when I run the world

     When I run the world everyone will be able to read, write, and cipher. Everyone will also eat vegetables and sweep their front walks. What I would like to see happen, seriously, is an independent commission to find the illiterate in the United States. I believe that millions are profoundly illiterate. Meaning they can't read a printed two digit number, or read even the alphabet. Tens of millions may be what is usually called "functionally illiterate"--which means they read so poorly that anything in print is useless to them. We can begin with the prison and probation population, as crime is one of the major symptoms of illiteracy. People who have never been to school have learned to make a living--often through crime. Prisons seem to do a lot of "consciousness raising" and group therapy exercises, but they obviously are not effectively intervening in the problem of illiteracy. 
I suggest a trained army of literacy teachers--to beat this in one generation, before another generation is raised without any education at all.

where does the money go?

    A bank transfer from one account to another, in the same bank, has now taken four days, and, according to the bank, may take another day before they consider themselves delinquent. The money disappeared instantly from the account from which it was withdrawn--but has yet to appear in the account to which it was deposited. Where has it been? In hyperspace? In financial suspended animation? For accounting purposes, it has ceased to exist--for days.

Suggestion--the money has been playing the stock market. If this takes four or five days as a matter of course, that may add up to billions per day, every day.

ark

How many of each animal did Moses take on the ark?












Suggestion--think twice.

the center of the universe

     I have asked this of several people--"where is the center of the universe?"--but didn't get the response I expected. The idea is that you are the center of the universe is not exactly philosophical. It isn't religious, either. It's scientific--or logical, if you prefer. Stay with me--the universe is infinite in all directions, correct? So its center, if infinity has a center, would be the observer--that is to say you--to you; or me--to me.
      Philosophy should be practiced with caution.

amateur philosophy

     I have been told, by amateur "philosophers" that crime is the will of God, and that this is God's way of, among other things, punishing the wicked. A "Miracle on 34th Street" moment for you--according to the government and laws of the United States, which can be seen in the workings of our insurance industry, God does not underwrite or sponsor crime.
     Most standard insurance policies exclude from coverage what are legally termed "acts of God'. That is why our government occasionally steps in and offers flood insurance to people living in areas where floods are common--because floods are an "act of God" not covered by a standard insurance policy.  This is because a widespread natural disaster would bankrupt any insurance company, not because the insurers are afraid to thwart the will of God by offering insurance against  divine retribution.
     You can, however, buy insurance against crime. Both car insurance and  homeowner's policies cover theft and vandalism, and life insurance pays if someone is murdered. So, according to our government and legal system, crime is not an "act of God".

the need to reclassify oneself

     Ask a female black student when she would have been first able to vote--in history--and you will probably get the answer "1865". Which is, of course, utter nonsense. She would have first voted in 1920, when American women were given the vote. Look for the "enfranchisement of women", or "women's suffrage". Try to tell your female black student this, and you may get a denial and an argument, even if you tell her to  look for the "enfranchisement of women", or "women's suffrage".  Did these young women need a public school lesson to tell them that not only are they black, with black skin, but that they are also, 1. women;  2. Americans; 3. people., 4. students? Surely they need to learn to reclassify themselves when occasion warrants--as something other than a skin.

hooray for Hollywood

      Hollywood makes some interesting historical epics. But some of the members of the audience believe that everything Hollywood makes is pretend. They may have been taught this at home, by parents who were sure they were keeping them from flying away on flights of fancy.  Unfortunately, they believe that Henry the Eighth, or the ancient Romans, are just as fictitious as tales of dragons and wicked witches. A teacher standing in front of a classroom trying to teach them medieval history may get a roll of the eyes--because they're sure the teacher doesn't know any better.

Suggestion--label movies fiction and non-fiction, or words to that effect.

no ifs ands or buts

     I watched a crime drama TV show recently, in which the detective didn't get to ask questions of the psychoanalyst. In this show the detective was probably trying to get around the psychoanalyst's "blocking" and "defensiveness" by going along with his "professional" refusal to co-operate, but it nearly made the show ridiculous. And at least one viewer wondered how true-to-life the scenario was. I hope it was very fantastic, but perhaps it wasn't.
    As far as I understand it, there are no legal exceptions to the subpoena power--the legal power to force someone to appear in court. No one gets to "just say no". When on the witness stand, we have the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no one may be forced to testify against him or herself (which at one time would have been arranged with torture, or threats to family members). Today this means that as long as a witness makes it clear that his or her refusal to co-operate (to answer a question on the witness stand) is based on a refusal to incriminate him or herself, that he or she will not be charged with contempt of court.
     Suggestion--everyone else who refuses to testify is in contempt of court, just as the law says--be it a priest, a psychoanalyst, a reporter, or anyone else.

where did the "learn" meme go?

     I sat down to read a month's worth of articles on education I had saved for later--these from the new York Times. The word learn wasn't used once.This is part of a trend sorely in need of correction. We have those who believe that children are either "gifted" academically, or not "gifted". We have those who believe that educational success is genetically determined. We have those who believe that answers to factual questions will come to them through meditation and prayer--not because they are trying to calm down and remember what they learned, but as a substitute for the learning that didn't happen. Not the learning they didn't do. The learning that didn't happen.
     The only sense in which education is hereditary is that educated people tend to insist that their children do their schoolwork--and they know that there is work involved. Absent this notion, every attempt to provide an adequate education to every American is bound to fail.

Henry Ford

     Henry Ford founded Ford Motors when most cars were still made as a fine craft. Different craftsmen worked for months making a car none of them would ever be able to afford to buy.  Henry Ford had a different idea. He would mass-produce a simple car, and pay his workers a high enough wage to be able to afford to but what they were making, To Henry Ford, this would create a system that would perpetuate itself--more people making more things because everyone making the things would also be buying the things they were busy making.
     Many people thought Henry Ford's ideas were outlandish. They thought he paid his workers too much, causing discontent in other workers. Henry Ford was very unpopular with many of the wealthier people. Henry's system worked, but unfortunately, this has not convinced everyone that we are all better off when workers can also afford to be consumers. This needn't be "ungreen"--consuming means services and green products, as well as manufactured goods. When other people can afford to buy what we are selling--and we are all selling something, one way and another--cars, insurance, education, technical services, entertainment--we are all more prosperous. Even people living on retirement income see an increase in their benefits when more people are making a decent living.

Suggestion--anyone's poverty impoverishes everyone.

epistemological doubt

Even a broken clock is right twice a day--




but you won't know when.

barbed wire is for cattle

     Barbed wire was invented to keep cattle from straying--so they wouldn't become lost, or ruin a neighbor's crops. Barbed wire may be useful for cattle, or  when running a prison, but it doesn't belong on city streets. What is barbed wire is meant  to do at the top of a six-foot fence? Anyone who wanted to climb over that fence would do it with or without the barbed wire. If a six foot fence is protecting something so valuable the owner feels a need for barbed wire, then he or she already has a problem that barbed wire can not fix. Maybe the valuable goods need to be moved indoors.
     Here in Philadelphia we have something worse than barbed wire--razor wire. It is more common than barbed wire. You may see it on the roofs of buildings or on top of fences. Aside from making our city uglier, it is dangerous and ought to be illegal. Razor wire was at the top of a six foot fence built around nothing but some grass--this on street busy with pedestrian traffic. Any schoolchild could have been sliced up by it.
     The first razor wire I noticed ( in a neighborhood that vaunts itself as hip and stylish) was on top of a high fence built around goods for sale left outdoors. The solution would have been to move the goods indoors. Anyone who wanted them badly enough to climb a high fence would cut through the fence--and avoid the razor wire


Suggestion--razor wire is ugly, nasty, and probably already illegal. If it isn't already illegal as a man trap ( protecting property with a device meant to cause injury or death), then perhaps we can get a new law or ordinance passed to make it illegal.

exceptionalism

     One of the things that defines our society--one of the main things--is that we have all agreed to one set of laws and rules--to be applied equally and without favor or prejudice to each and every citizen. No exceptions, no "case-making", no special allowances or privileges.  Every increase in "exceptionalism" is a decrease in what makes our society a living entity. If some people don't have to send their children to school; if some people are allowed to smoke peyote; if some people aren't required  to have a photograph on their driver's licenses; if some people are allowed to run casinos; if some people are allowed to use speech that differs from that allowed others--it all chips away at the structure of our society.


Suggestion--we need a set of laws and rules that apply to everyone-no exceptions.  If everyone can't live with it, maybe we need a new rule--one that everyone can live with.

going postal

Suggestion--don't say (or write) "going postal"

The writers using the expression "going postal" may not realize that it refers to a real series of crimes that happened  years ago. A "disgruntled postal worker" walked into a post office and shot several people. The crime seemed to inspire "copycats", and  "going postal" became an expression for going insane. This was later the subject of a movie--but the crimes were real, and the victims are dead. So it's not an amusing expression.

heads I win, tails you lose

Have you ever flipped a coin to decide something?  If "heads I win, tails you lose" doesn't sound suspicious to you, try it with another person, and see who wins.

internet voice lock

     One of these days internet security may mean showing your thumbprint to your computer--or talking to it. Most people have probably been asked for a thumbprint at some time. Fewer have been asked to permit their voices to be recorded--to make what was once called a voice lock. My mom worked in a building that had these--years ago, in the 1970's. In theory the voice lock would open only to the sound of the same voice. It worked very well, to a point. the device really could tell one voice from another, and would not open except when it heard that voice. The problem was that a recording of the voice might work as well as a live person speaking.

Suggestion--perhaps a program sophisticated enough to tell a live voice from a  recording could be given a try

thinking, new "Einsteins"

     When people give me a glimpse into how they think I make a note of it. Most of my notes are about errors in thinking. For instance, I have been told that if you say a thing a thousand times, it's true. I have also been told that if more people believe one thing than another, then that thing is true. No room for epistemological doubt.  That means how do you (or we) know that? And, could it be false?  For example, if you say that 2+2=5 a thousand times, does it?  No, of course not. If more people believe that 2+2=5 than believe that 2+2=7, does 2+2=5?  No, of course not. 2+2+4, an absolute truth, if you will, demonstrable through the classic logical argument by definition (as in what is 2? what is 4? what is plus?).
     The same people who expound the above theories of "truth" have been taught to repeat that "all truth is relative"--meaning that there is no such thing as truth, really. Some of them are convinced that Einstein "proved" this--yes, with the theory of relativity. One of the canards that makes part of this set is that Einstein also proved that the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. If you hear a rumbling, it may be Einstein rolling over in his grave. The "proof" that the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line is said to be that Einstein posited that light may bend, or curve, to go around a large object, such as a planet. The proponents of this theory refuse to see that this has nothing to do with the shortest distance between two points--which is still a straight line. If they would stop spouting pseudo-erudition for a living instant and think--that going around something is not a straight line; that Einstein, and physics, have not redefined "straight line" as the path that light takes, or may take; that the definition of "shortest distance" is not "the path that light takes"; that none of this has anything to do with "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line"--they might take a first step on the road to reality.

Suggestion--Find out where some of this is learned. I believe it is what is passing for remedial education in our prison system.

something stupid

You may be saying stupid things if you are using any of these--

I (we) just naturally assumed
This can't be right
I (we) cannot have made a mistake; I (we) cannot be wrong
I mean; but I meant
There must (has to) be  a
I heard; she (he, they, it) said
I read that into; interpreted that as
Surely you don't think
I can hardly believe
This doesn't make sense to me

whose baby?

      More than one person has insisted to me that a baby can have more than one father. Many people know that this is not possible, no matter how promiscuous the behavior of the baby's parents. No matter how many men a woman has sex with, only one of them is the father of any child she may conceive.
     This may be a way of making more "friends" for the mother and her baby, or it may be the prelude to an attempt at fraud or con artistry. But surely some of it is mere ignorance. 


Suggestion--better sex education.

can history be outdated?

     Someone once asked me if an old history book was outdated. In other words, shouldn't I get a newer history book? My answer was no--but it's not as obvious as I hoped it might be. Any book or document ( paper of any kind) "becomes" history if it gets old enough, of course. A very old diary, newspaper, bill of sale, letter, advertisement---they are all "history".  So an old history book "becomes" history in the same way.  If it contains data like population statistics they will be outdated as current information--but they are still history. History doesn't change much, anyway, even though it is often re-written for style and content. I think the history books we used when I was in school forty years ago did a better job including blacks and women than some of the newer books do. So in the case of using the book in a classroom, and not just for adult scholars, there is no substitute for reading the book with the ideas in mind you hope to see expressed in it. Up to the minute statistics are readily available on the internet. We no longer need the books to be as "current" as we once did for the purpose of statistics on population or economics, for instance.

Suggestion--If the students' books seem out of date to them, an interesting assignment might be to have students update some of the material, using the internet and library.


Suggestion--

paradise lost

     An item on the list, for many people, of what makes a utopia ( a perfect society or world), is surprising to me. It is "imagine a world in which no one had to work". I cannot imagine such a world. We could already have a world with twenty-hour (or maybe ten-hour) work weeks. But no work is not possible. Machines could never do it--we would literally have to return to slavery--no work for some, and a lot of work for others. This is not my idea of a utopia.
      You can hear this idea, or read it, as part of the groovy "counterculture" of the 1960's. I heard it again the other night--it was in a PBS special about Haight-Ashbury.--a quote from a "hippie".
     The philosophical underpinning of this is from the Bible. Adam and Eve did not have to work when they were in paradise.  When they were exiled from paradise, Adam had to earn his living, and Eve had to suffer in childbirth. An entire set of people is still raising children to believe that work is a punishment for sin--and that as long as they do no work they are, in fact, in paradise.

Suggestion--find out more about what other people believe--it may be important to you.

who are you?

        Who are you? Are you what you do? What you say? What you think or believe?  A famous philosopher once said " To do is to be"--or, you are what you do. "What do you do?" was a standard phrase when getting to know a new acquaintance.  It meant "what do you do for a living?"  Of course we are a bit more than what we do--we are all the things we could, or might, do, given world enough and time. We are not simply our past, but also our present and in some way our future--our plans, hopes and aspirations.
      To other people, however, we can't really be much more than what we do. Other people know that everyone has plans, hopes, and aspirations, but they only know the plans of people who have shared their ideas with them. To your best friend or your brother you may be a lot of different beliefs and plans and ideas--to a stranger you are your school, work, legal or medical records.

Suggestion--you may refuse to define yourself by your behavior--but remember that to other people, you are what you do (or have done).

the new gambling math

     Have you ever wondered why someone you know continues to gamble even though he or she seems to lose consistently? You might ask your friend about his or her math. Or accounting system. I have been told by a gambler that she won a couple of hundred dollars--this after losing several hundred. To her, only the winnings "count". The rest is gone with the wind. So while I figured that she lost about $400, she had it figured out that she won $200. Gamblers think this way about gambling all the time. Other people who repeatedly make life decisions that others would call self-destructive or self-defeating do the same--they only count the wins.

Suggestion--I'll ask you. Has anyone succeeded in persuading losing a losing gambler that he or she has, in fact, lost?