Monday, March 18, 2024

Trump's Party

The Trump family has decided to infuse new blood into the GOP political machine.  What will happen?  Will they get to paint their headquarters in gold, or go into bankruptcy?  Well, the GOP people must come to its aid.  Jump in with your checkbooks, or go down the drain with the Trumps.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Gene

 

Well, Kate and I just got back from the funeral service for a recently deceased close friend.  The funeral service was held in a small Evangelical church.  A little into the service, we found ourselves singing a hymn, whose refrain was

Trust and obey,

For there's no other way,

To be happy in Jesus

But to trust and obey.

This remarkable hymn managed to encapsulate all that I find disappointing in Christianity as it is practiced in the US: if you want to be happy with Jesus, you have to switch off the critical parts of your brain.

Much of the congregation consisted of our colleagues, who were college professors.  Some of them, doubtless, are comfortable with Trusting and Obeying, but higher education for many years has been engaged in a battle to fight against all sorts of dogma, which is why the conservatives and the GOP is so determined to get rid of "wokeness", one aspect of which is not Trusting and Obeying.  But is there truly no other way?

Arch

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Great Advice from Feynman

This is wonderful advice, all the more poignant for coming from Richard P. Feynman.  Some of you are cautious about whose advice you take—only to be expected after so much gaslighting—so read up about Richard Feynman.  He was brought up in Brooklyn, and eventually found himself working at the Manhattan Project.  He cracked the safe in which the reports of the several research groups were kept, left a note saying "Guess who?" and locked up the safe again. 

He wrote a 3- volume work that encapsulated all his notes, called The Feynman Lectures on Physics. 

To get back to the advice in the photo, his main trust (to young people) is:  find what you like to do, and really get into it. 

There is a message here for parents.  The kid who finds something she is enthralled by in their core curriculum is very fortunate.  You have to hedge your bets by providing a wide variety of activities for your kid. 

If your family is suspicious of higher education, your child can learn to downplay it.   It seems as though being well-educated is something a person should be proud of; and indeed he or she ought to be proud of it.  But in these times, a person can often be more effective as "an influencer," but not a cheap commercial influencer who has a huge following on social media, for the sake of getting rewards from companies; but to encourage people to think in rational ways, that science isn't bad, that vaccination is usually good; that politicians don't always do as much as they claim to do.  And maybe he or she (your child) could be a better influencer if her or his academic credentials are down-played.

Regrettably, once a youth gets into college, getting more and more qualified often depends on focusing on less and less, until people with the highest qualifications often know just a huge amount about a very narrow number of things.  This does not have to be the way it is.  Richard Feynman himself knew a huge number of things; he was widely read, he certainly knew how to crack a safe.  When he was alive (he might still be alive, but I think I remember hearing that he had died) people in society respected educated people.  People with wide knowledge and experience (that doesn't automatically come with a college degree; you have to go out and get that sort of knowledge and experience) were respected.  But we didn't know how resentful certain sectors of society were, and how suspicious of, college-learned people.  Bank loan officers, people with whom farmers had to do business, were often college educated, and these people did not usually have the customer's interests at heart; it was no wonder that many people thought of educated folk as ripoff artists. 

Well, we could be, I suppose.  When I looked in the eyes of certain of my students, I could see a certain question taking shape: "do we need to know all this, just to rip a few people off?"  I had been thinking how helpful they could be, with the additional information.  But some of them were focused more on knowing just how little they could get away with.  Being other-directed is something one absorbs from one's parents.  Unfortunately, some parents would just as soon their kids did not learn to be too altruistic. 

Arch


Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Thinking About Immigration

The problems with immigration are closely tied to our attitudes towards social welfare.

Politically, people's attitudes towards social welfare are numerous, ranging from "We don't need any sort of welfare at all.  Each man for himself!"  to  "Everyone should be provided with the basic necessities of life."  Those who haven't thought about this sort of issue might be shocked, but instead of 'everyone' if we were to say 'children', bearing in mind that even penniless families can have children, it takes on a different color.  Imagine a young couple, where the man was the breadwinner, and the woman was a homemaker, and then a mother; they get divorced, and now the woman must get child care while she looks for a job, or works.  Our perspective must change from: "I don't think I'll ever need the state to take care of me!" to: "There certainly are people who may need help from the community."

It isn't a huge leap to make the assumption that everyone believes that every citizen has to be taken care of, to some degree.  We are a nation that takes care of its citizens.

Some of us believe that we ought to take care of even non-citizens who live here.  It may be that (1) we give non citizens certain basic services to keep everyone safe.  (2) We give the kids of noncitizens certain services out of sheer humanity.  (3) Sometimes it is too burdensome to insist that our social service providers should verify citizenship of every individual before services are given.  And so on.

Well, once we establish the principle that we're a nation that looks after its citizens, or even its residents, it becomes clear that allowing open immigration is impossibly difficult; we would be taking on a great expense when we admit people through our borders.  Presence here has to be understood as a membership in all sorts of services.

Why not deny all immigration?  This sounds good in theory, but each of us has some categories of wannabe immigrants who we feel should be allowed in.  The question is how to do it in a fair and consistent way.

Friday, February 2, 2024

Transitioning Caution

There's a lot of evidence to believe that those who work in the area of guiding young people through the process of gender transitioning—getting ready for a sex change—have been a little too enthusiastic in advocating for it. Often, these strongly pro-transition advocates are reported to not offer more options to the young people they're counseling.  Bear in mind that the youngsters who come to be counseled concerning their gender dysphoria—discomfort with their assigned gender—often have other psychological burdens than just unhappiness with their gender.  But too often, the professionals who are assigned to counsel them are (reportedly) too focused on the route of gender transitioning.  This trend is confirmed by a substantial number of cases in which, the transitioned individual request reversal of the process: de-transitioning.

I am not an expert; I have just been unhappy with presenting very young children with the option to transition gender.  Kids often don't know their own minds, and other psychological problems they're facing complicate and interfere with the situation. I don't think writing about gender transition can be left to the experts. 

Political conservatives have opposed any gender transition for a long time.  For that reason, anyone who raises concerns about the ethics of gender transition are often accused—by pro-transition people—as being politically motivated conservatives.  No, I'm not raising a GO SLOW flag here because I'm a Christian conservative, or Tea Party-type Republican; I just think there are far too many people who want to support and affirm the interest in a youth who is merely interested in gender options, to follow through with actually transitioning.  Transitioning is difficult and painful, but detransitioning is even more painful.  This is far too delicate a problem to allow politics to interfere with it. 

Please read up on the matter yourselves:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/transgender-children-gender-dysphoria.html

Monday, January 22, 2024

Setting an Example

The last few days I have been thinking about what sort of example have I been setting for the people around me?

If I had lots of kids, that's one way a person could expect to have a large influence on the younger generation.  But I have just one kid!  Unfortunately, on one hand—in terms of humor, and speech, and music—I think she does follow my example.  And also in less positive ways: e.g. she tends to be a hoarder, like I used to be :(

One way in which I would have been gratified to be followed, is to have as small carbon footprint as possible.  * We have very fuel-efficient cars.  * Our home is entirely electric; at the moment, that means that our home heating is only as energy-efficient as the electric company, so we've put our efficiency in one basket, so to speak.  We use as many LED lamps as we can, and so on.  * My child went to the public school.  It's a free country, so we have the right to send kids to any school.  But by sending our child to the public school, we were investing in a resource that was publicly available, rather than a private resource.  On the other hand, my kid revealed that she was relentlessly bullied while at school, (something that—one hopes—does not happen in a Catholic school, for instance; but who are we kidding?  It probably does happen in most schools.)

* I commuted to work using a bike, or a bus,  for a while.  But that takes planning; I was running late so often, I had to race to work in my car. 

I can't think of too many other things I could report to you without it sounding like bragging.  I don't think I'm cut out to be an influencer.  That seems to be a role at which women are more successful, anyway.  I don't know whether women are interested in influencing their followers to maintain any sort of smaller footprint; their success seems to be measured by the size of their footprint; the larger, the better!

Anyway, I urge any of my readers who are influencers even in a small way to keep an eye on positive influences they could model. 

Arch

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

I used to write diatribes against Donald Trump

Donald Trump was, and continues to be, a pain in the a$$.  Many trumpees claim to believe him (though sometimes they qualify their belief by saying "He tells the truth in a certain sense").

The main point is that they want Trump as president.  Possibly because they want someone who can lie to the enemies of the USA; they obviously forget that Trump's lies are like those of a school kid. 

Better writers than I have written entire books about the unreliability of President no. 45, many of them also indicting the GOP for providing a home for Trump (in a manner of speaking).

Anyhow, there are far more fun topics to write about!

Arch

Final Jeopardy

Final Jeopardy
"Think" by Merv Griffin

The Classical Music Archives

The Classical Music Archives
One of the oldest music file depositories on the Web

Strongbad!

Strongbad!
A weekly cartoon clip, for all superhero wannabes, and the gals who love them.

My Blog List

Followers