There has been some controversy and dialogue since a Democrat criticized Ann Romney, wife of likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, as having "never worked a day in her life." This outraged Mrs. Romney and doubtless a number of other women whose "careers" have been as wife and mother.
Mrs. Romney replied that as mother of five sons, her life has been one of hard work. I have two comments on that: First, Mrs. Romney and her husband are very wealthy, reporting a recent year's income as 25 million dollars. People of means such as that can employ people to do the housework and to help with raising the children, so I doubt that Mrs. Romney personally had to it all herself. Quite possibly the most she had to do was to tuck her kids in at night.
I don't want to minimize the role of wife-and-mother, but I do have to say that probably a majority of mothers in present-day America have fewer than five children (at least I hope so!). There are no doubt those who do have a hard life raising their children—but it is not as in the time of our grandmothers (or great-grandmothers), who had to churn butter, bake bread, make the family's clothes and manually wash them—etc., etc. The modern woman has things much easier: We have had "labor-saving appliances" since the middle of the 20th century, and it's the rare American household which hasn't got at least some of them.
So I doubt that very many "stay-at-home moms" have things that hard. In the case of those who have few and/or quite young children, I see them at the mall, having lunch with their woman friends, with possibly one or two very young children along in a stroller. And they come to the mall in an expensive car which Hubby is at that very moment working hard to pay for.
Going somewhat into another issue: The life of the stay-at-home mom may satisfy and gratify some women but it is not satisfying for all. A woman of my acquaintance, who is very intelligent, confided to me that she found it stultifying to have only the conversation of the other mothers sitting around the sandbox.
Update, April 28, 2012
I've been told that Charlie Rose (host of a talk show on PBS, the public television network) has researched the issue and found out that Mitt and Ann Romney, in the period in question, did indeed have several domestic employees such as a nanny. Thus my surmise or speculation evidently was correct.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
I Am Back (Blogging, That Is)
After a lapse of a month I have decided to resume blogging.
Even though it's been unrewarding, at times—when I look at the statistics on my readership—still, I guess I am egotistical enough to believe that I have something to say and something that's worth sharing with anyone who cares to read.
At the age of 70, I have acquired some views of life and of humanity. Mainly one tinged with sadness. I think anyone who is intelligent, educated, liberal—and maybe I need to add "disaffected," which I am but which might not be a necessary consequence of any of the other traits mentioned—has to feel much as I do.
Here is one concise statement, my summing up (hey, how is that for arrogance, summing it all up in just a few words!?!) of what's wrong with humanity and what might be, ultimately, the one trait that might just do Mankind in: Man is capable of believing that which is not true (and of course that probably, or even obviously, has the corollary of denying that which is true).
There is a discipline that you never hear about these days. It was big in, say, the 1930s, and it's called General Semantics. I was introduced to it at the age of 17.
A guy by the name of Count Alfred Korzybski is credited with founding General Semantics. A man named S. I. Hayakawa, generally labeled a linguist (he was also at one time a US Senator and also, infamously, the President of the University of California, Berkeley who called in troops to combat student protesters in the era of student protests of the Viet Nam War and more, in the 1960s), also was a writer on the subject as was a man named Stuart Chase, basically a journalist.
To try to sum up General Semantics: The word is not the thing and the map is not the territory. We tend to feel that if you can put a name to something, that somehow means that the thing exists. This enables us to throw around words that don't have a referent—that is, they don't name anything that exists in the real world. It's this belief in the non-existent that is my subject here.
Now, today and in the West, most people would not believe in dragons, unicorns, mermaids, trolls, leprechauns—etc., etc. The list could go on and on.
Then there are some marginal categories where today some people, maybe a minority, do believe: UFOs, ghosts. Maybe Satan, maybe angels (we're getting a little less marginal here, I'd guess).
And the paranormal. And miracles. And maybe God. (As you can see, I've been going from minority beliefs to beliefs which are more and more common but which some few are skeptical of.)
I think many ideas, about Nature, about human society, etc., are widely held but are incorrect. Many ideas have some natural-selection value such that believing them may get their believers killed. An extreme but obvious case would be a person who thinks he can jump off the roof and not be killed—maybe because he thinks he can fly; we label that insanity. Maybe the sad story of Jonestown in Guyana, where religious leader Jim Jones persuaded nearly all his followers to commit suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Some less extreme cases would be where someone attempts something very dangerous and gets himself killed. (Think the annual "Darwin Awards.")
Probably more incorrect ideas harm another human than harm the holder of the belief himself. As an example, in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1693, it was believed that some members of the community were witches, and those "witches" had to be executed. At other times and places, witches, "heretics," homosexuals, etc., were burned at the stake, boiled in oil, or otherwise gotten rid of.
One egregious example would be the Inquisition, which probably executed thousands (forgive me for not turning up statistics here). Or take any case of genocide--the Holocaust, Rwanda, Kosovo, or any other--which killed people because they belonged to a hated group whose members were basically deemed undesirable and not deserving to live.
Is not all of this because some people hold incorrect ideas?
We may well doom our planet by means of war; pollution; global warming; other destruction of land, resources, etc.
We have evolved our ability to manipulate our planet by building great buildings and dams. We have waged wars which have destroyed, devastated, and laid waste large areas. We have built nuclear power plants which then have had accidents (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and made sizeable areas uninhabitable.
So we have become smart, smart enough to erect these edifices. But are we smart enough?
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Even though it's been unrewarding, at times—when I look at the statistics on my readership—still, I guess I am egotistical enough to believe that I have something to say and something that's worth sharing with anyone who cares to read.
At the age of 70, I have acquired some views of life and of humanity. Mainly one tinged with sadness. I think anyone who is intelligent, educated, liberal—and maybe I need to add "disaffected," which I am but which might not be a necessary consequence of any of the other traits mentioned—has to feel much as I do.
Here is one concise statement, my summing up (hey, how is that for arrogance, summing it all up in just a few words!?!) of what's wrong with humanity and what might be, ultimately, the one trait that might just do Mankind in: Man is capable of believing that which is not true (and of course that probably, or even obviously, has the corollary of denying that which is true).
There is a discipline that you never hear about these days. It was big in, say, the 1930s, and it's called General Semantics. I was introduced to it at the age of 17.
A guy by the name of Count Alfred Korzybski is credited with founding General Semantics. A man named S. I. Hayakawa, generally labeled a linguist (he was also at one time a US Senator and also, infamously, the President of the University of California, Berkeley who called in troops to combat student protesters in the era of student protests of the Viet Nam War and more, in the 1960s), also was a writer on the subject as was a man named Stuart Chase, basically a journalist.
To try to sum up General Semantics: The word is not the thing and the map is not the territory. We tend to feel that if you can put a name to something, that somehow means that the thing exists. This enables us to throw around words that don't have a referent—that is, they don't name anything that exists in the real world. It's this belief in the non-existent that is my subject here.
Now, today and in the West, most people would not believe in dragons, unicorns, mermaids, trolls, leprechauns—etc., etc. The list could go on and on.
Then there are some marginal categories where today some people, maybe a minority, do believe: UFOs, ghosts. Maybe Satan, maybe angels (we're getting a little less marginal here, I'd guess).
And the paranormal. And miracles. And maybe God. (As you can see, I've been going from minority beliefs to beliefs which are more and more common but which some few are skeptical of.)
I think many ideas, about Nature, about human society, etc., are widely held but are incorrect. Many ideas have some natural-selection value such that believing them may get their believers killed. An extreme but obvious case would be a person who thinks he can jump off the roof and not be killed—maybe because he thinks he can fly; we label that insanity. Maybe the sad story of Jonestown in Guyana, where religious leader Jim Jones persuaded nearly all his followers to commit suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Some less extreme cases would be where someone attempts something very dangerous and gets himself killed. (Think the annual "Darwin Awards.")
Probably more incorrect ideas harm another human than harm the holder of the belief himself. As an example, in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1693, it was believed that some members of the community were witches, and those "witches" had to be executed. At other times and places, witches, "heretics," homosexuals, etc., were burned at the stake, boiled in oil, or otherwise gotten rid of.
One egregious example would be the Inquisition, which probably executed thousands (forgive me for not turning up statistics here). Or take any case of genocide--the Holocaust, Rwanda, Kosovo, or any other--which killed people because they belonged to a hated group whose members were basically deemed undesirable and not deserving to live.
Is not all of this because some people hold incorrect ideas?
We may well doom our planet by means of war; pollution; global warming; other destruction of land, resources, etc.
We have evolved our ability to manipulate our planet by building great buildings and dams. We have waged wars which have destroyed, devastated, and laid waste large areas. We have built nuclear power plants which then have had accidents (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and made sizeable areas uninhabitable.
So we have become smart, smart enough to erect these edifices. But are we smart enough?
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Standing on the Shoulders of Predecessors
It's often said that, in science, one advance is built on another. In technology or inventions, it's also true that one advance depends on one or more prior inventions.
Movies, for example, were built on the previous invention of photography, but with the new addition of the idea that, if you took a series of photographs and showed them in rapid sequence, you could produce the illusion of motion. So the camera (and film) had to exist, and then what was new was the idea of a camera that could take rapid, sequential photos—and a machine (projector) to show the movies. And that of course also needed a light source, and it was not Edison's incandescent light bulb that was used but an arc lamp, which was brighter. (A similar arc lamp was used to light the movie sets.)
Television, of course, drew upon several prior inventions. First there was the concept of creating a "moving picture" by breaking a scene down into a succession of still frames projected and viewed in rapid sequence—as in the movies.
Also there was the idea of wireless transmission, from radio; and the idea of the camera. Plus, the cathode ray tube, which had been invented several decades earlier, and the notion of creating an image on the screen of that tube by building it up with a sequence of lines which in turn were made up of dots.
Plus, again, the camera. But this time the camera had to create an image that was broken down into lines and dots—the reverse of how the TV image was created on the TV receiver's screen.
And now the television set using a cathode ray tube is pretty much obsolete because the TV sets using LCD and plasma displays (which evidently have come to be called "flat-screen" TV sets) are actually cheaper to make.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Movies, for example, were built on the previous invention of photography, but with the new addition of the idea that, if you took a series of photographs and showed them in rapid sequence, you could produce the illusion of motion. So the camera (and film) had to exist, and then what was new was the idea of a camera that could take rapid, sequential photos—and a machine (projector) to show the movies. And that of course also needed a light source, and it was not Edison's incandescent light bulb that was used but an arc lamp, which was brighter. (A similar arc lamp was used to light the movie sets.)
Television, of course, drew upon several prior inventions. First there was the concept of creating a "moving picture" by breaking a scene down into a succession of still frames projected and viewed in rapid sequence—as in the movies.
Also there was the idea of wireless transmission, from radio; and the idea of the camera. Plus, the cathode ray tube, which had been invented several decades earlier, and the notion of creating an image on the screen of that tube by building it up with a sequence of lines which in turn were made up of dots.
Plus, again, the camera. But this time the camera had to create an image that was broken down into lines and dots—the reverse of how the TV image was created on the TV receiver's screen.
And now the television set using a cathode ray tube is pretty much obsolete because the TV sets using LCD and plasma displays (which evidently have come to be called "flat-screen" TV sets) are actually cheaper to make.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Of Cheese and Chicken Wings
The word buffalo, in America, refers to a large bovine animal also known as the American bison, scientific name Bison bison--except when it precedes (1) mozzarella or (2) wings.
Some people, if they ever wonder, might assume that "buffalo mozzarella" is made from milk from a buffalo (or bison) cow. It is not, it's made from the milk of what Americans know as a water buffalo.
Now, as to "buffalo wings," a food very popular in America as a snack or entrée: Of course buffalo don't have wings, so that can't be what the name means. "Buffalo wings" are in fact chicken wings, seasoned (as one might say) a la Buffalo—that is, the city of Buffalo, New York.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Some people, if they ever wonder, might assume that "buffalo mozzarella" is made from milk from a buffalo (or bison) cow. It is not, it's made from the milk of what Americans know as a water buffalo.
Now, as to "buffalo wings," a food very popular in America as a snack or entrée: Of course buffalo don't have wings, so that can't be what the name means. "Buffalo wings" are in fact chicken wings, seasoned (as one might say) a la Buffalo—that is, the city of Buffalo, New York.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Two More Wars in the Offing?
It's no secret—or should not be any secret—the Republicans and conservatives like war. Well, maybe that's not a way of phrasing it that they'd agree with. How about, they are more prone to favor the use of military force?
That is why we've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a loss of over 4000 American lives—arguably in both cases for at best a very unclear purpose. Supposedly America is always trying to export "freedom"—meaning, presumably, its brand of democracy—to other countries, whether they want it or not. Iraq is not and is not going to be a democracy after the American model, and heaven only knows what can be accomplished in Afghanistan, where we cannot even free the country from the influence of war lords.
Anyway, those are wars that commenced, and that fact cannot be changed. I must acknowledge that the US has supposedly largely exited from Iraq, thanks to a Democratic president—whether or not we have left the country any better off. (For one thing, I'd like an update on whether the Iraqi people yet have reliable, 24-hour electrical service, or whether they feel secure outside of their homes.)
So really, there is only a point in talking about the future. Currently Republicans and other "hawks" (we don't hear that word much, anymore) want the US to attack Syria and Iran. President Obama evidently is not very keen on doing either one; but if a Republican gets elected president in November, we may indeed find ourselves in the midst of yet another war.
The US has an all-volunteer military services. I don't understand why young American men want to join the military and go and fight. Evidently they feel they are being patriotic and "serving their country"; but when America has not been clearly attacked by these countries; and when the connection between these wars and America's welfare is similarly not clear; I have to think they may be misguided. (Remember, George W. Bush sold us on the Iraq war by falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein was developing "weapons of mass destruction." Many other wars, such as the Vietnam War, were also based on lies.) Those in Iraq who were attacking American troops did not view Americans as their saviors but as foreign invaders.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
That is why we've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a loss of over 4000 American lives—arguably in both cases for at best a very unclear purpose. Supposedly America is always trying to export "freedom"—meaning, presumably, its brand of democracy—to other countries, whether they want it or not. Iraq is not and is not going to be a democracy after the American model, and heaven only knows what can be accomplished in Afghanistan, where we cannot even free the country from the influence of war lords.
Anyway, those are wars that commenced, and that fact cannot be changed. I must acknowledge that the US has supposedly largely exited from Iraq, thanks to a Democratic president—whether or not we have left the country any better off. (For one thing, I'd like an update on whether the Iraqi people yet have reliable, 24-hour electrical service, or whether they feel secure outside of their homes.)
So really, there is only a point in talking about the future. Currently Republicans and other "hawks" (we don't hear that word much, anymore) want the US to attack Syria and Iran. President Obama evidently is not very keen on doing either one; but if a Republican gets elected president in November, we may indeed find ourselves in the midst of yet another war.
The US has an all-volunteer military services. I don't understand why young American men want to join the military and go and fight. Evidently they feel they are being patriotic and "serving their country"; but when America has not been clearly attacked by these countries; and when the connection between these wars and America's welfare is similarly not clear; I have to think they may be misguided. (Remember, George W. Bush sold us on the Iraq war by falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein was developing "weapons of mass destruction." Many other wars, such as the Vietnam War, were also based on lies.) Those in Iraq who were attacking American troops did not view Americans as their saviors but as foreign invaders.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
What's Old Is New
Remember typewriters? It's rather easy to see why word processing pretty much killed the typewriter; but they're supposedly making a comeback. Kids who see one for the first time think it's cool to see the print appear on the page as soon as you press a key.
They haven't ever totally gone away. Some people still have them and use them. Some writers, like Woody Allen, prefer to write on a typewriter. I've seen them in doctor's offices several times.
I actually have one, a very late-generation Panasonic electronic typewriter. (It's got two modes: in one mode, it prints as you strike a key, like any typewriter. The other mode lets you input up to an entire line at a time and you can edit before you print. And it can store documents, too.) I confess I haven't used it in a long time. I would if it were sitting out on a desk, but it's packed away on a closet shelf.
Still, I haven't heard that anyone has resumed making them. And it must be very difficult to find ribbons for them.
The vinyl record has never completely gone away, in the 30 years that we've had the CD, and a number of turntable models are still being made. Maybe typewriters will show their viability, too, and return from being an antique and a curiosity.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
They haven't ever totally gone away. Some people still have them and use them. Some writers, like Woody Allen, prefer to write on a typewriter. I've seen them in doctor's offices several times.
I actually have one, a very late-generation Panasonic electronic typewriter. (It's got two modes: in one mode, it prints as you strike a key, like any typewriter. The other mode lets you input up to an entire line at a time and you can edit before you print. And it can store documents, too.) I confess I haven't used it in a long time. I would if it were sitting out on a desk, but it's packed away on a closet shelf.
Still, I haven't heard that anyone has resumed making them. And it must be very difficult to find ribbons for them.
The vinyl record has never completely gone away, in the 30 years that we've had the CD, and a number of turntable models are still being made. Maybe typewriters will show their viability, too, and return from being an antique and a curiosity.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Monday, March 5, 2012
Tallest in the World
The Great Pyramid of Egypt originally stood 481 feet (146.5 m) tall and was the tallest man-made structure on Earth for nearly 4000 years—basically until the late Middle Ages when the Gothic cathedrals of Europe were being built and were trying to outdo one another in terms of their dimensions.
Interestingly, a couple of these churches held their pre-eminent rank only briefly because their heavenward-reaching spires met some kind of mishap, and thus they yielded their number-one place to a lower structure and the record height goes down three times in the following record.
The Great Pyramid was first surpassed around 1311 AD by Lincoln Cathedral in England, which had a spire believed to have been 524 feet (159.7 m) tall. (It collapsed in a storm in 1549.)
St. Olaf's Church in Talinn, Estonia, built in 1500 (521.6 ft, 159 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1549 to 1625 when its spire was destroyed by lightning.
St. Mary's Church, Stralsund, Germany (495 ft, 151 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1625 to 1647 when its spire was destroyed by lightning.
Strasbourg Cathedral, France (466 ft, 142 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874.
St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg, Germany was the tallest building on earth (483 ft, 147.8 m) from 1874 to 1876.
When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884 it was the tallest structure in the world at 555 feet tall (169 m). The Washington Monument was not the tallest structure on Earth for very long. It was surpassed in 1889 by the Eiffel Tower, which is 1063 feet (324 m) tall. It was the tallest until the age of the great skyscrapers in the US began in the 1930s with such buildings as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building.
Just for comparison purposes, the great ocean liner Titanic, which sank in 1912, was 882 feet long—longer than The Great Pyramid was tall but shorter than one of the great cathedrals was tall. The huge airship the Hindenburg, which burned in a famous disaster in 1937, was almost as long as the Titanic, with a length of 804 feet.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Interestingly, a couple of these churches held their pre-eminent rank only briefly because their heavenward-reaching spires met some kind of mishap, and thus they yielded their number-one place to a lower structure and the record height goes down three times in the following record.
The Great Pyramid was first surpassed around 1311 AD by Lincoln Cathedral in England, which had a spire believed to have been 524 feet (159.7 m) tall. (It collapsed in a storm in 1549.)
St. Olaf's Church in Talinn, Estonia, built in 1500 (521.6 ft, 159 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1549 to 1625 when its spire was destroyed by lightning.
St. Mary's Church, Stralsund, Germany (495 ft, 151 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1625 to 1647 when its spire was destroyed by lightning.
Strasbourg Cathedral, France (466 ft, 142 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874.
St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg, Germany was the tallest building on earth (483 ft, 147.8 m) from 1874 to 1876.
When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884 it was the tallest structure in the world at 555 feet tall (169 m). The Washington Monument was not the tallest structure on Earth for very long. It was surpassed in 1889 by the Eiffel Tower, which is 1063 feet (324 m) tall. It was the tallest until the age of the great skyscrapers in the US began in the 1930s with such buildings as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building.
Just for comparison purposes, the great ocean liner Titanic, which sank in 1912, was 882 feet long—longer than The Great Pyramid was tall but shorter than one of the great cathedrals was tall. The huge airship the Hindenburg, which burned in a famous disaster in 1937, was almost as long as the Titanic, with a length of 804 feet.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
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