Learning Experiences

Two Kids

This is about Cedar the goat (kid #1)

 and an unnamed nine-year-old girl out in California (kid #2).

Last spring, the nine-year-old decided to raise a goat and then put it up for auction at a county fair. But as things turned out, the girl bonded with the animal and, regarding it as a pet, no longer wanted to part with the goat. The girl’s family tried to back out of the agreement to auction Cedar, but the auction went ahead anyway. The family then took the goat and absconded with it, eventually placing the animal with a farm that leases out goats for vegetation control. 

The family offered to cover all expenses, and the buyer of the goat at the auction (let’s say something nice about a Republican state senator) agreed to the new plan, letting Cedar live. But they did not reckon with the hardasses of the Shasta District Fair. No way! they exclaimed. The child must be taught a lesson:

“Making an exception for you will only teach (our) youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants.”

And in order to enforce their rules, the Fair authorities got the Sheriff’s Office to send two deputies 500 miles to seize the animal. Taxpayers money wasted, anybody?

Henrik Ibsen demonstrated in his plays that the claims of the Ideal (abstractions, rules, laws) can be antithetical to life. In this case, the life that was lost was that of Cedar the goat, who probably ended up as someone’s picnic dinner.

And what was the lesson learned by the young girl? Probably, that the world of adult authority is rotten, without love or compassion.

(Story at https://www.sanluisobispo.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article273909885.html#storylink=cpy)

One Kid

Having tipped my hat above to a Republican politician, I must, unfortunately, return to the cesspool of the GOP.

Kristi Noem is the governor of South Dakota. Perhaps her most noteworthy action (or stunt) as head of that state was to send “up to 50” South Dakota National Guard troops to Texas to “help secure our border.” As if that handful could do the trick!

Last week, Noem moseyed on over to a National Rifle Association event (otherwise known as the gathering of the goofballs) and proceeded to outdo all the other quacks. She joyfully announced that her grandchild Addie had a shotgun and a rifle. The child, it should be noted, is almost two-years-old. Noem put it this way:

"Now Addie, who you know, soon will need them, I want to reassure you, she already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle, and she's got a little pony named Sparkles too. So the girl is set up.” 

Well, what is she set up for?

The Second Amendment to the Constitution (which the gun nuts keep under their pillows at night) begins (this is the part that is conveniently ignored by the nuts):

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .

That’s what she is being set up for: she is going to take her weaponry and endeavor to protect the security of our country in the same way that the two score and ten South Dakota guardsmen were going to protect the southern border. 

I am left with just one question:  

When Addie is on guard duty aboard Sparkles, who will change her diaper?

(Story at https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-governor-2-year-old-granddaughter-already-several-guns-2023-40)

The Curse of Education

To understand exactly what is wrong with American education, look no further than Catlett, Va. A recent story in The New York Times* reported on a ten-year-old fifth grader who challenged an entry about rocks in one of his text books—and was celebrated for doing so. 

Authority coming under attack—is that what public education is supposed to lead to?

The distinguished Tennessee legislator Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka said the other day,

"You’ve got to do what’s right — even if you think it might be wrong — you’ve got to do what’s right."**

That is, you must defer to authority (“what’s right”) no matter what—a variation on the old phrase “Are you going to believe us or your lying eyes?

But we see from the kudos that have been showered on the fifth grader (who shall remain nameless here to avoid further stigmatization in later life) how public education—by praising his whistleblowing—is attempting to undermine the rightful order of American life.

*

This celebration of whistleblowers is just one underhanded way that public education is a threat to Americanism. Consider how even in the early years of pre-school, children are encouraged to share: 

“Now, Billy, let Kevin play with the choo-choo a while.” 

What is it that sharing leads to? I ask. Communism. Toddlers of three and four are unwittingly being groomed to become Reds. Are we to stand by and do nothing?

*

There are manifold other tactics that are being used in the effort to undermine our country, but I will point out just one more. In how many classrooms are children separated into groups to work together to achieve a common result? The educators call that “cooperation”; I call it a concerted project to eliminate individualism from the USA. This “cooperation” is an undermining of the Ayn-Randism that espouses the strong, stand-on-his-own super-individual. It is a step backward from the High-Noonism of the “good guy with a gun” who will stop evil in its tracks. 

If this insidious “cooperation” expands further, we will be defenseless against the bad guys. And where would our country be then? Probably in the hands of communists who have been groomed almost from the time they left the cradle.

*

What to do ? What is the answer?

I think there is only one big step that must be taken to eliminate the threat: 

Defund education!

You have been warned!

***

*  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/us/student-textbook-mistake.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230413&instance_id=90088&nl=the-morning&regi_id=84409848&segment_id=130299&te=1&user_id=5604655212f4529172fd380b16fc901d

**  https://sports.yahoo.com/leaked-audio-shows-tennessee-gop-195911489.html

  

 

Sticks and Stones

Consider the happy state of the caveman. There he is chipping away at a flint with a rock in order to achieve a sharp edge; or he is squatting in his cave scratching in the dirt with a stick. 

Envy him.

If his stick breaks, he goes to the nearest tree, breaks off a branch, and is ready to continue his attempt at quadratic equations or the image of a mastodon. Is the second stick thicker than the first? No problem. There is no hardware issue here—no compatibility hassle. His simple equipment, we might say, works straight out of the box. 

*

I offer these thoughts based on insight gleaned from purchasing a new computer. There was actually no need for me to whip out my credit card, but I had been grousing about the seeming slowing of speed of my previous MacBook Air, and, so when I discovered that I could get a new one for 20% off, I jumped. 

Thanks to Amazon’s one-day delivery, there it was: spanking new in a dark gray slim silhouette. To demonstrate my adult restraint, I actually waited several hours before opening the box and started to call it into action.

The first thing I discovered was that the power cord of the old Mac did not work with the new one; the new Mac has completely different inputs. Not only the power input was incompatible with the new machine, but also, with the elimination of the USB slots, everything that plugged into the old Mac was useless on the new. Goodbye, wireless mouse; goodbye, external hard drive; goodbye, external disc drives; goodbye, scanner.

Hello, Amazon, send me a Bluetooth mouse.

*

It is not just with computers that the modern world has deemed it necessary to make upgrades the bane of one’s existence. 

I have been leasing the same make and model automobile through several iterations. It used to be that the music system had a six CD player. How wonderful! You could drive for hours and have new sounds accompanying you all the way. But the two most recent models have scrapped the six CD player and now offer a single measly slot to fill. This is bad for two reasons:

First: Have you ever gone on a trip with one music source on hand? In Argentina once, we borrowed the car of my son-in-law’s brother for a journey to the countryside. The car had a cassette player, but unfortunately there was only one cassette on hand to listen to. Have you ever tried listening to Rod Stewart in a car for two hours straight? The definition of Hell on Wheels.

Second: You’re driving on the Turnpike at sixty miles an hour. The CD in the single slot comes to an end. You would like to listen to something new, so what do you have to do? At sixty miles an hour (and assuming that you prefer to keep your eyes on the road) you fumble for the tiny ejector button, and, with any success, you remove the disc and place it on the passenger’s seat. Then you attempt to maneuver the center console open and extract a new disc. With one hand on the wheel, you lever open the disc’s case, remove the disc, and attempt to place it right side up into the narrow CD slot. If the next sounds that accompany you on your journey are not from Chopin’s Funeral March Sonata, you are still alive. 

*

Then there’s my dishwasher. (I will not dwell on the arduous adventure of getting the previous super to install it. Actually, he never did.) I cannot figure out how to load it. The spaces seem all wrong. And although the capacity looks greater than the old dishwasher’s, somehow there’s always less of a load when filled.

But that’s not my real complaint. The old dishwasher (by the same manufacturer, incidentally) had its controls on the outside of the machine. The new one has the controls (electronic, not mechanical) inside on the top of the front lid. Which means that when you open the lid, there’s a good chance that you will accidentally land a finger on the start button—and the machine sputters to life, spraying water all over the interior. It happened to me twice this week.

*

In conclusion, can we really say that the modern world—with the agita of dealing with modern technology—is an upgrade from the simple world of the caveman?

(And in case you need more proof: as I was going to transfer the text from Pages to my blog, the internet connection went down.)