Passing Thoughts on Some “E” Topics
Economics - From the Greek for managing a household. In the days before equal rights for women gained favor in the US, Home Economics was a college major considered appropriate for and limited to women. Currently disdained, I suggest such a course be mandatory for college Frosh of both sexes. In fact, it should be mandatory for high school Frosh.
Education - From the Latin, meaning to lead out, as if to lead away from ignorance into knowledge. If ignorance is an island surrounded by a sea of knowledge, then educators are captains of the ship called “curriculum”. A good way to explore the sea is to take voyages in different ships and also build and skipper your own raft. The saddest thing is to just remain on the island and never get your feet wet.
Elections - A way for the citizenry to make decisions when there is no practical way to reach consensus. Elections usually result in big- headed winners and sore losers unable to work together, whereas consensus builds unity and maximizes the prospect of people working together.
Electoral College - The US Constitutional embodiment of the 18th Century concept that, however hallowed, the average citizen is not smart enough to elect national executives. While that concept might arguably still be true in the 21st Century, the College is an anachronism that should probably be replaced to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election.
Elvis - An incredible phenomenon who became a self-parody during his life and an apotheosized parody after his death.
Embarrassed - This word has changed meaning over the last fifty years. It originally meant to be confused or perplexed or be unable to resolve something - such as being financially embarrassed.. It has since acquired a meaning more like I learned to remember it as a kid - as in being “pantsed” - having someone sneak up behind you and pull down your pants - em bare assed. The Bush Administration has managed to maintain both meanings for the US, the embarrassment of our national debt and trade deficit, and the feeling that we stand before the world with our pants down.
Employment - What one does done with time. When done for money, it becomes an economic indicator. When done for love, it becomes a spiritual indicator. When done for both, it becomes an unfortunately rare experience.
Energy - The unharnessed power of children at play, which if it could be tapped would make fossil fuels obsolete. In the meantime, energy is considered by management as a resource, or as Enron tried to make it, a commodity. Management seems to have forgotten that those energetic children grow into adults who become workers, and their power of play, less dynamic than when they were children, but more informed, adds an extra dimension of value to employees.
Entitlement - Historically, rights and privileges of the titled ones, the noble ruling elite, received through the government by taxing persons of low or modest income. Republicans use the term “entitlement” to denigrate demands and expectations of unworthy persons of low or modest income, received through the government from taxation. With Republicans in power, passing tax giveaways to the rich, the real entitlements are still the historical ones.
Environment - That which surrounds us and of which we are a part. The air, water, flora and fauna can take care of themselves if we humans work with them, rather than against them. Whenever we abuse the environment, we end up suffering too. Whenever we protect the environment, we are protecting ourselves.
Ethical - A very high standard of conduct to maintain integrity and to protect others. When set by self-policing, such as by the US Congress, the standard is considerably lower.
Ethnic - Traditionally meaning a pagan or heathen, as opposed to a Judeo-Christian. In the US now, a non-WASP. Ethnicity makes people more interesting than our US Presidents, all of whom have been WASP, except JFK. I wonder when we will have another non-WASP President. Remember, Hilary is a WASP too.
Evolution - The reality that things change, not necessarily incompatible with the mythology of a supernatural creator, unless you accept the bible as a literal truth greater than reality. If you believe in God, then it should be easier to believe in the evolving universe He created than in the literal truth of selected and edited writings by a handful of men who did not purport to be writing scientific journals.
Experts - People who have acquired much knowledge and experience in a particular area, so that their opinions in their area of expertise are considered more valuable than those of non-experts. Though most experts may agree on the answer to a particular question involving their expertise, persons seeking a different answer and willing to pay for it, such as the Bush Administration when it finds itself on the wrong side of prevailing scientific opinion, can usually find or create an expert who will give them the answer they want.
Extradition - The long established legal practice of the authorities in a place to which an accused criminal has fled, returning that person to stand trial at the place where the crime was allegedly committed. The Bush administration has turned the concept on its head, arresting people in the place where an alleged crime occurred , and then removing them to various other places where they are held in secret and tortured, without the benefit of the rule of law.
posted by Tom Blake | 2:54 PM
10 Comments:
I disagree with Tom's comment about the electoral college. The electoral college was invented to provide a filter of the insanity of mob rule, not because the founding fathers thought the indivdual was stupid. It was a noble idea (no pun intended) because history is full of examples of the tyrany of the mob. The best I can think of is the Terror following the French revolution. Dickens' description is a classic in The Tale of Two Cities. Another example is the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan. A most recent example is the rush to an inane and immoral war in Iraq. This is all the more sad because the mob was energized by our President, someone who should be providing rational leadership, not fomenting a mob.
In summary, the motivation for the electoral college is valid, even today, but it was an impractical idea. Even before the college became impotent, it produced political stupidity: Thomas Jefferson as Vice President to John Adams! Just imagine Al Gore as Vice President to George Bush! I skipped over Kerry because that is just unimaginable.
However, the problem of mob rule is a real one in this country. Many intellectuals propose that we adopt the parliamentary process of England. That will never happen, but it does make more sense than the electoral college.
John from Phoenix
Tom,
You left out the e word with the most impact, e itself. e for electronic. Like email, enews, etc. The electronic revolution is huge. I worked with computers since my college days in the early 60's, but the revolution didn't start until Steve Jobs came out with the Macintosh in 1983. Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989. Then the famous Marc Andreesen invented Mosaic, the first WEB browser. Even though I was in the business, I didn't appreciate this invention. (I'm a manager, not a visionary.) Before all this in the late 60's and early 70's MIT scientists invented Arpanet, the precursor to the WEB. The combination of these inventions opened the world to the electronic age. And we are still at the very early stages. Major cities in Arizona are building the infrastructure for a WIFI inteface to the net. That means you can connect to the WEB anywhere and without wires. The technology is amazing and the content that will be available on that technology is not imaginable by me, but many people much younger and smarter are inventing that now.
John from Phoenix
In school I learned the Electoral College was intended to compensate for the lack of information voters would have on national candidates for Pres and VP. Since most voters would not have traveled or had opportunities to meet national candidates, and since the local elite would have been able to travel and meet the national contenders, the idea was to have the voters vote for a known local elite person who the voter would trust to choose the right candidate. It was not so much a question of voters being stupid or a mob, but rather that the voters could not get personal information on far away candidates.
My political education since leaving school now leads me to believe the Electoral College was set up by the founding elite to enable their fellow elites to choose national elites for executive. In this sense, the fear of the mob you spoke about, John, has an element of truth. The elites did not want a populist non-elite President and were able to prevent that from happening until Andrew Jackson’s military record propelled him into office.
John, I think you are forgetting that until the 12th Amendment was ratified in 1804, the person receiving the second most votes for President became the Vice President. This created such tension between the two that it had to be changed.
John, I remember the huge computer room where your programs were run back at the UW. In 1965, the Air Force supposedly trained me to be an inventory management specialist using the same room size computer. In March, 1984, I bought a desktop computer using the CP/M operating system and a printer for $3,500. The computer had no internal hard drive, just the 5 1/4 inch floppies that held about 640k.
Transistors, micro chips and such innovations have propelled electronic hardware advances. Software arguably has advanced more slowly. After being around for some time, the Internet exploded in popularity a few years ago, due I think to browser competition, faster computer connections and more attractive and practical web content. The improvements will continue and the only significant threats to users are government censorship and ISP greed. I hope someday we will have Internet access without the need for ISPs and that we never have Internet censorship in the US like they do in some other nations.
Tom,
No, I'm not forgetting the 12th amendment, but, I have to admit, I could not have identified the amendment that changed the process of selection of the president and vice president. My point is that I agree with the motivation of the electoral college, but, hindsight being 20-20, the implementation was impracticle and led to potentially revolutionary situations. The 12th amendment was successful, in my estimation, by reducing the threat of revolution, but it did nothing to mitigate the threat of mob rule. Of course, I have no answer of my own. But when I see the impact of the religious right, I wish there were an answer. Do the church billboards in Seattle, as in Phoenix, announce that next week's service will expose the DaVinci Code? But maybe it is to our benefit that the right wing churches are spending their resources on a silly non-issue instead of the real damage they do to the human rights of immigrants and to public education. Not to mention their attack on the freedom of religion in this country for Muslims.
John from Phoenix
Tom,
Those were the days! The days when we were in college. I took my first computer course as a junior at the UW. I'd forgotten that you were with me when I went to the computer room (like a warehouse) to retrieve my computer programs. I don't remember if my first computer course was in Fortran or Assembly Language, but it doesn't matter. We prepared our programs on IBM cards (punched cards) that I laboriously typed on a keypunch machine. Then we entered our program by placing the card deck in a bin. The computer operators would run them in the order we placed them (or so they said). Response time was measured in days. Several runs were required to get all the bugs out of my program. At the end of the quarter I think I had two succesful programs. Then I went to graduate school and became a consultant to undergraduates on how to write computer programs. I got paid for being an expert!
Those were the days!
John from Phoenix
People in Seattle are not big churchgoers and churches do not play much of a political role. The primary interest here in the DaVinci movie is whether it is any good as a movie, with a secondary interest in the reaction to the movie by reactionaries. Who are the religious people in Arizona - sons of the pioneers, retirees, Hispanics, or ______?
When I speak of the religious right I am referring to those people who regulaly attend fundametalist and charismatic protestant church services. They are relatively young (I don't know about college age and twenty somethings anymore, but I will in a few years as my grandchildren get there.) Many are college educated and they believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. The are more comfortable with Jews than with Catholics. They cannot abide heresy, hence the outpouring on the DaVinci Code. But they also attack other popular culture. I seem to remember Dr Seuss coming under attack.
The Hispanics here are religious, mostly Catholic, but they're party people too. Nice to be around.
Sons of Pioneer types have no religion. My backpacking friend comes from that stock. He also is very conservative politically. But it stems from a rugged individualism. He rails at the US Park System and the BLM and the US Forest Service for all their restictions on human use of natural resources. Of course I don't think those agencies do nearly enough to protect the environment. But he and I have managed to hike the Grand Canyon together a dozen times without argument.
Retirees are our age and a little younger and a lot older. Religion is mostly for show for many in that group. Others are products of the 60's like us and long ago drifted off, maybe after a battle over hypocrisy or other challenges organized religion has. But there is a sizeable group of religious people among retirees. Their religious choices tend to be the traditional mainstream protestant denominations or Catholic.
Anmd there is one other huge group in Arizona: Mormons. The LDS religion is strong among a large minority of Arizonans. They are all ages, have excellent values, and really epitomize what many Christians preach. They look different, act different and live a life of Christian values. (of course there are Jack Mormons too.)
John from Phoenix
I liked the E for Embarrassed.
When you say that the US is caught standing in front of the world with its pants down, I was wondering if you meant it was in the traditional "I-got-pantsed" sense or if you meant the immature, turned-backwards, "You-can-kiss-this-ass-I'm-mooning-you-with" sense?
I think either one works.
Chris
I think they both apply too, Chris.
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