Idle thoughs and Musings..
- From: "Amused" <jamescopeland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:19:02 -0600
For the best part of a decade, shallow chuckleheads have relentlessly attacked George Bush, accusing him of a singular lack of intelligence, mostly on the basis of his public speaking ability. I just watched some short Mike Huckabee ads on YouTube. While many might classify them a "folksy" or "unsophisticated", my own personal opinion is that if Huckabee eventually gets the entire Republican Political Machine behind him, he's going to be hard to stop. In other words, Huckabee is the progressive Left's worse nightmare.
There are all manner of really interesting articles on the "collective intelligence" concept of human beings. It occurs to me that there are two "constructs" that are having an immense on the development of these concepts, AND the movement and harmonization of the English language. One is Google and the second is Wikipedia. While it is certainly true that both can be translated, (and are), the development and spread of their influence is English-based.
One of my offspring has long accused me of being a "knuckle-dragging Neanderthal". I always told her to wait until she meets a "real" Neanderthal. In the past few years, she has. It's surprising how quickly I've been propelled up the evolutionary tree in the past few years.
It kinda reminds me of Mark Twain's observation. paraphrasing, "When I was 14, I thought my old man was dumb as a stump. When I turned 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned to the past seven years."
If you think Mike Huckabee is a "fundy", it's only because you've never met a real fundamentalist Christian. Forget the Islamics. These folks will go after the Catholics because they consider the veneration given to The Virgin Mary, as nothing short of idolatry.
I've always leaned a bit to much in accepting the idea of the "catastrophe". First it was "The coming Ice Age, and then it was the Howard Ruff scenarios in the early 80's, then the AIDS epidemic, and of course there was the Millimum Bug. Originally, the idea of a runaway catastrophic climate change, kind of appealed to my sense of adventure.
Bah. Humbug.
The climate is going to change. Right now, the best guess is that it's going to warm a bit in the next hundred years. And there ISN'T a goddam thing we (Man) can do about it. I repeat. I'll start worrying about these computer models right after one of the modelers announces that his model has such a high confidence level that he doesn't need any more funding, and there is no need to even run the scenarios, even when new data is presented.
THE greatest threat to the continued stability of civilization is the real possibility (and growing probability) of a worldwide pandemic of The Avian Flu. AND, there is still a better than 50% change that it'll just go away.
I watched a revolution on TV, last week. This old boy in Chicago has invented a new wind generator. It's kind of a spiral shaped affair, and solved multitudes of problems. It can easily be scaled down to individual home, doesn't cost a small fortune, operates in very low wind speeds, automatically begins sluffing off energy at high speeds, doesn't kill everything with wings, operates just as well horizontally as well as vertically...yada, yada, yada. They're beginning in stallion in some buildings in Chicago.
I live in an area, where three cars at the same intersection is considered a traffic jam. Every other day, I pick up my grandson from a day care "center" ("Center" = a room in the local one of the buildings that surround the Catholic Church). Every day, the matron leads the three and four year olds out of the room. She's holding a rope, and all the kids are holding onto the rope. In front of the center is a street. The street is blocked at both ends by police barricades, every school day. On the opposite side of the the street, in a Church parking lot, is about 15 parents and grandparents that are OUT of their cars, watching the procession of young kids. Normally, there is a local cop, idling away his time watching this process.
Every day, the kids dutifully follow "the leader" and then the "designated" kid in front (changes daily), looks both ways, and then announces that it is safe to cross the street. After everyone is safely across, THEN (and only then) can the kids drop the rope and charge to their waiting minders.
It occurs to me that there are several "training" sessions going on, all at once. The kids are learning discipline. They're learning that some things/situations are dangerous, but proper vigilance (each and every time) can reduce that danger, because the danger IS NOT going away. And. Some parents, at least in a minimal way, are learning that you can't just kick a kid out and forget them. Group think/tradition dictate that EVERYONE get out of their car and wait on the kids, EVERY TIME. It doesn't matter if it's raining, snowing, cold as hell, whatever. You WILL get out, you WILL monitor your kid's progress, You WILL physically demonstrate that you care, You WILL physically demonstrate that you are involved, or YOU will be heavily queried by your friends, neighbors and relatives if you are ill and need assistance.
My four-year-old grandson is smart. He can't read yet, but he is becoming adept at navigating our second computer, to get to the children's on-line games. We can see the desire to learn to read is building, almost daily. (He is moving past the ultra-simple games where he can guess at the object of the game, into the ones that require some explanation, and he would MUCH rather he was able to do this himself, rather that waiting on Grandpa or Grandma to tell him what to do.
It occurs to me that, instead of viewing the Internet as a dangerous street, to be avoided at all costs, parents should be taking the cautious approach represented above. Get 'em on early, monitor 'em like a hawk, but teach them how to navigate safely.
Neither the streets, nor the Internet is likely to disappear in the foreseeable future.
.
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