Happy As Kings

Honk if this is the scenery you'd like to see on your vacation

I-70 between St. Louis and Kansas City is a forest of billboards.  The reason given (that I've seen) for permitting this blight is that business owners will lose customers if billboards don't let travelers know about the companies.  So, how many of you look for fireworks and pole dancers while you're on vacation with your families?  How many of you buy cars on holiday?  Does having kiddies in the car stop you from buying "adult toys" -- presumably for use in your motel room with your kids in the next bed?  Or maybe, the kind of customers the billboards are meant to attract aren't friendly family vacationers.  Way to develop tourism, Missouri.

I took the pictures that make up these images three days ago when returning home from an almost two-week trip.  No other state's stretch of I-70 was this ugly.  

(full disclosure, I wasn't thinking of this blog post while taking photos elsewhere, so the photos are not representative of all the highways BUT we never saw billboards like we saw on Missouri's stretch of I-70)

  Maryland

  West Virginia

 

  Virginia

  Ohio

  Indiana

  Illinois

 

I like coming home to Missouri, but I don't like driving on I-70 to get there.

By the way, this selection is perhaps 3/4s of the images I took, and these are, by no means, all the billboards on the east to west stretch of the road.

The US Army is Doomed

This weekend, all I seem to be thinking about is sex.  It's enough to make the children blush.

In my online travels, I ran across this blog post (with the same subject line) concerning the use by the Army of empathy bellies for soldiers learning how to run PT for pregnant soldiers and soldiers who are new mothers.  The writer is truly gobsmacked.

I left a reply, but don't see it.  Either it is being held for moderation or the blog ate it.  I don't like to waste thinking or typing, so here is my reply:   

From the blog:  I know this sounds harsh, but if a woman is pregnant, why wouldn't they be honorably discharged, given some form of severance and sent on their way, or given the ability to transfer to a non combat role, but only if there are spots open for them.

She wouldn't be discharged because it's against the law to fire women for pregnancy, which is a temporary condition despite its long-term effect. Mothers aren't the only ones to experience this effect (parenthood) as many fathers stay with their children until the kids grow up.

Aside from that, DoD made the decision to allow pregnant women and mothers to remain on active duty when the draft ended in the 1970s and the Army shifted to all volunteers. 

• The Women's Army Corps, 1945 - 1978, p. 264: "A week later, however, Secretary Froehlke, faced with reports projecting that the elimination of the draft would leave the Army unable to maintain a minimum of thirteen active duty divisions after FY 1974, called upon the Army staff for a plan that would achieve the speediest and largest supportable increase in the WAC."
• The U.S. Army's Transition to the All-Volunteer Force, 1968-1974, p. 192: "[LTC Jack] Butler believed that an expansion of the WAC in order to substitute enlisted women for men required no justification; the need was self-evident." 

As for the empathy bellies, it is a cost-effective measure to have instructors understand the limits of what a troop with a physical condition can tolerate.  These women have received expensive training and may be very good at their jobs.  To flush them from the system for pregnancy is a waste of your tax dollars and would leave their co-workers playing catch-up.  For the women to be injured from unsuitable physical training and possibly be medically discharged would result in a similar financial loss for the Army.  For a woman to be injured and lose a baby would be a tragedy.

The argument for women in the military not to bear children until they complete whatever term it is that they intend to complete is also a form of discrimination given that older mothers tend to have more complications with pregnancy.  Enlisting at 20, waiting twenty years to retire, and then start a family has a woman waiting until 40 to become pregnant. Also, no one asks men to refrain from becoming fathers because they are in the military. The services do not discharge single fathers although they, like single mothers, must have a plan for care of the child/ren in case of an emergency. In fact, it would seem that the military encourages parenthood/family life by providing family quarters and dependent travel, among other family support mechanisms.

To correct a misperception at the blog, no woman, with or without a 1-year old, would be sent "into combat," much less any pregnant woman.  During pregnancy a woman who is a soldier would have what is called a "profile" limiting the kind of work she can do, just as any soldier who is unable to complete his or her duties because of a temporary condition. Yes, women have been killed in combat situations but only because the battlefield can be anywhere. These women were not "in combat" although combat came to them.

Recreational sex

I rarely watch television news, but during this evening's exercise, I did.  When I watch television programs, they're usually DVRed and I skip the commercials. I guess I'm remembering the long-ago assertion that by using cable you'd be paying for your broadcasts and not have to put up with commercial messages, but I digress. 

Tonight, I was able to watch a Cialis commercial and I noticed that the people in the commercial either look as if they're the parents of older teens or college-age students, or at least at the upper end of childbearing years.  Given that, I'm assuming that the uses to which Cialis is intended to be put is for recreational reasons, not so that the couple shown can have more children (if any, since none are ever shown).

Given the outcry from some people [low-end example] about insurance-covered birth control pills meant for women, which allows the women to have sex without the consequence of pregnancy (whether or not that is what the treatment is meant to affect), why is there no similar complaint about insurance coverage for the recreational sex pills for men?

Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids

The subject line is the title of a Slate article.  I'd take apart the article, but most of it is of the 'old news' variety that has been dealt with many times. 

Effective research would have revealed information about the objections, as research would also have shown that Robert Reich (former Labor secretary) and Rob Reich (Stanford professor) are two different people, another bit of information fairly well-known in the (older?) homeschooling community.

 

Robert Reich http://robertreich.org/ 
 
Rob Reich 
http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/reich

 

A resonable reply to the article is in the comments section: search -- Ctrl. F for PC-users -- for Patrick Farenga.

Gotye

If I put the link here, it won't go down the memory hole as quickly as in other places.

Gotye

Finding a blog subject in the era of direct social networking

I used to use this blog to share jokes, pictures I like, and interesting websites, as well as letting off steam.  Now, with Facebook (and potentially with Google+) I can 'talk' directly with people who are more likely to reply.  That kind of communication is more satisfying than random blogging.  Now I find blogging more suited to sharing impersonal information, which is at odds with my blog's name as those are things I'm seldom "happy" about.

I don't want to turn off my blog, but I'm having difficulty finding a use for it that is compatible with why I started it.

I could use it to give Snopes one more link.  (today's 'new knowledge' is how egg whites aren't miracle cures for burns)

Or I could use it for social awareness articles.  (unsafe abortions are on the rise because of cuts in funding for contraceptives)

Those uses make it a kind of inefficient Twitter.

Or I could put up more pictures.  I like that use.

Shadows at the zoo.  My daughter, my grandson and me.  I'm the one who looks like the fairy Merriweather in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Just checking to see if this blog still works

This poor blog has been so neglected since the advent of Facebook.  The technological changes are flying by about as fast as the books are piling up.

Photoshopped propaganda

The last few days on Facebook, I've seen pictures people have either been acclaimed by the people who have shared them, or the person felt the picture to be an embarassment.  The thing I feel these pictures have in common, is that they were digitally manipulated.  Unfortunately, we have so many things to watch out for that closely examining images is just something else to put on the to-do list.

The giveaway in these pictures is the pixellation and differences in background shading.  Copy and paste the full-size images into a graphics program and increase the size of the image.  See the pixels?  D'you figure someone's playing you?

I find this one funny, but it's still been worked.

 

I find this annoying.  The intent of this image is that homeschooling parents and kids are numnutzes for not being able to spell their own 'name,' and the numnutzes are supporting Governor Perry.  I don't support Governor Perry in the least, but I find this connection to be offensive to both of us.

 

I hope this young man lived.  Whether he did or not, putting any tattoo on his body and using it for propaganda is disgusting.

 

This one puts out the vibe that the sign is hanging on a building or barracks in a combat zone -- it just has that look.  I seriously doubt (but could be wrong) that this sign would be allowed.  Officially proselytizing isn't condoned by the regs.

Air Force reviewing all ethics training,  14 Aug 2011, Air Force Times

The Air Force is reviewing all training materials related to ethics, core values and character development after more Christian-themed course work surfaced.

The problem isn't with the content, per se, it's with undue command influence on personal beliefs.  Servicemembers swear to protect and defend the Constitution, not a specific religious viewpoint.

 

Now if you think I've got hold of the wrong end of photo manipulation and am just annoyed at the messages in the above images, here's another example, one I hope makes readers laugh:

Click on the image, copy it, paste it into the graphics program and enlarge it.  See the pixels around the penguins and the cymbals?  Manipulation.

We all probably see images similar in tone to these images, and may nod in agreement with them, feel irritated, or laugh; that's normal.  But once you think about it, please, do take the time to see if someone's playing you and playing to your confirmation bias.

Remembers Benjamin Franklin's advice:  "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

-------------

Note:  I found out that the photo of the injured soldier is authentic.  I'm assuming the pixellation of his tattoo came from whoever publicized the version of the photo that I saw, and that that image had the tatoo 'sharpened' for legibility.  I was relieved to read that the young man survived.

Voter ID: who is pro, and who is con depends on the politics of the day

2011:  Rolling Stone

• The GOP war on voting
  In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year ...

2010:  Infowars

• Biometric National ID Card Included In Democratic Immigration Bill
  The Democratic proposal includes increased money for border patrol and drug war agents, equipment, helicopters and unmanned drones. It would create a national ID — which is dubbed a “biometric social security card.” Though Democrats insist that it is not an ID card and can only be used for employment purposes.

Watching political ... -- "debate" is the wrong word ..., posturing? -- is like watching two pendulums swing in opposition to each other with each 'side' on a pendulum changing positions after they pass the midpoint of each swing.

Politifact comparisons on news reports about Voter ID.

In Plain Sight

Finally, a tv show on which the homeschooling family is shown in a positive light.

• Girls, Interrupted, In Plain Sight

A family Mary Shannon comes across while chasing the errant dog, of whom she has custody, sparks Mary's interest as an adoptive family for her child.

Don't know much about history

At Boston.com, Jeff Jacoby writes about the National Assessment of Educational Progress's (NAEP) report that states, Less than one-quarter of students perform at or above the Proficient level [in history] in 2010. Some people may yawn at the idea of history, but without knowing where we've come from, we can't easily map a plan for where we're going, or know how to choose among the plans made for us by our elected officials.  I think it's cultural and educational neglect to ignore the wonderful stories, tales, reports and adventures of our forbears, ancestors and great-ancestors.

At the risk of being insensitive, and at the risk of leaving more children with poor instruction on the story of how we all got to where we are, we don't have to rely on schools.  Families: parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents, can do it themselves, even without homeschooling.  I'm not talking about drilling kids after school and killing even more initiative, just about spending our dollars where they'll do more good.  Historical fiction isn't "history," but it can encourage a love of where 'we' came from, and inspire our kids to know more.

• Instead of one Wii game, buy a biography:  for youger kids, one such as Abraham Lincoln by the d'Aulaires will do.  If you can afford an Xbox game, you can afford The Story of Mankind, the first Newbery Award winner.
• If straight-up history isn't your thing (at the moment), try fiction.  Rosemary Sutcliff's Dragon Slayer, among many others, is a retelling of the epic poem, Beowulf.  The imagination's dressing up of Grendel's attacks on the halls of Hroðgar, Grendel's mother's revenge for the death of her son, and Beowulf's final act as dragonslayer have as much adventure as repetitive video games. Ask the librarian for other good historical novels.
• If reading isn't your thing, try movies:  The Clan of the Cave Bear, Spartacus, Cleopatra, I Claudius, King Arthur, The Mists of Avalon, El Cid, Becket, Ivanhoe, Robin Hood (whether in tights or not), John Wycliffe, Joan of Arc, Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, The Agony and the Ecstacy, A Man for all Seasons, La Reine Margot, The Three Musketeers, The Crucible, Rob Roy, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain Horatio Hornblower, Shaka Zulu, The Alamo, Gone With the Wind, Young Winston, Wild Bill, The Last Samurai, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Battleship Potemkin, All Quiet on the Western Front, Schindler's List, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Patton, Exodus, The Right Stuff, Che, Full Metal Jacket, Taxi Driver, Milk, All the President's Men, Frost/Nixon, Munich, Charlie Wilson's War, Black Hawk Down, The Queen, Flight 93, The Social Network.
• If being a sofa spud isn't your thing, try joining a Civil War reenactment group.
• If staying in one place isn't your thing, try audio books while driving in the car.
• Visit museums.
• Research your family's genealogy.

History is all around us. Don't shortchange your kids/grandkids/neices/nephews by staying in the thin edge of today.  We're more than the surface.

 

Quick list of resources from top search results from Google:

Authors

• Louisa May Alcott
• Scoular Anderson 
• Pearl S. Buck   
• Frances Hodgson Burnett  
• Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
• Esther Forbes
• Nathaniel Hawthorne 
• Washington Irving
• Scott O'Dell 
• Elizabeth George Speare 
• Gene Stratton-Porter
• Roberg Louis Stevenson 
• Rosemary Sutcliff
  
• Mildred Taylor 
  
• Geoffrey Trease 
• Barbara Tuchman 
  
• Laura Ingalls Wilder  
  
• Jane Yolen 
  

 

Outlets

• Barnes & Noble 
• Beautiful Feet Books 
• Bellerophon Books 
• Bluestocking Press 
• Dover Publications  
• Historical Paper Dolls   
• Horrible Histories 

 

 Overviews and lists

• About.com:  Children's Books -- Historical Fiction  
• Historical Fiction Network:  Favorite Historical Novels for Children 
• Library Booklists:  Historical Fiction for Children  
• Scholastic:  Why & How I Teach with Historical Fiction 

 

Feel free to add your own titles, authors, outlets and links in the comments section since this entry is only the work of a few hours and I know I've missed much.

American military as a socialist entity

The local headline of Nicholas Kristof's column today in the Kansas City Star, gave me a laugh:  The Socialist U.S. Military System Works -- Hoo-ah!  I came to the same conclusion decades ago, not that the realization was anything spectacular, or public, it was merely an ironic realization, before the collapse of communism, and in the kitchen of the government quarters where our family lived.  The microcosm in which I lived was, short of being Spartans or 1st century Christians, the epitome of what my husband was actively working against.  Given our social group, I didn't bring up this viewpoint much in polite company.  (and yes, I supported my husband in his work -- realizing an -ismic irony didn't negate the reality of the opposition's intent)

I don't know that the military model is one that 'society' should emulate as a way of sustaining us all, but invoking socialism and communism as dread -isms, in and of themselves, holds as much truth as saying that pure free-market capitalism, unconstrained by any liberal practices, is the way to go.

I promised her I'd share

At her aunt's birthday party, my 7-year-old granddaughter recorded this short conversation with her younger cousin using her phone (a non-calling hand-me-down for game-playing).

Download Memo

For those in the family interested in hearing Hailey and Emerson, I had to install Real Player.

 

Rob Woodall and health care entitlement

In this video Congressman Rob Woodall (R-GA), first tells one woman, apparently retired from a company that doesn't provide health care benefits for retirees, that she shouldn't expect government health care because he needs to take care of himself. I'm guessing this is a reference to his tax rate. Minutes later, he tells another woman that he accepts the government health care benefits that come with his job because they're "free."

No, these programs are not "free."  Other people are picking up his tab -- taxpayers.

 

 

In questions asked by the media after the meeting, the Congressman said he chose the cheapest plan available to him, and that he supports members of Congress also participating in free-market health care programs. Apparently, just not now.

Law & Order's homeschool fixation

A couple of years ago, I stopped watching Law & Order SVU, in part because of the homeschool fixation of the producers and writers of the series.  I almost felt that when "the cellos" kicked in with the suspense music, each time a parent-figure came onscreen, that homeschooling would be part of the story. It wasn't enough that parents-in-general are marginalized by the series -- watch sometime and see who children light up for, who they're shown to be best protected by, who has the kids' best interests at heart (hint:  rarely the parents), but that homeschooling parents in particular are bad guys.  When a series reaches that level of predictability, the theme is a cliché. 

Yes, the crimes of murder and molestation of children happen disproportionally in families, but just because that's where the crimes usually happen doesn't mean that most parents commit such crimes.  After a while, I had enough of Law & Order's viewpoint and stopped spending any time with Olivia and Elliot.

I have not yet stopped watching Law & Order Criminal Intent, but if this series goes the way of SVU, then Mr. D'Onofrio will have to complete the show's final season without this viewer.  Tonight's episode has the homeschooled grad as a political radical, indoctrinated by his single-mother who herself was a '70s counterculture criminal with explosive tendencies. (and I just noticed my kids and I don't have matching wrist tattoos with Korean letters -- have to get on that)  I can tell you, from personal experience, that even kids who graduate from day schools can be strongly influenced by their parents' opinions.

As I've said before, I'd like to see the Law & Order writers feature an observant homeschooled kid who helps solve the crime because she wasn't cooped up in school.  With all the good PR that homeschooling gets, there should be at least one homeschooling family in the nation with a good enough rep to be used on a prime time show as a model for common sense.

Religious Civil Rights: Why Have the Washington Times and the Air Force Academy Savaged Them?

 Last week, a Washington Times editorial, "Air Force witchcraft," tried denigrating adherents of earth-centered religions by referencing a timely quote from Julius Caesar.

The religions of the barbaric tribes of Europe faded away as the Roman conquest brought civilization to the region. ... "They have likenesses of immense size, the limbs of which are composed of wicker, that they fill with living men," wrote Julius Caesar, describing a Druid ceremony. "After these are set on fire, the men inside perish in the flames."

 This appeal to ancient authority prompts me to rhetorically ask whether adherents of Christianity ever committed atrocities -- perhaps inquisitions, or religious wars, or genocide of civilizations new-to-Europeans? (I suppose Jewish atrocities are the ones in the Tanakh/Old Testament in which the Israelites wiped out neighboring tribes) Some might say, "Those things happened long ago. They don't happen now."  Children in Nigeria disagree. 

Another inaccuracy in the Times editorial is the statement:

All of the actual Wiccans and Druids died out hundreds of years ago.

 The thrown-together thinking behind the "actual" sentence is shown by the anachronistic mixing of Druids and Wiccans.  Druids were iron-age Celts; Wicca is a modern development; witches in the popular conception -- since the word is one synonym for Wiccan -- are, to my mind, mythological along with sorceresses and wizards.  In the here and now, some people do call themselves Druids, but as these neo-Druids are building websites and sending out home study courses, they've hardly died out.

 Another indicator of sloppy thinking by the article's writer is by referring to "actual Wiccans and Druids."  What is an "actual" Wiccan, or an "actual" Druid?  Would an "actual" Druid's physical existence be biologically equivalent to the body of a believer of a mainstream religion, or is there a difference between "actual" people and those who merely believe?  To me, the labeling of Wiccans and Druids as "actual" indicates the writer thinks that genetic Harry Potteresque wizards exist(ed), which brings up a pretty theological question:  Since most religions gain members by thoughtful teaching/conversion, do "actual" members of a religious group have their religion in their DNA?  If that were true, wouldn't an identifiable DNA marker for a specific religion lend more legitimacy to the status of "actual" believers?  (possibly? [see final paragraph])

 Metaphysics aside, how are secular authorities supposed to treat religion?  Should only the adherents of large-group religions be respected?  If that is how things should be, should secular authorities ignore minority-religions, or perhaps ban them? What is an appropriate secular treatment of group members with religious beliefs?

 Again from the Times article:

This is a space cadets can use to perform rituals if they happen to be witches, warlocks and tree-worshipers. ...

The Air Force is not alone in pandering.

 I'll overlook the Freudian "space cadets," although it gave me a laugh, but "pandering" is impossible to misconstrue.  One definition of pander is to receive special treatment. In a modern, tolerant country is it "pandering" to allow people to worship as they choose? 

The Times writer continues with the special treatment theme:

These neo-Pagan worshippers now have a federally supplied space they can call their own in the hills of Colorado Springs, Colo.

Why not?  The famous Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel is also "federally supplied," so why can't the minority-belief worshippers have a space in the hills?  Who is injured by either facility?

In the United States, practicing your religion is not a privilege, it's a right.  Which brings me to USAF Academy grad, Mikey Weinstein:

Religious Civil Rights: Why Have the Washington Times and the Air Force Academy Savaged Them?, 9 May 2011, Truthout

Shame, shame, shame on the Times for failing to recognize that, while the First Commandment might indeed say that "you cannot have any other Gods but Me," the First Amendment's clarion call is quite simply, "Oh yes you can!"

 The "clarion call" is echoed in the booklet, "Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups" published by the U.S. Army.  (link to text: here)

 The United States is not a theocracy.  The Constitution (the one the cadets will swear to uphold when they become Air Force officers) says so.  What Julius Caesar thought, is of no civic consequence.

Graphically ghastly cop shows

Have all the stories been told? I ask that while acknowledging basic plots, ranging from "a stranger comes to town/the hero goes on a journey" to 20 Master Plots. I understand cop shows use murder as a standard theme -- vicarious excruciating death being one of the strongest stressors a reader identifying with a main character can experience.  With that understanding, I'm finding the programs disturbing. 

A recent episode of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior featured a killer who dismembered living victims using a bandsaw.  I fast-forwarded through most of the program, and muted other parts.  If I wanted to watch a "chainsaw massacre movie," I'd find an original. (so far, no interest on my part) Tonight's CSI's opening showed one man feeding another man a stew sprinkled with diamond-shredded credit card shards and unidentified gross-looking objects, the impression being, the objects were parts of yet a third person.  Later, the victim was himself shredded. Contemporary R-rated movies I've seen never reached that level of gore, taking into account that I don't seek out violence. Not even the Stieg Larsson trilogy portrayed deaths so disgustingly.

In today's entertainment, are story lines exhausted?  Is carnage required to attract viewers? Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior is already deleted from my DVR queue.  CSI is teetering.

I still read mine in the paper

Line from the comic strip Zits:  Reading the news online is like trying to meditate in a casino.

Note

[DVR]  House (the tv show)

If I ever develop a serious, baffling disease, please don't send me to the hospital where Dr. House works.  Those people always go through hell, especially after talking to one of the doctors.

We have crocuses, it must be spring

They're a bit battered as a late snowfall sat on them for a day or so, but the cheerful little optimists continued poking up, regardless.