Essay Question. Respond to the Following Excerpt

  From the January 2014 issue of Scientific American: "Claude Steele of Stanford University has documented the negative impact on test performance when a minority student, before the exam begins, is asked to check off what racial or ethnic group the student belongs to. The late Nalini Ambady, then at Harvard University, demonstrated even preschool girls at a Harvard day care do worse on a simple math test if they are first subtly reminded of being female."

Whiny Guy Returns

Today I'm going to grumble. I'll try not to mumble. Some of you are chronically ill and you know what I'm going to say all too well.  I hope it makes you feel feel a little bit better because you know that there is someone else out there who knows what you are going through.  I'm not going to detail a long list.  Let it suffice to say that in the last few hours I have managed to break a tooth while chewing soft food, broke my favorite teapot, well… You get the picture.

The feeling I'm referring to is the awareness that your body doesn't work right anymore. I'm not just referring to age, this can happen to people of any time of life. I'm referring to the feeling you get when that car you love so much not only doesn't work but the mechanic says, "We can't get parts for that anymore. I don't think sure we CAN repair it."

As some of you know, I spent years training my family to laugh at these problems. Given the choice of crying about them or laughing about them,  I'll choose laughter without hesitation. 

But right now I just want to grumble a little.  Writing this and then posting it makes me feel a little better.  I invite everyone to shake their heads, put on a wry smile, and laugh about it. That will make me feel much better.

The Deserving Poor

In response to Bobby's post in which a businessman complained about the homeless taking over San Francisco, threatening its residents, and creating unacceptable levels of disorder, I posted:

One of the reasons I refuse to consider myself a liberal is because it seems to be a tenet of liberalism that the homeless are always the victims, never the victimizers.  Having worked with poverty in my professional days, I am well aware of the poor who are suffering for no good reason and certainly through no fault of their own. But I am well aware that a good many of the homeless are homeless because of their drug addiction, alcohol abuse, or mental instability. I hate to sound like I'm from the 19th century but some of the poor aren't among the "deserving poor".

I have known individuals who refused to go to shelters to keep safe because they were not allowed to use drugs or alcohol while they were there.

The problem is complex, but in its simplest form we need to provide support for those who need it and want it, while at the same time refusing to allow the dangerous and addicted to take control of our streets.

Ike on War

Bobby brought this 1953 speech to my attention:  

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][5]

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States

Former Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force

Visitation Rough Draft

Visitation

The sun came back today

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

It caressed

The cold wet desert

My living room

My soul

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

Nature and time

Planned well for me

Took care of me

In the last few days

Things were right

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

At the end of strain

Struggle

Pain

There was rain

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

A gentle blanket

Furry clouds

Soft slow rain

Constant rain

Three days of rain

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

Four days

No star

None seen

No ray of sun

Peace and rest

The beginning of a healing

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

So also then today

Right at the end

The sun

To say hello 

Goodbye

To set the scene

For Taps

My Vespers

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

Holidays coming

Thanksgiving

Lights to be hung

Life to be lived

Family to be loved

Briefly

For a moment

An hour

No more

A lesson From History

 -- Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer sees “the collapse of American liberalism” in sight, in no small part because of the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

“We have not just Obamacare unraveling, not just the Obama administration unraveling, not just the Democratic majority of the Senate [unraveling], but we could be looking at the collapse of American liberalism,” --

(Http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/charles-krauthammer-obamacare-liberals-99785.html#ixzz2lW1E8YY7)

Let's go to extreme focus. It's April, 1945. The allies are closing in on Berlin. Hitler has very little left except bizarre fantasies of divisions that no longer exist. Everyone knows the end of Nazi Germany is only a matter of time. They also know that this time will be measured in weeks. No more.  There is no hope.

-- "Suddenly Lorenz, one of the press chiefs, burst into the chamber without knocking and ran across the room." Herrgesell said. "He held a DNB bulletin in his hand and cried out: "Fuehrer. Great news. Roosevelt is dead." 

"Hitler leaped to his feet, grabbed the bulletin from Lorenz's hand violently and suddenly flamed with a queer fire. His expression was maniacal. Then he began to laugh. It was hideous. He walked up and down the room waving his arms and laughing. The room echoed with crazy laughter. 

"Suddenly he stopped laughing. Then a spasm of laughter gripped him again. And he threw himself around the room, laughing and repeating: 'I knew it. I knew it.' 

"Nobody ever saw Hitler ever smile again," the secretary said. --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8538153

Some reports indicate that Hitler and his generals broke open champagne to celebrate the sudden salvation of Nazi Germany. They were convinced that with Roosevelt dead the entire Allied war effort would collapse.  

After all, that is what happened to Frederick the Great. When victory seemed impossible, defeat inevitable, his enemy died and that was the end.

Well, it worked for Frederick the Great. It didn't work for Hitler. I don't think it's likely work for Krauthammer, either.

Everything is against the Republican Party. Its popularity has plummeted. The battle between the Tea Party and the not quite so radical Republicans is tearing the party apart. Young people almost universally despise everything the party stands for. Growing numbers of minorities are voting in record numbers, in spite of the GOP's efforts to deny them this basic right.

No, the failure of a website is not the great miracle for which you desperately hope, Mr. Krauthammer. Your party, the party of extremism, is dead. It just isn't smart enough to know that yet.

It is possible that a new Republican Party may rise out of the ashes of the old. However, if it does, it will not be the GOP as we understand it today. It will be a centrist, moderate, tolerant party. It may still call itself the GOP, but it will no more be the Republican Party of today than the Republican Party of today is the party of Lincoln.

The Wisdom of Age

You know you're getting old when you use the blow dryer that you no longer need for the hair you no longer have to warm up your socks before putting them on your feet. Then you hope that you can get them on your feet before they cool off because it's so hard to bend over that far.