Category: Do the Right Thing

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Issues and Answers 2.3: The Enstupiation of America

This issue is far, far too big to do more in a blog post than simply point in a couple of directions for answers. But one thing is absolutely rock solid certain: Americans are becoming stupider by the minute.

(Doubt the “absolutely rock solid certain” nature of increasing estupiation? I’ve blogged before on genuine illiteracy, innumeracy and other aspects of increasing enstupiation of the American populace before. Search my site (or just google around for yourself) for previous posts linking such things before arguing with me about enstupiated Americans. Heck, in all the posts I’ve done in the past on the topic, I’ve no more than scratched the surface.)

“If a foreign nation had imposed this system of education on the United States we would rightly consider it an act of war.”–the 1983 National Commission on Education, Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman

Hmmm, not much has changed for mthe better in the last 25 years…

Let’s first simply take as demonstrable fact that “public education” (more properly called “prisons for kids” nowadays) in America is broken beyond repair and ought to be scrapped and rebuilt from the bottom up. Sure, there are a few sterling examples of public education working well, but

a. the instances are too few and far between to offer any redemption of public education in general and

b. the methods of successful schools–schools that have as their product productive citizens from ALL educable or trainable portions of the bell curve –WILL NOT BE ALLOWED in schools controlled by remote educrats/politicians.

So, to turn the tide of enstupiation, we must first radically change public education. The first step? Take a page from those who mis-quote Falstaff and “kill all the pubschool administrators.” OK, not actually, but at least metaphorically. Remove those who are arguably the stupidest class of people in public education from any position of inluence (administrators” and give them something useful to do in stead, say, making little rocks out of big ones.

(Yes, here are those rare pubschool administrators who are both competent and focused on truly serving as an aid to the teaching/learning process. But they are so few as to be dismissed as nonexistant for the purposes of cleaning houses. *heh*)

Then do the same thing for professors of education–you know, the wackos who come up with another theory to use in experimenting on your kids every year, theories that always seem to make kids dumber, not smarter. Heck, from the consistency of educational theories coming out of schools of edcucation over the past 40-50 years, one might almost think that there were a vast conspiracy aimed at making the American citizen into Amercan sheeple. But, as has been attributed to Napoleon, “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity”–and the twc corrollary: “Never underestimate the stupidity quotient of really smart people.”

(But then, schools of education aren’t even populated by very bright people to begin with. Heck, most of the social “sciences” are populated by people too dumb or too lazy to do anything creative. Double that for English and graphic arts departments on most college and university campuses, which goes a long way toward explaining the works considered “great art” in the 20th Century… )

Next: get the feds OUT of education. Period. Check your copy of the Constitution. There is NO (zip, zero, zilch) Constitutional justification whatsoever for a federal Department of Education. If you find one, go tar and feather the person(s) who “taught” you to “read” and misunderstand the English language.

And then slap yourself upside the head for being so stupid as to not learn on your own.

Then: place the responsibility for children’s education firmly where it belongs. If Johnnie or Janie can’t read, write and do arithmetic, then blame the parents. Oh, you think we ought to blame the teachers? Sure, go ahead. Who ought to make sure the teachers are teaching their children properly? The question answers itself. And if Johnnie and Janie can’t read, write and do arithmetic and end up being unenployable, then let their parents be responsible for their support. Why should you and I have to take up the slack because lazy, stupid parents refused top BE parents and make sure their children learn what they need to learn to be productive citizens?

But parents’ respnsibilities do not begin and end with formal schooling. Actually, the most destructive lessons are taught by the time kids enter kindergarten (an horrific intellectual/social charnal house I and most of my generation was spared). While there are many destructive lessons “GRUP” parents* are teaching their children nowadays, the most destructive is the idolization of the child.

Parents who are their children’s buddies or servants or “facilitators” (*yech!*) are NOT offering their children the single most valuable lesson of all: a model of adulthood that celebrates maturity. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any place most children might look to find a real adult to model themselves after.

Thus we have “parents” who go ballistic (complete with explosions, firey immolations and childish temper tantrums) if funding for school sports is reduced in favor of *shudder* academics; “parents” who would rather see an academically demanding teacher fired than have little Johnnir or Janie actually, well, learn anything. (Yes, you do too know such parents.); “parents” who will excuse any of their own child’s misbehavior and fight tooth and nail to avert any actual consequences coming to bear on the child.

“Parents” who refuse their own responsibility for raising their children and shelter their children from the consequences of the chldren’s behavior: growing stupid, irresponsible citizens who will stupidly and irresponsibly

spend themselves into debt slavery for things they’ll just throw out tomorrow

elect politicians who will contin ue to sell our progeny down the river for a few more votes from enstupiated, greedy sheeple today

never see the hammer fall when it all comes to its inevitable end

Oh, gee. And I haven’t even touched on that other Great Enstupiator: The Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind…

*GRUPs are childish people who are chronologically adult but emotionally immature, clinging to youth, worshipping, adoring, seeking to emulate the immature behaviors of young people. The antithesis of maturity and wisdom, they seek to deny their advancing years. Dumbasses, one and all.

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OOT/OOS/OOP

Post title cryptic enough for ya? 😉 I’ll be out of town, out of state and mostly out of pocket for the next few days, so play nicely while I’m gone. (Yeh, I’ll have some sort of internet connection, but likely not the time to blog.)

Meanwhile, from Issue 1 of an abortive start at issues facing the U.S. (the series will continue–later), a tip from The Beagle Scout to add to Newt Gingrich’s Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less campaign at Americansolutions.com:

Those who haven’t yet done it and who care at all about US gas and energy prices may want to sign an electronic petition urging the US House of Representatives to pass H.R. 3089, the No More Excuses Energy Act of 2007. Here is the petition.

Read The Beagle Scout’s post and consider clicking on through the links he provides.

The unborn will bless you. And you might just help yourself out a bunch, too.

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“DWUC”–Driving While Under-Caffeinated

Wandering through a disjointed, rambling discussion with the voices in my head this A.M….

It’s a good thing I was under-caffeinated this morning. Too many “driving while brain dead” people on the road. Had I been properly caffeinated (thus, awake), I’d probably have stroked out at the number of folks who let a little dampness (after a night full of heavy rain) turn them into Aunt Tillies on the road… But enough of that.

Ever think about the differences between stereotypes and archetypes? They have common roots in real world relationships and usefulness. Archetypes as theoretical models actually have less usefulness in our quotidian experiences, IMO. Stereotypes though…

Ever notice that stereotypes get a bum rap in the talk of Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Mass Media Podpeople, et al, and yet Academia Nut Fruitcakes almost universally stereotype stereotypes as “bad” and Mass Media Podpeople cannot utter two sentences in a row without using stereotypes.

Why is that?

Well, on the one hand, Academia Nut Fruitcakes despise anything that simplifies models to the point of actual usefulness, while at the same time unconsiously making sweeping generalizations (oversimplified assumptions) about the unusefulness of simple models, AKA, stereotypes, which they have come to characterize as oversimplifications of some observed or imagined trait of behaviour or appearance.

(Mass Media Podpeople, OTOH, are unable to think in complex terms at all, and so have nothing BUT genuine oversimplifications to offer. In their case, stereotypes really are a bad, bad thing.)

Why do stereotypes exist to begin with? Because humans are generalization machines and Occam’s Razor is one of the most powerful tools (I almost typed “forces”) of reason. Face it: most “jocks” are intellectually stunted boors. Yes, it’s true. Nerds are, by definition, socially inept. Latino men are almost universally dominated by machismo (natural public reaction to their basically matriarchal home life–*heh*), and American society is becoming ever more feminized day by day.

Sidebar: I don’t have to defend any of the statements above, because to any person who has more functioning brain cells than a head of cabbage they are self-evident. Stereotype-driven, because they are generalizations from the real world that are testable hypotheses that can stand against exceptional tests: they work.

Example: the feminization of America. 99%+ of America’s future is brainwashed in our society’s prisons for kids (disingenuously referred to by Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Mass media Podpeople and politicians *spit* as “public schools”). More and more kids are being drugged out of their minds because, being boys, they act like boys, and our prisons for kids are dominated by female teachers for whom boyish behavior is anathema. Take a typical playground event: bully picks on victim. If the victim does the female teacher-acceptable thing and “goes crying to surrogate mommy” all is well in the eye of the prison for kids. If the victim does the right thing and plasters the bully, he gets in trouble. OK, maybe both get in trouble, but the point is that to satisfy a feminine culture, a forceful personal response results in injustice: punishment for self-defense.

And this trait is, of course, permeating our society. Self-defense is equated with aggression at an increasing rate. By all meeans, lets talk with the crazy guy with the atom bomb…

And that is but one of many examples of the feminization of America.

And so it goes with many things slurred as stereotypes: they are reflections of a reality the politically correct simply want to deny, as they embrace instead their reality-based fantasies and tyrannical utopian/dystopian views.

As someone once said (something like :-)), “In much of [their] talk, thinking is half-murdered.”

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Not Exactly Reindeer Games…

Warming up just a tad, but in the low 80s (as in 81 degrees fahrenheit in my no A/C, just windows open office) for the latter part of June? Not too shabby. Heck, the humidity is even in the low 1,000s% range *heh* (Yeh, it is humid enough to drown fish.)

Anywho, after much debate with the voices in my head, I ended up not building a new box from separate components. What I did instead was buy a “debranded” media center comp that I could seriously upgrade. Now, that does mean it came w/o the media center OS it was originally built for, and specific drivers for some of the components are “fun” to track down (drivers for the IR reciever and remote will likely be the most fun to hunt down). It also means I need to buy some more cable to build a new run to the computer (and not incidentally, another–better–splitter; split once into two, then again; one straight to cable “modem” and three runs to other places, for now).

Just more techie fun.

Still, for dirt cheap, an AMD 64X2 5600+ base system with a gig of memory (which I’m going to hand off to someone else–already selected, so don’t put in any requests :-)–and replace with 4GB), a competent sound/vid setup… which I will upgrade, and lotsa nice lil goodies including a nice TV Tuner card, bunches of media connections front and back and enough open PCI slots (one PCIex-1 is taken up already and the PCIex-16 is just waiting on a new vidcard). Oh, the 300W power supply is also scheduled for replacement. I have a nice 450W ps I can use in it until I get the PC Power and Cooling “Rolls Royce” ps I have my eye on, so I’m not screaming bloddy murder about a wimpy ps in my box.

Of course, no OS, media center, all that jazz, means it’s currently running Ubuntu 8.04 with MythTV, but as soon as I plop VirtualBox on, I’ll also install WinXP Pro-64 and hunt around for the usual stuff to use with it. Then, drag out some old software and install Win98 in another VirtualBox, so I can use Encore with it (cos it still doesn’t run under WINE).

UPDATE: *grrr* 64-bit CPU. 64-bit OS. 64-bit version of Virtualbox. Attempt to install 64-bit WinXPP, error: “Attempting to load an x64 operating system, however this CPU is not compatible with x64 mode. Please install a 32-bit X86 operating system.” The only XPP I have available that’s not been installed elsewhere is a 64-bit version. Looks like I’ll have to uninstall VirtualBox and go with VMware, instead. Sad, cos I really like the way VirtualBox sets things up. Oh. Well.

Other fun?my Wonder Woman’s Toshiba is at the “repair depot” for an LCD issue, so… have a desktop compy set up in the living room for her use. Kinda clunky solution, but at least she can chjeck her email and watch Stargate SG-1 reruns simultaneously. *heh*

Still getting above 40mpg in my lil 11-year-old Saturn. Even with “idjits” driving in front of me on two-lane roads that’re largely solid Ozarkian no passing zones.

Example: heading outa town (to another Third World County town about 10 miles away). Traffic stacked up for nearly a mile at nearly 30mph in the 55mph zone. Yep. Some 300 pound idjit on a motor scooter that he could probably push faster than it can carry him.

Now, at 30mph on a level road, I have to keep the lil car in 4th gear. That translates to about 1,500rpm. 45mph, I can use 5th gear… also 1,500rpm. 55mph is not quite 1,800rpm on the same level roadway.

But there I am lugging along at under 30mph, almost 1,500 rpm behind some idjit, wasting fuel.

Oh. Well. Lotsa those folks “driving” around, and I still got 42mpg on my last fill up (about 1mpg more than my porevious fill up–it’ll balance out, perhaps).

Imagine what kind of fuel economy I’d get if even a few of the idjits were to park their cars and attempt to master the intellectual challenge of putting one foot in front of the other…

😉

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Issues and Answers 2.01

Energy policy. No matter how much we work to reform tax policy to get the “feddle gummint” out of savings/investment policy and level the international trade playing field a bit, with the energy lashup that passes for “feddle gummint” policy we now have in place, our economy is hamstrung, our billions are being sent OUT of this country, largely to third world thugs, and we face a future of spiraling inflation.

The answer is complex but can start with one simple thing: learn some commonsense steps we can take NOW… and take them.

See American Solutions for more.

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Issues and Answers 1.02

Yesterday, I posted a video intro to The FairTax as an intro to the idea that real tax reform can have the single greatest ameliorative effect on our economic woes by introducing The FairTax. Today, part two:

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Issues and Answers 1.01

Of the many issues facing citizens nowadays, it’s easy to say that the answer to “What’s toward the top of your current concerns?” would be “It’s the economy, stupid.”

And, beyond simple concerns about oil/gasoline proices and the closely related rise in costs of concumer goods, that’s a very good answer. But it’s important that we understand that our economic problems go far beyond percieved consumer pain caused by rising costs and relatively stagnant wages. Think of several even more important, deeply embedded issues:

The primary “weapon” with which the U.S. used to bring down the Soviet Union was to sucker the soviets into attempting to compete with our economy. And still today, our best largely unused weapon against enemies such as Islamic terrorism is our economy. That’s something even a noncom fighting in Afganistan recognizes (a long read, and the economic observations are buried well down, but a read wll worth your time. h.t. Rosenary’s Thoughts).

Suffice it to say, every effort made by our politicians *spit* to weaken our economy both in obvious ways and in obscure, structural ways, is working. The dollar is at its weakest in decades; our trade imbalance is growing; our indebtedness as a nation is worsening. What to do?

Let’s start with some common sense steps. Step number 1 (even more important than Drill Here-Drill Now): Embrace the FairTax.

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The Ten Commandments

Via email:

T H E 1 0 C O M M A N D M E N T S
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this:

You cannot post ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal,’ ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,’ and ‘Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness’ in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians, because it creates a hostile work environment.

Yeh, poor babies. Wouldn’t want lawyers, judges and politicians *spit* to feel assaulted by *shudder* moral standards of behavior.

(With apologies to the few honest, decent lawyers, both judges and the politician who do observe decent moral standards. OK, so I’m assuming there’s a politician somewhere who is still a decent person fifteen minutes after becoming a politician. And, actually, there may be more than that, since there are so damned many of the critters–and no, I am not using profanity when I refer to politicians–as a class–as “damned”. Think about it. )

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It’s Not THE Answer…

…but it’s a step in the right direction.

Then, of course, nuclear power (I like PBRs), space-based solar, TDP plants and more–all very nearly “off-the-shelf” technologies–to round out an approach to energy independence from Middle Eastern (and other foreign) thugs (yeh, Saudis, I’m talking mainly about YOU).

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