Shouting at Each Other

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m not a happy warrior.  Some people are.  My friend Larry Correia, for instance.  I’m relentless and non-stop, but I’d much rather avoid conflict altogether.

This is not because I don’t have the courage of my convictions, but because I feel sorry for most people on the other side, whether what we’re talking about is writing, technological change (in writing and education and myriad other things) or politics.

I can see being them, with very little change in circumstances.

Take writing, for instance.  Until Kris Rusch opened the door of the jail cell I was where they were, but more so… Or perhaps less.  I’m not even sure where the fact that my income had been a good supplement but never enough to make a living puts me in relation to people who had been receiving lavish advances and living from them, as most of the inner circle of what remains of SF have.  Yes, I have friends caught in that position (most of the people concerned in the SFWA kerfuffle are aquaintances, sometimes friendly, but not friends) where the writing income dropped precipitously.  But my friends are resourceful, smart people and are getting into other avenues and widening the feed on their streams of income.  I.e. instead of being scared, they’re active and busy.

But until Kris Rusch opened the jail cell I was sitting here thinking “Well, hell.  If no one but small presses will take me” (look, it was an agent-induced perception.  Let it go.) “And all the presses are slashing advances in half… I might as well quit now.”  Three years ago, I actually told my husband I thought I was going to quit and spend six months familiarizing myself with translation.

I want to emphasize that what I’m doing with indie is still not paying more than about a novel and not from Baen, (about half a novel from Baen) and that once I’m done with covers, editing, etc for the stuff I’m bringing out, it will be gone (mostly because I’m buying 1k of ISBNs and maybe 2k if I put stuff up fast.)  So it’s not like I have guarantees that it will be an income, if my stuff from Baen stops selling and I have to go it on my own.  (Right now, strictly indie, not advance purchase for the novels on installments or donations to the blog, it covers about “a normal electricity bill in summer.” That’s it.  Granted this is the slump of summer, and I’m hoping as I get more up it will cover heating in winter.  It’s a stage indie income goes through.  That’s where we are.

I’m used to no guarantees.  Look, at 22 I took up my roots, everything I knew and everything I was – and you truly can’t get this unless you are a girl raised in a Latin country – and came across the ocean to live with a man my parents didn’t approve of, among people they’d never met.  Furthermore, I gave up the security of my degree, which I’d taken precisely because it guaranteed me employment.  (Having seen my brother and older cousins finish STEM degrees and cool their heels for six to ten years before someone who knew someone got them their first break, I decided I’d take a degree which – failing the high road of translation for and/or the diplomatic service [which oddly, I had a very good chance of getting/was being groomed for had I stayed] or a teaching post at college [which I was tactically offered, should I stay] – offered guaranteed employment as a highschool teacher, with three months off in summer, and two sets of two weeks vacation and a middle-class salary.  (Now teachers have other requirements in Portugal, but not at the time.)  Here my degree meant nothing, and finding a job as a translator is like finding a job as a writer: someone has to give you a break, and you have to fight each step up.  If I’d stuck with translation – and I want to point out even when I came here that’s ALL I expected.  I never expected writing to be more than a hobby until my love pointed out that if that’s what I wanted I should go for it, and he’d support me while I tried – I’d probably be making more than I am (I can/could do scientific translation from four languages and that’s OBSCENELY well paid.  Free lance, twenty one years ago, it paid $70 a page, and numbers counted towards “page” even though often the page was mostly numbers I just copied over.)  On the other hand I’d be about where I am, career wise: solid, but nowhere near the top of the pile.

Anyway, I abandoned all guarantees, all expectations, all my visions of the future once.

It’s sort of like being in an accident.  It’s terrifying the first time, less so the second, and I have friends who routinely get cut out of cars and don’t seem to care.  (I don’t advise getting to that state.)

It’s a very different mind set than most people – and frankly one I’d never have navigated had I not already been divided by being brought up in Heinlein books and therefore not have fit in in Portugal.  Most people like a predictable future and the rewards of that which they worked toward.

Writers, right now, at all levels, are being denied that certainty.  Hence the rip and scratch.  The Titanic has sunk, there are insufficient boats and we (they – I am blissfully floating away on a raft made of whiskey crates.  Crazy but effective) are fighting for a spot atop the grand piano with the certainty that if you get too many people on it, it will sink.

That is all you need to know about the psychodrama between Sci Fi writers.  I haven’t been around that long but I’m given to understand the field is PARTICULARLY prone to it, having had major seismic rifts over WWII and Vietnam as well as every change along the way.  I know at cons I met people who hadn’t talked to each other for years over something one of them had said thirty years ago.

If it were only that, it could be let go, but this is happening in every group, every fandom, every casual association I belong to.  People go off on weird tangents and then start ripping up at each other.

And then there’s politics.  I don’t know if anyone actually believes the course we’re on, economically, socially, internationally, is sustainable.  I don’t believe it, but then I’m a little more clued in about history and economics than others (though many on this blog leave me in the dust, since my research tends to be in terms of “How do I fake someone living in this era” which doesn’t exactly lend itself to macro-movements.)  It’s truly astounding how many people think the closed-pie Marxism they were taught in school is economics, and who will therefore bow their heads and accept being poorer so “others can be richer” – and how long it will take them to get that they were lied to is a guess.

I suspect however there’s a lot more awareness than people would admit to, otherwise we wouldn’t go from zero to shouted swearwords in ten seconds, when you’re just expounding facts, or even your opinion (like my I Am Spartacus post, which seems to have got needles under a lot of people’s nails.)

I think at some level, almost every one of us is aware that we’re carrying on a party on top very thin ice, and we’re all listening for the crack.

The difference is, some of us have hope for the future, hope of a contact with reality that will bring us into a more aligned state with it (almost anything is.)  Something that will stop the crazy “but I want a pony because France has a pony and France says his pony never poops, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

But they… they see the system they want, the system for which many of them have given their whole lives in work and devotion, crumble and reveal itself as a farce and a form of feudalism.  They might say they don’t believe it, but the bankruptcies, the cracks in Europe are registering.  Otherwise they wouldn’t shout so loudly, and they wouldn’t go from zero to screaming obscenities.

Mind you, most of us here – and elsewhere – are aware that we’re going to eat a lot of dirt on the way to rebuilding the American Republic.  But we think that’s possible, if not probable.  It’s something to work toward.

On the other hand, if you’re a collectivist, and you believe in the entire world singing Kumbaya, the last dozen years have administered a series of shocks to the system.  There have to be doubts and questions deep in your heart, which makes you shout all the louder.

A friend of mine told me that before the 2004 election “the louder they shout the less secure they are.”  Only this isn’t an electoral context.  This is life.  And at some level they know it.

So, where does that leave me?

It leaves me where I am.  I hate arguing.  I hate arguing with people I like in other respects.

But the hour is late and the journey perilous.  I can’t in conscience stay quiet while we print the country into financial oblivion.  I can’t remain quiet when we practically invite enemies to strike us.  I can’t remain quiet while our liberties are torn apart.

In my ideal world, I’m living in a Victorian by the sea.  (In Colorado? You say.  Shut up wretches, this is my ideal world, okay?) and I have this little tower where I write, and no matter if my villains or heroes are male or female, straight or gay, white or purple with yellow pokadots, no one comes to call me names.  In my ideal world, this blog is about what the squirrels did in the night, and recipes, and how to clean your house, and my cute, cute cats.

… This is not my ideal world.  In all the rifts going on around us, I respect (and sometimes love) people on the other side.  I can see how they got there.  They either can’t or they ignore this.  They project ignoble motives onto me and mine.  And they pursue a fantasist course towards a paradise that can’t exist.

The past has shown a tendency for people in that unenviable position to amass a pile of corpses of those who oppose them, before the would-be-paradise collapses.

I will not go quietly into that good night, and so I talk.

I talk though I’d much rather stay quiet and not engage in conflict.  I talk, though it will cost me friends.

It’s not easy.  At heart all I want to do is write stories.  This will never be a full-fledged politics blog, because that’s all I really want to do.

But we’re put into a time and a place.  And sometimes it’s necessary to talk – even when it gets us called names by people who should know better.  Even when it’s unpleasant.

Perhaps after it all settles, I can sit around writing stories and ignoring the world.  Perhaps this will go by without a horrible implosion.

Perhaps.  Let’s hope so.

But right here, right now, and though it pains me to say so, sometimes I have to talk.  Night is falling and every position is thrown into stark relief, and the ice beneath us is cracking loudly.

Perhaps if we stop dancing and make for the banks fast, something will be saved.  And perhaps there is a convenient whiskey crate some can row ashore.

But continuing dancing would be betrayal.  Of me, of you, and even of those who think the dance can go on forever.

Should someone else be doing it?  Undoubtedly.  I’m just a bum writer who only wants to write.  But somehow I find myself here, and I have this small and defective megaphone.

And we must each use what we can to light the idea of a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — regardless of race, credo or gender.  Against the night that falls.

316 thoughts on “Shouting at Each Other”

  1. Not a happy warrior either. My first employee review at my last job I was actually described as ‘surly’. Still got the raise.

    And never had that many friends either. When a black co-worker told me everyone is a little bit racist, I replied “I’m not racist. I dislike everyone pretty much the same. … Except Gypsy’s. Don’t get me started with Gypsy’s!”

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          1. It was the way everyone kept accusing me of thinking I was better than they were that gave it away. I, naturally, had better things to think about that our relative merits, but something had to explain it. Finally I deduced that I must really be better than them.

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            1. I haven’t gotten much of that, apart from one teacher way back who said I had looked at her as if she was ‘cheap sausage’ (common Finnish idiom, that) when she had said something I thought dumb. I guess I learned to be a bit more careful with my expressions. Now I’m mostly one of those people who gets ignored. As I have said, I don’t fight well so mostly I try not to. I’d lose most times anyway since getting angry enough to become incoherent usually counts as losing.

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              1. I get that kind of response too, and it’s only ever come from teachers. Could be a teacher thing (he says with tongue planted firmly in cheek).

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          1. Try being pulled into a conference with the teacher and your parents because they want to accuse you of cheating, and being told they assumed you must have cheated on the standardized test, which is why they made the whole school (I think it had about 80 students) take the test twice. I realized then that the fact that you’ve made me lose respect for you does not make me arrogant.

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            1. Fortunately, my spelling teacher knew that I had no need to cheat, so when she found me taking the test on top of my open book, she just told me to put it away (I didn’t even realize I was doing it – had no idea the book was open right under the notebook I was writing in).

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  3. Me neither. I get so pissed at being forced to fight…. well, the aforementioned berzerker comes out.

    Cats? yuck. Cute cute doggies. :)

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    1. They truly are forcing us to fight. Last night I read there’s a bill in Congress to require every person selling $5,000 or more in produce a year to submit to FDA regulation. Looking at the price quotes for local “u-pick” farms, that’s roughly 200-250 “units” of, say, blueberries, apples, whatever. My back-of-the-envelope calculation last night said you could hit that with an acre of apple trees. So this is targeting even small farms.

      So those little farmer’s markets with the heirloom organic vegetables and free-range eggs? Say farewell to them!

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      1. We have always been and will always be forced to defend our liberties against encroachment. Tyrrany, like rust, never sleeps. The thing is to fight at the first jostle, before a) they size you up as easy pickings and b) you get accustomed to the saddle and bridle.

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        1. By that “reasoning” she should move her family to public housing, too.
          She’s a walking, talking and worse yet, writing indictment of public schools.

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          1. We just pulled Timmy out of public schools. His many problems won’t be addressed by the school system, and he’ll be warehoused for the next ten or twelve years. I can’t let that happen.

            As for fighting, I’m the kind of guy that gets pushed, and pushed, and pushed. I finally get tired of it, and there are bodies to be disposed of.

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            1. “As for fighting, I’m the kind of guy that gets pushed, and pushed, and pushed. I finally get tired of it, and there are bodies to be disposed of.”

              That sort of defines our side, IMO.
              Good luck with Timmy. Wise choice.

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              1. I’m reminded of the lady at the office– most offices have one– that is a total doormat until someone is just too rude about taking too much for granted– and then everyone talks about what a bitch she is.
                (Not me, incidentally– but my sister. Folks think I’m a bitch for different reasons.)

                It’s just not fair for you to suddenly have a line that can’t be crossed when you never did before…..

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                1. After all, they let themselves get pushed into a corner, what business do they have standing up for themselves?

                  Calvera: Somehow I don’t think you’ve solved my problem.
                  Chris: Solving your problems isn’t our line.

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                    1. Words to live by: “If you going to shoot, shoot! Don’t talk!” – Eli Wallach, as The Ugly after being “ambushed” in the bathtub….

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                    4. Re the soaked black powder weapon – If the percussion cap is on tight and the bullet a tight fit, it would fire after submersion. Percussion revolver cylinders are always sealed with grease or a greased wad to prevent crossfire, so given tight caps it would go bang.

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                    5. He did display an attention to detail with his firearms. I like the scene in GBU where he takes apart several guns to assemble one that works well.

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                  2. RES,

                    I’m more fond of The Wild Bunch for what happens when you back people into corners.

                    SPOILER ALERT!!!!

                    Do Not Watch the clip if you haven’t seen it. Find it and watch the whole movie.

                    Just do it.

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                  3. I tend to be that person. Scared of fighting because I lose my temper so damn easily, so I don’t, unless somebody does push me into that corner.

                    I really, really envy those people who have sharp enough a wit and restrained enough a temper to be able to skewer their opponents with words, especially when talking. I can’t usually do that even in writing, apart from those rare occasions when I perhaps have a day or two to think about my answer before giving it (and not necessarily even then, but I might have had some hope for at least occasional hits if we still communicated mostly by letters send by snail mail).

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                    1. I am generally incoherent when I get angry, too. I do better in writing, with some time to work out what I want to say, but once in a great while, something hits me just right, and I can give a dressing-down that would make a rock cringe.

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            2. Same temperament, Mike. And as for Timmy, good for you. We pulled Marshall out once for same reason and would have pulled him again if we hadn’t found dual college/highschool program.

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            3. Long fuse, big bang at the end. I think that describes a rather wide swath of America, both those that vote and pay attention and care about the future… and those that work hard, keep their heads down, and save all their attention for a very narrow focus. Good for you, taking care of Timmy like that. He’ll have that to thank you for, as he grows up.

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            4. Heh. Same here. I toggle from taking crap to taking no prisoners.

              I blame the idiot “counselors” from back in the day whose idea of making life better was encouraging the beaten-down to “let it roll off your back” .. bad advice, and they’re *still* giving it because it’s easier than getting bullies some real help, but .. that’s another rant.

              Good for you, hope Timmy likes his new arrangement.

              Mew

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          2. She managed to learn Marxism in college or something. Sacrifice real flesh-and-blood people for the benefit of purely hypothetical people.

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          3. You do have to give her credit for high self-esteem.

            I wondered whether she was a product of public school and so clicked the link (I normally avoid anything published at Slate or Salon because, well, enough idiots find me I’ve no need to seek them, and nothing I’ve ever seen at either of those sites has persuaded me they are worth foregoing the pleasures of watching actual traffic wrecks) in order to find the “about the author” bio information, only to discover there’s no there there. A long list of headers of the sort I might click if the alternative was a root canal, but probably not even then, yet no bio.

            Curious, I went the search engine route and discovered this NY Times item:

            WEDDINGS/CELEBRATIONS; Allison Benedikt, John Cook
            Published: October 26, 2003
            Allison Lee Benedikt, a daughter of Myra and William Benedikt of Youngstown, Ohio, was married yesterday to John Joseph Cook, a son of Alexandra Warhol of Alexandria, Va., and Joseph T. Cook of Corona del Mar, Calif. Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, of the California Supreme Court in San Francisco, officiated at the Harvest Inn in St. Helena, Calif.

            The bride, 26, and bridegroom, 30, work at The Chicago Tribune, where she is a features editor and he is a reporter, covering television.

            Ms. Benedikt, who is keeping her name, graduated from the University of Michigan. Her father is the general manager of the Youngstown branch of BakeMark, a company that distributes baking ingredients and supplies. Her mother is a computer programmer in Youngstown and was until June the president of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

            Mr. Cook graduated from the University of Wisconsin. His mother is the vice president for federal affairs in the Washington office of UnumProvident, an insurance company. His father, who is retired, was a partner in the Irvine, Calif., office of Speiser Krause, a New York law firm.

            Knowing a little something about the type of culture likely in Youngstown I cannot but admire how this young lady cow has enjoyed a sheltered upbringing and look forward to not reading her columns about her children being taught by the kind of public school teachers who will tell a second-grade students that snakes are invertebrate and, when challenged (as my daughter, who had seen snake skeletons, did) instruct the student that as teacher she was the authority and that in her classroom snakes would be spineless.

            And a quick skim of her article in hope of finding a) biographical info or b) how old her kid(s) might be (in another article she indicates the waif is five — Momma is in for a big effing surprise) reveals the following inanities:

            … it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good.

            Your local school stinks and you do send your child there? I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.
            And parents have a lot of power. In many underresourced schools, it’s the aggressive PTAs that raise the money for enrichment programs and willful parents who get in the administration’s face when a teacher is falling down on the job. Everyone, all in.

            OMFG. O want to believe this satire but instead have no doubt that this is the sort of thing referenced by Orwell when he noted some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals can believe them. I have no doubt this lady cow believes herself morally and intellectually my better.

            I went K–12 to a terrible public school. My high school didn’t offer AP classes, and in four years, I only had to read one book. There wasn’t even soccer. This is not a humblebrag! I left home woefully unprepared for college, and without that preparation, I left college without having learned much there either. You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that I got a lame education. I’m saying that I survived it, and so will your child, who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all.

            What can one respond to somebody so secure in her ignorance and mediocrity?

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            1. Ah, but she learned something in school that you didn’t!

              Reading Walt Whitman in ninth grade changed the way you see the world? Well, getting drunk before basketball games with kids who lived at the trailer park near my house did the same for me. In fact it’s part of the reason I feel so strongly about public schools.

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                1. Will she feel as strongly about them when it is her kid that pukes all over her boss’s wife at the basketball game, because she taught them it is acceptable to get drunk before you go to the game, since it is after all a public school?

                  If that question makes no sense, it is because there is no way to make any sense out of her exceedingly intelligent statement.

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            2. You know how crabs will pull each other down into the pail? That’s what she’s trying to do.

              And when she gets upset, you can ask her why she’s being so crabby about it. (ba-bump-ding)

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            3. This reminds me, should I get married I plan to get control of the content of the wedding announcement in the paper: My friends and family will understand the odd information and outright mistakes about my family, childhood, work and education – strangers won’t care – but skip tracers can go look under the wrong rocks as long as they care to poke.

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        2. I saw that via Instapundit.

          1. She’s not proposing outlawing private schools. Yet.

          But it doesn’t enter her mind that outlawing private schools might be unconstitutional.

          2.

          …She [your child in public school] may not learn as much or be as challenged, but take a deep breath and live with that. Oh, but she’s gifted? Well, then, she’ll really be fine.

          I went K–12 to a terrible public school. My high school didn’t offer AP classes, and in four years, I only had to read one book…I’m saying that I survived it, and so will your child, who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all..

          Translation: only Enemies of the People refuse to make sacrifices for the future Workers’ Paradise.

          3.

          Many of my (morally bankrupt) colleagues send their children to private schools.

          Why does this person still have a job? Maybe at Slate, calling your colleagues (and superiors) morally bankrupt is not grounds for dismissal if (and only if) you’re on the brain-dead Left.

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          1. OMF GOOGLE. THAT FRACKING IDIOT. (Sarah takes deep breaths. Takes off horned helmet and puts down ax.) THAT PERSON HAS NEVER BEEN WITHIN TEN MILES OF A GIFTED CHILD IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. I mean a really gifted child, not the “top 40% determined by those the teachers like.” I MEAN KIDS WHO CAN RUN INTELLECTUAL RINGS AROUND THE TEACHERS. They’re either punished continually or detached and depress. My kids did both in stages, and at one time younger one was near suicidal. Older one I only realized what was going on when he left school, because he’s the master of the smiling face. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest this idiot’s crotch until she suffers 1/10th of what a gifted child suffers in a day in one of the public factories of idiots.

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            1. It strikes me that she is denouncing, as bad people, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Gores and (probably) everybody (with children) on the editorial staff at the Washington Post & NY Times. Good for her!!!

              Although, when you think about her argument, it applies equally to those who live in private apartments (or worse, private housing!) in preference to public housing. Think how much better public housing would be if everybody committed to it!

              And we ought eliminate the discriminatory effects of private kitchens and dining. If we all ate together, in public cafeteria (no, still allows discrimination) soup kitchens, think how much better the meals would be.

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              1. You know where kids really learn the important life lessons? In the workplace. Nobody really needs more than an eighth grade education, let’s put the kids into factories where they can learn what truly matters.

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                2. You know the really scary thing RES? Your argument makes much more sense than hers, and I believe if we followed your advice this country would be in a lot better shape today.

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                3. Unfortunately, the cirriculum has been destroyed by the incompatible goals of getting all of the little darlings their (meaningless) diplomas and of pushing advanced content into earlier grades (the too-early exposure actually ensures that very few ever learn those ideas). So to get an “8th-grade” education, most students end up needing at least a 2-year college degree.

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            2. I had some horrible classmates, but the teachers were generally either neutral or happy to have me around. They were a secure bunch, I guess. (Albeit I was quiet, neat, could generally multitask enough to know where the class was, just wanted to be left alone to read my books, and if not left alone would answer all the questions and/or cry a lot because of intense depression and horrible classmates.)

              That said, my parents were teachers, and already knew who the really bad/insecure teachers were. They did expend some favors keeping us out of certain teachers’ classrooms. And some of the insecure teachers were really pretty good with certain kinds of kids, oddly enough.

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              1. This ties in with a long comment here (From me? I know; shocking.) that WP ate the other day (yes, WP burned my cookies, then exploded them, then annihilated the fragments in a cookie-anticookie reaction): Basically, one of the things that keeps me optimistic is the way (some) kids figure out and then manipulate the system in school, by high school identifying and avoiding the bad teachers classes and building their own filters that screen out an amazing amount of the indoctrinatorial content.

                And as to the ninny who wrote the piece in question – you know, the bottom-third-of-the-curve students, who don’t build any filters to the indoctrination and swallow it whole, have to get careers too. It’s just unfortunate that her own kids will have to claw their way through the baloney coming both from home and school to become enlightened adults.

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                2. Heh. I might have done hell of a lot better if I had figured out the reason why I managed to do reasonably well in school in spite of hardly working at all was that I was actually pretty far above average. But I was a nice, well behaving girl who had been told her entire life that thinking you were better than others, in any way, was very, very bad so I refused to consider that and just felt like I had to be cheating in some way and spend those years scared somebody would find out I was slacking off and actually pretty lazy instead of the hard worker girls like me (doing pretty well) were usually assumed to be, while the fact that I really was slacking off a lot meant I never learned good work habits. It has taken me decades to remedy that, and I’m still not all that good – I can work well for weeks or months, but sooner or later there will become a period when I don’t manage to get anything much done, I just dither. Tends to happen especially after something like getting ill – I get a period when I have an excellent reason not to do much I do have difficulties getting back to really working (well, besides the work I get paid for, that I manage well enough, but things like housework and these projects which may start paying in the future but don’t yet…) again after it.

                  Maybe there is a point to arrogance. If you are allowed to be proud at least that may also push you into showing off, which can be a bit hard to do unless you also work hard.

                  And if I had been able to get into some sort of gifted program as a child I might have done hell of a lot better in spite of that SAD. As it was winters crippled me a lot earlier and a lot worse than they probably would have if I had not been learned to rely completely on my ability to learn things without working at it.

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                  1. I used to get twitted about having an ego, mostly because I am stubborn when I know (or at least think) I’m right about something.

                    Not working in school screwed up my study habits, too. I didn’t do homework, which screwed up my grades, and although I did fine on tests, I didn’t graduate with a very good GPA. I went to college expecting to be challenged, for once, and found it easier than expected, so when I finally got hit with challenging classes, I wasn’t ready.

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                  2. Here is where most people err, confusing arrogance for simple acknowledgement of observable fact, and false humility for the real thing. It is an area where true Christians have a step up.

                    Being smarter (quicker to absorb and process new information) than others no more makes you better than them than does being taller, faster or having better hand/eye coordination makes you their better. It is simply that in one particular area your Creator has endowed you differently. As it is not an attribute you have acquired it is not an attribute in which you can reasonably take pride.

                    Just so, proper humility does not rest upon your denying these differences, it is in your recognition that they are gifts not of your doing.

                    Being smarter does not make you a better person — it does not make you wiser, it does not make you more tolerant of human frailties, it does not make your soul more generous about forgiving the trespasses of others. If anything, being smarter often makes a person less so.

                    It is neither arrogant to acknowledge a minor difference in gifts bestowed not humility to deny those gifts. It is arrogance to think those gifts (or their lack) are the measure of a person’s quality, and humility to remember the fact that these are gifts and acknowledge their donor.

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                    1. “If anything, being smarter often makes a person less so.”

                      I’ve always thought intellect lets you see more opportunities to fall off the path of the good and righteous. But being taller, or stronger, or prettier also gives one the chance to do ill, as well. I used to think I was smart, based on things I knew and how quickly I could pick up things at school. Life has a way of teaching folks like me that it just ain’t so. *chuckle* I think slow, but I usually get the idea if I stick at it.

                      It’s much wiser, I believe, to take pride in good choices made. They may not always be visible to the world at large, but they matter. Swimming one more lap or shifting ten more pounds is a personal accomplishment, but caring for a child is golden.

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                    2. I believe in a somewhat different way, but I guess it’s not all that different – that the IQ may have been bestowed on me but it’s also possible it’s something I chose before being born – but having it, learning how to use it best and yes, also learning not to let it become my justification for my existence most probably is some sort of a test, or part of a test (I guess I mostly see life as school, but since I also believe in reincarnation that we do have more than one chance to graduate). Don’t know how well I’m doing there, I can be pretty impatient with people who are slower and I can’t say I have exactly learned how to use it either. Working on those.

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                  3. I still remember the retired teacher who sanctimoniously declared that if children see their parents working hard, that will be enough to give them good study skills even if they were given no work.

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                    1. I would be quite able to put the lie to that. And I could tell someone in no uncertain terms how stupid a statement it was. My father worked hard, and I’m embarrassed at how lazy I always have been.

                      I DID gather some habits from my dad, by osmosis if you will. For example, he made everything look easy, so I worked hard whenever I wanted to learn how to do something. After starting like that, I don’t believe there’s anything I can’t learn to be better than average at, within a reasonable period of time.

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                    2. if children see their parents working hard

                      …You mean, like, while they’re at work, which is when the kid’s at SCHOOL?

                      It doesn’t even make sense as a defense if you assume it’s true.

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                1. So… metaphorically speaking, through time and space, we were row mates — though I was never allowed to have the back row. I was front and left from the teacher EVERY class (assigned seats.) I presume that they passed notes. “That one? Let her in the back row and satirical poems about your hairdo circulate by second class.” (I ASSUME that was the reason, since I was very quiet.) Of course, being on the front row didn’t stop the SF reading OR the satirical poems. Though writing one on the BLACKBOARD just before class, about the economics teacher combover got me in REAL trouble.

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                  1. I don’t recall where my desk tended to wind up, but I know it frustrated my teachers that I would tuck a paperback inside my text and still avoid being caught not keeping up in class. Daughtorial Unit … the teachers finally asked us to ask her to put the book inside a text.

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                    1. I was always near the front due to the damn alphabet.

                      I think I’ve read that “they” found a correlation between alphabetical priority by last name and performance as measured by GPA. If so, “they” might have decided to alpha-scramble student seating to end the unfair dreadful tyranny of the alphabet.

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                    3. I always sat in the front row if given a choice. I started faking eye tests in fifth grade. Second day of HS photography class, the teacher hauled me down to the school nurse. “Test her eyesight!” “Read the third row.” “Err, I’m pretty sure that’s an A up at the top . . . ” Social anxiety. The braces were bad enough. GLASSES!!!! EEKKK!

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                    4. Most of my teachers quickly learned they had three choices, a) let me read in class and cause no problems b) ignore my absence from class as long as I showed up every week or so and work was turned in c) stop me from doing a) or b) and endure a living hell.

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                    5. I hated alphabetical seating, since I was usually at the back in those situations (married name now, obviously.) I sat in the front by preference where I had a choice, though my school was old enough and the classrooms were large enough that the teachers preferred grouping desks rather than all facing forward in regimental rows.

                      I didn’t find out I needed glasses until I was sixteen, with a mild nearsightedness and astigmatism. As my prescription is largely unchanged in the twenty years since, I suspect I had a bit of a problem seeing the blackboard clearly without squinting. It usually wasn’t a problem, though I did fail to notice some homework assignments written on the board, and may have actually failed to see them.

                      P.S. Gifted classes saved me so many problems. If they’d taught me how to not procrastinate (a self-taught process when I got to college), that might have helped even more.

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                  2. Ah see,you’re not supposed to leave evidence. I must say, I tortured a few, mime and mimic. They always knew it was me as I was the only one not laughing. They just didn’t know what “it” was.

                    I had a few good ones of course. Shakespeare and physics come to mind. and dear sweet sister “something” (alas) who took me to the library and introduced me to Andre Norton in third grade.

                    I guess that needs explaining. Mom put me in a Catholic school for a few years when the PS in Tulsa proved less than impressive. Not Catholic ourselves.

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                  3. I remember reading “Earthlight”, by Clarke, in the fourth grade (That space battle was way cool, as were the names of the ships. Lethe, Acheron, and Eridanus, they were.) Fortunately my teacher, Mrs. Cooper, sang next to me in the choir every Sunday (I was a soprano back then) and didn’t care what I did as long as I continued to get straight As.

                    I didn’t do much socializing then and there anyway, having gone from the first half of third grade to the second half of fourth grade. My Mom easily caught me up over the Christmas vacation, which goes to show how dumb even the best elementary school in the county was. And this was in 1959 or so.

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                  1. Certainly so today, though I doubt she enjoyed it. I think she reached way beyond her usual audience. It suddenly occurred to me that “drinking behind the gym” is code to establish her commie creds, as in I hung out with the proles.

                    And it’s all youalls fault I was still thinking about it whilst splitting wood all day.

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            4. Seconded on the gifted thing. … wow.

              Well, there you have it: The fundamental choice that the modern world (perhaps any era run by insane humans) offers you: You can be Good, or you can be Free. (evil-grin)

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            5. Or they do like I did and do the minimum amount of work possible to achieve a GPA sufficiently high enough to lower their car insurance, in the minimum amount of time possible. Then go find something interesting* to do.

              *Interesting usually is synonymous with trouble, although occasionally it just means driving teachers bonkers, because you enjoy watching their heads explode. Which strangely enough also often translates to trouble.

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              1. or they drop out and take the GED and discover that in their state, your GED doesn’t qualify until your class graduates.

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          2. ” who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all”

            Can someone esplain this to me?

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              1. Side note;

                My Father’s life work was a two volume biography of Joseph Priestly. One of the tidbits he uncovered was a letter in which Priestly admitted to a friend that he just couldn’t wrap his head around Newton’s fluxions. Until Father found that, historians hadn’t known why Priestly, who was up to his neck in just about every other scientific advance of the day, hadn’t touched calculus.

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                1. I could never really follow those epsilon and delta arguments the math people used to make the calculus rigorous. I did learn how to work it, and take derivatives, and all. Later I had a Physics professor say that one should not learn math from math profs, but in the Physics department, without the abstruse silliness.

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                  2. justthisguy wrote “Later I had a Physics professor say that one should not learn math from math profs, but in the Physics department, without the abstruse silliness.” It’s good to take math courses which are informed by practical considerations — maybe not learning calculus from a physicist, but at least learning it at the same time as you are using it in a practical application like physics. I think understanding the axiomatic foundations is worth it, though spending a lot of time carefully justifying all your practical tools in terms of the axioms isn’t worth it.

                    You can get a lot of useful work done with math without ever learning a rigorous set of axioms and proofs. The Babylonians did it with geometry, and the eighteenth century Europeans did it with calculus. Still, learning the axioms is relatively easy (compared to learning to work with all the techniques and abstractions built on them, stuff like conic sections in geometry or analytic functions in calculus) and seems to pay off on a regular basis (typically in understanding something more easily, or noticing an error because a contradiction arises). Because the difficulty is relatively low, the bang for the buck is relatively high, high enough that I think it’s well worth doing. I learned epsilons and deltas and all that before I studied calculus, from _A Concept of Limits_, a little book from Dover available for less than $10. It was at the recommendation of my father, a practical man whose professional specialty is figuring out what horrible things happen to precisely formed bits of metal and ceramic as time passes within a nuclear reactor. I can second the recommendation to anyone who’s interested in using calculus. (And more generally I can recommend studying books chosen by working engineers or physicists or programmers which were written by mathematicians.)

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                  3. Let me testify: I’d never have amounted to anything as a math teacher if I hadn’t learned my calculus from a physicist.

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            2. Immiseration will bring about the Glorious Revolution, comrade. This is why Lenin told a comrade not to give anything to a beggar. You must do nothing, so that things will get worse and worse, because then everything will get marvelously better.

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              2. The smart set seems pretty sure that (re)discovery of the dispensing power isn’t gonna bring about the Glorious (re)Revolution, so maybe immiseration is their best bet.

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            3. Her “logic” is that if you pull your kid out of public school because there is no AP Calculus class in public school, then there will never be an AP Calculus class (so far …. not nuts) but if you don’t pull your kid out of public school, then somehow 25 years from now there will magically appear an AP Calculus class. (WTF? She’s a moron).

              A great snark that I am stealing is: “So now liberals are creating 25 Year Plans?”

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                1. I suppose the best time frame is in the sweet by and by as in there will be pie in the sky by and by. For all I know there will be though I’d hope for some on Circum-Terra and Circum-Luna and maybe even Golden Rule though dining there has its own hazards.

                  Likely there were reasons deemed good for shorter range goals. At least the duration of a 5 year plan was determined technically – or by voodoo science if you prefer – the technical coefficients for input/output analysis on a (Wassily) Leontief table were considered constant for the 5 year duration and then adjusted.

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              2. She is not a moron (that would require some serious upgrades) but the people who have put her in charge of their valued property …

                Look, if you give a bear the keys to your SUV, who is the moron?

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        4. The technique my public school used to teach reading left my son functionally illiterate when we moved him and his older sister to private school. Surprisingly, the public schools after serving up a heaping heap of fail in reading did a better job of math training than the private school.

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        5. I saw that article, and my first thought was, yes – you demand that Barack and M’Shelle take your sprats out of Sidwell Friends and park them in the nearest public school to the White House. Then we’ll talk.

          The amusing thing was that I sent my own daughter to a private high school. A Catholic, all-girls, and run-by-nuns high school, which was in a sort-of-skeevy part of town, had a joke for a school library, an ancient bus for the sports teams which usually made it out to the end of the driveway of the school before breaking down entirely, the classrooms were cooled with window AC units, and the school itself was about 98% Hispanic. No kidding, my daughter was the only natural blond in her graduating class of 50, and one of only two Anglos.

          The neighborhood suburban and well-thought-of public school she would have attended would have been about 2/3rds Anglo, was beautifully modernized with all the HVAC and architectural bells and whistles, and I presume a fully-functional library, up to date textbooks and all.

          But see – she had some issues, being one of those dreamy but well-behaved children, who absolutely have to be in a small class with an observant teacher, standing ready to reel her back in, once she began daydreaming. A tiny school with a lot of individual attention paid – that was what we needed, and I paid for it, meanwhile paying the local taxes which supported the public school which wouldn’t have done her any good at all, and which I could not have changed in a single aspect during the four years that my daughter was in school.

          She got a damn good education out of it, a life-long aversion to box-pleated plaid skirts, and I think my taxes must have supported the public school education of other students,

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            1. She did, just before she finished the second tour. It amuses her to point out that she, her grandfather and I were all in three different services over fifty years, but all in the communications field!

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        6. Are you absolutely sure this isn’t trolling or something? It sounds like the sort of thing a “Moby” would write for a right-wing website.

          It’s hard to imagine how this could be serious.

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        7. Since Sarah mentioned him in her opening remarks, it is appropriate to note that Larry Correia has discovered this monument to non-thinking self-refutation (“I went to a krappy publik skool and I’m plunty edjercated”) this morning with Fisking Slate over Public Schools:

          I took a break from working on Monster Hunter Nemesis to check Facebook, and of course I found a link to something so astoundingly dumb that it demanded an immediate fisking. It is such a jaw dropping level of stupid that my first thought was that it was a brilliant piece of satire by a free market libertarian who really hates collective do gooders, but the article is from Slate, and I don’t think anybody over there is clever enough to pull off something like that.

          The article itself is your typical white guilt liberal pontificating on topics they don’t quite grasp and lecturing everyone about how to live in a manner that best assuages their white liberal guilt. This article is dumb, even by Slate standards, and that is saying something, but there is some value to be taken from it as it is an excellent look into the thought process of ass kissing statists. If it was satire by somebody who has run into all of these same arguments before (I’ve seen all of these points pop up in various school choice arguments, only I’ve never seen them bundled so completely) then high five. Good work. If this author actually believes this tripe, then I’m amazed she figured out how to turn on her computer to type it.

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          2. Goodness. I had a good public school education, so I know it’s possible. BUT I also know that I have a friend who sent her child to three different public schools in her area, all of which had serious bullying issues and apathetic teachers, and then the private school she was finally getting success with denied her the aid she needed to continue, so she’s homeschooling.

            When the choice is not between a good school and a mediocre school but various mediocre schools which were demonstrably turning her eight-year-old into a picked-on, sarcastic wreck, the article writer seriously thinks it’s for the better good to send all kids there? She should look up the suicide statistics for bullied teens. (And raped teens, and teens from oppressed groups, and so on…)

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            1. B. Durbin — how old are you? My husband (and I here, for a year for 12th grade) had an excellent public school education. Older son — 22 — had a passable public school education. Younger son, 18, had an awful public school education, except for the last two years when we transferred him to a magnet school that might be the only still “engaged” school in the area (and is excellent. Wish I’d known about it in time to put both kids through that high school from beginning then younger kid.) NEVER found a good middle school. Both elementary schools the boys attended (we moved halfway through younger kid’s time there — were pretty decent, but if I hadn’t taught them to read, write and cypher at home, they’d STILL not know. But they weren’t hell holes.) Middle school — same school — went from passable for older boy to h_ll on Earth four years later. All the good teachers left. Administrators went nuts. Bullying and nepotism OUT of control.

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      3. So this is targeting even small farms.

        I’m guessing that it’s targeting especially small farms, on behalf of Big Agribusiness, which is in a position to pass compliance costs on to consumers. I suspect that Congressional Republicans probably won’t quite dare to do the bidding of Big Business on this.

        But if the Stupid Party manages to lose the House next year, look out.

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        1. Honestly, I think it’s more at the behest of Big Government. There’s been a lot of push-back on things like raw milk and the bureaucrats Do Not Like Being Ignored.

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          1. Time to get out of the markets. Grow for you own and trade for what you need. Plan on the black market and practice now.

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            1. Not so much black as very, very grey. Barter and sharing are not illegal. Liberals love sharing! So that’s what we’re doing. Sharing. I share my tomatoes with you, you share your .223 handloads with me, we share deer season with the neighbors…

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              3. Sharing .223 handloads is illegal without local and national licensing and covering the 10% federal excise tax. Folks have tried to evade that tax with a customer buy the components and the handloader barters only labor – that notion has failed in gunsmithing where the customer really did send a rifle off to be customized and the gunsmith has been found to be a maker in the course of remaking.

                That excise tax is under regular attack as a good sin tax to raise – if more revenue that’s good, if less revenue because less production that suits our master class as well. – I surely wouldn’t want to have a normal capacity magazine full of 5.56 handloads leave my possession in Colorado say.

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                1. You’re supposed to pay taxes on all barter. pfui!
                  As for handloads, not something I want to trade anyway. I load for family. Everyone else is on their own.

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                  1. If you’re supposed to pay taxes on barter, shouldn’t the IRS be going after politicians for all the trading they do on votes and programs?

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          2. Agreed, Big Government is probably driving it. I’m suggesting why Big Agribusiness might look for a silver lining & not resist as strongly as they should. They placate the crocodile so it will eat them last, by which time today’s upper management will have retired rich.

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          3. They’ve done all the big important stuff. Now they have to find things to do to justify not just their jobs, but a raise every year and more staff to send out on inane piddly stuff.

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        2. Regulating at the $5000 level – the man who raises his own wheat to make dog biscuits for his own dog – is also a strike at folks eventually going off grid to be preppers. Folks who want to be able to be subsistence farmers but who under current circumstances are staying with a cash economy will be both discouraged and registered/regulated.

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          1. And technically, by their thinking, anyone growing their own food is taking the money they would spend on food out of circulation, and that can be regulated under the commerce clause too…

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  4. … I don’t know if anyone actually believes the course we’re on, economically, socially, internationally, is sustainable. I do, but then I’m a little more clued in about history and economics than others…

    I read the bolded phrase as I do (believe the course we’re on is sustainable), i.e. the opposite of what you mean to say (unless you’ve undergone a very drastic very abrupt conversion that makes St. Paul’s glacial by comparison).

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  5. I am not a happy (or hippy) warrior either unless you count the spreading hips. It just seems like everything is conspiring right now to make my life miserable. It doesn’t help that my meds are not helping either.

    As for writing, I haven’t been in the zone for a year now. My poetry doesn’t sell a bit (I do get pennies when I put them on a certain website… but that is it). I don’t see any way through and my outlook right now is as gray as the smoke plume that has been filling our valleys from the Yosemite Rim fire.

    I know that if I could leave here for a few days my outlook would brighten (especially if I could feel the sun for a few days). Oh yea, and the AC just died today… I am wearing a mask – *sigh

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  6. I used to love the give and take of verbal battle over important issues confronting our country. I never abandoned a friendship over differences of opinion, although a number of former friends did not embrace the same forbearance. These days, such conversations just make me tired and a little depressed. When an apparently intelligent person will concede that every fact you cite is accurate and that they can offer no facts in rebuttal, but follows up with the expression, “I just feel …,” there’s not much left to be said. Consequently, I avoid the discussion and spend my time sitting quietly at the coffee shop reading a good book or trying to write one.

    Cute cats and cute doggies.

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    2. I used to like to fight too, but it has turned into people that I used to trust my back to telling me baldly that lying, stealing and cheating are admirable if done successfully. I don’t want to fight these people any more; I want to get out a car battery and jumper cables, so it is best if I don’t talk to these people anymore.

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  7. I think James Graham, the first Marquis of Montrose, put it well in his famous toast:

    “He either fears his fate too much,
    Or his desserts are small,
    Who dares not put it to the touch,
    To win or lose it all.”

    The Founding Fathers did just that. They ‘put it to the touch’ to ‘win or lose it all’. We’re going to have to do the same in our present political, social and economic mess. The last couple of generations of our leaders have allowed our society to decay, ruined our economy, and willfully ignored the political and philosophical foundations laid by the Founding Fathers. As a result, we’ve got it to do all over again.

    I think the important thing is not to become discouraged. Sure, we’ve got one hell of a mountain to climb. So did the Founding Fathers. How many of them died, or were impoverished, by their efforts? Did that discourage them – or their children, or their successors? Nope.

    I fear many of us who care about this are literally going to have to lay down our lives in the process. We may be jailed by the authorities for refusing to go along with ‘Big Brother’ and resisting the bureaucratic apparatniks who are trying to take over every aspect of our lives. (Just look at homeschooling in Leftie states like California, for example.) We may be shot by so-called ‘law enforcement authorities’ for refusing to obey laws that are clearly unconstitutional, despite being passed by Congress and/or tolerated by the Supreme Court. We may become Zimmermans in the path of untold Trayvon Martins, who may win their encounter with us. No matter. Our survivors must take up the banner and keep going.

    I’m not hopeful about my personal future in all this. My health is too shaky, and I’m well into middle age. I don’t expect to live long enough to see the solution . . . but even so, I’ll damn well contribute to it in any way I can. That’s my job. And, by writing stories that celebrate freedom and everything that goes with it, perhaps I can inspire others to do likewise.
    See the Heinlein quote in Sarah’s blog header. It’s true.

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    2. This country faced down the global hyperpower – twice, conquered a continent, defeated the world’s most powerful army and navy – at the same time, and stared down one of the largest empires the world has seen. Does anyone really think we can’t withstand the pissant occupying the White House and his lickspittle satellites?

      The crises we face are nothing compared to what our forefathers dealt with in the mid-19th century. Like then, the resolution is going to be painful, we’ve made quite the sh!t sandwich and we’re all going to have to take a big old bite. But unlike then there’s no geographic commonality that would permit full-fledged war. The vileprogs are already besieged, and it’s the desperation that comes from that forcing them to act the way they are. Keep your powder dry, your weapons sharp, and smile. Time is on our side.

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    3. The Founding Fathers did just that. They ‘put it to the touch’ to ‘win or lose it all’.

      Oh! To ‘Shoot the moon,” like in spades– or is it hearts?– and my favorite Clint Black song:

      Wait a minute….
      Shoot the moon= win to lose it all.
      Nuke the moon….
      Dang, stuff on the net keeps getting deep when it seems silly.

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  8. I guess this is why I’m here. I’m one who used to enjoy the intellectual challenge of debate, and the opportunity to fine tune my thoughts against someone’s intelligent counters. But it’s all become so crushing. And I don’t want to say hopeless, but some days I have to really scrape to find the hope.

    I want to believe we have something other than rage against the dying, but if the light’s going to dim, I do have some rage.

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    1. There’s only so much honing that can be done on a 10-grit stone.

      That’s the biggest problem with the vileprogs, they’re fascination with intellectual fashion has left them completely unable to function against intelligent opposition. Just look at Obama’s first debate against Romney. And look at how so many on the left lambasted Leherer for not intervening to help Barry. They can’t win a fair fight.

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      1. 10-grit stone? You still find some of that? I was thinking low viscosity suspension of slurry. In theory there’s a refining abrasion in there…

        The way they function against intelligent opposition is to overwhelm with the irrelevant and dismiss. And I’m just past the point of being willing to subject myself to the inanity of it.

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        1. The problem is that if you don’t subject yourself to it their position becomes the only one around, and those unable (due to time, interest, or ability) to think about the subject just assume that it is the correct one.

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          1. I know, you’re absolutely right. On my better days I strike out to the land of the unable and try to spread logic and sense. Making the argument, I can still do. But confronting the vileprogs directly…that takes more.

            But, again, you’re right. Gotta stay in the fight.

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  9. Yes, keeping quiet would allow some friends to not be alienated. But you would lose so much more in not speaking, and you can walk in the confidence that the friends who stick with you are worth having in the first place. I, for one, value your voice.

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    2. People like Sarah are invaluable because they are more scarce than people like me: I’m not usually able to express things clearly enough to sound convincing to anybody unless they already think the same way, so I don’t think it would be worth it (and yes, probably that does make me a coward, although one could argue that it might be better to be quiet than to risk supporting the liberal idea that the ones who do not think like them are stupid – not being a good communicator I rarely sound smart except maybe when I’m writing fiction and so in full command of the whole story. Add to that a short temper…).

      So I’m not a good spokesperson. But I can try to support the better communicators (give links and try otherwise to direct people to them), and hope there is at least some worth in that.

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      2. I wish it were true, but I don’t think I’m convincing anyone. If people like Bill Whittle can’t, I certainly can’t. Unless the fiction gets them while they’re young, I think they’re past reaching.

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        1. Don’t be too modest. You can be quite eloquent, and while nothing may work on the ones who have made up their mind there are probably quite a lot around who are either sitting on the fence or just never really thought about the whole thing that much. So getting a few here and there may be slow going, but it’s hell of a lot better than just letting them fall on the other side of that fence.

          And yep, getting them young through fiction is even better.

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        3. You may not be getting too many people to solidly rethink their philosophy, but I think you’re putting doubt into their heads. You, and some others, have a capacity for pulling back and bringing the details so that they build from a lower level, which is better for getting people to at least consider them than the way I express things (which, I believe, is much like Kitti is saying), where the overall logic is close to the same, but is based on a higher level of shared understanding, and is therefore missed by the ones we try to convince, since the break with their way of thinking is further down.

          Or, to put it another way, what I may say in a couple of paragraphs, and be understood by regulars here, would be dismissed as stupid, inconsiderate, and possibly bigoted by Leftists, while you could say the same thing, but take 10 paragraphs and far more background information, and whether they admit it or not, will have them questioning their way of thinking.

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        4. PFUI!

          Sorry, but you do not know your impact. Aid and comfort? Yes. But more than that.

          It was Bill Whittle and people like him that kept my head together during three years in one of the most liberal law schools in the country.

          (I mean, yeah, law school is hardly conservative. This one was in Portland OR. Do the math. Apparently, the Center for American Progress recruited out of my law school, if that means anything.)

          It was art and fiction that got me back on track when I was that close to a purely deterministic, Skinnerian behaviorism viewpoint. Which would have gone to odd places.

          And I have an impact on my kid, on her friends, on the people around her. And my wife. And my community. And so on and so forth.

          No one person does all the convincing. All of us have a slightly different (odd?) view. Something you say might spark something someone else here says, which has an impact on people and situations we will never see.

          So it behooves us to speak up. > >

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        1. Encouraging others to not bend the knee is a not unworthy feat.

          I long ago gave up any hope of persuading trolls (they are innocculated against reason and impervious to discrepant fact; “you cannot reason a person out of a position …”) and instead treat them as pinatas, to be whacked repeatedly for the entertainment and benefit of watchers and in hope of making candy and toys fall out. The people you are trying to persuade are not those with whom you argue but those who listen to the trolls and think, “there’s something not quite right with that argument but nobody else seems to be troubled …”

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        2. I’m with RES, great value to be found in comfort and encouragement.

          I’m also with mobiuswolf, whack ’em again.

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            1. No, no, we’re very ecologically sensitive and dedicated to healing this planet with lots of prairie restoration.

              We’re just answering Stanley Kubrick’s questio in Full Metal Jacket, “What makes the grass grow?”

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  10. 1.

    .. the diplomatic service [which oddly, I had a very good chance of getting/was being groomed for had I stayed]…

    gasp cough cough gasp GASP COUGH COUGH!! breathe…

    Whew! :wink:

    2. Three years ago, I actually told my husband I thought I was going to quit and spend six months familiarizing myself with translation.

    For-profit academic publishing is a racket which is getting undermined by the same processes which are continuing to undermine mainstream publishing. Sooner or later (maybe next month, maybe in a couple of decades) translation software will be more cost-effective than human translators: first for the printed word, then for recordings, eventually in real time.

    To adaptively continue what you’re doing (especially since it appears to feed your soul) is, IMHO, an entirely sensible decision under conditions of unavoidable risk.

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    1. #1, btw, is directed to your…ebullient…public up-front persona. In my four months here, I have become aware that you do nuanced things to keep this community going smoothly. I don’t know what they are nor do I watch for them, but it’s obvious they’re there.

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      1. I don’t think the diplomatic service would have required anymore careful maneuvering than I did to keep my (libertarian) politics quiet and remain working in this ridiculous climate until two years ago (at Baen I didn’t have to pretend, of course.)

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          1. Are you kidding? After I’ve seen her say “Come to the dark side. We have cookies!”, I believe she is a cookie pusher! Especially when she starts tempting me with the forbidden fruit of knowledge of low-carb cookie recipes…

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            1. Right now, with a stress headache back (No, I don’t know why. Stupid brain doesn’t talk to the stupid body) I’m incredibly tempted to go work on the short bread recipe again. The last time it vanished fast, but the guys gave me no useful info. “More butter? Less flax?” “Numnumnumnumnum.”

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              1. What do you mean they gave you no useful info? “Can’t talk, must eat delicious shortbread” translates to “your recipe was exactly right, don’t change a thing.” :-P

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                  2. Usually means too much flour/ too little butter. *shrugs* I made a living as a scratch cook for a while, but I’m no baker, really. Simple stuff’s all I can do.

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                  3. Then put it on top of ice cream.

                    On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 12:46 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

                    > ** > accordingtohoyt commented: “It crumbles too much.” >

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                    1. the guys did, with the crumbles on bottom of tray. Low carb ice-cream. I’m not kidding what I got was ohnomnomnomnomnom and all was gone in less than an hour. And I made a lot.

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    2. GS
      As a translator, no. Translation software is like IE. In fact, it’s exactly the same. It’s always twenty years away. some day I’ll show you the cover that resulted from an artist in Spain using Altavista to translate Draw One In The Dark. You don’t WANT to know

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      1. IE? You mean artificial intelligence, i.e. AI?

        Afaic the overhyping of cognitive computer science overshadows that progress is being made. Advances always seem to be perpetually twenty years away, and then at some point they seem to happen overnight.

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        1. See, the IE-for-AI typo made perfect sense to me, because at the moment I’m working on Web development, where “Internet Explorer” is a curse word. IE is always, ALWAYS, the browser that follows Web standards the worst, and every Web designer’s bane is trying to work around IE’s quirks: your new Web site feature will look perfectly good in the other four major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera) with about an hour’s work, then you’ll spend two DAYS trying to make it look good in IE.

          Every new version of IE fixes some of the problems (IE 10 is way better than IE 9, which was way better than IE 8, and so on), but the version of IE that will finally actually match the other browsers in standard compliance… always feels like it’s 20 years away.

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          1. The original made perfect sense. Translation is like IE, e.g. “my hovercraft is full of eels”. IE is cranky, does not play well with others, and is basically a language that consists entirely of irregular verbs, idiomatic expressions, and declensions for proper nouns. In short, if it was on fire I would carefully sprinkle it with gasoline and then toss a phosphor grenade.

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            2. In other words IE is like English? It is irregular inconsistent and a general pain the neck, and at the same time while consistently showing its logical inferiority it is constantly taking strides at taking over the world simply because its user insist that they have learned one way to communicate, if anyone wants to communicate with them they can learn that way or take a flying leap.

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      2. Not sure if this belongs as off-topic here, or off-topic in Susan P’s Portuguese post:

        Speaking of things that are always twenty years in the future, Brazil comes to mind.

        I came across a couple of L. Sprague de Camp’s Viagens Interplanetarias books and liked them. Apparently there is a whole bunch of that material. It would be great to see if reissued at reasonable prices.

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        1. Brazil seems to be losing ground. I put it thirty to fifty years in the future, except, of course, if “civilization” crashes … which does seem any day now.

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          1. If civilization meaning people like me crashes then see e.g. The Outward Urge John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris as by John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes.

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      3. So how would you title a Spanish (or French or…..) version for the books of the series – bearing in mind that it is an open ended(?) series?

        Pick a Spanish family of in-group slang, what might a Starbucks barista say? Denver Mexican food or border Tex/Mex could translate the titles and keep the theme but might not make sense to Europeans? or menu French could cover the series with room for some innovation (my favorite Denver area restaurant the Bistro at Aspen Grove offers a Monte Kiddo on the child’s menu to go with Monte Christo on the regular menu) Coupe Denmark say could be a metaphorical yet foody title for many a book.

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        1. In Bogota they serve a demitasse of really strong coffee called a tinto. Of course they don’t ask if you want a coffee, they ask you if a cup of coffee would interest you, as in, “Provoca un tinto?,” which sound decidedly odd to the rest of the world.

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          1. JUST do not ask for a tinto in Portugal. That’s a glass of red wine. ;)
            the Portuguese coffee is basically espresso. And every shop has a machine and will sell you espresso. Bookstores, sometimes shoe stores. My son discovered this, and drank five espressos per block.

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            1. Ahhh. The bloom of youth. I used to drink two quarts a day and I liked it; meeting each day wired made it seem more better.
              Tinto is essentially espresso grind boiled. It is good.

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            2. After he had five espressos per block, I’m surprised that Portugal is still attached to Europe! Although . . . that may explain the new subduction zone forming off the Iberian coast, come to think of it . . .

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      5. At the risk of sounding like I’m sucking up, a good story title has two or more possible interpretations. It keeps the reader paying attention but that also makes it hard to translate, especially by machine.

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    1. I’m from Aguas Santas, on the outskirts of Porto. (Well, now part of greater Porto.) I lived there till I was 22… 28 years ago. ;) My family is still scattered throughout that region.

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        2. *looks at the rain falling so hard you can’t see the road across the yard*
          I think I’ll stick with my whiskey and cola, but noted.

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  12. Possibly tangental, but this line…

    The difference is, some of us have hope for the future,

    reminded me of a discussion with my daughter last night regarding “Under the Dome”

    I pointed out that I had a number of King books. I left alone the predictable choice of bad guys and good guys (that you could identify by their stated politics or level of quirky crazy before you saw them do a thing..).

    I noted that the reason I didn’t read King anymore was perfectly encapsulated in what happened after the dome came into existence. The story presented – incidentally a clumsy metaphor for finite pie economics – focuses on how people in the fishbowl turn on each other and tear each other apart. There are only a couple kids really trying to understand it – and that is very mystical, near-magic. The kind of authors I like would show that some people DO turn on each other and are greedy SOB’s – there is evil in the world – but would focus mostly on what people do to get by, improve things, even solve the problem, and would work on trying to find a solution rather than delving deeper and deeper into the “dark side” of small town america.

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  13. I haven’t been around that long but I’m given to understand the field is PARTICULARLY prone to it, having had major seismic rifts over WWII and Vietnam as well as every change along the way.

    I’d say that can be generalized to every field – on close examination – is equally inclined to fracture. See e.g. Double Star where the party that dominated by virtue of being right on the issues promptly fractures to provide its own opposition.

    One of the unintended consequences of bidding for a major Con is the destruction of friendships win or lose the bid – winning the bid for a World Con is doubly bittersweet because it means some people will indeed never speak to each other again.

    Then again the United States Chess Federation has yet to recover from the Fischer boom and popularity for the Appaloosa horse led to fraud and division in the Appaloosa Horse Club.

    As I recall Jerry Pournelle makes the best and brightest of his Sauron Supermen (cyborgs) melancholy because clear sighted. As many have noted the plans of men are shiny when new but go astray in the end yet leave a remnant. [I’d quote both gang oft aglay and Tolkien’s phrasing of the above if I had a searchable version of LOTR

    The human condition makes it hard when what one spends one’s life for is flawed in the end. The Author apparently considers that makes a better story.

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  15. As an Irish-German Catholic kid growing up in Chicago, spirited discussions of politics and the state of the world were entertaining and educational. Now, not so much. As the wise Miss Sarah stated, civility has gone the way of the dinosaurs.

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    1. and then the leftoids are oft whining that they want our side (by side, I mean anyone who disagrees with their utopian visions) to be more civil … usually after you’ve figuratively removed their heads after they called you a terrorist, hostage taker , or some other blood libel insult, for calling some stupid plan of theirs a stupid plan.

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        1. yes, they sucker the poor by telling them they will make them equal to the rich, but fail to mention it will be by making everyone poorer than the poor are currently.

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  16. And I keep going back to Musashi Miyamoto’s statement that the samurai must study both the sword and the pen. It certainly feels like some ideas need to be stabbed. Repeatedly.

    It’s what I said the other day. Doubt I have in spades, what I seem to be in need of at the moment is more faith. Problem is, one tends to destroy the other. But we do have families for whom we will do what we can.

    “It is said that the Hornburg has never fallen to assault”, said Théoden; “but now my heart is doubtful. The world changes, and all that was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?”

    Of course, that’s not the whole story. I have faith that just as Bilbo was in the right place at the right time to find the ring, perhaps something else at work, beyond any design of Vile Progs has placed US where we are, when we are. We are meant to be here, in our place and in our time. And that may be an encouraging thought.

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      1. Sometimes you can see The Finger on The Scales. Cast your mind to that climate conference, when we were set to give the store away and then the emails leaked. Have faith, my friends. Sursum Corda. Himself has a peculiar sense of humor. Let’s hope the US of A hasn’t stopped amusing Him.

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        1. I think Himself will have reason for a gentle smile or two, by and by. Babies are still being born, even as you read this. Young men are doing foolish things, and learning from their mistakes. Young ladies are providing the reasons for those mistakes, often enough. *grin* And there are cats, and squirrels, and dogs, and horses…

          Of course there is adversity. I reckon there always will be, as long as there are human beings as I understand them- and maybe after that, too. We grow as people by facing and overcoming adversity. Let there always be challenges, so we can meet them as men and women, on our own two feet.

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          1. Babies are still being born, even as you read this. Young men are doing foolish things, and learning from their mistakes. Young ladies are providing the reasons for those mistakes, often enough. *grin* And there are cats, and squirrels, and dogs, and horses…

            Starting to think the Hobbit way is a philosophy.

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                1. Bad time to admit: I want to write a parody of _LotR_, in the style of a Baen author.

                  Orcs trying to get into Gondor? Good luck with that — one of the Guardians of the Citadel comes from a culture where Digging In is second nature…. “We may not be able to keep them out; but we *will* make them pay in blood for every step they take past the gates.”

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            2. Darn. Need to file off the serial numbers more effectively, that one showed through! *grin*

              *whistles a barefoot tune*

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                1. Not a thing at all wrong with that, lass.

                  My family does a Tolkien-fest about once or twice a year. Read the series again around Christmastime, watch the (long, uncut, extra-scenes-added version) LOTR movies after all the Christmas eatery and visitation is done. It’s a good tradition to have. Espcially in a home that always has readers in it. *grin*

                  Tolkien’s also a good antidote to too much politics and suchlike. Good books with that strong thread of hope running through them are unfortunately uncommon these days. Maybe it’s harder to write that sort of thing without it seeming trite. It’s definitely un-PC, so unlikely to get time from the big publishers. We’re fortunate to have those few now with the chutzpah to tell such tales today. *nods at our host*

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        2. I’m just waiting for the Author’s next practical joke. I mean, we finally figured out the platypus, and yeah, an entire website series that makes $$ from people adding text to cat pictures, and the Onion scooping reality yesterday, but what’s next? And what’s that deep basso giggling sound I hear in the background?

          Although, I must admit to feeling a perverse satisfaction and comfort as I skimmed the geology journals this AM (I read them for the articles, I assure you), and discovered that the arguments over the ediacaran fauna (or are they flora? Are not! Are too! Your mamma’s a trilobite. Well, you can’t tell a rock hammer from a radiograph. You take that back!) continue unabated. There is some stability in the world. :P

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    2. Faith is not absence of doubt, just as bravery is not absence of fear. It is persevering in spite of doubt, for only by perseverance that we have any hope of success.

      To quote John Adams: Commitment!

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    3. And I keep going back to Musashi Miyamoto’s statement that the samurai must study both the sword and the pen.

      That’s because Musashi-Sama was a far-sighted and wise man, and he knew the TSA would never let one take either a katana or a wakizashi on a plane, but pens would be no problem.

      One can accomplish an amazing amount with the right pen.

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      1. There is a great market niche available for the first company to develop a tactical pen.

        I swear, when I was a kid there was a commercial in which they shot one of those pens through a 1″ board.

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            1. The market is full of tactical writing pens at all price points, Also pens with handcuff keys and more.

              Mel Tappan who had some associations with Dr. Pournelle and friends long ago wrote a now dated but not yet superseded book on Survival Guns suggesting inter alia that the big Mount Blanc was worth the money as a well hidden in plain sight weapon.

              Massad Ayoob long long ago suggested practicing with a Mini-Maglite driving nails ( I carry Mini-Maglites in left and right breast pockets readily at hand if my hands are raised to my face) as a striking weapon and for punishment and restraint Kubotan style. It might have profited Mr. Zimmerman to have some such.

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      2. I keep a mechanical pen in my winter coat pocket, because when I reached in to grab it wrong once I drew blood.

        Figure if it works on me, it’ll give anybody getting grabby second thoughts at least long enough for me to get my pocketknife out, which (if I have my bag with me) will give me time to get my gun.

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        1. Hatpin.
          Also prevents me having to chase down hat. It is in plain sight, but no one seems to see it as other than jewelry.
          Got it at a booth at a Rendezvous, wish I’d gotten half a dozen.

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            1. Rendezvous, as in Mountain Men. Thought there was a fair amount of shooting, including a shootout.
              We aren’t into it enough to have costumes, but we like to go watch and buy stuff.

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  17. I enjoy arguing, but I do not like arguments. Mostly because, while you have voices in your head telling you stories, I have ones that tell me things like “You can fix stupid if you hit them hard enough” and “A well-timed molotov cocktail would probably expose the Dems election fraud machinery” and other suggestions that are somewhat less than couth. Since I argue from facts and logic it makes it hard to ignore those voices, or drive.

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    1. Some ideas are indeed so stupid as to be contagious, and attempting to counter them with facts and logic doesn’t work because you inhabit Euclidean Reality and the reality they occupy is Non-Euclidean. See: Private Schoolz R Eevle argument discussed elsewhere this page.

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  18. I hate fighting. My problem is that I don’t have a setting between off and full on berserk. Maybe I can support the happy warriors.

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  19. “It’s terrifying the first time, less so the second, and…”
    When you’ve done your triple backflips without a net (moving to the US, becoming a full-time writer, and so on) how did you handle the stress? Unless I’ve mussed the Sarah timeline horribly there was also a lot of medical trauma around the same time as you changed careers.

    If there are any tips on how to do it with perhaps a bit less than maximum pain, inquiring minds would like to know. Of course that much promised squirrel story is intriguing too… So whatever you want to share is good.

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    1. I’m not sure how to do it with minimum pain… but I can try writing about it. Medical is sort of a leit motif to my life. Being born way premature was a bad decision in retrospect!

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      1. Quite.

        Item the First: support March of Dimes. Item the Second: invent Time Machine. [Note: Item the Second may precede Item the First. See Time Machine.]

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  22. Well, no miles walked today (about three yesterday), but I did get the dishes washed, and the kitchen and dining room swept and mopped, the catbox and the bathroom cleaned (except scrubbing the tub. I really should. I might after an ATH sanity break.)

    No words either, but I’m not the wordsmith of our pair. I did struggle through the help files to get the headers and footers taken out of the imported ODT file, and next up, trying to link the endnotes with their numbers in the text.

    I found a recipe for flaxseed shortbread on the web, and think I might try to recreate the essence of Sarah’s shortbread without the faintest clue what recipe she’s using. Because baking.

    …and I just looked up to see the cat drinking out of my waterglass. Time to switch to mead, because she won’t drink that.

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    2. One mile and a titch walked (because there is NO parking at Boondocks State Cow College), 2500 words despite life intruding.

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    3. One mile in the local state forest. The calculation is well behind where it should be, but at least it’s not longer stuck in the same circle it was in all week. It remains to be seen if the current path is a new, bigger circle.

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  23. (Right now, strictly indie, not advance purchase for the novels on installments or donations to the blog, it covers about “a normal electricity bill in summer.” That’s it. Granted this is the slump of summer, and I’m hoping as I get more up it will cover heating in winter. It’s a stage indie income goes through. That’s where we are.

    If I understand correctly, though, that income will keep coming?

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      1. The really dangerous terrorists will know to score a zero on this test.

        As did I.

        If you aren’t analysing the questions to reach a desired result, you aren’t taking the test, the test is taking you.

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      2. They had both Christian and don’t like Catholics. I know they’re anti-Christian but what’s the Catholic thing about?

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        1. I don’t know, but it SURE does make Obama a terrorist. What? you thought the abortion thing meant he loved Catholics? Clearly not, hence Obama is a terrorist. (Chortles.)

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        2. Fundamentalist. A fundamentalist’s two greatest enemies are the Pope and the Devil, in that order.

          It’s starting to get a bit frayed, but it lasted for decades, that joke.

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    2. Just skimming a few off the top …

      3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”
      Wouldn’t that include our current president?

      5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”
      That would include socialists, who see communism as a transition stage.

      7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”
      There go the socialists, again.

      8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”
      Oops — secular humanists and Richard Dawkins are right chuffed.

      14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”
      So, all those advocating for more than equal rights, such as gay marriage (we all have the right to marry a person of the opposite sex, thus insistence upon “same sex” marriage is opposition to equal rights.

      23. Anyone that is engaged in “conspiracy theorizing”
      That would include the people who drafted this list and a former Secretary of State who theorized about a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” It would also include Al Sharpton (well, most of the on-air staff of MSNBC) Jesse Jackson, Jr. and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

      29. Those that “don’t think they should have to pay taxes”
      That would include current SecState John Kerry who chose to not register his yacht in his home state to avoid taxes and any left-wing think tank (Center for American Progress, e.g.) established as a tax exempt organization.

      41. “General right-wing extremist”
      Major right-wing extremist is okay, as are lower ranks. Colonel right-wing extremist is a judgement call.

      45. Those that are “anti-global”
      AFL-CIO, UAW and other unions.

      46. Those that are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”
      That would describe pretty much the entire Democrat Party during the Bush Administration.

      55. Anyone that is “anti-abortion”
      There go the Catholics (at least those who abide by their faith.)

      56. Anyone that is “anti-Catholic”
      There go the abortion supporters and those like Nancy Pelosi who profess to be Catholics but discredit the faith. Oh, and the NY Times and MSM in general for obsessing over pedophilia in the Church while ignoring the far higher rate of occurrence in our public schools.

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      1. As far as I can tell that list is designed to catch everyone who (To paraphrase Prachett) isn’t lying motionless in a cellar all day. And those that are can be picked up for malicious malingering.

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          1. I realized I had overlooked a really good one:
            57. Anyone that is “anti-nuclear”

            A quick Google of “celebrities against nuclear power” provided an abundance of names and organizations of people who definitely ought be locked away, most prominently Barack Hussein Obama and Al Gore.

            A quick glance throught the Wikipedia article provided these additional names, slelected from their no doubt less-than-comprehensive list:
            Edward Asner
            Alec Baldwin
            Daniel Berrigan
            Philip Berrigan
            Christie Brinkley
            Jackson Browne
            William Sloane Coffin
            Barry Commoner
            David Crosby
            Michael Douglas
            Robert Downey Jr. (Darn!)
            Jane Fonda
            Bianca Jagger
            Dennis Kucinich
            Annie Lennox
            Ralph Nader
            Graham Nash
            Sam Nunn
            Sinead O’Connor
            Yoko Ono
            Bonnie Raitt
            Susan Sarandon
            Martin Sheen
            Bruce Springsteen
            Stephen Stills
            Sting
            Barbra Streisand

            Does Harry Reid’s opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage proposal make him anti-nuclear?

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          1. I think I’ve uncovered a hotbed of terrorist recruitment. Consider #3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”

            Now watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib-Qiyklq-Q

            Wouldn’t a world that sings in perfect harmony be a better place? Just what exactly do they mean by “perfect harmony”? Notice the glazed eyes of those singers.

            Clearly, anyone who drinks Coca~Cola is a potential terrorist.

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                1. What if you prefer the Mexican Cokes? (is drinking his morning caffeine in the form of HEB store brand cola made with sugar just because those MexiCokes are so pricey)

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                  2. It is sometimes possible to acquire American Coca~Cola made with real cane sugar, and at a decent price. In the Spring, look for Coke labeled as “for Passover” — apparently the ban on yeast during Pesach includes HFCS and so they manufacture a blend using cane sugar.

                    Check grocery stores serving a high concentration of Conservative and/or Orthodox Jews. Sometimes this Coke can be bought at a nice discount as stores clear it from their shelves after Passover. Look for in-store displays of Matzoh, macaroons and other foods associated with the holiday.

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                    1. Also, kosher for passover sweet recipes (deserts) if made with sweetener are a GREAT way for low carb deserts.
                      Sigh. I just miss Matzo crackers. Okay, okay, I’m a sick woman. I used to descend on the grocery store after passover when they went half price and get piles. I love them with tea and a thin layer of jam…

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                    3. Congratulations, you made me drool. Matzoh balls in a nice chicken soup, challah, honey cake with some apples, bagels with lox and cream cheese…

                      Oh carbs, sweet kosher carbs, how I adore thee…

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                    4. When we moved here, our neighborhood was evenly divided between older Jewish couples and older Catholic couples. (No, I have no proof the line runs through our house, sheesh.) What was funny about this is that both sets of grannies claimed the boys and gave them whatfor if they stepped wrong while out playing. As a result, the boys became total indoor couch potatoes. (Yes, that IS what I’m blaming.)

                      Like

            1. Wallabies are innocuous, cute, cuddly and couldn’t terrorize a fly. We pay big bucks to some of the best PR firms in the business to keep it that way.

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    3. Hmmm, I score pretty high but no clean sweep as I’m not anti-gay, anti-immigrant, nor anti-muslim. And for #38, nothing “sudden” about it …

      And I’m not any kind of religious zealot or “fundamentalist”. Just a recovering Baptist.

      Ammunition stockpiling? I call it “Investing in commodities”. And no extra points for a large stock of ammo in calibers I don’t own guns in? Nuts.

      Like

    4. So am I (54 out of 72) the line I particularly like is the one that says, “In many of the documents above military personnel are warned not to associate or become members of such groups.” (paraphrased because my computer is acting up and doesn’t want to back up today). Right the fact the one of those groups mentioned is ‘military veterans’.

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  26. I had to take a 100-level Philosophy course at UNO (damned “breadth requirements”). The teacher was going on about the concept of “lifeboat” moral choices — and he asked me: “You’re in a lifeboat — there are more people in the water around you than the boat can hold; how do you decide who to let in?”

    *BIG*. *FUCKING*. *MISTAKE*. >:)

    My answer: “None of them. I’m warm and dry, I assume, in the lifeboat; they are all cold and wet already. Anyone who I let into the boat is going to be cold, subtracting from what little warmth there is; and wet, which means the boat will be filled with freezing-cold salt water in short order, ruining the food and blankets; and will most likely die in short order, as the typical human can only last maybe thirty to forty-five minutes in ocean water. So letting any of them onboard will not only be futile, but will reduce my chances of surviving alongside. So, let them freeze or drown — if they wanted to survive, they should have gotten to the lifeboats sooner.”

    For some reason, he never called on me again.

    Moral: Never ask for someone else’s opinion unless you’re absolutely certain of the answer you’re going to get. >:)

    As to the forthcoming Second Civil War, I think Jeff Daniels’s George Washington said it best:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqitLNTTUzc .(from 5:42 particularly).

    (As to dealing with the opposition: The Lady Hoyt has expressed as how she sees me operating the guillotines during the Rebellion in _AFGM_. To which I respond with one word: “Lyons”. >:) “

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    1. Most colleges these days have “breath” requirements. If you’re breathing and able to sign the loan documents they will make sure you graduate eventually.

      The school song of many colleges today.

      Like

    2. “Which one of them looks willing to reward me sexually… in a way I’d enjoy?”

      That would probably also avoid too many future questions.

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      1. Allow each of the swimmers a three minute presentation as to why they should be in the boat, with an additional ninety second follow up. By the time each person has made his or her case the odds are enough will have succumbed to resolve the surplussage.

        If not, then each person should be allowed to make a one minute argument about why one (or more) of the remaining swimmers should not be allowed into the boat.

        If there is still no clear solution to the problem, each swimmer gets ninety seconds to argue why I should give up my seat for one of the swimmers. The one(s) making the most persuasive argument(s) for me giving up my seat are excluded from the boat (in order of the effectiveness of their argument) sufficiently to reduce the number rescued to that number which most enhances survival.

        Geeze, people always make these things so complicated.

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    5. I enjoy reading a lot by Howard Fast(ov) especially to include Being Red but I’m likely to put him with the Beards and others as a biased source even as I like the work.

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    6. 1) How big is the lifeboat?
      2) How many people are already in the lifeboat?
      3) What is their physical condition?
      4) What type of lifeboat is it? Covered? Uncovered?
      5) What is the quantity and nature of the emergency supplies in the lifeboat (food, water, blankets, first aid equipment, etc.)?
      6) What is the weather like outside?
      7) What is the water temperature?
      8) Do the people in the water have lifejackets?
      9) What do I know about the likelihood of a quick rescue? Are we in the middle of the Atlantic, or 30 miles from the local Coast Guard station?
      10) Why are you teaching people to try to make decision in the absence of adequate information?

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