So what is a troll?
It's like asking what is a fan? A groupie? A devotee? An admirer?
Except the troll is a sort-of anti-fan, someone whose attraction to you is due to some deep emptiness inside that you are somehow able to satisfy. The connection between blogger and troll is much like that between dominant and submissive in the S&M scene, except that the roles are contorted. Most bloggers and message board posters regard trolls as a nuisance, somewhere between pop-up ads and spammers. But I find trolls to be a lot more important. Unlike ads and spammers, trolls have a relationship between themselves and their targets.
About the time I began blogging I had a conversation with my buddy Bob about blog comments in general and negative comments in particular. I had just read a delightful post by Risawn, military girl blogger from Kosovo, about getting her first troll. Her site has changed a bit, but the archives content is intack. (I think she has the cutest smile I have ever seen. She makes me want to be thirty years younger and single. Check out these most recent pics, especially the one at the bottom of the post. What's not to love about this girl?)
You know you're doing something right when a Troll takes the time to bash you on your own website. I won't bother erasing their message, it's rather flattering.
Typical Liberal Slander from the left-wing whiners. He's appropriately named Beavis. I would give you his email but I have a suspicion that it isn't really his.
Honestly, what do people expect to gain by going to opposing websites and posting stupid remarks? His remarks, ver batum.
"Are you from Columbine? You look like you might be Dylan whats-his-name's ex girlfriend. Pretty sickening display of self deprication."
"Umm, did you kill any of your classmates recently? Reese Witherspoon meets Dylan Kliebold and the other freak who was his lover. You are such a freak!"
"BTW, I sent your website to the Justice Dept. American Terrorists like you should be watched closely."
Why to these assholes even bother? Where does this get anybody anywhere? Come here, attack me becuase I happened to pose with a M203 during a military training excercise and suddenly I'm in league with a school killing massacre from five years ago, because I happen to be in the military and know how to use a gun. And I don't know what the heck the Justice Department will do to my website, I haven't broken any laws or threatened anybody's life. All talk, no action. This shows your mentality, Beavis. It's non-existent.
But I won't deny that I'm a freak. I'll take that as a compliment.
UPDATE he brought it on himself. Beavis' IP Address links him to New York City. Liberal haven. Not surprised. Have at him - 66.65.118.233 I would warn Trolls, if you are here to cause a little havoc, you won't find that easy with me. If you have a differing opinion, I don't mind if you post an intelligent rebuttal. Postng stupid crap like "Have you shot up any schools recently" will cause me to mock you mercilessly.-->
Woah! Don't be messin' with this kid.
Anyway, I have had a troll admirer from early on who left occasional billets-doux (that's plural for billet-doux) in the form of anonymous comments. From the first one I thought of Risawn's post and thought to myself Is this the start of something big? Am I about to hit the big time, like Boortz, so I can brag about hate mail?
So far that fantasy is not to be.
All I have is a single, lonely troll who, bless his heart, can hardly spell and is way under the radar if the topic is not about the war in Iraq. He is unable to grasp the difference between pawns and policy, tactics and strategy, or conflict resolution in any form except one side successfully annihilating the other. He is immune to both nuance and precision, cannot discern the difference between fact and opinion, and is deeply threatened by suggestions of alternatives to military solutions anywhere in the world, especially Iraq, which he considers empty wastes of time.
Two days ago he left another deposit on a post that was irrelevant to the post and I deleted it because I was expecting company. Doc Searles was sending me readers and I didn't want them to step into a pile of anything right at the front door. I cleaned up a mess in the same way one uses a pooper-scooper to keep stuff off the sidewalk. It's the first time I did that, and it is interesting to see how well it works.
Well I must publicly apologize to my troll, because I apparently hurt his feelings. Within forty-eight hours he had posted another comment at my blog as well as one at the Piccadilly Message Board, a dying ember at Yahoo which still holds a sentimental place in my heart. (I am making an assumption here that my anonymous troll and the "hootsbudie" profile -- with one "d" -- at Yahoo are the same, but the spelling is not bad at Yahoo so they may not be the same. Actually, if they are different, it means I am up to two trolls, not counting the recommendation that someone added to the Yahoo post. Heck, I may be up to three! Things are looking up!)
I feel bad about deleting his carefully-worded comment and have decided to put it back into the record for completeness' sake.
John, I read your "Footnote from Iraq" story that you copied from another Bloger. You came down hard on our troops who shot a person by mistake. How many inocent people have the terorists killed with their car bombs? When will you stop defending Jihadists and tell the truth about the improved conditions there. I pity you.
I won't bother with the sics. The reader can supply his own.
I look forward to the day when I have more than one troll to brag about. In the meantime, I share two references.
First...
The Chinese gave a lot of thought to many subjects long before the invention of the internet, so they sometimes came to some interesting conclusions. In ancient China a student once asked his teacher about leadership:
"What do you think of the leader who is loved and respected by everyone in the community?"
"That is not enough," said the teacher.
"Then what of the leader who is feared and hated by all in the community?"
"That, too, is not enough," said the teacher,
"The ideal leader is one who is loved and respected by all the good people in the community, but feared and hated by all the bad people in the community."
Good leadership, it seems, involves selecting the right people and deselecting others. The master didn't give any guidelines to deselecting those who pay us to endure meanness, whether perpetrated by them or others. In this way we are not too different from professional athletes who sacrifice their health in exchange for big money. Or ladies of the night, for that matter, who are selling something else...
I suppose that is how we get the scar tissue. The scars which remain are those that came first, before we learned to forgive. Years at this job will build your faith. Only by learning to forgive the shortcomings of others, even before they become manifest, can we prevent the formation of new scars.
LINK
(Three weeks after I wrote that, the world changed with the destruction of the World Trade Center. I still get a bad feeling just remembering, now nearly four years later.)
Also...
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. (Matt 5:11-12)
Friday, June 10, 2005
My own special troll
Michael Yon on the Yezidi
Nope. Never heard of them, but now I know.
I'm late to scene discovering Michael Yon. His essays and pictures of Iraq are among the best journalism coming out of the war. His archives starts in January. The number of reports is surprisingly short. But qualitatively, it is the genuine article; tight, well-organized, readable and appealing. If you haven't already, it's time to bookmark. Before you leave the link, be sure to click "Home" and take a look at the pictures.
Some believe Yezidism is over 5,000 years old, while others claim thousands of years older. Nobody seems to know. The Yezidis have their own fuzziness on dates, and for the Yezidis it seems enough to say that theirs is the oldest religion in the world. The Hindus of India make the same claim about their religion, while others in Nepal and Tibet make calendar claims of their own....Not only do shards of Judeo-Christianity glint in this amalgam, but a close look also reveals pieces of Hinduism, especially in the prominence of castes. There are five Yezidi castes--depending on who one asks--the "most important" being the Pir, then Shaikh, Kawal, Murabby, and finally the Mureed (the follower). Descriptions of the Mureed are similar to the Dalits of Hinduism. The Yezidis are strictly forbidden to marry outside the Yezidi, and must marry within their caste....
Saddam Hussein's hatred for Yezidis and Kurds was matched only by his desire to eradicate every last one of them from Iraq. Even though most Kurds are actually Sunni Muslims, as is the now imprisoned dictator, his hatred for them remained unabated, and was relentless. Hussein knew that a collision of religious beliefs carved fault lines between the Yezidis and the Kurds who surround them. He used his common point of reference with the Kurds to sharpen their divide from the Yezidis, by calling them "Devil Worshippers." But just because the Yezidis don't have a Satan figure in their holy book, doesn't mean they can't spot a devil when they see one. Together with the Kurds, they resisted Hussein's will. Today, while the real peacock sits in jail, the unvanquished Yezidis are rebuilding their homeland.
LINK
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Deborah White on labels
Peek behind the rhetoric bush and find a real person most of the time. Debi White, card-carrying liberal Democrat, made the acquaintance of a card-carrying conservative Republican and had an interesting conversation.
After a bit of friendly chit-chat, she became serious. "How can you be liberal when you came from such a conservative town?" she asked. "I'm a Republican" she proudly announced.
After half-serious kidding about my liberal conversion at UCLA and a couple angry remarks by me about George Bush, I explained to her that I don't fit the stereotypical mold for the media-perfect Democrat...whatever that might be.
I personally believe that Roe v. Wade is wrong to permit an abortion at anytime during pregnancy, and frankly, struggle with any abortion. In the words of both President Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, I believe that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." Very rare.
I recently wrote an article on the Pros & Cons of Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Many good people have valid moral concerns about the use of fertilized human embryos being killed in the course of medical research. After extensive research and consultation, I concluded that I support the use of embryos in such research only with certain strict ethical protocols.
My self-labeled conservative, Republican friend exclaimed, "I'm a Republican, but I'm pro-abortion and and pro-embryonic stem cell research." We laughed. Go figure.
My personal stances don't always fall neatly into the "liberal" label, and her personal stances don't always fall neatly into the "conservative" category. Best-selling author Jim Wallis preaches that God is Not a Republican or Democrat. But this is about more than religion.
As my new friend and I did this weekend, when we shed our political labels and sit down to talk, perhaps enjoy a meal together, we are more alike than different. And the labels are just that. Labels. Convenient categories for politicans to use and abuse to build support for their own ambitions and empires.
The chasm between "liberal" and "conservative" is small on many issues and for most people. The classification lines between the two "sides" are fuzzy, messy, indistinct. And the overlap between "liberal" and "conservative" is great.
We are Americans first, and political party adherents second.
Flag Day is June 14, eight days from now. Wouldn't it be a blessing for our nation if we used that day to celebrate our oneness? I will. How about you?
LINK
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Welcome Doc's readers
Thanks, Doc, for the link.
Those who are interested can tke a look at my rant about education from a few days back. I am convinced, like Doc Searles, that what we think of as "education" is more than the results of tests.
A lot more...
And if you have the time, take a look at the "Footnote" of this post.
Salvation question
Ilona resurrects one of the oldest questions of the faith: Is it possible to lose one's salvation?
When I hear it asked there is an echo of voices from my Baptist past...Once saved, always saved!...intoned with firm conviction, typically in the wake of some serious discussion of sin in one form or another. The statement was reserved for the most controversial of conditions, since everyone understood that in everyday living, it is not an issue that threatens a good Christian. Only when one strays too close to the cliffs of perdition is it important to invoke those words of comfort and reassurance. And it has to be a declarative sentence pronounced with finality. To question the truth of it is tantamount to questioning the fact of salvation itself.
The realization that salvation is more than an event has been for me an important source of strength and encouragement. Salvation is also a process. Here for my personal record, and for the edification of anyone else who may be interested, is my response to ilona's query.
You have brought up one of the most persistent unanswered questions of the faith. If the answer were clear we would not still be asking. I do not propose to answer for anyone else, but for me there was one important insight: salvation is more than an event. Salvation, though it may be (pick one: found, appropriated, seen, launched, understood, given, other) as an event, it is significant as the beginning of a process.
That process of salvation is what enables a Christian always to be a participant in his own redemption. With God's help through salvation he is able to move from sinfulness to safety, assured that with every step he is closer to a better place than he was before. Like Edison's tireless elimination of materials that didn't work to make a better filament for the light bulb, Christians keep on looking for a better way to let their individual lights shine. Every time we try something that fails, we are one step more toward the end we seek. In a sense we lose our salvation with every failure, but that does not mean that it is lost entirely. In the end we know we will not only endure, as Faulkner said; we shall prevail.
A simile comes to mind. Salvation is to the Christian what sobriety is to the alcoholic. As mortals we are born with the seeds of damnation, but every day we also have the option to embrace salvation. As oft as we do it, we can have life, and have it more abundantly. But if we neglect (read "take for granted") our salvation, we are in danger of losing it (read "making a fatal error").
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Footnote from Iraq
This story has been haunting me for two days. I don't want to comment on it. But I also don't want to lose track of it. I expect a time to come when this story and its origin will vanish. A footnote...
Nihad Had to Die
Nihad was a young man aged 23 who lived in a small town. He made his living by collecting fresh milk from the countryside and delivering it to a wholesaler in Baghdad.
While going through one such round, he was about 300 yards from an American army convoy when the convoy was hit by some explosive device. The soldiers started shooting at anything in sight. Nihads car was targeted (I saw the car and counted 19 bullet holes in it, eight in the windscreen). He received a bullet in the thigh. A second bullet brushed against his head.
Nihad threw himself from the car, crawled into a drainage canal and made his way to a near-by village where the people took him home.
During that time, someone passing by, who knew Nihad's car, went into town (about 15 miles away) and told his father. The father rushed to the scene with two of his other sons and was desperate when he saw his son's blood on the cushion but no sign of the boy.
He approached the American soldiers and tried to gain any information from them. It was difficult through the language barrier. One of the US boys slipped him a small piece of paper. A few days later he showed me that slip. It was 3x1" scrap with something like (x Inf Div 186 PC) -) hurriedly scribbled on it. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but the father still has that piece of paper.
I know Nihad's father well. I saw the young man a few days later and was amazed at the incredible sight of the bald patch on the crown of his head, left by the near-fatal bullet. I urged the father to take the matter up with the US army authorities (US soldiers are not subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction), but he wasn't interested; he had no faith in the Americans!
Nihad pulled through.
On the 40th day of the first incident, Nihad was driving through his own town at 9:30 pm. He was several hundred meters from his home. There was what they call a foot-patrol of some 10 infantry men going through the same road. Apparently, Nihad failed to see them or failed to stop. They shot at him. Again, he was injured and, again, he threw himself out of the car. One of the soldiers came close to him and, standing over him, fired five bullets into his chest and head. His brain was splashed onto the pavement.
There were quite a number of people out in the street at the time. More than a dozen people had a clear view of the proceedings. They were quick to point out to others the almost-vertical bullets in the road surface.
Nihad's body was taken away by the soldiers and returned to his family the following morning by the Iraqi National Guard.
When I saw his father again about a week after the incident, he showed me another piece of paper. It was a typed, A5 size page expressing the regret of the US army at the incident caused by Nihad's failure to stop at a check point. The father, again, refused to take the matter up legally with the US army authorities.
About two weeks later, the Army sent Nihad's father an envelope with $2,500 in cash in it. The father took the money and gave it to someone in town whom he knew to be with the resistance.
LINK
Best Headline nomination
States Rights Go To Pot in Supreme Court Anti-Pot Decision
I dunno...this one is pretty good...
Giving a whole new meaning to "the chosen people"
(I still like mine about SCOTUS better. LINK
The other one got buried in a screed.)
...and the Best One-Liner goes to Sullivan:
Maybe this latest insult will fuel a real revolt from the grass-roots...
Monday, June 06, 2005
Bene Diction -- a must read
When it pours out like this, it ain't fiction.
She had volunteered to do a huge banner for the front of the church that matched the theme of the cantata. It was a lot of work, I had time to kill and I volunteered to help her. We had a lot of effort to pack into a short period of time. She had decided to do it in watercolour and dimensionalize parts of it with foam and various things. It was an outstanding piece of art.
We agreed to meet up in the church lobby late one afternoon to get the painting well under way. I arrived to find the work laid out and abandoned in the lobby.I definitely did not like the muffled voices I was hearing coming from behind the closed door of Dr. ***'s office.
Because of my upbringing I'm hyer-sensitive to potential conflict. That can be a good and bad thing. I hear conflict when it is not serious. I can't seem to tell the differnence, I have to keep learning. This particular day, Jane's life would depend on my hyper-awareness.
This is a life and death story, literally. It's not too long. Quick reading. Go read.
Mary Jane and the Court
Today's Supreme Court decision that federal authority supercedes state authority in laws regarding the medical (tee-hee!) use of marijuana.
Have you ever had the experience of seeing what happens when a hornet's nest gets hit by a rock? It's not a pretty sight. I just love this observation from P&C...
The case of Raich vs. Gonzales has been decided. The decision as far as this non-lawyer can figure out says that there are no limits to what Congress can regulate.
So let me see if I get this.
Water is sold in interstate commerce.
Does this give the Congress the power to legislate all uses of water in America? For instance it may be used for brushing your teeth but not be used after flossing? It may be used for one minute showers but not baths? If Congress so decides? You can drink it out of a tap (which is paid for) but not from a stream for which no price has been paid?
Slam dunk for sure.
also...
So let me ask my Republican friends who used to think that Wickard was an over reach by FDR into areas the Federal Government had no authority to regulate. Do you agree with the ever flexible Constitution theory? Your most vaunted conservative Judge, Scalia, concurs with the opinion and substantially agrees that the Federal Government has regulatory power over items that are not actually sold, and do not cross state lines.
So where is the Conservatism of the Court? Thomas. He says that there are well defined limits to Federal power. He goes back to the original understanding of the Constitution.
And to my lefty friends, is Thomas still your Uncle Tom? Scalia's water boy?
The Federal government now has unlimited police powers in the nation. It could prosecute simple theft. Why? Well the object of the thief could be sold in interstate commerce. Thus the thief is interfering with interstate commerce. Thus thievery could be a Federal crime. This is especially true for shoplifting.
There are now no understandable limits on the Federal Government. The limits are whatever five Justices decide (they decided for States Rights in Lopez). God help us all when Congress is in session.
Glenn Reynolds, as usual, has the latest scoops.
After all, he does teach law when he's not too busy.
None of this affects me. My smoking days are long past. What I think about now is the unbelievable fact that so much time, money, energy and valuable prison space is being dedicated to a so-called "war on drugs," a never-ending travesty that is as much a failure as prohibition. You would think that a country that is as dedicated as the US to commerce and free enterprise, whose exhaltation of the marketplace approaches religious extremes in other areas, would grasp the obvious tax and control potential of legalizing the sale and use of weed.
Sigh.
Technology watch: forecasting
Remember the Weather Rock? Sure fire way to know what the weather is. It's been around since before the interstate highway system. It was used most recently by the military in the Balkans...
While serving at Velika Kladusa as the Bosnia Rotary Wing Aviation Unit in Roto 7 from September 2000 to March 2001, the personnel of the "helicopter detachment" had a little fun with something we all like to gripe about--the weather. They created the Weather Rock, suspended it from a makeshift tripod and attached a plastic-covered sheet containing instructions on how to interpret the signs conveyed by the rock.
Warrant Officer Lou Schull, a met tech, explained the Weather Rock's infallible signs for our readers:
Rock white--it's snowing;
Rock wet--raining;
Rock moving--windy;
Rock casts a shadow--sunny;
Rock casts a shadow south--hangar light on;
No rock shadow--cloudy;
Cannot see rock--it's either night or the hangar light is off;
No rock--AWL;
Tripod shaking--earthquake.
BREAKING NEWS!
Improved weather forecasting is now available in the form of the Ambient Weather Forecast Beacon.
The Beacon silently and elegantly communicates weather data using color and light. It glows more red when warmer weather is forecasted, and colder blue hues if cooler temperatures are on the way. The Beacon will also subtly pulse to show the chance of rain or snow.
Your weather is just a glance away, a quiet interface that avoids the buzzing of cellphones and the complicated interfaces of computers. Design and technology blend, a fine glass object is revealed as a powerful weather indicator.
Patent-pending wireless technology continually updates the Weather Beacon from Ambient's nationwide radio network with no monthly fees required. A world of color-based reporting: weather forecasts and activity channels like skiing, gardening, sailing, and pollen forecasts.
more...
But that's nothing. Ambient's Forecasting Beacon just a small part of a data tracking revolution already underway. Thanks to Virginia Postrel I have been following a blog whose name describes its mission with mathematical precision: This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology & Economics. Today's find aims the light on Ambient Devices, an outfit on the cutting edge of -- you guessed it -- information and technology. They have a smart-looking little device that rests tastefull on your credenza that will tell you anything you need to know, from whether you're on the way to an option call, or whether your blood sugar is about to go off the rails because of what you had for lunch. Actually, I made that last one up. But it's just a matter of time until a wireless biosensor in your shirtpocket is able to keep up with your body functions and tells you when to schedule a trip to the loo. All you do, when the time comes, is rig it up to interface with this neat new system and you're set to go.
Check out the Ambient Dashboard.
... it’s clear what we want: streams of data that are perfectly chosen, arriving just in time, in exactly the form we need them. Every cell phone, PDA, laptop and desktop offers this promise. All of them disappoint. The company that gets this right will have created the ultimate killer app. And that’s because what used to appeal to us as a “cool gadget” now has the status of a necessity. It is the only device that promises us order in the world.
This has to be one of the reasons that Google just got into the portal game. The new portal gives us time, weather, news flashes, email. Google is a welcome player. It was late to the search engine game and still rose to the greatness. It did this partly by eliminating things from the screen. This sounds easy but it was, until recently, entirely beyond the poor bastards at Yahoo! and eBay who managed to make the screen look like the dog’s breakfast had just exploded. (It turns out that the rule of parsimony that governs good prose operates here as well. What we take out is just as important as what we put in.)
more...
I'm not smart enough to say anything intelligent about that.
I have a great time just watching it whiz past...
Looking at education
Public Schools...private schools...home schooling...day care....NCLB....NEA....Headstart....religious instruction....ID and evolution....and now book lists, for crying out loud!
I'm sick to death of hearing so many ignorant voices claimng to know the path to wisdom. Talk shows use public schools as whipping boys when the news is slow. Preachers rail against Godless education now that they don't have Godless Communism to kick around any more. Otherwise respectable, well-meaning parents sniff and sigh because immigrant kids are invading their neighborhood schools, while real estate agents steer clients here or there depending on whether elementary or high schools are "good" or "not the best."
I have in the last couple of days found vivid examples of stellar achievement on the part of people whose formal education was anything but good. LINK LINK One could argue that these are "exceptions" but that "most" students aren't learning as much as they once did. I cannot argue with that, but I will argue that the shortcoming has more to do with family values than public policy. Yesterday's in-depth three-hour interview of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on C-SPAN revealed, among other things, that this incredibly accomplished and erudite man was a self-described "goof-off...a high school dropout," who still went to college to become one of the most articulate and influential voices of our time. Children do not develop values in a vaccuum. Society, culture and public policy are important, but in the end the finished product, the adult who fails or succedes in life, reflects more about family background than culture. Thanks to cultural mobility, the offspring of disfunctional families need not be doomed to failure. Likewise, and unfortunately, there is no guarantee that ideal families will not produce kids who grow up to be weeds in an otherwise beautiful garden.
To illustrate my point, there are two timely reading assignments. It doesn't matter which one comes first, because both illustrate the same point. One is about the development of inner-city kids, the other is about Jews. In both cases the impact of family and social support (or lack of appropriate support) jumps off the page as the formative difference.
A paper by Gregory Cochran and others, entitled Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence advances the notion that a specific genetic component common to Jews of Ashkenazi origin, which includes most of Eastern Europe and North America, gives them a statistical advantage in intelligence. I have run across several references to this paper while surfing. I find it interesting, but not particularly surprising. The paper runs to forty pages, should anybody want to study it, but I have not. I want to get that on the table first off, because I don't like the eugenic implications. Even if it is scientifically sound, the conclusions, while compelling, will not lead me to change my thinking on the subject about which I am writing, the importance of family values on education. I mention the paper only to acknowledge the jumping off point of one horn of a two-horned discussion.
Having said that, I want to point to the brilliant and on-point comments of Judith Weiss of Kesher Talk.
But there is so much evidence that intelligence is malleable that I tend to favor nurture over nature arguments. I put forth a few of these in one comment thread:
Jews prize scholarship, but this goes beyond just subsidizing the studies and genes of the smartest young men.For centuries all male and some female children were taught to read, in places where the vast majority of the population was illiterate. All males were expected to study Torah and Talmud at least a bit. Talmud study is very intellectually demanding; it's like tort law, history, folk tales, homilies, and spiritual riddles all rolled into one. Often women would run small businesses so their husbands could study, so women had to know basic math and be able to read, even if they didn't go to yeshiva like the men. Also they would be very assertive (which gets stereotyped into "domineering" and "pushy.")
Children are encouraged to ask questions. Torah and Talmud study is traditionally done in "chevruta": pairs of students reading and discussing the text together. Any pedagogue will tell you this is an excellent method to get students to really engage with the material. Until recently almost all Jews spoke at least two and often more languages.
Also, a persecuted minority which wants to survive as a culture REALLY values its children. They are treated with great affection and concern. At an extreme, this is smothering, but in general it enhances the kid's self confidence and intelligence.Since the Enlightenment Jews encouraged their children to attend university, Jewish immigrants in Western countries have been similar to Asian immigrants in pressuring all the children to get good grades and advanced degrees, and sacrificing to support their children's academic and professional careers.
With this kind of culture you don't need genetics to explain intellectual achievement. In fact, somebody wrote a book about 10 yrs ago on "how to raise your kids the Jewish way." He went through all these cultural practices, which are not universal in Jewish families, but ARE pretty common. They are stereotypes which are for the most part true. His thesis wasa that "these child-rearing methods will produce self-confident smart kids and you don't have to be Jewish to use them." Talk about philo-semitic!
I browsed that book at a used book store in Austin about eight years ago; I regret that I didn't buy it, because I have not been able to track it down since. (Since she is quoting herself I didn't feel the need to treat the quote to indents as she did...)
There is nothing to add. She said it well.
Next, from the first comment left at this post we are directed to a very different, longer piece in City Journal by Kay S. Hymowitz. The article opens with the spotlight on Bill Cosby, whose unwelcome but cogent remarks are more like preaching at the choir than to it.
“The lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal. These people are not parenting!” Or the litany he presented in a Paula Zahn interview: “You got to straighten up your house! Straighten up your apartment! Straighten up your child!” Wearing a sweatshirt with the motto “Parent Power!” he doubtless would have blasted the “poverty pimps and victim pimps” who blame their children’s plight on racial injustice. “Proper education has to begin at home. . . . We don’t need another federal commission to study the problem. . . . What we need now is parents sitting down with children, overseeing homework, sending children off to school in the morning, well fed, rested, and ready to learn.”
We can hope that his efforts prove to be more than Quixotic. He is speaking loud and clear but I see little evidence so far that his words are having much effect changing the course of the cultural aircraft carrier which includes most of America. The stigma and penalties of a sick culture of non-education shows most clearly among black kids but it is endemic to the whole country at all socio-economic levels. Even in the best of middle-class families parents often regard schools and teachers as an extension of daycare in loco parentis. The symptoms do not show on academic testing, but become apparent in different forms. Eating disorders, substance abuse, promiscuity, body piercing and a casual acceptance of profanity and just about any variant of lifestyle choices are not the result of educational failures but failures of the nuclear family.
Forty years after the War on Poverty began, about 30 percent of black children are still living in poverty. Those children face an even chance of dropping out of high school and, according to economist Thomas Hertz, a 42 percent chance of staying in the lowest income decile—far greater than the 17 percent of whites born at the bottom who stay there. After endless attempts at school reform and a gazillion dollars’ worth of what policymakers call “interventions,” just about everyone realizes—without minimizing the awfulness of ghetto schools—that the problem begins at home and begins early. Yet the assumption among black leaders and poverty experts has long been that you can’t expect uneducated, highly stressed parents, often themselves poorly reared, to do all that much about it. Cosby is saying that they can.
[...]
Head Start, with its annual budget of $6.8 billion, remains a sentimental favorite of the public and of Congress. But the truth is, from the first time they parsed the data, Head Start researchers found that while children sometimes enjoyed immediate gains in IQ and social competence, these improvements tended to fade by the time kids hit third grade. The failed promise of Head Start might best be captured by a visit I made several years ago to a Head Start program in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a cheerful and orderly place that would satisfy anyone’s definition of quality child care. As I was leaving, an administrator introduced me to a young woman of 21 or so just arriving with her four-year-old. “This is Sonia,” he said proudly. “She went here when she was a little girl.” Not only had Head Start failed to prevent a poor child from becoming a teen mother, but a Head Start administrator didn’t even seem to think that it was supposed to. For him—and, one suspects, for many teachers and parents—Head Start had come to be nothing more than a nice neighborhood preschool; it wasn’t meant to change lives, and it boasted with institutional pride of what elite private schools and colleges call legacies.
A challenge that disproportionately affects black families is, in fact, trans-racial. We see it plainly where it stands out most clearly, making it tempting to dismiss the issue if you are not black. The City Journal article goes on to discuss several alternative programs, none of which has caught fire. Finally she comes right out and says
...poor parents raise their kids differently, because they see being parents differently. They are not simply middle-class parents manqué; they have their own culture of child rearing, and—not to mince words—that culture is a recipe for more poverty. Without addressing that fact head-on, not much will ever change.
The article is excellent. Recommended reading, by all means. There is a heart-breaking script of a two-year-old and her welfare mother interacting in a way that almost certainly insures what I would call scar-tissue on that child's development. My visceral reaction as I read was similar to what I feel when I see a child harshly disciplined for behavior that for him is normal, but embarrassing for the mother when it happens in public.
But as I was reading I couldn't help reflecting on an even larger picture of the family's role in educational and personal achievement. I have only the greatest respect for educational accomplishments, but I probably know more accomplished people who have done well due to perseverance and character traits than education. And my guess is that whoever is reading this post knows a serious number of people in their own circle whose successes in life -- whether economic, social or cultural -- have fallen far short of the promise of their educational accomplishments.
We need a nuclear option, alright. But the nuclear option I have in mind has nothing to do with Senate rules. The nuclear option I want to see is a nuclear family. That means a family that starts with two parents and stays that way until the child or children are grown. That means that the same two parents, God willing, will still be good role models for any grandchildren and great-grandchildren should they be blessed with any. Absent offspring, any two people who marry should become good role models for their neices and nephews, participating in their growth and development, again taking seriously their responsibilities as role models for any children in their lives, including those across the street, at the pool, or anyplace else that children and adults interact.
As long as there is going to be a public debate about education, it is only fair to start with the basics. By basics I don't mean the three R's. Illiterate families the world over rear children successfully. Education is about more than books. It is about values. Books, like calculators, are nothing but tools. In the same way that a skill saw can chop off a finger when not used safely, books, improperly understood, can corrupt and destroy a mind. But the problem is not with tools. Safety is taught by the teacher, the coach and the underpinnings of wise parenting.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Dangerous books
Let's see, now. Not long ago we got a list of banned books, according to some professional library group that keeps up with such things.
Comes now another list of (shudder, tremble...) dangerous books, as selected by 15 scholars and public policy leaders serving as judges, selecting the Ten Most Harmful Books. Here ya go...
The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
Quotations from Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong
The Kinsey Report, Alfred Kinsey
Democracy and Education, John Dewey
Das Kapital, Karl Marx
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
The Course of Positive Philosophy, August Comte
Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes
The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich
What Is To Be Done, V.I. Lenin
Authoritarian Personality, Theodor Adorno
On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B.F. Skinner
Reflections on Violence, Georges Sorel
The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly
Origin of the Species (sic), Charles Darwin
Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization, Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead
Unsafe at Any Speed, Ralph Nader
Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud
The Greening of America, Charles Reich
The Limits to Growth, Club of Rome
Descent of Man, Charles Darwin
I didn't do so well on this one, I'm afraid. (See italics)
But it is a shorter list than the other one...
Why do I have the idea that if lists like these keep getting compiled somebody will want to do something with them? Have I been reading too much into history?
Yo, ilona...you getting this?
How about private education proponents? Ya'll takin' notes?
Tip Preposterous Universe (from Brad De Long) via 3 Quarks
Kierkegaard: A bit of spice
(Several times over the last few years I have linked to the following piece, thoughtfully made available at a link that is no longer active. I forgot how I came by it, but I post it here for future reference, both for myself and whoever has need of it.)
As a skilful cook says of a dish in which there are already a great many ingredients: "It still needs just a little pinch of cinnamon" (and we perhaps could hardly tell by the taste that this little pinch of spice had been added, but she knew precisely why and precisely how it affected the taste of the whole mixture); as an artist says with a view to the color effect of a whole painting which is composed of many, many, colors: "There and there, at that little point, it needs a touch of red" (and we perhaps could hardly even discover the red, so carefully has the artist shaded it, although he knows exactly why it should be introduced). So it is with Providence.
O, the Providence of the world is a vast housekeeping, a grandiose painting. Yet he, the Master, God in heaven, behaves like the cook and the artist. He says: There must be a little touch of spice here, a little touch of red. We do not understand why, we are hardly aware of it, since that little bit is so thoroughly absorbed in the whole. But God knows why.
A little pinch of spice! That is to say: Here a man must be sacrificed, he is needed to impart a particular taste to the rest.
These are the correctives. It is a woeful error for the one who is used to apply the corrective to become impatient and try to make the corrective the norm for others. That is an attempt to bring everything to confusion.
A little pinch of spice! Humanly speaking, what a painful thing, thus to be sacrificed, to be the little pinch of spice! But on the other hand, God knows well the man he elects to use in this way, and then he knows also, in the inward understanding of it, how to make it a blessed thing for him to be sacrificed, that among the thousands of divers voices which express, each in its own way, the same thing, his will also be heard, and perhaps especially his, which is truly de profundis, proclaiming: God is love. The birds on the branches, the lilies in the field, the deer in the forest, the fish in the sea, countless hosts of happy men exultantly proclaim: God is love. But beneath all these sopranos, supporting them as it were, like the bass part, is audible the de profundis which issues from those who are sacrificed: God is love.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b.1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish "golden age" of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the "father of existentialism", but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his literary experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and revitalise Christian faith. Kierkegaard burned with the passion of a religious poet, was armed with extraordinary dialectical talent, and drew on vast resources of erudition.
Tienanmen Square -- June 4, 1989
The images are among the most unforgettable of our lifetime. A student model of the Statue of Liberty. Crowds of students peacefully protesting China's totalitarian system, capturing the world's attention in real time via TV. The most remarkable of all the images, a lone man standing in front of a line of tanks, prepared to die should they run over him.
Simon World marks the anniversary with this bleak observation.
Often we cling to this event as a sign of hope. A hope that democracy and freedom will one day prevail over the Communist party. The reality is while many of us like to think of June 4th as a turning point, the past 16 years have proved us wrong. The Communists have turned themselves into a party of nationalists who have created a new social contract with the Chinese people - economic prosperity and rising living standards in return for continued unquestioned rule by the CCP. And while it is difficult to be certain it seems the large part of China's population is (for now) happy with the deal.
There's plenty that could change. The CCP plays a delicate balancing game between socio-economic tensions and its grip on power. What's worse is it is good at it. But without the effective feedback mechanisms that democracy provides the powers-that-be need to hope they remain good at the game. It will only take one slip for the edifice to come crashing down. Which is why in situations like June 4th, 1989, the CCP is likely to err on the side of crackdown and confrontation. There's no upside in compromise and they hold the guns.
That's the problem. Firstly it seems almost inconcievable for another 1989 protest to happen as things stand. Secondly if it should happen the question to ask is how would the CCP leadership respond today? The answer is clear - in the same way. The CCP are good at learning the lessons of history.
The CCP has a clear desire to remain in power at all costs. Democracy and freedom is not an inevitability for China. That's the legacy of Tiananmen Square.
Funerals at home
Like the hospice movement, which since the 1960s has helped the terminally ill die peacefully at home, the home funeral movement aims to protect what it calls individuals' 'right' to care for their own at death. At its most abstract, promoters say, it hopes to dispel the fear and denial that accompany an institutionalized approach to death, and return life's final act to its historical position as a natural, profound and private event.LINK
We recently had a baptism at home for our newest grandchild, but it never occurred to me to have a funeral at home. At first blush I don't find a problem. After all, the funeral industry was not an industry until what we like to think of as "modern" times. Washing and preparing a body for burial was at one time as ordinary as childbirth. I have to think about this one for a while.
Tip Jarvis
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Farrah Gray, entrepreneur
Updated, July 29, 2006
This post is over a year old at this writing. When you get finished here, I have an update.
He was impressed. Me, too.
This from Nycola.com which has a picture and other links.
... At age 14, this young entrepreneur was a millionaire.
Gray's entrepreneurial journey began at age six when he went door to door selling body lotion for $1.50. Always starting economic empowerment clubs at school, Gray got the idea to do a radio show. At age 9, Gray co-hosted a radio show called "Backstage Live" which eventually reached 12 million listeners.
By middle school, Gray had a nationwide speaking career, commanding $5,000-$10,000 per appearance. Puberty hits. While most young men were off discovering the opposite sex, Mr. Gray started his own specialty food company, "Farr-Out Foods", which he marketed to young people and sold for $1.5 million by his 14th birthday. He started the company with a make-shift "we're too poor to buy syrup" recipe from his grandmother.
Now at age 20, Gray has his hands in multiple projects including the acquisition of "Inner City Magazine", his charitable foundation, "The Farrah Gray Foundation", which helps empower young inner city kids to think economically, and lastly, real estate investing. January 1st of this year, Gray released his first book, "Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out", which lists the practical lessons that took him from public assistance to being a multi-millionaire.
As I said, go on. Tell me about education.
While you're at it, tell Doc Searls, too.
Moral muteness in time of war
One of my referrers hit a post from six months ago that I had forgotten. It's time to read it again and refresh my memory, not to convince myself but to help me remember that powerful piece of discussion in the war resistor's toolbox. I blog it here for your general information.
Notice: the post is long and convoluted, and the links to First Things and Commonweal are even longer and more convoluted. But, hey! Getting out of college or grad school is just as bad. Most really worthwhile subjects take work.
Go read, if you have the time and stamina.
Public education...Storm, meet Pot. Pot, meet Storm.
"Students face consequences if they choose to accept evolution in a family or a church or a community that patently rejects evolution ... It might affect whether you get a date to the prom, or whether you get that summer job or not," McCoy said. "You may even anger close family members. Conversations about evolution can make family reunions very tense. "
LINK
It is bound to happen.
The same thing that happens to the children of divorced parents is now happening to students as the debate over teaching evoloution rages on.
Mixed signals is the worst of all shortcomings in management, in parenting, in education, in politics, in every human endeavor that requires the transmission of information. And mixed signals is what students are getting in this debate. The odd part is, it makes no difference if a well-meaning parent is home-schooling or sending the student to a private school with a curriculum that has the Good Faithkeeping Seal of Aproval. The finished product, the student, will still have to live and work a world that is, according to their training and instruction, deeply flawed to a dangerous point. Lacking the adult interpersonal skills that allow us to sit together in the same place with publicans and sinners, and others of ignorant, illicit and misguided creeds, adolescents and young adults are still trapped in that idealistic place where everyone who can't agree with them is simply ill-informed. All they need to do is pursuade others of the truth, and in time ignorant people will see the truth and the truth shall set them free.
We are witnessing the indoctrination, polarization and intellectual vaccination of a generation of young people prepared to engage in another civil war over principles, if necessary to defend and protect what they know to be "right." We are already teaching them the skills of actual combat in the proving grounds of the Middle East. After all, it's not about land, or oil, or international politics. It's about principles, you know. When the seeds of mixed signals are sewn, a lifetime of irresolvable conflict is the harvest. Social workers, pastoral counselors and others who work with children can attest to the fact that children will love and often try to protect a parent or parents who are abusive or negligent.
The bonds of affection in healthy families are stronger than disfunctional ones, to the point that children from that family can express the family identity even more than that of society around them according to how well the family has succeded in passing on its values and beliefs. But in the long run, society carries the heavier weight. How else to account for the changes in first-generation immigrants whose children don't speak the mother tongue as well as their new language? Whose grandchildren engage in habits or wear fashions their grandparents find unacceptable?
How else to explain the desegregation of public schools and accommodations, followed by private schools, clubs and churches? I remember widespread creation of "private schools" in the South, meaning "white schools." An avalanche of social opinion eventually prevailed, as in the case of smoking. Prejudice survives along with the use of tobacco, but the voice is sotto voce, just as more and more buildings are designated non-smoking. For me the question is not about faith versus science. It is about how faith approaches the world, not only its science, but its whole being. How can we teach our children to be IN the world, but not necessarily OF the world? Not how can the world teach our children, but how can we teach our children...
Friday, June 03, 2005
Book meme tag
Ilona tagged me with this book meme. I guess the idea is to tag people and get them to reveal what books they have owned, read, etc.
I can't do this as neatly as other people. It's too complicated and I'm too poor at cooking things down to a few lines. Instead I have written an essay.
Total books owned, ever...
Last book I bought...
Last book I read...
Five Books that mean a lot to me...
At some level I knew that I would eventually have to write about my connection with books and reading. It’s rather like trying to remember how it was to nurse, then learning to use a bottle, and end up knowing how to handle tableware to eat. Where do I start?
There is a lot that I don’t remember. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t drink coffee, for example. I can recall going round the table after the meal and checking out the cups of adults to get that last little sip from the bottom. Before good filters and percolators coffee had grinds, so no one finished a cup. That “last drop” thing was a marketing notion by Maxwell House, but no one I knew ever drank it. A kid like me could usually find enough to taste, and if you were lucky there would also be some undissolved sugar that made it almost as good as candy, but you had to be very careful not to get the grinds in your mouth.
BOOKS…
Back to books. My mother’s parents were both book people. Her mother was a teacher (elocution, already) and her father a minister. Mom taught school a couple of years, but she didn’t have the temperament for it and my father felt she should be at home with my sister and me anyway. As a minister and author of one book, my grandfather had endless numbers of books, a few of which are in my little library, including Hebrew grammar books, an early Nave’s Topical Bible, The Harvard Classics, a string of books on Presbyterian church history, collections of sermon notes by world scholars, and a couple of copies of his book. There is a great family story that when my grandmother finished college (1912?) she had a job selling Compton’s Encyclopedia, traveling by horse and buggy. I think her love of books may have been one of her qualities that appealed to him.
My wife is not a book person, but her grandpa was, so we also have books from his collection, including the Lincoln Library and a wonderful “Book of Nature”, 1875, sub-titled “Structure and uses of the organs of life and generation of man and woman intended especially for the married, or those intending to marry.” 180-plus pages, about six-point type with almost no illustrations. Her grandpa was a treasure of a man, interested in everything. When radio was first being broadcast, he build his own crystal set and was able to tell how exciting it was that a vacuum tube was finally invented. He had a professional-grade camera that used glass negatives, about 4 by 5 inches, that had to be loaded into cassettes and slid into the back to take pictures one at a time. He had the first motorcycle in his community, got a certificate in accounting at the age of sixteen and grew up to be a free thinker. We are not sure which place he may have gone when he died. His faith was not quite Unitarian, but close enough to risk damnation.
When his estate was liquidated I had to watch books by the hundred going out in cardboard boxes because we didn’t have a way to store them. It was a sad sight, the significance of which was not lost on me. I have made it a habit to keep my collection under control. Anything that can be bought at any bookstore – popular novels, reference, classics, etc. – I don’t care about owning. I try to hold on to books that I might not be able to get easily. Old, curious, or early edition books I hold on to. I also have books of local interest, as well as my collection of books from the sixties that have to do with black history and civil rights.
The advent of the Internet has curtailed my avid love of books. I have come to realize that books are tools, means to an end. Except for those having sentimental value, I don’t have a need to acquire books any more. Having downsized a few years ago, I suppose we have fewer than eight hundred books in the house. Ironically, we just moved into a new house less than two years ago and for the first time I have shelves that are almost enough to display all my books. Sigh. But they do look good.
READING…
I skim a lot, because I am a slow reader when I pay attention. I graze at reading most of the time, but I pay attention when it is a topic that I am trying to understand. Of course one can’t very well graze at writing, but I recognize levels of intensity in writing that almost reflect grazing in the degree of shallowness. I am reminded of a friend, now long gone, who was defending a thesis. One of his examiners said, “Roy, your problem is that when there is a question, you don’t just answer the question. Instead you Address the Issue. As a result you are almost never specific. That is unfortunate, because when you are specific, you are almost always wrong.” That is a problem I try to avoid, but I am aware of being long-winded. I know that when I edit myself, I find a lot that can be eliminated.
In my younger days I read voraciously. I remember a summer or two that I spent reading Russian novels, because they were so long that I couldn’t get them into the school year. By the time Dr. Zhivago was filmed I had already read the book, as well as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and a few short stories by Chekov. I discovered a proper public library when I was fourteen and thought I had died and gone to heaven. They even had records, so I could listen to music as well. That was 1958 and after. I took an early interest in psychology because I was always interested to know why people acted as they did. All the moving around made me very flexible, but socialized in only the most superficial way. I guess that is why human behavior has always interested me.
Before I got to high school I attended five elementary schools in Kentucky and Georgia, neither of which is famous for education. I had the privilege of going to a one-room school in Kentucky for almost two years – grades two and three, a training school for teachers who would be going into similar situations when they were assigned to isolated places in the mountains. We had six grades, with a row for each grade. There were four people in my grade, two boys and two girls. The biggest grade had seven students. There were separate outdoor privies for boys and girls. Mrs. Scott was the principle and it was a wonderful learning environment. Tests and study sheets were replicated by hectograph, a simple metal pan of gelatin that took purple ink from a master and released it up to ten or twelve times before it got too faded to read.
I’m skipping around, but hey, this isn’t a test. Maybe someday I will go back and clean it up…
The last book I bought was Virginia Postrel’s The Future and its Enemies, but I haven’t finished reading it. It’s more fun keeping up with her blog.
The most recent book I read for pleasure was The Life of Pi, Yann Martel. It is indescribable fiction by a gifted contemporary writer. The most unlikely of stories, and I found it to be more credible that I thought possible.
After I discovered ABE Books (American Book Exchange) online I decided I could get anything in print and most of what was no longer in print as well. The Guttenberg Project is also getting a lot of public domain stuff on line, little by little.
I can’t pick out five books that mean a lot to me. My grandfather’s book is one I think of, for obvious reasons. I read Don Quixote in a good translation (I think) after I got out of college and had time to read for pleasure, and it made a deep impression on me. Southern writers are special to me, particularly Lillian Smith and Carson McCullars. Why? I can’t say in a sentence or two, except to mention that I had the same high school teacher that taught Carson McCullars years before and I thought that was cool. Robert Coles’ studies of Dorothy Day and Eric Erikson, and Erikson’s study of Ghandi impressed me deeply. Mortimer Adler’s ideas about education expressed in the Paideia Program have stuck in my mind. And Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics is part of my collection – representing a truly unique and under-appreciated figure.
That will have to do for now.
As for tagging five other people, I don't have that many contacts that would be interested. At least I don't think so. Very few people leave messages at my blog, and I really don't have much traffic. As I write I pretend to have about four to six people reading, not hundreds or more. It works for me.
And from the start I have not participated in any chaining, emails, campaigns, petitions, whaever. I don't like the arithmetic. Sorry.
Another doctor blog
Via Gerard I found another doctor blog, The Doctor Is In. Don't let the name fool you. We don't go to the doctor because he is creative about naming a weblog. We go to the doctor because we trust his grasp of medical practice. That means he is big on facts. Really big. The more the better.
And like many high achievers, Dr. Bob knows a lot about a lot.
Dr. Bob is a physician in the Pacific Northwest, the fortunate husband of his wife of thirty years and father of three remarkable children. Blessed by the grace of God with the great priviledge of knowing His Son, and having experienced the limitless depths of His mercy, patience and forgiveness, he desires to serve Him and others well.
The most recent post is about concrete. More than you ever thought you could learn about building a bridge, and very well-written. Pictures, too.
I liked this piece from May 19.
Like tightly-written computer code, Darin’s nimble mind set the parameters, checked the variables, and executed commands in a tight loop whose efficiency and speed wasted no cycles. The Day of Vengeance arrived, with only one small ingredient missing: courage. But Darin had that algorithm factored as well: a fifth of Vodka erased all fears, drowning all doubts. By stealth of night, with watches synchronized and bottle drained, the window glass parted to usher him to glory. The mission was underway.
No one knows whether anyone heard the shattering of glass, but despite his stealth the disruption somehow caught the notice of neighbors. When the police arrived, the cause of the disturbance became evident: there was Darin, passed out on the floor, beside the untouched computer he coveted. Fate had struck a cruel blow–his celebratory blackout had arrived on the wings of Mercury rather than with the spoils of Mars. He awakened to handcuffs and an open-ended reservation at the Gray Bar Hotel.
As they used to say on Dragnet, "The names have been changed to protect the innocent." But you know the story is from real life. Well-done, too.
Reading further...
Dr. Bob has an interesting proposal addressing the crying need for health care for uninsured people. It sure beats the let-em-get-off-their-butts-and-go-to-work attitude that most comfortable Americans seem to have about the working poor.
Provide tax credits to physicians for charity care. Fund health care for the poor directly out of tax receipts.
Tax credits are preferable to bad debt deductions because they are used to directly reduce taxes, rather than taxable income. A $1 tax credit reduces your tax by $1, whereas a $1 deduction decreases it by $0.35, if you are in the 35% tax bracket, for example. If you’re a physician or other health care provider, and want to reduce your taxes, see more poor patients.
So how do you measure how much charity care a physician provides? Again, this is rather simple. All medical services are now quantified by a number called the relative value unit, or RVU. This value forms the basis for virtually all federal and private insurance reimbursement: multiply a medical service RVU by a conversion factor, and you get the dollar amount you will be paid. Computer software currently used for insurance billing almost always tracks these values, which are publically released annually by the government. Multiply the total RVUs for all charity care provided by another conversion factor, and you have your tax credit. All the components are already in place for this to work.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Tillich and boundaries
I came across a couple of posts at ilona's blog that made me think of something I wrote ten years ago.
It is a little disturbing, but also reassuring, to discover in greying old age that somebody else, famous and published no less, has aleady trod the same path. The reassurance is from the comfort of knowing that one is not going mad, but may, in fact, still be learning to articulate what life is teaching. The disturbing part arises from the discovery that what seems so fresh and important is not only thirty years old, but probably debated and filed by many bright minds both in and out of the classroom.
It seems that Paul Tillich reflected at length on what he refered to as "boundaries," those fertile areas of intellectual provocation between
...two temperaments, the meditative and conscientious, as against the romantic and carefree; between country and city; between social classes; between reality and imagination; between theory and practice; between one's own will and the obligations of the citizen, the member of the community; between theology and philosophy; between church and society; between religion and culture; between eternal life and the immidiate needs of today, particularly the needs of the least fortunate among us...
From On the Boundary, 1936, quoted by Robert Coles in his study of Eric Erikson
It is by wrestling manfully with what appear to be contradictions that we are able to grow in understanding. It is not cowardly to run from the unknown; sometimes it is the smartest course--especially if engaging the unknown may destroy the fibers of order that we call sanity. But to gather courage to face the unknown, knowing the threat, is to stretch the limits of truth and knowledge. Ultimately there will never be an end to the process. (The ear has never had it's fill of hearing, nor the eye of seeing. Eccl 1:8)
Nevertheless, to be alive and posessed of an inquiring mind requires that the faculty be used -- as surely as a taller person can see over the heads of the rest, or a child feels the fresh excitement of blowing fluff off a dandelion. The process is as inexorable as the birth of a baby. It cannot be stopped without stopping life itself.
My purpose, then, is to explore what seem to be contradictions, or (because that word has a kind of inflexible nastiness to it) areas that fall in the "borders." For some time I have been aware that in my life there are a number of trends bigger than I like to think about, but which have important implications, not only for me individually, but my children and generations yet to come.
If the concern were for me and me alone, it would be of no imprtance. I will come and go anonymously, with no more impact on the world around me than a leaf that falls in the woods. But the "trends" (I don't like the word. It has too much power.) that I'm thinkng about are bigger than my own piece of the ecosytem.
Freakonomics
This one I missed. These guys were on the Today Show promoting the book, and I just came across the Silflay Hraka reference.
"Outside the box" isn't even close...
Get this:
Money can replace morals. To deter parents from picking kids up late, a day-care center fined them $3 per child for each infraction. But the number of latecomers doubled, because "parents could buy off their guilt," Levitt writes.
Legalizing abortion lessened crime. Levitt presents compelling evidence that Roe v. Wade -- in reducing the number of potential criminals born -- had a far greater impact on the early-1990s drop in crime than gun control, the strong economy, or improved police tactics.
Semantics sells. In real estate ads, specific words like "granite" and "gourmet" fetch higher home prices, while vague descriptors like "charming" and "great neighborhood" drive values down.
Drug dealing is harder than you think. A crack dealer earning a paltry $3.30 an hour has a higher chance of being killed (1 in 4) than a Texas death row inmate (1 in 20).
LINK
Yeah, wouldn't you know. They have a blog. Check it out if you're interested in the details.
Enough of that. I'm in a hurry.
Do it or else
Volokh comments on a story about a judge who gave a drug offender the choice of going to church or going to jail.
A Kentucky judge has been offering some drug and alcohol offenders theoption of attending worship services instead of going to jail or rehab -- apractice some say violates the separation of church and state.
District Judge Michael Caperton, 50, a devout Christian, said his goal isto "help people and their families."
David Friedman, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union ofKentucky, said the option raises "serious constitutional problems."
"The judge is saying that those willing to go to worship services can avoidjail in the same way that those who decline to go cannot," Friedman said. "
That strays from government neutrality towards religion."
Indeed it does, Eugene Volokh comments...
This issue has actually come up in the past, when the government has given prisoners special benefits if they go to Alcoholics Anonymous, a program that has a religious component; courts have generally — and in my view, rightly — held that such a program indeed violates the Establishment Clause, precisely because it coerces people to participate in religious activities.
The result would be different if the judge required people to do something, and there were both religious and nonreligious options. But here it sounds like the only option is to engage in religious practice — or go to jail or rehab. I'm not sure that going to worship services is an effective way of getting people to stop misbehaving. But whether or not it is, the government may not coerce people into religiosity, even as a tool in fighting drug and alcohol abuse.
Hmm, if... there were... options.
Options.
Military conscription is very likely to return, if not in this war, then in the next.
I wonder how well their options will be understood by the kids who will be drafted? Poorly, I would guess, inasmuch as the only source of such information has historicaly been through churches, and from where I stand churches no longer murmur a word of concern about going to war.
But, hey! That's not what they were talking about...
Let's change the subject.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Antisemitism note
Eugene Volokh links to what is politely called a "sermon" from a Muslim speaker broadcast on TV with permission of the Palestinian Authority.
With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.
You will find that the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations. . . .
We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world -– except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relived... of the Jews — even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.
LINK
As I read this I am reminded once again how deeply antisemitism is embedded in the world. I say "world" because it is not just the Muslim world. I have heard this kind of bile from plenty of non-Muslim sources.
It seems that in the same way that until the Korean conflict the American military taught anti-black discrimination to the world by practice and example, so too does the Muslim community teach others to hate Jews. As we have seen in the case of racial discrimination, it is impossible to put poop back in the horse. Once it is in the street, the best remedy is simply time, patience and education, waiting for a diseased generation to pass.
