Can I Get Disability Payments for This?
I have a disability that is a constant burden. In my daily walk of life, it causes me many, many difficulties that weigh me down, reduce my ability to work or even have enjoyment of life. It’s severe and debilitating.
I simply caNOT understand–or many times even remember–that most people LIKE being stupid, ignorant and blind to the world around them.
Most people cannot (solely because they don’t want to take the vanishingly small effort to do so) understand that
x+y=z, therefore z-y=x
. . .or that a basic grasp of such things are, in the very a natural, ordinary and proper human existence, useful in so very many ways that if one were to stop to list them there would likely not be enough (electronic) ink to do so.
And that’s just scratching the surface of things most people do not even take for granted, because they remain obstinately blind to them.
But it’s not just that basic, almost first grade level, algebra’s usefulness in kitchen management, carpentry, shopping and much, much more eludes them (because they are too intellectually lazy to be able to win a game of checkers against a head of cabbage), no, it’s not just that. It’s also that such folks view any use of very simple math extending beyond extremely basic addition and subtraction as magic, only invoke via calculators of some sort. (But then, such folks also do not usually even understand the formulae they must use to input data into a calculator beyond simple multiplication, division, addition and subtraction.)
My disability is that I just do not get that.
Algebra, statistics (and the calculus necessary to understand how statistical formulae work; without that, one is far too easily manipulated by phony statistics. . . just sayin’), gemoetry, etc., are all extremely useful tools–as ways of thinking about our world around us–for anyone wishing to
save money
save time
save effort
. . . that it boggles my mind that so very, very many not only are utterly incapable of even seeing the daily multitudes of applications of simple maths like algebra and geometry but are actually dismissive of such simple maths as non-utilitarian (though few such folks would even understand what I just wrote).
I have tried and tried, but my disability seems to prevent getting my head around that mindset.
So, when a salesman (of construction materials in the case that came to mind) clicks away on a calculator and comes up with something that simply cannot be, given the physical constraints of a job, the materials involved, etc., because he unthinkingly applied the wrong sets of criteria AND improperly applied a wrong formula, pencil and paper proofs might not be enough to demonstrate the flaws. . . and searches at that business for someone who DOES understand what the problems are might go all the way to the top of the food chain (as it did; the owner of the business understood the simple maths involved *sigh*). One out of four persons (two out of five, including me), 25% (or, if I were included in the population count there, 40%) could do the simple math.
That’s pretty typical. When I’m in the room, the number of folks getting simple math goes up. When I leave, the general IQ drops. No, seriously, and I’m not really all that smart or math-or-letters-literate*. Really. About half my extended family, for just one population sample, can better me there. And while the IQ scores I was once a bit ambivalent about (I turned down an invite to a local chapter of MENSA while in college–issued by a psych prof who had a legitimate access to my records–because I just didn’t, and still don’t, feel that smart”) say I should be bright enough to grasp why people choose to be dumb, I just still don’t see it.
Shouldn’t I be getting some sort of disability payment from the nanny state for this painful, disabling disability?
Well, That Was Quick
Started a book–a novel. As usual, I read the acknowledgements. It’s a quirk of mine. The guy started off thanking “. . .the most influential English teacher in my life,” who “also happens to be my mother.” So far, so good. When he gets to his father, though, he demonstrates that the most influential English teacher in his life either wasn’t influential enough or was just not a very good teacher with,
“Growing up you thrilled and terrified my friends and I with bedtime stories. . . “
As any literate person knows, “my friends and” in that sentence doesn’t negate proper English usage. Absent, “my friends and” the sentence reads,
“Growing up you thrilled and terrified I with bedtime stories. . . “
Sounds like the statement of a subliterate doofus, right? Well, “my friends and” doesn’t change that.
That’s one strike. I’ll give him two more and a plot or character failure before the book is ashcanned. That’s fair, isn’t it?
And someone, please, report his mother for being an incompetent English teacher, mmmK?
You Just Can’t Make This Sh**te Up
Really. A *cough* classic “WTF*xtaposition”:
“Follow Masterpiece Classic on Twitter”
Really. Ya just can’t make this Shiite up. And they say it with what sounds like a straight face!
*heh*
Culling the Herd
See other posts on my reading addiction. It’s been out of control for more than 50 years. Recently, I’ve been able to put some books down before finishing them with a hearty, “&@## no! Not worth my time!”
I’ve just recently (OK, 5 minutes ago) created another, “Nope. Not wasting my time” category under fiction reads. Picked up a real goat-gagger (something I usually enjoy: lots and lots and lots of pages of small text on very thin, high-quality–at least for this day and age–paper). It promised fair to hold my attention for a good evening’s read. . . until I got to the four pages of background timeline covering a couple hundred years of back story and another four pages of dramatis personae.
Oh, &@## no! It’s supposed to be a story! If I NEED a set of references to keep the story straight, the guy obviously can’t just tell the story and get out of the way. I’ve done that sort of thing–read books where authors just canNOT just tell the story and paint the worldscape/background into the narrative skillfully, and it’s just a PITA. If an author can’t just do his job well enough to do paint the worldscape/background into the narrative skillfully, I’m not going to waste my time on his work. He’s banned from my reading list. Period.
Moving on. . .
“We’re from the government. We’re here to help.”
Just click the pic.
Better Hope TEOTWAWKI Never Happens. . .
. . . because civilization would truly collapse. Why do I say this? Because not only are young adults–you know, the ones who would have to carry the torch, as it were–largely illiterate (or at least massively subliterate and/or a-literate), but most of them don’t even know how to hold a writing implement like a pen or pencil.
Seriously. Watch a 20-something try to write anything with pen and paper. Almost every one I see nowadays has the most awkward, cramp-inducing grip imaginable. This, of course, results in nearly unreadable penmanship in many cases and is sure to induce the dreaded “writer’s cramp” in short order. Without the ability to comprehend the millions of volumes of written “dead tree” text (no matter how laboriously they may be able to decode those funny lil squiggles on the page) and thumb-text in “pseudo-L33T” on their ubiquitous dumb phones, the transmission of information is bound to die.
In short order, what was once civilization will be back to the Dark Ages where people don’t even know what used to be possible. Though it’d still be an order of magnitude more advanced than the typical Muslim society today, it’d be back to life as “nasty, brutish and short” in a generation.
Incurious Subliteracy
As I have often said here, I read a lot. No, more than what most folks think is “a lot”–much more. I have done for a little over 56 years now, and as a result have read a few thousand more books alone than anyone else I have yet met.
Now, that’s not in any way some sort of boasting, just a setting of the stage, as it were, OK? In fact, such addiction to reading is nothing to boast about at all, and, like other addictions, it has some undesirable or even simply irritating consequences.
One of the consequences of so very much reading is that I’ve observed a general diminution of literate use of English (I don’t read much in other languages any more and haven’t for a couple of decades *shrugs* It’s just worked out that way) in more and more recent works, and not just in the recent deluge of self-published (or “indie”) books. I’ll just cite one example of many in a recent book that I finished despite the fact that I wrote deprecating margin notes at least once per page, sometimes as many as four per page, expressing my disgust at egregious word misuses, inexcusable grammar errors, etc. The example?
“He was the exception that proves the rule,” misused to mean, in context of the rest of the passage, that this exceptional person demonstrated the validity of a particular “rule” by violating it and succeeding anyway.
*sigh*
That alone would have convinced me of the author’s obstinate, arrogant, obdurate incuriosity and ignorance. (Don’t assail me for redundancy–obstinate/obdurate. I’d add more synonyms with slightly variant meanings, but you have your own Thesaurus *heh*) Many, many decades ago, or so it seems to me now *heh*, I wondered at a use of “prove” that puzzled my childhood brain, as it did not seem to match up with the meaning I knew–show the truth of a thing via evidence or argument.
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. — Malachi 3:10
As my curious search discovered then (thank heavens for a LARGE “library” style two-volume dictionary in our family library), “prove” is used in the verse as translated in the KJV text above to mean “test”. And just so is “prove” used in the phrase, “exception that proves (tests) the rule.”
And so is the richness and diversity of the English language–a language of which it has been said that it’s quite happy to drag other languages into a dark alley to mug ’em for as little as a useful participle–degraded by thousands upon thousands of subliterate, dim-witted, incurious dumbasses who never bother to read outside their own little box and so never discover that what they “know” just ain’t so. . . in spades, doubled and redoubled.
BTW, the book that garnered so much red ink from me is one I became convinced was written, proof-read and edited by a congress of bare-assed baboons. I had to cleanse my mental palate with some Shakespeare.
Cool Heat
We don’t have a fireplace in our cozy lil home, and there’s not really any good place to add one, but. . .
We are considering finally replacing our old (still pretty nice) Magnavox bottle screen TV with a much larger LCD screen perhaps sometime this year. Yeh, no real hurry there, since TV isn’t really the center of our universe like it is for some (although I’ll admit watching Downton Abbey on my lil 15.6″ lappy screen positioned about 15″ from my eyes or even on my Kindle Fire (original) is pretty nice).
Still, a new, larger, wide aspect screen would let me build a faux mantle and surround for a collection of fireplace videos. . . 😉 Heck, there’s even a forced air heat duct on that wall (which I want routed UNDER the EC, away from both the piano and the HTPC, in future). Right now, it’s closed off (because its close to the piano’s best location), but routed out somewhere near where the fireplace videos would be running would be nice on a cold winter’s night. *heh* Sure, no real radiant heat (well, unless I could route the computer’s waste heat differently, too* ;-)), but still, it’d be fun: some snap, crackle, pop and other fireplace sounds and views to accompany quiet conversation, snuggling, or just side-by-side reading, as is often our habit.
A Critical Element of So-called “Gun Control”
It’s not “the essence” of gun control, as The Puppy Blender labels it–the essence is self-anointed elites controlling those they feel are their inferiors, alluded to but not specifically stated below–but it is a critical element:
“. . .the essence of gun control: ‘Again, it’s an expression of contempt for Middle America. They don’t like you and yours and don’t think you should be in charge of the capacity to take care of yourself. They know they can’t do this for you, but they’ve hired these nice people to draw chalk outlines of your kids, and that’s supposed to make you feel better.'”
And do note, these self-anointed elites not only “know they can’t do this [take care of you/protect you from predators, etc.] for you” but they are counting on it; they WANT those they view as their inferiors to be incapable of resisting predation, because they are the prime predators. Their true subtext to the rest of us is, “Welcome to serfdom; just lay back and enjoy the rape. It’s for our own good”