Admin Notice: comment moderation

I had comments on this blog set at 100% moderation.  There's obviously no need for that, and comment moderation is now turned-off.  You'll now see your comments published immediately.

Will reinstate if there's ever a demonstrated need....

"Things Have Changed" gets Liebster Award!

This coveted honor is now mine because Artsieaspie said I could have it if I wanted it.

Basically, this is a blog hop game.  But it's also a 'share the love' thing--Liebster is German for 'beloved.'  And I heard a long time ago that All You Need is Love, and I still believe it.

So, the first thing is I'm supposed to share "eleven random facts" about myself.


Eleven Random Facts

1.  I was born in 1952.

2.  I'm adopted.

3.  My father was an electrician.  He Worked with his two brothers in a small contracting business started by my grandfather.  Eventually, failing, the business was bought up by a larger firm and my father worked for them for a few years before retiring.  He was depressed by this turn of events.

4.  My mother was a school principal's daughter from Washington state.  It was a large family; she had seven brothers and a sister.  She met my father by mail during WWII.

5.  I grew up in Hammond, Indiana. This is an industrial area way up in the extreme northwest corner of the state, up against the state line, Chicago, and Lake Michigan. It's an area known as 'the Calumet Region,' very much looked-upon as "not really part of us" by the rest of Indiana.  Economically, politically and environmentally, it's sort of a mini New Jersey.

6.  I once played Mrs. Santa Claus in a play put on by our Cub Scouts group.

7.  Around my senior year in High School, I published two issues of a mimeographed Science Fiction fanzine.  Also around this time, I wrote, and played Dr. Zarkov, in the 8mm film production "Flash Gordon Returns."  

8.  I graduated from Valparaiso University, a private Lutheran school in eastern reaches of the Calumet Region.  I earned a BA in Political Science.

9.  I once won second prize in a poetry contest, and collected $10.00.

10. Much later, I won a 'song parody' competition and was awarded a boom box.

11. Past occupations include "Cost Analyst," (a government job), and IT Network Manager.  Currently I'm 'sort-of retired,' making minor amounts of money refurbishing and selling vintage audio equipment.

There!  Now, on to Part Two, which is to answer eleven questions put by Artsieaspie:

Answers to Artieaspie's Questions:

1. Who are you?  (In as great or little detail as you feel like sharing)

See first eleven 'random' facts.

2. What's the story behind this blog?

It's named after a Bob Dylan song.  The real story is I was pissed at the owner of another message board I'd been frequenting for a long time, so I planned to post essays here instead of on his board.

3. Right or left-handed?  Or, something else?

Right, but not overwhelmingly so.  Can mouse left-handed, for example.  My left eye is dominate, so some things get crossed-up.

4. Does evil exist?

Fundamentally, this question is asking 'do moral good and bad exist,' in a objective and binding sense.  I believe so, and you now know the entirety of the creed of my faith.

5. Do the ends justify the means?

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.  It very much gets down to cases.  It's easy to make big errors here.  

6. If we use our brains to understand the world around us, but we don't understand how our brains work, do we understand anything?

Yes, but incompletely   The universe is stranger than we can imagine.  

Some philosophers make a problem out of trying to figure out how it is that anything exists.  But just try to imagine what it would be like if nothing existed.

7. Loud socks or plain?

Plain.  In general, flamboyance isn't me.

Of all the silly reasons people find to judge others as unworthy, fashion is about the silliest.

8. Do you think Lady Macbeth's reference to the "milk of human kindness" means human kindness, or humankind-ness?  Or something else?

Receiving kindness is agreeable and beneficial, like receiving milk.  

Always try 'literal' first.  If it works, then stop.

9. Justice or fairness?

Kant said 'Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.'  That's the problem with making god out of anything, it makes stuff like the FALLING of the HEAVENS seem necessary, the 'thing to do' even.  

Too much justice gets unjust; too much fairness gets unfair.  Best just go for a pragmatic mix of each.

10. What's a key point in your life, where had you made a different decision things would be very different for you?  What would you and your life be like today if you'd chosen differently?

Key points are still ahead.  If I make good choices, I may make it possible for more people do better.

11. Now, bearing in mind all those answers.... who are you?

I am what I do.

Paying It Forward

OK!  Now, part three of the game is to come up with eleven new questions, and bestow the Liebster Award on eleven new blogs.  I believe the criteria is that the blogs must have fewer than 200 followers.  Unstated, but implied by the award name, is the requirement that the blogs, in my estimation, be 'lovable enough.'

Well, I know a few deserving blogs, but not eleven.  So I'll go find more.

Back tomorrow* with eleven bloggers, and questions for them!


* Maybe.  'I procrastinate' should be in the random facts somewhere....

Who Wants Armed Guards Everywhere?

Putting armed guards in all schools is a terrible idea.

Obviously, (if you aren't in the armed-guard business like some on the NRA board are), the billions it would cost could be better spent.  Oh, I don't mean that the lives aren't infinitely valuable.   But saving more lives is better than possibly saving an average of seven or eight mass-shooting victims a year, isn't it?  If we're going to spend billions and billions, we might consider putting the resources into attacking things that kill thousands and thousands of kids.

Let's look at some actual data.

2010 Deaths, by Cause, Age 5-24 Groups:

Average school mass-shooting deaths: 7.8 per year.*  The 'homicide' total in the graph includes some individual shootings at school, but is mostly off-campus incidents.

I figure if we go after accidents and suicide, we can surely prevent many many more deaths than an expensive program of armed guards everywhere could. Further, the mental health effort to prevent suicide can be expected to also have the effect of greatly reducing school shootings.

But all that is just why guards are a bad idea.  It's a terrible idea because it defines schools as a target, and sends the message that we're really scared about attacks at them.  It in fact institutionalizes the idea that if your anger, pain, evil psychosis or whatever makes you want to kill a lot of people, you act out your bloody desires at a school.  It makes 'school shooter' all the more embedded in the culture as a behavioral meme.  I actually think putting up the guards would result in more dead kids, not less.

                                                                                                                                    

* Based on 1996 to date data for school shootings, including college/university, US incidents, with two or more killed. Average deaths do not include suspected perpetrator.

sources:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pd...oup_2010-a.pdf

Musical of My Life--Update!

Finished reading Stranger in a Strange Land this morning.  The song in my head is now "Life is a Carnival."

Defining Persons, and Marriage: an Open letter to Linda Harvey

Dear Linda Harvey:

I saw some commentary on the web that said you said 'Homosexuals are not persons.'  This fits very neatly into the usual psychological profile of bigots dehumanizing the people they hate, denying that the 'less than human' have rights that we need respect.  So I wanted to see what you'd actually said.

Happily, when I looked an MP3 of the broadcast in question was still online, although you've since taken it down for some reason.... Anyway, I transcribed the relevant paragraph.

Linda Harvey, 'Mission America' radio broadcast, 12/12/12: 

"Supreme Court to Consider Marriage" (excerpt):

"Why should the equal protection argument be made in favor of homosexual behavior, which is changeable?  People are not naturally homosexual.  So the definition of person in the 14th Amendment is being twisted to make this assumption.  Many legal cases have been argued to try to pile all kinds of questionable characteristics into that word.  But 'person' should be understood based on historic, beneficial or at least neutral, and fact-based traits.  It should not be twisted to incorporate behavior that most religions and most cultures have said 'no' to."

(Transcribed from audio file, no longer available online as of 1/11/13, accessed at http://www.wrfd.com/MissionAmerica.aspx)

So, Ms. Harvey, the conservative position is 'a corporation is a person in the meaning of the 14th Amendment, but a homosexual isn't?'  Only a lawyer could make an argument like that.  Try not to listen to lawyers too much, Linda--leave that to the judges who are paid to endure it.

Really, you went astray right when you started dividing the human race into groups, and thinking of group rights.  So, you're right, 'homosexuals' are not a person.  But each and every individual homosexual is.  Civil rights are individual rights, and a homosexual is as much an individual as you are.  The 14th Amendment* says all persons are entitled to equal protection under the law.  Period.  There is no definition of 'person' in the amendment to argue about, or to be 'twisted' as you claim.  What we have to argue about is what 'equal protection' means.  

Equal protection, of course, does not mean that anything one wants to do is protected.  Lawmakers may make behavior illegal largely as they see fit, subject to constitutional limits. We are familiar with many of these limits, such as the Bill of Rights provision that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." (1st Amendment)  But what the 14th Amendment makes explicit is that if Congress can make some behavior illegal, and does so, it must be illegal for everyone.  Likewise, if rights are provided in law, they must be provided to everyone on an equal basis. 

The 14th thus clearly requires that all persons have an equal right to enter into marriage, as marriage may be legally defined.  The only question remaining is whether an equal right--equal protection--requires that the definition include same sex couples.  

So, what is marriage?  Where does it come from?  Leaving religion out of it, as we must in our civil society, marriage is the legal structure in which modern human societies recognize and regulate the natural human behavior of pair bonding.  All human societies recognize 'marriage' as a particular status, entered into with some degree of social recognition and ritual.  Still, fundamentally, marriage is an act that takes place between two individuals, as recognized in our own legal tradition as the 'common law marriage.'  

So, can gay couples fall in love?  Can they commit to each other, and agree to enter into permanent, intimate cohabitation, mingling their lives as heterosexual couples do?  What reason is there to say their natural cohabitation, or common law marriage, is not perfectly correspondent with such behavior of heterosexual couples? 

Linda, I expect you may answer that they cannot intend to have children.  But we do not deny or invalidate marriage when heterosexual couples cannot or do not produce children.  Biology can deny heterosexual couples the ability to themselves produce children as surely as it does homosexual couples, but we do not see such disability as touching the right of heterosexuals to bond, to love, to enter into marriage. 

So again, what reason is there not to recognize the love, the natural desire to bond as a couple, of homosexuals as we do that of heterosexuals?  What reason is there to impose social disability on them where no natural disability exists?  Their natural right to love, to live as persons as good as any other should be recognized by affording them 'equal protection of the laws.' 'Equal protection' must mean these person may not be denied the right afforded to others: the rights to be the equal of all other persons in the social recognition and protection afforded them when they bond with a person they love.

The only reasons to stigmatize these persons are religion, or bigotry. To a non-believer, and to a nation that protects religious freedom by not privileging any particular religion in law, what is the distinction between these two?

I'll be happy to offer you all the space you wish on this blog to answer this question, Ms. Harvey.

DonQuixote99 

* Text of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 1: 

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html

Letters From Aspergia

Been reading and corresponding a little on Letters from Aspergia, the blog of Ariteaspie.  She was nice enough to mention me editorially (I won the free book!), so I want to return the favor.  Arite's blog centers on her life as a diagnosed person with Asperger's syndrome.  I am not such a person, but I find I identify, at least to a degree, with some of the challenges she describes, and I've benefited from her insights.

She also has the very rare and wonderful gift of writing poetry that I like!

  

(Ms. A's book.  Victorian look no longer seen on her blog--restyling has happened.

No poetry in the book, alas....)

Avatar and Reality

People are always* asking me if my avatar is really me.  No, although for the first time in a long time, I bear some stylistic resemblance to "Dr. Sapolsky in the field with the baboons."  So to remove some fog, uncertainly, and doubt from the minds of those afflicted with same, here is quick real-time portrait of the actual me:

BTW, the easel in the background is not mine, and would be useless to me.  It's Mrs. Q. whose talents find expression there.



* twice