So, because life is worse somewhere else we should not want it to be better here? Can we not hold two thoughts simultaneously, being grateful for what we have and also wanting to improve our community, the country and maybe the world? Also, who is he to tell me how I (or anyone) think? If he wrote "many people" or "it seems to me" I'd be more interested, but the quote is a bit too certain to be acceptable, in my view. It strikes me that he is using the system to be quoted, to build his own brand. Meh.
The first half of the first quoted paragraph from Gurri describes the relationship between Trump and his vassals to a T, from what I've seen and read. Even the loyal ones get abused, just to keep them in line and off balance.
But I like Gurri's prescription of courage. We've seen a few great examples of those who summoned their courage in the face of that pocket of un-American tyranny enforced by fear.
NPR published the results of a worldwide happiness summary (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/20/1239537074/u-s-drops-in-new-global-happiness-ranking-one-age-group-bucks-the-trend). The US dropped out of the top 10 except in one category. Those over 60 are happier than the younger set. Why is that the case? Here I confess to not having read the details but my first thought was that I think that as we get older we develop a different set of priorities. Our sense of what really matters shifts to the more important things in our personal lives and we are less preoccupied with earning money, raising a family and worries about our kids and, of course, our parents. No longer being middle aged means no longer being in the middle and having to worry about everything, make that EVERYTHING. We have the luxury of focusing on what really matters. My grandson is searching to find his way, work-wise. However, he wants to come spend a day with me in my workshop. He'll find his way, but he wants to come to my workshop and learn to make a bowl on my lathe! That's cool and serves as an example. His mother may be happy for me, but she must also worry about him in a way I don't. I care, but do not have to hold the worry. So, today I'll spend some time in my workshop and quite possibly I'll take a nap later, while the world around me has little time for either. Life is good.
I listened to a guest speaker at meeting several weeks ago. In many of the schools, they provide a lunch, but don't have utinsels nor an eating bowl, kids provide their own. So the more caring students race to the front of the line and gulp down their food so they can let their friends use their bowl.
I looked at my precinct data last night (we reported out before 8:30pm), and the good news is I wasn't the only one to vote for Nikki! 4 others joined me! 😀
Regarding Bernie Moreno, as of 11pm last night he was leading in every Ohio county. I don't know if that held or not (Cuyahoga County hadn't checked in, which is Dolan's home area).
The Chicago media can't be bothered (at least as far as I could find this morning) reporting the Nikki percentages, because they think the only story is that Trump won by a lot, yawn, now on to dissecting the fine points of the Dem state and local primaries. But according to the AP (one has to drill down quite a bit) Haley got 14.3% and other candidates got 5%. So even though Trump is the presumptive nominee, nearly a fifth of those voting in the GOP primary in Illinois (I won't call them all Republicans) still wanted to use their vote to send a message, even though resistance is supposed to be useless and we will be assimilated.
I looked at my precinct data last night (we reported out before 8:30pm), and the good news is I wasn't the only one to vote for Nikki! 4 others joined me! 😀
Regarding Bernie Moreno, as of 11pm last night he was leading in every Ohio county. I don't know if that held or not (Cuyahoga County hadn't checked in, which is Dolan's home area).
Good morning. Temperature about 40. It’s supposed to be another Indy day. Yesterday’s primary election was won by the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, Bernie Moreno over my pick. Non-Trumpy state senator Matt Dolan. Nikki Haley got something like 14% of the vote.
The mothership today is reporting on the upcoming (and informal) process of choosing the next NATO Secretary General. The LUK question is an interesting one, about the resurgence of classical education in schools, asking if that is a good idea.
In NC alone there are over 100 school systems (one per county, withe a few residual city school systems). Multiply that by the number of high schools, middle and elementary schools in each. Then multiply that by the number of teachers in each school.
Expand that for all 50 states and territories.
There are well run and poorly run schools, and well run and poorly run classes within each school. There is plenty of room for
improvement, and there are individuals that definitely need to get gone, but, respectfully, an across-the-board "hardly seem redeemable" is a bit much.
"Classical education" is a good idea in theory. In practice, like any other theory, it works well for some subset of students if it is executed well. And, like any other theory, it works poorly if it is executed poorly, and it works poorly for some students even if it is executed well.
One problem with our public conversation - and why I'm not really missing TMD - is that asking whether something "is a good idea" generates discussion as if the question were, "Is this the ONLY good idea?" I think that's because, "It's good for some people in some situations," doesn't provide any basis for argument, because it's obviously true while leaving the field clear for many other things to be true.
In the past, numerous people have told them. My conclusion is that a badly-phrased question, asking people to opine in broad strokes or to predict the future, generates more site engagement and is intentionally chosen.
Others have said that is not a kind evaluation, but I think it's more respectful of people to treat them as if they're acting intentionally than to treat them as if they're too silly to understand what they're doing. The writers are elite-credentialled adults: I feel that I must assume they are capable of generating a good question if they wished to.
A poor teacher will screw up the best of ideas. The best of teachers will work with any idea and hep students truly learn, but they will have less to work with if the theory is not good.
I almost completely agree. The best teacher still has to work with whatever the student population is, and the students have agency and their own agendas, too.
D is a little down in the mouth about her team's having done just pretty good yesterday (13th out of 32 teams) as opposed to good, quite good, or excellent. On the other hand, when it was time to study harder, she didn't want to study harder. Wishing you'd gotten a better outcome without doing more work is very common for a child!
Perhaps being down in the mouth is a sign that a lesson is being learned about causes and effects. It is also an opportunity to discover techniques to improve one's own mood rather than expect others to fix it for you by making the thing you are unhappy with go away.
"Fear strips away humanity and leaves behind a panicked animal, hoping only to survive. Fear demands obedience, conformity, sycophancy ..."
This describes the atmosphere behind the scenes in my church right now. My friend the communications coordinator said that when Assistant Pastor walks into the office and closes the door, she just looks at her desk and mumbles, "Yes," or "You're right," until he wears himself out and leaves. There doesn't have to be a risk of death or injury or deportation or confiscation of goods for our viscera to react with the "freeze, flight, or fight" instinct, which mainly means "freeze" in the kinds of environments where a Southern lady experiences abuse.
Although I find the idea that either of our American political parties is a major threat of legal tyranny on the Russian model to be overblown, I think the urge is there. They want to be tyrants, they want to control everyone: they just don't have the mechanisms.
Trump is a tyrant over his own lackeys. Seriously. There are so many instances in which what I know of the situation suggests he is abusive toward all of them, even the ones on his good side. This is part of his mechanism for control. I think it will be cathartic when one day (I hope sooner rather than later) these stories come out. But I have already been able to connect the dots.
When charm and persuasion fail, there’s always brute force and exercise of raw power. Since our politics is more about expressing disdain and hatred, it seems almost the inescapable turn of events.
Those who want to control have a natural advantage over those who want to be left alone. Those who are willing to mistreat others have a natural advantage over those who are more decent, or who are conditioned to respect even illegitimate uses of authority.
At the end of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," as a government is forming that, with the "best of intentions," will have the power to make people conform to the norms chosen by those who happen to be in the government, the protagonist asks, "Are food riots too big a price to just let people be?"
It's the libertarian tragedy: All you want is to be left alone, but you end up needing tyranny because others don't want to leave you alone.
Good morning. E and F are shuffling around and will be leaving by 7:30, I hope. They have a notion of stopping at Taco Bell to pick up Second Breakfast on their way to Envirothon.
I have done enough inadvertent experiments in which I got so involved in something I missed lunch and then got very hungry at an inconvenient time. "Eat a big breakfast" or "have something mid-morning just in case" were what I learned to do when preparing for that kind of day.
I told E he could use my credit card to get gas, but not at Taco Bell. Even a rushed drive-through employee might observe a conflict between the name and the boy.
High School Envirothon results: F and the Girls were 2nd, and the Tall Boys, featuring the eponymous Son E, were first!!!
Our arch-rivals from Davidson County Homeschool were shocked to be 3rd.
Well done!
Nicely done! Congrats!
So, because life is worse somewhere else we should not want it to be better here? Can we not hold two thoughts simultaneously, being grateful for what we have and also wanting to improve our community, the country and maybe the world? Also, who is he to tell me how I (or anyone) think? If he wrote "many people" or "it seems to me" I'd be more interested, but the quote is a bit too certain to be acceptable, in my view. It strikes me that he is using the system to be quoted, to build his own brand. Meh.
Agree on " if he wrote 'many people...". I know more people who are baffled and alarmed by the herd-types than are part of the herd.
It might have something to do with hanging around retired people, musicians and blacksmiths. And the children of those folks.
The first half of the first quoted paragraph from Gurri describes the relationship between Trump and his vassals to a T, from what I've seen and read. Even the loyal ones get abused, just to keep them in line and off balance.
But I like Gurri's prescription of courage. We've seen a few great examples of those who summoned their courage in the face of that pocket of un-American tyranny enforced by fear.
NPR published the results of a worldwide happiness summary (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/20/1239537074/u-s-drops-in-new-global-happiness-ranking-one-age-group-bucks-the-trend). The US dropped out of the top 10 except in one category. Those over 60 are happier than the younger set. Why is that the case? Here I confess to not having read the details but my first thought was that I think that as we get older we develop a different set of priorities. Our sense of what really matters shifts to the more important things in our personal lives and we are less preoccupied with earning money, raising a family and worries about our kids and, of course, our parents. No longer being middle aged means no longer being in the middle and having to worry about everything, make that EVERYTHING. We have the luxury of focusing on what really matters. My grandson is searching to find his way, work-wise. However, he wants to come spend a day with me in my workshop. He'll find his way, but he wants to come to my workshop and learn to make a bowl on my lathe! That's cool and serves as an example. His mother may be happy for me, but she must also worry about him in a way I don't. I care, but do not have to hold the worry. So, today I'll spend some time in my workshop and quite possibly I'll take a nap later, while the world around me has little time for either. Life is good.
I think it’s because we experienced the 80s…I loved the 80s.
I listened to a guest speaker at meeting several weeks ago. In many of the schools, they provide a lunch, but don't have utinsels nor an eating bowl, kids provide their own. So the more caring students race to the front of the line and gulp down their food so they can let their friends use their bowl.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but perhaps caring is the other parent.
I looked at my precinct data last night (we reported out before 8:30pm), and the good news is I wasn't the only one to vote for Nikki! 4 others joined me! 😀
Regarding Bernie Moreno, as of 11pm last night he was leading in every Ohio county. I don't know if that held or not (Cuyahoga County hadn't checked in, which is Dolan's home area).
The Chicago media can't be bothered (at least as far as I could find this morning) reporting the Nikki percentages, because they think the only story is that Trump won by a lot, yawn, now on to dissecting the fine points of the Dem state and local primaries. But according to the AP (one has to drill down quite a bit) Haley got 14.3% and other candidates got 5%. So even though Trump is the presumptive nominee, nearly a fifth of those voting in the GOP primary in Illinois (I won't call them all Republicans) still wanted to use their vote to send a message, even though resistance is supposed to be useless and we will be assimilated.
I looked at my precinct data last night (we reported out before 8:30pm), and the good news is I wasn't the only one to vote for Nikki! 4 others joined me! 😀
Regarding Bernie Moreno, as of 11pm last night he was leading in every Ohio county. I don't know if that held or not (Cuyahoga County hadn't checked in, which is Dolan's home area).
Good morning. Temperature about 40. It’s supposed to be another Indy day. Yesterday’s primary election was won by the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, Bernie Moreno over my pick. Non-Trumpy state senator Matt Dolan. Nikki Haley got something like 14% of the vote.
The mothership today is reporting on the upcoming (and informal) process of choosing the next NATO Secretary General. The LUK question is an interesting one, about the resurgence of classical education in schools, asking if that is a good idea.
Classical ed might be a good idea, even if public schools hardly seem redeemable at this point…
In NC alone there are over 100 school systems (one per county, withe a few residual city school systems). Multiply that by the number of high schools, middle and elementary schools in each. Then multiply that by the number of teachers in each school.
Expand that for all 50 states and territories.
There are well run and poorly run schools, and well run and poorly run classes within each school. There is plenty of room for
improvement, and there are individuals that definitely need to get gone, but, respectfully, an across-the-board "hardly seem redeemable" is a bit much.
That’s fair.
I hope I didn't come across as snippy. That was not my intent.
No. My diatribe on the matter is probably a bit superficial at this point.
"Classical education" is a good idea in theory. In practice, like any other theory, it works well for some subset of students if it is executed well. And, like any other theory, it works poorly if it is executed poorly, and it works poorly for some students even if it is executed well.
One problem with our public conversation - and why I'm not really missing TMD - is that asking whether something "is a good idea" generates discussion as if the question were, "Is this the ONLY good idea?" I think that's because, "It's good for some people in some situations," doesn't provide any basis for argument, because it's obviously true while leaving the field clear for many other things to be true.
You should bring that to their attention. I find the phrasing of the question irritatingly juvenile most of the time.
In the past, numerous people have told them. My conclusion is that a badly-phrased question, asking people to opine in broad strokes or to predict the future, generates more site engagement and is intentionally chosen.
Others have said that is not a kind evaluation, but I think it's more respectful of people to treat them as if they're acting intentionally than to treat them as if they're too silly to understand what they're doing. The writers are elite-credentialled adults: I feel that I must assume they are capable of generating a good question if they wished to.
A poor teacher will screw up the best of ideas. The best of teachers will work with any idea and hep students truly learn, but they will have less to work with if the theory is not good.
I almost completely agree. The best teacher still has to work with whatever the student population is, and the students have agency and their own agendas, too.
Excellent point. You’re exceptionally profound this morning!
Agreed.
Thank you. Some days the brain works.
D is a little down in the mouth about her team's having done just pretty good yesterday (13th out of 32 teams) as opposed to good, quite good, or excellent. On the other hand, when it was time to study harder, she didn't want to study harder. Wishing you'd gotten a better outcome without doing more work is very common for a child!
Perhaps being down in the mouth is a sign that a lesson is being learned about causes and effects. It is also an opportunity to discover techniques to improve one's own mood rather than expect others to fix it for you by making the thing you are unhappy with go away.
For "comfort," I offered, "You could have studied more, but it's okay. You learned some things, had fun, and made a new friend."
I think Martin Gurri is right, and yet ...
"Fear strips away humanity and leaves behind a panicked animal, hoping only to survive. Fear demands obedience, conformity, sycophancy ..."
This describes the atmosphere behind the scenes in my church right now. My friend the communications coordinator said that when Assistant Pastor walks into the office and closes the door, she just looks at her desk and mumbles, "Yes," or "You're right," until he wears himself out and leaves. There doesn't have to be a risk of death or injury or deportation or confiscation of goods for our viscera to react with the "freeze, flight, or fight" instinct, which mainly means "freeze" in the kinds of environments where a Southern lady experiences abuse.
Although I find the idea that either of our American political parties is a major threat of legal tyranny on the Russian model to be overblown, I think the urge is there. They want to be tyrants, they want to control everyone: they just don't have the mechanisms.
Trump is a tyrant over his own lackeys. Seriously. There are so many instances in which what I know of the situation suggests he is abusive toward all of them, even the ones on his good side. This is part of his mechanism for control. I think it will be cathartic when one day (I hope sooner rather than later) these stories come out. But I have already been able to connect the dots.
When charm and persuasion fail, there’s always brute force and exercise of raw power. Since our politics is more about expressing disdain and hatred, it seems almost the inescapable turn of events.
Those who want to control have a natural advantage over those who want to be left alone. Those who are willing to mistreat others have a natural advantage over those who are more decent, or who are conditioned to respect even illegitimate uses of authority.
At the end of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," as a government is forming that, with the "best of intentions," will have the power to make people conform to the norms chosen by those who happen to be in the government, the protagonist asks, "Are food riots too big a price to just let people be?"
It's the libertarian tragedy: All you want is to be left alone, but you end up needing tyranny because others don't want to leave you alone.
That is one of my all-time favorite books.
I read it many times in my teens and 20s.
I re-read it at least once a decade.
I should check the library catalog.
I didn't know you read Heinlein! He was one of my favorite SF authors in college.
I did, and high school and college was the time I read his books.
So true.
Good morning. E and F are shuffling around and will be leaving by 7:30, I hope. They have a notion of stopping at Taco Bell to pick up Second Breakfast on their way to Envirothon.
Hmmmmm. Is today's Envirothon task to create methane?
Sometimes you need to do the experiments on yourself.
I have done enough inadvertent experiments in which I got so involved in something I missed lunch and then got very hungry at an inconvenient time. "Eat a big breakfast" or "have something mid-morning just in case" were what I learned to do when preparing for that kind of day.
I told E he could use my credit card to get gas, but not at Taco Bell. Even a rushed drive-through employee might observe a conflict between the name and the boy.