AN EXPERIMENTAL LIFE
"West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette: In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court overruled its decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis and held that compelling public schoolchildren to salute the flag was unconstitutional. The Court found that salutes of the type mandated by the West Virginia State Board of Education were forms of utterance and thus were a means of communicating … [Read more...]
Normally, I'd wait until the end before posting about a book. But I'm reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I intended to ditch it as soon as I realized it would be first person. But I got stuck in its world. It starts out a bit YAD feeling, with what seems like it'll be a frame story. What King is actually doing is setting up a means of discussing time travel, which I really appreciated. In fact a … [Read more...]
Of course I had to read this one. Child fleeing abusive home. They're hunting him, and he has to learn to make a life on his own. It's a novella, and maybe another of Koontz's recent teasers. But I'm willing to be teased with this. There's a teaser for 77 Shadow Street at the end, but I found it bleh. Just horror. I'll pretty much read any more that Koontz puts out with the three main protagonists … [Read more...]
I've never undertstood people being willing to pay for training, college courses, a degree, certification, education, but who treat the money they've spent trying things out in life (experimentally) as money "lost" when they later choose another direction. Money spent on a house, and then you decide you don't want a house. Money spent on a degree, and then you decide you don't need the degree. … [Read more...]
Oklahoma was an experiment that lasted half my life. I lived in Oklahoma when I was 12, again when I was 15, from 17-23 (the rest of my boyhood) & 24-28 (the beginning of adulthood) and again from 30-31 (my experiment with on-campus grad school). I returned in 2000 as a married man and stayed for more than 10 years after that. It's on that 10year period I place most of my attention, because I … [Read more...]
To those who left us, who abandoned me or my wife or the both of us, throughout our lives, because we weren't finished yet, or we fell short, or because in some ways the world had shattered us like glass and we were looking up in pieces with sharp edges. You were foolish and impatient. You lacked integrity and were possessed of cowardice. You judged without reference to your own frailty. You … [Read more...]
For me, epistemology, judgment, and identity are the core variables that determine whether I engage people seriously or merely humour them. How do you deal with motivations and behaviors you don't understand? Do you superimpose meaning over them, thereby substituting an illusion for understanding, an assumption for reality, or do you allow yourself to remain in the dark and be comfortable with … [Read more...]
I break politically minded people down into two categories - liars and idiots. I'm not talking about politicians, which are either paid, professional liars or ideologically sponsored fools. I mean ordinary people who consume political news and either believe what they hear or see it as the arena for their ideological battle. The idiot is the true believer - the person who, for example, says we … [Read more...]
It's Thistle & Shamrock night, and Folk Salad night. I'm always surprised that people seem surprised, sometimes, because I listen to Celtic or Appalachian folk. Likewise, I have a straw hat I wore when I ran a company based on working outdoors. Normally I come off as either a bit Breaking Benjamin or just Wagner, though my secret passion is lesbian music. I'm a diehard Sarah Maclachlan fan, … [Read more...]
When I was younger, I bought into the sales pitch that zoos are rescuing animals from the jungles where, otherwise, they might be wiped out. Later, when we had more information about animal procurement, they changed their pitch. It became about 'raising awareness' so that people would care about protecting animals in those same jungles. I've come to believe zoos actually soften such awareness by … [Read more...]
When some people ask about my religion and, and I mention our traditions, they express surprise because I wasn't raised in it. Their point is that, if you didn't grow up in the Faith, speaking of "my people" or "our tradition" seems false or contrived. It has taken me some years to realize that, because they are inundated with fundamentalist 'messages' from every megaphone the world offers, they … [Read more...]
We live in an age of AntiChrist. I don't mean a fundamentalist theory that plays "who's the devil". I mean in principle, politically, and ethically, it's one of the ages of AntiChrist, of which there have been many - perhaps (as is my attitude) all of them. There are several core principles of AntiChrist or of an antiChristian ethos, many of which are supported fervently and even rabidly by the … [Read more...]
I've always thought atheists should be consistent. Don't bow your head when someone says grace. Don't close your eyes and pretend to go along. Don't go through the motions in your parents' church. Just be what you are. It's really impossible for atheism to be fully consistent - nihilism is the theoretical outcome, but if implemented, they would simply make arbitrary decisions. To step in front of … [Read more...]
It's never right to look at the family pet as 'just' an animal. It reflect a certain absence within the human being to do that - a missing component in the man, not the animal. It is the fundamental alienation from nature that Francis Schaeffer wrote about in Pollution and the Death of Man. "Dog" is often a derogatory term in this culture - you dog, man she's a dog, etc. It reflects the … [Read more...]
1. A fictional period that current Mediaeval historians (e.g. Cantor, Strayer, et al) reject, but which is useful for history teachers to justify spending only one chapter on an entire millennium. 2. A means of ensuring students have no significant understanding (beyond parroted platitudes) of the religious precedents that have determined, shaped, and evolved into the worldviews of their teachers. … [Read more...]