The Bounty Of Salvage

Check out this score - disinterred from my MIL's library:



That's right, a 1954 edition printing one of his early books, first published I believe in 1927.

Check out the price in the upper left corner - a whopping 50 cents! [I had mistakenly thought every thing back then was *a nickel*...]

Fifty-five years later it's on Amazon for $8.00.

So what's that? 5.17% in compound annual inflation? (Check my math you Captious wannabes!)

And within the book was also this *artifact*:



So 55 years ago a yearly, discounted, subscription to SI could be had for a whopping $4!

The best deal I can find today, in 2009, is a year of the worthless magazine for $39.

Obviously, Will Durant's work has appreciated more (16x) over the past 5.5 decades than Sports Illustrated (9.75x)!

The Story of Philosophy was Durant's first book, and since he labored for another 40-50 years, I highly doubt it represents his best work. But still, I believe *philosophy* was in fact Will's wheelhouse. So I look forward to perusing it at my leisure. Recall I've read The Story of Civilization in its entirety - an accomplishment West Coast Tom says I can now append to my resumé!

Here's a Durant quote from his Foundation's website which I may or may not have already reproduced on this blog:

It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts - between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks.

I could never recommend Will Durant enough. The man had more of an effect on my intellectual development than the rest of my *educators* combined!

For my master Durant link - click here.

It's Not Just A Trend?

Here's an excerpt I just read from Will Durant's The Story of Civilization - Our Oriental Heritage,

If the sense of beauty is not strong in primitive society it may be because the lack of delay between sexual desire and fulfillment gives no time for that imaginative enhancement of the object which makes so much of the object’s beauty. Primitive man seldom thinks of selecting women because of what we should call their beauty; he thinks rather of their usefulness, and never dreams of rejecting a strong-armed bride because of her ugliness. The Indian chief, being asked which of his wives was loveliest, apologized for never having thought of the matter. “Their faces,” he said, with the mature wisdom of a Franklin, “might be more or less handsome, but in other respects women are all the same.” Where a sense of beauty is present in primitive man it sometimes eludes us by being so different from our own. “All Negro races that I know,” says Reichard, “account woman beautiful who is not constricted at the waist, and when the body from the arm-pits to the hips is the same breadth – ‘like a ladder,’ says the Coast Negro.” Elephantine ears and an overhanging stomach are feminine charms to some African males; and throughout Africa it is the fat woman who is accounted loveliest. In Nigeria, says Mungo Park, “corpulence and beauty seem to be terms nearly synonymous. A woman of even moderate pretensions must be one who cannot walk without a slave under each arm to support her; and a perfect beauty is a load for a camel.” “Most savages,” says Briffault, “have a preference for what we should regard as one of the most unsightly features in a woman’s form, namely, long, hanging breasts.” It is well known,” says Darwin, “that with many Hottentot women the posterior part of the body projects in a wonderful manner…; and Sir Andrew Smith is certain that this peculiarity is greatly admired by the men. He once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope… According to Burton the Somali men are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line, and by picking her out who projects furthest a tergo. Nothing can be more hateful to a Negro then the opposite form.”



Line them up and choose a tergo?

Boy, talk about a "meat market"!!!

A tergo is Latin for "at or toward the back; from behind; in the rear."

Will Durant wrote this book in 1935 and of course he sourced others from preceding centuries. All along my untutored mind figured that Sir Mix-a-Lot had started a trend!!!

Green Fascism at Harvard

Harvard is a truly disgusting place. Will Durant has tossed about an expression - "the scourge of half-educated youth" - which couldn't be a more apt description of the wretched student body combined, of course, with the Harvard "faculty".

The student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, recently ran a little green Inquisition. It sought to expose all faculty members for their choice of automotive transportation. First read some of the excerpts:

The Harvard Showroom Is Open

In Faculty, hybrids are popular, but Subarus take the cake; in VES, there's even a Suburban

What happens when an academic must descend from the highest reaches of the Ivory Tower and, well, buy a car?

The Crimson surveyed the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ wheels this semester and came to a few tentative conclusions: Priuses are common, suspected Porsche owners don’t want to be interviewed, and, as for the most academic of automobiles? It’s the Subaru Forester.

Taken together, the roster of cars—and other modes of transport—employed by Harvard professors sheds a bit of light on the Faculty’s distinctive character: part snooty and part down-to-earth, part self-conscious and part green-conscious. None of those attributes, it turns out, are mutually exclusive.

GREEN ON THE RISE

"I drive a Chevy," John R. Stilgoe proclaims. “It makes me sound like a common man.” The famously quirky visual and environmental studies professor says his black ’96 Suburban helps him blend into rural America on his annual summer field trips into the heartland.

He’s also quick to note that he doesn’t actually drive his massive SUV (city fuel economy: 11-12 miles per gallon) to campus—just from his house south of Boston to a train station. "If you reduce your carbon footprint at the house, you can drive whatever you want," Stilgoe says.

As for luxury cars, the 223 professors who responded to the survey seemed a bit hesitant to reveal that they owned them. One of the few who did, historian Sugata Bose, said in an e-mail: "I am not sure I should reveal this information to a Crimson reporter, but I drive a BMW 325xi. I hope very much that Harvard students will approve."



Oh, where to start. Everything about Harvard is ludicrous; every little story, incident, heck even the diction (e.g. heteronormative) emanating from Harvardians provides springboards to a bottomless pit of blog material - sort of akin to the New York Times.

The entire premise reeks of arrogance. Why is anyone's car the business of a student newspaper? Where's the liberality? What happened to the concept of pro-choice? Where's the right to privacy? Killing an unborn baby is nobody's concern, but the fuel efficiency of one's car is...???

Now take for instance this bottomhole, professor John R. Stilgoe, who is spotlighted as a token driver of an earth-heating Suburban. The guy is not even really an outlier in that he is "quick to note that he doesn’t actually drive his massive SUV (city fuel economy: 11-12 miles per gallon) to campus..."

So even the gas guzzler owner is a staunch environmentalist. Or at least he is AFRAID to say that burning gas is not a crime against the galaxy. Tell those little pissant Inquisitors what they want to hear!

The jerk also says that driving a Chevy makes him sound like a common man. That it helps him blend in rural America. Note that he is NOT a common man...he only sounds that way to the undiscerning. I am sorry, but this idea about blending in in rural American bespeaks supreme arrogance. You'd think an über-educated man with his vast stores of knowledge would be able to easily wend his way through Nebraska. You'd think he wouldn't need a costume to do whatever BS, tax-payer funded research it is that he does. They make it like Red State America is on another planet; ivory tower professors had best don spacesuits when condescending upon NASCAR country. Believe me, the most chauvinistic, self-unconscious bigots are to be found on college campuses like Harvard. And of course they masquerade as "liberals", "progressives", and crusaders for "diversity". They literally see 40%-50% of Americans as ignorant rubes - as mere commoners.

The dimly lit journalists of today's Big Media are remarkable for their inability to in any way challenge clichéd answers. Feed them a line (that strikes the right chords) and they will move on to the next, scripted question. It's apparent from how they swallowed Prof. Stilgoe's balderdash, that these aspirant little Commie journalists are just as incompetent as their incumbent peers at the New York Times, CNN, etc.

If they were really concerned about burnt gasoline raping Father Nature, they'd have pressed Stilgoe about his rural jaunts. How does a Harvard student not understand that a Suburban driven all over rural American IS NOT OFFSET by short trips to a commuting train station the two days a week, and seven months a year, a professor pontificates on campus. Do they not realize how far rural America is from Boston? A roundtrip to Manhattan is 470 miles from Stilgoe's house, that's about 40 gallons of gas right there - and rural America still ain't even close to the Big Apple.

So I googled this Stilgoe guy and let's just say he is one whacked-out dude. Look at the ridiculous, made-up courses he teaches.

I was about to send him an antagonistic email but found this on his website.



It reads "no" on email. What an advanced, progressive sort of guy we have here teaching at Harvard! Maybe I will drop by his house in nearby Norwell. If someone competent and documented will watch my kids for less than $15 per hour, then I promise to pay the professor, what should be, a very entertaining visit.

And mind you, this is the only professor with the gumption to own a real "SUV". Clearly he lacks the pebbles to say, "Hey, listen you little snot-nosed twenty year-old wannabe journalist, I'll drive whatever the hell I want..."



More from the Crimson:

The Crimson surveyed the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ wheels this semester and came to a few tentative conclusions: Priuses are common, suspected Porsche owners don’t want to be interviewed, and, as for the most academic of automobiles? It’s the Subaru Forester.

Forester ownership transcends the disciplines, from anthropology to African American studies and from English to history—with at least 15 FAS Forester owners in all. "Half of Cambridge" drives the $22,000-and-up cross between a station wagon and an SUV, anthropologist Theodore C. Bestor muses.

Now I don't consider the Subaru Forester an SUV - at least for Harvard people. Here's why, it is a Gay-Mobile. Go google it, it is the number one, most popular vehicle in the gay community. So while the geeks at the Harvard Crimson have outed it as the most popular car for demigods on campus, in my book, it doesn't really count.

For one thing, it's likely pure cover. Hypocrites that want the space and comfort of a larger car figure they can buy the Gay-Mobile and stave off criticism. Obviously the ruse works and it reminds us that, all mocking aside, Harvard professors aren't completely stupid.

Just the other day, at my local library, I pulled up next to a Subaru Forester. I would never have taken any notice if I weren't in the middle of writing this post. On the bumper was a sticker that read, "Love is all it takes to make a family". Aha!

On my way into the building, I held the door open for two incredibly wide, short-haired, earring-less women who were exiting with a small child. Of course, they got right into the Forrester.

And this brings me back to Prof Stigloe. I wanted to ask him if he was really lying more to the Crimson or to himself. Does he in fact give a hoot about environmentalist nonsense or is he kidding himself about why he really drives the Suburban? I'll bet he drives it for the same reason I do. It is an awesome ride. It's more comfortable than my living room furniture. Perhaps he cloaks his true feelings with this elitist crap about blending into rural America. But more likely, he just doesn't feel like taking cross-country trips in an uncomfortable, tiny lawnmower of a vehicle.

I don't blame him. Once you get used to a Suburban, driving any other car feels like a Flintstone mobile. Then again, there may be no genuine dishonesty - he may just be a flat-out, self-justifying hypocrite. With all the deflection going on, it's just too hard to tell and really quite beside the point.



Okay, so here's the secret, if you want to teach at Harvard and drive in comfort, then hide behind empathy for gays. If you want to drive a globe-heating Suburban, tell the pissant Crimson reporter that you need it for your field research - you know, to blend in with the lumpen masses. Even though these kiddie Inquisitors have dubious standing in the first place, and are obviously short on brains, they'll be sure to approve of the morally superior tack and the bigotry towards the common man.

As for these professors I ask:

Where's your integrity? Where's the intellectual honesty? ¿Dondé están los cohones?

Reporters also spotted at least four Porsches across campus. Various attempts to figure out who owned them were unsuccessful. Chemistry professor Stuart L. Schreiber, the subject of a 1994 Crimson profile that featured his Porsche, would not comment for this article.

Why are Porche driving professors afraid to tell the little sh*t reporters that they will drive whatever the bleep they want to drive?

As for luxury cars, the 223 professors who responded to the survey seemed a bit hesitant to reveal that they owned them. One of the few who did, historian Sugata Bose, said in an e-mail: "I am not sure I should reveal this information to a Crimson reporter, but I drive a BMW 325xi. I hope very much that Harvard students will approve."

He hopes the students "approve"????

This is insane. It's the students who should, at least theoretically, logically, and historically, be seeking approval from the professors.

Let me get this straight. Harvard students, who hemorrhage $50,000 of taxpayer and parental money EACH YEAR, are questioning the propriety of owning a $50,000 car that a grown adult buys with his own earned income???

Anyway, why should I defend these professors? They obviously treat the students like customers (who are never wrong) with their pandering, grade inflation, and whatnot. The prof's lack the fortitude to defend themselves. They lack the brains and/or stomach to stand up to Cambridge groupthink. From where I sit, they barely merit any respect, even from the little pissants of the Harvard Crimson. In essence, the teachers are really just aged students themselves - and are even more demented. They're crazier because they've been in the Cambridge echo-system a whole lot longer.

I don't quite know what to do with the dizzying arrogance of Harvard students. They are mere children. They have never worked in the real world. They have never paid any taxes or any household bills. They've never procreated. They've never served in the military. Collectively they haven't done anything that history has adjudged to be within the domain of adulthood.

Their sense of moral superiority coudn't be more baseless or more nauseating.



No doubt soon the Crimson reporters will be following professors into bathrooms, noting how much paper they use and how many gallons they flush.

The "scourge of half-educated youth"?

Even for Harvard, Will Durant may have overestimated the fraction.

Self-Rebutting Morons

"Noah's Ark", built on Mount Ararat to attract world leaders' attention to global warming, will be inaugurated for public visits.

As a part of the project prepared by Greenpeace, a ship similar to Noah's Ark has been constructed on the mountain - thought to be the location where Noah's Ark finally touched dry land.

The wooden ship will be ten meters long, four meters wide and four meters in height.

"We are in front of a second universal flood. But it is not yet too late. If all the nations of the World make a turn in favor of environment one will be able to avoid the catastrophe," indicated Andree Behling, Greenpeace expert in energy." "The politicians must assume their responsibilities and cannot continue to look at a world threatened to be submerged by the tides, the storms and floods, while hundreds of thousands people lose their houses, while plants and animals disappear by the diseases and dryness," he said. (link)

The quartet of irony, hypocrisy, ignorance, and stupidity, even if each raised to the n-th degree, could not adequately describe Climate Change Morons.

When did modern scientists start touting biblical tales of creationism? What happened to the Big Bang Theory and Darwinism?

Is "climate change" alarmism a science or a religion? If it's a science, when do they need to invoke the religious metaphor of Noah?

(Answer: it's really all about deception!)

The fact remains, every civilization throughout history has had doomsayers warning of cataclysmic flooding. Furthermore, they have always blamed it on human iniquity. So despite millennia of scientific discovery and innovation, today's experts have nothing more than an age-old popular myth.

These days I am partial to historically-based arguments and wisdom. Read what Will Durant wrote over 70 years ago to put today's fears of "climate change" into proper focus:

"Even more universal was the story of the Flood; hardly an ancient people went without it, and hardly a mountain in Asia but had given perch to some water-wearied Noah or Shamash-napishtim. Usually these legends were the popular vehicle or allegory of a philosophical judgment or a moral attitude summarizing long racial experience – that sex and knowledge bring more grief than joy, and that human life is periodically threatened by floods, - i.e., ruinous inundations of the great rivers whose waters made possible the earliest known civilizations. To ask whether these stories were true or false, whether they “really happened,” would be to put a trivial and superficial question; their substance, of course, is not the tales they tell but the judgments they convey."

That last line really is the crux of the pathology, "...but the judgments they convey."



Noah's Ark is a self-discrediting argument - most especially coming from today's scientists. Greenpeace is trying to invoke history to buttress their alarmism when in fact, history exposes "climate change" as just another in a long line of scaremongering hoaxes.

This would be like saying that O.J. Simpson's acquittal PROVES that murderers are often falsely accused.

Where are those "real killers" anyway?

What If I'm Wrong?

How many among us suffer personal criticism without plugging our ears, closing our eyes, putting our hands up, or taking other *defensive* measures - that is if we don't flee the scene altogether?

My guru Will Durant touched upon this when he posited, "Nothing is more unpopular to say than the truth."

Yet in much of the homeschooling literature I have been reading, I've had to bear substantial, direct criticism of some of my methodologies - from people whose opinions I've grown to respect a great deal.

Many in the homeschooling world insist:

• Not to correct or criticize children.
• Not to use *incentives* EVER.
• Not to spank/hit the misbehaving brats.
• Not to force or EVEN SUGGEST curricula.

I do ALL of the above.

I yell at my kids all day long - for disobedience, for lackluster concentration on *seat-work*, when they fight,....

I dangle dessert, going to the park, and even larger prizes like new Knex sets for completing *their work* (i.e. Kumon books)

My kids get a pointed dose of my right hand probably several times a week.

And yes, there is an aggressive, parentally-chosen curriculum in this household at the moment.

My critics say that yelling and hitting teaches kids nothing except that *force* is a legitimate determinant of right and wrong.

They insist that rewarding educational goals achieved will keep my kids from ever truly valuing learning in and of itself; that it will prevent them from becoming life-long learners, just as testing-obsessed, factory schools did to most of us.

Lucky for me, most of these critics can be neatly categorized as *extreme unschoolers*. We all know how much easier it is to discard a well-wrapped bundle!

But I'll do my best to keep an open-mind; I will remain ever-vigilant of these other theories because....

The last thing I want to do is mess up my dear children.

When I'm wrong, I hope to see the signs quickly, admit it, and change course.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Last summer, my wife was on maternity leave, so we had the glory of an 8-week summer in the Hamptons. (I packed up my PC and traded the markets between laps in the pool and cervezas).

One night back then, I grabbed a random book off my mother-in-law's bookshelf titled The Age of Louis XIV. And so it began, my 16 month fling with Will Durant.

I am proud to say that now, less than 1.5 years later, I have finished the entire 11 volumes of Durant's - The Story of Civilization - all 8,945 pages of little type and big insight. I vowed to get through them by the end of the year and did so by powering through the last book over the weekend. Now I just have to type up my notes.

So I figure to have more time to devote to this blog - perhaps starting next week. Both of my sitters called out "sick" this week. They are "sick" so much I should just fire them. But then again, firing no-show babysitters is kind of like subprime borrowers "losing" their home (when they have negative equity to begin with).

But I am thinking about getting rid of the sitters altogether. I don't really think they improve my trading or my chi. And I kind of enjoy the time with my kids. If I do "fire" them, this blog will be kaput for a while UNLESS I start to get up at 4am.

Anyway...

The snow just started. They are predicting at least a foot. Supposedly it's going to accumulate at a rate of 3 inches per hour at some point.

My son's "teacher" at the local community center asked me today if I had gone to the grocery store yet. I laughed and reminded her that "that is what your generation does".

I did drive by Stop&Shop just thereafter and it was so packed that you couldn't even turn into the parking lot. So there's probably no milk, bread, and eggs left anyway. (link)

Better Blogging Chronicles 12 - Facebook

I may be late to the party, but that's immaterial.

I've been researching Facebook as a marketing tool lately - mostly for HomeschoolDad.com - and have decided that it can provide some utility to this here blog.

I've set up a Marginalizing Morons Fan Page where I will start posting *supplemental content*.

It'll mostly be short blurbs, knee-slapping pics, and other morsels of my unparalleled sophomoric sense of humor.

In order to see this stuff you'll have to log into Headbook, click on my link above, and then LIKE my fan page.

I believe that once you *like* my page....that my updates should theoretically stream into your Facebook news-feed.  Although I'm hearing from some people that this isn't an automatic by any stretch; that without sufficient *interaction* Facebook's algorithm might not stream updates all the time, or to every fan.  Whatever.  We shall see.

This really is sort of a split-test. If I find that the blog is getting some traction from Headbook....I may strategically alter my posting. Also, there are some rumbles out there that if anything, Headbook will help my *backlinks* (for Google search rankings).

I understand that many of my most loyal readers are actually *haters* and wouldn't dare LIKE my site in full view of their *friends*. For them, reading my site is akin to sneaking a peak at g@y kiddie p0rn!

Believe me....I totally understand. We were out with our new, good friends here on Long Island last night for New Year's...

Somehow they got wind that I had a *blog*.

But despite passionate pleading, neither my wife nor I would divulge the name of it. NO BLEEPIN' WAY!

Even though I've toned down my harshly judgmental, screed-ish posts over the years most Morons are still highly insensitive to ideas that contradict their *firmly held beliefs*.

As Will Durant quipped, "There's nothing more unpopular to say than the truth"!

And, while you're logged into Headbook.com....please LIKE my HomeschoolDad Fan Page too. Thanks!

Here are previous 11 installments of Better Blogging Chronicles.

New Quotes, Finally

I've updated the *Random Quotable Nuggets* on the upper right-hand margin.

The new ones are Will Durant-laden, with particular emphasis on the fall of Rome. As y'all will see, the contemporary parallels are flat-out scary.

BTW, that *page element* is not a daily quote; it is as advertised. Refresh the web page and the quote will change. Sit there all day hitting F5 and commit them all to memory if you have nothing better to do.

For some reason the HTML coding I am using limits the number of quotes in my array. Otherwise I'd input my entire stored batch which is quite lengthy. If any of you kids are fluent with programming and can help me out, shoot me an email so I can send you what I'm working with. The first one to fix my problem wins a free CaptiousNut bobblehead doll!

Wealth Gap OR Reality Gap?

It was a conspiracy to get them arrested too. Seriously!

From Forbes:

Justin Brown, who was quick to point-out that Occupy Wall Street has no spokesman, described the standoff and mass arrests yesterday: "There was more or less an overt or calculated effort to block traffic as the group was entering the walkway over the Brooklyn Bridge. A legal volunteer with the National Lawyers Guide saw an undercover officer in that area leave a squad-car, join the protests, and go with the group over, probably in the process verbally encouraging protesters to enter the roadway. After a significant number had entered, [NYPD] blocked it from the back, blocked it from the front, then brought in the paddy-wagons and arrested, I think the number is over 700 so far.


When asked if he thought undercover NYPD were purposely infiltrating and agitating protesters, Brown answered emphatically, "No question, no question. I don’t know if they’re hunting for terrorists or encouraging any particularly violent behavior but I think, on a small scale, if you can encourage someone to go onto the streets where you’re not supposed to, then that gives you the opportunity to come in with the handcuffs."

As regular readers well know, I don't usually follow the din of contemporary news. In fact I barely skim these headlines even though these whack-jobs are camped out on the front door of my wife's office in Lower Manhattan.

I faintly heard that they were protesting *global warming*, *corporate greed*, and *inequality*. I also heard that it's a status quo protest FOR the re-election of the current President - which is not a little bit funny!

Well nominally at least they are mad at Wall Street. But of course their anger is non-sensical.

Wall Street is actually a creation of the socialists of yesteryear. Seriously.

If it weren't for the wholly un-Constitutional income tax in the first place (redistribution)....there wouldn't be the 401k exemption which all but forces average folk to blindly dump money into the stock market each month. It's precisely that *dumb money* that has turned Wall Street (i.e. the 'skim biz') into the frothy gold mine that it is.

With this government-mandated funnel....average people wouldn't be Moronically buying mutual funds, preyed upon by interested financial advisers, fretting over every tick in the indices and Wall Street would essentially be nothing more than an off-the-radar, private casino for rich people.

Believe me, I understand the anger. There's a whole lot of scheming and thievin' going on at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, AIG, and many other politically connected financial entities.

But it's friggin Obama who's forking over billions of taxpayer money to bailout large banks these past 3 years. He's the one monetizing/inflating the stock, bond, and commodity markets and in the process spectacularly enriching Wall Street.

And recall it was Obama who was elected by the wealthy and by Wall Street too!

Rightfully these trust funders should be BLAMING THEMSELVES (and their hippy ancestors).

On protesting *inequality*....I would like to highlight a slammin' quote from my boy Will Durant:

But I will not say that revolution is never justified. But we have learned, through the experience accumulated and transmitted by our undying hierarchy, that after every overturn there will soon again be masters and men, rich and relatively poor. We are born unequal, and every new invention, every added complexity of life or thought, increases the gap between the simple and the clever, the weak and the strong. Those hopeful revolutionists talked of liberty, and equality, and fraternity. But these idols never get along together. If you establish equality you let natural inequalities multiply into artificial inequalities; and to check these you have to restrain liberty; so your utopias of freedom sometimes become straitjackets of despotism, and in the turmoil fraternity becomes only a phrase.

I did let the *global warming* bit slide because it's been well covered in the past.

In summary, these LOSERS are against the people, policies, and institutions THEY have voted for; they are against Father Nature, human nature, economic laws...

I myself would not be surprised if tomorrow night they held a candlelight vigil protesting the ever-heartless and chauvinistic *force of gravity*!

Must Be Messing Up Our Kids!

Just this week...

Someone, a repeat (childless!) offender, insinuated that my wife and I weren't emphasizing *multilingualism* in our homeschooling.

Then, a couple days later, another in-chimer told me I should bring my kids to his neighborhood in Harlem so my kids could *experience diversity*.

AND just yesterday my father calls up, asks what we were doing on that *nice, warm day* and interjected before I could even answer, "I HOPE YOU ARE TAKING IT EASY ON THOSE KIDS....AND LETTING THEM GO OUTSIDE."

Of course my father specializes in *taking it easy* so he was simply projecting his priorities - as the others were.

And, not for anything, but there's hardly any *intellectual diversity* in Harlem or anywhere else in NYC.

E.g:

I am indeed always looking for new educational ideas and perspectives....but this week I couldn't help but be reminded of Will Durant's zinger:

"Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done."

As always, y'all can see how *messed up* our kids are at their blogs (see the right-hand margin) and at HomeschoolDad.com.

Squeezing A $100 Million Church Through The Eye Of A Needle

A commenter from a post earlier today introduced me to Joel Osteen - someone I'd never heard of. He's apparently the *most popular* preacher in America:

So the critics assail him for being too light on Jesus and Scripture; for promising his followers worldly rewards; etc. Almost like an infomercial that's too good to be true, right?

Well I for one love infomercials. I watch them quite often on my low-def, round-screen color TV - even if I NEVER buy anything (only The Bean). Even though I'm not a big fan of brainwashing, the marketing is usually ingenious. The packaging of these too-good-to-be-true products really does highlight latent consumer demand.

So the commercial success of Oprah, American Idol, iMorons,..., and the *lite* ministry of Joel Osteen is definitely preaching some truth worth noting - even if it's not the TRUTH outsiders are holding them too.

You know the Jesuits were (and might still be!) VERY UN-ORTHODOX in their methods, in how they courageously spread the Word to frontier heathens. It's all too easy for armchair do-nothings to sit back and criticize. Here's my boy Will Durant:

"Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done."

Indeed!

So I say *so what* if Joel Osteen isn't running the perfect ministry for whatever YOU think YOUR NEEDS are. YOUR fear of him becoming a Big Media caricature is just that, YOUR SELF-INDUCED problem. Live and let live (and tune out Big Media). Like I said, I'd never even heard of this guy before today. And I'm not afraid at all to investigate him further.

Extreme Couponing?

Now my first wife and I might possibly be the only people who hadn't heard of so-called *extreme couponing* - that is until we caught a few minutes of it on the hotel's color TV last week:

There are plenty more videos on YouTube, of course.

I myself as a stock option trader don't understand the *stockpiles*.

If you buy something you don't need for free (we'd say *bought for even*)....flip it to someone else for crying out loud - even at a below-market price. These cheapskates should be selling all that extra salad dressing and Powerade to their neighbors for 25-50 cents a bottle.

A few years ago, while reading Will Durant's Story of Civilization, I first learned that there were other forms of greed besides ambition for wealth. The precise example involved monks or something who'd camped out atop trees for weeks, naked, with nothing to subsist on. Durant characterized this as *spiritual greed* - and you may recognize a strain of it today amongst the radical earth-humping set. See - The Year Without Toilet Paper.

Watching these extreme couponers cursing at the register when they don't get the final price all the way down to a penny I couldn't help but think I was witnessing *miserly greed* or something.

Now I don't think it's worth my time and energy to spend 20 hours a week trying to buy $600 worth of useless, unhealthy groceries that I may be able flip for a $200 profit.

BUT it may be worth my homeschooled kids' time...

It, if successful, could be a great entrepreneurial exercise for them. For example I saw one woman buy 100 Butterfingers for free. She had a 50 cent-off coupon, *double coupons*, and they were retailing for $1. I'd have my kids sell those for 25 cents a piece outside of of the government schools here and they'd be sold out in no more than an hour.

You have to think though....

Once these strategies have hit color cable TV they are probably on their way out. I mean how long before stores and food manufacturers start putting quantity restrictions and whatnot on these coupons?

The Awakening - Anon

A time comes in your life when you finally get...when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out…ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on. Then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.


This is your awakening.


You realize it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon.


You realize that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings, and that any guarantee of "happily ever after" must begin with you...and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.


You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are…and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions.


You learn the importance of loving and championing yourself...and in the process a sense of newfound confidence is born of self-approval.


You stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you – or didn’t do for you – and you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected.


You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and everything isn’t always about you.


So, you learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself...and in the process a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.


You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties…and in the process a sense of peace and contentment is born of forgiveness.


You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. You begin reassessing and redefining who you are and what you really stand for.


You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you’ve outgrown, or should never have bought into to begin with.


You learn that there is power and glory in creating and contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a "consumer" looking for your next fix.


You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era, but the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life.


You learn that you don’t know everything, it’s not you job to save the world and that you can’t teach a pig to sing. You learn the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry and that martyrs get burned at the stake.


Then you learn about love. You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You learn that alone does not mean lonely.


You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of setting boundaries and learning to say NO.


You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs.


You learn that your body really is your temple. You begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin to eat a balanced diet, drinking more water, and take more time to exercise.


You learn that being tired fuels doubt, fear, and uncertainty and so you take more time to rest. And, just as food fuels the body, laughter fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play.


You learn that, for the most part, you get in life what you deserve, and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy.


You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making it happen.


More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You learn that no one can do it all alone, and that it’s OK to risk asking for help.


You learn the only thing you must truly fear is fear itself. You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your own terms.


You learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom.


You learn that life isn’t always fair, you don’t always get what you think you deserve and that sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people...and you lean not to always take it personally.


You learn that nobody’s punishing you and everything isn’t always somebody’s fault. It’s just life happening. You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls.


You learn that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.


You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about: a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower.


Then, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself and you make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never, ever settle for less than you heart’s desire.


You make it a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility.


You hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind.


Finally, with courage in you heart, you take a stand, you take a deep breath, and you begin to design the life you want to live as best as you can.

My *awakening* - whatever it was - came after:

• Getting married and multiplying fruitfully
• Reading Will Durant's books (all 11!)
• Starting this blog
• Reading the Bible cover-to-cover + annotations
• Discovering John Taylor Gatto and homeschooling

In the absence of a major life event (trauma, tragedy, etc.)....I believe the process, if it ever happens, is generally more gradual than epiphanous.

Of course *really bad people* have strategically forced the lumpen masses to defer adulthood, they've successfully rewritten history, censored Biblical expression, and insidiously enslaved generations through *schools*.

Another Old Coot Marginalizing Himself

Forbes editor Rich Karlgaard had an interesting post the other day on his blog. He was at a hotel and sent out his pants for dry cleaning. Turns out, they sent him someone else's clean breeches. The dilemma was, he liked them much better than his own and thought about wearing them. You can go read the whole thread here if you want. My post today is about some Old Coot cluelessly admitting more stuff than he should in that comment thread. Here's his first comment:

Several items along this line.

I almost never buy my own clothes. Shirts, especially, simply show up hanging in my closet. Leather jackets. Blue jeans too. Even shoes. My wife shops.

I do get to go with her when good suits are involved, of course. But casual stuff...who cares? Knock yourself out, Baby.

There are three grown women in my household...In addition to my wife, our daughters who are 36 years old and 34 years old are unmarried, have their own homes in San Francisco and Chicago but visit their mother quite a lot. Especially when I am out of the country. The one in San Francisco seems to like our washer and dryer more than her own...free soap? I don't know.

Sometimes shirts, etc. that I find hanging in my closet really do not fit me at all. Way too big or entirely too small. I do not ask any questions about such matters. All sorts of possibilities come to mind...none of them worth talking about.

Accuse a grown woman of...what... exactly? There's three of them. I don't even have a 50-50 chance of guessing right.

They would each just look at me like I might have been saying something...but they have no idea what it could be.

When I take my shirts to the laundry (20 at once) from time to time I discover that an orphan has found its way into my lot. Hard to catch this with the white shirts...but the colored shirts...I can pretty much pick out the newcomers. If the shirt fits...shoot, wear it!

When we played football we threw our incredibly sweaty and foul tee-shirts (worn under the shoulder pads) into a canvas bin on wheels and walked to the showers...We simply took a clean one from the stack the next day on the way into the locker room.

So what? Some of you are squeemish about any of this? What were we saying last week about the "Wussification of America"?

For crying out loud!



Did you get what this Old Coot just said?

He said that in his household, consisting of his wife and two daughters, random men's shirts make frequent appearances.

Bear in mind, that as a financial blog, almost everyone who reads Digital Rules is a dude.

This guy has no clue how bad that admission makes him look. Do you think a bunch of married women get together at tea parties and glibly divulge, "You know, I find random bras and panties lying around the house...it's no big deal."

I THINK NOT! (at least outside France)

This situation reminds me of a frequent parley among the Neanderthals down in the trading pits of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Some guy would come in donning a hideous new shirt:

OtherTrader - [laughing] Yo, where the *blank* did you get that ugly shirt?

UglyShirtWearer - Out of YOUR closet this morning, *sshole!

If you don't get the comeback, I'll translate - It means he diddled your woman/wife and grabbed the shirt out of your closet on his way out.

Down in the pit, every joke was your-mother, your-wife, your-sister, etc. Just like 4th grade!

But the rule most of us young coots understood, is that you certainly don't go into a roomful of men, paint yourself as a cuckold and set yourself up for such well-deserved ball breaking.

Though I have a slight antagonistic relationship with this fossil, out of the kindness of my heart I swallowed all jokes this time. I have had some pretty acerbic exchanges with him; nonetheless the Old Coot is likable in an avuncular sort of way.

But then he opened the door some more. Here's a subsequent comment he posted:

My girls are drop-dead beautiful and bright. Really. Just like their mother, they simply own just about any man they get around.

The older one brings home these heavy hitter Silicon Valley engineer types and the occasional professional athlete. She now tells people she is 27 (instead of 36)...She's simply having too much fun.

The younger one in Chicago manages clinical studies inside one of the major Pharmaceutical houses...and there is a guy that we do know about now...she never let us meet any of her young men before (although her girlfriends always whispered to my wife that she had them scattered around the country...) so this might be serious. Good.

My own little woman is known to everyone as the Big Boss...I myself took a Vow of Poverty after the divorce (when that first one) dropped me to zero a very long time ago.

The Big Boss owns everything...literally. Including the pants she lets me wear.

Fries,

When I was dating girls in my own ill-spent youth I did notice that the easiest ones had the most-likely-to-take-a-human-life (again) fathers. When my daughters hit 16 I looked in the mirror and realized I was exactly that same way too (West Virginia breeding).

"Boy, let me explain to you how easy it is to turn a bull calf into a steer...if you got a razor blade and can count to two..."

Maybe that has been the problem all along. Thanks.



So, after blithely notifying the entire world that random dudes' clothes show up at his house, he goes on to elaborate lest anyone not fully understand.

One of his daughters simply has "too much fun" and the other has men "scattered around the country". Then, to boot, he compares himself to the fathers of all the "easiest" girls he's dated throughout his youth.

Talk about self-mutilation!

For the record, my daughter will certainly not be allowed to have any such "fun".

And if she does, I will be neither deluding myself about how flattering it is, nor blogging about it on the World Wide Web.

Furthermore, if I do devolve into an incontinent Old Coot myself, I am quite sure my kids will muzzle me.

As Will Durant has said - Silence is trebly golden after the age of sixty...

Indeed.

Will Durant on Religion

I looted this passage from the beginning of The Reformation which is Book VI of Durant's The Story of Civilization.

RELIGION is the last subject that the intellect begins to understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority, its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire. What are the secrets of this resilience?

The wisest sage would need the perspective of a hundred lives to answer adequately. He might begin by recognizing that even in the heyday of science there are innumerable phenomena for which no explanation seems forthcoming in terms of natural cause, quantitative measurement, and necessary effect. The mystery of mind still eludes the formulas of psychology, and in physics the same astonishing order of nature that makes science possible may reasonably sustain the religious faith in a cosmic intelligence. Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance. Now life is rarely agnostic; it assumes either a natural or supernatural source for any unexplained phenomenon, and acts on the one assumption or the other; only a small minority of minds can persistently suspend judgment in the face of contradictory evidence. The great majority of mankind feel compelled to ascribe mysterious entities or events to supernatural beings raised above “natural law”. Religion has been the worship of supernatural beings – their propitiation, solicitation, or adoration. Most men are harassed and buffeted by life, and crave supernatural assistance when natural forces fail them; they gratefully accept faiths that give dignity and hope to their existence, and order and meaning to the world; they could hardly condone so patiently the careless brutalities of nature, the bloodshed and chicaneries of history, or their own tribulations and bereavements if they could not trust that these are parts of an inscrutable but divine design. A cosmos without known cause or fate is an intellectual prison; we long to believe that the great drama has a just author and a noble end.

Moreover, we covet survival, and find it hard to conceive that nature should so laboriously produce man, mind, and devotion only to snuff them in the maturity of their development. Science gives man ever greater powers but ever less significance; it improves his tools and neglects his purposes; it is silent on ultimate origins, values, and aims; it gives life and history no meaning or worth that is not cancelled by death or omnivorous time. So men prefer the assurance of dogma to the diffidence of reason; weary of perplexed thought and uncertain judgment they welcome the guidance of an authoritative church, the catharsis of the confessional, the stability of a long-established creed. Ashamed of failure, bereaved of those they loved, darkened with sin, and fearful of death, they feel themselves redeemed by divine aid, cleansed of guilt and terror, solaced and inspired with hope, and raised to a godlike and immortal destiny.

Meanwhile religion brings subtle and pervasive gifts to society and the state. Traditional rituals soothe the spirit and bind the generations. The parish church becomes a collective home, weaving individuals into a community. The cathedral rises as the product and pride of the unified municipality. Life is embellished with sacred art, and religious music pours its mollifying harmony into the soul and the group. To a moral code uncongenial to our nature and yet indispensable to civilization, religion offers supernatural sanctions and supports: an all-seeing deity, the threat of eternal punishment, the promise of eternal bliss, and commandments of no precariously human authority but of diving origin and imperative force. Our instincts were formed during a thousand years of insecurity and the chase; they fit us to be violent hunters and voracious polygamists rather than peaceable citizens; their once necessary vigor exceeds present social need; they must be checked a hundred times a day, consciously or not, to make society and civilization possible. Families and states, from ages before history, have enlisted the aid of religion to moderate the barbarous impulses of men. Parents found religion helpful in taming the willful child to modesty and self-restraint; educators valued it as a precious means of disciplining and refining youth; governments long since sought its co-operation in forging social order out of the disrupting egoism and natural anarchism of men. If religion had not existed, the great legislators – Hammurabi, Moses, Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius – would have invented it. They did not have to, for it arises spontaneously and repeatedly from the needs and hopes of men.

Definitely See This One....And Ruminate Upon It

These last few months I've been re-watching all seasons of The Wire - as I've mentioned before.

Just this week, I was excited to discover Season 5 up on HBO OnDemand. Those were the only shows I'd yet to see.

The first couple of episodes really got me down. In fact I thought they near stunk. I was wondering if this show's final season was going to be as anti-climactic, as weak as the whimpering finales of those other once-great series: The Sopranos, Seinfeld, Falcon Crest, etc.

But it got much, much better and finished with quite the flourish. I stayed up late watching the final three episodes last night.

In this fifth season, the storylines added the element of Baltimore's foundering newspaper and its substantial, and distortive(!), effect on local politics and crime. In particular, I found the one copy editor (light-skinned guy) they cast to be absolutely phenomenal.

All I have to say, again, is that The Wire was a dramatic masterpiece. Future scholars will no doubt hold it up as one of the most remarkable, the most illuminating insights into our times. Will Durant certainly nailed it when he asserted that the best art was always *philosophy in garb*.

See my prior post - The Wire.

Who Found Whom?

Here's the song in question.

That chick commenting above (on YouTube) is hardly the only one to misinterpret the lyrics of The Fray's *You Found Me*.

The other night I heard a radio DJ wax sentimental about the song too. He was also under the impression that the song was about a dude and a broad in love. You'd think a *professional* would have a cursory knowledge of his craft, no?

In fact, *You Found Me* is about finding or being found by God. It's about religion which, depending on personal definitions, stands in contradistinction to amorous heat.

Mrs. C-Nut laughed at how backwards these people could be. But I said, in fairness, 99% of all secular music is indeed about *romantic love*; it's actually as safe a presumption as one could make on this planet.

Not to mention, my wife has a horrible ear for lyrics. She rewrites classic songs, all the time, with no remorse whatsoever. Just go ahead and try and correct her.

I myself am not a music buff. I'd never know the gist of *You Found Me* if I hadn't heard it on Christian Rock radio station down in Naples this past winter.

While we do have to bear the Beastie Boys and whatnot, there's still a ton of good secular music out there with some pretty darn poetic lyrics. No doubt future generations studying our culture will scratch their collective head trying to label us as easily as we have preceding ones.

Here's another decent song with provocative lyrics.

That one line in there, "Dad I'm big but we're smaller than small
In the scheme of things, well we're nothing at all"....reminds me of Will Durant's line:

In any event it is good that a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

SpellQuizzer

A couple of months ago I received an email from the proprietor of SpellQuizzer software. He sent me the software for free in hopes that I would discuss it on my blog.

It's simply a program that *says* words and asks your child to spell them. Wrong answers are pointed out and corrected - and the kids get another crack at the words they missed.

BUT, the program doesn't come with a library of words. You have to compile your own lists; read them into the computer's microphone; and record them in a sentence if you desire.

As much of a pain in the butt finding my buried microphone was and recording the words is, this is an ideal program to tailor a flexible homeschool curriculum.

Not only can I enter words at the precise cusp of Prince C-Nut's ability, I can keep the quizzes current with words from other timely subjects. For example, yesterday's list had *Maine* and *camping* on it - because that's what we did last week.

The format is pretty much as one would expect. Your child hears:

"Maine.....We went to Maine for our vacation."

So not only does the parent get to choose the words, they get to put them in a sentence. This is another opportunity, like everything else in life, for edification. For example, I put *stone* in one list thusly:

"Stone.....A diamond is the hardest stone."

So maybe my kids will learn a tad more than just spelling. I have to admit I've also inserted my colorful humor a few times!

"Body.....My Mom only married my Dad for his body."

Much to my chagrin I really just started this program with my 4.6 year old the other day. I firmly believe that spelling is an integral part of what I call reverse-reading or *composition*.

My son can read fairly well, but when I ask him to spell one of the words that he's just pronounced correctly, well, he can't do that yet.



This all begs the larger question, "How important is spelling?"

Because I've seen many smart people self-deprecate with *Well, I'm a bad speller*.

Is it possible to be *intelligent* or *educated* if one can't spell?

After all, just about all of our written communication these days has a *spellcheck* functionality.

But I submit that spelling is VERY IMPORTANT.

Words are mental tools and even weapons (of self-defense only - like karate!). The more you have in your box - the more your mind can construct, destruct, and repair. So in my book one must ideally study words with great application; this would include not only precise spelling and meanings, but also origins.

I've grown to see etymology as a profoundly important subject.

In fact, note Will Durant's last line in this excerpt from Age of Faith:

By adding French and Latin to its German base, English could triply express any one of a thousand ideas (kingly, royal, regal; twofold, double, duplex; daily, journal, diurnal,...); to this it owes its wealth of discriminating synonyms and verbal nuances. He who should know the history of words would know all history.

I'll have more to say on this SpellQuizzer as we get further along with it.

[I sure hope there are no spelling errors in this post! Google's spellcheck has been malfunctioning lately.]

'Old Coot' Homeschool Advocate?

Any serious educational theory must consist of two parts: a conception of the ends of life, and a science of psychological dynamics, i.e. of the laws of mental change. Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education. The educational machine, throughout Western civilization, is dominated by two ethical theories: that of Christianity, and that of nationalism. These two, when taken seriously, are incompatible, as is becoming evident in Germany. For my part, I hold that, where they differ, Christianity is preferable, but where they agree, both are mistaken. The conception which I should substitute as the purpose of education is civilization, a term which, as I mean it, has a definition which is partly individual, partly social. It consists, in the individual, of both intellectual and moral qualities: intellectually, a certain minimum of general knowledge, technical skill in one's own profession, and a habit of forming opinions on evidence; morally, of impartiality, kindliness, and a modicum of self-control. I should add a quality which is neither moral nor intellectual, but perhaps physiological: zest and joy of life. In communities, civilization demands respect for law, justice as between man and man, purposes not involving permanent injury to any section of the human race, and intelligent adaptation of means to ends. If these are to be the purpose of education, it is a question for the science of psychology to consider what can be done towards realizing them, and, in particular, what degree of freedom is likely to prove most effective.

On the question of freedom in education there are at present three main schools of thought, deriving partly from differences as to ends and partly from differences in psychological theory. There are those who say that children should be completely free, however bad they may be; there are those who say they should be completely subject to authority, however good they may be; and there are those who say they should be free, but in spite of freedom they should be always good. This last party is larger than it has any logical right to be; children, like adults, will not all be virtuous if they are all free. The belief that liberty will ensure moral perfection is a relic of Rousseauism, and would not survive a study of animals and babies. Those who hold this belief think that education should have no positive purpose, but should merely offer an environment suitable for spontaneous development. I cannot agree with this school, which seems to me too individualistic, and unduly indifferent to the importance of knowledge. We live in communities which require co-operation, and it would be utopian to expect all the necessary co-operation to result from spontaneous impulse. The existence of a large population on a limited area is only possible owing to science and technique; education must, therefore, hand on the necessary minimum of these. The educators who allow most freedom are men whose success depends upon a degree of benevolence, self-control, and trained intelligence which can hardly be generated where every impulse is left unchecked; their merits, therefore, are not likely to be perpetuated if their methods are undiluted. Education, viewed from a social standpoint, must be something more positive than a mere opportunity for growth. It must, of course, provide this, but it must also provide a mental and moral equipment which children cannot acquire entirely for themselves.

The arguments in favour of a great degree of freedom in education are derived not from man's natural goodness, but from the effects of authority, both on those who suffer it and on those who exercise it. Those who are subject to authority become either submissive or rebellious, and each attitude has its drawbacks.

The submissive lose initiative, both in thought and action; moreover, the anger generated by the feeling of being thwarted tends to find an outlet in bullying those who are weaker. That is why tyrannical institutions are self-perpetuating: what a man has suffered from his father he inflicts upon his son, and the humiliations which he remembers having endured at his public school he passes on to Ònatives" when he becomes an empire-builder. Thus an unduly authoritative education turns the pupils into timid tyrants, incapable of either claiming or tolerating originality in word or deed. The effect upon the educators is even worse: they tend to become sadistic disciplinarians, glad to inspire terror, and content to inspire nothing else. As these men represent knowledge, the pupils acquire a horror of knowledge, which, among the English upper-class, is supposed to be part of human nature, but is really part of the well- grounded hatred of the authoritarian pedagogue.

Rebels, on the other hand,, though they may be necessary, can hardly be just to what exists. Moreover, there are many ways of rebelling, and only a small minority of these are wise. Galileo was a rebel and was wise; believers in the flat-earth theory are equally rebels, but are foolish. There is a great danger in the tendency to suppose that opposition to authority is essentially meritorious and that unconventional opinions are bound to be correct: no useful purpose is served by smashing lamp-posts or maintaining Shakespeare to be no poet. Yet this excessive rebelliousness is often the effect that too much authority has on spirited pupils. And when rebels become educators, they sometimes encourage defiance in their pupils, for whom at the same time they are trying to produce a perfect environment, although these two aims are scarcely compatible.

That's Bertrand Russell, a dinosaur who's been dead for 40 years now, sounding like a present-day homeschooler.

I don't think I'd heard much of this guy before. But from Googling, he seems to be rather well-known - even a *patron saint* for devout atheists!

The above was excerpted from his essay - Education and Discipline. Towards the end of it, he really sounds like a home-education advocate. Here's another part that resonated with me:

I do not think that education ought to be anyone's whole profession: it should be undertaken for at most two hours a day by people whose remaining hours are spent away from children. The society of the young is fatiguing, especially when strict discipline is avoided.

One last comment...

Russell, in the beginning of his essay, equates education with *civilization*.

Guess what....so did my main man Will Durant!

Check out my 'old' post - One Step Forward and Two Steps Back. It's hard to believe that it's been three full years since I finished the best books on Earth.

Marginalizing Red Sox Fans

The Red Sox are religion in New England.

How many times have you heard that?

If you think that all it means is that the fans are passionate then you probably should stick to books beginning with "Once upon a time..."

Let's start with the religion accusation.

I mistakenly thought that the Red Sox 2004 World Series victory would end the lunacy that is Red Sox fanaticism. I was dead wrong. It's crazier than ever. Then again, only a Moron predicts rational behavior from the jokers up here.

Everywhere you go, at all times of the day, you will see Red Sox fans in their gear. Sure there are lots of Steelers shirts in Pittsburgh and whacked out cheeseheads in Wisconsin, but it's way worse here. People that shouldn't be draped in sports jerseys and caps, like adults and nubile women, see nothing wrong with going to church and out on the town in what I consider clown attire. I know football season is life for many Philadelphia Eagles fans as it is for many college football towns, but baseball drags on, EVERYDAY, for more than half the year. It's an eternity if you count spring training and the playoffs.

A year or two ago I was at the Ninety-Nine Restaurant in Charlestown, Mass. On an April Friday afternoon, my buddy asked the bartender to change one of the numerous televisions to the Masters. Some locals across the bar went absolutely bonkers - almost to the point of belligerence - because we wanted to see Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson compete in a major over a meaningless Red Sox spring training game. (Of course Charlestown is an interesting little place; it's a 50-50 clash of small dog toting yuppies and grizzled old townies.)

I can't scientifically prove that Sox fans are crazier than ever though I will offer my anecdotal best. First of all, at $48 on average per seat, Fenway Park tickets are the most expensive in all of America; they are going on something like 400 straight sellouts. Secondly, I offer up three people I have known for a long time - including my father - who have gotten noticeably nuts over the Red Sox over the last few years. When I was a kid, my dad couldn't care less about "those bums". Now the game simply has to be on, either on the radio, or on the boob tube even if he's at someone else's place. The same applies to my other two acquaintances - for all the years I have known them, only recently have they become diehard Red Sox Idiots.



Last weekend I went to a family reunion to meet some distant cousins for the first time. They had a very nice barbeque going, a large pool, etc. Some of these cousins I didn't even get to meet as they were burrowed inside watching a worthless Red Sox game. Others were lingering in the pool house on this beautiful sunny day also staring at the game on TV. This is the theme throughout New England. If the Sox are playing, NESN is on in almost every house. We left that cookout to go to another celebrating my grandparents' 66th wedding anniversary. Of course the "game" was the centerpiece of that event when we arrived as well - that is until I turned it off and guilted everyone into socialization.

The sad thing is, the fans here actually brag about how passionate they are. Retired pitcher Bruce Hurst bolted out of Beantown years ago for the greener grass of the San Diego Padres. Later on he lamented that he missed the zeal of Boston fans. This is the type of propaganda talking point that makes Sox fans proud, is repeated endlessly among the booboisie and in the Boston Globe, and it is, quite frankly insane.

I see these 25 and 30 year old guys out at bars wearing their Manny Ramirez shirts and I really pity them. First of all, how stupid are these tools? Do you think the ladies will swoon with affection for a dude in an official MLB jersey? Hey Susie, look at that hottie there in the Johnny Damon shirt...What do you think, he's a successful entrepreneur with his own business or lives with his mom?

Can you imagine a studly John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever dancing in his mirror before the big Friday night out - wondering whether he looks better in his home or away Thurman Munson shirt?

I can't.

I once heard an inane discussion on sports radio about what the rules were, age-wise and whatnot, for wearing a team's shirt in public. Actually, I believe I heard this debate separately on both WFAN (New York) and WEEI (Boston). On one of the stations they concurred that "season ticket holders" have a freer rein to dress like a twelve year old boys than the rest of the fans.

Check out this 50 year-old LOSER that sat in front me at a Celtics-Lakers game last year. Nice shirt pal - it really shows off your triceps!



Listen up Red Sox fans, your impassioned pride IS NOT a cause for admiration, it is a badge of LOSERHOOD.

Here are a couple of more examples of Red Sox pagan worship that I mined from the web.

First up is a Jewish guy who decided to revisit his long since forgotten temple because one weekend it got to house the 2004 World Series Trophy. They had never allowed flash photography in the 'gog for Bar Mitzvahs or Rosh Hashanah but an exception was made for this pagan trophy. What priorities!

A Little Old Time Religion

I've heard the talk about the Red Sox being the true religion of New Englanders, and always thought the notion was a bit overblown. Until I saw the World Series trophy in my synagogue.

It was strange to see this sight in the place where I had my Bar Mitzvah service fifteen years ago. However, it gave me pause to consider that it took the presence of this item to bring me back to my synagogue for the first time in perhaps three years. Why is it, I wondered, that I was more inspired to go to temple by the World Series trophy than by the promise of spiritual nourishment? Am I lazy, or irredeemably secular? Or did I feel that I got something from the experience of following professional sports that I was not truly getting here? When I think of my Red Sox memories, they're not just about games watched; they're about experiences with friends and family, stretching back almost as far as I can remember.

Rabbi David Myer led the congregation—mainly families, most dressed in Red Sox garb of one sort or another—in a prayer of thanksgiving. As Rabbis are wont to do, he engaged in a short etymological discussion meant to illuminate a larger point. The word "religion," he explained, is derived from "ligament"...as in, the connective tissue that holds us together.

It made sense to put this most secular activity—professional sports—into the context of religious celebration. I had indeed felt a deep sense of connection with strangers at religious services, as I had in the stands of Fenway Park. In our society of increasingly alienated individuals, that kind of connection is profoundly valuable. But Dr. Charles Steinberg, the Red Sox vice president who has ushered the prized artifact around on its pilgrimage, had a more lofty agenda. He made the case for the World Series championship as a genuine miracle. Not a secular miracle, like the gold medal for hockey in the 1980 Olympics. An honest to goodness, old fashioned, Red Sea parting miracle.

Dr. Steinberg compared the Sox' eight consecutive postseason wins with the story of Hanukah, in which a day's worth of holy oil was said to illuminate the temple's flame for the eight days it took to bring in some more.

"If [the team] stopped believing, they would not have won Game Four [of the American League Championship Series versus the Yankees]," he said from the bimmer. "The candle would have gone out. The oil would have run out. But the miracle wound up lasting eight days. It could only have come from above."

Next up is another guy demonstrating the infectious nature of hope. He saw in the Red Sox's improbable championship, a divine omen that the world was morphing into utopia, i.e. that John Kerry would defeat President Bush in the 2004 election. This perhaps bears filing in the Hillary Homerun category.



Is the Supreme Being a Red Sox Loving Democrat?

Either way, from the standpoint of a Red Sox loving democrat, this impossible victory must be cause for hope. Because if the Boston Red Sox can beat the New York Yankees, after coming back from a three game deficit, in the seventh game of the American League pennant series, and win it in the house that Ruth built, then surely the democrats can beat the republicans, after coming back from a bad supreme court ruling, in the final weeks of this election campaign, and win it in the house the George stole.

No matter how you look at it – as either a sign from the Supreme Being or as powerful tale of hope against hope – it was a sign. I’m sure of it.

And the last example I gleaned in about two minutes of browsing was this - some nerd professor type arguing for the academic certification of baseball as a religion in America.

Curses and Catharsis in Red Sox Nation: Baseball and Ritual Violence in American Culture

In this essay I would like to revisit the legend of the Curse of the Bambino for the insights it can provide scholars of American religion on the allegedly religious dimension of baseball. The Winter 1996 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which was devoted entirely to a discussion of religion and American popular culture, featured a now-widely-cited essay by David Chidester arguing for the inclusion of America’s favorite game in the academic study of religion.1 Chidester put forward a functionalist argument to advance the cause, echoing similar cases made years earlier by such notable scholars of religion as Catherine L. Albanese, Allen Guttmann, and Joseph L. Price.2 For these scholars, baseball exhibits a distinctive set of myths, rituals, and codes of behavior–the formal elements of “official” religions–that function to unite a community of participants/believers and orient them to an atemporal social and cosmic order.

Hah! "Myths, rituals, and codes of behavior..." and rabbis calling the win a "genuine miracle".

Okay now that I think I have sufficiently established my premise I want to scaffold up to my larger point. Consider the following quote:

Organized religion does not invent superstition, it checks it. (Will Durant)

Now bear in mind, generally speaking, organized religion does not exist up here in New England. Jews are less pious than elsewhere, Catholicism is a joke, if you remember I had godparents at my daughter's group Baptism wearing New England Patriots attire on the altar, and Protestantism also exists in its weakest form of anywhere in the country - congregations are so desperate for members that the gay friendly rainbow is on a lot of Protestant roadside signage. To boot, John Taylor Gatto has documented how Boston always had a vacant spiritual heritage - specifically, a disaffected Calvinism going back through the early 1800s. In his books he tells of a forlorn, childless culture that initiated mass compulsory schooling in a perverse effort to fill these voids.



Sure Fenway is an awesome ballpark and sure, the Curse of the Bambino was an intoxicating/nauseating legend. But I maintain that the real draw of being a Red Sox fan is that it provides a sense of meaning and purpose for an otherwise harried and irreligious populace. Reality can be stomached each day by checking the box scores and seeing that the Sox won last night and the Yankees lost...

Sports fanaticism is everywhere really about vicarious heroism and mental escapism. How many millions of fans go to bed each night dreaming about their team, potential trades, the unlimited prospects of their talented rookies? Ask yourself, when your career, marriage, and/or social life have gotten rocky have you deflected your depression by rooting for your favorite team? Looking back, I certainly did.

Here's some healthy advice - if your marriage is rocky or your job dreadful...you might want to work DIRECTLY on the problems. A pennant won't really solve them.

It's like these Deranged Dog People. I would say that roughly 90% of the people I know who put off marriage or childrearing ran out and filled that void with a dog. It's not that Red Sox fans are inherently losers or heathens, their fanaticism is just a natural consequence of human nature. People have always yearned for meaning and direction in their lives. As the famous quote goes,

A man who ceases to believe in God will believe in anything.

Now I am not one of these art museum types that always hated sports. I too have been afflicted with sports fanaticism for most of my life. It's only now that I have become wise as to the reasons why. Once I had a baby, suddenly shows like Pardon the Interruption that I made time for everyday, started to look very, very silly. I got to thinking that soon enough I will be old and grey and will be looking back on my life. I get very depressed thinking about how much of my valuable time, how many hours, days, and years I have spent watching athletes jostle over a ball.

Here's another small point. Today the masses aren't sports fanatics - they are spectating sports fanatics. People don't play football, baseball, and basketball, they mere watch others do so. If anything, it is exercise by proxy - kind of like the executive massage where someone else is doing all the work. So yes, athletics are full of virtues, but that would be if one was actually a participant.

I believe Ancient Greece at its incipience was marked by EVERYONE wrestling, racing, boxing, throwing the javelin, etc. However, the decline of this great culture coincided with a move away from popular sports participation to, like our present day society, mere athletic spectating.

So I want my millions of blog readers to ask themselves, what is more important to you - your family, career, and your epitaph or your team winning the title?

I say try to go a week without watching ESPN or checking a box score and see what happens.

Heretofore I have had "Boston Celtics" listed on my Blogger profile as an "interest". I just deleted it because I know realize it's embarrassing to define myself as demoralized pagan would. (Also, today is a suitable day to jump ship on the Celtics, given that asinine trade they just made for Kevin Garnett.)



The increasingly arrogant Bill Simmons insists that since the Sox have finally won a title he can now "die in peace." He's hardly alone with that sentiment.

To all these knuckleheads I'd like to interject that one must first have a life in order to die.

(The other faux religion up here, fertilized by the exact same causes, is of course pagan earth-worshipping - or as it's euphemized, "environmentalism".)