ETON Mini GM400 Super Compact AM/FM Shortwave Radio with Digital Display now selling for $27.98 at Amazon

ETON Mini GM400 Super Compact AM/FM Shortwave Radio with Digital Display now selling for $27.98 at Amazon➚

I saw this Grundig-badged mini at Radio Shack for $10 more. It's really getting tempting, despite the mediocre reviews. I would use this mainly for travelling; I currently use a Grundig G8 when I travel because it's small and travels well, but AM DXing is lousy. I need a small portable with a good speaker, off timer and alarm. I know I have many options, I just really like the looks of the Eton/Grundig M400, but by most accounts, the AM DXing would be lousy.

Matching Students' Biological and Educational Timetables

NBC today reported on biochemical reasons why teens have trouble waking up and being alert in class at the time most of us are in class or at a desk or otherwise fully engaged with the day. I couldn't find the segment, but the same story is reported here...

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/canada/Grades+improve+classes+start+later+study+finds/5262224/story.html➚

All good. Why notable? We were talking about this 20+ years ago when I was studying to be a teacher; there have been recommendations for years to push high school classes back later, and this study confirms what we've known all along.

The problem with unintuitive changes is that most of the people affected by the change don't have the background of the experts or even the foundation to understand the discussion. In this case, that includes a lot of students, parents, and teachers.

Hence resistance to things like teaching in a language other than English, a sliding scale for grades rather than fixed percentiles, peer instruction, outcomes-based education, or, of course, starting a teenager's day an hour later.

It's not just a matter of "if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for them"; that type of ignorance is a old as humanity; it's a matter of institutionalized ignorance, where xenophobic responses to people and ideas masquerade as political discourse.

If you carefully observe closely enough and long enough, beentheredonethat becomes the subtext of nearly every debate.

Look at the comment at the link above to this story:

Joe Schmoe
4:56 PM on August 17, 2011

Um....how about kids go to bed earlier and get a good nights sleep...this study seems silly...how many $$$ were wasted on it ??? I don't buy the fact that a kid who sleeps from 10-7 performs worse than a kid who sleeps from 11-8...god help any kid who moves time zones...then he's really screwed....

Joe Schmoe is the reason why we will be forever fighting for common sense to prevail, and why those that possess it will never win.

Dee Dee Jean

These are pictures from a recent sitting. If you're family, please don't tell Mom and Dad, we are going to frame some.

R.I.P. Truman, August 25, 1984

The Truman I Knew

A lost kite that flew too soon toward heaven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_capote➚

If you read only one book of his, read Music for Chameleons.

Uncle Creepy Says Remember to Eat Your Mandibles

Okay, so I'm reading issue #2 of Creepy magazine (reliving my youth again[1]), and I read about the cannibalistic Beane clan in Scotland, and think, No way, just too weird, but wouldn't you know, ol' Uncle Creepy is right, there is such a story...

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/scotland/dumfriesshire/legends/the-legend-of-sawney-bean.html➚

I'm part Scottish, always wondered why I preferred the dark and had a taste for pickles and salt pork.


[1]
Rich Nickel and I used to sit up in the loft in my garage and read these. His parents didn't mind them as I recall, but mine would have had conniptions had they known. They were so deliciously irreverent, if sometimes a little too much.

Old Hackers Never Die, They Just Get Deleted[1]

My first job in a computerized environment that required a password actually interpreted the BACKSPACE key as a character during login; so, if you miskeyed your password, hit the backspace and continued, login would fail.

(That was at Merchants Service Bureau; they used to be on the top floor of the Old Kent Bank building that used to be on Front Street and Leonard. It's not there anymore. Merchants Service Bureau supplied customer credit information to merchants. I worked for Compulit in the basement of that building. Compulit is/was a legal consulting company that used computers to sift through documents that were opened by court order for one reason or another. We worked on green screen dumb terminals hooked up to a mainframe.)

Now, there were some very interesting menu options on our work stations that we were told never to touch. Of course, that meant I had to touch them, and I produced a very interesting screen full of odd characters; whatever I'd tapped into was binary, and long. I had no idea what I was did, but they did, and the bureau's secret police were in our basement office in short order and I was publicly flogged.

Interestingly, they weren't quite sure how much I understood about what I'd done and seen, so they flogged me with some deference, which is an altogether different experience than a humiliating flogging.

With all the audit trails and regulations today, that could never happen again, now could it.

To this day, if I miskey my password, I start over. Yes, I do use the backspace, but I remove all characters and start at the beginning. Some habits are not logical, they are simply programming.

[1]
Which only means you get removed from file allocation tables and all sorts of other digital nastiness. Oh, the analogical possibilities.

Intractable Personalities

I was already composing a blog entry regarding intractable personalities, when what should intersect my world, all within 12 hours?


David Letterman is threatened on Muslim forum due to al Qaida remark
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/letterman-threatened-on-muslim-forum-due-to-al-qaida-remark/2011/08/18/gIQASGzKNJ_story.html➚

Christine O'Donnell walks off CNN's Piers Morgan after refusing to discuss her views on witchcraft and same-sex unions
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/idUS100221528720110817➚

Overstock.com sues Goldman Sachs
http://www.overstock.com/50257/static.html➚


Why explain what examples already do so well?

al Qaida: I don't like what you said so I'm going to cut out your tongue
Christine O'Donnell: I don't like your question so I'm not going to talk with you.
Goldman Sachs: I have a billion trillion gazillion dollars already, but I want yours too.

I've read that one of the reasons Rome fell is because they spiked their wine with lead to sweeten it and they all went slowly mad from the practice. Mmmmm... wonder how it tastes in Kool-Aid.

Ideolektanschauung

[Buzzed by me on 11/15/10]

I am nearly fully convinced that the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is more than a hypothesis http://bit.ly/d7mgU5➚

Conservative minister Chuck Missler believes UFOs (and other other-worldly ghosties) are the Nephalim come back http://bit.ly/awinjp ➚; he has a hobbyist's understanding of physics and astronomy and has combined this with a theology wrested from ancient niches.

(I wonder what Jesus would say about so much ado over angels and UFOs.)

Heard a commentator on AFR (http://www.afa.net/radio/➚) last week say that the liberal media reported unemployment figures harshly during the Bush administration when they hovered around 5%, but has not been as harsh on Obama when they are nearly double; whether that is right or wrong is not as interesting as what he said after that: that it's like we're living in an Orwellian world where right is left and up is down.

I agree with him on that point, because if you listen to AFR much, you'll quickly realize there is a large group of people who have an entirely different view of reality in very fundamental ways (obviously AFR is an example, not an exception). You'll never convince them that national healthcare is a good idea, despite a bushel of bible passages regarding widows and the poor and the difficulty of riches.

Why? At this point, it's easy to fall into metaphor: You can say it's because they lack the mental tools to see reason and change their minds. You can say they are looking at the world through a lens that confines their perspective. You can say they're not playing with a full deck.

You can even say they are right.

But what have you said if you say they're right? You're saying you're equipped with similar mental tools as they are, or are looking at the world through the same lens, or aren't playing with a full deck, or possess some superset of metatools that allows you to evaluate your own perspective and others' and how they relate (which is rather presumptuous).

I'd say rather you have roughly similar backgrounds and have been exposed to similar ideas, books, media, social units, etc, that favor this perspective. Our brains are wired early, perhaps fully and finally by puberty, when the window for language adaptability closes, and we are, perhaps, after that, a kilned clay pot that cannot hold anything more than it was designed to hold.

In think the Sapir-Whorf "language barrier" extends beyond traditionally defined languages (ie German or French or English). It's seen in the language of business, politics, civics, religion, education, etc, so that even within one language community there are barriers to fully understanding one another.

Now some of this is certainly due to reasons other than language (lack of education, minimal exposure to other concepts, stubbornness, an agenda that discards competing ideas), but because we're linguistic creatures, limited meaningful conversation can happen outside language; we are confined or circumscribed by it.

You can witness this daily almost anywhere one person expresses ideas unfamiliar to others. In Calculus class in college, I sat in a chair and listened for an entire semester, but didn't understand a word I heard. If you asked me after class if the professor had said thus-and-so, I would have said No, I didn't hear that, when in reality I did hear it, but I didn't process it in a way I could organize it and act on it. I was unable to because I hadn't yet acquired (nor have I to this day) the basic concepts (language) of Calculus.

The problem is deepened by resistance of those who don't understand how to acquire the tools to organize the new knowledge so they do understand. If they happen to be more comfortable in a competing paradigm (or will not or cannot change for other reasons), they may incorporate the new information there, or account for it in some other way. The Evolution/Creation debate is perfect example. So are conservative approaches to healthcare and gay marriage, IMHO.

It is as if there is a Sapir-Whorfian counterpart to the dialect, even the ideolect. What do we call them?[1]

This presents very tangible problems when those who don't understand don't know they don't understand and are in a decision-making capacity. It accounts for everything from poor nutrition choices for ourselves and our children, to poor church and business and civic decisions that marginalize people and ideas, to wars that end the lives of millions.

George W Bush, promoting his memoirs right now, is not surprisingly defending his presidency and actions (however few he was actually personally responsible for), including torture (which is being redefined as something besides torture), and two wars that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents (true noncombatants).

(Does an American life have more value than an Iraqi life? Bush would say no on principle, and his supporters also, but it wouldn't change their actions, and that's how you tell the real difference between what people say and what they believe; yes, by their fruits.)

If he believes his own words, he's delusional; but regardless, many others do, because argument from authority is sufficient for them.

We will never know the life trajectories that were altered or erased or never intersected because one man and a few around him decided to expend the energies of one nation to destroy another.

Interesting rabbit hole: "The Great Debate: Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong?" http://origins.asu.edu/ ➚and NPR Science Friday http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201011055 ➚

[1]
So, is there a Sapir-Whorfian counterpart to the dialect, even the ideolect? I'm tempted to pare down Weltanschauung into discrete subcategories, but I'm sure it's been done to some extent.

Dialektanschauung ?
Ideolektanschauung ?

Cheap but effective and delightfully layered.

Slideshow: Vernondale Elementary School, Erie, PA, in 2000

These were taken at Vernondale Elementary School, 1432 Wilkins Road, Erie, PA 16505, during summer vacation when the shool was closed. I got some good shots inside by putting the camera flush to the window. It's changed a lot of course since 1967 or so. My first principle, who scared the daylights out of me, Mr Luschen, died while I was still in grade school. He was a heavy smoker and in those days school teachers smoked in schools. He smoked right in his office. Imagine that. I looked for news of him, tried to get a picture, but came up empty. I understand he was a nice man.





Mr Luschen's nephew, John Luschen, was my classmate. John hung with a different crowd and I never got to know him. He took speech therapy classes once a week as I recall. His speech therapist looked like Michael Constantine from Room 222[1]. I never thought John's voice was odd. It was actually kind of endearing. His closest friends were Richard Clouser, John Tushak (sp?) and Steve Schloss. My dad worked with Mr Schloss, Steve's dad, and I was friends with Steve to some extent, but Steve was an athlete, and I was, well, not, and when you're a kid, that's everything. Someday I'd like to meet them again. Richard Clouser plagiarized one of my science reports in 6th Grade. Gary Locke, our science teacher, caught him and arranged a little public drama around it. (As a former educator, I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'll bet Richard never plagiarized again.) I always felt sorry for him after that. He was not a bad kid.

[1]
Be still my heart...

Gloria Jean's Coffee is Glorious

I have no financial interest in this company, but if you happen to be nearby on a warm day, don't pass up their High Energy Mocha Voltage Chiller. It's a frothy iced coffee with a jolt of (I think) espresso and a few ground up coffee beans that offer a tasty grittiness that I like.

I travel the Ohio Turnpike a lot and the first Service Plaza East of Toledo (on both sides of 80/90) has a Gloria Jean's.

Visit Gloria Jean's Coffee➚

Salvation of the Fittest (or Why Creationists are Unwitting Evolutionists)

[Buzzed by me on September 28, 2010; resposted here with a few edits]

Most Creationists are unwitting evolutionists.[1]

 Here's why:

Fundamentalist Christians believe that we are each accountable to God for our decisions and we have no excuse for not meeting His standards. The Bible itself says all are without excuse, regardless of social status, race, religion, etc. If we do not meet that standard, we are not saved and perish eternally.

Evolution theorizes that the more fit an organism is to its environment, the more likely it will survive and reproduce itself. All have the same standard to meet. Some organisms adapt and some do not. Those that do not, do not reproduce, and their lineage perishes eternally.

That is why Creationists are Evolutionists.

If you disagree, then you must accept that there is a limit to accountability, and that some people are accountable for their choices and some are not. (Eg, an average socially adjusted adult is able to tell right from wrong. A child cannot. If the adult and child both die in a car accident, does God judge them equally?)

Now, if you agree that some are more accountable than others, where do you draw the line? And who draws it? Is a grown adult with an IQ of 85 (nominally functional) just as accountable as a grown adult with an IQ of 140 (Thomas Jefferson)?

The point is, as soon as you agree that some are more fit than others to make a choice to be saved, then you are saying either A) God will save those who are not fit enough to understand the importance of the choice or its consequences, or B) God will not save them, and Choice B is fundamentally the same foundation for evolution.

Of course, this all assumes a fundamentalist background. Some Christian traditions claim redemptive value for infant baptism, or allow that mental deficiency is an exception. And I understand I've introduced the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle in the paragraph above; it was to simplify the statement.

(The intellectual problems of Choice A are manifold, because of course the class of souls is not restricted to children; it includes anyone who for physical or psychological or other reasons is not mentally capable to make a choice.)

And a higher-level point is that there are a limited number of internally consistent ways to discuss the nature of being, and most elements of each system correspond to similar elements in others. We are all describing the same observations, aren't we? Rain is rain is rain, whether it's deposited by a weather system or a god, and if one person feels that a rain dance helps and another scoffs at that, it doesn't change the nature of rain.

Same for how fit something is for some purpose, whether that be an evolutionary advantage for approval by God to enter Heaven.

Call it "Salvation of the Fittest" and the analogy is fairly complete.

[1] Presuming for the moment that most Creationists are also Fundamentalists; or, at the very least, if they do not share the labels, do share many of the same preconceptions; I come out of this tradition and believe this is true; I cannot remember ever meeting a person that claims to be one and is not also the other, though I'm sure there are some.

Names from Yesteryear

Here are a few people I'd like to connect with from a very long time ago, when the world could be crossed on a bicycle and the edge of town began with television.

I usually see email here sometime during the day: [click to reveal]@gmail.com

Other ways to find or follow me are here➚.

Michael Guyton, K-6th Grade, Vernondale Elementary School, Erie, PA
Richard Nickel, K-12th Grade, Vernondale-McDowell, Erie, PA
Scott Cadwallader, 7th-9th Grade, Bethel Christian School, Erie, PA
Jerry Beers, 7th-8th Grade, Bethel Christian School, Erie, PA
Scott Hollinsworth (Scott Hollingsworth?), 7th-9th Grade, Bethel Christian School, Erie, PA
Greg McClintock, 7th-9th Grade, Bethel Christian School, Erie, PA

There are more, but this is a start from the earliest years.

Vernondale Elementary School➚ 1432 Wilkins Road Erie, PA 16505	Bethel Christian School➚ 1781 West 38th Street Erie, PA 16508

A Followup to a Followup to a Response to NPR's Story on Adam & Eve

I published comments here➚ and here➚ after hearing the NPR story that included a Calvin professor.

In response to my response, Amy Julia Becker wrote:

My resposne to Amy:

Good question.

I'm of two minds.

Since I can't go back in time, I can't answer it from first-person-experience, but despite lots of time in the bible, I can recall no point where it was obvious to me the people reading or listening to it would regard the stories as primarily representative of deeper truths (and only secondarily or unnecessarily accurate).

(IMHO with a couple exceptions - 1. Parables, and 2. Fantastical accounts, see below)

Now that is not true today. Most Christians (except American fundamentalists) interpret more incredible passages, even some accounts of Christ, as instructive, not historical. That's for the individual to decide. Many claim the name "Christian" while denying the Virgin Birth or Resurrection, for example; that is entirely their prerogative, since no one owns the title or all the pieces that define it.

I'm more interested in how Christians respond to it and invite others to respond.

When we tell a child there is no Santa Claus, the child goes through some tears, some questions, and resigns himself to the obvious (depending on the age and how much we reinforced the story to that point). To help it along, we say things like "Santa's not a real person, but his spirit lives in the hearts of everyone at Christmastime," or something similar.

In other words, we've removed the factual aspect of the story from the child's universe, and there is little left to sustain a belief. Some children are devastated, some sort of had it figured out already.

Likewise with a belief in biblical stories, which, once the factual aspect is removed, become less interesting to most people. This is often the response of someone with a Western cultural background, where accuracy is simply expected in historical reporting. There are other cultures (usually ancient ones) where the message is not in the accuracy, but in the elements of exaggeration or metaphor that served to explain a principle.

(Many biblical scholars believe that certain durations like 40 and 7, miraculous acts, or a ludicrously long life, are examples of this.)

However, our Western culture is skeptical of any account that is not also accurate; it's a wonderful expectation, for it gives us a solid foundation for science and debate; unfortunately, it misses equally great rewards that can come from literary devices that need more flexibility. Neither side is right or wrong; both sides offer insight into the substance of a thing, but from different angles.

(I don't think we disagree on this. I'm probably restating the obvious.)

BTW, I never did tell my son, now 20 years old, there was no Santa. I never stopped playing the game, and though he of course came to realize the truth, he still to this day plays along with me. I did that because I value the childlike magic of the season and think it has a great deal to offer in an age when celebrations of simple sentiments are increasingly ridiculed and cluttered with commercial nonsense.

Being Right Has No Meaning If No One's Listening

Interesting blog article here about the August 10 NPR story that mentioned former Calvin professor John Schneider in the context of the origins debate among evangelicals.

Blog Commentary, "Evolution, Evangelicals, the Historical Adam, and NPR"➚

NPR Story, "Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve"➚

However, IMHO if the writers (and prior to them, storytellers) of the Genesis account didn't believe the story "necessitate[s] an historical Adam and Eve," I'd be inclined to agree.

Unfortunately, I believe they believed the stories they were telling were literally true; and in a world where everything is relative (including literary criticism), there is no foundation for convincing anyone that one particular perspective has more merit than another.

Don't get me wrong I think the author, Amy Julia Becker, is right: fiction (or parable or metaphor or whatever you want to call it) often presents more helpful insight into human nature than nonfiction; but divorcing the reader from the factual substrate leads to unexpected consequences, like agnosticism or atheism, which is often the acceptance stage of a frustrated Christianity.

Calvin is failing to keep pace with a changing church and student body, many of whom are now my age, where more years have passed since we graduated than had come before. And by "keeping pace" I don't mean compromise, I mean intelligently and sensitively dealing with widely differing opinions in the Christian community, rather than simply expelling those we disagree with because we can.

Being right has no meaning if no one's listening.

A Skeptic Shares Two True Ghost Stories

Tulip Staircase Ghost➚

Are there such things as ghosts? What is the evidence for a spiritual reality that intersects with our own?

There are uncounted first-person accounts, and those hold some water in court and religious debates and such; call me a Doubting Thomas, but if I haven't experienced a supernatural event myself, it's very difficult to believe it happened to someone else.[1]

I've read many books that claim to offer proof that the unseen world (particularly the Christian variety) exists. And I will still pick one up and give it as shot if I think it offers something new. All I ever hope for is one little detail that says "maybe."

I think I found it.

I don't recall when or where precisely, because the effect was cumulative, but the book that happened to be in my hands at the time was Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity➚, by Dr Gregory Boyd and Edward Boyd, loaned to me by a friend.

I happen to be a radio enthusiast. Any and all, from antique to modern. I don't have the space, time, or tools to seriously collect or restore them, but if I find one I like, I buy it; some are gifts and have sentimental value.

(Check me out over here➚ at KD8OSB's Old Time Radio Diner, which is intended to be more about Old Time Radio, but has included old time TV lately and some other loosely-related topics. I'll be posting a couple garage sale finds soon, one I'm especially pleased with.)

It occurred to me that there are millions of radio waves passing through me right now, across thousands of frequencies, some carrying information.

Every radio signal that could be "tuned" at my present location is passing through my body. That includes everything from local and distant AM/FM stations to my WiFi router to the cell signal that will make my phone ring if the right one is detected. Every police and ambulance call, every taxi and school bus dispatch, etc. is going through me right now.

How many precisely? Well, if we're only counting the waves that carry information, conceivably the entire spectrum of this chart...

FCC Freqquency Allocation Chart
Click for full size➚

Yet, I'm completely unaware of it.


With the right equipment you can hear any one of them. You can even make a simple receiver from common household items➚ (and a trip to the hobby shop) to hear nearby stations, no batteries required. Once upon a time that was common knowledge among most school children, who built crystal radios at home or in school. Now it's a curiosity. Few folks realize the same technology behind a dying entertainment medium is what enables their cell phone.

But back to the topic: The combination of everything that has entered my body and mind has provided a totally unreasonable inkling that something real is on the other side, that I have touched it, and it knows me.

Those outside my head can trust it to be very real, but I have no expectations that you'll do so.

Sometimes you just know, and I just know, for no reason at all.

I know that puts me on the other side of where I usually am ("prove it"), but it doesn't make any difference; an unreasonable peace persists.

Most of the time.

The Brown Lady of
 Raynham Hall➚

[1]Aside from the many conventional religious experiences one has simply by virtue of being raised in a church (and all the music and images and tears and laughter that go with it), I have had one bona fide secular supernatural experience: One night when I was very small, perhaps 5 years old, perhaps a little older, I woke up for no reason that I can remember. No sudden noise, no dream. This was in the same bedroom I mentioned in another post➚. This room was the top floor of my boyhood home in Erie. It ran the length of the house. My bed and my brother Tom's bed were at one end, and the top of the stairs was at the other. I sat up and looked at the top of the stairs. There stood a motionless, featureless, white, glowing, human-shaped figure. I spoke to it, but it didn't respond in any way. I spoke to Tom, but he was fast asleep. You might think I'd be frightened, but I wasn't. I was very much at peace, even calmed. I lay back down and fell asleep. To this day, I have no idea what I saw, but I know it wasn't a reflection, a passing car, the moon, etc. I slept in that room every night for 12 years or so; I knew every creak and shadow in it.

Thomas G Cairns

Here's another: My Grandpa Cairns, Thomas Graham Cairns, died in his home with his family at his side, in Erie on January 10, 1993 at the age of 81 (or 80, if you believe Grandma, who was never quite sure of his age, and this seemed to trouble her). My Grandparents lived on East 37th Street in Erie for many years; it's the only house I associate with them, though I've driven by the one my dad grew up in.  (The house on East 37th and the love inside it are among my fondest memories of childhood). My Uncle Ken, Dad's brother, was in Michigan at the time my grandfather died, preparing a Sunday school lesson for that morning. Ken and his family lived on Pollock Road in Holly at that time. At some point that night, the grandfather clock in Ken's living room tolled. A few moments later, my dad called Uncle Ken and informed him that Grandpa had just died. Why so strange? That grandfather clock was broken and hadn't tolled for years.

Disrespect, Neglect, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

One day as a kid, I stopped my bicycle to watch an Erie Times News guy park his car in a neighbor's driveway and walk up to their door. I don't know why I stopped. I suppose he had some business there, collecting an overdue paper bill or something, and the newspaper logo on the car caught my attention. Few cars in those days had logos on them except ones belonging to large companies and government agencies. He looked very official.

I stood astride my bicycle, drawn to a small American flag affixed to his car antenna; it was so ragged, there was only a couple frayed inches left; most of it had long since been tugged away by the wind and scattered in traffic.

I said "Hey Mister, your flag is kinda worn out." He said "So are the hostages" and kept walking.

He was referring to the Americans held hostage at the American Embassy during the Iran Hostage Crisis.

I suppose if you're going to make excuses for dishonoring something, a patriotic excuse is better than most.

Around the same time, I saw a shirtless long-haired hippy at a downtown concert on Perry Square[1] who used a small American flag to patch the crotch in his jeans.

The two men had more in common than they'd probably care to admit.

[1] On State Street in Erie, PA. This was during We Love Erie Days. I would ride my bike downtown, since I was too young to drive, go to the main library, then watch the older kids smoke dope and dance to local bands. One of the bands was called Live Wire, they did ZZ Top covers. I'm amazed how often I did this and survived unscathed, though if you know me, you know some countercultural  DNA was definitely shared.

Football Trains an Entire Generation to Celebrate Confrontation

[This is part of a post from my other blog, KD8OSB's Old Time Radio Diner ➚... I repeat it here so I can add an apropos comment posted by The Oatmeal today.]

CNN reported last night on "In the Arena" [2011-08-03], just before going to Piers Morgan, on the effects of the heat wave engulfing much of the US (including me) was having. It was one of those 60-second sayonara segments that did nothing but be topical and provide a segue into the next program.

Among the effects cited were three deaths, one coach and two football players. There was no comment, not even a raised eyebrow or intonation that suggested there was anything unusual about this, as though it were akin to rising gas prices.

Every summer children die for a sport, for the approval of a parent, usually a father; they are dreaming of college and professional sports, and we encourage it, knowing full well it will end in high school. We say it builds character, teaches teamwork, tests our mettle, makes us better citizens.

With rare exceptions, it does none of those things. Instead, it degrades children into hulking brutes, takes time away from intellectual pursuits, inculcates defeatism, equates success with violence and reinforces the association with physical encounters, and teaches competition instead of cooperation. It can slosh their brains around inside their skulls, leading to permanent damage, and in the middle of summer it can kill them.

Look back at all the kids you knew in high school that were on the football team. Where are they now? Maybe a class president, maybe a West Point graduate, maybe a local politician, if you went to a big school like me, but the rest?

I know football (and similar) is a surrogate for war, and we are training an entire society to celebrate confrontation, either by participating or observing.

Let's find another way.

Addendum:

And as some stars aligned somewhere, today I read this wonderful comment at The Oatmeal:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/blog/jeff_rides_bikes.jpg ➚

The story that incited it:

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/ultramarathon ➚

Read it regularly, it's worth your time.

American Anxiety

I heard the term "American Anxiety" on PBS's "Journey to Palomar." It seems astronomer George Hale suffered from anxiety at a time when the whole United States was thought to be suffering en masse from the ailment (which I have intimate experience with). This was in 1906, the same year as the San Francisco Earthquake. We look back at times that far removed as slower, simpler, gentler, but they saw fast and intense change - technology (the airplane, the car, the telephone, electric lights), a world war was looming, vast numbers of Americans were moving from the family farm into crowded cities, the elevator allowed cities to build up rather than out, etc.

No generation escapes stress. You may find some pockets of time that are calmer than others, but even within those, people fear something, and fear it very much, from the days our ancestors worried about being eaten by lions and tigers and bears (oh my) to today, where we might fret over a lost cell signal in stalled traffic on a 100-degree day with broken air conditioning and being late for a meeting with the boss and I'm-gonna-look-like-a-drowned-rag-doll-when-I-get-there, all in about 5 seconds.

Seems at times life is little more than one long sentence punctuated briefly by a comma here and there for us to catch our breath until, at the end, we are out of commas, and out of breath, and God supplies a period.

"It's a Wonderful Life" or "Clarence Meets the 达赖喇嘛"

I recently was able to help a friend and received in return a magnificent gift - a bell from the Dalai Lama (达赖喇嘛) when he visited New York.

This is the Bell from
the Dalai Lama (达赖喇嘛)

You see, "Clarence," my online alter ego, was the angel from It's a Wonderful Life. And you can't be unfamiliar with the line at the end in which it's explained that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.

A pair was granted today.

Sentimentality (which I criticized here➚) can sometimes be something quite different from the groan-inducing patina collected over years of thoughtless use; sometimes it's the substance of the thing, the matrix in which a collective understanding is fixed. It's hard to tell the difference sometimes, but we often apply the word "classic" to instances when most of us most of the time embrace the sentiment rather than groan over it.

Life is indeed wonderful when filled with small treasures like this.