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.

Money, Money, Money

This is pretty interesting...

...even though the dude COULD NOT be more annoying!

And even though, *wealth* can only be arbitrarily measured - at best.

Will Durant would also interject:

"The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations."

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.

'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.

For Would-Be Etymologists

Dictionary.com has started blogging.

See the Hot Word Blog if you find the origin of words interesting as its lessons are somewhat spunkier than reading straight through a etymological dictionary.

Even though I do in fact joyously indulge in the latter....I've personally found the Hot Word Blog a decent read.

I'm going to rerun one of my favorite Will Durant quotes.  From the 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.

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.

The Pangs Of Hunger

Above find my wife's *dietary* dinner from last night. One whole grilled chicken breast and half of a nuked sweet potato - with nary a drop of butter or oil on either.

She's doing this crazy diet that's a combo of starvation and twice-daily workouts.

Ain't nothing like going for a couple of runs on an empty stomach each day!

Her mood was irascible at first, but apparently the immediate results have eased the pangs.

Here's her latest guidebook:



Now how insightful is it to tell people NOT TO EAT and to RUN EVERYDAY?

Ah,...why aren't I writing bestsellers again?

We all are biased and can never really know anyone else's bodies. But still, I think dieting is overrated. I routinely ask people who are *dieting* if they've ever tried working out every single day - even if only a 10 minute run. Yet I've yet to hear a single person say, "Yeah, I hit the gym for 30 days straight and didn't lose a pound."

IMO, people obsess over caloric intake, meal frequency, Weight Watchers points, net carbs, and whatnot BECAUSE THEY ARE LAZY!

They just don't want to run/bike/stairclimb regularly.

I've been telling my wife to run everyday for years. She always insisted that 2-3 lengthy workouts per week were better. I completely disagree and think that 10 intense minutes every single day would work for everyone.

As Will Durant wisely phrased it, "Nothing is more unpopular to say than the truth."

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!

The Neo-Paleo-Woman

Here's Will Durant on *primitive* women:

The simplest form of the family, then, was the woman and her children, living with her mother or her brother in the clan; such an arrangement was a natural outgrowth of the animal family of the mother and her litter, and of the biological ignorance of the primitive man. An alternative early form was "matrilocal marriage": the husband left his clan and went to live with the clan and family of his wife, laboring for her and with her in the service of her parents. Descent, in such cases, was traced through the female line, and inheritance was through the mother; sometimes even the kingship passed down through her rather than through the male. This "mother-right" was not a "matriarchate" - it did not imply the rule of women over men. Even when property was transmitted through the woman she had little power over it; she was used as a means of tracing relationships which, through primitive laxity or freedom, were otherwise obscure. It is true that in any system of society the woman exercises a certain authority, rising naturally out of her importance in the home, out of her function as the dispenser of food, and out of the need that the male has of her, and her power to refuse him. It is also true that there have been, occasionally, woman rulers among South African tribes; that in the Pelew Islands the chief did nothing of consequence without the advice of a counsel of elder women; that among the Iroquois the squaws had an equal right, with the men, of speaking and voting in the tribal council; and that among the Seneca Indians women held great power, even to the selection of the chief. But these are rare and exceptional cases. All in all the position of women in early societies was one of subjection verging upon slavery. Her periodic disability, her unfamiliarity with weapons, the biological absorption of her strength in carrying, nursing and rearing children, handicapped her in the war of the sexes, and doomed her to a subordinate status in all but the very lowest and the very highest societies. Nor was her position necessarily to rise with the development of civilization; it was destined to be lower in Periclean Greece than among the North American Indians; it was to rise and fall with her strategic importance rather than with the culture and morals of men.

In the hunting stage she did almost all the work except the actual capture of the game. In return for exposing himself to the hardships and risks of the chase, the male rested magnificently for the greater part of the year. The woman bore her children abundantly, reared them, kept the hut or home in repair, gathered food in woods and fields, cooked, cleaned, and made the clothing and the boots. Because the men, when the tribe moved, had to be ready at any moment to fight off attack, they carried nothing but their weapons; the women carried the rest. Bushwomen were used as servants and beasts of burden; if they proved too weak to keep up with the march, they were abandoned. When the natives of Lower Murray saw pack oxen they thought that these were the wives of modern whites. The differences in strength which now divide the sexes hardly existed in those days, and are now environmental rather than innate: woman, apart from her biological disabilities, was almost the equal of a man in stature, endurance, resourcefulness and courage; she was not yet an ornament, a thing of beauty, or a sexual toy; she was a robust animal, able to perform arduous work for long hours, and, if necessary, to fight to the death for her children or her clan. "Women," said a chieftain of the Chippewas, "are created for work. One of them can draw or carry as much as two men. They also pitch our tents, make our clothes, mend them, and keep us warm at night....We absolutely cannot get along without them on a journey. They do everything and cost only a little; for since they must be forever cooking, they can be satisfied in lean times by licking their fingers."

Most economic advances, in early society, were made by the woman rather than the man. While for centuries he clung to his ancient ways of hunting and herding, she developed agriculture near the camp, and those busy arts of the home which were to become the most important industries of later days. From the "wool-bearing tree," as the Greeks called the cotton plant, the primitive woman rolled thread and made cotton cloth. It was she, apparently, who developed sewing, weaving, basketry, pottery, woodworking, and building; and in many cases it was she who carried on primitive trade. It was she who developed the home, slowly adding man to the list of her domesticated animals, and training him in those social dispositions and amenities which are the psychological basis and cement of civilization.

But as agriculture became more complex and brought larger rewards, the stronger sex took more and more of it into his hands. The growth of cattle-breeding gave the man a new source of wealth, stability, and power; even agriculture, which had seems so prosaic to the mighty Nimrods of antiquity, was at last accepted by the wandering male, and the economic leadership which tillage had for a time given to women was wrested from them by the men. The application to agriculture of those very animals that women had first domesticated led to her replacement by the male in the control of the fields; the advance from the hoe to the plough put a premium upon physical strength, and enabled the man to assert his supremacy. The growth of transmissible property in cattle and in the products of the soil led to the sexual subordination of woman, for the male now demanded from her that fidelity which he thought would enable him to pass on his accumulations to children presumably his own. Gradually the man had his way; fatherhood became recognized, and property began to descend through the male; mother-right yielded to father-right; and the patriarchal family, with the oldest male at its head, became the economic, legal, political and moral unit of society. The gods, who had been mostly feminine, became great bearded patriarchs, with such harems as ambitious men dreamed of in their solitude.

This passage to the patriarchal-father-ruled-family was fatal to the position of woman. In all essential aspects she and her children became the property first of her father or oldest brother, then of her husband. She was bought in marriage precisely as a slave was bought in the market. She was bequeathed as property when her husband died; and in some places (New Guinea, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, India, etc.) she was strangled and buried with her dead husband, or was expected to commit suicide, in order to attend upon him in the other world. The father had now the right to treat, give, sell or lend his wives and daughters very much as he pleased, subject only to the social condemnation of other fathers exercising the same rights. While the male reserved the privilege of extending his sexual favors beyond his home, the woman - under patriarchal institutions - was vowed to complete chastity before marriage, and complete fidelity after it. The double standard was born.

The general subjection of woman which had existed in the hunting stage, and had persisted, in diminished form, through the period of mother-right, became now more pronounced and merciless than before. In ancient Russia, on the marriage of a daughter, the father struck her gently with a whip, and then presented the whip to the bridegroom, as a sign that her beatings were now to come from a rejuvenated hand. Even the American Indians, among whom mother-right survived indefinitely, treated their women harshly, consigned them all drudgery, and often called them dogs. Everywhere the life of a woman was considered cheaper than that of a man; and when girls were born there was none of the rejoicing that marked the coming of a male. Mothers sometimes destroyed their female children to keep them from misery. In Fiji wives might be sold at pleasure, and the usual price was a musket. Among some tribes man and wife did not sleep together, lest the breath of the woman should enfeeble the man; in Fiji it was not thought proper for a man to sleep regularly at home; in New Caledonia the wife slept in a shed, while the man slept in the house. In Fiji dogs were allowed in some of the temples, but women were excluded from all; such exclusion of women from religious services survives in Islam to this day. Doubtless woman enjoyed at all times the mastery that comes from long-continued speech; the men might be rebuffed, harangued, even - now and then - beaten. But all in all the man was lord, the woman servant. The Kaffir bought women like slaves, as a form of life-income insurance; when he had a sufficient number of wives he could rest for the remainder of his days; they would do all the work for him. Some tribes of ancient India reckoned the women of a family as part of the property inheritance, along with the domestic animals; nor did the last commandment of Moses distinguish very clearly in this matter. Throughout negro Africa women hardly differed from slaves, except that they were expected to provide sexual as well as economic satisfaction. Marriage began as a form of the law of property, as a part of the institution of slavery.

Our Oriental Heritage (p32-35)

It certainly ain't hard to see the primitive woman, or for that matter the primitive male, still alive here in alleged modernity, now is it?

Again, if I were a chick today....there's no way I'd have anything at all to do with men!

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.]

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.

Economists - Useless BUT Harmful

Here's Greg Mankiw proving a critic's point.



He quotes economist James Galbraith:

It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession [re: their failure to predict the mortgage crisis]. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

And now here's the esteemed Greg Mankiw's commentary:

Like his late father, Galbraith the younger is highly critical of mainstream economics. This is noteworthy in part because Galbraith is listed as an Obama economic adviser.

One of the more telling things to look out for in the coming weeks (assuming the seemingly inevitable Obama victory) will be which economists get which jobs in the new administration. Will the important positions be filled with people like Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman, who are essentially mainstream economists with slightly left of center political views, or with heterodox economists like Galbraith who are deeply skeptical of the economics found in most textbooks? If the administration is filled with prominent members of both groups, the internal battles over the heart and soul of the new administration's economic policy should prove fascinating to watch.

Actually Greg, economic policies have REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES - people gain or lose jobs, individual liberties are at stake, fortunes are made and lost, standards of living shift, etc.

His nerdy hunger for FASCINATION just proves Galbraith's point about economists and their *fundamental uselessness*!!!



Yes they are useless, but far from innocuous.

Just think how many budding little socialists have passed Mankiw's courses.

Just think of how wannabe elitists he's helped teach the heinous crafts of confiscation and redistribution.

What about their negative externalities, Greg?

If ONLY they were just *useless*.

Marginalizing Morons Mimicry

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)

So some *academic* wrote a book on "dumb kids" with their iPods, MySpace, Facebook, and shiftless lives.

Yawn.

Amazon retails the 3.5 (out of 5) starred book for $25. Check that, it's down to $16.47.

After reading Amazon's book reviews it seems the book is quite the *sleep inducer*.

Fundamentally, according to Will Durant, people that run around calling others *stupid* are dishonestly praising themselves.

I have no respect for other such clowns...

Just Look At The Pictures!

Do you know what this is an example of?



Biblia Pauperum - A Latin expression meaning "Bibles for the poor".

Essentially, they were pictorial Bibles. Will Durant used the term generically to refer to "picture books for the unlettered".

Sometimes I feel like all the web traffic I get is from clowns looking for pictures. From my "referral stats" I can see exactly how most of you get to my blog. More often than not, my "readers" are simpletons looking for pictures - primarily of "liz claman naked" ("liz clayman") or any number of other popularly searched for images on my blog. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the Liz Claman Stalkers have long since surpassed the number of dumb kids who've downloaded that "Day After Tomorrow" pic from my Apocalyptic Morons, Etc. post. Another example would be my recent Nanny Criteria post - all three pics from it have been generating blog traffic.

It's not unusual for these pea-brains to find my blog on an image search and then linger around for a while and sample some of my morsels of wisdom. BUT, most often, these kids just grab the image they want and dash back to MySpace or Facebook.

What else would you expect from a nation of Lapsed-Learners?

Below find one more pic that I manufactured for the lumpen masses. If I can just re-activate a few brains it's worth dirtying my hands!



Any buffoon can generate web traffic - the more advance skill is getting people to actually read what you've written.

What Separation Of Church And State?

The more history I read, the more I see humans collectively as a horde of robots. Read this Will Durant excerpt:

The piety of the people had by 1500 made the Church the economic master of Scandinavia. In Denmark half the soil was owned by the Church, and was tilled by tenants verging on serfdom. Copenhagen itself was an ecclesiastical fief. Clergy and nobility were exempt from land taxes: the nobles because they served at their own expense in war, the clergy because they organized worship, morals, education, and charity. The universities at Copenhagen and Uppsala were of course in ecclesiastical hands. The Church required a tenth, annually, of all nonecclesiastical produce or income; it exacted a small fee for every building raised, every child born, every couple married, every corpse interred; it claimed a day of gratis labor from every peasant yearly; and no one could inherit property without making a contribution to the Church as the probate court of wills. These imposts were defended as financing the ministrations of the church, but complaints rose that too much of the proceeds went to maintain bishops in regal splendor.



Now just replace the "Church" with the "State". Do you see the clear and powerful parallels with today's Big Government America?

The "imposts" today are income and corporate taxes and are much higher than 10%. They are defended as necessary for "infrastructure" like roads, schools, cops, high school football, and keeping 'old coots' from eating dog food. The "regal splendor" that they nourish is best thought of as a vast bureaucracy, career politicians, and their army of self-defensive lawyers.

Today no one can inherit property without a proper contribution to the State either - the death tax. Marriage also now bears a tax penalty. "A small fee for every building raised"? Hah! Construction is barely permitted today, even on private property - and never for a "small fee".

Universities today are run, not by "ecclesiastics" in the old sense, but rather by a monolith of evangelical socialists. Why the heck are the best and brightest young people, college students, all geeked up about dimwits like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Well, Cuius regio ejus religio - it's a scholarly Latin expression meaning "whose region, his or her religion" or "the religion of the ruled must be that of the ruler." Muzzling dissent has been the most efficacious form of brainwashing throughout the ages.

While 16th century Scandinavia sported Copenhagen as an "ecclesiastical fief", today one might as well call the numerous blighted urban areas, with their government housing, schooling, and welfare fiefdoms of the State. (For good measure they fraudulently stuff the ballot box.)

The Old World clergy used to organize "worship, morals, education, and charity." Well, today's high priests of Statism have ramped it up a notch. They've graduated from organization to coercion. Thou shall worship the "environment". Thou shall not offend. Thought crimes like "hate" have been codified and sins of yore like envy have become standard tools of the State. A new moral order has been cast based upon diversity, relativism, and whatever ideo-fad that might tout favorable demographic trends (e.g amnesty for border hopping identity thieves). It goes without saying that the State has both cemented and enlarged its penchant for "charity". Welfare, entitlements, subsidized student loans, affordable housing, Head Start, ....the list is interminable. Charity my ass. It's all at once coercive redistribution, class-baiting, mind-enslavement, and LCD politics by incumbents eyeing 51% majorities.



Ah, the good ole days of 10% taxation and swift executions. Now we get lifelong torture via emasculation and the harassed productivity of 50% tax brackets. Who today wouldn't take compulsory Sunday mass attendance in exchange for a return of 10% taxation?

Modern day Statism has all the hallmarks of yesteryear's worst religions. I am hardly the first person to assert this, but the State simply became the Church. Secularists in Europe took down the Papacy by pouncing on its warts - then they incorporated the very same ones into their rule.

The odds are that whenever you hear someone today mention the "separation of church and state"....you are listening to, if not a modern day Statist, then one of their brainwashed minions.

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)

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.

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.

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?

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!!!