Category Archives: View

View 802 Saturday, December 21, 2013

WINTERSET

It is one year since the end of the Mayan Calendar. Winterset, the shortest day and longest night of the year; and tomorrow the days begin to be longer.

It is late, and I have had a long day. 

Merry Christmas to all.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 802 Thursday, December 19, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

Cogito ergo sum.

Descartes

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. Cogito,

Ambrose Bierce

Catching up a little, but tomorrow I have an auditory appointment in the hopes of finding hearing devices that will work for me. I have had bad hearing since 1950, and after the radiation treatment in 2008 it became dramatically worse, and has been deteriorating ever since. I have known I needed hearing aids since 1975 but the problem is that I have a very irregular pattern: I hear some frequencies quite well, so anything that amplifies everything caused some sounds to be very loud, and what I hear isn’t intelligible. It has strained Roberta’s indulgence for decades. Now I am told there are new devices that will work for me, some developed by the VA. We will see. Tomorrow I try anyway.

I was going to do an essay on the futility of pre-school education as an attempt to “solve the education problem” or “clean up the education mess” or even “Avoid the impending education catastrophe”. All of it is summed up in one statistic> In Illinois, a high spending state on education – at least money goes into the system – the number of kids in fourth grade who read at grade level is said to be 60% although some put it as low as 40%. This is an average among all students. Other states have about the same results.

This is a disaster, and adding pre-school isn’t going to solve it, because what it means is that we have at least a 50% illiteracy rate. Half the kids CAN’T READ by fourth grade. That means that instead of learning history or math or mechanical drawing or biology they will primarily be taught remedial reading, which is harder and harder to do as they get older because the teachers don’t know how to do it, and the professors of education who don’t teach people to read – they teach people how to teach people to read – generally have no experience in actually reaching reading and work from inadequate theories.

My mother in rural Florida in the 20’s taught first grade. I asked her if any of her first grade students did not learn how to read. She said, well there were a few, but they didn’t learn anything else either. The notion that a child of normal or dull normal intelligence – in other words 85 to 90% of the students – would not learn to read in first grade had not occurred to her. They were expected to learn to read, and the teachers taught them to read. It’s hard work but it can be done for every kid of normal to dull normal intelligence. Once they learn to read they can read anything, and “reading at grade level” has no meaning. “Understanding at grade level” does mean something; but for children who can read it means they can read, slower with “big words” (like, as Dr. Seuss says, Constantinople and Timbuktu) and faster with Hop on Pop and Green Cheese and Ham and Horton Hears a Who, and very slowly with words like omnicompetent and polymorhhochromatic (and no I don’t know what that last one means either but I can read it).

By fourth grade kids ought to be reading real stories, and real history, some poetry and they ought to be finding out their potential – will they be intellectuals learning symbol manipulation (what we call geek smart) or learning skills in manipulating objects or people, teachers or mechanics or bookkeepers or clerks – but they sure shouldn’t be spending time learning to read.

Now if the preschools were to teach kids to read before the regular teachers get hold of them, they might so some good, but that won’t happen because the same professors of education who can’t do in 2013 what the Florida Normal School at Gainesville taught high school grads to do in two years, namely teach those students how to teach first graders to read, will be put to teaching four year college graduates; and the incompetence of the Education Department Professors at reaching teachers to teach reading has been adequately demonstrated.

It’s a national disaster and throwing more money into the system to hire deans and sub deans and administrators and assistant associate deans and all the rest of it which now requires the middle class to go into debt for life to do what my wife and I did on our own, get through college, will only increase the debts and the costs. It won’t do any good.

Teach your own kids to read before the system gets to them. Of course it also means they will have to learn things in school that the teachers won’t have time to teach because the upper grade teachers will be struggling with the half the kids who can’t read at grade level. Smart kids are on their own. The good news is that you can teach them to read early –I learned at age 3, but that was unusual; but all the kids in my first grade school at St Anne’s on Highland Ave in the Normal district of Memphis learned to read by the end of First Grade.

We don’t need pre school we need first grade teachers who understand that first graders can learn to read if only they are taught to do it, and all the theories about why they haven’t learned are worthless. But then I have been saying that for about Sixty years. Sigh.

Allowing a true 50% illiteracy rate in effect condemns half the population to being hewers of wood and drawers of water. No republic can afford to waste half the population. We are in thrall to politicians elected by teacher unions who have made it impossible to fire teachers for incompetence. Hell, in Los Angeles we can’t fire them for anything: the man who fed his pupils cookies smeared with his own semen was allowed to resign with pension. No one gets fired. Can’t allow that.

And the remedy is not to create new jobs for more teachers. The remedy is to insist that the education establishment get out of the way since it will neither lead nor follow.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 802 Wednesday, December 18, 2013

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

More errands, mostly to what used to be called Mail Boxes where I have a non-USPS postal box, to send one box priority mail – it fit just fine in one of their flat rate boxes – and another that included a Disney Airplane character and an Ice Princess for two grandchildren, both absolutely impossible to fit into any normal sized box. I let UPS package and send them. Then to the vet to pick up another bottle of the prescription painkiller liquid that we give Sable. It costs more than all my medications, but it seems to keep her happy. The girls at the vet asked about her. Everyone knows Sable and she’s a wonder. “Is she eating all right?” That’s not hard to answer. Since she decided that we think she’s sick she works every possible angle to get more doggies treats. The trick is to cut back on her regular food enough that she isn’t gaining much weight. Too much weight would really strain that sore leg. But she’s doing just fine, likes to go for walks – not as long as we used to take, but then she’s 11 years old now – and likes to sit with us in the evenings, and works the system for more puppy biscuits.

And every day is a gift.

I have lived in Studio City – a sort of subdivision of Hollywood – since 1968, and I am fairly immune to being star struck, but it can happen. Today at the Mail Boxes shipping place as I approached the counter I noticed a strikingly pretty blue-eyed honey-blonde, not extravagantly dressed, hair in pony tail, no makeup, standing next to me at the counter and talking on a cell phone. Talking quietly, so as not to disturb anyone. I looked again and she sort of smiled, as some of the more self assured Hollywood people do, and went back to her conversation. The clerk took my packages to the back for boxing, and we stood there, she on her cell phone and me with nothing to do but look at her, which wasn’t hard to do.  Eventually she was done with the telephone and we were both just standing there, so I said “Are you who I think you are?”  She gave me a pleasant smile and said “Who do you think I am?”  “I think you’re Molly Quinn.”  “Yes, you’re right.” Another pleasant smile.

So I told her “I like your work,” which I have found an acceptable thing to say to every actor and writer I have ever met including me, and she thanked me, and I said something about being a writer so I knew a bit about the racket and I thought they did that very well, and she smiled and thanked me again. Altogether a pleasant experience, I hope for both of us.  It wasn’t an enormous surprise since Castle is shot here at CBS Studios, and we’ve met Nathan Fallon a couple of times walking in our neighborhood.  A few years ago I asked him about Molly Quinn, and he said she was just like the girl you see on the screen and very pleasant to work with.  Now I have the same impression.

This sort of thing happens to us around here every now and then. It’s one of the small pleasures of living in Studio City. When I moved here this was a much less posh neighborhood, mostly working middle class, with probably the largest population of working writers – mostly screen – per acre in the world.  Over time there have been more actors and producer staff and fewer writers as the neighborhood gentrified and up went the MacMansions until it begins to resemble a very crowded Beverly Hills in places, but thanks to Proposition 13 the property taxes have not risen accordingly. Houses are taxed at the most recent sales price, and since we came here in 1968 we are taxed on what I paid for a good working middle class house.  Studio City is as much like a village as you can find in most of California, and has all the benefits of a nearby big city. 

Joanne Dow sends this:

You’ve probably, or at least hopefully, seen this before

Whether or not you’ve seen this before it’s worth reviewing it.

Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs – Updated 2010 http://youtu.be/LPjzfGChGlE

{^_^}

Actually I had not seen it before. It does help put things in perspective. The awful truth about world poverty is that if there are no rich nations, no one is going to be able to do anything about the poor. As I said a very long time ago in A Step Farther Out. In Kindle or there are still paperback editions available used. Of course I don’t get anything from sales of used books, but I do all right on Kindle books on Amazon. Either way, though, if you haven’t read that book, it’s compiled from editing some of my old Galaxy columns when I was Willy Ley’s successor as Science Editor of Galaxy, and talks about such matters as population growth and the Limits To Growth. In those days there were all sorts of people who thought that growth and development were terrible and should be halted.

The truth is that there is only one limit to population, and it isn’t war or poverty. Until the Industrial Revolution, population grew until it reached what amounted to Malthusian limits: when there were too many people to be fed regularly. About 90% of mankind lived in what we would now call wretched poverty, one suit of clothing, one meal a day, little to no medical care. The exceptions were the organized elements of society, and that organization was generally military. The Romans could afford bread and circuses because they had tax farmers in the provinces.

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” C. Northcote Parkinson observed that the decree seems to have been enforced ever since. Those taxes supported the Roman forces and civil service that allowed the Romans to live a little better than those in the provinces, and when that order broke down, mankind entered the Dark Ages in which even more people lived day to day and meal to meal, and population was limited by caloric intake; and that was governed in good part by one’s ability to enforce rule over the masses, either by amassing wealth or by hiring out to those who had wealth – which they kept by hiring warriors.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that, and there came a new method of limiting population: wealth. Wealthy societies have lower birth rates and grow more slowly than poor societies. Poor societies continue to breed more people as caloric intake increases.

I said most of this in A Step Farther Out, and if I were ever privileged to have a few moments with the Holy Father I would say it to him: you don’t stop famine by feeding people. It is not even true that if you teach a man to fish he will eat well for the rest of his life, for if everyone else learns that, then those who fish best eat best until all run out of fish.

You will not help the poor by eliminating wealth. Which is not to say that there should not be limits on wealth and disparity between rich and poor. But without knowing a lot about the details, I would bet that Bill and Melinda Gates have done more for the poor of this world than US foreign aid generally does. Without wealth there would be neither Bill and Melinda Gates nor US Foreign Aid or the Agency for International Development – and incidentally, although they are unlikely to acknowledge it in Saigon, the US probably did more for Viet Nam, North and South, with our AID personnel teaching agriculture than the USSR and China together.

You don’t stop famine by feeding people, and you don’t appreciably reduce world poverty by opening the rich nations to immigration; and to the extent that the failure of the melting pot destroys the economic integrity of the wealthy countries, encouraging unlimited immigration is the worst thing you can do to the wretched of the Earth. Which does not relieve you of the obligation to help your neighbors.

Merry Christmas.

I found this by accident, started looking, and was surprised to find I had looked at it all and found it worth doing. http://distractify.com/culture/arts/the-most-spectacular-abandoned-places-in-the-world/

And there is this:

Have you got 2 minutes? This is an amazing work. I didn’t see Christ’s birth but we know about that facet of history.

Click  on the link below and 500 images will flash before you in two minutes.

That’s a little over 4 images per second.

You will not have an opportunity to see or understand each image.

Just look and allow the images to wash over you….

It is quite an experience.

Two minute history lesson. Don’t blink!!

Click Here <http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=MrqqD_Tsy4Q>

It is worth a two minute investment.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 802 Tuesday, December 17, 2013

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

Another day devoured by locusts. I had to answer mail in the morning, then our walk, then I had to go out to Kaiser to let them drain out five vials of blood for whatever tests they do. One thing about going out to Kaiser just after noon, I can be pretty sure that most of the people I see there who aren’t staff are likely to look older than me. Some of them probably aren’t.

I went from there to Target to shop for puppy biscuits. Most people would call them doggy biscuits, but I read the original Thurber story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and while I have forgotten most of the story other than detail – the Danny Kaye and Boris Karloff movie was easier to remember – the one line I recall is “Puppy biscuit.” He was sent to buy some.

Target has a great line of puppy biscuits, and I need all of them. Sable first was diagnosed with cancer 13 months ago and given about 6 months to live even if we cut her right foreleg off – which she would have hated, being a very active and somewhat vane dog. We decided that we’d keep her whole and so long as she was a happy doggie we didn’t have any decisions to make. Still, the diagnosis was serous and we couldn’t help treating her as if she were sick, and she noticed that. Husky dogs are very intelligent, and they are also sensitive to what they are entitled to. Not that they think they are equals. They don’t. They know they are dogs – well, possibly wolves – but they can also get a good sense of what they are supposed to have, including what time they are to be fed; and while they seldom bark, they are very good at talking. And Sable is very good as sounding unhappy, which always gets us a bit concerned, and she has now figured out an elaborate routine for after dinner, complete with a series of doggy treats each one different, and her medication before she goes to bed, and a final doggy treat, all at fairly specified times. She also gets a grooming session while we watch some TV show. And of course that happens on the couch which for the first ten years of her life she wasn’t allowed on, but when she got the sore leg and — well, you get the idea. It’s pretty hard to tell your friend whom you don’t expect to have with you more than a couple more months that she’s a bad doggy for begging, and send her out of the room. At least it’s hard for me.

Anyway, Target has a very good line of doggy treats, and I went out there to buy some. The last time I got them I thought would be the last time I’d be buying them, but here we are buying more. I am not fooling myself, every day we have her is still a gift, but there have been many days, and she’s nearly as active and certainly as happy now as when she was first diagnosed with all this. And I have a two month supply of puppy biscuit.

I also found presents for two of the grandchildren. Not sure how well they will go over, but we’ll see.

At Target no one was older than me. The store was fairly crowded, mostly with attractive and very determined women who seemed to know what they wanted and where they would find it. Unlike me. I know I needed the puppy biscuit, but shopping for a 5 year old girl and her one year old brother is a bit out of my recent experience. I already found something good for my oldest grandchild and got that sent, and tomorrow I’ll get everything sent out, leaving me with the perplexing problem of what to give Roberta. She wants me to finish Mamelukes, but that’s not likely by Christmas. Maybe by Easter.

If you’re looking for a way to pass the time, try this. It might even be instructive.

38 Test Answers That Are 100% Wrong But Totally Genius At The Same Time | buffy willow

Jerry

Don’t be drinking coffee when you look at these:

http://distractify.com/fun/fails/test-answers-that-are-totally-wrong-but-still-genius/

Ed

I have enough trouble drawing and adding all the little arrows in Feynman’s QED, and one can spend years learning how to do it more efficiently (I didn’t, learn that of course). But we always knew it was a Rube Goldberg device, and Feynman never had a real theory on why it worked so well. New we have something new. If the distractions above didn’t use up enough time, you can spend the rest of the week contemplating this one:

Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics – Wired Science

Jerry

Quantum chromodynamics is a Rube Goldberg device that is wrong, but it is all physicists had. Now that has changed. A lay explanation:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/amplituhedron-jewel-quantum-physics/all/

Looks interesting.

Ed

Interesting is an interesting word.

I was going to continue to muse about Pope Francis and capitalism, and in particular the concept of distributism, which is not a movement to make everyone equal, but one to make more people free. The argument is that great concentrations of wealth and power, whether in the hands of individuals or of governments, make everyone less free. Strict equalitarianism doesn’t work, and communism fails in the absence of religion – that is an order of monks and live in equality but it will generally also be in poverty. If you would have wealth, you must allow your people to pursue and keep that wealth. However, unrestrained striving for wealth does not lead to a good society, or indeed to a stable society. With great concentrations of wealth come temptations: to those who have not the wealth, and to those who have it. And the vast discrepancy in power and freedom between those at the top and those at the bottom makes for a not very lovely country.

The distributist position is that taking wealth from the wealthy and giving it to the poor doesn’t work very well either, and often harms the poor. However, taking it and using it to build a governing class is even worse. The goal is to use distributist methods to reduce the big gap between top and bottom, but not in a manner that simply rewards indolence. None of that is easy, and it may not at all be possible. We do not know what the limits are or should be. How wealthy is wealthy enough? There will be great discrepancies in wealth – but how great?

Distributists and the Pope are in total agreement when the Pope says

"Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills… A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits."

This is quite different from what the Socialist tradition desires.

For more on this, see this morning’s article in the Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303293604579256021556967710

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.