit, I went back to the fitness center to pick up my things. The person next to me looked familiar. Another person came in and said, “Hi, Gary.” Click: Gary Houdek, owner of Jitters Tea and Coffee. Except he had sold it recently to relatives of the owner of the building. He also remembered me even though I hadn’t come in for several years, probably from my Reader Weekly column.
But then I forgot about a play tonight at UMD. My wife reminded me of it, and so we won’t forget to go.
I had a different closing, but I forgot it. Just kidding! I actually remembered that I had forgot about the play and intended its mention to be my last sentence.
The Wellness Visit was an interview with an RN who asked various questions about my health and made some recommendations. One of the first items was for me to memorize three words: apple, table, penny. I tucked "ATP" in my brain to help remember them. A few minutes later I could only remember apple and table! Fortunately my total score for all the cognitive tests was fairly high for my age.
Later I told the doctor about this, but forgot “table”. As soon as he left the room, I remembered "apple, table, penny".
After the visit, I went back to the fitness center to pick up my things. The person next to me looked familiar. Another person came in and said, “Hi, Gary.” Click: Gary Houdek, owner of Jitters Tea and Coffee. Except he had sold it recently to relatives of the owner of the building. He also remembered me even though I hadn’t come in for several years, probably from my Reader Weekly column.
But then I forgot about a play tonight at UMD. My wife reminded me of it, and so we won’t forget to go.
I had a different closing, but I forgot it. Just kidding! I actually remembered that I had forgot about the play and intended its mention to be my last sentence.
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Understandable cell phone service
When I wrote “Junk mail and the fine print”, I neglected to mention my cell phone provider, Consumer Cellular. It is very upfront about the costs and the usage. I get to tailor it to what I think I will need in the next month. Plus, Consumer Cellular gives me a report when I approach a limit.
You can buy a variety of phones from Consumer Cellular, either by phone or in certain chains. If you want a smartphone, the prices start at $80. If you want higher end phones, they start at $xxx plus $25/month for so many months. This is the one place that Consumer Cellular is a bit opaque, but it does give you the added information with a click of your mouse.
The basic service is $10/month plus 25¢/minute. The next step is $15/month with 200 minutes.
Data starts at 20MB for $2.50 and tops out at 2.5GB for $30.
My plan is for January is $81.39 for 600 minutes of talk, 1GB of data, a wireless home base at our cabin, and $25/month for my iPhone 5s. The hard part is calculating all the surcharges and taxes; for some reason these vary every month, no matter the provider. If I had a paid iPhone and didn’t have the home base, my bill would be about $46/month. Even less if I didn’t use my iPhone for a hotspot when we’re at our cabin.
Oh, yes, Consumer Cellular uses the AT&T network. At our cabin I can get from 10Mbps to 23Mbps.
Bottom line: Consumer Cellular is a case in what the free market in phone service should be. The buyers have all the information they need to make a decision.
You can buy a variety of phones from Consumer Cellular, either by phone or in certain chains. If you want a smartphone, the prices start at $80. If you want higher end phones, they start at $xxx plus $25/month for so many months. This is the one place that Consumer Cellular is a bit opaque, but it does give you the added information with a click of your mouse.
The basic service is $10/month plus 25¢/minute. The next step is $15/month with 200 minutes.
Data starts at 20MB for $2.50 and tops out at 2.5GB for $30.
My plan is for January is $81.39 for 600 minutes of talk, 1GB of data, a wireless home base at our cabin, and $25/month for my iPhone 5s. The hard part is calculating all the surcharges and taxes; for some reason these vary every month, no matter the provider. If I had a paid iPhone and didn’t have the home base, my bill would be about $46/month. Even less if I didn’t use my iPhone for a hotspot when we’re at our cabin.
Oh, yes, Consumer Cellular uses the AT&T network. At our cabin I can get from 10Mbps to 23Mbps.
Bottom line: Consumer Cellular is a case in what the free market in phone service should be. The buyers have all the information they need to make a decision.
Junk mail and the fine print
I keep hoping that some internet provider will offer 30Mbps service at $30/month with no other conditions, like phone or TV. So I keep opening the envelopes and it is always the same old offer. For example Charter Spectrum offers up to 30Mbps internet at $29.99 per month when bundled with TV at $29.99 and phone at $29.99. The fine print also reads “for 12 mos”. The print is so fine that I can’t even determine if there is an abbreviation period after “mos”.
Well, the really fine print with all the conditions includes: “To reduce Charter direct mail, visit charter.com/dmoptout.”
I filled out the form without concern because it did not ask for any information that Charter didn’t already have, that is my name and address. It didn’t even ask why I wanted to drop out. Charter probably doesn’t want to read what I wrote above.
But maybe thousands of us could make a difference. If you think so, please pass on the link to this blog entry. If you pass the link to this entry, I'll see how well the campaign worked. Thanks!
Well, the really fine print with all the conditions includes: “To reduce Charter direct mail, visit charter.com/dmoptout.”
I filled out the form without concern because it did not ask for any information that Charter didn’t already have, that is my name and address. It didn’t even ask why I wanted to drop out. Charter probably doesn’t want to read what I wrote above.
But maybe thousands of us could make a difference. If you think so, please pass on the link to this blog entry. If you pass the link to this entry, I'll see how well the campaign worked. Thanks!
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Let’s Stop It with Global Warming Denial
The blogosphere is filled with nitpicking about NASA’s supposedly only 38 percent certainty about 2014 being the warmest year for recorded data. Does it really matter if 2014 was the warmest year in recent history or the third warmest year? The trend is still up even though there may be slightly cooler years or there may be cooler spots that had been warmer.
Think of your house in winter. Assume it is a five-room house with a basement. Assume you have no central heating and your only heat is from electric space heaters.
If you turn on one space heater in one room, you will feel warmer by the heater and colder as you move away from it. Suppose you turn on a space heater in every room. Each room will warm up near the space heater and be cooler away from the space heater. If you are on the opposite side of the room, there is no room-heating! And if you go to the basement, you have proven that there is no household warming!
What happens if you put a space heater in every corner of each room and in every corner of the basement? You will have a very warm house, maybe an unbearably hot house.
So what happens if you have a few steam-powered factories? Not much. What happens if you add hundreds and thousands of steam-powered factories. Well, the areas around these factories may be a bit warmer, but few will notice until they go into the factories.
What happens if you have a few steam-powered trains? Not much, just like with the factories.
What happens if you have a few thousand gasoline-powered cars? Not much. But if you take lots of measurements, you will find that the temperatures are rising slightly around the areas where these factories, trains, and cars operate.
What happens when there are hundreds of thousands of factories and trains and millions of cars? Where is all the heat from these going to go? Magically back into the ground where the fuel came from?
Add to this that these factories, trains, and cars generate carbon dioxide. Since the Earth takes in energy as ultra-violet radiation and sends out energy as infra-red radiation, you would think there would be some stability in energy. But carbon dioxide (and other gasses) block infra-red radiation. The more carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere, the more heat will be retained on earth. The more generators of carbon dioxide we have, the more carbon dioxide we will have dumped into the atmosphere.
Let’s go back to our household heaters. Nowadays, we use electric heaters. Any carbon dioxide that results from our use is generated outside the house. But what if our heaters are fireplaces and wood stoves? The carbon dioxide is being generated inside our house. If we are not careful, we could suffocate ourselves. To make sure we have enough oxygen, we have to have leaky windows and doors or some controlled source of oxygen.
A simple thought experiment shows that we are definitely putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. For millennia, people cooked their food and warmed themselves with wood fires. The wood provided the carbon for fuel and the trees absorbed the carbon dioxide to grow more wood. This is a virtual cycle: what gets used for one purpose is recycled to produce more of the original substance.
Then people discovered coal in the ground. This burned better than wood and was never rotten or damp. For millennia, the techniques for extracting coal were too inefficient to provide world-wide use.
As the world population grew and agriculture spread, more trees were cleared for buildings and farms. This meant less wood was available for fuel and alternatives were needed. Extracting coal became more efficient.
However, its use wasn’t always efficient. Many fireplaces and factories didn’t burn coal efficiently and much soot was dumped into the air. This resulted in dirty laundry and more cases of pulmonary diseases. As late as the 1940s, steam locomotives would spew cinders and other pollutants as they rumbled by. At the time, we lived right next to the tracks in an otherwise nice neighborhood. We would have to brush our hair after a train passed.
Coal and other fossil fuels are inefficient for another reason. They ain’t making them anymore! We have drained the swamps where critters large and small drowned and slowly broke down into coal and oil. We have also “drained” the easy access to oil and coal. Now we blow up mountains to get coal and pound the heck out of the underlying rock formations to get oil and gas. The first has ruined towns and rivers. The second is causing minor earthquakes.
Both of these operations remove thousands of trees and other vegetation that would absorb carbon dioxide. Add to that we want larger and larger parking lots, wider and wider highways, and larger and larger buildings. We will need more oil for these and will take away more of the carbon sink vegetation. This is a vicious cycle; things only get worse.
Meanwhile we have more and more carbon being burned and many people making lots and lots of money producing carbon fuels. To understand the denial of global warming, follow the money. As Adam Smith wrote in his “Wealth of Nations”, those who live by profit are not to be trusted.
You can find more thoughts like this at my blog: http://magree.blogspot.com.
Think of your house in winter. Assume it is a five-room house with a basement. Assume you have no central heating and your only heat is from electric space heaters.
If you turn on one space heater in one room, you will feel warmer by the heater and colder as you move away from it. Suppose you turn on a space heater in every room. Each room will warm up near the space heater and be cooler away from the space heater. If you are on the opposite side of the room, there is no room-heating! And if you go to the basement, you have proven that there is no household warming!
What happens if you put a space heater in every corner of each room and in every corner of the basement? You will have a very warm house, maybe an unbearably hot house.
So what happens if you have a few steam-powered factories? Not much. What happens if you add hundreds and thousands of steam-powered factories. Well, the areas around these factories may be a bit warmer, but few will notice until they go into the factories.
What happens if you have a few steam-powered trains? Not much, just like with the factories.
What happens if you have a few thousand gasoline-powered cars? Not much. But if you take lots of measurements, you will find that the temperatures are rising slightly around the areas where these factories, trains, and cars operate.
What happens when there are hundreds of thousands of factories and trains and millions of cars? Where is all the heat from these going to go? Magically back into the ground where the fuel came from?
Add to this that these factories, trains, and cars generate carbon dioxide. Since the Earth takes in energy as ultra-violet radiation and sends out energy as infra-red radiation, you would think there would be some stability in energy. But carbon dioxide (and other gasses) block infra-red radiation. The more carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere, the more heat will be retained on earth. The more generators of carbon dioxide we have, the more carbon dioxide we will have dumped into the atmosphere.
Let’s go back to our household heaters. Nowadays, we use electric heaters. Any carbon dioxide that results from our use is generated outside the house. But what if our heaters are fireplaces and wood stoves? The carbon dioxide is being generated inside our house. If we are not careful, we could suffocate ourselves. To make sure we have enough oxygen, we have to have leaky windows and doors or some controlled source of oxygen.
A simple thought experiment shows that we are definitely putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. For millennia, people cooked their food and warmed themselves with wood fires. The wood provided the carbon for fuel and the trees absorbed the carbon dioxide to grow more wood. This is a virtual cycle: what gets used for one purpose is recycled to produce more of the original substance.
Then people discovered coal in the ground. This burned better than wood and was never rotten or damp. For millennia, the techniques for extracting coal were too inefficient to provide world-wide use.
As the world population grew and agriculture spread, more trees were cleared for buildings and farms. This meant less wood was available for fuel and alternatives were needed. Extracting coal became more efficient.
However, its use wasn’t always efficient. Many fireplaces and factories didn’t burn coal efficiently and much soot was dumped into the air. This resulted in dirty laundry and more cases of pulmonary diseases. As late as the 1940s, steam locomotives would spew cinders and other pollutants as they rumbled by. At the time, we lived right next to the tracks in an otherwise nice neighborhood. We would have to brush our hair after a train passed.
Coal and other fossil fuels are inefficient for another reason. They ain’t making them anymore! We have drained the swamps where critters large and small drowned and slowly broke down into coal and oil. We have also “drained” the easy access to oil and coal. Now we blow up mountains to get coal and pound the heck out of the underlying rock formations to get oil and gas. The first has ruined towns and rivers. The second is causing minor earthquakes.
Both of these operations remove thousands of trees and other vegetation that would absorb carbon dioxide. Add to that we want larger and larger parking lots, wider and wider highways, and larger and larger buildings. We will need more oil for these and will take away more of the carbon sink vegetation. This is a vicious cycle; things only get worse.
Meanwhile we have more and more carbon being burned and many people making lots and lots of money producing carbon fuels. To understand the denial of global warming, follow the money. As Adam Smith wrote in his “Wealth of Nations”, those who live by profit are not to be trusted.
You can find more thoughts like this at my blog: http://magree.blogspot.com.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names cannot hurt me
"A faith that cannot withstand ridicule is no faith at all. And a faith that cannot laugh at itself is a faith that defies human nature."
- “Your Free Speech, and Mine”, Timothy Egan, New York Times, 2015-01-16
There are too many people and too many governments that take offense too easily at any criticism of their religion or their government. They are so insecure in their beliefs or of their power that they are willing to kill those who criticize them.
The current political insecurity is shown by the North Korean government. They can’t take the spoof of their leader in an American film. One, should they worry about a rebellion in North Korea because of this film? It will definitely not be shown publicly. Two, have they considered the spoofs of American politicians that are made daily in all kinds of media all across Europe and the Americas? Does President Obama really have such big ears as drawn by many cartoonists?
The current religious insecurity is shown by those who take offense at caricatures of Mohammed. This is also a political insecurity by certain governments who use religion to control their people. Have they considered all the spoofs of religion and religious figures that have been made for centuries in Europe and the Americas? Does the Pope really wear such a high mitre that his aides have to check the height of a bridge before the Pope can ride under it?
Wiley’s “Non Sequitur” frequently draws the foibles of people entering heaven. I bet most of us have seen over a dozen cartoons in the last year from a variety of cartoonists picturing God.
Many of you probably know several jokes about religion. Here are a few that I’ve known for decades. I’ve shortened them a bit to save space.
A priest and a rabbi golfed together every Sunday afternoon for many years. One day the priest asked the rabbi if he ever ate ham. Hem, haw! “Well, yes, I have.” “Tasted pretty good, huh?” A couple holes later the rabbi asked the priest if he ever slept with a woman. Hem, haw! “Well, yes, I have.” “Better than ham, huh?”
Two priests and a Protestant minister went fishing together. After a bit, one priest said he forgot something on shore and walked across the water to shore and came back. A bit later the other priest did the same. The Protestant minister had to show that he could walk on water also. He stepped out of the boat and sank up to his neck. One priest asked the other, “Do you think we should have told him where the rocks are?”
Jews tell this about themselves: If two Jews are in a room there will be three opinions. You can substitute Unitarians for Jews and probably several other religious groups.
Garrison Keillor claims the original settlers of Lake Wobegon were Unitarian missionaries, one of whom wanted to convert the Ojibwe with interpretative dance.
For a lot more jokes about Unitarians, see http://www.imladris.com/Sandbox/index.shtml?UuJokes.html. The lead paragraph is “Many of these jokes are collected in the fine volume "The Church Where People Laugh" by Gwen Foss. They're full of unwarranted stereotypes suggesting that all UUs are flaky, coffee-swilling environmentally fanatical atheists ... as a UU, I find them hilarious.“
Monty Python produced two popular movies heavy on spoofs of religion: “Life of Brian” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.
Ah, “The Holy Grail”! There is a violent religion for you. All the Christians that pillaged their way across Europe and the Near East to drive Muslims out of the Holy Land. And many of them made alliances with the Muslim rulers.
Even religious groups that many consider strait-laced can laugh at themselves.
“A teacher asked her students to bring an item to class that represented their religious beliefs. A Catholic student brought a crucifix. A Jewish student brought a Menora. A Southern Baptist student brought a CorningWare.”
For many more like this, see http://www.christianpost.com/buzzvine/7-southern-baptist-ecumenical-jokes-that-will-have-you-rofl-107419/.
I was given a book by a French friend, “Dieu rit en Alsace” (“God laughs in Alsace”). It has many anecdotes about clergy and lay people. One of my favorites is about a young Protestant pastor asked to perform a wedding in another town. He directed the couple to exchange knees and bend their rings. I wish I still had the book to see the original German and all my other favorites in French. I hope the person I lent it to can find it.
I wonder if God is so great, then can't he take care of blasphemers like he did with the Great Flood or with Sodom and Gomorrah?
I think those who criticize “blasphemy” are insecure in their own beliefs. Like the North Korean leaders they see everything that contradicts their world view as a physical threat to themselves. Many believe that the best counter to “blasphemy” or any insult is to dismiss these with “consider the source”.
Take a look at the “Charlie Hebdo” cover. It was republished last week in both the Reader Weekly and the Duluth News Tribune. Isn’t Mohammed shedding a tear about the violence done is his name? At least twice this past week I’ve seen Muslims retell the story of Mohammed’s forgiveness of a women who threw garbage at him as he passed her house.
“...and you should forgive And overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” – Qur’an
“Life ain't no how serious. We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo
“Can't we all just get along?” – Rodney King
Je suis Charlie! Je suis Ahmed!
- “Your Free Speech, and Mine”, Timothy Egan, New York Times, 2015-01-16
There are too many people and too many governments that take offense too easily at any criticism of their religion or their government. They are so insecure in their beliefs or of their power that they are willing to kill those who criticize them.
The current political insecurity is shown by the North Korean government. They can’t take the spoof of their leader in an American film. One, should they worry about a rebellion in North Korea because of this film? It will definitely not be shown publicly. Two, have they considered the spoofs of American politicians that are made daily in all kinds of media all across Europe and the Americas? Does President Obama really have such big ears as drawn by many cartoonists?
The current religious insecurity is shown by those who take offense at caricatures of Mohammed. This is also a political insecurity by certain governments who use religion to control their people. Have they considered all the spoofs of religion and religious figures that have been made for centuries in Europe and the Americas? Does the Pope really wear such a high mitre that his aides have to check the height of a bridge before the Pope can ride under it?
Wiley’s “Non Sequitur” frequently draws the foibles of people entering heaven. I bet most of us have seen over a dozen cartoons in the last year from a variety of cartoonists picturing God.
Many of you probably know several jokes about religion. Here are a few that I’ve known for decades. I’ve shortened them a bit to save space.
A priest and a rabbi golfed together every Sunday afternoon for many years. One day the priest asked the rabbi if he ever ate ham. Hem, haw! “Well, yes, I have.” “Tasted pretty good, huh?” A couple holes later the rabbi asked the priest if he ever slept with a woman. Hem, haw! “Well, yes, I have.” “Better than ham, huh?”
Two priests and a Protestant minister went fishing together. After a bit, one priest said he forgot something on shore and walked across the water to shore and came back. A bit later the other priest did the same. The Protestant minister had to show that he could walk on water also. He stepped out of the boat and sank up to his neck. One priest asked the other, “Do you think we should have told him where the rocks are?”
Jews tell this about themselves: If two Jews are in a room there will be three opinions. You can substitute Unitarians for Jews and probably several other religious groups.
Garrison Keillor claims the original settlers of Lake Wobegon were Unitarian missionaries, one of whom wanted to convert the Ojibwe with interpretative dance.
For a lot more jokes about Unitarians, see http://www.imladris.com/Sandbox/index.shtml?UuJokes.html. The lead paragraph is “Many of these jokes are collected in the fine volume "The Church Where People Laugh" by Gwen Foss. They're full of unwarranted stereotypes suggesting that all UUs are flaky, coffee-swilling environmentally fanatical atheists ... as a UU, I find them hilarious.“
Monty Python produced two popular movies heavy on spoofs of religion: “Life of Brian” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.
Ah, “The Holy Grail”! There is a violent religion for you. All the Christians that pillaged their way across Europe and the Near East to drive Muslims out of the Holy Land. And many of them made alliances with the Muslim rulers.
Even religious groups that many consider strait-laced can laugh at themselves.
“A teacher asked her students to bring an item to class that represented their religious beliefs. A Catholic student brought a crucifix. A Jewish student brought a Menora. A Southern Baptist student brought a CorningWare.”
For many more like this, see http://www.christianpost.com/buzzvine/7-southern-baptist-ecumenical-jokes-that-will-have-you-rofl-107419/.
I was given a book by a French friend, “Dieu rit en Alsace” (“God laughs in Alsace”). It has many anecdotes about clergy and lay people. One of my favorites is about a young Protestant pastor asked to perform a wedding in another town. He directed the couple to exchange knees and bend their rings. I wish I still had the book to see the original German and all my other favorites in French. I hope the person I lent it to can find it.
I wonder if God is so great, then can't he take care of blasphemers like he did with the Great Flood or with Sodom and Gomorrah?
I think those who criticize “blasphemy” are insecure in their own beliefs. Like the North Korean leaders they see everything that contradicts their world view as a physical threat to themselves. Many believe that the best counter to “blasphemy” or any insult is to dismiss these with “consider the source”.
Take a look at the “Charlie Hebdo” cover. It was republished last week in both the Reader Weekly and the Duluth News Tribune. Isn’t Mohammed shedding a tear about the violence done is his name? At least twice this past week I’ve seen Muslims retell the story of Mohammed’s forgiveness of a women who threw garbage at him as he passed her house.
“...and you should forgive And overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” – Qur’an
“Life ain't no how serious. We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo
“Can't we all just get along?” – Rodney King
Je suis Charlie! Je suis Ahmed!
Thursday, January 15, 2015
If we have smaller government…
...will smaller corporations follow?
I thought a recent article in the New York Times had a headline linking Jeb Bush and “small government”. At the time, I only saved the link. When I revisited the link, the article didn’t have that headline but one about his emails as Governor of Florida. (“Emails from tenure as governor of Florida show Jeb Bush’s agenda and goals”, 2014-12-25).
He did campaign on promising to make Florida state government smaller. He did set a goal of cutting the number of state employees in half. “And while he did not slash the number of state employees by half, he did privatize thousands of public jobs.”
The problem with promises of smaller government is that often little discrimination is made between what government services are important and what services are superfluous. It reminds me of Senator Rudy Boschwitz and his call for “across the board cuts”. Are we going to cut understaffed court systems as well as grants to the arts? Many people will step in with increased donations to the arts, but how many are willing to donate to the court systems?
What services did Gov. Bush cut? Could these cuts have resulted in longer wait time for developmentally disabled individuals to receive assistance? Did he cut law enforcement? Would this have resulted in more traffic crashes because irresponsible drivers had more chances to hurt other people?
What about the privatizing of public services? Who are these companies responsible to: the people or the shareholders? If prisons are privatized, do the companies have an incentive to help inmates re-integrate with society? Or do they have an incentive to maximize profits and feed and house prisoners at the lowest possible cost without any concern about recidivism?
What is it that makes some people automatically assume corporations will always do better than government? Have they considered that both corporations and governments are run by people? And what do people do too often? Make mistakes.
Deadly mistakes like air bags that kill people and brakes that don’t work.
People lie too often. Government officials tell us about weapons that don’t exist. Corporations tell us that their projects will create jobs and will not harm people or the environment.
Two of the favorite punching bags of government critics are the Departments of Motor Vehicles and the Postal Service. Sorry, but my experiences with either have been almost always positive. Sure, I have to wait in line sometimes, but I console myself that the clerks will treat me as if I were the only customer. And the last words of a postal clerk are “Anything else?” Our usual postal carrier trudges through the snow and cold, and she can still greet us with a cheery smile.
Most of my interactions with large companies are generally positive, but the number of things that go wrong is far too many.
I have accounts with several corporations for various services from online newspapers to cell phone service. I make payments to many of these by automatic payment through my credit card. Some of these have been sending me emails that my card has expired!
This was beginning in December and into this month. Strange! My card has an expiration date of 01/15! My bank verified that means 1/31/15. I’ve called or emailed a few about this. I said I would probably not receive a new card until mid-January. How can I update it without an updated card?
My new card arrived this past week! Hurray, I won’t be receiving these messages for another three years.
But…
I spent half a morning updating half the auto-pay accounts. I wrote some of this while waiting for Virgin Mobile to give me the next page of ??? I lost count. Each took over a minute to load. This is corporate efficiency?
Ah, Virgin Mobile accepted my card. No, it did not! It doesn’t like the old card number that is displayed with mostly asterisks. I replaced that with 16 digits all jammed together. It didn’t like that. I can’t remember all that happened but finally I had a screen that had the updated info. Except my choices now are to cancel or pay now. I would pay automatically on the due date. I cancelled. When the next page finally came up it looked like I was all set, but the expiration date wasn’t included. Then I was waiting for the page “Edit info”. The expiration date was NOT updated.
Then I was watching the wait circle go round-and-round for “Contact Us”. Ah, it finally loaded.
I received an email from Virgin Mobile a couple of hours later. The representative listed five straight-forward steps. Why didn’t I see the first step? Did I go off to another page where that step was not shown? I don’t know, and I’m not going to double check now. I do know that all was not peaches and cream.
“Terms and agreement” had a check-box for acceptance, but it was not obvious. It was partially hidden by text. I finally got all the steps done, and was told that it would take fifteen minutes to reflect the change in my account. I bet it wouldn’t take them fifteen minutes to notify me if I had run over the limit on my credit card.
I could rant on about some of the other problems of two days updating only a few accounts. Some went smoothly; other were almost as bad as the Virgin Mobile experience.
I do know some people who would not even attempt this task. They would find an expert to do it for them. With all the research in the last thirty years that has gone into human interface and ease of use, one would think that large corporations with their “efficiency” would be experts in this field.
Mel wonders if there is a Moore’s law for software bugs: every 18 months, the percentage of errors doubles.
I thought a recent article in the New York Times had a headline linking Jeb Bush and “small government”. At the time, I only saved the link. When I revisited the link, the article didn’t have that headline but one about his emails as Governor of Florida. (“Emails from tenure as governor of Florida show Jeb Bush’s agenda and goals”, 2014-12-25).
He did campaign on promising to make Florida state government smaller. He did set a goal of cutting the number of state employees in half. “And while he did not slash the number of state employees by half, he did privatize thousands of public jobs.”
The problem with promises of smaller government is that often little discrimination is made between what government services are important and what services are superfluous. It reminds me of Senator Rudy Boschwitz and his call for “across the board cuts”. Are we going to cut understaffed court systems as well as grants to the arts? Many people will step in with increased donations to the arts, but how many are willing to donate to the court systems?
What services did Gov. Bush cut? Could these cuts have resulted in longer wait time for developmentally disabled individuals to receive assistance? Did he cut law enforcement? Would this have resulted in more traffic crashes because irresponsible drivers had more chances to hurt other people?
What about the privatizing of public services? Who are these companies responsible to: the people or the shareholders? If prisons are privatized, do the companies have an incentive to help inmates re-integrate with society? Or do they have an incentive to maximize profits and feed and house prisoners at the lowest possible cost without any concern about recidivism?
What is it that makes some people automatically assume corporations will always do better than government? Have they considered that both corporations and governments are run by people? And what do people do too often? Make mistakes.
Deadly mistakes like air bags that kill people and brakes that don’t work.
People lie too often. Government officials tell us about weapons that don’t exist. Corporations tell us that their projects will create jobs and will not harm people or the environment.
Two of the favorite punching bags of government critics are the Departments of Motor Vehicles and the Postal Service. Sorry, but my experiences with either have been almost always positive. Sure, I have to wait in line sometimes, but I console myself that the clerks will treat me as if I were the only customer. And the last words of a postal clerk are “Anything else?” Our usual postal carrier trudges through the snow and cold, and she can still greet us with a cheery smile.
Most of my interactions with large companies are generally positive, but the number of things that go wrong is far too many.
I have accounts with several corporations for various services from online newspapers to cell phone service. I make payments to many of these by automatic payment through my credit card. Some of these have been sending me emails that my card has expired!
This was beginning in December and into this month. Strange! My card has an expiration date of 01/15! My bank verified that means 1/31/15. I’ve called or emailed a few about this. I said I would probably not receive a new card until mid-January. How can I update it without an updated card?
My new card arrived this past week! Hurray, I won’t be receiving these messages for another three years.
But…
I spent half a morning updating half the auto-pay accounts. I wrote some of this while waiting for Virgin Mobile to give me the next page of ??? I lost count. Each took over a minute to load. This is corporate efficiency?
Ah, Virgin Mobile accepted my card. No, it did not! It doesn’t like the old card number that is displayed with mostly asterisks. I replaced that with 16 digits all jammed together. It didn’t like that. I can’t remember all that happened but finally I had a screen that had the updated info. Except my choices now are to cancel or pay now. I would pay automatically on the due date. I cancelled. When the next page finally came up it looked like I was all set, but the expiration date wasn’t included. Then I was waiting for the page “Edit info”. The expiration date was NOT updated.
Then I was watching the wait circle go round-and-round for “Contact Us”. Ah, it finally loaded.
I received an email from Virgin Mobile a couple of hours later. The representative listed five straight-forward steps. Why didn’t I see the first step? Did I go off to another page where that step was not shown? I don’t know, and I’m not going to double check now. I do know that all was not peaches and cream.
“Terms and agreement” had a check-box for acceptance, but it was not obvious. It was partially hidden by text. I finally got all the steps done, and was told that it would take fifteen minutes to reflect the change in my account. I bet it wouldn’t take them fifteen minutes to notify me if I had run over the limit on my credit card.
I could rant on about some of the other problems of two days updating only a few accounts. Some went smoothly; other were almost as bad as the Virgin Mobile experience.
I do know some people who would not even attempt this task. They would find an expert to do it for them. With all the research in the last thirty years that has gone into human interface and ease of use, one would think that large corporations with their “efficiency” would be experts in this field.
Mel wonders if there is a Moore’s law for software bugs: every 18 months, the percentage of errors doubles.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Muslims do speak out!
Too often someone writes or says that Muslims should speak out against the violence committed in the name of Islam.
Are these complainers in a cocoon? Muslims do speak out about the violence. The complainers probably don’t read what is even in local dailies.
Maybe they spend too much time on Fox News. Someone put on the Coffee Party site a snippet from Fox News of an interview with Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot: Jesus of Nazareth”. The interviewer kept repeating “How can a Muslim write about Jesus?” In another era, many would ask, “How can a black women be an interviewer on TV?” Or today, “How can a non-Muslim write about Islam?” or “How can a non-Muslim even ask questions about Islam?”
As to speaking out, many Muslims do. A group of Muslim scholars in Britain condemned the violence and the cartoons both but counseled patience and restraint.
One writer who stands out from several that I have read recently is Ahmed Tharwat, a broadcaster and writer in the Twin Cities. He wrote “I am Ahmed – non-terrorist”. He wrote for many Muslims that he is tired of being held responsible for the actions of a few out of over a billion Muslims.
Are these complainers in a cocoon? Muslims do speak out about the violence. The complainers probably don’t read what is even in local dailies.
Maybe they spend too much time on Fox News. Someone put on the Coffee Party site a snippet from Fox News of an interview with Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot: Jesus of Nazareth”. The interviewer kept repeating “How can a Muslim write about Jesus?” In another era, many would ask, “How can a black women be an interviewer on TV?” Or today, “How can a non-Muslim write about Islam?” or “How can a non-Muslim even ask questions about Islam?”
As to speaking out, many Muslims do. A group of Muslim scholars in Britain condemned the violence and the cartoons both but counseled patience and restraint.
One writer who stands out from several that I have read recently is Ahmed Tharwat, a broadcaster and writer in the Twin Cities. He wrote “I am Ahmed – non-terrorist”. He wrote for many Muslims that he is tired of being held responsible for the actions of a few out of over a billion Muslims.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Tout est pardonné
I've spent a lot of time researching the "Tout est pardonné" issue of Charlie Hebdo. But I have found no address to order a copy. I could impose on a couple of French friends, but I email them too infrequently.
I did find out how to donate and did: http://www.charliehebdo.fr/index.html. This site has almost nothing else but donation forms.
But I won’t go to eBay for it. I read that somebody is already offering this issue at $300!
P.S. 2016-01-02 A French friend did mail me the "Tout est pardonné" issue of Charlie Hebdo. It really does tax my French.
I did find out how to donate and did: http://www.charliehebdo.fr/index.html. This site has almost nothing else but donation forms.
But I won’t go to eBay for it. I read that somebody is already offering this issue at $300!
P.S. 2016-01-02 A French friend did mail me the "Tout est pardonné" issue of Charlie Hebdo. It really does tax my French.
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