farming never-neverland

     I watched a video about farm life the other day, hoping that it could help to explain food production. It couldn't. Some people do not believe that food comes from farms--and when told, deny it, as they already "know" better. They "know" that farms are pretend, or out of the past--we get food by some more modern method now--factories, or machines. I have spent hours on the video clip site, trying to put together a set of films that would show plowing, planting, tending, harvesting, transporting, processing, and distribution. I found a lot of videos of combines and harvesters, but I couldn't arrange the set I wanted.  I'll have to try again, or contact an educational video service. I'm looking for a video that will show that farmers are real, not  fantasy characters. The video should show that farms and farmers are modern, not a historical re-enactment. The film should explain what "factory farming" means, as the same people who don't believe that food comes from farms have "decided" that this means food comes from factories. Any suggestions?

the death penalty and religion

     I have read a lot of different arguments both for and against the death penalty over the last thirty years. The one argument I find insupportable is the religious conviction that we, as a state, are acting out the will of God, or instituting divine justice of some kind, through the execution of criminals. I, as one of "we the people", do not consider myself a god, or an agent of God. I do not believe in the Jungian "oversoul" God--the God made up of all the people together. Although I am not a Christian, the "pot cannot be greater than the potter" certainly should have warned any Christian away from this view. If God is the creative force behind all the life in the universe, that God does not reside in the minds or the sex of human kind, except to the extent that it has created humankind.
     The religious view of the death penalty also denies the redemptive power of God--and I do believe in redemption. For a Christian, it also denies the redemptive power of Jesus--something I though all Christians believed. I believe that any human being can be redeemed at any time, although I do not belong to a religion that requires this belief of me. I believe it because I have seen it, and I know that it is possible.
     If this argument is based on a tenet of faith, those making the argument ought to be able to state plainly just what that tenet is--and they don't seem to be able to do that.

hippopotamus, hippopotami, hippopotamuses?

     Ever meet one of those people who manages to arrange a chance to display his or her so-called erudition at every opportunity by working words like "hippopotami" into everyday garden-variety conversation?
     Resolved: I shall never write about more than one hippopotamus at all. If there are two or more, someone else will have to tell the story.

old books

      One of the things cyberspace hopes to accomplish is to scan every book ever printed. At least one copy of everything would be in a computer file somewhere, even if the file is not available to share. People are also working on projects to transcribe old written records into typescript--as computer files. There are still mountains of old court records, church records, government records, diaries and manuscripts--all written on paper in old-fashioned script. Some of these records are available to the public, but to see them you would need to visit the building in which they are housed. Photocopies are sometimes available, but that only works when a researcher knows what he or she is looking for. No one would take on the job of photocopying an entire set of records just so a researcher could look through them--and if they did, at 10 cents or 25 cents a page, the cost would be enormous. The internet can someday make all of these records available to anyone who wants to look at them--they are public records, after all.
     The internet could also make rare books available, or books long out of circulation.  Libraries do have a system of loaning books to one another when someone requests them, but the internet could make that much easier. The book has to be put in the mail, which takes time, and someone has to pay the postage costs. It has cost me as much as $10 to borrow a book. Even with an interlibrary loan system, some books are too rare and valuable to borrow. People are sometimes permitted to look at them in person--by visiting the library that owns them. A trip like this might  not be possible for everyone who might like to look at a rare book--making rare books available online would solve this problem. Many of the rare books  belong to public libraries, and the public that supports the libraries ought to be able to use them.

government by the people

     Why government by the people? Because nothing else works--not because it's an ideal we may never reach, or a high-sounding notion--because it works. When people know they have made the decisions by which they live, they make better decisions, and are much more likely to abide by them.

bring back Mighty Mouse

     Tomorrow Philadelphia will have its Thanksgiving Day parade. Santa Claus will come to town, welcomed by marching bands from Florida shivering in the cold--but Mighty Mouse won't be there--again. I miss Mighty Mouse.

theocracy

     Many people argue that a theocracy--a government in which the church is part of the state--can't be democratic, because everyone would have to belong to the same church. That much is true. Consider England, the theocracy with which Americans are most familiar. As long as the monarch of England is the head of the Church of England, and Anglican bishops sit in the House of Lords, England remains a theocracy. At one time its citizen-subjects did not have the same civil rights, according to religion. It was considered impossible to be a loyal subject of the crown and not belong to the Church of England, as the head of state was also head of the church. This is the same tradition that made of dissenters, pilgrims--those same pilgrims who came to America in search of religious freedom.
     The other "side" to this argument is that we now supposedly believe in the "right to the self-determination of peoples"--that is, that other people have a right to have whatever kind of government they want, without an exception for theocracy. The British seem to have solved this problem in their own country--everyone votes, with no test of belief. But for other purposes, Church of England membership counts. Anyone who wants to know more about theocracy should look at the history of the church and state in England.

don't try this at home

     Don't worry, I ran this through legal. One more high school story. When I was in high school, I became involved in a nefarious plot to blow up the school--and get us all a few days off.  A fellow student informed me of a conspiracy to flush all the toilets in the school at once--which would supposedly blow up the plumbing, make a mess if not a real flood, and get us dismissed for the day. I was a quiet honor student, by the way--one of 3 out of 732 who was never called to the disciplinarian's office through 3 years of high school. So an obvious choice, as no one would have suspected my involvement in such a scheme. Or they might have imagined I was brighter than this.
     The plot failed. We were all supposed to be stationed at the toilets at noon--so some careful planning was required, to make sure we were actually in place in each lavatory. Nothing happened. We spent several days trying to find out who didn't flush. I wonder if teens have been told this story since the invention of indoor plumbing. All in the interest of science, anyway.

# play by the rules, #2

     In high school, back in the 1970's, we had the opportunity to play intramural softball--meaning anyone could make a team, and the school would arrange a time and a place to play a game. I was drafted by a team of my fellow "geeks" ( as they came to be called later ), and we were particularly bad ball players. Most of the team wore glasses, or needed them, and probably took them off to play.  "Anyone could make a team" meant just that--teams were made up mostly of kids who already knew one another--including a team of serious ball players, who usually played on the varsity baseball team. We played this team. Our poor team of geeks was losing by  40 runs, and it was still the 6th inning.  Our outfield was terrible, and it took a long time to arrange the 3  "outs" required to end an inning.. The varsity players were getting tired, and said so. Very tired. They wanted to go home. Enter geekdom. If they went home, wouldn't they forfeit the game? Why, yes, they would. They still wanted to go home, and it was agreed--so we won the game by forfeit. We wore them out.

how to commune with the dead

     Communing with the dead is easy. Learn to read, and read what they left in print, or in writing. Or visit a museum, and look at what they made. An old building will do if you don't live near a museum--although there are a lot of museums available to visit on the internet.

malapropisms

     A malapropism is using the wrong word--particularly a long and "fancy" word that sounds something like another word, but means something completely different. A character in a play, one Mrs. Malaprop, gave her fictional name to this type of error. One place you can hear malapropisms is TV. I mean the reruns currently playing of the 1970's "All in the Family" series. Archie Bunker, the bigot who learns to get along with people, uses a lot of malapropisms--and is rarely corrected by the other characters on the show. The creators of the show obviously meant to display just how ignorant a bigot can be--but this has misfired, at least for part of the show's audience, who miss the malapropisms and think that Archie is intelligent because he uses long words.
     Another 1970's show, "Sanford and Son", has also been playing recently. Fred Sanford, also something of a bigot, uses malapropisms, too. His errors are usually corrected by another character. Perhaps the creators of this show had already learned that this might be necessary, as some of the "All in the Family" audience had missed the point.

# told you there's a God

     When I was about seven years old, my mom took me downtown shopping, with an acquaintance of hers and her four or five year old son. The child was obnoxious in every way. We had to stop and deal with his balking, yelling, and tantrum-throwing several times--right in the middle of Wanamaker's department store. That lovely turn-of-the-last-century old store, where voices always seemed to be hushed. The day brightened up considerably when we were visited by the hand of God, or karma, if you will. It happened like this--we were all going up the escalator. The brat sat down on the escalator, with his behind on the step going up. My mom and the other woman were talking, and didn't notice. I tried to get their attention, but hesitantly, as interrupting was forbidden. When we got to the top of the escalator, the brat's pants got caught in the teeth of the moving steps. He let out a howl. The step seemed to have whacked him right on the behind. The next step did the same. And the next. It took a minute for the store manager to shut the thing down and extricate the brat. Meanwhile the brat was having a well-deserved spanking. He wasn't harmed, but his pants were torn, and I suppose his backside was bruised, along with his mighty little ego. What a satisfying end to an awful afternoon. I still love that old store.

public school

    I'm a great believer in the idea of public school--that we should have one set of schools, all of them functioning well, and that all children should attend them. I would go as far as to support the banning of any kind of private school altogether, and all home schooling. Education seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with home schooling now backed up by the federal government, and more schools being "privatized" every day.  If the "privatized" schools are an improvement, that's all to the good. They have attracted a lot of attention and support. But I have to wonder--where was that support for the public schools--before they became privately operated? Do we have so few citizens who believe in the idea of public schools? And if we do, is that part of what has been wrong with the public schools?

millenial ideas

     One of the millenial ideas popular now is that the world would be a better place without borders. These poor lines on the map are now blamed for starting wars, oppressing people, and worse. According to the new groovy, without borders we will all live in peace and brotherhood, with free cat food. This is very naive, and on more than one level. Borders are constructs in human minds, They don't "do" anything--as history, psychology, and economics don't "do" anything. Blaming them for human problems is silly.
     If we erased all the borders on the Earth, within a matter of days the people on one side of a river would want to talk to the people on the other side of the river about water usage, or something. Each would find a representative to talk to the people on the other side. And it would look very much as before--a "government", or something like it, formed because people found it useful and necessary.
     Making governments is a natural function of humankind.  It's one of the ways we try to get along with one another. Two people may make a deal--three or more form a government. The solution to corruption in government is not abolishing governments, but making better governments.
     The solution to arguing over borders is not abolishing borders, it is offering solutions to the problems that caused the argument--the problems that will not magically disappear if we erase the lines on a map.
    

# play by the rules

     When I was in high school I was a member of the World Affairs Club. We participated in a model United Nations program, for the purposes of which each school was a country. Our school came late to the game, and the larger countries were already assigned. We were the Maldive Islands one year, and the Seychelles another. Our team had to think up a speech that these countries might make to the United Nations, and deliver it. Since we were representing such a small nation, it was assumed that we would have time on our hands ( we did ). Some of us were made part of the sergeant-at-arms staff, responsible for keeping order in the assembly.  Our speech, based on research into politics and economics in our "nation" was already written, so I had time to read most of  Robert's Rules of Order before our next "session".  According to the rules, the sergeant-at-arms and his or her staff are responsible for note-passing--permitted in the UN, if not in school. Power! We found it. The "United States" couldn't pass a note to "Russia" unless we would handle it for them. We tried to get political and economic concessions from them before we would pass their "notes". That is how the "Seychelles" became a contender in the game for world domination. Or something like it.

don't blame the computer

     For all the talk about artificial intelligence, the truth is that a computer doesn't "know" anything. A computer is an electronic innocent--it only knows what people tell it. So don't blame the computer--blame people.

a curious parenting incident

     When my daughter, now grown, was about 14 years old, I looked up from reading the paper at the dining room table one afternoon to see a police car stopping in front of our house. My daughter was still in school, or should have been, but I was worried--perhaps something had happened to her. I was surprised to see a young woman get out of the police car--a teenager I had seen in the neighborhood once, but whom I did not know. She matched my daughter's description pretty well--tall, fair, big, brown shoulder-length hair. There was no real resemblance. I started to go outside, but the police car was gone. The police officer had dropped off a teen at my house, apparently after being told by the teen that she lived there. I went into the back yard, where there was a drive cutting through the backyards of our block, to see if the teen went that way. The police car was at the end of the drive--several houses away--and the teen had stopped to talk to the police officer. I assumed that the matter was settled, and that the girl had been caught giving the police a false address--but was it? I never knew, nor did I find out who the girl was. This must happen a lot---I wonder how often? And does the flip side of it happen, too? When teens are in trouble, does an adult go to court and claim to be the teens' parents? Unbeknownst to the real parents?

where Wall Street could lead us

     Someday, perhaps every square mile of the earth will be the site of some business selling shares of stock--a publicly-owned corporation. As the public that invests in the stock market becomes more international with every passing day, soon everyone may be invested in some way in nearly everything. Every war or disaster will directly affect everyone--not just those injured or ruined. No one will be able to drop a bomb without blowing up his own investment--or the investments of his family and neighbors.

a lost tradition?

    Remember what a "snipe hunt" was? When the new guy ( or female co-worker, club member, etc.) was sent to find a left-handed toilet seat, or a counterclockwise screwdriver? Where do the old traditions go?

word question

If I say that something is repetitive and redundant, is that repetitive, or redundant?

voice lock

    One of the security measures that was tried in the past was the voice lock. It opened only at the sound of the voice of the person (or persons) whose voices were used as "keys".  The lock seemed to work very well. It could recognize a person's voice, separate and distinct from any other voice--even if the person had a cold, or a sore throat. The problem was that it worked too well, in a way. It could be opened by a recording of that same person's voice--the voice which had been used as a "key". So the use of the voice lock was discontinued. This all happened in the 1970's. Still, the device could be useful for identifying the voices of people on tapes and recordings.

what was the question?

    When my daughter, now grown, was about 10 years old, she once looked up from her homework and asked "Mom, is the answer 4?"  What a cosmically weird question. 4 is the answer to so many things. According to the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", 4 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything--oops, spoiler. 4 is the answer to-- how many legs does a cow have? or a table ?(usually) or any quadruped? --what is 6-2?, and infinite mathematical variations on that theme-- how many years between Olympics? or leap years?  4 may be the answer to how old are you?--or how many pieces of pizza are left? It can be the answer to so many things. I began to see what Douglas Adams saw in 4 as a universal answer. But what was the question?