Man and Nature

For a good deal of the most recent human history, Man's attitude toward Nature has been, "Cut that forest, drain that swamp, dam that river. Dig a canal here, plow that prairie under." These actions probably reached their peak in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, but they're still going on. Man believed that he could and should "control" Nature, and there was even a fear or dread of the wild. We talked about dominating and controlling Nature. It was "development." It was civilization.

However, we have begun--maybe only in a small way--to realize that what we have done to Nature has frequently had unforeseen, bad consequences. Cutting down our forests has meant that we don't have the ground covered with trees which filtered the water that we humans might eventually drink, and absorbed water that otherwise might cause floods. Plus, trees have sequestered carbon, and getting rid of them means more CO₂ in the atmosphere, which adds to global warming.

Draining swamps similarly has had negative impacts on the land's hydrology, meaning, again, absorption of water that otherwise might contribute to floods.

Damming rivers and streams has impacted the ability of some fish species to spawn. More generally, all of these means of "managing" or "controlling" Nature have almost always had an impact on wildlife, for example eliminating habitat for waterfowl.

I wonder to what extent this unfortunate, outdated, and dysfunctional attitude toward Nature is biblical. Genesis can be read as granting Man dominion over all of Nature and wildlife: they are for Man to use and enjoy (and, to interpret that in the vocabulary of a modern capitalist society, to exploit for profit).

In recent times and in some places, there have been signs of a changed attitude toward Nature. (Native Americans have always had a much better, respectful attitude toward Nature; but unfortunately they and their ideas were not given much respect by European settlers.) We have gotten rid of dams, but probably mainly small ones. All the great dams built in recent times are still standing and, in fact, in many places in the world dam building is proceeding apace. We still think we can engineer our way out of flooding and we are looking to science for remedies for most of the problems that we (science, engineering, etc.) caused in the first place.

The core problem is too much tampering with Nature and, even back of that, too many people in the world who are demanding land to live on, water to drink, etc.

Copyright © 2018.

Modified November 30, 2018.
Update, January 17, 2019. I recently came across a quote from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (whose name might be more widely known today than it was in her lifetime because the now-infamous high school in Parkland, Florida, the scene of a school shooting, was named after her. In her time she was known as a writer and conservationist):

We have a hard time believing that Nature would be in a good state without our manipulation.

Of course, Nature usually does quite well without our interference and  in fact is usually the worse for our efforts--as this posting has tried to show.

A Linguistic Generation Gap?

I am in a relationship with a guy who is much younger than I am. No, I'm not a sugar daddy to him, and perhaps our relationship is anomalous or bewildering to some people--but that's not my topic for here and now.

I wanted to write about purely linguistic matters. I am a linguist, after all, so any linguistic matter is of interest to me.

Between the two of us I think we exemplify a linguistic generation gap.

It's not news, or a new phenomenon by any means, that younger folks have a different vocabulary, particularly where slang terms are concerned, because slang changes very rapidly. (That's true not only in America; the same thing occurs in other countries.) Language and culture, generally, are closely intertwined. If there is a youth language, it's because there is a youth culture--games, music, movies, things like manga and anime. Their language may serve to deliberately shut out their parents and other adults. I am sure parents hear me here (though I have no children).

Earlier in our relationship my partner would often ask me to define many of the words I use. Now, I find myself turning to him for explanations of newer vocabulary I encounter, frequently online. I guess the online world is presumed to be inhabited by pretty young people. And yes, when it's not convenient to ask him, I may turn to urbandictionary.com.

It's kind of like Jeopardy!, the TV show. I am a big fan of Jeopardy! and like to see what I know that the contestants don't know. If it's topics like movies, pop music, or TV, they definitely beat me: they know that stuff and I don't.

However, when it's a matter of what you might call older knowledge, I know it and they don't. Here is a question I saw come up twice: "This life jacket gets its slang-term name from a 1930s movie sex symbol." Answer: Mae West. Each time, no contestant--that is, out of six contestants, between two episodes of the show--knew it. (And supposedly, people about to appear as Jeopardy! contestants study the questions asked on former episodes of the show.)

So, whether it's Jeopardy! questions or language, older and younger people may have different language and probably live in significantly different worlds.

I collected a recipe from the Internet recently.  It's a pasta dish, with mushrooms, and I found it grounds for two observations. 1) The woman sharing the recipe with us says that the mushrooms can give the dish "a stroganoff vibe." I was struck by that expression. I would never say something like that, using vibe like that. 2) Also, she referred to the mushrooms in the recipe as "'shrooms." Now, what is the reason for that? To save keystrokes? It saves precisely one keystroke! To be cute? I think that's more on target.

Maybe I'm venturing a bit beyond the original subject here, but I feel that some linguistic habits that I see around me are alarming. I feel that verbal habits--speaking and writing--have a lot to do with thinking. If we speak or write fuzzy or confused English, then our thinking is fuzzy or confused. (I don't know which is cause and which is effect but I suspect that's a chicken-and-egg enigma.) The worlds of business and commerce, and the military, encourage--maybe even demand--linguistic habits which I find little short of horrifying. Very long locutions where short ones, even a single word, would suffice. Vagueness, evasiveness, euphemism. The joke has it--and I frankly don't know if this is actually true--that the Army, rather than literally calling a spade a spade (as in the proverb), calls it an "entrenching tool."

Of course all this is not new, and I can't hold all these things up as examples of how the linguistic avant-garde are using (or misusing) the language. George Orwell wrote about all this some 80 years ago (see, for example, his Politics and the English Language).

Copyright © 2018.
Modified November 30, 2018.

Latest on Trump

Donald Trump, in recent news, has downplayed the guilt of Saudi Arabia in the murder (in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey) of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who worked for the Washington Post. He says that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has assured him that he did not order the murder of Khashoggi. Trump says he believes the Crown Prince.

This is very reminiscent of when Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that he believed Putin when Putin denied that Russian hackers had interfered in the US elections in 2016.

It looks as though Trump cannot conceive that anyone could or would lie to him. This from a man who is one of the most colossal liars of our time.

In both cases Trump has appeared to scorn his (or our, the US's) intelligence community, and what they were telling him, for the sake of cozying up to the leader of a foreign country (in the case of Saudi Arabia, they are somewhat more clearly our ally than would be the case with Russia).

I have to think that Trump was motivated by a desire to not alienate Putin, or Saudi Arabia. (One might say in the Saudi case that this was motivated by the US dependency on Saudi oil, but the truth is that currently the US is an exporter of energy so we are not as dependent on Saudi oil as was once the case. The US does sell Saudi Arabia a lot of arms and weapons, and maybe that is the motivation for trying, as Trump is apparently doing, to avoid any friction by saying that we believe what they tell us and don't believe they did something despicable--which earlier he seemed on the verge of doing.)

In other news, Trump has criticized a US district court for not ruling as Mr. Trump would have liked (the case, I believe, involved an asylum-seeker who had crossed our border). Trump complained about "Obama judges" who are not, in Trump's view, sufficiently concerned with the "safety" of our country and who are not taking a very hard line with asylum applications. He was rebuked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, who said "There are no Obama judges, nor Trump judges, nor Bush judges. . . " and that we should be thankful that we have an independent judiciary.

Trump never takes disagreement or criticism lightly, so he struck back at Chief Justice Roberts. All this, I think, played out on Twitter, a platform clearly beloved by Trump.

I imagine that Trump's handlers have had to remind him (or, more likely, to try unsuccessfully to convince him) that he is not a king and must abide by the laws and the constitutional limits on his power and authority.

Copyright © 2018,

Guns Yet Again

I am truly tired of blogging about guns--and Americans should be more than tired of this never-ending series of mass shootings. But this will never change until and unless America gets over its love affair with guns, abandons the idea that everybody is entitled to own a gun, and gets some resolve to rein in the NRA (National Rifle Association) and somehow diminish its influence over our legislators. Maybe this will happen at the state level first--but then the Supreme Court, now more conservative than ever, will rule the state law unconstitutional because of the Second Amendment.

When I think this, I think it's hopeless. Meanwhile I am sure Europeans (and people everywhere else in the world) shake their heads about those crazy Americans who go on killing one another.

Copyright (c) 2019.

Republican Lies (In the Manner of One Mr. D. Trump)

Republicans running for election or re-election in next month's election have been getting feedback and even static from their constituents over the issue of whether they want a government-supported health care plan to cover pre-existing conditions.

The Affordable Care Act (so-called Obamacare) provides that the insurance plans offered by private insurers who offer health insurance to individuals under the Act must cover pre-existing conditions. Republicans have tried, sixty times, to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else. The exact details of the replacement plan have never been made public (as I understand it), but it is widely believed that it would not require coverage of pre-existing conditions.

Now we see that this has become a big issue, and Republicans are getting a lot of pushback over the pre-existing conditions thing. Their response to this, and their campaign strategy? To claim that they support coverage for pre-existing conditions and that the Democrats do not.

If this were true, they would simply need to leave Obamacare alone and not try to repeal it, as they have done 60 times.

Evidently Republican congressional candidates are trying to copy a strategy so often used by Donald Trump, which I think I can describe as "Lie to them and they will believe it, 99% of the time." This cynical approach is based on the belief that the electorate is stupid or at least incapable of critically examining what is told to them. Unfortunately that often seems to be true.

Copyright © 2018.

New Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh

Please scroll down to July 5 posting.

Republicans: Friend of the Rich, No Friend to Seniors

Today's news says that Mitch McConnell (a Republican senator from Kentucky and the U.S. Senate majority leader) wants to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. The reason? To alleviate the deficit in the US budget. And the reason for the deficit? Because Donald Trump's (and Republicans') tax cut has benefited corporations and the ultra-wealthy but reduced the government's income (i.e., worsened the budgetary deficit).

McConnell, not unreasonably, feels that the loss of revenue due to the tax cut should be made up somewhere, somehow. But it should be clear to anyone that cutting taxes on the very rich and corporations, if that loss of revenue has to be made up by cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security, is favoring the rich at the expense of the elderly for whom Social Security may be a chief, or only, source of income, and who also greatly benefit from Medicare.

The moral is this: If you are a recipient of Social Security and/or Medicare--or even if you are not but are simply someone other than a member of the "One Percent" (that is, the very richest in our society)--you should not be voting Republican, because you are not voting in accordance with your own interests.

The Republicans have long been the party of and for the rich. For people who have not seen that, it should be more obvious now.

If you're one of the One Percent, I'm actually going to tell you that you should vote Republican; it's in your interests. If you're not, remember that the Republican philosophy is help the rich and screw the poor. And, they have huge amounts of money with which to influence elections. So--support the other side.

Copyright © 2018

Donald Trump's Style

No, not his style of dress but his style of argumentation.

As many people know, Trump is fond of using Twitter ("tweeting"). It is said that late at night, alone in the residence areas of the White House, he tweets away to his heart's content. If any other US president has used Twitter at all, none has used it so much.

He has no tolerance for criticism of himself (someone recently said he has the sensitivity of a teen-age girl), and so he lashes out at anyone who attacks him. A favorite tactic is to apply negative adjectives to anyone who has criticized him. The New York Times recently published an op-ed piece written by an anonymous White House insider who claimed that Trump's staff tries to thwart some of his ill-advised decisions and actions. In Trump's attack on the  NYT he called the paper "failing." A politician who criticized him he called "weak." These are two examples out of perhaps hundreds.

These tactics of Trump's became very obvious to those who watched him during his political campaign for the Presidency. But to attack someone's argument by attaching negative adjectives to him was known even to the ancients as a fallacious type of argument. The  Romans called it argumentum ad hominen--that is, rather then rebutting or refuting a man's argument, you attack the man himself.

It saddens and amazes me that nothing Trump does or says seems to reduce the support he receives from his followers and supporters: not his actions, which have served to help corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of the common man and may  have brought us close to nuclear war with North Korea at least once; not his encouraging of white supremacists and other racists; not his surrounding himself with crooks and criminals in his government; and certainly not his lies, which at least a few times he has had to "walk back" (as the current jargon would have it). As I think I have said elsewhere, too many people are not critical of what they hear and read. They are ready to believe anything Trump says and don't seem to care when it's been shown that he lied.

Copyright © 2018

Reason for the Catholic Church's Priest Sex Abuse Problem

Stories--you could say scandals--involving sexual abuse of young persons by Roman Catholic priests have been in the news lately, and this is not the first time by any means. It's been a repeated story and by now a long-standing vexation for the Church.

Now, I want to say as soon as I can and as strongly and emphatically as I can that pedophilia (sexual attraction to children) and homosexuality are two different phenomena and not connected. In fact, studies have shown that most men who have a sexual attraction to very young persons are heterosexual. However, I discuss both of these sexual inclinations here because I believe the Church is seen as a refuge for both of these categories of people.

Quite a few years ago, as a result of a position I then held, I was sent, anonymously, an article--also anonymous but supposedly written by an insider--with estimates of the percentages of homosexuals in the priesthood, in monasteries and convents, and in seminaries. The numbers were estimates, and even so I don't have them at my fingertips. Suffice to say they were surprisingly, amazingly high.

I have what I believe is a very reasonable explanation for these data.

What I believe happens is this: A (probably young) man or woman perceives in him/herself urges or attractions--for the same sex, for minors, or for both--which he has been taught (sometimes very emphatically) are wrong, shameful, sinful. He  sees the Church as a solution, believing that once he has taken his celibacy vows, his efforts and desire to remain true to those vows will help him to suppress those unacceptable desires.

Unfortunately, and very sadly, it typically does not work.

Copyright © 2018.

People Are the Problem--I Mean, Human Numbers

Many of the problems of our planet--depletion of fish in the ocean, extinction of animal species, pollution, climate change, scarcity of resources such as water--can be traced to a root cause: people. That is, too many people, or overpopulation. How so?

• Fish are being depleted simply because there are too many people who want to catch and eat those fish, in relation to the number of fish there are. Supplies of fish are not unlimited, and many fish species are close to exhaustion.
• Animal species are being lost from the ecosystem due to loss of habitat (due to natural areas being turned into housing tracts and shopping centers--so called "development") and also hunting, which often is for food for people.
• Pollution, simply, is due to people and their activities: their manufacturing, their burning fossil fuels, their producing all forms of waste.
• Climate change, as many people understand, is due to the production of greenhouse gases, which is due mainly to our burning of fossil fuels but also to other causes such as raising of livestock (cattle emit methane, which is a greenhouse gas).
• Scarcity of water is due to human activities: drinking bathing and cooking, of course, but also manufacturing and agriculture. Of course more people means more water consumed and this is already a critical problem in some places.

In some parts of the world, such as Latin America, where the birth rate is producing a growing population, a serious obstacle to controlling population has been the Catholic Church.

In America, we have many single mothers who have four, five, or six children. (I hope it will not sound racist if I say that these are often "minority" women.) When there is no father in the home, this is a recipe for poverty. Some of these women work two or even three jobs to try to support their children, and their jobs are often low-paying. Also, their children are apt to receive a less-than-ideal amount of supervision and thus they get into trouble.

I don't know why these women don't use birth control more. I can only guess. Some of them may be Catholic (but what percentage?). Many presumably don't know enough about the available means of artificial birth control or are the victims of misconceptions and misinformation.

If they work at jobs that provide health insurance (and, surely, many of them do not), they should have access to birth control through their employer-provided health insurance. However, the Trump administration is doing what it can to worsen the population problem. Under former President Obama's health care plan (often nicknamed "Obamacare"), employers, through their employee health insurance plans, made access to birth control easier. But Trump and his cabinet want to make it easier for employers to opt out of providing this coverage on "conscience" grounds, i.e., they can claim it violates their religious beliefs. (In the interest of the greatest accuracy possible and to avoid over-simplification: there was provision for such objections, which involved submitting a form, but some employers--for example, Catholic  hospitals--object even to doing that, and Trump is trying to make greater accommodation for these employers.)

And, perhaps even worse, Trump has undermined, curtailed, and even eliminated US aid to family planning programs in other countries.

Copyright © 2018

Your SUV Is Helping to Destroy the Planet

Transportation in the US--that includes all our cars plus, of course, trucks, buses, and so forth--is responsible for 20% of greenhouse-gas production. (And, as nearly all scientists will tell you, greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels contribute to climate change.)

And people do not realize that, when they buy a big SUV that is thirsty for gas, they may be producing more than their share of CO₂.

The equation is very simple: More gasoline consumed equals more greenhouse gases out the tailpipe.

So, please, to avoid doing your share to destroy the planet, please think twice when purchasing that SUV. Ask yourself whether you really need such a big one, and look at the gas mileage of any model you're considering.

Copyright © 2018.

The Nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court

There was a post here about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; but I've deleted it because there's been so much water over the dam since I wrote that. (So this displays with an incorrect date and was actually posted on 10/11/2018.)

There was a complex and emotional story leading up to Kavanaugh's eventual (last Saturday) confirmation to the Supreme Court by the US Senate Judiciary Committee and then the whole Senate--as required by the US Constitution.

Since the story was well reported, even in international news, I will recap it briefly: Kavanaugh was accused of sexually attacking a woman, going back more than 30  years. Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified in a special Senate hearing. Kavanaugh got very emotional, particularly in relating how the accusations have taken a toll on him and his family--and this probably earned him a good deal of sympathy.

However, he segued into a rant in which he claimed that the whole business was a plot by Democrats to exact revenge for Trump's defeat of Hilary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016. (Had he been coached in this by Trump? Because it sure sounds like one of Trump's paranoid hoax/conspiracy claims.)

Anyway, an FBI investigation was ordered. However, the problem with that is that Trump ordered the investigation and thereby was able to set the parameters and limits of the investigation, and limited it such that the FBI was allowed only a week for the investigation and interviewed only nine people. Probably it was a foregone conclusion that the bottom line to the FBI report contained nothing earth-shaking and was in fact entirely trivial.

(In the Senate vote, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine widely regarded as a moderate who frequently did not follow Republican or Trump ideology; and Democratic Sen. Manchin from Tennessee, both voted to confirm. This was a surprise (a disappointment, if you were on one side of the issue). So the vote was 50 Yea, 48 No. If one of those two had voted No, there would have been a 49-49 tie; and then Vice President Pence, acting as Senate President Pro Tempore, would have cast the deciding Yea vote--again, all according to the Constitution.)

So Mr. Trump in the end got his extremely conservative nominee confirmed and now, we are told, we have the most conservative Supreme Court in many decades, one which may well reverse such landmark Supreme Court decisions as Rowe v. Wade (which legalized abortion) and Obergefell (which legalized same-sex marriage). The only hope that these decisions will be left alone is if the Court keeps in mind a judicial principle called stare decisis ('let the decision stand').

Copyright © 2018.

A Scholarly Disquisition on "Three Blind Mice"

Three blind mice, three blind mice,/See how they run, see how they run, /They all ran after the farmer's wife,/ She cut off their tales with a carving knife, /Did you ever see such a sight in your life/ As three blind mice?

 --Nursery rhyme/song

This text provokes an astonishing number of questions.

First, how common is blindness among common field mice, genus Mus? Amazingly, rather scant data exists on this important question. And then, since the poem may be ultimately European in origin (as witnessed by a German version, Drei Blinden Mäuse¹), is blindness more common in the common European mouse genus Apodemus? One majorly flawed study of this question suggests that blindness may in fact be approximately 17% more common in the  European mouse.²

Second, why are three blind mice found in association? Is there an advantage to this behavior? Perhaps their pooled sensory capabilities (assuming they can be somehow shared) compensates, to a degree, for their visual deficit.

Next, why are they running? This seems quite inexplicable in an animal that cannot perceive any obstacles that may lie in its path. One would logically expect only slow, tentative exploratory behavior, using smell and/or the feeling capability of their whiskers.

Next, evidently they are chasing the farmer's wife.  Now, even everyday experience tells us that smaller creatures seldom chase larger ones. And a mouse, having an average weight of 118 grams, while an adult human male is presumed to weigh 70 kg (154 lb)³--with, of course, the average adult human female weighing somewhat less--results in a ratio, by weight, of human to mouse of approximately 593.2 to 1.

However, the literature does in fact yield eye-witness accounts of a mouse or mice chasing a human. The earliest of these is by Marco Polo in his Diary.⁴

Now, the matter that, as we are told, a farmer's wife cuts off their tails. What is the function of this caudalectomy? Is it pure animal cruelty? What reasons could the farmer's wife have for preferring that the mice (presumably found about her homestead and/or farm) be tailless?

Next, the reasons for her choice of implement: Why might a carving knife be the instrument of choice for de-tailing a mouse? And, still more puzzling, do the mice stand still for this operation? Would not the squeals of pain of the first mouse to suffer this surgery serve as an effective warning to the other two mice and cause them to get the hell out of there?

Finally, we are asked whether we have ever seen such a sight as three blind mice. However, I do not believe any of the major or recognized polling organizations have ever attempted to gather any data on how many people have in fact seen three blind mice.

1. Gesta Romanorum, III, iv.

2. Podgorny, A., Blindness in European vs. North American Mouse Species, J. A. A., 9. 427.

3. These figures are from JANAF, Some Weights of Common Creatures (New York, UN Fund for Useless Statistics, 1937).

4. Polo, M, Diario, Venice, 1368.

Copyright © 2018.

Critique of Conservative Philosophy

Conservatives believe that less government is better. They want to leave much to private industry, rather than having government involved in it (financing it, etc.) because they believe government is inefficient, wasteful, and even corrupt.

They also believe in lessening government regulation of business. This is a major conservative tenet. Rather than government ensuring that business takes measures to protect its workers (e.g., from factory injuries), protect consumers from unsafe products, and avoid polluting the environment--the air we breathe and the water we all must drink--conservatives believe that if you just leave businesses alone, they will do the right thing. This ignores the innumerable times that businesses have put their own profit and other business objectives before the health and welfare of their workers, customers, and the public.

Conservative economics have given us "trickle-down" economics under President Ronald Reagan (when it did not work) and now again under Donald Trump. This idea holds that if you cut taxes to the wealthy and to big corporations, they can invest the money they save on taxes and use it to expand their businesses; this creates new jobs--or so the theory goes. As I said, this theory did not work in Reagan's day, and today this same economic theory is being urged on Trump by an economic advisor of his who has been wrong over and over and over again.

Conservative individuals sometimes go so far as to say that they feel they should not have to pay taxes, that the income which they have legitimately earned (through hard work, or being enterprising, or being rapacious) should not be taken from them and given to the poor and needy who, they believe--usually with definite racist implications--simply do not want to work. The recent incident (caught on video and gone viral on social media) involving New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg shows Schlossberg saying that his taxes go to support these immigrant, Spanish-speaking restaurant workers whom he is complaining about through "welfare". This makes little sense, because if they were on welfare they would not be there, working in the restaurant. And if they are there, working in the restaurant, they are not on welfare. But this is typical conservative thinking: Reagan and Trump both got elected by implying that these lazy people (African-Americans and/or Hispanics) don't want to work and simply take money away from the good, noble, hard-working (white) guy who pays taxes.

To go back to some of our earlier points: Public health has been one of the major successes of government. Government entities identify epidemic diseases (food-borne illnesses, diseases, and so forth), identify the sources, and put public-health countermeasures in place.

Also, as I have said, government (except to the extent that Trump is doing his best to undermine and even stop these functions) helps keep our food and medicine safe, our air and water clean, pure, and safe, and nearly every aspect of life in our country as  many of us would like it to be.

Update: A conservative (unfortunately I can't tell you who it was) appearing, I believe, on Fox News, said of the children detained at the US border and wrenched from their parents, "Well, they're not our kids. This exemplifies what I believe to be a very common characteristic of conservative people: no empathy--that is, the  ability to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes.
One time, while I was on a business trip and pleasantly enjoying dinner in Lake Tahoe, I quoted a US Supreme Court justice (I think it was Justice Frankfurter, and I don't recall what the topic of conversation was or what prompted me to come out with this) as saying something to the effect, "Better nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be unjustly punished." To this my colleague said, "See, I don't agree with that!"
But what if the innocent, unjustly accused person had been his spouse, or child, or parent, or sister or brother? I think that, were the matter to touch home in that way, he might feel differently.

Copyright © 2018.

What to Do about All the Shootings

Today there was news of two school shootings. How many people are tired--no, beyond tired--of hearing of these things? And how long will they go on? What will it take to stop the murder of our children? Some people would say, Well, no one really knows how to solve this problem.

Well, how's this for one thought? Contrary to what the NRA (National Rifle Association) wants America to believe, more guns do not make us all safer. If anyone thinks that is logical, rather than the contrary--that is, the fewer guns out there, the fewer shootings--just look at the experience of Australia. Australia banned guns, a few years ago, after a rash of shootings worthy of America. People were given inducements--monetary, I believe--to turn in their guns. And--guess what? Homicides by gunshot dropped dramatically.

Yes, it's that simple.

Or it should be. I'd be a whopping big fool if I believed it really was simple. The fact--the problem--is that Americans love their guns and aren't going to give them up without a fight--maybe literally. Guns are macho, and dearly loved by all those well endowed with testosterone. I have long believed that guns, and shooting people with guns, were glamorized by western (cowboy) movies. So, when people in other countries think America is still the Wild West, in a sense they are right.

Copyright © 2018.

Not Again!? Yes, More on Guns and School Shootings

I have said I am tired of blogging about guns, mass shootings, and school shootings. But they keep happening and I for one can't ignore them or keep silent (nor should anyone be able to).

After student survivors of the Parkland, FL, school shooting met with President Donald Trump, he was pledging action. But anything he has done has been completely ineffective. What happened is that, after his meetings with the Parkland students, Trump had a late-night meeting with representatives from the NRA (National Rifle Association)--and it's well-known that Trump is persuaded by whomever he last spoke to.

There have been over 150 school shootings in 30 years. What is it going to take to stop this ridiculous and intolerable phenomenon? We need widespread public outrage, and we need that to translate to people ceasing to vote for pro-gun legislators--those who accept money from the NRA and any and all other pro-gun lawmakers (which pretty much means Republicans).

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently said that we might need to think about repealing the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment to the Constitution states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The Founding Fathers who wrote and approved the Second Amendment were thinking in terms of muskets that could do a limited amount of damage. They did not foresee such progress in weapons that we would one day have semi-automatic and automatic assault rifles that could kill many people in literally a matter of seconds--let alone that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could easily buy and even stockpile six or 10 or 14 of these weapons.

Copyright © 2018.

Truth and The Right

Lying is not a new phenomenon in public discourse (read, "politics"), any more than it is new to our human species. In fact, one of my professors told our class, by way of discussing the origins of human language, that one theory is that language was invented to allow lying.

And I have sometimes imagined, as a "thought experiment" (a term used by physicists), that perhaps, if mankind were to make contact with another intelligent species, that species might turn out to have no concept of lying and to be in fact incapable of it. Or, imagine what our world would be like if there were no lying. We are lied to not only by politicians and the like but, sadly, by our preachers and teachers (let's hope that they are not knowingly lying to us but that they believe what they are saying).

And the problem is not simply that mankind is capable of lying, but that those on the audience end believe what that hear and read. A good education--evidently a rare thing--teaches people to be critical. It's a lesson that badly needs to be learned but is seldom or not easily learned. I used to berate my (college) students for being uncritical. I would say, "I could stand up here and say 'Black is white' and it would just go mechanically into your ears, down your arms, through your pens and onto your paper."

I have blogged before about the fact that the Right disseminates a lot of misinformation (or, as I guess the new word is, dysinformation). Just as a couple examples, in a recent PBS (public television) program on John McCain (a very prominent US politician, long-serving US Senator from Arizona and opponent to Barack Obama in our presidential elections), there were scenes where a McCain supporter held a sign about his willingness to personally and physically protect his grandparents. What was that about? I believe it referred to the idea--eventually proved false--that so-called Obamacare (more formally called the Affordable Care Act) was going to promote the euthanasia of sick old people. Another lie in the same TV program was when McCain was speaking one-on-one with a woman who said, of Obama, "He's a--a--Arab," meaning, I'll assume, a Muslim. This was another lie spread by the Right (and McCain, being truly a very decent and principled man, told the woman that that was false).

Who spreads these lies? I think a main channel is conservative radio and TV commentators, but nowadays dysinformation is being spread on the Internet, on web sites, and--as we have recently learned, in a bit of a scandal--via social media such as Facebook.

There is also email. A high school classmate of mine, at one point, was forwarding to me Right-wing propaganda.  I call it propaganda because it was false and I could pretty easily learn that it was false--yet these emails had been forwarded many, many times before reaching me. And how many times were they received and read and believed?

And in the 2016 presidential election, as we know, there was wrong information being spread via Facebook, so-called "alt-right" media, and by candidates.

I am thinking mainly of Donald Trump here.  The New York Times reported that, in the course of calendar year 2017 (and thus not even during the presidential campaign), they caught Trump lying 1300 times. That's about four lies per day, right?

Is Trump an evil man who is coldly and calculatingly trying to deceive his audience (which, these days, must be taken to be the whole world)? That's not clear. Sometimes he may be voicing what is simply an incorrect statistic or other incorrect information (how that might happen might itself be a question to think about).

I'm someone who pretty generally tries to give the Devil his due. So I'm willing to say this: It may very well be that Trump genuinely believes he's doing what is best for the country. However--and there has to be a very big "however"--we must think about what Trump sees as "the country." I have to think that, in Trump's eyes, "the country" is pretty much equivalent to what we've come to call "the one percent"--that is, Trump's rich friends, those who own and control business (and politics) in the United States.

Thus, Trump talks about "getting the EPA off our backs." By this he means relieving or alleviating the "burden" of regulation on businesses under, for example, The Clean Water Act, which Trump has nullified. This means businesses can operate with less care (and cost) due to regulations on, for example, their pouring pollutants into our rivers and streams. Yes, better for Business--but not better for America's children who might be made ill, stunted, deformed by drinking water contaminated with harmful chemicals.

Copyright © 2018 by Richard Stein

Beware TV Ads

Watch much TV? Do you view those irritating ads for products you order by phone, or by going to a web site? Here are some marketing practices that you should be aware of.

It's become common for these ads to offer you (for example), a second what-ever-it-is for free; "just pay separate fee."

First, I don't know how much that "separate fee" is likely to amount to, but you should consider that, with this fee, it's not actually free.

Second, consider this: Say the item costs $19.99 and the second one is "free." I think you should understand the offer this way: The item really costs $10 each but you are being forced to buy two of them.

And then, have you noticed that all prices are "just such-and-such an amount" or "only. . ."? This is a bit of psychology practiced upon you by the merchandiser, trying to make you think (usually unconsciously) that the offering price is low, cheap, a bargain. Maybe a little less subtle is when they say "For the amazing low price of . . . ." Or they imply that the price is lower than formerly. Probably you can't verify that, and I suspect it's most likely not true.

Another trick to make you think the price is a good one is when the screen shows a price with a big red "X" through it and then a lower price, meaning (again) that the price has been reduced. Again, be suspicious of this.

Sometimes, if the price is for some cosmetic is, say, $39.95, maybe you are getting two or three items and the ad will say, "A $170 value." There is no way you can verify that and you should consider it totally phony and made-up.

For more expensive items, it might be something like, "For just five easy payments of $29.99 each." (Note the inevitable "just.") First, I suspect they don't expect you to multiply the amount of the payment by the number of payments to determine the total cost you'll be paying. Face it, you're lazy, and maybe also not good at mental math. And, sometimes the screen will show (for example) five payments, which (again) is crossed out by a big red "X", and then it's four payments--again to make you think you're getting a price reduction and a bargain.

Are these TV offers ever a good deal, or at least reasonable? In one case I compared the TV price with the price for the same item on Amazon. The same.

Sometimes the items advertised on TV--even if the ad says "Not sold in stores"--are in fact available in stores. For example, Bed, Bath & Beyond carries many "As Seen on TV" items--and if you buy the item from BB&B, you won't pay the shipping charge, though you may have to add sales tax to the price.

I frankly don't know whether, buying from TV vendors, you get an okay product, or reasonably fast shipping (the ads often say "Allow 4 —6 weeks for delivery"), or whether you get ripped off on the shipping charges. That's because I've never ordered from a TV ad; I'm too cautious. Though I have occasionally bought "as seen on TV" products, and I would not generalize to say that they are no good.

A final word: A lot of what I say here may be pretty obvious to the more shrewd among us, but, judging from how frequently I hear on the news of scams and so on that people fall for, I do have to believe that, if not actually stupid, my fellow man sometimes is naive, incautious, or just not critical.

Update, May 16, 2018:  Another device may be subtle (well, maybe they're all subtle). "You may qualify" for a hearing aid or for their life insurance. Qualify? To be sold something? You bet you qualify, as long as your money is good. They want to make you think you're lucky that they're willing to let you buy their product; but who really is the lucky party when you shell out your money, you or they?
Added, July 17, 2019: Yes, that is the tactic of a vendor of hearing aids. They make you think you are lucky if you are "accepted" into their 30-day trial period to "evaluate" their revolutionary new hearing aid. But if you are smart you will recognize it's simply "we sell, you buy."
Also, you can dial the number shown on your TV screen to learn about extra benefits that maybe not all Medicare beneficiaries (What, not me? Horrors!) may be receiving. It really is just about an insurance agent on the other end of the phone line who wants to sell you their particular health insurance scheme.

© 2018 by Richard Stein

Jews in Spain, 1492

It's unusual for Mourning Dove Hill to give you a little history lesson, but here it is, without further apology:

The year 1492 was a momentous year, and not only because, as we are all taught in school, "Columbus discovered America" in that year (actually, in his first voyage, in that year, Columbus made land on an island in the Caribbean, and not on the mainland of North America).

Also in that year, Queen Isabella of Castile married King Ferdinand of Aragon, thus uniting the two largest Christian kingdoms of Spain.¹ That permitted the new, larger and stronger, Spanish kingdom to complete the so-called Reconquista, or reconquest of Spain by Christian kingdoms from the Muslim Moors, who had been controlling an ever-shrinking domain in Spain for centuries.

Again in that year, and not coincidentally, an edict was issued by Ferdinand and Isabella concerning the Jews who, under the Moorish rulers, had lived in peace and, in fact, more than mere toleration (in most kingdoms and at most times). The Jews were given an ultimatum: convert or get out. (Actually and practically speaking, there was a third choice: do neither and be tortured to death--possibly burned at the stake--by the Inquisition. Some Jews submitted to a conversion that was not completely sincere and thus became so-called crypto-Jews or, as the Christian Spaniards called them, "Marranos," which translates as 'pigs'. The term was also used of Muslim converts to Christianity.)

(The Muslims were also promised toleration but, some 30 years later, under King Charles II, they were similarly forced to convert or get out.)

The Jews of Spain, known as Sephardim, spread to many countries including North Africa, Turkey, and throughout the Middle East--all the lands that were then the Ottoman Empire. They brought with them a language of their own, derived from Spanish and known as Ladino or Judeo-Spanish. Ladino traditionally was written with the Hebrew alphabet, and it might be said that Ladino is to Spanish as Yiddish is to German.

_________________________

¹ As I originally wrote this, it may not be accurate. I now believe Ferdinand and Isabella were married in 1469 and united their kingdoms in 1492. The Jews were ordered to leave or convert three months later.

²One exception is that there was a massacre of Jews in 1391. 

I apologize for not being confidently in command of my facts here. I invite any reader to research these historical facts and offer a correction to anything I wrote which is not accurate.

© 2018 by Richard Stein

Guns--Yet Again

I really don't want to blog about guns anymore and had thought (or hoped) that I was done doing so. But, alas, we've had another awful mass shooting of innocent school children.

President Donald Trump held a highly publicized meeting with survivors and parents of victims of three school shootings: Columbine, Sandy Hook/Newtown, and the latest, Parkland, Florida.

As part of what he proposes to do about the problem, which was dramatized to him by some very emotional speeches by the student survivors and parents, he cited the coach who was shot in Parkland, saying that if that man had been armed, things might have been different.

In other words, the answer to the shooting problem so often given by gun-rights advocates and the NRA (National Rifle Association): MORE GUNS! The answer to the problem of prevalent, too-often-used guns in America is MORE GUNS! The idea being that, if I am in a situation where someone is shooting and killing, and I have a gun myself, I can shoot (and presumably kill) the shooter--thus saving myself and others.

I can see one problem with this idea. There is one element in the equation that is being omitted: If I am face-to-face with someone with a gun, and who is using that gun, the outcome--isn't this obvious?--depends on who is the better shot; that is, who can shoot faster (i.e., be quick on the draw) and more accurately--that is, who is the better shot.

I, for one, would not have faith in myself to be the one who comes out better (or alive) from this hypothetical situation. I guess everybody in America must not only get a gun but "learn how to use it," that is, spend time on one of those things I think are called firing ranges.

And, again for myself, I think that, even in a situation where it might be viewed as a case of protecting myself, I would not want to have to make the decision to shoot someone else. Maybe if it was a case of "him or me," a survival or self-preservation instinct would kick in and provide the answer. But just finding myself in that situation seems to me to be the stuff of nightmares.

No, the answer is not more guns, but fewer guns. Australia (and three other countries) began programs to remove guns from their countries--and homicides by gun  dropped dramatically.

Unfortunately, the United States not only has a very strong lobby in the NRA (which is said to have given $31 million to Trump's campaign) but also something called the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which (as it is usually interpreted) guarantees US citizens the "right to bear arms." What is often forgotten is that centuries of jurisprudence have established that limits may be set on this "right to bear arms." We need to be thinking in terms of what limits can be set, short of seriously considering whether we can, or should, get rid of the Second Amendment (which is probably pretty much unthinkable, even after so many mass shootings).

Copyright © 2018

Update, March 1, 2018: Trump has actually proposed some restrictions on guns, and if he is serious about this, and can get this done, I might consider taking back all (well,some, anyway) of the nasty things I've said about him.
However, Trump is proverbially persuaded by the last person he talked to. So someone from the NRA or some Republican politician might get him to reverse himself (which of course he is quite prone to do). So it's premature to do any celebrations or even thanking him.
Plus, he still wants to arm teachers. This is just a paraphrase of the oft-repeated NRA mantra, "The best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
And, let us not forget, the president does not make the law. This would require Congress passing some laws, and the pundits don't seem to feel this is likely.

Update, March 2, 2018.

It looks as though I was right. Today the media are reporting that the White House is "walking back" some of President Trump's comments made yesterday on the need for stricter gun laws, and the need, and ability, of our congressional lawmakers to defy the NRA. This reversal comes after he met with some representatives of the NRA late last night.

As I said, whatever opinions Trump is espousing depends on whom he was last talking to. The man is so intellectually weak, shallow, and worthless that he has no opinions of his own.

What's Wrong with Charities

I contribute money to a lot of things that can be called charities: Social-change organizations, feed the children, help animals and wildlife, save the environment, cancer research, political organizations--the list goes on.

It ticks me off that so many of them, when you send them money, reply, in effect, "Thanks, but now send us more!"

And I'm getting even more annoyed at them over a variety of practices: When they want a contribution, their solicitation will come in an envelope that says something like, "Second renewal notice," which I feel makes me look like a deadbeat (okay, only my mail carrier would notice and he most likely doesn't concern himself).

Online solicitations have their own particular tricks. They say something like, "If you could contribute just $3, it would help us. . . " Then you click and go to the contribution page, and is the default amount $3? No, it's $25.

Also, by default you are agreeing to make it a monthly contribution. You have to uncheck a box to make it one-time. I already make monthly contributions to four or five organizations and basically do not want to commit to any more.

I believe in being charitable. My religion (more or less) commands it. However, I have found, lately, that I've been giving to so many groups: usually small amounts, but a few dollars here and 10 or 15 bucks there, it adds up to hundreds before you know it.

And yet, I go online and here's a "Help my campaign" or "Donald Trump has done such-and-such, help us fight back"--and I can't resist.

It's been making me do some thinking about my finances and just what I can and cannot afford. Wish I knew how long my retirement nest egg needs to last me. . . .

Copyright © 2018


Update, March 1, 2018: I've continued to have the problem of contributions being made "recurring" when I did not intend that. I am quite certain that the little box, "Make this a recurring contribution," was not checked, and yet this has happened at least three times. I've responded to that by unsubscribing to emails from those organizations so that there's no danger that I will forget that I should not contribute to those guys. And, where they asked for a reason for the "unsubscribe," I told them about this, and the fact that it's made me very angry. Are they going to take any notice? I doubt it. Still, I feel I've done what I could to punish them for how they (as I feel) tricked me.

Update, July 17, 2018. Another matter I need to mention: If you watch much television you probably have seen long commercials showing kids with cancer, who are in wheelchairs and/or have had their hair fall out due to chemotherapy; or pathetic, abused dogs, in cages or chained up. These ads are undoubtedly effective at tugging at our heartstrings.
However, before you send them money, ask this question: How much do those TV ads cost? How much of my donation is going to program efforts (that is, the work they are supposed to be doing) and how much to fundraising (e.g. TV commercials)? You can find out how much any charity spends on fundraising from a web site called Charity Navigator. Me, I will give to them when I see a notice on the screen, during those ads, saying that all of the work to produce the ads, and the airtime, have been donated.

Three Religions Have This in Common

Fundamentalist Christianity, Fundamentalist Judaism, and Fundamentalist Islam all condemn homosexuality. Their agreement on this point, and most likely a number of other points, does not make them correct. But it does make me wonder why they have this (and presumably quite a few other things) in common.

So here are my thoughts: The molders (and I use that word with much careful consideration, so as to encompass both ancient, historical personages and modern religious leaders) of these religions feel that life needs to be tightly controlled and regulated--presumably by their scriptures and their clergy. So they see life--behavior--as being about a lot of rules, for what we must and (maybe more importantly) what we must not do. What clothes we should wear, how we must wear our hair, what we should (or, more likely, should not) eat. Maybe there is a view of human nature implicit here: we are all wild, savage beasts, and our natures--our lusts and other baser impulses--need control, examination, regulation, corseting.

And what about the people who are drawn to these sorts of religion, who embrace them and gladly follow them? I believe there is a certain personality type that positively likes having a lot of their conduct prescribed. I'm not sure whether this is the same personality type as the "molders" I referred to above, or a complementary type that fits that of the molders like two pieces of a jig saw puzzle.

Well, it's usually believed in modern, western democracies that people should believe and observe what they want. That's fine; but too often the attitude is, "I don't think such-and-such is right, so I am going to try to prevent you from doing it"--whether it is  homosexuality, abortion, or any of countless things which most of us feel a human being ought to be free to do.

Copyright © 2018