Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Are You Sure You Are Qualified to Vote? Hmmm?

OK, so you may have the “right” to vote, but are you really qualified to cast that vote? I’d suggest that at least two things must obtain before a citizen who has a right to vote is right to exercise that right. Those two things are

    1. A working knowledge of the basics of US history, geography and government functions.
    2. A grounding in the facts of the issues and candidates of the day.

Given those two criteria, I doubt more than half (if that) the people who cast their votes on election day(s) throughout America are qualified to do so. Sure, they may have opinions, but opinions informed by ignorance are worth the information that is their basis.

Try these out on friends, acquaintances and associates:

Could you pass a US citizenship test?

and

The SHORT FORM of this Civics Literacy Test

Any of those three linked quizzes should afford an adequate look at one’s basic American civics literacy.

As for adequate knowledge of candidates and issues, the best test is simply this: is your primary source of information the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind? Then, FAIL. *heh*

Just sayin’. (I hate sharing the polling place with people who are too lazy to do their homework before casting their vote. Really hate it.)

If you fail the simple tests of either basic criteria, please stay home the next time the polls are open. Really, it’s for your own good as well as that of society.

Note: the quiz found at Could you pass a US citizenship test? is the least well-framed of the three offerings above, but does accurately reflect the really poor framing of a current real citizenship exam. *sigh* Some of the question/answer combos are reflective of a “history” and “civics” view that is more propaganda than actual history and civics, such as, “What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?” (The real correct answer: Nothing but provide for disingenuous propaganda,” but the “correct” answer according to the test–which I dutifully rendered–was the lie, “Freed the slaves”.)

Still, on that “test” because I have for all my life had a semi-dyslexic recall of the geography of the “Left Coast”, I almost missed a question. (Yes, I said “A question” *heh* Don’t make me brag about my scores. Just let it be with “My eighth grade American Civics class would have been amused to be asked to take tests this simple.” No, seriously.)

Continue reading “Are You Sure You Are Qualified to Vote? Hmmm?”

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The Friday Lineup

Well, Drudge has rounded up the usual suspects. Caption his Friday Lineup if you will:

(I’m think along the lines of, “If you don’t get that finger out of my face… “ *heh*)

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Missing the Point

I received an email today that contained the following:

If course the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind can see the differences. The point is that the Hivemind hates normal, everyday folks who pay their own way in life and assemble in an orderly fashion to petition their government for a redress of legitimate grievances while showing respect for their country. (It’s that last part that particularly gripes the Hivemind.) The Hivemind despises honest, decent, hardworking, productive citizens.

OTOH, the dirty, disrespectful, “I just came to this ‘protest’ to skip school, score some dope and sex and hack off my parents” Wall Street Occupation dumbasses? The Hivemind’s cuppa tea, folks.

THAT is the point of the Hivemind’s propaganda concerning these two very groups of people.

BTW, how many of these “protesters” in these “spontaneous uprisings” are getting paid for the gig (instead of taking time off and sacrificing income as most of the TEA Party folks did)?

It’d be interesting to know more about just who is funding these things. If we had actual journalists in the Hivemind we might find things like this out, eh?

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Now That’s Just Not Nice!

Not nice at all! Someone needs to think these things through before publishing the web page…

Don’t take these folks’ unthinking cruelty seriously. RIP, Steve.

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NOT Part of the Solution

First, a couple of graphics, then a brief (not quite *heh*) disquisition.

And a fuzzy blow-up of part of that screencap:

Now, the problems:

1. The graphics are the result of a screencap from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson to a group of “more than one hundred school superintendents from around the world” at the 2008 Apple Education Leadership Summit.

2. School administrators, in the US at least, are arguably the stupidest people in education (Check their scores on the GRE, for example: bottom of the barrel.)

3. The talk in the video linked is about creativity and education, and in particular the links to divergent thinking. Sloppy thinking and presentation creates a false dichotomy between divergent and linear thought (something Robinson also does in his book, “Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative,” IIRC).

4. No matter that Robinson does briefly allude to the fact that divergent thinking is but a part of creativity and “genius” (he’s remarkably chary in his description of either) notice the graphic accompanying his talk on the decline of divergent thinking from ages 3-5 to ages 13-15. That’s right. Although his words say he’s talking about divergent thinking, his graphics say he’s talking about “genius”–whatever that is. And remember: he’s talking to what is likely a group of the dumbest people in education…

5. Robinson also makes absolutely stupid and false comments like, “…all children are born artists…” *faugh!* Not even all children are born with enough creative spark to be artists, and NONE of them are born with the talent AND the disciplined training, practice and experience to BE artists. It’s comments like this that encourage idiots to admire their own inartful scribblings, ugly dabblings and awful screechings as though they were art, and also encourage the appreciation of such crap by dullards made even duller by people who buy into Robinson’s stupid meme.

Mozart wasn’t BORN a creative genius. He was born with the POTENTIAL to BECOME a creative genius, and by means of his father’s (often harsh, excessively so, perhaps, if my reading of Mozart’s upbringing and the record itself is accurate*) tutelage, developed that potential to amazing heights.

I could go on and on (and on), but the point is simple: school administrators–as a general class–don’t need to hear this kind of poorly thought out tripe. They’ve already heard too much of this stuff over the years and from the evidence do not have the mental capacity to filter it for nuggets of wisdom or even understand them if they could do so.

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Gotta Love the Sharp Stuff

“A man who doesn’t have a sharp knife handy when he needs it just ain’t very sharp.”–anonymous sage

I quite literally have no idea how many knives I own. I probably ought to do an exhaustive inventory of them, but I also have a lot of other chores on my plate, so that’s not likely to happen any time soon. Still, every now and then I drag an old fav out of some pile sitting around and clean it up, sharpen the blade and just generally work it to make certain it’s still usable… then after a few weeks’ use it’ll drift on back into some stack and I’ll fall back on my three or four most-used knives.

I dug this one out today and did a tuneup on it. (These aren’t pictures of MY knife but some of the exact same model kyped off an ebay display.)

That’s supposedly high carbon steel (though it “takes” an edge more like stainless steel and “stains” like high carbon–the worst of both worlds *heh*) and the “ivory” handle is Delrin. (See here.) It take a LOT of work to get a decent edge on this blade, and it doesn’t really hold an edge all that well. But. It fits my hand very, very well and has a nicely designed shape and is well balanced for skinning and general knife work, so I used to carry it in my right boot almost all the time, for quite a few years, back in the day when ropers were daily wear for me. Daily attention to the blade was enough to maintain the edge, once it HAD an edge of any decency. Heck, if it already ad a fair edge, the bottom of a coffee cup would do some fair daily maintenance.

Have to keep the blade oiled (I’m still going on a very small bottle of an IBM synthetic oil that was used on some of their old tape drive technology), but if I do that (I hadn’t in a couple of years so that needed attention), the blade stays pretty clean.

It’s a handy knife when it’s been maintained. I gave a like knife to my brother who has reported that he found it quite useful in deer season.

Imperial Frontier Model 432. Pretty cheap. The ebay listing had it around $20, IIRC. Imperial, of course, is history as a knife maker. (Yeh, yeh, I’m sure the brand name has been acquired by some company that’s now making knives in Bangalore or somewhere, but they’re bound to be not as good as even this mediocre knife. AND they’re really, REALLY not “Imperials”.)

I have some other Imnperials–pocket knives–from the early 1900s that are really nice knives for their intended uses: hold a good edge, nice “hand” etc. This one, though… if I carried a boot knife on a regular basis again, this would probably be it.

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