It needs roots, leaves, and flowers.
STEM refers to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It is all the rage to ensure that a large number of public school students be grounded in STEM. That’s “where all the jobs are.”
But is that all our public schools should produce: “skills” that are “hot” today for large corporations? What happens when large corporations want different “skills”? How many FORTRAN or COBOL programmers are still working? How many large corporations were willing to let them learn C on the job? Or would the large corporations rather let them go and hire C programmers taught by a university? Programmers who would be cheaper because they didn’t have seniority. Or programmers who would be cheaper because they were H1-B hires? The old programmers would be familiar with how the company functioned. The new programmers would probably take longer to learn how the company functioned than the old programmers could upgrade their “skills”.
Tech innovation in and of itself is devoid of meaning. We need the humanities and art to give meaning. The humanities are the roots of a learning plant. They feed the STEM with ideas of what has worked in the past and insight to what might work in the future. The arts are the flowers of the STEM. Without music, drawing, and theatre, STEM is only more and more gadgets which became ends in of themselves. See Sherry Turkles’ “Alone Together” for how much are society has become tools of our gadgets rather than our gadgets being our tools. The leaves are the parts that extract learning from whatever sources are available.
Even before STEM became a buzz-word, I had plenty of STEM training.
I had the science of Physics and Chemistry in high school and college. I really haven’t used much Physics or Chemistry since then. I do remember that speed equals the acceleration multiplied by the square of time. I don’t know what use this has been to me except that I don’t think sky diving is a good idea. I do remember that water is two-parts hydrogen and one part oxygen and the carbon dioxide is one part carbon and two parts oxygen.
In college I took the technology of AC Circuits and flunked it. But all I really need to know today is that the wall sockets are AC circuits that when properly used can provide light as well as power for the computer I am typing this article on.
Oops, an aside. From English I learned the last phrase should be “for the computer on which I am typing this article.” And of course, from other reading I have learned that this is a forced construction based on the idea that English should follow Latin grammar.
In college I had “Engineering Tools and Processes”. I don’t remember my grade (not an A), but as all the others did, my brazing of one piece to another exceeded the base line. On the other hand, I never did get the hang of arc welding. I always got the rod stuck to the work.
Now Math is something I really got immersed in: calculus, differential equations, complex variables, mathematical logic, and more: two years at a liberal arts college and two years in graduate schools. But what do I use math for now: balancing my checkbook, doing my taxes, and guessing an appropriate tip. I do remember that the squares of the sides of a right triangle equal the square of the hypotenuse. But might I have learned this just doing some carpentry? The 3-4-5 rule for making a right angle. About the only other formula I remember is the integral of e to the x equals a function of u sub n. I didn’t learn that in the class room!
With all that STEM, how did I learn so much about computers? On the job training and my own curiosity. I got a summer job between my junior and senior years to learn computing. With a text book from the company library and the help of others, I successfully completed a program that was used after I left.
When I went to graduate school as a graduate assistant, we were given some manuals and pointed at the computer room. It was the days of cards-in, cards-out but it was self-serve. None of this priesthood behind locked doors that gave back your work when they damn-well decided to.
Now computers have gotten both easier to use and harder to use. But how many of those who get the full STEM treatment will get and hold jobs in industry. Will a programmer be able to easily change jobs if he or she doesn’t have the right “skill set”? Or will companies look for new grads from other countries on H1-B visas. And after the visas expire just send them back home because the companies can get new grads with “up-to-date” “skill sets”.
This all reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Player Piano”. Workers were spit out of the system because their jobs were replaced by computer systems. Even managers were getting spit out. Vonnegut saw this back in the bad-old-days of cards-in, cards-out.
But what I really learned in school and on my own that was of lasting importance was in the roots, flowers, and leaves. What would my life be without all the literature I learned? Would I have enjoyed and learned from Shakespeare and other great books without being exposed to them in school? Would I have learned about government without civics and American history? Would I have enjoyed a wide range of music without a class in music appreciation. It is all of these that allowed me to enjoy life and contribute more than sitting in a cubicle designing “the next great thing.”
Also in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2016-03-24 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/24/6930_stem_is_only_part_of_a_plant-1.
Also "complex various" was corrected to "complex variables".
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Thursday, March 17, 2016
I am American, not Irish!
“On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish!” Really? Just what is Irish? Is it the ruffian who flung his elbow in my face as he passed me in Killkenny? Or is it the people named McGree who invited me to their home for dinner? Is it the parish priest who let me look through church records? Or is it the woman who smoked in the no-smoking car on the train back to Dublin. Just like any other group, ethnic, religious, or skin hue, there are many different behaviors from the generous to the hateful.
One St. Patrick’s Day, my mother proclaimed that we were “Orange-Irish”. I don’t think she had a clue. If she knew the ancestry of my paternal grandfather, she certainly didn’t pass it on to me. Neither did my German-born paternal grandmother.
From all the genealogical research I’ve done, it seems that the surname Magree, McGree, or MacGree comes from Ireland. However, from all the genealogical research I’ve done, I have found no ancestor in my male line that was definitively born in Ireland.
The closest was my great grandfather, John J.R. Magree, who variously claimed to be born in Brooklyn or England. In the last year or two I found that he was born in Liverpool of an American and a woman living in Liverpool. Her name was Margaret Pope. Her father was a customs officer, and so I assume she was not born in Ireland.
John James Richard Magree’s father was John Cornelius Magree, who generally went by John C. Magree. I did find a record of his getting his seaman’s certificate in 1833 at the age of 15. In the 1850 census he was listed first in a crew of a ship in New York or Brooklyn. In 1851 he was the master of the ship Ivanhoe bringing about 400 immigrants from Liverpool to New York. Most of the passengers were Irish. I did not find a Margaret Pope or Margaret Magree in the passenger list.
I did link John C. Magree to his father twice. John C.’s marriage document named his father as Vincent Magree. The 1830 Census did list Vincent Magree’s household as containing a male about 12 years old.
With Ancestor,com, I can find no record other than these two of Vincent Magree. I wonder if he (or others) anglicized his name from Vincenzo Magri to Vincent Magree. I have found records where a Magri has also been named Magree. It’s possible that my paternal line comes from Italy; one relative told me that one of uncles looked “Spanish”. I do know that I was one of the few “curly-haired” males in my family.
Just who are these “Irish” that the English of another time called a “race”? We do know they were Celts who drove out another group. Was this displaced group the “fairies”? But then the Vikings came raping and pillaging. After that another wave of Vikings came, but they were called Normans (Norse men). But the Normans had settled in France, so are the Irish French? Partly! Names like Fitzpatrick come from the French Fils-Patrick, meaning son of Patrick. Then the English came a-pillaging and taking land. This invasion was so devastating that many Irish left for the Americas and Australia.
When the descendants of the Irish immigrants to Australia come to the United States, what do we call them? Australians!
I do know that many grandchildren of people who immigrated to other countries are often labelled with their ancestry, but I don’t know if these labels persist for so many generations as they do in the U.S. I enjoy springing the question “What nationality is the King of Sweden?” By American reckoning he is French. He is a descendant of one of Napoleon’s marshals: Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte! Some often respond that Queen Elizabeth II is German. She’s a descendant of Prince Albert of Saxony.
What are people who immigrate to the U.S. or their descendants called when they go back the “Old Country”? Americans! I read one Swedish novel where a man worked in Chicago for several years, came back to his home town, and was labelled as “American”. I read another where a second-generation woman came back, could hardly speak Swedish, and was called “American”.
I was an “Ugly American” in Europe for six years. If you read “The Ugly American” you know that he was the good guy in the local view and the “bad guy” in the expatriate community. “The Ugly American” learned the language and customs of the host country, and he didn’t spend all of his time in the “country club” American community.
I worked on learning the languages of the countries I visited and used them both in speaking and reading. A few others didn’t even make an attempt and were miserable. In fact, one European colleague called me a “Northern European” because I worked at blending in.
But I can’t resist being the other kind of “Ugly American” in this country. When someone says they are Swedish or Italian, I ask “Talar du svenska?” or “Parlai italiano?” “Do you speak Swedish?” or “Do you speak Italian?” Generally the response is either befuddlement or a negative reply.
So, this assumed descendant of some Irish immigrant won’t be drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. As much as he likes Guinness or Smithwick, he will probably be drinking a couple of glasses of Italian wine. Sláinte or cin-cin!
Also printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-03-17 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/17/6888_i_am_american_not_irish.
P.S. About green beer and other "Irish" fare, see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/dining/corned-beef-and-cabbage-not-so-irish-historians-say.html.
One St. Patrick’s Day, my mother proclaimed that we were “Orange-Irish”. I don’t think she had a clue. If she knew the ancestry of my paternal grandfather, she certainly didn’t pass it on to me. Neither did my German-born paternal grandmother.
From all the genealogical research I’ve done, it seems that the surname Magree, McGree, or MacGree comes from Ireland. However, from all the genealogical research I’ve done, I have found no ancestor in my male line that was definitively born in Ireland.
The closest was my great grandfather, John J.R. Magree, who variously claimed to be born in Brooklyn or England. In the last year or two I found that he was born in Liverpool of an American and a woman living in Liverpool. Her name was Margaret Pope. Her father was a customs officer, and so I assume she was not born in Ireland.
John James Richard Magree’s father was John Cornelius Magree, who generally went by John C. Magree. I did find a record of his getting his seaman’s certificate in 1833 at the age of 15. In the 1850 census he was listed first in a crew of a ship in New York or Brooklyn. In 1851 he was the master of the ship Ivanhoe bringing about 400 immigrants from Liverpool to New York. Most of the passengers were Irish. I did not find a Margaret Pope or Margaret Magree in the passenger list.
I did link John C. Magree to his father twice. John C.’s marriage document named his father as Vincent Magree. The 1830 Census did list Vincent Magree’s household as containing a male about 12 years old.
With Ancestor,com, I can find no record other than these two of Vincent Magree. I wonder if he (or others) anglicized his name from Vincenzo Magri to Vincent Magree. I have found records where a Magri has also been named Magree. It’s possible that my paternal line comes from Italy; one relative told me that one of uncles looked “Spanish”. I do know that I was one of the few “curly-haired” males in my family.
Just who are these “Irish” that the English of another time called a “race”? We do know they were Celts who drove out another group. Was this displaced group the “fairies”? But then the Vikings came raping and pillaging. After that another wave of Vikings came, but they were called Normans (Norse men). But the Normans had settled in France, so are the Irish French? Partly! Names like Fitzpatrick come from the French Fils-Patrick, meaning son of Patrick. Then the English came a-pillaging and taking land. This invasion was so devastating that many Irish left for the Americas and Australia.
When the descendants of the Irish immigrants to Australia come to the United States, what do we call them? Australians!
I do know that many grandchildren of people who immigrated to other countries are often labelled with their ancestry, but I don’t know if these labels persist for so many generations as they do in the U.S. I enjoy springing the question “What nationality is the King of Sweden?” By American reckoning he is French. He is a descendant of one of Napoleon’s marshals: Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte! Some often respond that Queen Elizabeth II is German. She’s a descendant of Prince Albert of Saxony.
What are people who immigrate to the U.S. or their descendants called when they go back the “Old Country”? Americans! I read one Swedish novel where a man worked in Chicago for several years, came back to his home town, and was labelled as “American”. I read another where a second-generation woman came back, could hardly speak Swedish, and was called “American”.
I was an “Ugly American” in Europe for six years. If you read “The Ugly American” you know that he was the good guy in the local view and the “bad guy” in the expatriate community. “The Ugly American” learned the language and customs of the host country, and he didn’t spend all of his time in the “country club” American community.
I worked on learning the languages of the countries I visited and used them both in speaking and reading. A few others didn’t even make an attempt and were miserable. In fact, one European colleague called me a “Northern European” because I worked at blending in.
But I can’t resist being the other kind of “Ugly American” in this country. When someone says they are Swedish or Italian, I ask “Talar du svenska?” or “Parlai italiano?” “Do you speak Swedish?” or “Do you speak Italian?” Generally the response is either befuddlement or a negative reply.
So, this assumed descendant of some Irish immigrant won’t be drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. As much as he likes Guinness or Smithwick, he will probably be drinking a couple of glasses of Italian wine. Sláinte or cin-cin!
Also printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-03-17 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/17/6888_i_am_american_not_irish.
P.S. About green beer and other "Irish" fare, see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/dining/corned-beef-and-cabbage-not-so-irish-historians-say.html.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Much alarm about nothing
One of the current online ads is one about you can get over $4,000 more in Social Security every month. Sounds like an offer you can’t refuse!
Supposedly Congress has removed a Social Security Benefit and Obama has approved it. It will be removed on May 16, 2016.
The advertisers make it look like this benefit was removed by a clause snuck in by some anti-Social Security member of Congress.
Actually, it is a loophole that allowed a spouse to defer his or her Social Security while the other collected his or her Social Security. At some later date the deferrer could have a much higher Social Security benefit.
To get $4,000/month more, the person would have had to have a rather high income. I can’t imagine the average worker getting such a benefit.
But these are probably just the people the ads target. Either these “marks” will have to pay an upfront fee or buy a book to find out that they cannot get such a benefit.
I tried checking the Social Security website for “2016 changes”. I got eight hits, but that’s all I could see. No text, no further links. I sent an email, but my guess is that it will be a long time before I get an answer: too many people are asking the same question and overloading the system.
Fortunately, Vanguard published an article written by Jacklin Youssef that explains the changes. See https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/article/youssef-social-security-022016.
Essentially, by using your spouse’s Social Security benefits and deferring your own until age 70, you can collect 34% more per month. Let’s see, to get $4,000/month more in Social Security, you would have to have deferred a benefit of $11,764.71/month
So, you retire at 67 but defer your benefit until age 70. You would pass up $423,529 dollars to get that extra benefit. It would be over 100 months until you recouped the $423,529 you passed up. You would be over 78 when you broke even on your delay. Are you sure you will live to 78?
It’s late and I don’t want to figure out the interest you would have earned if you had saved that $11,764.71 a month.
However, how many people do you know that receive $11,764.71/month in Social Security? These are not the people who are going to respond to these ads. They probably already have financial smarts or advisors to get the best deal for themselves.
P.S. If you see an ad about this change, I had nothing to do with selecting the ad. It's done automagically based on the content of an entry.
Supposedly Congress has removed a Social Security Benefit and Obama has approved it. It will be removed on May 16, 2016.
The advertisers make it look like this benefit was removed by a clause snuck in by some anti-Social Security member of Congress.
Actually, it is a loophole that allowed a spouse to defer his or her Social Security while the other collected his or her Social Security. At some later date the deferrer could have a much higher Social Security benefit.
To get $4,000/month more, the person would have had to have a rather high income. I can’t imagine the average worker getting such a benefit.
But these are probably just the people the ads target. Either these “marks” will have to pay an upfront fee or buy a book to find out that they cannot get such a benefit.
I tried checking the Social Security website for “2016 changes”. I got eight hits, but that’s all I could see. No text, no further links. I sent an email, but my guess is that it will be a long time before I get an answer: too many people are asking the same question and overloading the system.
Fortunately, Vanguard published an article written by Jacklin Youssef that explains the changes. See https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/article/youssef-social-security-022016.
Essentially, by using your spouse’s Social Security benefits and deferring your own until age 70, you can collect 34% more per month. Let’s see, to get $4,000/month more in Social Security, you would have to have deferred a benefit of $11,764.71/month
So, you retire at 67 but defer your benefit until age 70. You would pass up $423,529 dollars to get that extra benefit. It would be over 100 months until you recouped the $423,529 you passed up. You would be over 78 when you broke even on your delay. Are you sure you will live to 78?
It’s late and I don’t want to figure out the interest you would have earned if you had saved that $11,764.71 a month.
However, how many people do you know that receive $11,764.71/month in Social Security? These are not the people who are going to respond to these ads. They probably already have financial smarts or advisors to get the best deal for themselves.
P.S. If you see an ad about this change, I had nothing to do with selecting the ad. It's done automagically based on the content of an entry.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
How to protest successfully
Many people are showing up at Trump rallies to show their opposition. However, their actions often just rile up the Trump supporters. A much more effective tactic would be to show up and do nothing. A quiet audience is the worst possible insult to the likes of Donald Trump.
By wearing anti-Trump T-shirts or carrying anti-Trump signs, protesters just energize the Trump supporters. But if a large part of his audience never applauded, never jeered, but just remained quiet, Trump wouldn’t know what to do, nor would many of his supporters.
Passive resistance like this can defuse many situations and make those who are the targets of the resistance feel very uncomfortable and unsure of their own positions.
I was very disappointed when Occupy Wall Street changed from lots of people carrying signs to a few people camping out in public spaces. These squatters generated more antipathy than sympathy.
When somebody is shot, whether by police or by a bad guy shooting a cop, riots or demonstrations are not the answer. Riots reduce the sympathy for the victim, and even distract from getting justice. The best possible response is flowers at the site of the shooting.
Gandhi and King led the way on non-violent protest. We dishonor them by even unduly disruptive behavior.
By wearing anti-Trump T-shirts or carrying anti-Trump signs, protesters just energize the Trump supporters. But if a large part of his audience never applauded, never jeered, but just remained quiet, Trump wouldn’t know what to do, nor would many of his supporters.
Passive resistance like this can defuse many situations and make those who are the targets of the resistance feel very uncomfortable and unsure of their own positions.
I was very disappointed when Occupy Wall Street changed from lots of people carrying signs to a few people camping out in public spaces. These squatters generated more antipathy than sympathy.
When somebody is shot, whether by police or by a bad guy shooting a cop, riots or demonstrations are not the answer. Riots reduce the sympathy for the victim, and even distract from getting justice. The best possible response is flowers at the site of the shooting.
Gandhi and King led the way on non-violent protest. We dishonor them by even unduly disruptive behavior.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Raucous Caucus and Other Ruckuses
The Party of One held its caucus in front of my fireplace. Mysteriously, it issued the following results: None of the above, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton. The Party of One caucus called on all of its members to not vote for any Republican except Arne Carlson or Bill Frenzel. Unfortunately, Bill Frenzel died two years ago, but Arne Carlson is alive and writing. See governorcarlson.blogspot.com for what he thinks of Trump, Fox, and MSNBC.
Trump's plurality is not the lock on the nomination that so many news stories imply. Cruz and Rubio could unite as President/VP and have the majority of delegates. Either of the two could run as President but Rubio running as President may have a benefit. This choice defuses the issue of Cruz's birthplace. But if such a duo is finalized, Cruz will more than likely be the Presidential candidate because as of this writing he has more delegates than Rubio. Do you think the same “birthers” that tried to make an issue of Obama’s birth will make an issue of Cruz’s birth?
There is a campaign by Credo Action to get CBS to stop giving so much coverage to Donald Trump. An email from Credo Action quotes CBS CEO Les Moonves: Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” The email also quotes CBS’s diversity and tolerance policy: “CBS Corporation, and its divisions are committed to building an environment that values diversity throughout the corporation and in its business practices.”
Personally, I think watching televised debates or even TV news is a waste of time.
I last watched Presidential debates in 2004. I got so sick of John Kerry repeating “in my plan” that I almost didn’t vote for him. I only voted for him because he was better than the alternative. Bush was an angel compared to the angry clowns trying to outdo each other in shouting matches. And Bush as a former governor and a sitting president had far more credibility and experience than an erratic businessman who has made a career of putting people down. Remember “You’re fired!”
Watching TV news is unproductive time. I can read more news items in a half-hour in a newspaper than I can get in a half-hour TV news broadcast. Plus, I can skip ads in the newspaper but it’s hard to skip the twelve minutes of ads in a TV newscast.
My Party of One caucus was a lot less crowded than my wife’s DFL caucus. She spent a lot of time driving around looking for a parking place, then she had to stand in line to even enter the building, and then she couldn’t get into the room for her precinct. The best she could do was write her choice for president on a little slip of paper. She had wanted to submit a couple of resolutions. This is democracy?
I keep wondering why so many states have partisan primaries or caucuses that are open to the public. I think it was Robert La Follette of Wisconsin over a century ago who thought that primaries would make elections more democratic. I think it has had two downsides. People who don’t give time or a dime to a party get to decide its candidates. Second, it makes for much longer campaigns.
Many point to Canada and Britain as examples of “six-week campaigns”, but both of these are parliamentary systems. My deadline precludes doing further research on this, but I think two factors are at work here.
First, elections are not held on a regular cycle. Often, a prime minister may decide to call elections to try to get more support for his positions. These irregular elections have to take place in a relatively short time. If a government does sit for its whole term, people are just in the habit of holding elections in a short period of time.
Second, even though voting for a member of parliament may be a proxy for the prime minister, the members are possibly only willing to campaign for a short period of time. Few are the times that we have two-year-long all-out campaigns for local and state governments.
I do wish our so-called “debates” were debates in the classical sense: rather than moderators posing questions to each of the “debaters”, one of the candidates would speak for a certain amount of time on whatever topic he or she chose. The other candidate (or candidates) could either rebut the first candidate’s remarks or go on to another subject. Assuming only two candidates, the first would have a shorter period of time to rebut the second. This is more or less how the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held. Unfortunately, few people today would be willing to stand the hour-plus time of a single debate, or even sit that long.
It is ironic that the party that thought the federal government should work to abolish slavery is now the party that promotes segregation. “Because we think it a wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong.” - Abraham Lincoln, Quincy, Illinois, 13 October 1858.
Whatever your choices are in November, be sure to vote. Your vote always counts. You only throw your vote away if you stay away.
Also posted in the Reader Weekly of 2016-03-10 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/10/6854_raucous_caucus_and_other_ruckuses.
Trump's plurality is not the lock on the nomination that so many news stories imply. Cruz and Rubio could unite as President/VP and have the majority of delegates. Either of the two could run as President but Rubio running as President may have a benefit. This choice defuses the issue of Cruz's birthplace. But if such a duo is finalized, Cruz will more than likely be the Presidential candidate because as of this writing he has more delegates than Rubio. Do you think the same “birthers” that tried to make an issue of Obama’s birth will make an issue of Cruz’s birth?
There is a campaign by Credo Action to get CBS to stop giving so much coverage to Donald Trump. An email from Credo Action quotes CBS CEO Les Moonves: Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” The email also quotes CBS’s diversity and tolerance policy: “CBS Corporation, and its divisions are committed to building an environment that values diversity throughout the corporation and in its business practices.”
Personally, I think watching televised debates or even TV news is a waste of time.
I last watched Presidential debates in 2004. I got so sick of John Kerry repeating “in my plan” that I almost didn’t vote for him. I only voted for him because he was better than the alternative. Bush was an angel compared to the angry clowns trying to outdo each other in shouting matches. And Bush as a former governor and a sitting president had far more credibility and experience than an erratic businessman who has made a career of putting people down. Remember “You’re fired!”
Watching TV news is unproductive time. I can read more news items in a half-hour in a newspaper than I can get in a half-hour TV news broadcast. Plus, I can skip ads in the newspaper but it’s hard to skip the twelve minutes of ads in a TV newscast.
My Party of One caucus was a lot less crowded than my wife’s DFL caucus. She spent a lot of time driving around looking for a parking place, then she had to stand in line to even enter the building, and then she couldn’t get into the room for her precinct. The best she could do was write her choice for president on a little slip of paper. She had wanted to submit a couple of resolutions. This is democracy?
I keep wondering why so many states have partisan primaries or caucuses that are open to the public. I think it was Robert La Follette of Wisconsin over a century ago who thought that primaries would make elections more democratic. I think it has had two downsides. People who don’t give time or a dime to a party get to decide its candidates. Second, it makes for much longer campaigns.
Many point to Canada and Britain as examples of “six-week campaigns”, but both of these are parliamentary systems. My deadline precludes doing further research on this, but I think two factors are at work here.
First, elections are not held on a regular cycle. Often, a prime minister may decide to call elections to try to get more support for his positions. These irregular elections have to take place in a relatively short time. If a government does sit for its whole term, people are just in the habit of holding elections in a short period of time.
Second, even though voting for a member of parliament may be a proxy for the prime minister, the members are possibly only willing to campaign for a short period of time. Few are the times that we have two-year-long all-out campaigns for local and state governments.
I do wish our so-called “debates” were debates in the classical sense: rather than moderators posing questions to each of the “debaters”, one of the candidates would speak for a certain amount of time on whatever topic he or she chose. The other candidate (or candidates) could either rebut the first candidate’s remarks or go on to another subject. Assuming only two candidates, the first would have a shorter period of time to rebut the second. This is more or less how the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held. Unfortunately, few people today would be willing to stand the hour-plus time of a single debate, or even sit that long.
It is ironic that the party that thought the federal government should work to abolish slavery is now the party that promotes segregation. “Because we think it a wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong.” - Abraham Lincoln, Quincy, Illinois, 13 October 1858.
Whatever your choices are in November, be sure to vote. Your vote always counts. You only throw your vote away if you stay away.
Also posted in the Reader Weekly of 2016-03-10 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/10/6854_raucous_caucus_and_other_ruckuses.
Friday, March 04, 2016
A lot has happened since you last read this column!
Have you gotten tired of Facebook or Classmates sending you email like this?
I dropped Facebook long ago because what generally happened was a half-sister posted yet another picture of her yard. I ignore Classmates because the great news is that someone who I didn’t know posted something or other.
Well, you may or may not be interested in the “lot” that happened to me last week. If not, go on to something else, If you are curious, I hope to reward you with a few chuckles.
At least twice last week, I woke up with some stupendous ideas for this column, mostly about politics and billionaires. I should have gotten up and written them down, but I preferred trying to go back to sleep. I would remember these great ideas in the morning. Of course, they faded with the rising sun.
Well, a few annoyances happened and they are hard to forget.
My printer started producing broken letters. I twice tried the nozzle cleaning procedure, but the test papers came out even worse. I even replaced the one ink cartridge that was low.
The warranty was about six weeks shy of running out. Oh, well, for a few dollars, it’s hardly worth making a claim.
I looked up a few printers on Best Buy, and of course my model was no longer sold. And of course, none of the current printers used the ink jet cartridges of my model. I selected a model that was similar in functions, took my old printer to be recycled, and at the last minute took the receipt for the old printer.
When I got to Best Buy, I took in the tray that accepted envelopes. I hoped I could use it in the new printer so that I didn’t have to change the paper in a tray.
I looked over the model I had selected and it looked like a good replacement. As I really knew, the old tray wouldn’t fit. I asked a clerk a few questions including how to recycle the old printer. He said to bring it in a cart.
I went to check out, paid for my new printer and some ink cartridges. I couldn’t find my Rewards card but the cashier looked it up. I took my purchases out to the car and brought in my old printer for recycling. I gave the clerk at customer service the old printer and my story. When I gave him the receipt for the old printer, he said that I had a replacement warranty! I could have paid for the new printer with the old printer.
I still couldn’t find my Rewards card, and so he gave me an in-store card for future purchases. I had no idea what I would be using it for in the near future, but as you will read, I soon found a use for some of the credit.
I took the printer home and started to set it up according to the instructions. Things went smoothly except for setting up wi-fi on my modem and on my computers.
Then I tried printing some business cards. The printer broke the card stock apart and jammed. Check instructions. Open back panel. Pull out pieces of card stock, broken along the perforations and crumbled. Also pull out pieces from the front. Put back panel back, but it won’t fit. Just which way does this thing go in? I think it took me ten minutes to do it right.
Print a sheet of business cards and leave for a meeting, finally. This was Thursday.
On Friday, we headed to the Twin Cities. As I often do on trips of an hour or more, I use my iPhone and a low-power FM gadget to play podcasts through the car radio. Except the gadget didn’t work! The power light was on, but the radio frequency lights wouldn’t come on. Nothing I tried would change the situation.
So, we spent two hours barely hearing “To the Best of Our Knowledge” (ttbook.org). I had the iPhone between the seats and we could barely hear the speaker above the road noise. At least we learned more about the operations of Coca Cola than we had known before.
When we got to the Twin Cities, we headed first to the Roseville Best Buy store.
We couldn’t find the same make of FM gadget, but we did find one that was considerably less expensive and automatically found the most open station.
I paid for it with my rewards card and the in-store credit card. I still couldn’t find my rewards card, but I could use the email message on my phone about the rewards credit I received for the printer purchase.
We next stopped at a grocery store. While my wife shopped, I installed the FM gadget. It gave me 88.1 as the frequency and I could hear the podcast scratchily. I reread and reread the instructions, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a clear signal.
Because the reception changed as we changed direction, we figured that we were getting interference from the humongous antennas in Shoreview.
Before we left the Twin Cities, we tried again in a Caribou parking lot. We reread the directions and tried again. We were able to listen to a podcast with a minimum of static. We were still within sight of the Shoreview towers.
Oh, I also found my Best Buy Rewards card. It was in my wallet all along. It is silver-gray, not blue and yellow!
We have three lessons here that we constantly forget. One, read the directions first and understand them. Two, when looking for something in your wallet, make sure you see the face of every card. Will I forget the next time? Does the sun rise every morning? Three, I found one of the lost middle-of-the-night notes. It was in a folder I didn’t check. Sorry, it’s more about billionaires.
I dropped Facebook long ago because what generally happened was a half-sister posted yet another picture of her yard. I ignore Classmates because the great news is that someone who I didn’t know posted something or other.
Well, you may or may not be interested in the “lot” that happened to me last week. If not, go on to something else, If you are curious, I hope to reward you with a few chuckles.
At least twice last week, I woke up with some stupendous ideas for this column, mostly about politics and billionaires. I should have gotten up and written them down, but I preferred trying to go back to sleep. I would remember these great ideas in the morning. Of course, they faded with the rising sun.
Well, a few annoyances happened and they are hard to forget.
My printer started producing broken letters. I twice tried the nozzle cleaning procedure, but the test papers came out even worse. I even replaced the one ink cartridge that was low.
The warranty was about six weeks shy of running out. Oh, well, for a few dollars, it’s hardly worth making a claim.
I looked up a few printers on Best Buy, and of course my model was no longer sold. And of course, none of the current printers used the ink jet cartridges of my model. I selected a model that was similar in functions, took my old printer to be recycled, and at the last minute took the receipt for the old printer.
When I got to Best Buy, I took in the tray that accepted envelopes. I hoped I could use it in the new printer so that I didn’t have to change the paper in a tray.
I looked over the model I had selected and it looked like a good replacement. As I really knew, the old tray wouldn’t fit. I asked a clerk a few questions including how to recycle the old printer. He said to bring it in a cart.
I went to check out, paid for my new printer and some ink cartridges. I couldn’t find my Rewards card but the cashier looked it up. I took my purchases out to the car and brought in my old printer for recycling. I gave the clerk at customer service the old printer and my story. When I gave him the receipt for the old printer, he said that I had a replacement warranty! I could have paid for the new printer with the old printer.
I still couldn’t find my Rewards card, and so he gave me an in-store card for future purchases. I had no idea what I would be using it for in the near future, but as you will read, I soon found a use for some of the credit.
I took the printer home and started to set it up according to the instructions. Things went smoothly except for setting up wi-fi on my modem and on my computers.
Then I tried printing some business cards. The printer broke the card stock apart and jammed. Check instructions. Open back panel. Pull out pieces of card stock, broken along the perforations and crumbled. Also pull out pieces from the front. Put back panel back, but it won’t fit. Just which way does this thing go in? I think it took me ten minutes to do it right.
Print a sheet of business cards and leave for a meeting, finally. This was Thursday.
On Friday, we headed to the Twin Cities. As I often do on trips of an hour or more, I use my iPhone and a low-power FM gadget to play podcasts through the car radio. Except the gadget didn’t work! The power light was on, but the radio frequency lights wouldn’t come on. Nothing I tried would change the situation.
So, we spent two hours barely hearing “To the Best of Our Knowledge” (ttbook.org). I had the iPhone between the seats and we could barely hear the speaker above the road noise. At least we learned more about the operations of Coca Cola than we had known before.
When we got to the Twin Cities, we headed first to the Roseville Best Buy store.
We couldn’t find the same make of FM gadget, but we did find one that was considerably less expensive and automatically found the most open station.
I paid for it with my rewards card and the in-store credit card. I still couldn’t find my rewards card, but I could use the email message on my phone about the rewards credit I received for the printer purchase.
We next stopped at a grocery store. While my wife shopped, I installed the FM gadget. It gave me 88.1 as the frequency and I could hear the podcast scratchily. I reread and reread the instructions, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a clear signal.
Because the reception changed as we changed direction, we figured that we were getting interference from the humongous antennas in Shoreview.
Before we left the Twin Cities, we tried again in a Caribou parking lot. We reread the directions and tried again. We were able to listen to a podcast with a minimum of static. We were still within sight of the Shoreview towers.
Oh, I also found my Best Buy Rewards card. It was in my wallet all along. It is silver-gray, not blue and yellow!
We have three lessons here that we constantly forget. One, read the directions first and understand them. Two, when looking for something in your wallet, make sure you see the face of every card. Will I forget the next time? Does the sun rise every morning? Three, I found one of the lost middle-of-the-night notes. It was in a folder I didn’t check. Sorry, it’s more about billionaires.
Thursday, March 03, 2016
How to respond to polls
I think the best comic that I've seen on polling is in the 2016-02-26 "Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee" by John Hambrock. See http://edisonleecomic.com/comics/february-26-2016/.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Iconoclastic ideas (or mysteries)
“I would love to talk to people, and say ‘Why do you need so much money?’ And why do people say it’s so admirable? I think the world has gone quite mad.” - John Cleese as reported by Lee Schafer, Star Tribune, 2016-02-17.
I haven’t yet gone back to “Dark Money”, the book I mentioned last week, but I keep wondering why so many exorbitantly rich have so much money to slosh around that they spend exorbitant sums to ensure that they get even more. When one has hundreds of billions of dollars, what’s a hundred billion or two less?
What is galling is that many claim they earned it, every penny. But how many people worked for a pittance or even a decent salary to create and implement the ideas to earn this money? Often several thousand people showed up every day to bring in that money while the billionaire was jetting here and there on vacation or attending a conference to rail against taxes and government, the same taxes and the same government that subsidizes many of their enterprises. For example, I’ve seen estimates that every Walmart store costs government entities one million dollars a year.
Many who want strict adherence to the Constitution seem to forget "Regulate commerce among states" and "establish a post office”.
The Republicans and their giant-corp backers are doing their best to nullify the EPA rule about emissions. Are these polluters keeping their emissions in the state where they are produced? If any of these emissions go to another state, then the President is right to regulate this commerce in emissions.
The Republicans seem to be bending over backwards to dis-establish the Post Office. The latest gimmick was to impose far greater requirements on pension funding than many corporations get by with. The last I looked my Unisys pension was funded at 77 percent. I exaggerate, but it seems like the Republicans want the Postal Service to be fully-funded on pensions for employees who have not even been hired yet.
I really don’t know what a “fair share” of taxes is, but it is a mystery how many people want perfect infra-structure, immediate arrest of all criminals, and bombing of countries far, far away but do not want to pay any taxes for any of these. Is there a correlation between complaints about government and complaints about burdensome taxes?
A good case in point is the following headline: “Wisconsin crackdown on repeat drunken drivers will cost taxpayers”, Mark Sommerhauser, Wisconsin State Journal, published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2016-02-19. Duh!? What is the cost to taxpayers of the death and destruction caused by drunken drivers? I submit that it is quite a bit higher than the cost of the crackdown. In other words, spend what seems too much to prevent something that costs even more. Even that crackdown on fourth offenders may be too soft. Sweden had or maybe still has tough drunk driving laws: first offense was two years in jail, even for members of Parliament.
Why does Clinton have to be president so we finally have a woman president? Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren are much better choices, but neither seems to be interested.
Why do we have reach out across (fill-in the blank) lines? Can’t we just be nice to everybody. I hold doors for others, they hold doors for me. Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along.”
We do have to reform or at least neutralize people who judge people by factors which have nothing to do with a given situation.
Right now many established and respected media are giving misleading information. Clinton “won” in Nevada and Trump “won” in South Carolina. I posted a comment on a New York Times article; the article made no reference to the actual delegates gained. Sorry, I didn’t note the article. Interestingly, my comment was not posted for all to see. At least, as I write this hours later, I have not been emailed that my comment was posted.
Well, Trump did win in South Carolina because the South Carolina Republican primary is winner take-all. He “won” with less than a third of the vote. However, in Nevada, Clinton received 22 delegates and Sanders received 16 delegates. Oops, another source gives 19-15, and yet another shows a spread of about 600 votes. Sorry, I’m visiting so many sites to get to the truth that I have forgotten where I found which figures. Clinton does have an advantage because of super-delegates, elected and party officials who are automatically delegates to the convention. The super-delegates are overwhelmingly pro-Clinton.
One of these sources was “How many delegates do Trump, Clinton need to win? What's the delegate count for each candidate?” by Jonathan D. Salant at http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/how_many_delegates_do_hillary_clinton_and_donald_t.html.
Let's skip caucuses and primaries and even do away with political parties. Even though the writers of the Constitution warned about factions, they soon split into them. The most famous being the long feud between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Let’s start at the local level. Let each registered voter send in a nomination for each position by email or mail. Rank the nominations by number of votes; those who are in the top half of the list go on to the next ballot. Repeat as necessary until one is chosen. Named candidates can drop out at any time.
Some may say that this is too expensive and subject to fraud. Isn’t the low turnout expensive to our society? Supposedly we already have too much fraud if you believe those who demand onerous restrictions on voting.
The only vote that doesn’t count is the vote not cast.
Also in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2015-02-25 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/25/6797_iconoclastic_ideas_or_mysteries.
I haven’t yet gone back to “Dark Money”, the book I mentioned last week, but I keep wondering why so many exorbitantly rich have so much money to slosh around that they spend exorbitant sums to ensure that they get even more. When one has hundreds of billions of dollars, what’s a hundred billion or two less?
What is galling is that many claim they earned it, every penny. But how many people worked for a pittance or even a decent salary to create and implement the ideas to earn this money? Often several thousand people showed up every day to bring in that money while the billionaire was jetting here and there on vacation or attending a conference to rail against taxes and government, the same taxes and the same government that subsidizes many of their enterprises. For example, I’ve seen estimates that every Walmart store costs government entities one million dollars a year.
Many who want strict adherence to the Constitution seem to forget "Regulate commerce among states" and "establish a post office”.
The Republicans and their giant-corp backers are doing their best to nullify the EPA rule about emissions. Are these polluters keeping their emissions in the state where they are produced? If any of these emissions go to another state, then the President is right to regulate this commerce in emissions.
The Republicans seem to be bending over backwards to dis-establish the Post Office. The latest gimmick was to impose far greater requirements on pension funding than many corporations get by with. The last I looked my Unisys pension was funded at 77 percent. I exaggerate, but it seems like the Republicans want the Postal Service to be fully-funded on pensions for employees who have not even been hired yet.
I really don’t know what a “fair share” of taxes is, but it is a mystery how many people want perfect infra-structure, immediate arrest of all criminals, and bombing of countries far, far away but do not want to pay any taxes for any of these. Is there a correlation between complaints about government and complaints about burdensome taxes?
A good case in point is the following headline: “Wisconsin crackdown on repeat drunken drivers will cost taxpayers”, Mark Sommerhauser, Wisconsin State Journal, published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2016-02-19. Duh!? What is the cost to taxpayers of the death and destruction caused by drunken drivers? I submit that it is quite a bit higher than the cost of the crackdown. In other words, spend what seems too much to prevent something that costs even more. Even that crackdown on fourth offenders may be too soft. Sweden had or maybe still has tough drunk driving laws: first offense was two years in jail, even for members of Parliament.
Why does Clinton have to be president so we finally have a woman president? Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren are much better choices, but neither seems to be interested.
Why do we have reach out across (fill-in the blank) lines? Can’t we just be nice to everybody. I hold doors for others, they hold doors for me. Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along.”
We do have to reform or at least neutralize people who judge people by factors which have nothing to do with a given situation.
Right now many established and respected media are giving misleading information. Clinton “won” in Nevada and Trump “won” in South Carolina. I posted a comment on a New York Times article; the article made no reference to the actual delegates gained. Sorry, I didn’t note the article. Interestingly, my comment was not posted for all to see. At least, as I write this hours later, I have not been emailed that my comment was posted.
Well, Trump did win in South Carolina because the South Carolina Republican primary is winner take-all. He “won” with less than a third of the vote. However, in Nevada, Clinton received 22 delegates and Sanders received 16 delegates. Oops, another source gives 19-15, and yet another shows a spread of about 600 votes. Sorry, I’m visiting so many sites to get to the truth that I have forgotten where I found which figures. Clinton does have an advantage because of super-delegates, elected and party officials who are automatically delegates to the convention. The super-delegates are overwhelmingly pro-Clinton.
One of these sources was “How many delegates do Trump, Clinton need to win? What's the delegate count for each candidate?” by Jonathan D. Salant at http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/how_many_delegates_do_hillary_clinton_and_donald_t.html.
Let's skip caucuses and primaries and even do away with political parties. Even though the writers of the Constitution warned about factions, they soon split into them. The most famous being the long feud between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Let’s start at the local level. Let each registered voter send in a nomination for each position by email or mail. Rank the nominations by number of votes; those who are in the top half of the list go on to the next ballot. Repeat as necessary until one is chosen. Named candidates can drop out at any time.
Some may say that this is too expensive and subject to fraud. Isn’t the low turnout expensive to our society? Supposedly we already have too much fraud if you believe those who demand onerous restrictions on voting.
The only vote that doesn’t count is the vote not cast.
Also in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2015-02-25 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/25/6797_iconoclastic_ideas_or_mysteries.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
“Conservative vs. Liberal” is a misleading view of politics
I saw “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right” by Jane Mayer reviewed in the New York Times and decided to buy it. Once I started reading it, I found it very depressing. It just has too much about how the Koch brothers have inserted their pseudo-conservatism into our state and local governments. Even the inside cover is depressing – hundreds of thousands and even millions given to dozens of organizations that support the Koch brothers views.
You can find a review at “Inside the List” by Gregory Cowles, New York Times, 2016-01-29, “Attack the Messenger”.
Every time I blow my nose or dry my hands at Essentia Health, I think how the Koch brothers benefit from the thousands and thousands of tentacles with which they have gripped our society. Every box of tissue and every towel dispenser is labeled Georgia Pacific, a Koch brothers company.
I can’t help but wonder if the Koch brothers have the Benedictine values of Essentia Health. Essentia Health’s mission is “We are called to make a healthy difference in people’s lives.” Its values are quality, hospitality, respect, justice, stewardship, and teamwork.
You decide.
“Conservative” and “right” are very misleading terms. Some who call themselves “conservatives” are rather “liberal” with the idea of conservative. For example, how can anyone who extracts resources without any consideration for the consequences be called “conservative”? These extractors are being rather “liberal” with the resources.
Some who call themselves “liberal” are quite conservative in use of resources. Except when they fly all over the world or drive hundreds of miles to attend conferences on being more “conservative” with resources.
Some who call themselves “conservatives” because they oppose abortion as murder of innocents seem to be quite “liberal” in supporting those who would wage war, which is almost always murder of innocents.
Some who call themselves “liberal” can be quite “conservative” with whom they will allow to speak in public ceremonies. A real liberal would allow the invitee to speak and either stay away or sit quietly without applauding.
Sometimes I think the last great conservative was Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a British politician and author. “He was a great political thinker. Viewing English policies with something of the detachment of an alien [Burke was Irish], he was able to diagnose the situation with an imaginative insight beyond the range of those immersed in the business of the day and bound by traditional habits of mind.” The Age of Revolution, Winston Churchill.
Burke’s enemies accused him of being Catholic, a pejorative that presumed he was unfit for office. Have we heard another religious “pejorative” used in our times? Burke correctly predicted that the French Revolution with its chaos would lead to a military dictatorship. He also supported the grievances of the American Colonies: “Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself.”
The whole idea of “right vs. left” is one-dimensional. I submit that political thought is four-dimensional. Besides Conservative vs. Liberal, we also have Generous vs. Greedy, Rigid vs. Flexible, and Simplistic vs. Thoughtful.
Generous vs. Greedy
One can be generous by being willing to pay the taxes necessary for a civilized society. That includes having enough food and shelter.
One can be greedy by working to get legislation that puts themselves at an advantage regardless of the cost to others.
Rigid vs. Flexible
We are seeing a lot of rigidity lately in that several candidates are trying to outdo one another in showing how well they promote “Conservative” orthodoxy, even at the cost of depriving others. They also must regularly recite the Pledge of Allegiance and then work to deprive others of “liberty and justice”.
We don’t see much of flexible in politics nowadays. It seems that so much political literature and writing contains “demand”. No matter the party, it seems it wants us to demand something that is in their party orthodoxy. One of the ironies is that the Coffee Party, which was founded as a civil alternative to the demands of the Tea Party, often demands some action.
Simplistic vs. Thoughtful
Simplistic always reminds me of the Tea Party member who said she could understand the Constitution by reading it. The original Constitution is about 30 pages in an iBook version; the Federalist Papers to explain it are over 900 pages; and I don’t know how many thousands of pages Supreme Court Justices have written to interpret it. Furthermore, the Supreme Court rarely has unanimous decisions, and what one Court rules could be overturned by a different Court.
As I thought about this article, I remember that years ago the Utne Reader had published a political map that had four axes: Liberal-Conservative, Freedom-Order, Decentralization-Centralization, and Equality-Liberty. It was devised by Eric Selbin and Ron Steiner. It has eighteen groups around the edges with representative literature, music, food, and personalities for each. It was included in the November/December 1991 Utne Reader. I was able to find an online copy at “Exploring the Dynamics of Polarization” by Tom Atlee at www.tomatleeblog.com/archives/175327148. If you would rather see the map in color, try the Duluth Public Library (or your own local library).
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-02-18 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/18/6746_conservative_vs_liberal_is_a_misleading_view_of.
You can find a review at “Inside the List” by Gregory Cowles, New York Times, 2016-01-29, “Attack the Messenger”.
Every time I blow my nose or dry my hands at Essentia Health, I think how the Koch brothers benefit from the thousands and thousands of tentacles with which they have gripped our society. Every box of tissue and every towel dispenser is labeled Georgia Pacific, a Koch brothers company.
I can’t help but wonder if the Koch brothers have the Benedictine values of Essentia Health. Essentia Health’s mission is “We are called to make a healthy difference in people’s lives.” Its values are quality, hospitality, respect, justice, stewardship, and teamwork.
You decide.
“Conservative” and “right” are very misleading terms. Some who call themselves “conservatives” are rather “liberal” with the idea of conservative. For example, how can anyone who extracts resources without any consideration for the consequences be called “conservative”? These extractors are being rather “liberal” with the resources.
Some who call themselves “liberal” are quite conservative in use of resources. Except when they fly all over the world or drive hundreds of miles to attend conferences on being more “conservative” with resources.
Some who call themselves “conservatives” because they oppose abortion as murder of innocents seem to be quite “liberal” in supporting those who would wage war, which is almost always murder of innocents.
Some who call themselves “liberal” can be quite “conservative” with whom they will allow to speak in public ceremonies. A real liberal would allow the invitee to speak and either stay away or sit quietly without applauding.
Sometimes I think the last great conservative was Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a British politician and author. “He was a great political thinker. Viewing English policies with something of the detachment of an alien [Burke was Irish], he was able to diagnose the situation with an imaginative insight beyond the range of those immersed in the business of the day and bound by traditional habits of mind.” The Age of Revolution, Winston Churchill.
Burke’s enemies accused him of being Catholic, a pejorative that presumed he was unfit for office. Have we heard another religious “pejorative” used in our times? Burke correctly predicted that the French Revolution with its chaos would lead to a military dictatorship. He also supported the grievances of the American Colonies: “Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself.”
The whole idea of “right vs. left” is one-dimensional. I submit that political thought is four-dimensional. Besides Conservative vs. Liberal, we also have Generous vs. Greedy, Rigid vs. Flexible, and Simplistic vs. Thoughtful.
Generous vs. Greedy
One can be generous by being willing to pay the taxes necessary for a civilized society. That includes having enough food and shelter.
One can be greedy by working to get legislation that puts themselves at an advantage regardless of the cost to others.
Rigid vs. Flexible
We are seeing a lot of rigidity lately in that several candidates are trying to outdo one another in showing how well they promote “Conservative” orthodoxy, even at the cost of depriving others. They also must regularly recite the Pledge of Allegiance and then work to deprive others of “liberty and justice”.
We don’t see much of flexible in politics nowadays. It seems that so much political literature and writing contains “demand”. No matter the party, it seems it wants us to demand something that is in their party orthodoxy. One of the ironies is that the Coffee Party, which was founded as a civil alternative to the demands of the Tea Party, often demands some action.
Simplistic vs. Thoughtful
Simplistic always reminds me of the Tea Party member who said she could understand the Constitution by reading it. The original Constitution is about 30 pages in an iBook version; the Federalist Papers to explain it are over 900 pages; and I don’t know how many thousands of pages Supreme Court Justices have written to interpret it. Furthermore, the Supreme Court rarely has unanimous decisions, and what one Court rules could be overturned by a different Court.
As I thought about this article, I remember that years ago the Utne Reader had published a political map that had four axes: Liberal-Conservative, Freedom-Order, Decentralization-Centralization, and Equality-Liberty. It was devised by Eric Selbin and Ron Steiner. It has eighteen groups around the edges with representative literature, music, food, and personalities for each. It was included in the November/December 1991 Utne Reader. I was able to find an online copy at “Exploring the Dynamics of Polarization” by Tom Atlee at www.tomatleeblog.com/archives/175327148. If you would rather see the map in color, try the Duluth Public Library (or your own local library).
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-02-18 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/18/6746_conservative_vs_liberal_is_a_misleading_view_of.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
General Ization’s power grows
Despite my warning in the Reader Weekly of 2007-04-26 (General Ization Battles Truth), people keep enlisting in his armies and misleading others.
The latest is the sweeping generalization that this or that candidate “won” in the Iowa primaries. Figuring out the Iowa caucus results is a bit of a slog, but looking at the result summary in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/primaries/iowa), you will see that one candidate “winning” and the others ‘losing” is a serious over-generalization.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton had 49.9% and was effectively awarded 23 delegates. Bernie Sander had 49.6% and 21 delegates. I would hardly call this a Clinton win, because Sanders received almost as many delegates as Clinton and who knows what will happen in the state convention when delegates are selected for the national convention?
On the Republican side, Ted Cruz had 27.6% of the vote and eight delegates, Donald Trump 24.3% and seven, and Marco Rubio 23.1% and seven.
These five candidates were all “winners” in the Iowa caucuses. But how will these results translate into actual votes in November? Iowa is a caucus state, not a primary state. My guess is that a lot fewer people show up for caucuses than do for primaries, and a lot fewer show up for primaries than do for final elections.
The Iowa Secretary of State’s registered-voter list has 586,835 “active” Democratic voters and 615,763 “active” Republican voters. But it lists 727,112 “No Party Active” voters. The Republican caucus turnout was 186,874 or less than a third of the “active” Republican registered voters.
I would say that the biggest winner, based on the large number of “no-shows” in the Iowa caucuses was “None of the Above”, and that means the biggest loser is democracy.
“New Hampshire Embraces Trump’s New York Bombast” (New York Times Online 2016-02-07). Really? Did all the voters in New Hampshire really embrace Trumps bombast? If we look at the figures of how many thousand New Hampshire voters actually turned up for Trump’s speeches, maybe the headline should read “New Hampshire Rejects Trump’s New York Bombast”.
Closer to home, the Duluth News Tribune has had headlines that imply all of Duluth is involved in something or other.
When a student died of exposure on Woodland Avenue, the News Tribune had a headline similar to “Duluth should be ashamed.” Did each and every person in Duluth know she was outside freezing to death? Was each and every driver passing by her house in any position to know that somebody was outside in need of help? Were even any of the very few pedestrians in a position to see somebody huddled at a door? Her death should never have happened, but only a few people were in any position to prevent this or come to her aid.
A recent headline was “Duluth feels ‘the Bern’”. How many Duluthians showed up for Bernie Sanders’ rally in Duluth? I think it was about 4,000. That is a rather good turnout, but that also means that about 76,000 Duluth residents didn’t show up for Sanders’ rally. How many would have liked to attend but didn’t for one reason or another? How many didn’t even want to consider going? We don’t know the numbers for either of these possibilities. But considering that probably more than 4,000 Duluth voters would not vote for Sanders, we could also have the over-generalized headline: “Duluth rejects Sanders”. If Sanders wins the Democratic endorsement, we will have to wait until November to find out if “Duluth rallies for Sanders” or if “Duluth rejects Sanders”. Either headline will be a generalization because there will be a large number of people who voted for the Republican candidate. These voters are also “Duluth”.
Since my previous column on General Ization, I’ve learned he would not have all this power without the able help of his lieutenants, Xavier Aggeration and Ms. Direction. You can detect some of X. Aggeration’s contributions above.
Ms. Direction has been spreading the notion of “value voters” embracing the Republicans. But don’t most voters have values? Besides anti-abortion and Biblical literallism, aren’t there the values of peace and justice? I find it strange that these “value voters” align themselves with supporters of “greedy corporations” who hold no values except “shareholder value”.
Ms. Direction, like her boss General Ization, doesn’t play favorites. She spreads the idea of “greedy corporations” as if all corporations treat their workers as serfs and cheat their customers as often as they can. There are many corporations that value their employees and often tell the regulators that something went wrong in the production of some product. And we find many corporations that are changing their products to suit their customer’s wants.
Of course, they only know what some customers want. Maybe other customers don’t want change, or if they want change, they want change back to products they could buy some years ago. Hopefully, the customers that want certain changes are those who volunteered the information, not those who were coerced into agreeing to a desired response in a focus group.
This leads us into the worst generalization: “The People”. It would be great if “The People” were a majority of all eligible voters. Unfortunately, election after election it is a “majority” of those who actually show up to vote; this too often means that a minority of eligible (and too often registered) voters “decided” the outcome. I hope you, dear reader, are going to be one who shows up and shows General Ization, X. Aggeration, and Ms. Direction that they are wrong.
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2016-02-11 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/11/6703_general_izations_power_grows.
See also http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/02/general-ization-battles-truth.html.
The latest is the sweeping generalization that this or that candidate “won” in the Iowa primaries. Figuring out the Iowa caucus results is a bit of a slog, but looking at the result summary in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/primaries/iowa), you will see that one candidate “winning” and the others ‘losing” is a serious over-generalization.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton had 49.9% and was effectively awarded 23 delegates. Bernie Sander had 49.6% and 21 delegates. I would hardly call this a Clinton win, because Sanders received almost as many delegates as Clinton and who knows what will happen in the state convention when delegates are selected for the national convention?
On the Republican side, Ted Cruz had 27.6% of the vote and eight delegates, Donald Trump 24.3% and seven, and Marco Rubio 23.1% and seven.
These five candidates were all “winners” in the Iowa caucuses. But how will these results translate into actual votes in November? Iowa is a caucus state, not a primary state. My guess is that a lot fewer people show up for caucuses than do for primaries, and a lot fewer show up for primaries than do for final elections.
The Iowa Secretary of State’s registered-voter list has 586,835 “active” Democratic voters and 615,763 “active” Republican voters. But it lists 727,112 “No Party Active” voters. The Republican caucus turnout was 186,874 or less than a third of the “active” Republican registered voters.
I would say that the biggest winner, based on the large number of “no-shows” in the Iowa caucuses was “None of the Above”, and that means the biggest loser is democracy.
“New Hampshire Embraces Trump’s New York Bombast” (New York Times Online 2016-02-07). Really? Did all the voters in New Hampshire really embrace Trumps bombast? If we look at the figures of how many thousand New Hampshire voters actually turned up for Trump’s speeches, maybe the headline should read “New Hampshire Rejects Trump’s New York Bombast”.
Closer to home, the Duluth News Tribune has had headlines that imply all of Duluth is involved in something or other.
When a student died of exposure on Woodland Avenue, the News Tribune had a headline similar to “Duluth should be ashamed.” Did each and every person in Duluth know she was outside freezing to death? Was each and every driver passing by her house in any position to know that somebody was outside in need of help? Were even any of the very few pedestrians in a position to see somebody huddled at a door? Her death should never have happened, but only a few people were in any position to prevent this or come to her aid.
A recent headline was “Duluth feels ‘the Bern’”. How many Duluthians showed up for Bernie Sanders’ rally in Duluth? I think it was about 4,000. That is a rather good turnout, but that also means that about 76,000 Duluth residents didn’t show up for Sanders’ rally. How many would have liked to attend but didn’t for one reason or another? How many didn’t even want to consider going? We don’t know the numbers for either of these possibilities. But considering that probably more than 4,000 Duluth voters would not vote for Sanders, we could also have the over-generalized headline: “Duluth rejects Sanders”. If Sanders wins the Democratic endorsement, we will have to wait until November to find out if “Duluth rallies for Sanders” or if “Duluth rejects Sanders”. Either headline will be a generalization because there will be a large number of people who voted for the Republican candidate. These voters are also “Duluth”.
Since my previous column on General Ization, I’ve learned he would not have all this power without the able help of his lieutenants, Xavier Aggeration and Ms. Direction. You can detect some of X. Aggeration’s contributions above.
Ms. Direction has been spreading the notion of “value voters” embracing the Republicans. But don’t most voters have values? Besides anti-abortion and Biblical literallism, aren’t there the values of peace and justice? I find it strange that these “value voters” align themselves with supporters of “greedy corporations” who hold no values except “shareholder value”.
Ms. Direction, like her boss General Ization, doesn’t play favorites. She spreads the idea of “greedy corporations” as if all corporations treat their workers as serfs and cheat their customers as often as they can. There are many corporations that value their employees and often tell the regulators that something went wrong in the production of some product. And we find many corporations that are changing their products to suit their customer’s wants.
Of course, they only know what some customers want. Maybe other customers don’t want change, or if they want change, they want change back to products they could buy some years ago. Hopefully, the customers that want certain changes are those who volunteered the information, not those who were coerced into agreeing to a desired response in a focus group.
This leads us into the worst generalization: “The People”. It would be great if “The People” were a majority of all eligible voters. Unfortunately, election after election it is a “majority” of those who actually show up to vote; this too often means that a minority of eligible (and too often registered) voters “decided” the outcome. I hope you, dear reader, are going to be one who shows up and shows General Ization, X. Aggeration, and Ms. Direction that they are wrong.
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2016-02-11 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/11/6703_general_izations_power_grows.
See also http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/02/general-ization-battles-truth.html.
Sunday, February 07, 2016
General Ization battles truth
Originally published in
Reader Weekly
April 26, 2007
I meant to write about the General’s sister Globa L,. but several articles, including in the Reader Weekly, made writing about the General seem more timely.
Generalization is taking something specific and applying it to many other situations that might not have any relation to the original event or idea. One of the worst examples is calling Jews “Christ killers” because a mob called upon Pilate to crucify Jesus. But does a mob in one part of one city represent all the people of a country? Is every child in that country responsible for the actions of a mob? Should these children’s descendants be responsible for something they had no say in?
We certainly don’t like certain Muslims deciding all Americans should die because of the actions of governments that we can’t always control.
One of the most frequent generalizations is “the media is liberal”, seen most often in the letters to the editors of daily papers. These letters are often written by someone who has a “conservative” agenda and doesn’t want to see anything published that contradicts his or her viewpoint. Ironically, the publication of these letters proves the writers are correct; publishing many different viewpoints is a liberal action.
On the other hand, many so-called liberals complain that the media is conservative. The Reader Weekly publishes the views of two columnists who often level this charge. I long ago gave up on reading Norman Solomon because he derides “the media” for not covering news as he thinks it should. Jim Hightower recently complained about media bashing Democrats for investigating the Justice Department using two publications as an example. Then he uses a poll by USA Today to show popular support for continuing the investigation. (1) The papers that I read, all called “liberal”, report that even Republicans are dissatisfied with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony.
“Mallard Fillmore”, the conservative duck drawn by Bruce Tinsley, bashes liberals and government mercilessly. One of his favorite targets is the U.S. Postal Service. One of his recent strips was a reply to an “irate postal worker” asking when Mallard would stop bashing the Postal Service. Mallard’s reply was “When they stop bashing my packages.” My question is when is Mallard going to bash UPS or other package carriers for bashing his packages. (2)
I’ve probably received more damaged packages from UPS than I have from the Postal Service. Does that mean UPS bashes packages more? No, I have to take into account that I probably receive more packages from UPS than any other source.
Ad hominem arguments are a form of generalization, that is, an idea is not very good because a certain person said it.
I would suppose that the income tax is a bad idea because Marx and Engels called for it in “The Communist Manifesto”. Oh, but conservatives in Britain imposed an income tax in 1799. The British Government needed all the revenue it could get in its struggle against Napoleon’s France. Despite income and property taxes going from 1.67 million pounds in 1799 to 14.6 million pounds in 1815, the British economy prospered. (3) Napoleon had to rely on indirect taxes because the French were resistant to more direct taxes. Guess who won the war.
Many conservatives seem to use ad hominem thinking to formulate their positions. They see global warming as a liberal cause, and therefore they must oppose it. Some of these global warming skeptics use generalizations to support their arguments. Many letter writers say the cold weather in March proves there is no global warming, mixing up meteorology and climate (weather today and weather trends spanning decades and centuries).
Global warming skeptics also use “positive” ad hominem thinking. If someone who seems to have some scientific stature supports his or her viewpoint, then that person must be correct. (Like all those liberals who are praising Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to.) One of these global-warming skeptic documents was supposedly signed by 17,000 (or was it 20,000) scientists stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide … is causing, or will, … cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (4)
But who are these 17,000 scientists? Are they all climatologists or chemists employed by oil companies? Are there even 17,000 climatologists in the world? It turns out that these scientists are anybody with a degree who signed a certain petition. (5)(6) I think I would rather go with the opinion of people who regularly study weather and climate. (7)
If climate change is not happening, why is the corporation liberals love to hate, Wal-Mart, going green, saving itself and its customers money? (8)
Generalizations about conservative and liberals certainly don’t always work out as expected. Truth takes a bit more work.
P.S. Do your own search on "17,000 scientists" and "Marshall". I did and found the "Global Warming Petition Project". I looked for a unique name in the A section and found "David Acerni" and did a search for him. There is only one "D Acerni" at whitepages.com. He lives in Kittaning PA. According to a Department of Energy spreadsheet from 1999, he was the contact for the Rosebud Mining Co. of Kittaning PA. I can find no current professional reference to him.
(1) “NYPD’s ‘intelligence’”, section titled “Why media companies get no respect”, Jim Hightower, Reader Weekly, April 12, 2007
(2) “Mallard Fillmore”, Bruce Tinsley, Star Tribune, April 13, 2007
(3) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy, p. 130
(4) “Gore causes lobal warming in area middle school brains”, Budgeteer News, April 15, 2007
(5) “What the skeptics don’t tell you”, Woods Hole Research Center
(6) “The denial industry”, George Monbiot, The Guardian, September 18, 2006
(7) Climate Change: An information statement of the American Meteorological Society, Feb. 1, 2007,
(8) “The Power of Green”, Thomas Friedman, New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2007
See also "General Ization's power grows".
©2007 Melvyn D. Magree
Reader Weekly
April 26, 2007
I meant to write about the General’s sister Globa L,. but several articles, including in the Reader Weekly, made writing about the General seem more timely.
Generalization is taking something specific and applying it to many other situations that might not have any relation to the original event or idea. One of the worst examples is calling Jews “Christ killers” because a mob called upon Pilate to crucify Jesus. But does a mob in one part of one city represent all the people of a country? Is every child in that country responsible for the actions of a mob? Should these children’s descendants be responsible for something they had no say in?
We certainly don’t like certain Muslims deciding all Americans should die because of the actions of governments that we can’t always control.
One of the most frequent generalizations is “the media is liberal”, seen most often in the letters to the editors of daily papers. These letters are often written by someone who has a “conservative” agenda and doesn’t want to see anything published that contradicts his or her viewpoint. Ironically, the publication of these letters proves the writers are correct; publishing many different viewpoints is a liberal action.
On the other hand, many so-called liberals complain that the media is conservative. The Reader Weekly publishes the views of two columnists who often level this charge. I long ago gave up on reading Norman Solomon because he derides “the media” for not covering news as he thinks it should. Jim Hightower recently complained about media bashing Democrats for investigating the Justice Department using two publications as an example. Then he uses a poll by USA Today to show popular support for continuing the investigation. (1) The papers that I read, all called “liberal”, report that even Republicans are dissatisfied with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony.
“Mallard Fillmore”, the conservative duck drawn by Bruce Tinsley, bashes liberals and government mercilessly. One of his favorite targets is the U.S. Postal Service. One of his recent strips was a reply to an “irate postal worker” asking when Mallard would stop bashing the Postal Service. Mallard’s reply was “When they stop bashing my packages.” My question is when is Mallard going to bash UPS or other package carriers for bashing his packages. (2)
I’ve probably received more damaged packages from UPS than I have from the Postal Service. Does that mean UPS bashes packages more? No, I have to take into account that I probably receive more packages from UPS than any other source.
Ad hominem arguments are a form of generalization, that is, an idea is not very good because a certain person said it.
I would suppose that the income tax is a bad idea because Marx and Engels called for it in “The Communist Manifesto”. Oh, but conservatives in Britain imposed an income tax in 1799. The British Government needed all the revenue it could get in its struggle against Napoleon’s France. Despite income and property taxes going from 1.67 million pounds in 1799 to 14.6 million pounds in 1815, the British economy prospered. (3) Napoleon had to rely on indirect taxes because the French were resistant to more direct taxes. Guess who won the war.
Many conservatives seem to use ad hominem thinking to formulate their positions. They see global warming as a liberal cause, and therefore they must oppose it. Some of these global warming skeptics use generalizations to support their arguments. Many letter writers say the cold weather in March proves there is no global warming, mixing up meteorology and climate (weather today and weather trends spanning decades and centuries).
Global warming skeptics also use “positive” ad hominem thinking. If someone who seems to have some scientific stature supports his or her viewpoint, then that person must be correct. (Like all those liberals who are praising Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to.) One of these global-warming skeptic documents was supposedly signed by 17,000 (or was it 20,000) scientists stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide … is causing, or will, … cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (4)
But who are these 17,000 scientists? Are they all climatologists or chemists employed by oil companies? Are there even 17,000 climatologists in the world? It turns out that these scientists are anybody with a degree who signed a certain petition. (5)(6) I think I would rather go with the opinion of people who regularly study weather and climate. (7)
If climate change is not happening, why is the corporation liberals love to hate, Wal-Mart, going green, saving itself and its customers money? (8)
Generalizations about conservative and liberals certainly don’t always work out as expected. Truth takes a bit more work.
P.S. Do your own search on "17,000 scientists" and "Marshall". I did and found the "Global Warming Petition Project". I looked for a unique name in the A section and found "David Acerni" and did a search for him. There is only one "D Acerni" at whitepages.com. He lives in Kittaning PA. According to a Department of Energy spreadsheet from 1999, he was the contact for the Rosebud Mining Co. of Kittaning PA. I can find no current professional reference to him.
(1) “NYPD’s ‘intelligence’”, section titled “Why media companies get no respect”, Jim Hightower, Reader Weekly, April 12, 2007
(2) “Mallard Fillmore”, Bruce Tinsley, Star Tribune, April 13, 2007
(3) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy, p. 130
(4) “Gore causes lobal warming in area middle school brains”, Budgeteer News, April 15, 2007
(5) “What the skeptics don’t tell you”, Woods Hole Research Center
(6) “The denial industry”, George Monbiot, The Guardian, September 18, 2006
(7) Climate Change: An information statement of the American Meteorological Society, Feb. 1, 2007,
(8) “The Power of Green”, Thomas Friedman, New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2007
See also "General Ization's power grows".
©2007 Melvyn D. Magree
Friday, February 05, 2016
TRUTH or truth?
TRUTH is what some assert with certainty but with no coherent justification. TRUTH cannot be challenged.
Truth is what people strive for with questions and tests; truth may never be fully achieved but enough has been discovered to offer a guide to life or improvement of lives.
One TRUTH is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. The truth is that the Bible offers many moral teachings even though it contains descriptions of many impossible events or even justifies bad deeds.
Did God on the sixth day create “man in his own image, … male and female created he them”? Or did he create only Adam and then when Adam grew lonely, he created Eve from Adam’s rib. I would think it would take more than a few days for Adam to grow lonely for a companion.
Is the “Great Flood” a recounting of some catastrophic flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in which some few had the foresight to build boats for their family and cattle, or was it a great flood to destroy all the “wickedness”, including babies? Considering that the depth of the waters was 15 cubits (22-1/2 feet), it was probably the former. Flood stages of over 20 feet are all too common even now. The truth is that it is important to be just and that it is important to prepare for disaster.
Is it TRUTH that God let Satan bring many calamities upon Job, or is it truth that bad things happen to good people? Certainly a just God would not let so many innocent people be killed to test one man, especially if God knows everything?
Is it TRUTH that heretics should be burned at the stake? It is truth that the Bible only mentions “heretic” once. “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject” (Epistle to Titus, 3:10). I don’t think “reject” meant to kill, but rather it meant to shun.
Is it TRUTH that Islam is a militant religion set on converting all to Islam? It is truth that Mohammed and his followers had to defend themselves against the polytheists of Mecca who considered the Muslims a threat. It is also truth that many Muslim-dominant cultures had a mix of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
“Those who believe, and those who are Jewish, and the Christians, and the Sabeans - any who believe in God and the Last Day, and act righteously will have their reward with their Lord; they have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.” - Talal Itani. “Quran In English. Modern English Translation. Clear and Easy to Understand”.
The Sabeans were a culture in South Arabia; this is supposedly where the Queen of Sheba came from, she who visited King Solomon.
You can get many versions of the Qur’an from the iBook store and other sources. However, like the Bible, it takes much reading to understand what is meant.
Consider “simple” documents like the “Declaration of Independence” and the “Constitution”.
Is it TRUTH that they are clear and unambiguous? It is truth that people are still arguing over them over two hundred years later. It is truth that what one Supreme Court decides may be overturned by another Supreme Court? For example, “Separate but Equal” was overturned by “Brown vs. Board of Education”.
Is it TRUTH that the United States is a Christian nation blessed by God? It is truth that many of the signers of the “Declaration of Independence” or the “Constitution of the United States” attended Christian Churches. It is truth that the “Declaration of Independence” mentions “Nature’s God” and the “Protection of Divine Providence”. But it is also truth that the “Constitution” uses no words or phrases involving any deity. It is truth that the United States took land from Christian Cherokees and others because white men wanted the gold that was found in Georgia. So much for the “Protection of Divine Providence” for these Christians.
Is it TRUTH that Adam Smith advocated totally free markets? It is truth that he used “free market” once and only once in “Wealth of Nations”. But it is also truth that the heavily regulated market was brought about by the woolen manufacturers. They asked for and received from Parliament many regulations that would keep the price of wool down so that their costs would be down and their profits up. It is also truth that even today “Free Marketers” lobby for laws that are beneficial to them and detrimental to others.
Is it TRUTH that voters “decided”? By the time you read this, the Iowa caucuses will have been held. It is truth that many voters cast their votes for whoever “won”, but many other voters chose somebody else. It is truth that better headlines would be that “a plurality of voters” or “a majority of voters” supported the “winner”.
It is also truth that no matter who is doing the reporting, they have a limited amount of time or space.
It is also truth that this column should end before you fall asleep.
Also published in Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-02-04 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/04/6677_truth_or_truth.
Truth is what people strive for with questions and tests; truth may never be fully achieved but enough has been discovered to offer a guide to life or improvement of lives.
One TRUTH is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. The truth is that the Bible offers many moral teachings even though it contains descriptions of many impossible events or even justifies bad deeds.
Did God on the sixth day create “man in his own image, … male and female created he them”? Or did he create only Adam and then when Adam grew lonely, he created Eve from Adam’s rib. I would think it would take more than a few days for Adam to grow lonely for a companion.
Is the “Great Flood” a recounting of some catastrophic flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in which some few had the foresight to build boats for their family and cattle, or was it a great flood to destroy all the “wickedness”, including babies? Considering that the depth of the waters was 15 cubits (22-1/2 feet), it was probably the former. Flood stages of over 20 feet are all too common even now. The truth is that it is important to be just and that it is important to prepare for disaster.
Is it TRUTH that God let Satan bring many calamities upon Job, or is it truth that bad things happen to good people? Certainly a just God would not let so many innocent people be killed to test one man, especially if God knows everything?
Is it TRUTH that heretics should be burned at the stake? It is truth that the Bible only mentions “heretic” once. “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject” (Epistle to Titus, 3:10). I don’t think “reject” meant to kill, but rather it meant to shun.
Is it TRUTH that Islam is a militant religion set on converting all to Islam? It is truth that Mohammed and his followers had to defend themselves against the polytheists of Mecca who considered the Muslims a threat. It is also truth that many Muslim-dominant cultures had a mix of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
“Those who believe, and those who are Jewish, and the Christians, and the Sabeans - any who believe in God and the Last Day, and act righteously will have their reward with their Lord; they have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.” - Talal Itani. “Quran In English. Modern English Translation. Clear and Easy to Understand”.
The Sabeans were a culture in South Arabia; this is supposedly where the Queen of Sheba came from, she who visited King Solomon.
You can get many versions of the Qur’an from the iBook store and other sources. However, like the Bible, it takes much reading to understand what is meant.
Consider “simple” documents like the “Declaration of Independence” and the “Constitution”.
Is it TRUTH that they are clear and unambiguous? It is truth that people are still arguing over them over two hundred years later. It is truth that what one Supreme Court decides may be overturned by another Supreme Court? For example, “Separate but Equal” was overturned by “Brown vs. Board of Education”.
Is it TRUTH that the United States is a Christian nation blessed by God? It is truth that many of the signers of the “Declaration of Independence” or the “Constitution of the United States” attended Christian Churches. It is truth that the “Declaration of Independence” mentions “Nature’s God” and the “Protection of Divine Providence”. But it is also truth that the “Constitution” uses no words or phrases involving any deity. It is truth that the United States took land from Christian Cherokees and others because white men wanted the gold that was found in Georgia. So much for the “Protection of Divine Providence” for these Christians.
Is it TRUTH that Adam Smith advocated totally free markets? It is truth that he used “free market” once and only once in “Wealth of Nations”. But it is also truth that the heavily regulated market was brought about by the woolen manufacturers. They asked for and received from Parliament many regulations that would keep the price of wool down so that their costs would be down and their profits up. It is also truth that even today “Free Marketers” lobby for laws that are beneficial to them and detrimental to others.
Is it TRUTH that voters “decided”? By the time you read this, the Iowa caucuses will have been held. It is truth that many voters cast their votes for whoever “won”, but many other voters chose somebody else. It is truth that better headlines would be that “a plurality of voters” or “a majority of voters” supported the “winner”.
It is also truth that no matter who is doing the reporting, they have a limited amount of time or space.
It is also truth that this column should end before you fall asleep.
Also published in Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-02-04 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/04/6677_truth_or_truth.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Republicans are anti-Constitution
Among the many charges that Republicans make against the Democrats is "activist judges", members of the Supreme Court who interpret the Constitution differently than their "strict constructionist" view.
Then a Republican-appointed majority interprets "people" in the second Amendment to be "persons" and interprets corporations as "persons". Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and many other signers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be spinning furiously in their graves.
Now those who would be the Republican candidate for President are stepping all over the Constitution with their accusations that their opponents are not Christian enough. I guess they really need a refresher course about the Constitution: "... but no religious Test shall ever be Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." - Article 6.
And the Constitution also requires a new President to take an oath or affirm: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
If these religiosity types can’t even protect the Constitution, can they even protect the nation from threats from within and without?
See “The G.O.P.’s Holy War”, Frank Bruni, New York Times, 2016-01-30, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/the-gops-holy-war.html
And the Constitution also requires a new President to take an oath or affirm: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
If these religiosity types can’t even protect the Constitution, can they even protect the nation from threats from within and without?
See “The G.O.P.’s Holy War”, Frank Bruni, New York Times, 2016-01-30, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/the-gops-holy-war.html
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Rogues, clowns, politicians, and statespersons
Whether in government, business, unions, or any other human activity, we can find people who are rogues, clowns, politicians, or statespersons. And sometimes a person can be any of these at various times.
Rogues are those who are only for themselves. They may merely be selfish or they may work to destroy others. Clowns are those who have no connection to reality. Politicians are those who try to work with others to accomplish something they can’t do by themselves. Statespersons are those who have a vision for the common good and succeed in implementing some portion of that vision.
Richard Nixon was an example of someone who was all of the above as candidate and President. He was a rogue in his first campaign for the Senate when he misrepresented Helen Gahagan Douglas as a Communist. He was a rogue when he authorized the Watergate break-in. He was a clown when he said “I am not a crook.” He was a politician in that he did work on legislation that was supported by many in both parties, for example Marshall Plan funding. He was a statesman when he looked beyond his anti-Communism to visit and recognize China.
The genial Ronald Reagan was certainly not a rogue. He was a clown in that he thought the Laffer Curve showed that decreasing taxes would increase prosperity. He was a politician in that he did get legislation passed that had significant bi-partisan support. He was a statesman in that he worked with Mikhael Gorbachev on a nuclear arms treaty.
A good portion of the current Republican candidates are clowns and at least one is a rogue. They are clowns in their continued attacks on President Obama, including continuing to label him as a Muslim. They are clowns in their continued belief that giving more money to the rich will make the general public richer. Their schemes will make the whole country poorer with an even more rapidly deteriorating infrastructure and more rapidly warming climate. And they don’t seem likely to be good politicians because they seem incapable of compromise to get something done. As I looked at a picture of them in the Star Tribune of 2016-01-17, I thought that the only gray matter was their gray uniforms, I mean gray suits (“Give candidates a little time to think and a little time to speak – you know, kind of like presidents have.”, Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg).
As for the current Democratic candidates, they may be politicians working with others, but I don’t see them as statespersons.
Rogues in business include those who ran Enron (into the ground) and those who gave misleading information to get people to sign mortgages they couldn’t afford. The Koch brothers are certainly rogues in that they buy a lot of legislation at the state and local levels that is advantageous to them and detrimental to the people.
The rogues in Oregon do not represent the people. Those “patriots” occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are only after some Ayn Rand “freedom” to do what they please rather than the freedom to govern ourselves. The Tea Party types seem to completely ignore the General Welfare clause of the Constitution and the establishment of a Congress to provide laws. If law enforcement doesn’t bring these rogues to justice, it will be our misfortune (malheur in French).
The magical thinking of the anarchists in Oregon is of the same ilk as another set of rogue anarchists: the so-called Islamic Jihadists of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram. These “Islamic” rogues no more represent Islam than the Bundy anarchists represent the American people. Consider that there are only about 100,000 “Jihadists” but 1.6 billion Muslims
As a measure of how non-Islamic these rogues are, consider that they may not even have copies of the Qu’ran. “Because it has nothing to do with the Quran. They didn't even have the Quran; they didn't want even to give us a Quran.” - Al Arabiya News, 2015-02-04, reporting on Didier François’ interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
If you want a better sense of Islam, see www.trueislam.com.
But “Islamic” rogues are not the only misusers of “religion”. If we are a Christian nation, why do some “Christians” call for the expulsion of Muslims? Why do some “Christians” call for bombing women and children because there are “Islamists” in an certain area. What kind of Christian nation would have nuclear weapons that would indiscriminately kill thousands of innocent citizens?
On the one hand, we had the rogue Fred Phelps whose Westboro Baptist Church would picket veterans’ funerals as a protest against gays. I couldn’t confirm this memory but I did find a long list of non-Christian behavior. On the other hand, we have the Christian statesman, Martin Luther King Jr., who eschewed hate and worked hard to spread Christian love, even against those who would hurt him.
We don’t get to choose many of our rogues, but we can choose many of our politicians and statespeople. But to do that, we have to show up at each and every election. If we stay away, we bring on the clowns, and the rogues, too. Every vote counts and your vote counts only if you cast it.
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-01-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/01/22/6588_rogues_clowns_politicians_and_statespersons.
Rogues are those who are only for themselves. They may merely be selfish or they may work to destroy others. Clowns are those who have no connection to reality. Politicians are those who try to work with others to accomplish something they can’t do by themselves. Statespersons are those who have a vision for the common good and succeed in implementing some portion of that vision.
Richard Nixon was an example of someone who was all of the above as candidate and President. He was a rogue in his first campaign for the Senate when he misrepresented Helen Gahagan Douglas as a Communist. He was a rogue when he authorized the Watergate break-in. He was a clown when he said “I am not a crook.” He was a politician in that he did work on legislation that was supported by many in both parties, for example Marshall Plan funding. He was a statesman when he looked beyond his anti-Communism to visit and recognize China.
The genial Ronald Reagan was certainly not a rogue. He was a clown in that he thought the Laffer Curve showed that decreasing taxes would increase prosperity. He was a politician in that he did get legislation passed that had significant bi-partisan support. He was a statesman in that he worked with Mikhael Gorbachev on a nuclear arms treaty.
A good portion of the current Republican candidates are clowns and at least one is a rogue. They are clowns in their continued attacks on President Obama, including continuing to label him as a Muslim. They are clowns in their continued belief that giving more money to the rich will make the general public richer. Their schemes will make the whole country poorer with an even more rapidly deteriorating infrastructure and more rapidly warming climate. And they don’t seem likely to be good politicians because they seem incapable of compromise to get something done. As I looked at a picture of them in the Star Tribune of 2016-01-17, I thought that the only gray matter was their gray uniforms, I mean gray suits (“Give candidates a little time to think and a little time to speak – you know, kind of like presidents have.”, Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg).
As for the current Democratic candidates, they may be politicians working with others, but I don’t see them as statespersons.
Rogues in business include those who ran Enron (into the ground) and those who gave misleading information to get people to sign mortgages they couldn’t afford. The Koch brothers are certainly rogues in that they buy a lot of legislation at the state and local levels that is advantageous to them and detrimental to the people.
The rogues in Oregon do not represent the people. Those “patriots” occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are only after some Ayn Rand “freedom” to do what they please rather than the freedom to govern ourselves. The Tea Party types seem to completely ignore the General Welfare clause of the Constitution and the establishment of a Congress to provide laws. If law enforcement doesn’t bring these rogues to justice, it will be our misfortune (malheur in French).
The magical thinking of the anarchists in Oregon is of the same ilk as another set of rogue anarchists: the so-called Islamic Jihadists of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram. These “Islamic” rogues no more represent Islam than the Bundy anarchists represent the American people. Consider that there are only about 100,000 “Jihadists” but 1.6 billion Muslims
As a measure of how non-Islamic these rogues are, consider that they may not even have copies of the Qu’ran. “Because it has nothing to do with the Quran. They didn't even have the Quran; they didn't want even to give us a Quran.” - Al Arabiya News, 2015-02-04, reporting on Didier François’ interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
If you want a better sense of Islam, see www.trueislam.com.
But “Islamic” rogues are not the only misusers of “religion”. If we are a Christian nation, why do some “Christians” call for the expulsion of Muslims? Why do some “Christians” call for bombing women and children because there are “Islamists” in an certain area. What kind of Christian nation would have nuclear weapons that would indiscriminately kill thousands of innocent citizens?
On the one hand, we had the rogue Fred Phelps whose Westboro Baptist Church would picket veterans’ funerals as a protest against gays. I couldn’t confirm this memory but I did find a long list of non-Christian behavior. On the other hand, we have the Christian statesman, Martin Luther King Jr., who eschewed hate and worked hard to spread Christian love, even against those who would hurt him.
We don’t get to choose many of our rogues, but we can choose many of our politicians and statespeople. But to do that, we have to show up at each and every election. If we stay away, we bring on the clowns, and the rogues, too. Every vote counts and your vote counts only if you cast it.
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-01-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/01/22/6588_rogues_clowns_politicians_and_statespersons.
Monday, January 18, 2016
More on erratic iPhone cellular setting
Follow-up to http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/01/erratic-cellular-data-settings.html.
I spent an hour or more pouring over postings in the Apple User Community looking for some solution to my long wait for cellular toggles to be activated in my iPhone. I finally found a link a user made to T-Mobile.
Quite simply a soft reset works. For how long, I know not.
A soft reset is to hold the on-off button and the home button until the screen goes blank and the Apple logo is shown again.
Why didn’t Apple offer this advice?
I spent an hour or more pouring over postings in the Apple User Community looking for some solution to my long wait for cellular toggles to be activated in my iPhone. I finally found a link a user made to T-Mobile.
Quite simply a soft reset works. For how long, I know not.
A soft reset is to hold the on-off button and the home button until the screen goes blank and the Apple logo is shown again.
Why didn’t Apple offer this advice?
Friday, January 15, 2016
"For want of a nail…” updated
Because an employee was laid off, certain data was not gathered.
Because certain data was not gathered, a report was not made.
Because a report was not made, a contract was lost.
Because a contract was lost, revenue was lost.
Because revenue was lost, a company was lost.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Why do we have to know more about computers than cars?
Just after I posted “Erratic cellular settings” I thought about cars and problem solving.
Long ago I learned a little story about car problems that may have been older than me.
A car dealer gave his wife a new car. She was delighted with it, but she complained that it ran erratically. A mechanic checked it out and could find nothing wrong. She brought it in again with the same result. Finally, the head mechanic went out with her.
She started the car, pulled out the choke, and hung her purse from the choke.
Sometimes, you have to just be there to solve a user’s problem. I found this out when a user couldn’t access a document because his computer terms didn’t the same meanings as others did. I had to go to his house to understand the problem. I found out the cause of an error in my own software when I saw a user print a document on his on printer. I had assumed a negative number for a printer line would not get printed. It worked fine on my Apple printer, but it didn’t work on his third party printer.
The problem with computers is that the designers expect their users to be expert car mechanics, masters of intricate analysis of problems. But all the average user wants to do is touch a few buttons or type a few words to get his or her work done. If their cars sputters when it should purr, they take it to a mechanic who often can diagnose the problem within an hour. But if their devices sputter when they should purr, they are expected to put in hours trying to get enough information to get somebody to finally make a correction to the software (or tell them not to hang their purses on the menu bar).
My plaint about all this complexity is whatever happened to the “Computer for the Rest of Us” (The 1984 Apple Macintosh)?
Long ago I learned a little story about car problems that may have been older than me.
A car dealer gave his wife a new car. She was delighted with it, but she complained that it ran erratically. A mechanic checked it out and could find nothing wrong. She brought it in again with the same result. Finally, the head mechanic went out with her.
She started the car, pulled out the choke, and hung her purse from the choke.
Sometimes, you have to just be there to solve a user’s problem. I found this out when a user couldn’t access a document because his computer terms didn’t the same meanings as others did. I had to go to his house to understand the problem. I found out the cause of an error in my own software when I saw a user print a document on his on printer. I had assumed a negative number for a printer line would not get printed. It worked fine on my Apple printer, but it didn’t work on his third party printer.
The problem with computers is that the designers expect their users to be expert car mechanics, masters of intricate analysis of problems. But all the average user wants to do is touch a few buttons or type a few words to get his or her work done. If their cars sputters when it should purr, they take it to a mechanic who often can diagnose the problem within an hour. But if their devices sputter when they should purr, they are expected to put in hours trying to get enough information to get somebody to finally make a correction to the software (or tell them not to hang their purses on the menu bar).
My plaint about all this complexity is whatever happened to the “Computer for the Rest of Us” (The 1984 Apple Macintosh)?
Erratic cellular data settings
If you feel lonely and ignored when nobody seems to have a solution when your software acts erratically. Take heart! It happens to novices and gurus alike. You are not a "dummy". It just takes a lot of time to get all the necessary information to pinpoint the problem.
I sent the following to Consumer Cellular after an abrupt disappearance of a long-standing annoying problem.
To avoid using up cellular data I turn cellular data on and off on my iPhone 5s. With iOS 9 it became a nuisance because the settings would not change quickly, often it could take two minutes. This doesn’t happen on my wife’s iPhone 5c with iOS 8.
I thought the problem could be iOS 9.1. The problem did go away when I installed iOS 9.2. Then the problem came back.
Yesterday, we changed our data and voice plans, splitting our account into two accounts.
Today, I can turn cellular data on and off quickly. No change in iOS. No change in other settings.
Could it be something Consumer Cellular or AT&T is doing?
This also makes me wonder it I changed my bank prematurely. Would
Consumer Cellular now let Republic Banks software operate smoothly? Nope, it still gives system error after I enter my password.
Anybody in CC have the time to really look into this? Have any other users reported a similar problem.
Note added 2016-01-18:
For one solution, see http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/01/more-on-erratic-iphone-cellular-setting.html.
I sent the following to Consumer Cellular after an abrupt disappearance of a long-standing annoying problem.
To avoid using up cellular data I turn cellular data on and off on my iPhone 5s. With iOS 9 it became a nuisance because the settings would not change quickly, often it could take two minutes. This doesn’t happen on my wife’s iPhone 5c with iOS 8.
I thought the problem could be iOS 9.1. The problem did go away when I installed iOS 9.2. Then the problem came back.
Yesterday, we changed our data and voice plans, splitting our account into two accounts.
Today, I can turn cellular data on and off quickly. No change in iOS. No change in other settings.
Could it be something Consumer Cellular or AT&T is doing?
This also makes me wonder it I changed my bank prematurely. Would
Consumer Cellular now let Republic Banks software operate smoothly? Nope, it still gives system error after I enter my password.
Anybody in CC have the time to really look into this? Have any other users reported a similar problem.
Note added 2016-01-18:
For one solution, see http://magree.blogspot.com/2016/01/more-on-erratic-iphone-cellular-setting.html.
Thursday, January 07, 2016
If...
Some have said that “if” is the biggest word in the English language. It certainly does have a lot of import on our thinking, be it blame, regret, or thankfulness. Our lives are certainly filled with choice points of our own doing or the actions of others. “If my teacher hadn’t suggested,,,, then I might not have…” “If I hadn’t asked for a raise, would I have ever gotten one.”, and on and on.
I have so many “if’s” in my life that got me to this moment of typing on a laptop that I could probably fill this issue of the Reader. And you would have fallen asleep by the fourth page.
One of my early if’s is if my parents hadn’t divorced, would my mother have moved us in with her aunt and uncle? That determined where I started school. If my great aunt and uncle hadn’t bought a house on the other side of the city, would I have have gone to a second elementary school. At that school I met many others who would become life-long friends.
I did lose those contacts when my mother decided to rent an apartment on the other side of town. By the time I started high school, she remarried and we moved back to the other side of town.
That house was in a school attendance area different than the area many of my old friends were in. I made the choice of asking for an exemption to go to that smaller school to be with my friends again.
One of the math teachers at the smaller school punctuated his remarks with “When you go to Case…” meaning Case Institute of Technology. Five of us started as freshmen there a year or two later.
But would I have been able to afford the $750/year tuition? The assistant principal suggested that I apply to the Huntington Fund for a scholarship. I did and was granted a full scholarship.
With my job at Kroger’s, suggested to me by one of the friends I met in the second elementary school and with whom I still correspond, I was able to afford books and bus fare across the city to Case.
Shortly after we moved back across the city, I attended a Methodist Church within a half-hour’s walk and was active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF). This continued into my Case years.
I don’t know the exact cause, but I started losing interest in my engineering studies. I ran for president of the area MYF council and won. Also on the council was the daughter of a doctor. After I flunked out of Case, I started dating her.
We both went to Ohio Wesleyan the following fall, she as a freshman and me as a junior. Despite my flunking out of Case, the Huntington Fund kept funding me. They had long dropped their maximum scholarship to $500, and I had to take out student loans to supplement it and my own part-time job earnings to make the $1,100 annual tuition.
I got good enough grades in mathematics that Case took me back in the graduate program with a full fellowship in the computer center which included a $75/week salary! I also married that sweetheart from two paragraphs back.
I don’t think you want to put up with two thousand words of all the twists and turns of the next fifty plus years, but I have many, many “If I hadn’t done this, would this interesting thing have happened.” I’ll try to collapse those into the few paragraphs remaining of my space.
We chose to move to Minnesota and my employment with Univac because we liked canoeing. After five years I became restless and managed a transfer to Europe. We started in Switzerland for a few weeks and then lived in Italy for the next two years.
I became unhappy with the management in Rome and transferred to Sweden. We liked Sweden so much that we stayed four years. But then my wife decided our kids should go to junior high in the United States. Another “if” I must stick in is that my wife met an American women on the subway who had a cabin in Brimson. She extended an open invitation to visit them.
I gave a wishy-washy description of my interests to my previous bosses at Univac in Roseville, and so we didn’t move back to Minnesota. Instead I wound up in “exile” in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. I was “rescued” when Univac needed people to work on a new computer in Roseville. That computer was cancelled and I was put on another project, on which I didn’t shine.
Meanwhile, the microcomputer revolution started and I jumped into it. I blew that too and wound up as a bus driver. But my wife was doing quite well in her work. What we didn’t do well on was co-ordinating when we would take our annual BWCA visit. With the background of a whole bunches of “if’s” we finally visited our friends in Brimson and did so annually.
Yikes, what if I could have 2,000 words!
Our son went to Japan and when we visited him we missed an annual visit to Brimson. We went in fall instead and found property for sale. We bought it, and a few years later had built our own cabin.
This time my wife engineered the transfer and we moved from the Twin Cities to Duluth to be nearer our cabin. But she found more and more things to do in Duluth and has less time to spend in Brimson. And we’re both getting older and mowing lots of paths and cutting firewood seems to take longer and longer.
We have lots of memories of all those if’s and we know lots more if’s are coming.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
- Robert Frost
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-01-07 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/01/06/6522_if.
I have so many “if’s” in my life that got me to this moment of typing on a laptop that I could probably fill this issue of the Reader. And you would have fallen asleep by the fourth page.
One of my early if’s is if my parents hadn’t divorced, would my mother have moved us in with her aunt and uncle? That determined where I started school. If my great aunt and uncle hadn’t bought a house on the other side of the city, would I have have gone to a second elementary school. At that school I met many others who would become life-long friends.
I did lose those contacts when my mother decided to rent an apartment on the other side of town. By the time I started high school, she remarried and we moved back to the other side of town.
That house was in a school attendance area different than the area many of my old friends were in. I made the choice of asking for an exemption to go to that smaller school to be with my friends again.
One of the math teachers at the smaller school punctuated his remarks with “When you go to Case…” meaning Case Institute of Technology. Five of us started as freshmen there a year or two later.
But would I have been able to afford the $750/year tuition? The assistant principal suggested that I apply to the Huntington Fund for a scholarship. I did and was granted a full scholarship.
With my job at Kroger’s, suggested to me by one of the friends I met in the second elementary school and with whom I still correspond, I was able to afford books and bus fare across the city to Case.
Shortly after we moved back across the city, I attended a Methodist Church within a half-hour’s walk and was active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF). This continued into my Case years.
I don’t know the exact cause, but I started losing interest in my engineering studies. I ran for president of the area MYF council and won. Also on the council was the daughter of a doctor. After I flunked out of Case, I started dating her.
We both went to Ohio Wesleyan the following fall, she as a freshman and me as a junior. Despite my flunking out of Case, the Huntington Fund kept funding me. They had long dropped their maximum scholarship to $500, and I had to take out student loans to supplement it and my own part-time job earnings to make the $1,100 annual tuition.
I got good enough grades in mathematics that Case took me back in the graduate program with a full fellowship in the computer center which included a $75/week salary! I also married that sweetheart from two paragraphs back.
I don’t think you want to put up with two thousand words of all the twists and turns of the next fifty plus years, but I have many, many “If I hadn’t done this, would this interesting thing have happened.” I’ll try to collapse those into the few paragraphs remaining of my space.
We chose to move to Minnesota and my employment with Univac because we liked canoeing. After five years I became restless and managed a transfer to Europe. We started in Switzerland for a few weeks and then lived in Italy for the next two years.
I became unhappy with the management in Rome and transferred to Sweden. We liked Sweden so much that we stayed four years. But then my wife decided our kids should go to junior high in the United States. Another “if” I must stick in is that my wife met an American women on the subway who had a cabin in Brimson. She extended an open invitation to visit them.
I gave a wishy-washy description of my interests to my previous bosses at Univac in Roseville, and so we didn’t move back to Minnesota. Instead I wound up in “exile” in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. I was “rescued” when Univac needed people to work on a new computer in Roseville. That computer was cancelled and I was put on another project, on which I didn’t shine.
Meanwhile, the microcomputer revolution started and I jumped into it. I blew that too and wound up as a bus driver. But my wife was doing quite well in her work. What we didn’t do well on was co-ordinating when we would take our annual BWCA visit. With the background of a whole bunches of “if’s” we finally visited our friends in Brimson and did so annually.
Yikes, what if I could have 2,000 words!
Our son went to Japan and when we visited him we missed an annual visit to Brimson. We went in fall instead and found property for sale. We bought it, and a few years later had built our own cabin.
This time my wife engineered the transfer and we moved from the Twin Cities to Duluth to be nearer our cabin. But she found more and more things to do in Duluth and has less time to spend in Brimson. And we’re both getting older and mowing lots of paths and cutting firewood seems to take longer and longer.
We have lots of memories of all those if’s and we know lots more if’s are coming.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
- Robert Frost
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-01-07 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/01/06/6522_if.
Saturday, January 02, 2016
Quote from “ISIS war on Christmas”
Quote from “ISIS war on Christmas” by Kamel Daoud:
"One might counter that of the two groups, only Muslim extremists kill. Which is true, at least when it comes to people. But the extremists of the right kill humanism, and that’s the only thing that could save us all."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/opinion/isis-war-on-christmas.html
For more background on Algeria and Daoud, see “Stranger Still, Kamel Daoud and Algeria, caught between Islamist fervor and cultural flowering”, by Adam Shatz.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/magazine/stranger-still.html.
"One might counter that of the two groups, only Muslim extremists kill. Which is true, at least when it comes to people. But the extremists of the right kill humanism, and that’s the only thing that could save us all."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/opinion/isis-war-on-christmas.html
For more background on Algeria and Daoud, see “Stranger Still, Kamel Daoud and Algeria, caught between Islamist fervor and cultural flowering”, by Adam Shatz.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/magazine/stranger-still.html.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
A new form of taxation
Most of us complain about taxes in one way or another. But we almost always have our individual ideas of what government should do. We sort of ask government to lower taxes but be sure to fund my sacred cow.
To this end, I suggest that the tax forms have an allocation schedule on which we can allocate where we want our income tax money to be spent:
Each individual cabinet level department
The office of the President
The Senate
The House of Representatives
If a person’s list doesn’t add up to 100%, then the remainder will go into a general fund to be allocated in the usual manner by Congress. If a person’s list adds up more than 100%, then the values are adjusted proportionally to add up to 100%.
Much of text lost because deleting a duplicate deleted both.
So, if a person thinks the only business of the Federal government is war, aka defense, then he or she can stipulate 100% of their income tax go to the Dept. of Defense.
If a person thinks transportation and education are the most important activities of government, then he or she could stipulate say, 40% for one and 30% for the other leaving 30% for Congress to decide how to use.
With this plan, if only two percent of the allocation went to the military or any other function, Congress would have to use general funds, if available, to make up the difference to what it thinks is really needed.
Whatever we do, we should remember the supposed words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "I like taxes. They buy me civilization."
To this end, I suggest that the tax forms have an allocation schedule on which we can allocate where we want our income tax money to be spent:
Each individual cabinet level department
The office of the President
The Senate
The House of Representatives
If a person’s list doesn’t add up to 100%, then the remainder will go into a general fund to be allocated in the usual manner by Congress. If a person’s list adds up more than 100%, then the values are adjusted proportionally to add up to 100%.
Much of text lost because deleting a duplicate deleted both.
So, if a person thinks the only business of the Federal government is war, aka defense, then he or she can stipulate 100% of their income tax go to the Dept. of Defense.
If a person thinks transportation and education are the most important activities of government, then he or she could stipulate say, 40% for one and 30% for the other leaving 30% for Congress to decide how to use.
With this plan, if only two percent of the allocation went to the military or any other function, Congress would have to use general funds, if available, to make up the difference to what it thinks is really needed.
Whatever we do, we should remember the supposed words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "I like taxes. They buy me civilization."
When does a new year really start?
You may be reading this just before or just after New Year’s Day, 2016. But is this really the start of a new year? Shouldn’t the New Year really start on the Winter Solstice? In 2015 this was December 22. How did our calendar put the start of the new year about ten days later?
The Roman calendar of Julius Caesar’s time was based on the lunar cycle. Many calendars of today are also based on the lunar cycle, such as the Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, and Islamic calendars. All of these have ways of periodically resynchronizing the calendar with the solar cycle, but not necessarily in the solar year. This can result in certain holidays moving over the years from a winter holiday to a fall holiday.
Julius Caesar and several scholars reformed their calendar from a ten-month lunar cycle to a twelve month cycle. That’s how we got the last four months moved two months later than the numbers they represented: September for ninth instead of seventh, December for twelfth instead of tenth. The Romans also added an extra day to every fourth year to bring the calendar in synch with a solar year assumed to be 365.25 days long.
Even this was insufficient. Hipparchus in the Second Century B.C. calculated the solar year to be 365-1/4 days minus 1/309 days. His instruments were not that precise; he calculated this from his own and others measurements over a several year span. What is remarkable that this figure is off by six minutes per decade or ten hours per century.
Pope Gregory XIII commissioned a calendar reform in the Sixteenth Century. Essentially, this dropped leap years in years not divisible by 400. However the Julian calendar was off by ten days and they were dropped; in 1582 October 5 became October 15. As with any change of custom, this met with quite a bit of resistance. For example, peasants thought it was an attempt to cheat them out of a week and a half’s rent. Most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar within a few years; Protestant countries took decades or centuries to adopt it.
Britain (and its colonies) did so in 1752, but now British calendars were eleven days off. So, September 2 was followed by September 14. That’s why George Washington was born on February 11, 1732, but we celebrate his birthday on February 22.
The Orthodox Church did not adopt the Gregorian calendar. That is why Orthodox Christmas is on January 7 instead of December 25.
Are you having trouble figuring that out? If George Washington’s birthday was moved, why wasn’t Christmas moved? It wasn’t and it wasn’t. The Orthodox Christmas is on December 25 in the Julian calendar. But the December 25 in the Julian calendar is now January 7 in the Gregorian calendar. In other words, the adopters of the Gregorian calendar moved George Washington’s birthday, but they did not move the date of Christmas.
This column is shorter than I had planned. Reading and understanding the why’s and how’s of calendars can take a lot more time than I thought. Did the Julian calendar start with January on the winter solstice? I didn’t find any definitive statement on that. But if the Julian calendar was off by ten days in 1582, then the new January 1 would have been December 22 on the Julian calendar.
Well, I kept slogging away, and I did find an article on the solstice and January. Julius Caesar did want to start the new calendar on the solstice or the equinox, but the Senate wanted it to start on January first of the Roman civil calendar. That was when they traditionally took office. Caesar compromised.
And most politicians are still compromising. After all, “perfect is the enemy of the good.”
The Roman calendar of Julius Caesar’s time was based on the lunar cycle. Many calendars of today are also based on the lunar cycle, such as the Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, and Islamic calendars. All of these have ways of periodically resynchronizing the calendar with the solar cycle, but not necessarily in the solar year. This can result in certain holidays moving over the years from a winter holiday to a fall holiday.
Julius Caesar and several scholars reformed their calendar from a ten-month lunar cycle to a twelve month cycle. That’s how we got the last four months moved two months later than the numbers they represented: September for ninth instead of seventh, December for twelfth instead of tenth. The Romans also added an extra day to every fourth year to bring the calendar in synch with a solar year assumed to be 365.25 days long.
Even this was insufficient. Hipparchus in the Second Century B.C. calculated the solar year to be 365-1/4 days minus 1/309 days. His instruments were not that precise; he calculated this from his own and others measurements over a several year span. What is remarkable that this figure is off by six minutes per decade or ten hours per century.
Pope Gregory XIII commissioned a calendar reform in the Sixteenth Century. Essentially, this dropped leap years in years not divisible by 400. However the Julian calendar was off by ten days and they were dropped; in 1582 October 5 became October 15. As with any change of custom, this met with quite a bit of resistance. For example, peasants thought it was an attempt to cheat them out of a week and a half’s rent. Most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar within a few years; Protestant countries took decades or centuries to adopt it.
Britain (and its colonies) did so in 1752, but now British calendars were eleven days off. So, September 2 was followed by September 14. That’s why George Washington was born on February 11, 1732, but we celebrate his birthday on February 22.
The Orthodox Church did not adopt the Gregorian calendar. That is why Orthodox Christmas is on January 7 instead of December 25.
Are you having trouble figuring that out? If George Washington’s birthday was moved, why wasn’t Christmas moved? It wasn’t and it wasn’t. The Orthodox Christmas is on December 25 in the Julian calendar. But the December 25 in the Julian calendar is now January 7 in the Gregorian calendar. In other words, the adopters of the Gregorian calendar moved George Washington’s birthday, but they did not move the date of Christmas.
This column is shorter than I had planned. Reading and understanding the why’s and how’s of calendars can take a lot more time than I thought. Did the Julian calendar start with January on the winter solstice? I didn’t find any definitive statement on that. But if the Julian calendar was off by ten days in 1582, then the new January 1 would have been December 22 on the Julian calendar.
Well, I kept slogging away, and I did find an article on the solstice and January. Julius Caesar did want to start the new calendar on the solstice or the equinox, but the Senate wanted it to start on January first of the Roman civil calendar. That was when they traditionally took office. Caesar compromised.
And most politicians are still compromising. After all, “perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Thursday, December 24, 2015
There really are only two religions
What? You think there are dozens of major religions and thousands of sects within them. That may be true when you consider that many people believe in a long list of do’s and don’ts that are peculiar to their particular “religion”. But if you look beyond the creeds and admonitions, you will find that are only two basic belief systems: generosity to others and narrow systems of “we are right and you are wrong”. And all the major religions have many generous believers and far too many hateful believers.
In the third and fourth centuries there were major fights over what the exact natures were of God and Christ. Often these fights were more political than religious, often depending on the belief of the current Roman Emperor. Those who didn’t hold the right belief could be exiled and have their writings burned.
These persecutions of others in the name of Christianity continued through the centuries and into this century.
We have Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Spain, who set out to rid Spain of “heretics”, generally meaning Jews and Muslims. He was more merciful than some of his predecessors; he didn’t torture suspects without the testimony of at least two witnesses of “good nature”. John Calvin was instrumental in the burning of Michael Servetus at the stake along with his books. His crime: denying the Holy Trinity. The Ku Klux Klan upheld “Christian morality” by bombing black churches, killing innocent children.
On the other hand, we have many examples of Christian generosity. The Quakers were very active in the anti-slavery movement. Florence Nightingale tended to the wounded and dying in the Crimean War. Mother Theresa cared for the dying in India. Martin Luther King, Jr. called for non-violent resistance to segregation and other maltreatment of blacks and others.
Islam has been called a religion of peace, but human arrogance has subverted it, just as it subverted Christianity. Muhammad had not been dead long before his followers started bickering over who was his rightly heir. If I’m reading the Wikipedia entry on Sunni-Shia correctly, Sunnis believe the leader of Islam is selected by consensus and Shias believe the leadership is inherited by descendants of Muhammad. There are many more differences, many similar to the Protestant-Catholic split in Christianity.
Just like with Christianity, many wars have been fought between these two groups over the centuries. Meddling from “Christian” powers has exacerbated these differences in the last hundred years, opening the old sores of the Crusades. We have Muslim-Muslim violence and Muslim-Christian violence. Shias blow up Sunni mosques and Sunnis blow up Shiite mosques. Sunni Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Shiite Iran to gain to much influence and Iran doesn’t want Saudi Arabia to gain much influence. Into this antagonism is thrown the wild card of Daesh (aka Islamic state). Daesh shows about as much mercy as did the “Christians” mentioned above.
An interesting aspect of the Koran are the injunctions to have proof for your knowledge. This may be why in the Dark Ages of Christianity, Arab mathematics and science were making great strides.
I didn’t have time to check it out thoroughly, but some say that Islam means peace. Google Translate didn’t give me this, but a Wikipedia entry on Islam did say that Islam comes from the trilateral root s-l-m. One of these words is “salaam” for peace. Hm, close to the Hebrew “shalom”.
Charity, especially to the poor, is one of the five pillars of Islam. The word for charity is zakat, which also means purification.
One Islamic charity is the Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross. I haven’t read much about it recently, but it has been active in disasters.
Two well-known Muslims who come to mind with a more peaceful outlook are Malala Yousafzai and Muhammad Yunis, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Malala is the young Pakistani girl who was shot by terrorists who didn’t think girls should be in school. Fortunately for her and many others, she survived the attack.
Muhammad Yunis is the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank provides low-interest, small loans to the poor. These loans have allowed many people to start small businesses to support themselves.
We often think of Buddhists as being pacifists. “One’s mind should be free from hurting or harming others” and several other sayings. Unfortunately, down through the centuries, Buddhists have been involved in wars and killing. Think of the “King of Siam”. The news has recently had many stories of Buddhist rioting against Muslims. Of course, the Taliban didn’t help by destroying Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. The first Muslims killed by Burmese were in the 11th Century. In the 17th Century Muslims who fled India after losing a war of succession were killed after a dispute with a Burmese pirate king. Some modern Muslims have fled Burma to Thailand where they have been put in several refugee camps. There are also reports that the Thai military towed boatloads of Muslims out to sea and left them there.
Fortunately, we have Buddhists like the Dalai Lama. A refugee from his own country, he still manages to be cheerful and work to promote peace. He too won a Nobel Peace Prize.
If I put a damper on your Christmas cheer, I’m sorry. But remember that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of the “Prince of Peace”. I hope that the examples I gave of people of different faiths working for peace will give you hope for a brighter future. With our help, the religion of generosity will prevail.
Also in the Reader Weekly, 2015-12-24 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/12/24/6439_there_really_are_only_two_religions
In the third and fourth centuries there were major fights over what the exact natures were of God and Christ. Often these fights were more political than religious, often depending on the belief of the current Roman Emperor. Those who didn’t hold the right belief could be exiled and have their writings burned.
These persecutions of others in the name of Christianity continued through the centuries and into this century.
We have Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Spain, who set out to rid Spain of “heretics”, generally meaning Jews and Muslims. He was more merciful than some of his predecessors; he didn’t torture suspects without the testimony of at least two witnesses of “good nature”. John Calvin was instrumental in the burning of Michael Servetus at the stake along with his books. His crime: denying the Holy Trinity. The Ku Klux Klan upheld “Christian morality” by bombing black churches, killing innocent children.
On the other hand, we have many examples of Christian generosity. The Quakers were very active in the anti-slavery movement. Florence Nightingale tended to the wounded and dying in the Crimean War. Mother Theresa cared for the dying in India. Martin Luther King, Jr. called for non-violent resistance to segregation and other maltreatment of blacks and others.
Islam has been called a religion of peace, but human arrogance has subverted it, just as it subverted Christianity. Muhammad had not been dead long before his followers started bickering over who was his rightly heir. If I’m reading the Wikipedia entry on Sunni-Shia correctly, Sunnis believe the leader of Islam is selected by consensus and Shias believe the leadership is inherited by descendants of Muhammad. There are many more differences, many similar to the Protestant-Catholic split in Christianity.
Just like with Christianity, many wars have been fought between these two groups over the centuries. Meddling from “Christian” powers has exacerbated these differences in the last hundred years, opening the old sores of the Crusades. We have Muslim-Muslim violence and Muslim-Christian violence. Shias blow up Sunni mosques and Sunnis blow up Shiite mosques. Sunni Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Shiite Iran to gain to much influence and Iran doesn’t want Saudi Arabia to gain much influence. Into this antagonism is thrown the wild card of Daesh (aka Islamic state). Daesh shows about as much mercy as did the “Christians” mentioned above.
An interesting aspect of the Koran are the injunctions to have proof for your knowledge. This may be why in the Dark Ages of Christianity, Arab mathematics and science were making great strides.
I didn’t have time to check it out thoroughly, but some say that Islam means peace. Google Translate didn’t give me this, but a Wikipedia entry on Islam did say that Islam comes from the trilateral root s-l-m. One of these words is “salaam” for peace. Hm, close to the Hebrew “shalom”.
Charity, especially to the poor, is one of the five pillars of Islam. The word for charity is zakat, which also means purification.
One Islamic charity is the Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross. I haven’t read much about it recently, but it has been active in disasters.
Two well-known Muslims who come to mind with a more peaceful outlook are Malala Yousafzai and Muhammad Yunis, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Malala is the young Pakistani girl who was shot by terrorists who didn’t think girls should be in school. Fortunately for her and many others, she survived the attack.
Muhammad Yunis is the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank provides low-interest, small loans to the poor. These loans have allowed many people to start small businesses to support themselves.
We often think of Buddhists as being pacifists. “One’s mind should be free from hurting or harming others” and several other sayings. Unfortunately, down through the centuries, Buddhists have been involved in wars and killing. Think of the “King of Siam”. The news has recently had many stories of Buddhist rioting against Muslims. Of course, the Taliban didn’t help by destroying Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. The first Muslims killed by Burmese were in the 11th Century. In the 17th Century Muslims who fled India after losing a war of succession were killed after a dispute with a Burmese pirate king. Some modern Muslims have fled Burma to Thailand where they have been put in several refugee camps. There are also reports that the Thai military towed boatloads of Muslims out to sea and left them there.
Fortunately, we have Buddhists like the Dalai Lama. A refugee from his own country, he still manages to be cheerful and work to promote peace. He too won a Nobel Peace Prize.
If I put a damper on your Christmas cheer, I’m sorry. But remember that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of the “Prince of Peace”. I hope that the examples I gave of people of different faiths working for peace will give you hope for a brighter future. With our help, the religion of generosity will prevail.
Also in the Reader Weekly, 2015-12-24 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/12/24/6439_there_really_are_only_two_religions
Friday, December 18, 2015
Merry Christmas and other seasonal thoughts
Originally published in Reader Weekly, December 22, 2005
For yet another year, Christmas is controversial. If there isn’t a ruckus about the commercialization of Christmas, there is a ruckus about Christmas not being “inclusive”. Some big box stores have told their “associates” to not wish “guests” “Merry Christmas”; instead the associates are to wish “Happy Holidays”. Some think that this is great because we are a “diverse” nation, others think it is terrible because we are a “Christian” nation, and yet others, possibly the majority, don’t care.
As a freethinker and sentimentalist, I think both sides are expecting too much of other people. I personally don’t believe the Christian overlay to the winter solstice. On the other hand, I love the traditions that have derived from that Christian overlay. It doesn’t bother me to sing “Joy the world, the Lord has come” and other carols because the music is great and it brings back memories of many Christmas celebrations over the years.
Those who want “inclusivity” seem to think that a dominant culture is a dominating culture. Because a larger portion of a society believes one way and acts on it in any fashion, then that portion is dominating all those who don’t believe that way. That is, by saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone, you are making them believe in Christmas.
Some of those who don’t want others to practice such “inclusivity” seem to think that a dominant culture has a right to be a dominating culture. That is, you will say “Merry Christmas” whether you believe it or not.
I think both sides could take a lesson from Irving Berlin, the son of a cantor who fled the anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. Irving Berlin wrote both “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade”. He didn’t believe in either holiday, but he helped those who did celebrate them with joy.
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, you can please all of the people some of the time, and you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Rigidity in viewpoint came up recently in another context. A letter writer to the Star Tribune called Garrison Keillor anti-Christian as well as all of MPR or NPR. That was a surprise to me. Garrison Keillor may pillory hypocrites or gently chide those who have feet of clay, but all the evidence I’ve seen indicates he has the deepest respect for those who are sincere in their beliefs. For as long as I can remember, he has often included hymns and religious singers in his shows. Many MPR programs include religious music, including the annual “Festival of nine lessons and carols” from King’s College in Oxford.
Rigidity is found all across the political spectrum. Many think that Kevin Thompson is hard-nosed and uncharitable. So what do they do; they write hard-nosed and uncharitable letters about Kevin. Hey, he stopped writing for the Reader Weekly; be charitable and let him be.
Speaking of Garrison Keillor, he recently gave an interesting view of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents – it was anti-terrorism. In Herod’s viewpoint, Jesus was a threat to his power; therefore he had to take steps to reduce that threat. Keillor went on to say the message of Christmas is that the weak shall prevail over the powerful.
Holiday spirits of another kind abound at this time of the year both in and out of the news. Before I left for an employee party I decided I would have two beers while there. When I left for the party it was snowing heavily; I decided I would have only one beer. As I drove up Thompson Hill I saw either an accident or a disabled truck on the downhill side that had brought traffic to a crawl in one lane; I decided I would have no beers. When I drove down the hill two hours later, the road was in somewhat better shape, but I was glad I held myself to my promise.
Holiday spirits are not the only thing to be wary of at this time of the year. I often approach curves in the winter with the thought, “Somebody coming the other way could skid over the center line.” As expected, my thoughts are usually not realized. Except for twice in recent memory. The second was this past week at Miller Hill Mall. I approached a sharp turn to my left by Northstar Ford. There was a huge pile of snow on the inside of the corner. Would somebody be crossing the center line? Sure enough, a car coming too fast for the conditions started coming into my lane. I was going rather slowly and stopped without a problem. The other driver managed to recover from her error, but she drove by me like I wasn’t even there. I wonder if she even knew how close she came to spoiling both of our evenings, and holidays.
For yet another year, Christmas is controversial. If there isn’t a ruckus about the commercialization of Christmas, there is a ruckus about Christmas not being “inclusive”. Some big box stores have told their “associates” to not wish “guests” “Merry Christmas”; instead the associates are to wish “Happy Holidays”. Some think that this is great because we are a “diverse” nation, others think it is terrible because we are a “Christian” nation, and yet others, possibly the majority, don’t care.
As a freethinker and sentimentalist, I think both sides are expecting too much of other people. I personally don’t believe the Christian overlay to the winter solstice. On the other hand, I love the traditions that have derived from that Christian overlay. It doesn’t bother me to sing “Joy the world, the Lord has come” and other carols because the music is great and it brings back memories of many Christmas celebrations over the years.
Those who want “inclusivity” seem to think that a dominant culture is a dominating culture. Because a larger portion of a society believes one way and acts on it in any fashion, then that portion is dominating all those who don’t believe that way. That is, by saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone, you are making them believe in Christmas.
Some of those who don’t want others to practice such “inclusivity” seem to think that a dominant culture has a right to be a dominating culture. That is, you will say “Merry Christmas” whether you believe it or not.
I think both sides could take a lesson from Irving Berlin, the son of a cantor who fled the anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. Irving Berlin wrote both “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade”. He didn’t believe in either holiday, but he helped those who did celebrate them with joy.
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, you can please all of the people some of the time, and you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Rigidity in viewpoint came up recently in another context. A letter writer to the Star Tribune called Garrison Keillor anti-Christian as well as all of MPR or NPR. That was a surprise to me. Garrison Keillor may pillory hypocrites or gently chide those who have feet of clay, but all the evidence I’ve seen indicates he has the deepest respect for those who are sincere in their beliefs. For as long as I can remember, he has often included hymns and religious singers in his shows. Many MPR programs include religious music, including the annual “Festival of nine lessons and carols” from King’s College in Oxford.
Rigidity is found all across the political spectrum. Many think that Kevin Thompson is hard-nosed and uncharitable. So what do they do; they write hard-nosed and uncharitable letters about Kevin. Hey, he stopped writing for the Reader Weekly; be charitable and let him be.
Speaking of Garrison Keillor, he recently gave an interesting view of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents – it was anti-terrorism. In Herod’s viewpoint, Jesus was a threat to his power; therefore he had to take steps to reduce that threat. Keillor went on to say the message of Christmas is that the weak shall prevail over the powerful.
Holiday spirits of another kind abound at this time of the year both in and out of the news. Before I left for an employee party I decided I would have two beers while there. When I left for the party it was snowing heavily; I decided I would have only one beer. As I drove up Thompson Hill I saw either an accident or a disabled truck on the downhill side that had brought traffic to a crawl in one lane; I decided I would have no beers. When I drove down the hill two hours later, the road was in somewhat better shape, but I was glad I held myself to my promise.
Holiday spirits are not the only thing to be wary of at this time of the year. I often approach curves in the winter with the thought, “Somebody coming the other way could skid over the center line.” As expected, my thoughts are usually not realized. Except for twice in recent memory. The second was this past week at Miller Hill Mall. I approached a sharp turn to my left by Northstar Ford. There was a huge pile of snow on the inside of the corner. Would somebody be crossing the center line? Sure enough, a car coming too fast for the conditions started coming into my lane. I was going rather slowly and stopped without a problem. The other driver managed to recover from her error, but she drove by me like I wasn’t even there. I wonder if she even knew how close she came to spoiling both of our evenings, and holidays.
The Reluctant Santa
Originally published in the Northland Reader now the Reader Weekly, December 7, 2000 as "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he's a temp employee"
Santa Claus quit in early December, 1999. Mariner Mall called Pro Staff for a replacement. The staff looked at each other and said, “Mel!” I have white hair and a white beard.
The job was from noon to 6 everyday through the 23rd. The pay was $7.50/hour. I was not very enthusiastic but I accepted because I thought it would be an interesting experience.
When I arrived at the Mariner Mall office, I introduced myself as the Santa from Pro Staff. Grant, the manager, took me down the back halls to the back room of an empty store. The floor was littered and the small restroom had not been cleaned in months. The room had two Santa suits and wigs hanging from old display stands.
I figured out the various pieces of the outfit, stripped down to my underwear, and began putting things on. First was a stuffed front, essential for those of us with a moderate build. Next were the big red pants, and I mean big. They must have had a 60 inch waist! Pulling the drawstring as tight as I could, I just managed to get them to stay up over the false front. Then there was the big red coat with white, fake fur trim. It fit well enough, not too baggy and not too tight. To go with the coat was a wide black plastic belt.
Pro Staff had said that I should wear black shoes and I did have on a pair of black “dress” boots. The fake boots were black, lined vinyl with white fake fur around the tops and no soles. One’s own shoes peeked out from under the fake boots. Running shoes definitely would not do.
Now I was ready for the finishing touches. I have a white beard, but it is rather short and sparse so I had to use a false beard. The supplied beard was a huge frizzy thing with a moustache that covered my mouth instead of staying above my mouth. Since I have a fairly decent white moustache, I kept the false moustache below my mouth. The wig was a mass of flowing hair that was also frizzy.
Almost last was a huge red hat with white trim and a white ball dangling from the top. That hat could not be worn without the wig! Last was a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses. They were smeared and I thought they would pinch and scrape my nose (did they ever?)
SantaI wended my way through the back halls to the main part of the mall. On my way, I went past the rest rooms, and I immediately had to get into character. As I met people in the hall, I greeted them with “Merry Christmas!” Most people reacted with cheer and a “Merry Christmas, Santa!” From my “throne” I looked out over some fake snow to a camera on a tripod, a reflector light on a stand, and three tables in a U.
Being Santa was “easy” but boring, at least in a slow place like Mariner Mall. I watched for eye contact from people passing by. If they looked at me I waved and said, “Merry Christmas.” Some people would make eye contact from thirty feet away and their faces would light up. Others didn’t seem to notice me until they were right alongside me. Yet others ignored me by looking straight ahead or at the store windows.
If a kid walked by I would say “Merry Christmas” even without eye contact. Some would shyly hide behind their parents; others would almost run to me.
The photos made my life harder. Some parents were intimidated that they had to pass by the photographers’ tables to get to Santa, even if the photographers asked, “Would you like a photo or would you just like to see Santa?” On the other hand, the possibility of photos attracted parents whose kids were afraid of Santa. A couple of parents were almost abusive trying to get the kids to sit on my lap or even to stand near me.
One thing I didn’t like was bribing the kids with candy canes to get them to come forward or to calm down. Aren’t they being taught not to accept candy from strangers?
On the other hand, there were the kids who came rushing up to get a hug. I would open up my arms and give them a big bear hug, and then go into my almost robotic spiel. “Hi, what’s your name?” “What would you like for Christmas?” “Anything else?” “We’ll see what we can do.” “Would you like a candy cane?” “Bye. Merry Christmas.”
It wasn’t all that mechanical. I kept my tone friendly and I would vary my “script” with questions about details, like how big a truck they wanted and what kind. I would extemporize with things like “Everybody wants Pokémon cards. I don’t know if the elves can print enough.” One memorable visitor was Erin, a precocious girl trying to work through her confusion of seeing Santa in different places: “When I saw you at Jubilee...”
There were three Santa substitutes who filled when I had classes at UMD and on weekends. One substitute spent two hours in the bar of the mall pizzeria before he began his shift on Sunday. I didn’t get any details on how he behaved, but the photographers were told by their manager to just pack up. A mall customer accosted them at the photo store accusing them of getting Santa fired. The Santa who replaced me the second weekend was moody. He would be very friendly and open for a couple of hours then be grouchy or withdrawn. The third substitute was almost wooden. He wouldn’t look around, he apparently didn’t relate to the kids, and he got up to take a break when there were about a dozen kids in line.
Some adults wanted to sit on my lap and I didn’t deny anybody. My first visitor was a grandmother who had a tradition of getting her picture with Santa. Several retarded adults were delighted to sit on my lap. Some adults reeked of cigarette smoke. Of course, I had to get a photo with my wife.
Almost the very last adults to sit on my lap were a reporter and cameraman from a local TV station. I was amazed at how well I winged the interview. Since we don’t have a VCR or a TV, I called a friend to ask him to tape it, but I only got to leave a message. Unfortunately, his stepfather was in the hospital and died on Christmas eve. I later purchased a copy of the segment to watch on somebody else’s TV.
There were lots of other high points like the three or four kids who asked for “Peace on Earth.” Answer: “We’ve been working on that one for a long time.”
All in all I’m glad that I did it because of the many small rewards. But I doubt that I would do it again. I don’t think the sore bottom, the itchy chin, and the waiting for the next break were worth the pay. Especially considering not much was left after I paid for the pictures, the news video, and the chocolate bars I ate on breaks.
Santa Claus quit in early December, 1999. Mariner Mall called Pro Staff for a replacement. The staff looked at each other and said, “Mel!” I have white hair and a white beard.
The job was from noon to 6 everyday through the 23rd. The pay was $7.50/hour. I was not very enthusiastic but I accepted because I thought it would be an interesting experience.
When I arrived at the Mariner Mall office, I introduced myself as the Santa from Pro Staff. Grant, the manager, took me down the back halls to the back room of an empty store. The floor was littered and the small restroom had not been cleaned in months. The room had two Santa suits and wigs hanging from old display stands.
I figured out the various pieces of the outfit, stripped down to my underwear, and began putting things on. First was a stuffed front, essential for those of us with a moderate build. Next were the big red pants, and I mean big. They must have had a 60 inch waist! Pulling the drawstring as tight as I could, I just managed to get them to stay up over the false front. Then there was the big red coat with white, fake fur trim. It fit well enough, not too baggy and not too tight. To go with the coat was a wide black plastic belt.
Pro Staff had said that I should wear black shoes and I did have on a pair of black “dress” boots. The fake boots were black, lined vinyl with white fake fur around the tops and no soles. One’s own shoes peeked out from under the fake boots. Running shoes definitely would not do.
Now I was ready for the finishing touches. I have a white beard, but it is rather short and sparse so I had to use a false beard. The supplied beard was a huge frizzy thing with a moustache that covered my mouth instead of staying above my mouth. Since I have a fairly decent white moustache, I kept the false moustache below my mouth. The wig was a mass of flowing hair that was also frizzy.
Almost last was a huge red hat with white trim and a white ball dangling from the top. That hat could not be worn without the wig! Last was a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses. They were smeared and I thought they would pinch and scrape my nose (did they ever?)
SantaI wended my way through the back halls to the main part of the mall. On my way, I went past the rest rooms, and I immediately had to get into character. As I met people in the hall, I greeted them with “Merry Christmas!” Most people reacted with cheer and a “Merry Christmas, Santa!” From my “throne” I looked out over some fake snow to a camera on a tripod, a reflector light on a stand, and three tables in a U.
Being Santa was “easy” but boring, at least in a slow place like Mariner Mall. I watched for eye contact from people passing by. If they looked at me I waved and said, “Merry Christmas.” Some people would make eye contact from thirty feet away and their faces would light up. Others didn’t seem to notice me until they were right alongside me. Yet others ignored me by looking straight ahead or at the store windows.
If a kid walked by I would say “Merry Christmas” even without eye contact. Some would shyly hide behind their parents; others would almost run to me.
The photos made my life harder. Some parents were intimidated that they had to pass by the photographers’ tables to get to Santa, even if the photographers asked, “Would you like a photo or would you just like to see Santa?” On the other hand, the possibility of photos attracted parents whose kids were afraid of Santa. A couple of parents were almost abusive trying to get the kids to sit on my lap or even to stand near me.
One thing I didn’t like was bribing the kids with candy canes to get them to come forward or to calm down. Aren’t they being taught not to accept candy from strangers?
On the other hand, there were the kids who came rushing up to get a hug. I would open up my arms and give them a big bear hug, and then go into my almost robotic spiel. “Hi, what’s your name?” “What would you like for Christmas?” “Anything else?” “We’ll see what we can do.” “Would you like a candy cane?” “Bye. Merry Christmas.”
It wasn’t all that mechanical. I kept my tone friendly and I would vary my “script” with questions about details, like how big a truck they wanted and what kind. I would extemporize with things like “Everybody wants Pokémon cards. I don’t know if the elves can print enough.” One memorable visitor was Erin, a precocious girl trying to work through her confusion of seeing Santa in different places: “When I saw you at Jubilee...”
There were three Santa substitutes who filled when I had classes at UMD and on weekends. One substitute spent two hours in the bar of the mall pizzeria before he began his shift on Sunday. I didn’t get any details on how he behaved, but the photographers were told by their manager to just pack up. A mall customer accosted them at the photo store accusing them of getting Santa fired. The Santa who replaced me the second weekend was moody. He would be very friendly and open for a couple of hours then be grouchy or withdrawn. The third substitute was almost wooden. He wouldn’t look around, he apparently didn’t relate to the kids, and he got up to take a break when there were about a dozen kids in line.
Some adults wanted to sit on my lap and I didn’t deny anybody. My first visitor was a grandmother who had a tradition of getting her picture with Santa. Several retarded adults were delighted to sit on my lap. Some adults reeked of cigarette smoke. Of course, I had to get a photo with my wife.
Almost the very last adults to sit on my lap were a reporter and cameraman from a local TV station. I was amazed at how well I winged the interview. Since we don’t have a VCR or a TV, I called a friend to ask him to tape it, but I only got to leave a message. Unfortunately, his stepfather was in the hospital and died on Christmas eve. I later purchased a copy of the segment to watch on somebody else’s TV.
There were lots of other high points like the three or four kids who asked for “Peace on Earth.” Answer: “We’ve been working on that one for a long time.”
All in all I’m glad that I did it because of the many small rewards. But I doubt that I would do it again. I don’t think the sore bottom, the itchy chin, and the waiting for the next break were worth the pay. Especially considering not much was left after I paid for the pictures, the news video, and the chocolate bars I ate on breaks.
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