Since it's Christmas Day, this might be an occasion to think about some of the stories that surround Christmas and that are usually viewed as facts about Jesus' birth but which either are probably untrue or are almost certainly untrue.
First, Jesus was not born in the year 1 A.D. There was an error in the calendar at one point. Most scholars now think it probably was in 4 B.C.
Second, there is absolutely no reason to believe Jesus was born on December 25. There is no record of the date Jesus was born; and it is believed that the celebration of the birth of Jesus at some point was attracted to the time of the Roman celebration of Saturnalia or perhaps to one or more pagan feasts that centered around the winter solstice.
Third, scholars now think Jesus was probably not born in Bethlehem, as the gospel stories say, but in Nazareth.
Fourth, the story of the Magi or "wise men." I believe only one of the gospels mentions this (sorry, I haven't got a N.T. at my elbow with which to confirm this), where it simply says "three kings of the East." There is no mention of their names being Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar—that is a so-called medieval accretion—nor that one of them was black.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The Newtown, Connecticut, School Shooting--After We've Had a Week to Gain Perspective
It's now been over a week since the occurrence of the terrible, tragic shooting of first-grade pupils and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut; and the nation and the world has had, not a chance to recover but a chance to contemplate, discuss, and try to analyze this shocking event.
As was well shown in a special program on PBS (the American public TV broadcasting network), there are two components or ingredients to an event like this.
1. Mental illness on the part of the perpetrator.
2. The availability of guns.
The current state of our science is such that we can't confidently identify individuals who are going to do something like that. There are factors which might be considered risk factors, but the group possessing such risk factors is large, and it's only a statistical matter and would not clearly focus attention on specific individuals.
However, much thought needs to be given to the second factor, the availability of guns. The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, 88.8 guns per 100 population. And, as a Harvard study showed, more guns mean more homicides.
The gun lobby—mainly the National Rifle Association and a few other, smaller gun owners' or gun rights groups—wants to tell us that what we need is more guns. But that is contradicted by the experience of our own country, first; and by that of Australia.
The United States had a federal ban on so-called assault weapons for ten years, which expired in 2004. Mass shootings using assault weapons have increased since the ban expired. Also and at the same time—due to the influence, power, and legislative success of the gun lobby--gun laws have been loosened in many states.
Second, since Australia enacted tough gun-control laws, their experience of mass shootings such as we have been having has been nearly nonexistent.
A third factor needs to be added to the two I enumerated above:
3. The gun culture in the US.
There are countries with a high—though not as high as America's—rate of gun ownership. One such is Switzerland. But you simply do not hear of mass shootings in Switzerland.
Or take England. England has maybe 50 homicides a year. The US has roughly 12,000.* On a single summer weekend in Chicago, there might be 20 or more homicides committed with guns.
In the US, guns are glamorized and may be, for young urban gang members, a symbol of manhood. Guns are identified with heroically depicted characters in western movies.
Video games have also been blamed for our gun violence. At first blush it makes sense: many video games feature killing people (albeit not real people) by shooting them, and I understand that some video games even show assault weapons being used, weapons with visible brand names.
However, England gets the same video games. And they surely get American movies, including all those American westerns. Yet somehow those factors have not caused the English to be enamored with guns the way Americans are. We need to figure out what accounts for the difference. It would be too easy to simply say, "Well, the English--or the Swiss--are just more peaceable and civilized people." But as I write that, I'm almost tempted to say, Well, maybe that is simply the case. It just does not occur to them to go around shooting one another.
______________
*Update, January 8, 2013. Last night ABC TV news said the figure is 30,000 gun homicides a year. Today they said that there have been 57,000 gun homicides in two years; and that 85% of the world's deaths of children from guns occur in the US.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
As was well shown in a special program on PBS (the American public TV broadcasting network), there are two components or ingredients to an event like this.
1. Mental illness on the part of the perpetrator.
2. The availability of guns.
The current state of our science is such that we can't confidently identify individuals who are going to do something like that. There are factors which might be considered risk factors, but the group possessing such risk factors is large, and it's only a statistical matter and would not clearly focus attention on specific individuals.
However, much thought needs to be given to the second factor, the availability of guns. The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, 88.8 guns per 100 population. And, as a Harvard study showed, more guns mean more homicides.
The gun lobby—mainly the National Rifle Association and a few other, smaller gun owners' or gun rights groups—wants to tell us that what we need is more guns. But that is contradicted by the experience of our own country, first; and by that of Australia.
The United States had a federal ban on so-called assault weapons for ten years, which expired in 2004. Mass shootings using assault weapons have increased since the ban expired. Also and at the same time—due to the influence, power, and legislative success of the gun lobby--gun laws have been loosened in many states.
Second, since Australia enacted tough gun-control laws, their experience of mass shootings such as we have been having has been nearly nonexistent.
A third factor needs to be added to the two I enumerated above:
3. The gun culture in the US.
There are countries with a high—though not as high as America's—rate of gun ownership. One such is Switzerland. But you simply do not hear of mass shootings in Switzerland.
Or take England. England has maybe 50 homicides a year. The US has roughly 12,000.* On a single summer weekend in Chicago, there might be 20 or more homicides committed with guns.
In the US, guns are glamorized and may be, for young urban gang members, a symbol of manhood. Guns are identified with heroically depicted characters in western movies.
Video games have also been blamed for our gun violence. At first blush it makes sense: many video games feature killing people (albeit not real people) by shooting them, and I understand that some video games even show assault weapons being used, weapons with visible brand names.
However, England gets the same video games. And they surely get American movies, including all those American westerns. Yet somehow those factors have not caused the English to be enamored with guns the way Americans are. We need to figure out what accounts for the difference. It would be too easy to simply say, "Well, the English--or the Swiss--are just more peaceable and civilized people." But as I write that, I'm almost tempted to say, Well, maybe that is simply the case. It just does not occur to them to go around shooting one another.
______________
*Update, January 8, 2013. Last night ABC TV news said the figure is 30,000 gun homicides a year. Today they said that there have been 57,000 gun homicides in two years; and that 85% of the world's deaths of children from guns occur in the US.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Are More Guns the Answer?
Some people think that the answer to our problem with guns is more guns. Gun sales are booming after the tragic Newtown shootings, and some people say "Arm the teachers."
That makes no sense to me. One, it's just an arms race, as we had between nations during the Cold War; and, as some of the world's leaders had the sense to realize, that does not make anyone more secure. Quite the contrary.Some people think that the answer to our problem with guns is more guns. Gun sales are booming after the tragic Newtown shootings, and some people say "Arm the teachers."
That makes no sense to me. One, it's just an arms race, as we had between nations during the Cold War; and, as some of the world's leaders had the sense to realize, that does not make anyone more secure. Quite the contrary.
Second, if I, for example, owned a gun, and someone invaded my house, I'm sure I'd get shot before I successfully shot the intruder.
Third, the United States is not the world. Look at the rest of the developed world, where there is neither the rate of gun ownership nor anything like the rate of gun violence that the United States has. As far as I'm concerned, that says it all. People in other countries believe the United States is still the Wild West; and, as far as our attitude toward guns is concerned, they are right.
Here is a quote from the web site Bloomberg View ("Concrete Ways to Turn Back the Gun Lobby"), which says it perhaps better than I can:
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
That makes no sense to me. One, it's just an arms race, as we had between nations during the Cold War; and, as some of the world's leaders had the sense to realize, that does not make anyone more secure. Quite the contrary.Some people think that the answer to our problem with guns is more guns. Gun sales are booming after the tragic Newtown shootings, and some people say "Arm the teachers."
That makes no sense to me. One, it's just an arms race, as we had between nations during the Cold War; and, as some of the world's leaders had the sense to realize, that does not make anyone more secure. Quite the contrary.
Second, if I, for example, owned a gun, and someone invaded my house, I'm sure I'd get shot before I successfully shot the intruder.
Third, the United States is not the world. Look at the rest of the developed world, where there is neither the rate of gun ownership nor anything like the rate of gun violence that the United States has. As far as I'm concerned, that says it all. People in other countries believe the United States is still the Wild West; and, as far as our attitude toward guns is concerned, they are right.
Here is a quote from the web site Bloomberg View ("Concrete Ways to Turn Back the Gun Lobby"), which says it perhaps better than I can:
[T]he widely successful push to bring guns into schools, churches, bars, sporting events -- essentially every public venue in American life -- is part of a narrow political campaign that romanticizes and fetishizes firearms, all the better to sell them. In all of these instances, we are told the right to carry a gun is paramount to all others, including an employer’s right to maintain a safe workplace.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Workers' Rights, Workers' Power
It might be only a slight exaggeration to say that there have been a rash of anti-labor measures enacted by governments recently.
First there were the measures in Wisconsin that were initiated by Governor Scott Walker which stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights.
A few days ago in Michigan that state's Republican governor signed two bills, notably so-called right-to-work legislation, normally understood as undermining organized labor because it specifies that workers in factories do not have to join a union nor pay union dues.
And now today the Mayor of Chicago has signed a new labor contract for the janitorial employees at Chicago O'Hare Airport. This new contract is with a labor vendor who employees non-union labor.
It's commonly known that by many measures the power of unionized labor in the United States has been declining. For one thing, the percentage of American workers who are labor union members has been steadily declining for decades.
These latest developments may not be totally surprising but I think they occasion some thought about labor in America.
First it must be said that the labor movement improved working conditions for workers in factories, which was often brutish and unsafe. Through the efforts of labor unions, the work week was reduced and government-enforced safety standards for the work place came into being.
It was far more through the work of unions than through the generosity or conscience of employers that the American worker attained a working-class standard of living that was the highest in the world. (I suspect that nowadays some European countries equal or possibly even surpass that living standard.) On the other hand, workers are paid much less in the so-called Third World countries; and just as according to the laws of thermodynamics heat will flow from higher to lower, so work flows from higher-cost to lower-cost countries, so that not only American but Japanese and European manufacturers are having their goods produced in China. So, if you were minded to focus on the American worker's role in this—which most likely would not be fair—you could or say that the American worker has priced himself out of the world marketplace of labor.
Thinking about the import of new laws mentioned above, my thought was that we are creating a new class of the immigrant-laborer. But after just a moment I realized that this is not at all a new development. For over a hundred years it's been immigrant labor which has worked at the least-skilled jobs. Once it was in factories but now it's more likely to be janitorial, farm work, or perhaps in restaurant kitchens.
So the nature of the low-paid, unskilled work whose ranks are peopled by immigrant laborers has changed. But still I want to reflect on labor.
First, a disclaimer of sorts. If you want to look at "blood," then I am to be suspected of not being a friend of labor. My immediate ancestors were the factory bosses who would move their production to another state to avoid having to have union workers.
And I have written about some of the things that I blamed on union work rules: for example, one can see many jobs in progress where it looks like one person is working and three, four, or five men are standing around doing little or nothing.
In Great Britain you could argue that unions have undermined the success of British industry. The joke is that 15 minutes after starting work, the British worker pauses for a tea break. English auto factories were plagued by labor unrest and poor quality of production. Just as one example, the famous German car company BMW bought the English company that built Rover and Land Rover. After some years they failed to turn it around and sold it for $1.
So maybe it's bad if unions have too much power. Maybe that happened in England. Maybe it happened in the Unites States. (One needs to remember the era around 1950 when John L. Lewis was head of the powerful United Mine Workers and his union, or railroad unions, could cripple the country.)
But I for one would not like to see all the power on the part of the employers, either, even if that would not mean a complete return to unsafe and exploitative conditions in factories and other work places.
Maybe what is needed is a fine balance of power between labor and management. But I fear that recent or current conservative and Republican states and local governments are not aiming for a balance but want to turn back the clock and eviscerate workers' rights as much as they can manage.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
First there were the measures in Wisconsin that were initiated by Governor Scott Walker which stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights.
A few days ago in Michigan that state's Republican governor signed two bills, notably so-called right-to-work legislation, normally understood as undermining organized labor because it specifies that workers in factories do not have to join a union nor pay union dues.
And now today the Mayor of Chicago has signed a new labor contract for the janitorial employees at Chicago O'Hare Airport. This new contract is with a labor vendor who employees non-union labor.
It's commonly known that by many measures the power of unionized labor in the United States has been declining. For one thing, the percentage of American workers who are labor union members has been steadily declining for decades.
These latest developments may not be totally surprising but I think they occasion some thought about labor in America.
First it must be said that the labor movement improved working conditions for workers in factories, which was often brutish and unsafe. Through the efforts of labor unions, the work week was reduced and government-enforced safety standards for the work place came into being.
It was far more through the work of unions than through the generosity or conscience of employers that the American worker attained a working-class standard of living that was the highest in the world. (I suspect that nowadays some European countries equal or possibly even surpass that living standard.) On the other hand, workers are paid much less in the so-called Third World countries; and just as according to the laws of thermodynamics heat will flow from higher to lower, so work flows from higher-cost to lower-cost countries, so that not only American but Japanese and European manufacturers are having their goods produced in China. So, if you were minded to focus on the American worker's role in this—which most likely would not be fair—you could or say that the American worker has priced himself out of the world marketplace of labor.
Thinking about the import of new laws mentioned above, my thought was that we are creating a new class of the immigrant-laborer. But after just a moment I realized that this is not at all a new development. For over a hundred years it's been immigrant labor which has worked at the least-skilled jobs. Once it was in factories but now it's more likely to be janitorial, farm work, or perhaps in restaurant kitchens.
So the nature of the low-paid, unskilled work whose ranks are peopled by immigrant laborers has changed. But still I want to reflect on labor.
First, a disclaimer of sorts. If you want to look at "blood," then I am to be suspected of not being a friend of labor. My immediate ancestors were the factory bosses who would move their production to another state to avoid having to have union workers.
And I have written about some of the things that I blamed on union work rules: for example, one can see many jobs in progress where it looks like one person is working and three, four, or five men are standing around doing little or nothing.
In Great Britain you could argue that unions have undermined the success of British industry. The joke is that 15 minutes after starting work, the British worker pauses for a tea break. English auto factories were plagued by labor unrest and poor quality of production. Just as one example, the famous German car company BMW bought the English company that built Rover and Land Rover. After some years they failed to turn it around and sold it for $1.
So maybe it's bad if unions have too much power. Maybe that happened in England. Maybe it happened in the Unites States. (One needs to remember the era around 1950 when John L. Lewis was head of the powerful United Mine Workers and his union, or railroad unions, could cripple the country.)
But I for one would not like to see all the power on the part of the employers, either, even if that would not mean a complete return to unsafe and exploitative conditions in factories and other work places.
Maybe what is needed is a fine balance of power between labor and management. But I fear that recent or current conservative and Republican states and local governments are not aiming for a balance but want to turn back the clock and eviscerate workers' rights as much as they can manage.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Guns--Yet Again
It's happened yet again: another mass shooting in the United States. I'm getting tired of writing about these things.
What kind of sick, crazy society is it in which these things can occur? What kind of sick, crazy society permits it?
I wish I could say you never hear about these things occurring in other countries. It's almost true. Within the last couple of years there was a mass killing of 47 people by a man named Breivik in Norway—even peaceful Norway; and I believe there's been one in New Zealand.
But when something like that occurs in another country it is even more shocking and startling because it is rare almost to the point of being nonexistent. Nothing of the sort had ever happened in Norway before, and nothing of the sort has happened since.
Yet here in the US it seems we have this kind of thing occurring every few months.
It should be clear to nearly any one that the problem is the gun culture* in the US. There are too many guns among the population, they are too easy to get, and crazy people can get guns, even so-called assault weapons.
The US state in which I live, Illinois, has been the only US state out of 50 in which it was not legal to carry a concealed gun out of doors. And now that law has just been overturned by a court. This means that if I should piss off some stranger—and yes, I've done that—I might well get myself shot.
If that happens, please, somebody, say "He told us so."
____________
* Maybe I should define what I think "gun culture" means. It means a lot of people think guns are a good thing, want to own a gun, want to shoot a gun (at shooting ranges). The argument goes, I need a gun to protect my person and my property.
Well, if literally everybody owns a gun, then maybe you do need to own one, too. That, to me, conjures up an image of some kind of dystopian world that I don't think I'd want to live in.
On the other hand, if nobody owns a gun, you don't need one.
The US is quickly becoming a country where everyone owns a gun. And with this concealed-carry business, well, that's not a world I ever thought I'd have to live in.
Update, December 14, 2012. The above was written after, and prompted by, the mall shooting in Oregon. Therefore, it was written before still another shooting, that of some 26 school children and teachers in a Connecticut elementary school.
Regrettably, these killings almost surely will continue until there is a very loud public outcry, an outcry loud enough to drown out the pro-gun voices of the National Rifle Association, which is very powerful and has been hugely successful in opposing gun-control measures.
Personally, I would even favor repeal of the Second Amendment (the infamous "right to bear arms" amendment), although I'm pretty sure that is not going to happen any time soon.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
What kind of sick, crazy society is it in which these things can occur? What kind of sick, crazy society permits it?
I wish I could say you never hear about these things occurring in other countries. It's almost true. Within the last couple of years there was a mass killing of 47 people by a man named Breivik in Norway—even peaceful Norway; and I believe there's been one in New Zealand.
But when something like that occurs in another country it is even more shocking and startling because it is rare almost to the point of being nonexistent. Nothing of the sort had ever happened in Norway before, and nothing of the sort has happened since.
Yet here in the US it seems we have this kind of thing occurring every few months.
It should be clear to nearly any one that the problem is the gun culture* in the US. There are too many guns among the population, they are too easy to get, and crazy people can get guns, even so-called assault weapons.
The US state in which I live, Illinois, has been the only US state out of 50 in which it was not legal to carry a concealed gun out of doors. And now that law has just been overturned by a court. This means that if I should piss off some stranger—and yes, I've done that—I might well get myself shot.
If that happens, please, somebody, say "He told us so."
____________
* Maybe I should define what I think "gun culture" means. It means a lot of people think guns are a good thing, want to own a gun, want to shoot a gun (at shooting ranges). The argument goes, I need a gun to protect my person and my property.
Well, if literally everybody owns a gun, then maybe you do need to own one, too. That, to me, conjures up an image of some kind of dystopian world that I don't think I'd want to live in.
On the other hand, if nobody owns a gun, you don't need one.
The US is quickly becoming a country where everyone owns a gun. And with this concealed-carry business, well, that's not a world I ever thought I'd have to live in.
Update, December 14, 2012. The above was written after, and prompted by, the mall shooting in Oregon. Therefore, it was written before still another shooting, that of some 26 school children and teachers in a Connecticut elementary school.
Regrettably, these killings almost surely will continue until there is a very loud public outcry, an outcry loud enough to drown out the pro-gun voices of the National Rifle Association, which is very powerful and has been hugely successful in opposing gun-control measures.
Personally, I would even favor repeal of the Second Amendment (the infamous "right to bear arms" amendment), although I'm pretty sure that is not going to happen any time soon.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
The Value of People Skills
I think the most important ability a person can have is understanding people, or to be more precise, understanding human behavior.
The people who have this ability may become managers, politicians, car salesmen.
Maybe politicians and car salesmen are not people that you unequivocally admire. Still, having those abilities can make for success in life—not only in a career but also success in interpersonal relations.
I'm talking about an ability that consists of knowing, for example, what to say and what not to say. Knowing how people are going to react if you say or do such-and-such.
Some people, perhaps because of their childhoods, grow up with, as we put it, poor social skills. A book came out maybe 10 years ago which talked about "social intelligence." It's undoubtedly true that there are different types of intelligence. Many people who are very intelligent according to some measures are strong in many types of abilities but deficient in social intelligence.
There is Mensa, the "high IQ society," of which I was a member for 34 years.. While I have met many people in Mensa who seem to be ordinary people, there is no doubt that there are the geeks—that is, people with a lot of ability in computers, mathematics, and so forth--and stereotypically, Mensa members may be short on social skills. These types may be happiest working alone, doing work in which they can enjoy the luxury of not having to interact with other people constantly.
Sadly, though, that type of work situation might be rare. I was reading how the solitary inventor—an Edison, for example—has been replaced by the research lab which, of course, means an environment involving many people and thus a need for interaction among people.
In some research settings, I know that possibly quite a bit of eccentricity is tolerated. Because it's recognized that these people have rare abilities which must be prized, people in such organizations often enjoy a considerable degree of freedom, and in many matters they are left alone, permitted to dress as they want and often to keep the work hours that they want to.
Still, even those organizations have their managers, and university academic departments have their department chairs. Probably those who have better people skills are sought out for promotion to managerial positions.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
The people who have this ability may become managers, politicians, car salesmen.
Maybe politicians and car salesmen are not people that you unequivocally admire. Still, having those abilities can make for success in life—not only in a career but also success in interpersonal relations.
I'm talking about an ability that consists of knowing, for example, what to say and what not to say. Knowing how people are going to react if you say or do such-and-such.
Some people, perhaps because of their childhoods, grow up with, as we put it, poor social skills. A book came out maybe 10 years ago which talked about "social intelligence." It's undoubtedly true that there are different types of intelligence. Many people who are very intelligent according to some measures are strong in many types of abilities but deficient in social intelligence.
There is Mensa, the "high IQ society," of which I was a member for 34 years.. While I have met many people in Mensa who seem to be ordinary people, there is no doubt that there are the geeks—that is, people with a lot of ability in computers, mathematics, and so forth--and stereotypically, Mensa members may be short on social skills. These types may be happiest working alone, doing work in which they can enjoy the luxury of not having to interact with other people constantly.
Sadly, though, that type of work situation might be rare. I was reading how the solitary inventor—an Edison, for example—has been replaced by the research lab which, of course, means an environment involving many people and thus a need for interaction among people.
In some research settings, I know that possibly quite a bit of eccentricity is tolerated. Because it's recognized that these people have rare abilities which must be prized, people in such organizations often enjoy a considerable degree of freedom, and in many matters they are left alone, permitted to dress as they want and often to keep the work hours that they want to.
Still, even those organizations have their managers, and university academic departments have their department chairs. Probably those who have better people skills are sought out for promotion to managerial positions.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
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