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June 2003

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Sorry if you've been having some trouble getting around the cats section of this website.  Its a legacy problem through two html programs and two file servers, and there are issues.  It should be a bit better now.

A year ago I was in a bit of a rant about "blessings":

     "We are able to know one thing: what it is moral for us to do.  We don't know what is a blessing and what is not  We don't know how the world should be.  We barely manage to live an intentional moral life, and yet we have the unimaginable hubris to think we know the mind of God.  Today everyone declares their blessings.  In cultures of continuous wisdom, only elders whisper the guess that something is a blessing.

     "We are constantly insulting faith with our "knowledge" of such things.  Do you have faith that God is good?  Or do you require that your life meet up with what you would define as a blessing?

     "To pigeon-hole God into your won concept of "blessings" is to insult God.  It is to say that the goodness of God isn't good enough just the way it is."

     -journal, June 8, 2002

Whew.  Note to self: don't do that!

Watching Antiques Roadshow while typing.  A first version Mac signed by Steve Wozniak on the back worth $6,000 with the signature or $10,000 if the story could be documented.  Okay, let me say that again... there was a Mac Computer on the Antiques Roadshow.

The Triangle of North Carolina has been taken over by its own version of the O.J. trial this summer.  Novelist, politician and war hero Mike Peterson's wife was found dead at the base of the stairs in their home.  "Tragic accident or 1st-degree murder?"  was the news headline today, in an article summarizing what we all already have heard.  The question is all about the kind of cuts she had on her head, and earlier in his life Mike Peterson had another female friend die in the same way, with the same questions.  Is this a man who got away with murder and then did it again?  Or the next version of "The Fugitive"?

Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning international affairs columnist for the New York Times, has written an article titled "Is Google God?".  Google is always on, and everywhere.  Google will shape our lives.  Most importantly, the ability to connect is shaping the world.  I try to read Friedman whenever I see his name, and this article didn't disappoint.

     Another New York Times writer, trolling Iraq for discontent with the American occupation, finds "A thousand thanks to Bush! And a thousand thanks to Bush's mother for giving birth to him!"  Article here.

I gave a presentation on employment at church today titled "Employment: Principles, Statistics, Actions".  See the PowerPoint slides here for the text-only version or here for the graphic version (pretty quick download).

http://www.newsobserver.com/peterson/story/2656407p-2463383c.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/29/nyt.friedman/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/27/nyt.kristof/index.html

I've put up an obituary page for Sneakers.  I've got notes about his life, his illness, and his death and my mourning.  There is also information about the teachings of the LDS church regarding animal stewardship and animal resurrection, including a link to a story to teach children about animal death and resurrection.

(the one on the right in the photo)

Just developed photos of my Christmas tree.  Last year was my first year with a Christmas tree, and I'm already sentimental to put it up again.

(very, very slow download for very pretty pictures.  click and then go do your housework and come back later)

Check out Abbie the Cat Has a Posse.  Abbie the Cat has quite a lot of cat thoughts to share.

When I was five years old I was very attached to a family friend.  One day a gave him a special treasure- a little found object that my Mother let me play with.  After giving it to him I immediately regretted it. I couldn't stand losing my special thing.  I went to my room and cried.  My four-year-old sister suggested I simply ask for it back.  So I went back out to the friend and took the gift back.  I don't think my actions caught the attention of the adults, but it was a major event of my childhood.

    Today I took my cat to the vet to be put down.  The cat had been suffering from cancer.  As I was driving to the vet, I really wanted to take it all back.  I wanted my childhood back, I wanted the town that existed when I was growing up, I wanted the pony of my childhood.  I wanted to go back to the day my cat and I first met, when he was a bouncing kitten and I was almost 21 and everything in my life was changing.

(the one on the right in the photo)

So it just happens to be the 21st birthday of Prince Williams today.  And my Mom's pet donkey sickened and died this week.

The other day I was writing about the rather free use of the term "fiancé" in the media.  Well, there was a real winner today- this time the supposedly affianced is dead, so he can't argue.  And it is especially absurd considering he was 17 years old.  From my conversation with the reporter in the previous case, they use "fiancé" if the person they talk to claims such a state existed.  No intelligent consideration of the claim is required.

     The last one was a real winner.  This time it is just a run-of-the-mill knocked-up teenager.  Well, she might not be a teenager, in which case it is slightly more interesting than an older woman was stupid enough to let a 17-year-old knock her up.  Nonetheless, probably not a person that had a seriously good chance of getting married.

http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2637298p-2446417c.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/06/21/britain.prince.reut/index.html

Helen Keller is always an interesting topic.  Everyone knows the story of the blind and deaf girl whose understanding of language opened when a teacher held her hand under running water while spelling the word "water" into her hand.  And if you don't know the story, read Helen Keller's autobiography.

     This New Yorker article via Metafilter looks over the topic one more time.  I guess we're not supposed to admire her as much as we once did, since someone who learned to use language better than everyone blessed with hearing and site and who attained better educational opportunities against higher barriers than anyone of her time is... not all that impressive?

     I can understand the argument- she shouldn't be treated as a child because of her disabilities.  Her writing should be judged against any other adult writer- and it still judges well.

Review of How We Eat: Appetite, Culture and the Psychology of Food.  You have to really think you're something special to impose your macrobiotic, Atkins, whatever, on what would otherwise be a communal experience.  And in a certain sense you have to indeed be something special- enough money to turn down a meal and enough self-sufficiency to turn down a social engagement.  In other words, as cut off from humanity as possible.

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?030616crat_atlarge

"My kid has better table manners than your honor student."  I've about had it with parents who are so impressed with their children that the don't want to intervene and teach them about how to be adults.  And the misuse of the word "educated" to mean "well-informed" isn't going over very well either.  "Educated" is about a process of transforming a person into something better.  It isn't about a high level of knowledge.  An educated person must be knowledgeable, but nothing says that an knowledgeable person is educated.

     But after a few decades of "educated" being reduced to mean "knowledgeable" and "knowledge being increased to have more vitality in American life than education (I blame Sputnik and the Cold War space race for this), "knowledgeable" is set to take another step up.  Now, knowledge comes before education, and also before a particular part of education called "morality" or "ethics" (I blame the explosion of the nuclear family for this).

     If you only spend a few waking hours per day with your kid, it is is much easier to pat him on the head for the A+ that the education (knowledge building) system gave him.  Having a real interaction where values and ethics are transferred takes too much time.  Joel Engel starts off with this problem in "Too Smart to Be So Dumb," citing a car crash caused by one of these little darlings who happened to get a 1550 on his SAT.

     I have to admit that when I was 17, at a good college after leaving high school a year early, I thought that knowledge was pretty cool too.  I pictured my life as one long process of  acquiring more knowledge.  Somehow all that knowledge would some how formulate itself into a kind of meaning for life.  Indeed, in having that hopeful second thought, I had moved being knowledge-ism to the bastard son of education: intellectualism.  Today, as I try to lead a more balanced life, a good life, an educated life, I am constantly tempted to dive back into intellectualism when I'm not quite sure about things.  I feel guilty for having abandoned the intellectualism that once seemed like the real meaning of life, and I feel embarrassed around those who have been able to build up their intellectualism into great towers.  But that just isn't real life.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/730avutr.asp

Earlier this year the city of Durham was without power for more than a week following a major ice storm.   It's a miserable experience. I was without power for 10 days in my rural home, and was forced to take shelter after the cold and pollution from my generator put me into respiratory distress.  In Durham folks were pulling guns on power workers and the usual suspects were on the news claiming that predominately white towns got power first.  It was as ugly as it gets in North Carolina.

     The power company said the problem was the tree lovers in Durham who had insisted that the trees not be cleared away from the power lines.  Now, less than nine months later, Durham residents are at arms over tree cutting.  This is a city that was willing to shoot someone over a downed power line not that long ago.

http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2599679p-2412407c.html

0679743685

Okay, I keep a journal and I keep detailed to-do lists and I keep a blog.  But Bob Graham has taken it to a new level.  See here and here and here, all from this post on Metafilter.  Little notebooks, one or two per day, more than 4000 so far.

     I filled up about 30 journals before switching to a three-ring binder system a couple of years back.  Now the journal and the to-do list and the calendar and the church bulletin, the bills, weekly print-outs of this blog... all of this goes in the binders.  Bob Graham puts his notebooks in manila folders with the correspondence from that day.

About one year ago I wrote...

     "I feel dizzy by the possibilities of the week and what may or may not come of it.  I have not adequately set out a plan, so there is chaos on chaos on fear and hope.  Today’s headache will become anxiety tomorrow morning, and I will be on my way for the roller-coaster of the week." (03/24/2002)

    Exactly.

Today at CNN Thomas Friedman wrote a little summary about how the world views American power.  At the same time someone from the John Locke Foundation from Raleigh got a bit of drivel in the News and Observer.  Just to highlight how much more astute Thomas Friedman is than everyone else, though this particular comparison is a pretty easy knock-out.

     I actually find the News and Observer article odd.  The writer is in favor of allowing more immigration, which is a strange ending to an article all about how much illegal immigration costs America and all the crime it brings and the usual scare tactics that we would hear from people who want to lock down the borders.  A bunch of foolishness without any facts to back it up;  facts are usually available from the John Locke Foundation, so this is rather unusual.

Three sisters, all West Point graduates. "I never saw them simply as good girls," Connors said of his daughters. "I saw them as athletes and young leaders, and I felt they could handle the pressure at a place like West Point."

     I think that is a very interesting thing to say about raising daughters.  I see too many girls being disciplined into obedience as if that were the goal, when having "good girls" is just the first step in turning out the high quality women that we need.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/01/nyt.friedman/index.html

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-west0601,0,1443036.story?coll=ny%2Dlinews%2Dheadlines

http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2582671p-2396880c.html

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This page last updated 01 July 2003.

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