It is a great example as to why I believe the things I believe. Human goodness is utterly limitless, and works almost silently.

(Found via The Kitchn.)

Huge advert on the side of a bus: “FIRST AID IN WARTIME. FOR HEALTH, STRENGTH AND FORTITUDE. WRIGLEY’S CHEWING GUM.”

I’m reading Orwell’s Why I Write right now. He is our grandfather’s generation’s Jon Stewart. I’m working more on this concept as it goes.

It’s like that boring old history stuff is, like, worth learning or we’re doomed to something. Or whatever.

You betcha.

9:27 – The board is taking up remaining amendments on the high school world history course.

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.

9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

9:51 – Dunbar’s amendment striking Jefferson passed with the votes of the board’s far-right members and board member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller of Dallas.

9:56 – Here is what the Library of Congress says about Jefferson’s influence: “Recognized in Europe as the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson quickly became a focal point or lightning rod for revolutionaries in Europe and the Americas.” The Library of Congress notes, in particular, Jefferson’s influence on revolutionaries in France (including on the Declaration of the Rights of Man), other European nations, South America and Haiti.

(Found via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

[From 1984 by George Orwell]

There is an easily understandable truth to the phrase, History is written by the victor. The victorious are the ones left after the battle to tell the tale, so it is their story. Even ‘his story’ seems like the etymology of the word, though it is not.

Logically, however, it seems as though it should not be the case. Fact is fact. What happened, happened. Right? The American Revolution went from this, to this, to this.

But we humans are limited, isolated souls. We cannot truly know anything beyond our own experience. So when we look upon the past, we see it through our own eyes and nothing more. Try as we might to keep the past even-handed, it remains clouded by what we believe actually happened.

And that belief as to what happens tempers our current state of mind. We justify our current decisions based on that foggy history, to either follow the path or run counter to it. The hardest to cope with of all is when evidence points to a different conclusion than what is believed to be true.

This is where a new battlefield has opened up, and it follows the words of George Orwell exactly.

In Texas, there is a board of education that controls the content of a huge amount of school textbooks. A single board, in one state, dictates the content they want in most schools.

How this is possible is through textbook manufacturing. Texas publishes a single list of approved textbooks for all of its schools. Texas is a huge state. So, if a publishing company wants guaranteed millions in sales, they cater to Texas. And since they’ve catered to Texas, those books become the books for much of the whole country.

As one would expect, Texas, as a whole, has stronger religious leanings than average. And this board has a solid voting bloc of religious conservatives. This fact would normally be balanced out by California’s liberal-secular leanings, but since that state won’t be purchasing textbooks for another half a decade (good planning, that’s what that is), Texas is now wielding far more influence over the market than it previously did.

Up now for their curriculum decisions is social studies. History. Our very past is going to be altered by the present. Alterations to make sure that there are well-mentioned gaps in Darwin’s and Galileo’s advances in our very world. Show Reagan as a hero, followed by the grandeur of Newt Gingrich. And be sure people see that our very founders were espousing Christianity and rule under Biblical law.

It is the last point that is most confounding to my knowledge. I have read our founders, not just read about them. Most of them were Christians, yes, but that was merely the default. The far more reaching fact about them was that they divorced their personal faiths (which were from numerous sects) and knew that their inspirations came from Enlightenment philosophy of reliance on themselves to get through existence.

These people honestly believe they are setting history right. That is what is so tough to fight. And it is a subtle fight over words. What is most impressive is that they are thinking in terms of generations. If they rewrite history now to deceptively emphasize the religions of our Founders over their actual beliefs, then it will be thirty years before the ramifications are fully felt.

As Mr Coates mentioned when I first read about this on his blog (also followed up by Mr Sullivan), it is hard not to leave this subject on a sour, depressing note. The effects of such an intellectual coup are difficult to see as too harmful in a world becoming coated with ubiquitous information. It also requires a vast amount of effort to maintain a campaign such as this over decades.

Still, it is always worth fighting against such willful acts of ignorance and deception.

The speed reading is definitely coming along, I think. My retention is higher. I’m getting closer to my goal of reading about a book a week, plus I’m able to consume more delicious content online. Hopefully that’ll make up for the fact I can’t listen to podcasts any longer since my kids keep getting louder.

So here are a few lines from The Art of War that struck me. From Chapter 2, Waging War:

3. If the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Chapter 3, Attack by Strategem:

18. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Chapter 13, The Use of Spies:

4. What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

5. Now, this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.

5.1 If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.*

6. Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

27. Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are the most important element of warfare, because on them depends an army’s ability to move.

That all spoke quite a bit about what has happened in the world in the past decade, and even so about the Cold War as well. Who would have thought that actual, evidential knowledge would be useful in conducting war?

*Not actual quote from Sun Tzu.

King.

Arguably the greatest American leader of the 20th century.

I totally got 91% on this bad boy.

Now, my son isn’t vindictive toward our fine avian friends, he just knows that we as omnivorous mammals, meat must be killed prior to ingestion. Plus, my friend and I were talking about spotting birds (I had apparently seen a crane in flight while I was driving last night), so the whole thing isn’t entirely out of context.

I started by explaining that we have farms that raise chickens and turkeys for eating. The lad said he knew (I’ve explained it before), but how to we kill birds in the sky?

Well here we go. My son, being a five year old, has already seen and pretended to use many different weapons. Most of them have been blasters or phasers from science fiction, and I’m fine with that. But still I refuse to deny him knowledge of most things that he would find out anyway and would rather he know them properly.

I started with the fact there are handguns/pistols, and there are long-arms. That’s an easy enough place to differentiate small guns from big guns. So we’re talking about hunting, and unless you’re a friend of my dad’s, you hunt with a long-arm.

In long-arms, you can then break down into groups shotguns, rifles, and assault rifles. Assault rifles are used by soldiers in battle. That’s the only place they’re needed. Easy enough to understand.

Rifles, next, are used to hunt bigger animals like deer and wild pigs. They shoot a single big bullet in one spot. That’s what you need to take down larger animals.

So with smaller animals like birds, you need a smaller bullet. That’s when you use shotguns. Shotguns don’t fire one big bullet, they fire a bunch of little bullets over an area. So that’s what you take with you when you, for example, go out into a swamp and hunt ducks.

What about moose, dad? Can you hunt moose?

Sure you can. What do you want to use to hunt a big moose? Something that shoots a big bullet or little bullets?

A rifle.

That’s right, good job. Glad it makes some sense.

We continue walking.

Dad, look at this picture I drew. That’s the sun, that’s Earth, that’s Jupiter, and, uh, what other planets are there?

Lesson learned. I have no qualms with my children knowing about life and death, particularly since they’re so intertwined. I wouldn’t mind showing him how the different weapons work next time we’re visiting Granddad and checking out his collection of vintage toys.

Addendum: Since I have an inquisitive mind, I went ahead and Googled long-arms. Nothing. Apparently I’ve been using the wrong term for years. According to Wikipedia, the terms are long guns and short guns. I probably got mixed up with the fact that my mum has used long-arm quilting machines for years. Glad I didn’t bring up that fact and confound the boy further.

Mukasey and Hayden complain that the president has tied the hands of future presidents in this. Yes, he has. What Obama understands is that what is truly vital is that this dark and shameful period not become a workable precedent. It must be repudiated at the very heart of the American political system, and removed like the cancer it is.

After my small dish of dinner, I took my cocktail and my iPod outside. I turned up the volume as loud as I could and closed my eyes. The sounds of the ballpark came from this tinny little device on the table. The constant buzz of the crowd, escalating as a tough inning was closed by the home pitcher, made up the background for the announcer.

There’s a language to baseball. It’s an auditory game. You can listen to the balls and strikes, the outs, the pitches thrown, who is on base. When you hear all that, the game gets painted into your mind. You know who’s up and who’s waiting to bat. There’s a story forming.

Each half of the inning is its own tale. And there is time between pitches and events to talk about the past, talk about what’s going on in the city around the team, and what other teams have been up to. You feel a part of it no matter how distant.

As the season rolls on, the story gets more interesting. History has been happening, changing the scenery itself behind each and every pitch. As with life, you rarely see it happen at the time. But when you look back, suddenly the world is different.

Still, through it all, it’s all baseball. That tinny little voice on the table next to me, all simply, grainy radio waves with the same commercials between each change in sides.

My iPod has an app that shows the pitch-by-pitch movement of the game. To do that, it connects to my wireless network. From the router creating that network is a wire to a cable modem. The cable modem is what connects my home to the giant and strange ethereal world known as the Internet. At some other point on the internet is the home of Major League Baseball. This is the collective home for all the information and broadcasts coming from all the ballparks across our lovely continent.

So the announcer’s voice goes into his microphone, the signal carrying wire moving it to the local broadcaster. The local broadcaster sends it out to the central company who then distributes it to other outside stations, namely my local station. Then, over the air, that voice manages to reach my device, coming out small and tinny, yet clear, to tell me that there was a popup to left field, the runner on first tags up, the throw to second, not in time!

My son joined me for a bit out there on the deck. We didn’t last outside for long. April in Minnesota is still cold after dark. We sat there, listening to the voice, drinks at our ready. His milk, my adult beverage.

And it’s been like this for what is quickly closing in on 100 years. The adage of the story?

Though the technology may change, the point remains the same.

Baseball.

He hits it high! He hits it deep! This one is… outta here! – Duane Kuiper, through my youth, joyfully over and over again.

Aside from the other great steps we have taken that came to fruition today (such as my children growing up in a world where a Black man has already been President), the event itself is historic interest. Watching the swearing in of the elect and the bidding adieu of the former floored me. For over two hundred years, for essentially our entire existence, the stewardship of our country changed hands.

No violence, no riots, no revolution has come about due to a change in our executive. Nothing happens. It never has. It’s all rather dull and dry (well, usually). And it’s just what we expect to happen. Sure a great many other countries go through similar changes, but we have been at it for a very long time.

We should be quietly proud of that fact, too. Our Republic and Constitution are the oldest and longest unchanged in the world. I guess having the people be the ultimate check on government was a rather staying notion, no?

As for today’s ceremonies, I loved the music. Aretha Franklin singing before the Vice President took his oath and John Williams’ original composition performed by a circle of geniuses… it was just grand and timeless. And I thought the Benediction by Dr Lowery and his inclusion of text from the Negro National Anthem was a brilliant touch.

I hope you’re starting to sleep a little better.

Sincerely,
Evan

Two years ago today, my wife and I were married. Twenty-four months and she still hasn’t offed me. Hot dog!

There is also the meaning of Veteran’s Day. Since living in England, the value of it is so very different. I appreciate it more, what a nonsensical and nightmarish time that all must have been for those poor, brave souls lost. It astounds me that there are veterans of that war still alive today. Ninety years since the treaty was signed, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, of 1918, and there is still a small contingent of survivors. Simply amazing and wonderful, and they deserve every possible drop of our respect and gratitude.

And lastly, there is the strange sensation that this day is also marked for my friends. Guys I went to high school with, who I learned to play Dungeons & Dragons with. They’re veterans of a war now.

Growing up, there was always a sense that veterans were old chaps who remember battling in the air, manning mass numbers of ships across the sea, and fighting tooth and nail through Europe and Asia to the rescue of good.

And there were the hidden veterans of Vietnam. It had already been in the history books, tucked in the chapters that still remained after the school year was done. There was a vague sense of guilt surrounding the whole topic, and it was apparently something my parents’ generation knew and felt deeply, but it was lost on their children.

Now, however, the honor is on these young men who are never far removed from my memories of growing up. I don’t know whether to thank them or apologize to them. I doubt that feeling will ever leave me. At the very least we have learned from our collective past and know to give these brave, still living souls our respect and love.

So here are thanks to the ones I know served. Thank you Garren, John, Jon, and David.

(Found via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Also, the term ‘gawk’ comes from a shortened form of ‘Goddamn, that’s a big fucking auk!’

As a historical carryover, this is also the title bestowed on all adolescent lead Bari Sax players.

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

Imperial Spain attempted to invade what would become Wisconsin to search for the perfect cheese. The soldiers sent were known as the Conquesodors.

What are implications of this? Firstly, the point of the case found that the Washington DC ban on handguns was found unconstitutional. The law was fundamentally flawed because DC, if you’re unfamiliar with American geography, is a small parcel of land surrounded by other states that don’t have the ban. So really, picking up a handgun if you wanted it, was easily done.

Secondly, the larger implication is that the personal ownership of a firearm is guaranteed. Further, the amendment should be read as a personal right to protect oneself and one’s family and property. This protection should also be understood as against both personal attacks as well as tyranny by the government. The reasoning behind this point comes from English rule and our Colonial days, and the fact the Second Amendment was putting into written law a long-standing belief.

So far as how much Heller changes things, no one seems to be certain. I know I am still up in the air. I always have been able to see both sides of the argument. But one interesting thing has come out of reading commentary on the ruling: comparisons between the US and Europe, with the US having a lower crime rate.

Apparently, we have a much higher homicide rate, possibly due to our right to lethal weaponry. However, overall crime is lower. I don’t think by much (I’m writing this on hearsay, I haven’t read any numbers). That being said, Europe has the higher rate of injuries from crimes, America has the higher rate of deaths. That just seemed interesting to me.

Another thing I have read several times is the fact that guns do not change the crime rate. They may affect the lethality of the crimes, true. But there is also the factor of victims being less likely to fight back against someone with a gun, and the factor that those who defended themselves with a gun without firing a shot (warded off their attackers) aren’t likely to report it.

Now comes to my opinion on the topic of gun control. I will admit, I have argued in the past, usually as the devil’s advocate to my father’s opinions (always in good fun, Dad), that the well-regulated militia clause of the Second Amendment was the lynchpin of the whole thing. And now that we built ourselves a standing volunteer army, there really is no need for we civilians to own firearms anymore.

I have indeed been persuaded by the opinions of the court, and will defend an individual’s right to own a gun to protect their family and home. However, it was not solely the court that has swayed me in this direction. My adolescence falling to my adulthood during the anti-liberty hell of the Bush Administration also shifted my views. Now I am quite ready to maintain a couple of arms in my own home should the government attempt to stifle my right or access to free speech. And at this point, I do feel we should take up arms against the evils that have been perpetrated in our good name.

Sorry, I digress.

Now, on to more of my views. I am very glad that the ruling still left plenty of room for regulation of firearms and their use. I will fully admit that the presence of a gun culture in the United States is valid and very real. Anyone who has existed outside of full urban areas for more than just traveling to another urban area will know this. There is a history to this continent that cannot be told without the long arm to one’s side.

I must stipulate at this point, I do mean long arms. I think that the right to own a rifle or shotgun should not be infringed. The West was won with the shotgun in the hands of settlers (great for hunting food and home defense). Wars have long been won with rifles. Handguns, while occasionally handy, were not at the fore of such things.

To me, pistols just kill the people around you. That’s why, in principal, I am okay with the idea of banning handguns. The idea of regular folks walking around with little to no training and, I do partly blame the media for blowing bad stuff out of proportion, jittery that everyone they run into is a potential mugger/rapist/murderer is frankly frightening. It calls to my mind this scenario:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ITqS2uTPD4]

I will openly admit, though, that since handguns do exist, and that since they exist in the hands of criminals, I think that we civilians may be better off having them available to us. Still, everyone walking around with a glock is frightening.

I think my biggest feeling of fear comes from knowing there are people handling these weapons without any training. There are some absolutely basic things that everyone must know. My dad, though thoroughly capable as he was, could have taught me himself how to handle a gun, put my butt into a hunter’s training course as soon as I was old enough to get a license.

So I say if people have to have licenses to handle the biggest killers in the country, cars, they should have licenses to handle firearms. If you are going to drive a car, you better have it on you. If you are going to use a gun, you better have it on you. If you’re going to drive a big truck, you will need to have extra training and a higher-level license. If you are going to carry a concealed handgun, you better have a higher-level license. That’s a big reassurance to me that the person holding the thing has been trained to.

Though I will ask, please, for the love of all things good in this world, make sure the license requires better than a 70% accuracy on the test to pass. Even upping it to 80%, a lousy B-, would make me feel better (for both tests, really). And there should well be a child’s permit alongside it, where they begin training to handle firearms, but not without an adult presence until some specific age. I am not sure which, but I am sure that there can be permits graded by age alongside caliber so that a twelve year old is just handling a 22 squirrel shooter out on the ranch.

I am very glad that, again, the court ruling allowed enough free space to permit the creation of licensing without infringing on the Second Amendment.

I do hope that, in progressing from Heller, cool heads prevail. I hate to see it all boiled down to a culture war between those people that like guns and those that don’t, as it often does. I would much rather see the discussion be, We as Americans have a very ancient right to own guns; how can we best ensure that they are reasonably accounted for and safely used?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtL-1V3OZ0c]

I nearly made it to see the event in St Paul. I almost heard, live and in person, Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. However, I decided to be a good boy and stay in class rather than ditch for the rock concert. I regret it, and I always will.

Obama started speaking just as I began to drive home. I hung on every word. The man was fired up and nearly had me cheering alone in my car on the highway. He was as classy as ever in giving his opponent her due credit.

There were moments, though. Amazing moments. Moments from his voice to my ears. Moments that can be harnessed into a source of energy. And these moments are not him pushing us into action; they are moments that awaken and evoke the very core of our own motivation.

Obama made a pledge tonight to not campaign on a platform of fear. Hearing that made my heart soar. I have never been afraid. And I’ve been made sick seeing others so gripped by propagandized, irrational fear for nearly seven years. That promise to run without injecting despair made the crowd roar. I had never heard such a noise erupt even while the orator is still having to shout themselves over the crowd.

And then there are the ties of this moment to history. Obama brought that in as well. I feel somewhat that Western cultures miss out a bit on the idea of invoking ancestors. We are here because of the battles they fought, and it should be known that we have that strength within us as well. Obama does not campaign on his ego, he campaigns on what he knows and believes that Americans are capable of.

This is a moment we all can be proud of. For the Greatest Generation, they can have one more moment to add to so many that they have given to produce a better world. For the Baby Boomers, they can have a moment of redemption that, even with all the nonsense they were involved in, that their social revolutions have come to fruition. And most of all, for we Generation Xers, so they can believe that they are indeed capable of doing something great as their predecessors have done.

When I got home, before sitting in front of the computer to write, I stared for a minute at my sleeping infant daughter. I know I’ve written on it before, but I still cannot imagine the world she and my son will grow up in. With the people doing right by themselves, my daughter will come to know a world where a black man has already been President.

That thought is the ultimate reminder that we are a part of this moment, and that this moment is a part of history. I may not have been there in person, but I will remember this moment when we had been told that yes we can, and yes we indeed did.

This is from a Pro-Tibet protester in San Francisco.  I just couldn’t help but share…

History doesn’t repeat itself, of course, but it sure does rhyme.