Let's make some stuff

Obama is in Schenectady! I'm watching him now. Not starting well by giving props to a Republican like Cuomo. Yeah, I know, but he sounds like one. Brian Stratton got to ride on Air Force One today. Nice...

Chris Gibson... great! The guy who wants to repeal health care. You know the .... job killing bill. Wanna know what a job killing action is? See Cuomo's announcement about laying off thousands of state employees. No need to make an argument there about whether it's killing jobs to fire people.

Okay, so Obama is talking about technology. America is home to innovation we're so productive and we build stuff, and ya da yada yada. Entrepreneurs, etc. State of the art batteries. Renewable energy... 650 jobs.... Challenge is to harness this spirit, this potential. Make it easier to bring good things to life. Yeah, let's make it easy for GE, but hard on state workers. I get the picture.

GE invested 13 million, but they got it through a tax break. We have an ever increasingly shrinking world, and we need to export more goods. But do the people of China have money? We have a pretty high standard of living; I'm pretty sure we are the big consumers. So if we open markets up, we get all the cheap stuff from places with low wages. But these low wage countries can't buy our stuff, because they don't have any cash.

This plant in GE is part of his deal with China.... but they're sellling the turbines to Samlcote India. 1200 jobs in GE... woo hoo. He wants to double American exports. We're gonna keep sellin stuff all over the world. Accelerate growth. We want an economy based on Thomas Ediison's principles. Jeff Imelt of GE is going into Obama's cabinet.

Frankly, if the economy does come back into a somewhat healthy recovery by November of 2012, he can't lose, no matter what lies the uber right sling at him. Two years later... my recovery board.... a million jobs... business picking up... still looking for work. Hmmm pesky unemployment numbers. If only these pesky businesses would actually hire people and the government would stop firing people....

So far, by the way, we have a traditional jobless recovery....

Jeff has a wealth of experience. Jeff and others will get us into overdrive mode. Clean energy and other stuff. Fix the roads, educate the people. Hudson Valley gets some props... Um... you're right next to SCC, and they are doing some edumacating too, Barach...

Pioneering efforts is what America is all about... brighter days... spirit of innovation... American Dream.... come on Obama.... didn't you read Arthur Miller? Speech is wrapped up. Whoah that was fast. Jeff Lawrence... I know that guy. He's my Assistant Superintendent's husband.

National blueprint... icon... Edison is Obama's. Hudson Valley the only one with an apprentice program.... 18% exports....a big goal.

Jessica layton in the hand shaking arena. Out of the ballpark. Meeting with people. Hometown feel. Clear away the road blocks, like regulations against polluting, Beneatha? Why aren't businesses hiring? Jeff says it's because of political uncertainty. Oh, please. Doubts and fears. Please don't blame this on politicians. This is all on business. The government didn't drop the ball. Dr. Ron Seyb from Skidmore didn't get much face time. Abigail Bleck. Really needs to change her name. Bleck. We're here waiting outside for nothing, folks. Oh that was really insightful. Oh we can't do without Days of Our Lives....

Back to Ron. This is the tone we're going to hear. Danger is just old wine in a new bottle. What's new. Follow up. Why does the government need to follow up and help the economy improve? What happened to Laizzes Faire? I always wonder if Republicans who are so pro business ever realize that the Ron Pauls of the world are looking for less government involvement in business...

What happened to poor Ron. Back to Jessica Layton. So upbeat! Back to Bleck street. Erie Blvd is closed down. President might be on his way out. Who cares! To get a glimpse of his motorcade?

Timing was interesting, says Beneta. After the China trip... Lawrence says it's a stronger message due to the delay. Politics is like that? How deep Beneta. One tweeter says, Huzzah for upstate New York. Three dozen cars in the motorcade. Back to airport. Hoping Obama would stop for a slice of pizza!

Jeff Imelt's role. The committee... Ron gets to talk. New advisory panel. Imelt was a Republican contributor as well as to Hilary. Back from the brink... into overdrive. He wants to send a message that the worst times are over. Happy days are here again? GE employee. Jessica talks to Danielle someone. Clean energy is perfect for GE. About time.... capablity... yahoo!

Goals for the research center... excitement. Murfeld? Local pols get to tell people what they should take from the speech? Schenectady is trending on Twitter. Whatever that means. Back to Jeff. Back to China. Huge roadblocks to trade with China. Keeping interest rates low in China... Regulatory.... um things.... leveling the playing field is important. Nothing good ever happens until you sell something? Are you serious? If I sell a nuclear bomb....

And stuff

Economy back to basics? Who says what basics are? When were we at this elusive base? Low pay in China- five years from now. More pay for Chinese workers? Do you really think so? Now to the airport with Sabrina Dhammi. Woman in tears from meet and greet with Obama. Okay... Peter Gordon tweet. Markets today.... positive? Hold your breath everyone. Here's a new saying.... Nothing good ever happens until someone gets a good paying job with good working conditions and some job stability. He's at the airport already. That was quick. Probably could have gone up RT 7 and stoppped at the diner for some souvlaki.

235,000 new jobs. How do you get these figures. Jeff hasn't done the math. Sales dollars per job. What's the ratio? Ron on China and India. Does Ron know that India's rich and poor are growing apart at an alarming rate... just wondering. Jeff back to innovation. Ooh these tweets are so insightful (not).

GE is divesting and getting back to making stuff and selling things. Divesting from GE Capital- one of my least favorite corporations. What we thought was the motorcade was the prep for the motorcade. I thought that was a bit fast, even for a motorcade on closed roads. Looks like the airport is no longer a hindrance to people coming to the capital district.

From Stratton Airbase to GE- very close, but too many side streets. Obama has to go outside to get on his plane... How sad. Here comes Obama. Talking to someone.... Up the steps and off he goes. No enterage. How does he feel about his speech? Jeff says he feels good connecting themes. Oh, not Jeff... Ron. What comes next? White House happy. Media is mercurial. Republicans will be diplomatically cynical.

Sabrina was warned by secret service about jet wash. Press Corp and staff go in the back of the plane. LIke clock work. 2 pm departure. One hour to Washington. 6:30 to go to Democratic Issues Conference. Can he walk the talk? Really? Wheels of the ground at 2:10 pm. Motorcade travels in a plane too. Cool.

The business of manufacturing. More jobs in Schenectady. Bodes well for the area. Moving out and taking off... what will the pundits say? Aren't they pundits? A major address. Pointed to a larger audience. Good lame duck session. Two year anniversary.... stars aligning. Edison in the state of the union address? Could Schenectady become a national metaphor? Let's make some stuff.

4th largest corporation in America. We're back! Reganesque optimism? American worker. What did Regan do for American workers? Um... destroyed unions.... deregulated industries so that workers could be laid off... hmmm Oh, now a story on how to fly a 747. Here it goes.... is this really worth covering unless it blows up? Wheels off the ground at 2:06. Thanks to Ron, and Jeff Lawrence Center for Economic Growth (whatever that is). Assessment exercise is big i higher education. Plane gone, story over. Wait.... we have a little more plane shot... the end.

Things I hate on the telie

Let's face it- we could each of us do a blog on this box over here and how much stupid stuff comes up. We have ourselves to blame of course. And like everything else, one man's art is another one's refuse.

Still, there is some pretty stupid stuff you just can't forget. Today, the Bongo and hoogey show... you know Bongo and Kathy lee Gifford... The show is no worse than any other morning show, but the last two guests were just worthless. The first was a woman who said we should worry about shrinkage in the winter. So much so that she thought we should all get baby powder to sprinkle into the cracks in our hardwood floors. But then don't vacuum it... just leave it there. My question- doesn't dirt do the same thing? And she wants us to stuff our ug shoes with newspapers and clean them with milk. Yeah. Milk. The second woman was supposed to be giving us some new taste sensations. Her first was pumpkin pancakes. They had to show us how to make pancakes! Who can't make pancakes. This wasn't sesame street or some kids' show. These were grown women sitting around a fake kitchen oohing and ahhing over plopping some pumpkin pie mix into your pancake batter and... ooh cooking it. Then the Bongo lady (whatever her name is) plopped her spatula on top of her cake! This is a no no among pancake makers. People do that with hamburgers too, and it's like, hey can I squeeze the juiciness out of this here burger for you? For pancakes... hey, they're cakes, right? Caky? You don't press the air out of your cakes do you? And it wasn't over This "cook" says, take some toasted hot dog rolls, put jam in them, and some butter, and bacon, and voila, you have this great snack. Are you serious? It's toast with bacon on the side, only you stick the bacon into your toast. This is a recipe? I made this kind of stuff after a long night of drinking in college (back in the day).

So if you have anything stupider than this, let me know. By the way, one of my students recently doubted whether stupider was a word. I said yes, and then checked on line, and one site said it was a word, but it was kind of an ugly word. Then I read it in a book this week. There it was... stupider!

Kafka on education in the 21rst Century

What would Kafka say about American education in the current era? That is our question for the evening. I just started the introductory material on an edition of the Metamorphosis and other stories, and as I read it, I started to understand what the writer meant by the universality of his major theme.

As any good reader of Wikipedia can discover, Kafka explored the notion of alienation. Alienation from the self, from the world, from all of it- whatever it is. However, built into any good look at Kafka is a bit of Marx and a sprinkling of Nietzsche, who Kafka read early on.

By the way, did you know that Kafka's sister divorced her Aryan husband so that she could be taken into custody with her other sisters by the Nazis and died in Auschvitz? Remarkable.

So, as I muse on Kafka, I think to myself, education has become, in Marxist terms, an assembly line of production. As a worker on the assembly line, I no longer have any ownership of the product. My worth is calculated based on how much value I add to my product. It is no longer valuable for a teacher to enlighten, to inspire, etc. It is nice if he does this, but not valuable. The only thing valuable any more is to add value to the commodity we call the cohort of students we process through the machine. Of course, the value is determined in any number of ways. If I can demonstrate that my students improved in some measurable way over the course of study, I can demonstrate added value. By reducing students to conglomerate sets of scores and by reducing their humanity to aggregated data, the process of education becomes far less complicated, and much more in line with corporate models of success.

There are a handful of companies out there who actually want their employees to become more creative for the sake of creativity. The bottom line is... well.... the bottom line. Creativity takes only a secondary or perhaps tertiary role in the process. The goal is not creation, the goal is added value. If being creative leads to a better bottom line, then creativity is fine. If it doesn't lead to improved test scores on a standardized test, the enlightenment thing is just a... mental state.

Now, granted, the current push for 21rst century skills gives lip service to creativity. It may even be one of our 'four cs' along with collaboration and competence. But the ability to come up with creative solutions to complex problems is now a skill. Creativity is not a goal, but a means to an end. In other words, the creativity itself is valued only if it leads to something of substance, a measurable outcome.

What can we expect, right? Who pays for enlightenment? We want results. If I hand you a paycheck with numbers on it, I want a report back that has numbers on it. Of course the absurdity of it is that we create these standardized tests that attach a number to a person's competence in a field of study, but we all know that the number is a merely a sign, a metaphor for something else.

Just as IQ tests create a numerical symbol for an elusive thing we call intelligence, standardized tests are really parables for the real thing. If I get an A in Mr. Fairchild's class, what does that mean? If I get a 98 on the ELA, what does that mean? Frankly both can be compared to ratings on wines....

We need to know many things to interpret these letter and number symbols. The A in my class represents many things. For some students, it represents their best effort. For others it represents something less than their best, but compared to the others in the class, it is excellent. Does the A represent how much the student learned, or does it represent how much the student handed in? Usually the latter. Does an A in a Regents class mean the same as an A in an Honors class?

The 98 on the ELA represents any number of things. First, one must know what year the student took the exam. For it to have meaning, one must know how that student did in relation to other students who took the test. If the test was scored out using a typical bell curve, that student should be in fairly rarefied air. However, this is really up to the state and how they decide to curve or distribute the scores. They will play with "cut scores" and crunch numbers to fit whatever they feel is appropriate, but all of it will come down to a corporate goal and all individual variables will be subsumed for the larger goal of the whole body.

This is the absurd moment. One suddenly realizes that the grades one has gotten, the acolades one has received, the pats on the back for a job well done, are all arbitrary and meaningless. This is the Kafka moment. When our main man wakes up to the nightmare that he is not a human, but a vermin.... The absurdity of the moment becomes unbearable.

The system does not want us to see this absurdity. It wants us to remain comfortably numb in our comfortably modern understanding of statistics and justified results. By way of these artificial signs of success, the funding continues, and the system coughs back to life on the way to whereever it is going.

Like I said, creativity is nice in this system, as long as it can be measured and calibrated.

things we thought were true

Tonight in the news... astrology has been off for some 3000 years. Not by a lot, just a smidge. Turns out there are 13 signs, not 12. For some reason it doesn't matter to us because of something to do with the fact that we figure things out seasonally. Still, it seems likely that the precise mathematical calculations made by astrologers must have been... well, wrong.

Last week we talked about new discoveries regarding Pluto and its fellow dwarf planet, Aris. We thought we knew what we meant by planet, and then... we looked at it a new way, and suddenly it was something else. Phenomenology rocks! If you've never read the preface to the play Doubt, it is really worth checking out John Patrick Shanley really embraces the notion of doubt and argues that it while it is uncomfortable, it is an essential part of being human.

Today in class we wrote on a quote I lifted from Shanley's opening to the text of the play from the book of Ecclesiastes. The gist of it is that too much wisdom brings one to sorrow. How true, I suppose, but how pointless. While it may be nice to ignore the news and other inconvenient truths, one cannot simply not know something, unless one is willing to lie to oneself and to others.

Although, I think most big astrology fans and experts will simply readjust their readings based on the new information, while maintaining that the old readings were just fine. The same adjustments were made by those who supported a Ptolemaic view of the solar system. Until it fell apart under the weight of excess data collected by better and better telescopes. But the old system held on for as long as it could, desperately readjusting without throwing out the old wine skins of an earth centered solar system.

Scientists brag that that's what makes science superior to other modes of inquiry. They argue that they are always making progress by creating new paradigms based on new data. Of course, they can't see that their methodology is a paradigm as well, one that does not always work. In other words, science is sometimes not pragmatic. Pragmatism insists on making shortcuts if it looks like it will help. Science rarely takes short cuts.

And yet this past week, a scholarly scientific journal published a study on ESP. Many of the scientists interviewed in response were offended that such non-scientific theories were being proffered as science. Their complaint was the traditional one- hard to falsify, etc. Still, it was published, and now the jury gets to decide.

One wonders if we will see science returning to a new form of scholasticism or even a neo platonism. Stranger things have happened.

Blood libel

I pulled this off a website to read:

In saying her critics "manufactured a blood libel," Sarah Palindeployed a phrase linked to the false accusations made for centuries against Jews, often to malign them as child murderers who coveted the blood of Christian children.

Blood libel has been a central fable of anti-Semitism in which Jews have been accused of using the blood of gentile children for medicinal purposes or to mix in with matzo, the unleavened bread traditionally eaten at Passover.

The spreading of the blood libel dates back to the Middle Ages — and perhaps even further — and those allegations have led to massacres of Jewish communities for just as long.

The term "blood libel" carries particular power in the Jewish community, though it has taken on other shades of meaning. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Wednesday that "while the term 'blood libel' has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history."

What I see here is that Foxman wants to distance himself and his people from Palin; one can hardly blame him. It is laughable when powerful people purporting to be such independent thinkers, sporting deer rifles and talking about their toughness and strength reach back for tea and sympathy from the public when they are falsely accused or maligned by the media.

By comparing herself to the jews, Palin is drawing on a new victimhood in conservative christianity. Many evangelical christians bathe in the martyrdom of a perceived persecution by the society they live in. They often preach Paul's comforting words: be in the world, not of the world. But most of us christians are not exactly persecuted. It is pretty easy being part of the moral majority these days, but for many evangelicals, it is a rallying point to see yourself as under attack by the worldly forces.

This is the kind of picture Palin and her advisors want to paint by referring to a blood libel. If they can get us to see her as a victim of the very prejudices we liberals decry as immoral, we lose our moral high ground. Of course, if we see it for what it is, we can see that Palin shares in the guilt of false accusations and persecutions of her detractors.

come together

Most remarkable in Sarah Palin's response to the furor over the shooting in Arizona and the subsequent blame game played in the aftermath was that she attempted to separate almost everything and everyone. We are individuals, she explains; it is not a city that committed the crime, only the shooter; anyone who tries to share the blame is practicing blood something or other....

The key message or perhaps her subtext was that we do not commit crimes and we should not be held responsible for the unexplainable actions of a madman. This is true, I suppose, to a point.

On the other hand, almost everyone has suggested that we should come together to grieve and share our grief. We as a country will heal from this, we will pray together... So the grieving is a group activity, but the blame should not be shared? Part of what makes us human is that we recognize that when another person suffers, we suffer. This is called empathy. I think blame can be shared too.

In fact, Palin and her two buddies from the right have been trying to share the blame of extremist rhetoric with her opponents on the left. They did it too, so I am not to blame for my cross hairs on the woman who now has been taken off a breathing machine and is delicately holding up her two fingers in either a peace sign or a victory signal.

But while they want to share blame put on them by others, they want to suggest that any connections made by their opponents are part of a persecutory witch hunt. When anyone attempts to ask Palin or Limbaugh to take on some of the guilt and sin of a fellow human being, their reaction is that we are persecuting them.... Metaphorically, she is tying this blaming of her (an innocent bystander) to the blame put on the Jews. In a sense, we are supposed to see her as one of them.

And yet, juxtaposed against this trope of common suffering, she stands by the core of every libertarian. One of the primary philosophies of the libertarian right is an Emersonian "I am a rock, I am an island" (Simonian?) view of man. Americans have often fallen back on this kind of 'go it alone' view for many years, and that approach to the world is strongest in parts of the country where people are most fiercely independent- the wild west.

New information about the killer from Tucson tells a classic story of growing independence leading to its sinister brother: alienation. He was apparently a very nice kid who slowly moved from being a saxophone player in a band to a guy who played dark and nerdy games with friends to a guy no one wanted to play with anymore. One of his old friends said it made him nervous when he would invite him to go out into the desert to shoot guns. People started to make excuses, and the girls didn't really want to date him any more. It is of course counter-intuitive for us to begin to understand and sympathize with a person like him. However, being human means being empathetic. One of the chilling reports was from a neighbor of the family- they said if a ball rolled into their yard, they'd leave it there rather than retrieve it. Bad vibes they all said. They were the Radleys of Macomb.

I have had neighbors like this, and I have known people who have begun to alienate themselves and allow the drift of uneasiness into their lives. These people have been allowed to become islands, not because they are powerful Emersonian idealists, or Nietzschean Ubermench, but because they find it easier to be on their own than to deal with others.

Sarah Palin's instincts that come from an anti-socialist ideology right out of an Ayn Rand novel are demonstrated by her remarks in which she distances herself from the shooter. Rush Limbaugh continued to help draw out this distance by pointing out that Sarah Palin was no where near Tucson on the day of the shooting.

Of course, many people with less ice in their veins have begun to feel guilty that they did nothing to stop this horrible event. The cop who pulled the shooter over for going through a red light, the taxi driver who drove him to the store, a friend who knew him when.... all these people who came into contact with him will now begin to ask a simple question- how could I have made a difference?

This is about a shared humanity. We are guilty of this attack, because another human committed the atrocity. Just as I would feel guilty if a member of my family caused a tragedy, and if it were a member of my town, I would feel some remorse, we can all feel a trace of guilt in the things that went down that day in the sun drenched parking lot of a Tucson grocery store.

Palin is desperately trying to distance herself from this event. I'm sure the NRA will have no comment on the event for quite some time. Many gun owners are running as fast as they can from this event to buy bigger clips for their guns in fear that the 30bullet clips may be outlawed. Perhaps they can all get together at the doorway of their local gun shop to say a prayer for the victims.

But instead, most will buy more guns so that they can feel safer (though statistically this is idiocy), more bullets so they can keep themselves safer. Protecting oneself by clinging to one's Glock is not really the best way to "come together." I'll leave you all with one more Beatle's lyric: "Happiness is a Warm Gun."

science is not so wonderful as you think

The other day, two of my ex-students came back for a visit to the alma mater. One, a literature major, the other, chem. Lindsay tried to apologize for Carrie's deleterious view of fine arts in general.

"It's all so made up," Carrie had complained.

"Of course it is," I responded, "isn't that what makes it interesting?"

"No," she retorted. "That just makes it bullshit (or something to that effect."

"How is chemistry any different?"

"We have facts and real things to look at."

"So do we- books are real, right? Ink on pages... all real."

At that point, Lindsay tried to explain to me that Chemistry majors don't really get any of this stuff I was talking about. That was about how deep your average science major wants to go philosophically.

This encounter was followed by one I had with one Peter Bertram, chemistry teacher. I have begun to see where this dogmatic notion of science stems. He was reflecting on how ambiguous and challenging the questions on the ELA he had just proctored for me were. I agreed with him and his lock step mind concluded that there was clearly one superior answer, but it was pretty easy to see how a student would pick the lesser of the two "right" answers.

Now this is a big area of interest for me, and like my blog says, be ready to take some time if you want to talk about this with me. I am a reader response guy through and through. Philosophically, I am as pragmatic as they come in practice, but in theory, I am a phenomenologist somewhere between Kant and Husserl, or more in line, Heidegger. Which is to say I generally admit that reality is what I am conscious of and that when one claims to be holding on to a firm grasp of what "is," I smile and know you are a damned villain. You have no more claim to it than I do, and I've been looking most of my life.

So, when Mr. Bertram said he had the right answer, I began to query:

"What do you mean by 'the right answer'?"

"Well, there were two answers, but one is the one they are looking for."

"Ah, so the writers of the questions are the source of what is right?"

You can imagine how far we got... about that far. Just like Carrie...

And after the exam was over, this issue reared its head again as we discussed why the ELA was being given on the 11th and would not be actually determined (as far as scores go) until a week or so later. We English teachers explained to each other that this way the state can determine what the standard is based on how kids performed on this test. It is a new test, so there is no base line data. What they will do in subsequent exams is unclear.

Matt thought this was a bit disconcerting. I explained that there are two ways of evaluating: the American and the Danish system. In the Danish system (as in the way 4-H rates their kids), a criteria is established, and you either meet it (blue ribbon), or you don't (red ribbon). That means out of 10 kids, all 10 could get blues and 0 could get reds (fail). In the American system, your success is determined by whether someone in the contest out performs you. You get a blue ribbon only if you are the best. You could all suck, but if you suck the least, you get a blue ribbon.

I would argue that while the Danish system sounds more scientific and more stable, its competitor is more in line with how values are determined in the "real world." When we grade papers, we look over the papers and put them in piles. The ones that perform really well get the As, etc. Honestly, if I get a pile of papers that are really a pile of .... ahem.... I will not give any As, but getting my pile of lousy papers tells me one of three or four things. Either my assignment was beyond my students, or they are a bunch of doofuses, or I was not clear what I wanted in the papers, or there was a big concert that weekend, and 50% of them got stoned instead of really working on the paper.

In job pursuits, the American system prevails as well. When you go to a job interview where you are competing against the best and the brightest, you better be better than the last guy who went in for the interview. If you go out lookin for love in all the wrong places, it is easier to find someone when it gets close to quittin' time. Yes, I suppose in each of these cases, one has minimum standards we have to meet. I am not going to hire an unqualified person simply because he sucks the least, and most of us will not date someone with several teeth missing, but, hey, if you're desperate....

So, it is quite pragmatic to say that grades and values are determined ultimately by comparison with each other and not with any rock solid standard. In fact, one of the reasons we continue to be in a crisis mode in education is not that we are doing worse at meeting our current goals, but it is because we are not keeping up with the Dutch and the Danish and half of the other industrialized countries when it comes to math and other skills.

So, back to my science discussions. The scientists think they are working with absolutely static and measurable facts and that their field of inquiry is about finding truth. This brings me to my final move- what is Pluto? Planet or dwarf? In the NYT this week, there's an article that explains that the dwarf planet they found some time ago is smaller than they thought it was. Due to new methods of determining such things, they may go back to calling Pluto the 9th planet. Thus, the utterance "Pluto is the 9th planet in our solar system." Was meaningless for centuries, then it gained some credence, and then it was accepted as fact, then doubted and then called wrong, and now may be returned to a status somewhere near true.

Here we have the work of scientists- what makes a planet a planet? Who decided whether it was or wasn't planet worthy? All valuations (as Nietzsche would cry) are arbitrary!

In the end, scientists and English professors are doing the same things- trying to make meaning of the chaos. My right answer works for me, and I will be sure of this for at least another two minutes or so.

Peter Bertram

Pluto vs. Aris

Responsible Speech

Of course the buzz is all about the political discourse that "created" the shooter and the shooting in Arizona. The reverse buzz from the loud mouths (Beck and Rush) is that it's not their fault. Well of course not. You didn't pull the trigger, Rush. Glen, you're a swell guy with nothing but good things to say about everyone.

Ya'll are off the hook. We all know is was Sarah that started the fire in the first place. Consistent with a biblical view, we should just blame Eve.

Frankly, there is plenty of blame to go around when a maniac gets a gun and lets loose in a crowd of politicians. We can blame our gun crazed culture, our lack of help for the mentally ill, a lack of health care for said mentally ill person, and throw violent video games into the mix for a perfect ending to the list.

The reason we are all blaming the right is that the victim (of note) is a Democrat. A centrist Democrat and a popular one by most accounts. She was put in the cross hairs of Palin's unbridled enthusiasm to wage a metaphoric war on liberalism, even though she is no Teddy Kennedy. In her all or nothing view of the world, our victim was fair game.

The other reason we blame Palin and her cheerleaders (frightening image- Rush or Beck in a little skirt with pom poms) is that they are the ones fomenting anger. The right kicks back like so many children in a dysfunctional household, yelling "you yell too!" Palin's email to her buddy (from deep inside her bunker) sounded like a pathetic child arguing that if we blame her, somehow we'll all lose our right to free speech. She joins the laudable ranks of folks like Rod Blogoyovich and Larry Flint.

The right now wants to remind us of the leftist nut jobs who foment hatred. Ooh, like Reverend Wright and that guy they kept trying to remind us of during the election who we had forgotten about.... what was his name? Ayers?

The difference between Ayers and Beck is that no one ever considered Ayers as Time's Person of the year. And Reverend Wright has never come even close to being POTUS. And that is the thing these guys have not come to realize. They are blessed with the gift of rhetoric and a certain charm. They have also been lucky enough to have found an audience. Neither Palin nor Rush, nor Beck has realized the important role they play, or they feel that they are so right about what they envision for us in America that they can take the risks they take every day.

The other difference between the right and left is that "our" mouth pieces (Rachel Maddow?) are neither household names, nor are they inflamatory. The most famous left wing name caller we have is Michael Moore. It is quite a reach to say that he preaches hate. He may be a socialist and he may "hate America" as his opponents argue, but he is certainly not riling up would be anti-capitalists for a surge on the Bastille. The worst radical lefty I can think of is Noam Chomsky. How many Americans know who he is?

Left wing radicals of the strength and vitriol of Beck and Rush have not existed since the French and Russian Revolutions. Okay. There was Mao too. But in America today, there is not much of a chance of the gay straight alliance taking a pot shot at a congressman. Really. There's not. There are some radical PETA people, but throwing blood on people's fur coats is not the same as packing a Glock in your sock and going to a rally to mix it up with the people.

So, let me recap. The right wing loud mouths need to see that they have a lot of power. Such power needs to be used judiciously. In freedom begins responsibility.

Does it mean anything?

Somehow, I stumbled on a website that actually cited my blog entry on Plato, Aristotle, and the Soul of Education. I have no idea how it got there, but if you go to Yasni.com and type in Jasper Neel, somewhere way down on the sites, when you get to the blogs that mention him, my blog might come up on your screen. I tried to get my wife to look at it on her computer, but it didn't work, so I had to carry Whit's computer over to her and show it to her. She was not impressed.

However, having looked at the post again, I realized that I had used the wrong first name for one of my mentor teachers of all time. When I wrote the piece long ago, I had said his name was Anthony, but I now realize that is his brother (whom I also see from time to time). Well, it took me a half hour just to remember how to edit my pages. I have now done the edit, and for anyone who happens to stumble on it, it is now correct.

I ran into Kevin McCann recently at the East Greenbush library, and he hadn't seemed to have changed a lick. He is still as sharp as ever and he still remembered my sister's name after many many years. I will count myself lucky if I can still remember a student after some forty years or so when I have retired. Simply for this, Mr. McCann deserves to get credit in my blog instead of his brother....

We aren't Arizona, but...

If you have ever thought to yourself, wow I am so glad I don't live in Beirut or Dublin or Tel Aviv or... insert a place in history where violence has occurred in the name of extreme politics and or religion... you can now add Arizona. This event just goes to show that anarchists are just under the patina of a society that only gives lip service to virtues like compassion and belief in true democracy. Next time you hear a politician say something like "Don't retreat, reload" just say no- you cannot get me to turn against others to further your lunacy. We need more peace, not stones to throw.

I wrote this in response to an article on today's shooting of an Arizona congresswoman. She was a centrist politician who supported the health care bill but also favored the unpopular law against people of color that has made Arizona famous for racism of late. I often hear people in check out lines, at automotive shops, at the barber... how people are tired of living in New York. The taxes, the dysfunctional government, the weather....

And yet I could never stand to live in a place like Kansas or Arizona or Texas. This is not to say that we are somehow superior to Arizona- we have nuts here too. And the politics in a barber shop in Poestenkill aren't much removed from the climate in Kansas or Arizona or Texas. Still.... there are enough sane people in the northeast to make nut cases like this shooter realize that... well....they're nuts.

Still, such people of the Timothy McVeigh ilk continue in upstate New York, Michigan, Vermont, Wisconsin. They are here and they need to get a simple message preached to them. You may be angry and you may disagree with others, but killing or threatening people is not the way. In class, we have just finished up reading the Rebel. In it, Camus addresses these people who have reached the edge and cannot help themselves but to rebel and lash out. His consistent lesson is to remember that you belong to the human race. You are not a god. You do not have the right to take the life of another simply because you judge that person immoral and even ungodly. You cannot preach messages like the ones Sarah Palin has preached and behave the way she behaves without the lunatics coming out and putting into practice her thinly veiled attitudes.

Clearly, Sarah Palin is not guilty of this crime. However, you will see that the blogoshere has already linked her to this event. She puts targets on politicians. How much brain power does it take to see that this might lead to violence? I wonder if she is tweeting today about this tragedy. Is she privately beginning to question her poor choice of words and the sporting of her hunting garb for the media?

To be fair, this is not about her. It is about those who have held power for hundreds of years in this country now seeing their power ebb. They are angry at change, angry at the audacity of hope, and angry at anyone who opposes their way of life. This anger is poisonous and the more we allow our neighbors to wink and nod at racism, homophobia, discrimination toward women, and a slew of other "progressive" ideas, the more we allow ourselves to be drawn into these old tribal patterns.

The next time you hear someone make a joke about using a gun to silence someone, or a quip about someone of color, or a joke that ends with something like, "we don't need their kind in our town..."... stand up and say "that's enough." No yelling, no anger. Just say no.

Today's news is about Arizona. Tomorrow it could be here. Say no.

Piece of pie anyone?

So today in the news... they are announcing cuts to the military. Can you believe it? I even heard that they may increase the contributions military personell will make to their health insurance. This after the President said he would freeze the wages of all federal employees except active duty personel.

I am going to make a bold prediction that these cuts to our brave service men and women have as much chance of sticking as the Republicans have of repealing Obamacare. While we're on that topic, did you ever wonder how words like welfare and Obamacare could come to be terms of derision or have negative connotations? How did we get to a point where looking out for the welfare or the health care of people was a bad thing?

So the federal government wants to tighten the grenade belts of our active duty folks? The argument you will hear is that we should make an exception for them, after all, they are on the front lines and they put themselves in harm's way for our freedom, and they make it so that we can be safe at home, and...

I wonder why the same argument isn't made for maintaining the salaries of social workers. They are on the front lines as well. They take care of people we don't want to deal with on a daily basis too. Now, they don't shoot those people- they help them. But social work, I dare say, may have as much to do with saving our country from disaster as the military does. What did you say? How can you compare social work to invading foreign countries? That's like comparing apples and oranges.

Okay, what about police and firefighters? Don't they put their lives on the line too right? Should we continue to be incredibly generous with their pensions or should we start to tighten their vests and coats a bit too?

Have we left anyone out in this squeeze? There's those pesky nurses I suppose. They are on the front lines, taking care of us as well. Should they be an exception to this universal belt tightening? Teachers? Garbage removers? Waitresses?

Which special interest group do you favor?

When the cuts come down on the military and really stick- I mean, if we actually see the federal military budget go down in any significant way, then we know that the country is really ready to cut the deficit. Until then, it's just one special interest group against another for their piece of the pie.