Power to the People

Because empowering people outside the bounds of central government control is dangerous.

He speaks of liberty, freedom and helping society’s marginalised. His dedication to civil liberties has brought him a loyal band of followers. Now Cody Wilson, scourge of the campaign to control the proliferation of arms, is coming to London with a new mission: to challenge the global financial system.  Mr Wilson, 25 – named by Wired magazine as one of the world’s 15 most dangerous people after he created a gun that can be downloaded and built with a 3D printer – is promoting a crypto-currency that would operate outside of government control.

The Independent

Tomorrow is the Big 4-0

Looking forward to the next forty, should I get them, I have just one wish: a face like Willie's.

"But I just want to be happy!"

I shudder a little inside when I hear anyone over the age of 12 using the word "happy."  In most cases I am pretty sure they do not know what they mean when they use the word.  A better Socratic would ask them about it.  Maybe I'll get there someday.  I am as confident as I am about anything, however, that many use the word happy to describe a "steady state" to be achieved and held and when they do so they are speaking of a fantasy: there are no steady states.  One would be just as well off as to own a trained unicorn or to retain title on a rainbow than achieve happiness as the concept is commonly employed.  In recent years I've taken up the use of the word "joy" and its cognates as a form of passive resistance to this trend.

There are those, however, attempting to redeem the term and return it to useful employment and there is an audience for what they are selling.  Stoicism is a practice of living that can be undertaken within nearly any other philosophical, cultural, or religious paradigm.  It seeks to supplant rival conceptions of what it means to live happily (or joyfully).  It rejects the hedonisms of any age, whether it be the hedonism of youth which seeks happiness in experiences, the hedonism of middle age in the collection of stuff, or the hedonism of the old which is reverence.     Likewise it rejects the conception of happiness which says, "Just go along to get along" a passive avoidance of actually living life in the hope of avoiding hassles, and settling for that small accomplishment as a happiness.

What is stoicism then?  In short it is a discipline of mind that only seeks what is within one's own control.  It is a lifelong discipline as our lives are in constant flux and not only is our environment changing but so too is our brain.  This is no small task but neither is it overwhelmingly difficult.  It will neither come with reading merely one book or a "graphic novel" but neither is there is a need to lock one's self up in a monastic's cell for a decade of chanting and meditation.  Stoicism overlaps greatly with a modern approach to psychotherapy: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  Likewise it can be thought of as a kind of Western Buddhism, while Christianity might be said to have drank stoicism's milkshake, stoicism never really went away.   If you already accept that the elusive nature of happiness might have even a small part to do with what bounces around in your own head rather than being the full and total responsibility of your circumstances, stoicism/CBT might be helpful in gaining ground on your own pursuit of happiness.

As for what a daily practice of stoicism is or might look like, I'll describe my personal practices in a later post but the disciplines of mind I seek are standard.  For a beginners approach to stoic practice, no one is doing more work helping women and men get started then Don Robertson and I'd defer to his suggested starting point with only a single recommendation: the use of writing a few short sentences every morning and evening to make the practice a little more concrete and a little less mental.  More of us remember to brush our teeth just before bed than remember to be grateful for the day for the very reason that one is concrete and the other is not.  If you want a more intense introduction, by all means check out the Live like a Stoic Week 2013 Handbook.

270 Words

On this, the 150th Anniversary of the Gettysburg address we remember those husbands and sons who did not die in vain.  My grandfather tells me about his grandfather, who fought and returned home intact, at least physically intact, from that war.  We easily forget with our Facebook updates and Obamacare failures but these words remind us of the carnage that took place during those years and the relative magnanimity that followed the south's defeat, magnanimity born of the knowledge that we were all still, or rather again, one nation.  When we have difficulty giving grace to our political opponents who do no more than insult our own narrow conception of good sense, we demonstrate our own ignorance, shortsightedness, and vainglorious pride.

You don't have to say much to mean much.  It doesn't take much to forgive much.  Everything hinges on remembering, despite our differences, we are all Americans and "jaw, jaw is better than war, war."

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Milleniels

They'll be alright.  Nothing a little time under pressure can't fix.

Thursday is for Politics

The big policy disagreement in this household the last year has been how to read the "Common Core" standards.  This is the first critique that strikes me as having real substance.

Core Meltdown Coming

I’ve stayed mostly out of the Common Core nonsense. The objections are mostly fuss about federal control, teacher training, curriculum mandates, and the constructivist nature of the standards. Yes, mostly. But so what? Here’s the only important thing you need to know about Common Core standards: they’re ridiculously, impossibly difficult.

I will focus here on math, but I’m an English teacher too, and could write an equivalent screed for that topic.

I’m going to make assertions that, I believe, would be supported by any high school math teacher who works with students outside the top 30%, give or take.

Two to three years is required just to properly understand and apply proportional thinking–ratios and percentages. That’s leaving off the good chunk of the population that probably can’t ever truly understand it in non-concrete situations. Proportional thinking is a monster. That’s after two to three years spent genuinely understanding fraction operations. Then, maybe, they could get around to understanding the first semester of first year algebra–linear equations (slopes, more proportional thinking), isolating variables, systems, exponent laws, radicals—in a year or so.

In other words, we could use K-5 to give kids a good understanding in two things: fractions and integer operations. Put measurement and other nonsense into science (or skip it entirely, but then remember the one subject I don’t teach). Middle school should be devoted to proportional thinking, which will introduce them to variables and simple isolation procedures. Then expand what is currently first semester algebra over a year.

A co-worker was fired for a broach of public morality that our employer thought disregarded our "corporate values," which is to say the values of the institutions aristocracy.  In a free nation, with a freedom of association, I respect the rights of my employer to fire my friend, even as I am more in agreement with my friend than the aristocrats who fired him.  That right of free association, however, extends to all institutions and liberty does not mean that certain groups are afforded special protection as a political favor to tie up their votes.

ENDA is a bad idea

When Washington first passed employment discrimination laws, Congress saw that anti-black discrimination was so widespread, so destructive and so intractable that the government was compelled to impose a remedy on private business. The question today is whether another intervention is warranted — or will it do more harm than good.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed the Senate on Nov. 7 with supporters promising to end anti-gay discrimination in the workplace. The law may or may not do that — but it will certainly ban legitimate practices by private employers. Federal laws, after all, are not precision-guided weapons. They are blunt and they always inflict collateral damage.

If the Washington Examiner refused to hire a reporter simply because the reporter was gay, that would be wrong. But one can imagine cases in which an employer might justly place on employees conditions that are tied up with sexuality or gender identity.

The problem with the article is the psychological need to bring global warming into the story and emphasize as fact what is not yet understood: the many ways beyond luminosity that the sun impacts earth's climate.

Strange Doings on the Sun

Something is up with the sun.
Scientists say that solar activity is stranger than in a century or more, with the sun producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected and its magnetic poles oddly out of sync.
The sun generates immense magnetic fields as it spins. Sunspots—often broader in diameter than Earth—mark areas of intense magnetic force that brew disruptive solar storms. These storms may abruptly lash their charged particles across millions of miles of space toward Earth, where they can short-circuit satellites, smother cellular signals or damage electrical systems.
Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is "a total punk," said Jonathan Cirtain, who works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as project scientist for the Japanese satellite Hinode, which maps solar magnetic fields.

Truckin' Buddy

Stupid Smokestack

A Free People

will not be controlled.  It is best engage in the positive work of building a society where legislation is limited to those areas where there is broad consensus.  If you can build a 1911 with a 3D printer, you're not far away from printing a fully automatic AR-15.  Either we can live in a tolerant nation where the harmless minority is allowed to live as it wills or we can construct a police state to enforce meddlesome legislation which no one really cares about.  A diverse society which is also an armed society is a libertarian society.

Armistice Day 2013

We remember and honor the sacrifice of war's veterans, regardless of what we now think of the war the in which they served.  We acknowledge those who did not return whether they volunteered or were drafted, whether they believed in what they were doing or were just looking to come back home.  We acknowledge that war is, in the course of human events, necessary if a people are to remain free but that the cost is always greater than the politicos promise "to be home by Christmas."  We remember, but we do not celebrate.  War is always a tragedy, especially to those who are most intimately impacted by it.

We reserve the right, however, to curse throughout eternity those leaders who through ignorance, neglect, deception, or any combination of the three lead live to a ripe old age after leading us into senseless wars which serves only their own egos, delusions, or narcissism.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

A Year's Potatoes

Downs the road a ways is a potato warehouse and sorting facility.  If you pick them up there, they are $0.20 a pound.  We make use of a root cellar to buy in season and in bulk.  I got three growing kids and the dimes add up.

Our house did not have a root cellar when we bought it but it had the perfect spot for one and an afternoon and fifty dollars was all I needed to build one.  I know an old man in town who sells food grade barrels, most of them originally held Tabasco sauce, saw off the top and some scrap plywood for a lid, and you are set.  The spuds last more than a year in storage and we have one less thing to pick up at the grocery store.

400# in the cellar.

The last of last year's potatoes, still firm and tasty.

They come in the house about 20# at a time.

Statistics

Half a million miles over ten years in my own vehicle without a cracked windshield.  Thirty miles over forty minutes in a borrowed pickup and the universe gives me this gift.

Winter