I’m leaving now. I’m ambivalent about it, because there are pluses and minuses to being here in Ontario. In fact, here are some of them:
+ First, I enjoy living with my wife much more than living 2,000 miles away
- I do not enjoy being isolated from the university, people, and other resources that help me do my job. It feels like trying to run a business in Pittsburgh from a tent in the Sierras.
+ It’s only 3 months in the summer
- Then there’s winter… Continue reading →
We had a combined lesson for Priesthood/Relief Society today. The teacher made some very specific claims about the meaning of selected verses in the second chapter of Joel (but not the troublesome verses in between). I agree with some of his assertions, and the rest are not totally beyond the realm of possibility. However, the most obvious interpretations of those verses, in my mind, do not involve the “closet” that the Bride comes out of as a symbol of the Whitmer farm, nor the “pillars of smoke” referring to the Twin Trade Towers. Continue reading →
I watched one of those “create an argument” shows this afternoon. Two hosts. One guest was a business school prof. The other was a guy about 25 years old. The topic was “Generation Y.”
Within about 3 minutes, the “discussion” turned into a complete attack on young people. All 3 of the… um… less young people just jumped down Generation Y’s throat. Gen Y is a bunch of unintelligent, illiterate, entitled, lazy, shiftless… yeah, those words were used. Many times. The 20something responded that today’s youth have different career plans than their parents did, they carry record amounts of student debt, and they learn during college that their degrees are unlikely to help them achieve the jobs they want. In addition, their communication habits, formed in a different education system and shaped by the online environment, can’t be expected to look like their parents’, and they are ambivalent about working for corporations that arguably have damaged the planet, destroyed the social contract, and proven themselves disloyal to their employees.
This, of course, had no effect on the old people, who seemed to become more and more angry that the young guy wasn’t agreeing with their criticisms. I was surprised by a a couple of things:
1 – The sheer vehemence of the old people’s condemnation. There seemed to be no recognition that not all young people are exactly the same, that some of these characteristics might have positive aspects, or that they might be reactions to the current environment. It seemed like an ambush.
2 – The young guy was much more evenhanded and (it seemed to me) rational than the others. He made some excellent points (which I’ve already mentioned), and (as far as I watched) kept his cool under attack.
This kind of all-out generation war is new to me. These shows are notorious for trying to squeeze maximum conflict out of minimal issues, but it was still interesting. It made me think of how I see my students (sometimes I agree with the old people), and it seemed that the old folks were overlooking some facts:
These spoiled, illiterate, ungrateful brats will be busy running the world when we’re busy running out of Depends (TM). Also, recent attempts by the older generation to browbeat or guilt-trip the younger generation into doing things the Fogey Way have been somewhat unsuccessful. So, we can’t stop them from taking over, and we almost certainly can’t turn them into copies of ourselves, now that they’re 23, so…
Maybe instead of increasing their alienation with a generation they are probably seeking the approval of (despite what they say), we should look at who they actually are, and a) take advantage of whatever they bring to the table, b) tailor any last-ditch persuasion efforts (they’re in their 20s…) to who they really are, rather than who we wish they were, and c) try to guess what they will turn the world into, so we can find a way to live in it without going crazy.
(final note: On MST3K right this minute, Crow is saying, “Well, honey, it looks like we spawned a demon seed.” Heh heh).
Serious News: The winds of politics blow strange. After 30 years of Freedom of Information Act requests by watchdog types in the U.S., we’re finally seeing some (inconsistent) compliance. Reports like this account of 1,000+ pages of documented Patriot Act abuses by the FBI being handed over to citizen groups are becoming more common. I submit that scandals such as detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib are part of what has swung the balance.
Meanwhile, in Canada, decades of government and military information freedom is now being throttled, apparently specifically in the area of detainee treatment in Afghanistan. This is not good.
Less Serious News: What could be more awesome than a contest for librarians to pimp out their library carts? I can’t think of many things at all. Pictures here.
1 – Cover the children’s eyes.
2 – Read.
3 – Feel the joy.
4 – My source: Wikiquote.org (although I’ve been a D.P. fan for a while)
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
~ reviewing Atlas Shrugged
It is that word ‘hummy,’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
~ reviewing A. A. Milne’s book in her “Constant Reader” column in The New Yorker
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
~ from Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? (1988) by Marion Meade
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
~ As quoted in Turning Numbers into Knowledge (2001) by Johnathan G. Koomey Continue reading →
I grew up in a conservative American climate. We were Republicans. We opposed tax increases. We were deeply suspicious of Democrats. We favored the U.S. Minding its Own Business. We favored the federal government doing the same, and having as little business as possible. We were against government programs that reduced personal accountability or autonomy. We opposed strong governmental regulation of free enterprise. We considered the Kennedys, communism, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts and modern entertainment to be deeply flawed and possibly evil. Especially the Kennedys.
Patriotism seemed, for a time in childhood, to be inseparable from nationalism (and perhaps tied to Republicanism, for that matter). Early on, however, I found that idea unsatisfactory. Why should I celebrate the piece of land I live in just because I happen to live there, but also expect other people in other lands to admit that my piece of land is the best piece of land, when they clearly have their own pieces of land? This was nothing more than an expanded version of ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation. It was certainly not the lofty spiritual concept its adherents sometimes paint it as, and it never made sense to me. Nationalism is not patriotism. Continue reading →
In the vein of avoiding work, I just read a 1996 Outside article about a truly amazing (in both the positive and negative sense) man in the Eastern Andes of Peru. Excerpt:
Don Benigno Añazco carved his way 36 years deep into the green heart of the Andean forest, founded 14 settlements, abandoned his wife and many children, married his daughter, slew his son-in-law, fought drug peddlers, tamed the wilderness, and reclaimed, as best he could, the Inca Empire. And now I was going to find him. By Kate Wheeler
Lesson #1: don’t mess with Don Benigno Añazco.
Lesson #2: don’t mess with Kate Wheeler.
Lesson #3: special characters like á, ó, ñ, and ü sometimes don’t age well in the www environment.
Ever wonder how to mummify yourself with minimal or no help from your friends? Hint: It takes several years, and reads like a horror story. Click for information on the Sokushinbutsu, who spent the last several years of their lives doing this. So. Freaky.
OK, here’s some sweet swing I found while randomly surfing. The music is (lemme see if I got this right) the Pipkins(?) “Gimme Dat Ding.” The dances are awesome. I can identify some excellent Lindy, some marvelous Balboa, and a little jazzed-up East Coast, but I can’t identify about half the dances. Doesn’t matter. They all look great.
#1: Best… Star Wars… Theme… EVAR. There’s an accordion and they’re from Ontario. Click the mp3 link on the site. You will not be disappointed.
#2: This should have been obvious, so why didn’t I think of it?
#3: Funny note from Fake Steve Jobs, about Microsoft’s recent strategy of paying “journalist” bloggers to plug their products:
…I’m proud to say that here at Apple we don’t pay off bloggers and hacks; we go to the trouble of hypnotizing them. It’s a lot more work, but we think it’s worth it.
Heh.
#4: From PhD Comics. It’s totally the honest truth. I live the life.
So there I was, sitting in my hotel room, feeling sick as a dog in Quebec City, last week, channel surfing and trying to get some work done. And I see Lou Dobbs. He’s “interviewing” a leader of one of the Hispanic immigrant movements who are going to protest in a couple of days. He’s really just haranguing the man. Okay, that’s what Lou Dobbs does. Fine. But he shamelessly took advantage of the guy’s language issues. The guy was obviously bilingual, and had to think for a second before framing his answers (actually, if Lou Dobbs had me in his sights, I’d think carefully before speaking, too–second language or not). That’s just rude.
But even more stupid: the guest answers a question with something about the support that undocumented immigrants give to the economy. Lou interrupts him, starts nearly yelling, and insisting that it’s a known fact that illegal immigrants are a net drain on the economy of the U.S., what with all the social services they use up.
A year ago, I would have wondered. Now, however, I’ve been studying what we know and don’t know about illegal immigrants. The latter category far outweighs the former, not surprisingly. But what little there is out there suggests (pretty strongly) that undocumented immigrants in the U.S. contribute more to the economy than they take from it. Yes, that’s what I said. Few people know that this research is being done, and maybe we’ll find later that it’s different; but that’s the state of the science right now. I don’t think anyone has any evidence to the contrary.
Lou spoke as if he had some kind of special knowledge. Right Wing America probably bought it. He’s full of crap on this particular point, however; and it disturbs me to see someone pretending to be a journalist, while spouting untrue information in the service of making a few preach-to-the-choir boo-ya points with his predictable demographic.
Ass.
And that’s how I end up yelling at televisions in hotels in foreign countries.
This post may sound like a joke, but it’s not. It’s about a song that has given me very bad feelings and sometimes nightmares for 27 years. But I deal with trauma through sarcasm. I recommend the practice to anyone.
I heard the song dozens of times when I was about 10. You know how it is: you learn the lyrics because the tune is catchy, or because it’s always on the family cassette player, and only later do you reflect on what the lyrics actually mean. Continue reading →
Religious & Cultural Iconography – Mexican Souvenir Shop
A large-scale, dedade-long study of abstinence programs in the U.S. has released its final report. The popular press has gotten the main findings right: the programs don’t seem to have any impact on teen sexual behavior. But there are some other interesting things, too: Continue reading →
