Raising children under the current regime when every vestige of morality and ethics has been swept away be the greedy and the ruthless is very difficult. You want your child to do right and to believe that doing right is a worthy part of a well lived life, but everywhere you look, America has become the land of the grifter and influence peddler.
Once upon a time, there was an author who believed in righteousness, heroism and a well told story about the struggles faced throughout history when you want to do what is right.
His name was Howard Pyle.
Here below is one of his book plates. He is a very famous illustrator and he wrote many books.
(A Howard Pyle book in the public domain downloadable at Project Gutenberg.)
Above is a link to the book site and it is several different formats for different machines and capabilities for download. Below is the Wikipedia article on his life and work. (Full disclosure: I have given money to support Wikipedia, admire its design and purpose, and when teaching in class and online always allowed my students to use it as a source in anything they wrote. I consider the people of Wikipedia to be my friends.)
Pyle was widely respected during his life and continues to be well regarded by illustrators and fine artists. His contemporary Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo that Pyle’s work “struck me dumb with admiration.“[12]
All of Pyle’s principal works are available and a good number of books in which he is the illustrator. His pictures are quite beautiful.
During these times of troubles I can recommend without reservation, his work as something you can give to your children to teach them some of the great lessons and legends from the story of Western Civilization.
If they are very young, you might print it off for them, I recommend you begin with “The Wonder Clock,” a collection of 24 stories, one for each hour of the day. The illustrations are quite original and delightful. Older children can use desktops, etc., to see the many books and illustrations online.
As a parent or guardian, we have responsibilities to teach our children the story of our culture and how we have arrived at what we consider right and wrong.
I hope this helps. If you use these stories and others like them at an early, impressionable age, they should have maximum effect.
I found this article online at the Sojourner’s web site. It is called: Can Poems Push Christians to Stop the Suffering in Gaza? The article is written by Ryan Duncan.
The article discusses a book of poetry and its author and what this use of art does. You might say, when we read this we are discussing the power of language and in particular, the power of poetic language.
Below is a link to the story and a short but effective quote.
After reading Forest of Noise, it becomes apparent why Abu Toha’s public appearances are often marked by moments of sorrow and anger. In one MSNBC interview following his Pulitzer win, Abu Toha fell into a tense back-and-forth with journalist Catherine Rampell when she pointed to some of his social media posts and suggested he was questioning the status of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
“I’ve never denied anyone’s suffering,” Abu Toha remarked sharply, “I know that everyone is suffering, Israelis and Palestinians, but why are our sufferings not acknowledged? Why are we called terrorists? Why are we called prisoners of war while the Israelis who were kidnapped from Israel are named hostages? Does this give them more humanity, because they are Israeli, while my loved ones are being named prisoners and they are tortured?”
Why indeed.
It’s a pretty piece of writing and I hope you read the whole article.
Now for my take on this.
We live in a period in the United States where words have been weaponized. Our current regime’s leader will reach thirty thousand documented lies in just a week or so. In addition, he has made insults a standard part of his particular brand. He likes “Low IQ,” “Communist,” Marxist”, etc. His pitiful flock hangs on every insult, every lie and every appeal to their lowest and most base instincts like hogs wallowing in mud and excrement squealing in delight.
But words don’t have to be evil and wretched to have power. How about these:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
“By sun and candle-light” is a very pretty little phrase. Words can exalt. Words can heal. And yes, words can heal and guide us.
Let’s try some healing works from history. This is Lincoln’s first inaugural address.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Good words. Our current’s regime’s leader is incapable of forming those kinds of sentences, of attempting to unite the American people in love and common purpose.
But we can work to make this a united and great nation in spite of our lack of competent, intelligent and spiritual leadership. We can find our own words. America is full of great words and great thoughts.
Try these:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
Even before this current set of horrors we must endure end and even before our suffering is assuaged, we can still find the great and healing words here in America, in many ways more of a dream and an aspiration.
Let us remember what we are as a nation in our highest and strongest longing.
When my son, Jake, was a little boy, we often watched movies and shows together and talked about the moral and ethical implications. We started very early. I remember when he was five asking him if it mattered if the jackals or the lions fed on the animals in “The Lion King.”
American Heroes.
A few days ago, I saw some clips from the mini-series (I believe it is an ITV production.) “Hornblower.” I am a big fan of C.S. Forester. When I was a teenager, I read all of the Hornblower stories. I have to admit as a very young person, their lessons of leadership and the importance of enduring injustice and unfairness were generally lost on me. That is one reason I think it is important to watch these programs with your children. The series is brilliant in its exposition of the moral choices confronting the young Hornblower and the choices that he made.
So, I asked Jake (now 31) what he got out of the series when we watched it so many years ago. Surprisingly he didn’t recall it that well. He told me that he felt that the most important ethical teachings he absorbed were from Star Trek. In particular, he talked about “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.” But then the conversation turned to the one program that we both found abundant lessons from: “Babylon Five.”
Jaks, specifically mentioned Londo Mallori’s descent into evil and eventual redemption in death as one lesson in morality that he had never forgotten. I have to agree that the show delivered up a healthy dose of moral lessons and the hard, cold difficulties inherent in doing what is right. I could write a dozen articles easily about its teachings.
And so, I have decided to encourage my kind readers to spend at least one night a week watching a program with moral implications with their children. And not just that, from time to time, I will talk about specific recommendations that I want to make and suggestions about what moral lessons can be drawn from specific programming.
Let us begin with my strong recommendations for “Star Trek, the Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” and “Babylon Five” as well as “Hornblower.”
When I was a little boy I used to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and they had heroes. There was Fess Parker playing Davy Crockett. There was Zorro, the Swamp Fox and the Scarecrow. They fought against tyranny.
(The kind of Americans we use to have.)
They did what was right at great risk.
I was a little boy in those far off days. Those characters were my heroes.
So, I have to ask. Do the people running Disney every watch their own programs? Do they care what kind of example they set? Do they look in the mirror and wonder where it all went wrong because wrong it is?
They gave into evil.
They surrendered to an orange make up covered villain. And they did it knowing that they will be bullied again and again. Once the bad guys understand what brought fear and collapsed the spines of the management at Disney, they will do it again and again. Surrender and appeasement never stop. The crawling abasement of the defeated and the cowardly continues forever.
It is said the coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero just one. Well, Disney is on one death among many. I almost pity them.
What happened to doing what was right? What happened to facing the threat of tyranny with courage and resolve?
Was it just programming? They portrayed heroic behavior to beguile children into buying merchandise? Was that all it was, just a con? Or did they at one time believe that Americans had to stand up for what was right?
We’ll never know. For what can they say that we can trust? What can they say that we will believe?
If you don’t have a spine or courage, what won’t you say? What won’t you do to give yourself one more day, one more minute of hiding from the bully, one more desperate plea, “Please don’t hit me! I’ll do anything you want me to!”
Courage is necessary right now. Many Americans are standing up against what is happening.
But not everyone is up to the standard of men and women of courage. They prefer to crawl and we should pity them but never forget that when the time came to take a stand, they ran like hell.
We don’t see a lot of courage these days. In the last few months in the United States, law firms, whole industries and universities have bent the knee to the new regime. The American elites that have dominated our society for decades when put to the test of loyalty to nation or self-interest proved themselves to be cowards and curs.
It has been very disappointing. I was under the illusion that I lived in a robust democracy when what I actually live in is a society where many of the most influential and well placed people simply want their money and power without any responsibility to the people and heritage of the United States. They are self-interested, greedy cowards.
(In an Alice in Wonderland world, all ideas are equal. But we live in the real world where ideas have consequences.)
And so we have the current situation where democracy itself may disappear in this nation.
But not everyone has surrendered. Not yet.
RFK, Jr. demanded that “Annals of Internal Medicine” retract a study whose results call into question his ridiculous fringe and conspiracy laden beliefs.
I will not dignify or give any credence to the anti-science ravings of this man. To pretend, that he “might have something,” is another way to assist people in their leap down the rabbit hole of internet nonsense.
I stand on the side of reason, logic and science.
I firmly believe that the study questioned by Kennedy is well founded and provides substantial evidence that anyone who is rational should take into consideration when making decisions about vaccine safety.
But the wonderful part of this sad nonsense is what the Danish researchers did when Kennedy issued his demand.
When confronted by Kennedy’s demands, they said no.
When confronted by the demands of the American federal government that they give way to conspiracy minded nonsense, they said no.
When asked to give up their integrity and surrender to opinions of the foolish and ill informed, they said no.
They stand in defiance to our current nonsensical government. They have backbone and courage.
I wish we had more of these kinds of people here in the United States.
RFK, Jr., Demanded Study on Vaccines and Aluminum Be Retracted—The Journal Said No
The study in question, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in July, is one of the largest of its kind, looking at 1.2 million children born over more than two decades in Denmark. The authors reported that no significant risk of developing autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders was associated with exposure to aluminium compounds in vaccines.
…
Annals of Internal Medicine says it stands by the study and has no plans to retract it. Christine Laine, editor in chief for the journal, wrote in a comment on the study’s web page on 11 August that “retraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred here”.
A published response was made and I recommend you read all of it.
Anders Hviid, the senior author and an epidemiologist at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark’s public-health agency responds in the following post:
Data vs. Doubt: Danish Scientist Responds to U.S. HHS Secretary Critique of Aluminum Vaccine Study
In conclusion, I maintain that our study does not provide support for the hypothesis that aluminum used as adjuvants in vaccines are associated with increased risks of early childhood health conditions. None of the critiques put forward by the Secretary is substantive. Currently, the best way to evaluate this hypothesis is to use observational data and methods. This is what we have done using transparent and rigorous statistical analysis. I categorically deny that any deceit is involved as implied by the Secretary.
Our current regime is an enemy of science, logic and reason. They don’t like to be disagreed with and the idea of independent judgement and actual research fills these liars and mountebanks with fear and trembling.
Their deadliest enemy is the truth.
If we come out of this crisis and return to democratic principles, truth must be the light that guides us.
Down in the article referenced below, Ms. West-Knights, said that as thoroughly as Prince Andrew’s scandals have been covered, a new book is like taking “a thousand daggers to a corpse.” It is a very eloquent and appropriate line.
But then she goes into some of what the books says. I have been following the sorry story of Prince Andrew, a man given every advantage who then tossed them all away for trysts with women and a desperate need for money he hasn’t in anyway earned. He could have been a symbol of nobility and kindness but that would have required him to think about someone beside himself and he is unable to do that.
What does the book say? In spite of my interest in the subject and the many articles I’ve read there was much to see. This book has many new revelations about this fellow’s pitiful behavior.
I can’t say enough about the Imogen West-Knights’ writing. It is delicious, biting and loaded with so many things I want to quote that choosing any particular paragraph or line is hard.
Imogen West-Knights writing for Slate discusses the new book called “Entitled.” The article she wrote is linked to below and called It’s Hard to Imagine a Book More Damning About the British Royal Family Than This.
Usually find a good quote from an article is very straightforward. I chose the most damning paragraph but this is article is well worth reading and you should read it in full. There is deadly acid in almost every line.
… Lownie (the book’s author) reportedly approached about 3,000 people for this book, of whom he says only a tenth replied, but that is enough. And what these people—drawn from Andrew’s love life, his professional life, his staff, and his sometime friends—have to say about him is damning beyond belief. Here follows just some of the claims Lownie makes about Andrew, all of which are backed up by testimony from people who know or knew the prince, but still just allegations, I suppose: He had a member of the royal staff moved from his job for wearing a nylon tie, and another because he had a mole on his face. He had 40 women brought to his hotel room in Thailand over a five-day visit. Aged 26, he had dozens of stuffed animals on his bed, one of which wore a vest that read “It’s tough being a prince.” He missed his daughter’s 12th birthday party to hang out with Epstein at his Miami beach house. He ran up a bill of £325,000 on helicopters and planes in 2005 alone. He let a Libyan gun smuggler pay for a holiday he took to Tunisia and accepted a present of a bugged MacBook Pro from an attractive woman who turned out to be a Russian spy; he later tried to get himself a free Fabergé egg on an official Kremlin tour. In his role as a special representative for the United Kingdom, he earned, in the diplomatic community, the nickname “His Buffoon Highness” by refusing to follow his briefs and perhaps even read them in the first place. Once, driving his £80,000 Range Rover to Royal Lodge in Great Windsor Park, he found that the gates’ sensor was broken, so, rather than taking a 1-mile detour, he rammed them open, causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage.
Based on this single paragraph and the rest is equally damning, the book’s title, “Entitled,” seems at best a cruel understatement.
It has been written that those to whom much has been given, much is to be expected. Seldom has so many benefits and honors been given one man with so little return.
Why? Because I hate the mediocre crap! By and large it is pitiful poorly written garbage.
(My vision of the AI monster preparing to destroy all actual writing and all actual images.)
Last year I sat down to renew my Office 365 subscription. It usually ran about seventy dollars but not that time. It was a hundred dollars. They had added AI and they charged me an additional thirty dollars for it. No choice. I was in the middle of several projects so I couldn’t opt out of the service although I am really thinking about going over to WordPerfect on the next renewal date.
I did one experiment with it. I gave it five words and a topic. It wrote an essay. Not a very good essay but sort of C+ kind of high school essay. The content did not alarm me. What alarmed me was the entire process took about thirty seconds. In theory, I could generate 120 essays in an hour. And I could see in my mind’s eye, some person writing a blog online or doing school or college work or writing editorials for the local paper writing essay after essay after essay with the touch of a few buttons.
That was the last time I used the AI feature on Word. Every time I start the program, every single damn time, it starts with the AI program with the prompts to use it. I have to deliberately turn it off.
I write my blog myself. It is my thoughts, my ideas, my writing, my spelling, my punctuation and my phrasing. You, my readers, deserve nothing less.
I am considering putting some kind of “NO AI” label on the site. If one is not available online currently, I’m sure it will be soon.
I want you to know I am not the only one upset by the explosion of AI mediocrity.
Here is the magazine Scientific American’s published article linked to below by linguist Naomi S. Baron which discusses AI and writing :
But what happens to human communication when it’s my bot talking to your bot? Microsoft, Google and others are building out AI-infused e-mail functions that increasingly “read” what’s in our inbox and then draft replies for us. Today’s AI tools can learn your writing style and produce a reasonable facsimile of what you might have written yourself.
My concern is that it’s all too tempting to yield to such wiles in the name of saving time and minimizing effort. Whatever else makes us human, the ability to use words and grammar for expressing our thoughts and feelings is a critical chunk of that essence.
I was easily able to find numerous articles in a similar vein and to my dismay many cheerleading articles as well.
But I’ve made my decision.
I am a man hopefully a gentleman — and I do my own writing.
This week in Business Ethics is marred by the death by ovarian cancer of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She died during the week of Rosh Hashanah which in Jewish lore means she is particularly blessed. Here is a guide for my readers unfamiliar with the surrounding concepts.
Currently that American Institution, the Post Office, is under attack. Don’t believe me? A federal judge called the changes: “a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service” It is very poor business ethics indeed to sabotage a public agency, a public good for all Americans, for private gain. I found a good article on the importance of the sorting machines which I include here as well as the article I got the federal judge quote from.
Tragically there appears to be increasing violence surrounding requests that people wear masks and practice social distancing. In a particularly callous attack, a 67 year old gas station worker suffered a fractured skull after being assaulted with a pipe. It is a particularly bitter reality that during a worldwide pandemic, many Americans are unwilling to pull together in the wake of the viral threat to protect each other from infection. This generation of Americans is half helpless to act on behalf of the common good. Many believe in the crass nonsense of libertarianism and similar beliefs that the only interest is self interest. The generations of Americans that sacrificed in the face of war and epidemic must be astonished at this willingness to sacrifice our fellow Americans out of simple pig headedness.
Are we entering the Pyrocene, the age of fire? Stephen Pyne suggests in the High Country News that is indeed the case. He says that in previous ages we had ice ages and this current situation is the other side of the coin, that is, ages of fire. It’s a good read and a fairly brief one. It is attached below.
Over the last twenty years, financial institutions including the often mentioned five, HSBC, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), conducted about 2 trillion dollars in suspicious activity. Rest assured this is a developing story and we are going to hear more as the particulars work their way to the surface.
Federal charges of among other charges, commercial bribery, were filed against six individuals who are charged with bribing Amazon employees to gain an unfair advantage. The bribes totaled about $100,000. Temporary suspensions of competitor accounts was one of the means used to gain advantage.
This kind of crime causes people to buy inferior or even dangerous goods. Let’s hope Amazon acts to clean up its staff.
New York filed a 2 billion dollar lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson for its role in the opoid crisis, that is, encouraging opoid use and downplaying the risks of addiction. Since Oklahoma has already won a case and 500 million dollars from the company, one has to wonder why the state has waited this long and is that the correct amount?
How is it that a video in which a man committed suicide live on Facebook does not violate their standards and is still up? Facebook says it has a policy against suicide and videos showing self harm but isn’t enforcing it.
Movie Theatres have been open for about a month but the economic returns have been disappointing. Mulan’s crash at the box office could not have helped matters.
English: United States Senate candidate , at a town hall meeting in Louisville, . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Rand Commits Plagiarism and Wants to Kill His Accuser
A man commits plagiarism and gets caught. It happens. I’m sure I will make a mistake and use someone’s remarks without properly attributing them. I write several hundred posts a year besides my other writing. It’s just a matter of time. It will be totally inadvertent. I have no intention of stealing material. Should someone point out my mistake, I will apologize and properly attribute the remark. A gentleman can do nothing else. If caught in an obvious wrong, amends must be made.
But not everyone understands these rules.
Rand Paul has been caught using direct quotes from other authors as if it were his material. And it appears that further research is revealing that he may have been plagiarizing for quite some time. He didn’t apologize. He’s angry. And he says if only the law allowed he would challenge his accuser to a duel with the presumed intent of shooting her down like a dog.
A gentleman does not take other people’s writings and pass them off as his own.
A gentleman once caught in an obvious wrong does not insist that it is a political attack, and therefore, somehow irrelevant.
A gentleman caught in an obvious wrong does not infer that he would kill his accuser.
I heard that Paul had borrowed some material without attribution the day after the Maddow’s program aired. I, a longtime political junkie, expected a quick admission of a mistake, a simple apology and the media to forget the whole thing in a couple of days. Imagine, my astonishment when a supposedly seasoned politician decided to hang tough in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Rand Paul has made this a big story by refusing to accept responsibility for his acts. And has compounded this with his ridiculous dueling suggestion. Where does he thinks he lives? the South of the Pre-Civil War era? Maybe that’s where he wants to live. But we don’t live there and his antics merely cast doubt on his intelligence, his honor and his judgment.
On the one hand, the revelation that he lifted material from several speeches as well as whole pages of his book from other sources, without attribution, isn’t necessarily a 2016 candidacy-ender. What’s most politically self-destructive is Paul’s bizarre reaction to the charges – which really aren’t “charges,” they’re fact. Instead of admitting he or someone on his staff made an error and promising to toughen his standards, he’s attacked Rachel Maddow, who found the first instance of plagiarism, repeatedly and personally.
“This is really about information and attacks coming from haters,” he told ABC’s Latino-focused network Fusion. “The person who’s leading this attack — she’s been spreading hate on me for about three years now.” Ew, “spreading hate on me,” that sounds kind of disgusting, Rachel – really?
And then, in a bizarre, likely candidacy-ending interview with ABC’s “This Week,” he began talking about a duel.
“Yes, there are times when [speeches] have been sloppy or not correct or we’ve made an error,” Paul said. “But the difference is, I take it as an insult and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so.”
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He went on: “And like I say, if, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.”
“I think I’m being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters.”
Paul’s assumption that normal people will hear his reference to fighting a duel and say, “Hell yeah!” betrays his permanent residency on the American fringe. He lives in a world where it’s always the 19thcentury South, and troubles are best handled with guns and guts, not government. Paul acts like nobody’s ever been either smart enough, or brave enough, to tell the plain truth – and once he does, common sense voters will recognize it and reward him. Instead, they recoil and go, “Huh?”
Then on Tuesday afternoon, BuzzFeed editor Andrew Kaczynski pointed out that
this is a recurring problem for Paul. In a speech to a group of
Hispanic business leaders, he gave a note-for-note recitation of the
Wikipedia entry for the movie “Stand and Deliver,” which tells the story
of an inner city math teacher.
“When you are running for president, a plagiarism scandal is not what
you want on your resume, especially not something as embarrassing as
plagiarizing Wikipedia, but that is what Rand Paul has on his hands
now,” Maddow said.
“And in the face of mounting evidence that this wasn’t an isolated
incident, that this is a repeat thing,” she continued, “Sen. Paul is not
talking. We reached out to his office again today, no response at all.”
Maddow pointed out that it’s not just her show now asking questions
about this. On Tuesday night, the Louisville Courier-Journal ran a
headline story called “Rand Paul mum after being accused of plagiarism.”
“Rand Paul may not want to answer to me or this show or this network
about this,” Maddow said, “but he’s going to have to answer for this to
his home town press or to somebody. He may not want to answer for it,
but he’s going to have to.”
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