Ken Miller Update

Ken Miller has, like the dangerous criminal the US Government believes him to be, been ordered to a Medium Security federal prison (but in his home state rather than in the state he was tried). He begins his 2 year minimum terms on March 22nd, 2016. You can send him letters of encouragement at:
Pastor Ken Miller

FCI Petersburg Medium 

1060 River Rd. 

Hopewell, VA 23860

UPDATE:
The good news is that at the last minute he was reassigned to minimum security. And, of course, no prisoner can receive mail by name, just by number. Here is the corrected contact information:

FCC Petersburg Low
Kenneth L Miller 08464-082
P.O. Box 1000
Petersburg, VA 23804

'Nigger' is the new 'Peasant'

One thing about living in the modern age is the ease at which one can look up the meaning of a word. And I'm not just talking about The Internet; I was able to pick up an 8-pound unabridged 1929 dictionary for its value in scrap paper. I'm therefore able to look up meanings that are now so obsolete that they may be left out of most online definitions. Thus my surprise when I found that there is a word with a very specific meaning I could have used instead of the word 'nigger' when writing this post.

The word is 'peasant.' An ancient meaning of the word, still found online, is:

a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank.

Obviously, peasants were the niggers of their day. But you can see how this usage of the word has not kept pace with modern technology: niggers of the late 19th and early 20th century in the American South definitely fit this definition of peasants, but most niggers nowadays wouldn't.  You don't have to work on a plantation to belong to a class with a low social rank.

Niggerhood in Iraq

Imagine not being allowed to attend school with the other children in your neighborhood because of what your ID card says. Imagine being told that your rent is going to go up simply because of who you are. Imagine losing your job when your employer finds out that you're one of "those people."

As explained in an earlier post, I've appropriated the word "nigger"--no longer allowed to be used by outsiders to describe those of a particular race--for a new use, one for which no suitable word previously existed (one of the many ways languages evolve). A "nigger" is anyone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. Crucial to this discrimination is being able to identify "niggers." In Iraq, it's a matter of which word one has on his ID card under the heading "Religion."

Iraqi society is strictly segregated by race and religion. Until recently, the two were one and the same. Assyrians were Orthodox; Chaldeans were Catholic; Armenians were Apostolic; and other than a smattering of Zoroastrians and Yezidis, everyone else was Muslim. Much as the two groups were at each other's throats, no distinction was made between Shia and Sunni; both classes enjoyed, at least in name, the full benefits of citizenship. For the others, a certain level of second-class citizenship was readily available, and as long as one did not aspire to anything higher than two stars in the military or a cabinet level position in the government, he was free to advance as long as he kept to his proper place.

But, ah. The 'uppity' Muslim who tries to become a Christian! Instant niggerhood.

Another one-term president--but how?

According to Snopes, Proctor & Gamble Former Executive Lou Pritchett really did write an open letter to the newly elected President Obama in which he stated the following:

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America ' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh's, Hannitys, O'Reillys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

According to Pritchett, he "sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or published it."

Well, the writing is on the wall: President Obama's chances of being re-elected are slim to none. Rather than let a Republican take over the White House, however, it appears that the Democratic National Committee has an ace up their sleeve: Hilary Clinton.

It's been over a decade since a Clinton lived in the White House, and there's still a lot of pent-up support for The First Woman President. Having already passed the milestone of The First Black President, there's little incentive in keeping Obama on retainer; and Hilary is likely to be too old to run if she waits another 4 years.

I will admit, the idea's not original with me, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama announce in the next couple months that he won't be running for re-election, but will instead throw all his support behind Hillary and get on with the job of running the country for the last year of his single term.

By the way, there is quite a precedent for such a move. The following presidents failed to be nominated by their parties to serve a second term:

John Tyler*
James Polk
Milliard Fillmore*
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Andrew Johnson*
Rutherford Hayes
Chester Arthur*

*(these were former vice-presidents who took over upon the death of the former president, but were never nominated by their party to the presidency itself)

These former vice-presidents served more than one term as president, but failed to be nominated for a third, for which they were eligible:

Theodore Roosevelt
Calvin Coolidge
Harry Truman
Lyndon Johnson

And this president served two full terms in his own right, but was twice denied nomination to a third:

Ulysses S. Grant, who--as Obama is expected to do--successfully campaigned for the winner of his party's nomination.

Definition of Niggerhood

Inasmuch as I have used a certain word a few times in this blog, I though I should stop and define it for the benefit of my readers who have most likely never encountered it the way I use it.

As a boy, I could have gotten my mouth washed out for using the word 'nigger'. During the era of Race Riots and forced desegregation, it was a word so charged with emotion that just using it could incite a riot. I myself thought of it as a pretty demeaning appellation, so I saw no reason to use it for several decades.

In recent years, however, especially after reading the series of biohistorical novels by Mildred D. Taylor, I've come to realise that the word 'nigger' best encapsulates the experience of someone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. The word itself comes from the Southern English pronunciation of the pidgin word for black-skinned person, nigga. It has also been pronounced nigra, and originates in the Latin word for black. All of this goes back to the fact that black-skinned people have throughout recorded history been taken as slaves in battle, and that this custom persisted centuries after the custom died out among the other races. In fact, it persists to this day, with the black slave trade curtailed but still active in the geographically diminished country of Sudan (which name, by the way, means 'black person' in the language of those who continue to take them as slaves--Arabic).

But being a nigger doesn't necessarily have anything to do with slavery. Niggerhood persisted by custom in the American South for many decades after slavery was abolished, and wherever the Police State raises its ugly head, niggerhood inevitably will be found as well. Niggerhood is simply the state of belonging to a class, the members of which are considered to be not worthy of the rights and privileges enjoyed by members of the ruling class. The recent rhetoric in Washington, for example, to the effect that members of the Tea Party ought to be "taken out and shot" for opposing Obama's debt-raising scheme, indicates that in the mind of the ruling class, even legally elected members of this newest class of Niggers don't really deserve to belong--nor, apparently, even to live. It is typical of the suppressing class to seek to kill members of the suppressed class who 'get uppity' and try to find a legal way to express their human rights--in fact, the whole notion of lynching is based on this characteristic.

So, my dear readers, be advised that I use the word "nigger" not in any specific racial sense whatsoever, but merely as shorthand for "member of a suppressed class" whether that suppression be political, economic, or social in nature. In fact, niggers will invariably encounter suppression in all of those forms, should their identity become known.

How to run afoul of the Patriot Act by doing absolutely nothing for 20 years

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — According to the federal government, two sisters in rural Kentucky do not exist.

Raechel Colleen Schultz and her sister, Stephanie Marie Schultz, were born at home in Kentucky and Alabama respectively. They were home-schooled and their parents never sought birth certificates, vaccination records or Social Security numbers for them.

Now, 29-year-old Raechel and 23-year-old Stephanie have sued the Social Security Administration in an effort to get Social Security numbers and cards, which will allow them to work legally. The suit, filed July 29 in U.S. District Court in London, Ky., is the latest legal battle for the women as they attempt to obtain legal recognition of their existence.

"No one has ever heard of anything like this before," said their attorney, Douglas Benge. "When the girls first came to see me, it's one of those things of, 'What do I do now?'"

Notice first of all that these women ('girls' seems to be unintentionally demeaning here) are not accused or even suspected of any crime. If anything, it was their parents who offended the law by failing to get them registered, but it is the girls who are now being punished for it. Without the ability to be recognized by the government, they have absolutely no rights as citizens--even though they have lived their entire lives in the United States. Furthermore, without being able to legally identify themselves, they are deprived of even basic civil rights, like the ability to use public transportation, drive, or even get out of jail on bail if unjustly arrested. In short, they are no better off than the niggers of 50 years ago--maybe worse. They not only can't sit in the front of the bus--they aren't even allowed on at all.

What about equal rights for CMOC (Christian men on campus)?

Nearly four years ago, I wrote about the burkini and wondered what could be done to provide equal protection to Muslim men. The takeaway message from the ongoing concern over covering up Muslim women seems to be that there is no need to protect Muslim men from lusting after women--just to protect Muslim women from being lusted after. This, of course, is fully in keeping with Islamic doctrine, which encourages men to beat their unsubmissive wives, and allows them to have as many as they can afford, provided the number never exceeds four at any one time.

So, now the women at George Washington University--Muslim or otherwise--can enjoy one hour a week free from the ogling eyes of men--Muslim or otherwise. But note that no one seems to be concerned about the men--Muslim and otherwise--who have to be exposed to all the barely covered bodies of their female fellow swimmers during coed swim time the rest of the week.

Ironic it is that it was even Muslims who finally raised the issue. It should have been Christians. Feminine modesty is enjoined in their scriptures, which also prohibit looking lustfully at women--modest or otherwise.

OK, CMOC, where are you?

US Navy discriminates against Barack Obama

There is, in medical science, something called The Iatrogenic Effect. What it means is that there is a point of diminishing returns in the practice of medicine, in which further spending on medical testing and treatment not only results in less benefit, but actual harm. In other words, there comes a point where anything more a doctor can do for you is going to hurt you, rather than helping you. Barack Obama may have already reached that point.

Provided with unlimited free medical care from the US Navy as well as his own personal doctor and ambulance, Barack Obama is an iatrogenic incident waiting to happen. He was recently given a blood test, for example, to test his Prostrate Specific Antigen level. There has been quite a bit written about this test of late in the New York Times:

"The PSA blood test, used to screen for prostate cancer, saves few lives and leads to risky and unnecessary treatments for large numbers of men, two large studies have found."

and this, by Dana Jennings:
"I’m angry because the two studies confirm my gut feeling – based on comments to this blog and on the stories of many men I know – that millions of men, especially those in their late 60s and beyond, have received unnecessary prostate cancer treatments that have, at the very least, damaged their bodies and lives, if not outright ruined them."

And this from the very inventor of the test itself:
" . . . men lucky enough to reach old age are much more likely to die with prostate cancer than to die of it. Even then, the test is hardly more effective than a coin toss. As I’ve been trying to make clear for many years now, P.S.A. testing can’t detect prostate cancer and, more important, it can’t distinguish between the two types of prostate cancer — the one that will kill you and the one that won’t."

But Barack Obama got the test anyway, because it's part of Navy policy to give it to men over 40. He also got his colon screened, even though he's not 50 yet--apparently because the Navy has him down as an African-American, and they are considered "at a higher risk" for colon cancer.

This is racial discrimination, pure and simple--because Barack Obama was not born an African-American. His wife was, but with her advanced education and ability to hire domestic help, I doubt she's ever served him the soul food that serves as the primary cause of higher cancer, strokes, and cardiac arrests among those who eat it.

The last time I was at the Field Museum in Chicago, the Races of Man exhibit was still on display, although it had been moved to its own floor. I imagine it's probably in the basement now. But it clearly showed what were considered at the time it was commissioned to be the seven Races of Man. Traditionally, though, there were only four races, generally divided by skin color, and based on the presence of melanin and carotene:

Red: High carotene, low melanin
Yellow: Some carotene, little melanin
Black: No carotene, lots of melanin
White: Little carotene or melanin

Now, there is going to be some variation in all of these broad categories. To nail down the various ratios of carotene to melanin, you have to go all the way out to seven races.

When we come to Africans, we find them falling into three broad categories: the White North Africans, the yellow South Africans, and the Black Africans everywhere else. The Sub-Saharans are further subdivided into the Nilotic, Capoid, and Bantu races: Black, Dark Yellow, and Brown. It is the Bantu, or Brown race that overwhelmingly supplied the genes to those now known as African-Americans, and Barack Obama didn't get any of them. He's a member of the Luo tribe, which is of the Nilotic race. Thus he's no more genetically suited for medical treatment designed for the Bantu race than I am. This makes him a victim of discrimination: not on the basis of his medical needs (so called), but on his listed race.

M, F, or O?

I just noticed it today, but for some weeks now the local law enforcement website has stopped categorizing arrestees by "Race." This, along with a removal of the "Age" field. The purge hasn't reached the statewide database yet. Question: does the Emergency Response Service still ask if suspicious persons are "Black, White, or Hispanic?" And is this a nationwide movement?

What's next--the elimination (or expansion) of the "Sex" category?

Stay tuned.

The Berean Believers: Men, Women, or Jews?

Inasmuch as this blog's posts on the TNIV continue to be of interest to Zondervan and even the CBT itself, I feel compelled to complete as many posts on it as I can in time for consideration before the Newer and Improveder NIV comes out in 2011.

I've been reading the NIV again after having set it aside for a couple of decades, and of course one thing that frequently comes to mind as I go through it is, "I wonder how the TNIV changes this?" Such was the case this morning while reading Acts 17. And what do you know--when I went online to check the TNIV, I found a change from the NIV that actually appears to be for the better. Don't get too excited about it, though, until you've heard me out.

Acts 17:10-12 NIV
As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Now, the common English text just had "these" as the subject of 'were' in v. 11, but in replacing it with a proper noun for the NIV, the CBT looked all the way to the sentence before the previous one to find an antecedent for the Greek pronoun outoi. But in looking the passage over again to update the gender reference, it appears that someone on the CBT noticed that the actual referent was probably the Jews who met at the synagogue; it's actually the noun just previous to the pronoun in the Greek text. Thus the following change in the TNIV, which, I will agree, corrects the overgeneralisation of the NIV:

Acts 17:10-12 TNIV
As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Okay, so of course 'brothers' had to become 'believers', a change from the specific to the general, consisting at least implicitly of an elevation of women to an influential position of leadership in the Thessalonian church which is in no wise implied in the Greek text itself. "The Berean Jews" as a change from the general to the specific is warranted, however, but only because the previous change from the specific to the general wasn't. I will grant, though, that the TNIV makes the identity of those noble Bereans more explicit than did the KJV and most of its revisions.

It was no innovation, however, for Zondervan had pinned the same label on the noble Bereans in its Amplified New Testament back before it had even taken over sponsorship of the NIV. In other words, the NIV was a step backward in translation excellence, and all the TNIV did was bring it forward to a previous standard of several decades earlier--a time span during which the English language had supposedly changed so much that a new rendition was warranted.

Looking further in the NIV, we find the missing 'Jews' in v. 12, where they are in contrast to the Greeks who believed along with them. The TNIV was able to dispense with the label here, having put it back where it belonged--although even there it is only implicit, not explicit, in the Greek text. But that's fine, as it fits the CBT translation philosophy.

What isn't fine, though, is that the decades-old gender-insensitive reading at the end of v. 12 was left uncorrected. Of course the CBT in the TNIV never tampered with explicit references to women, only with masculine references that they felt should explicitly include women. So "a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men" was just fine as-is. Or was it?

What the Greek literally reads is:

many therefore of them believed and of the hellenic women the honorable ones and of the men not a few

If I had no knowledge of Greek beyond what a lexicon would supply, I would probably assume that there were three classes of new believers mentioned here:

1. Many of the Berean Jews who had searched the Scriptures
2. The honorable ones among the Berean Greek women
3. Not a few Berean men

But really, I doubt this is how any translator actually understood it. The genitive phrases link three groups to the verb 'believed': 'them', 'the Greek women', and 'the men'. Thus the verse should be punctuated to read:

Many therefore of them believed, also of the Hellenic women (the honorable ones), as well as of the men--not a few.

This is the most likely reading of the KJV rendition:
Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

But translators have generally understood this to refer to the following three classes of new believers:

1. Many of the Berean Jews who had searched the Scriptures (implicitly just the men)
2. Many of the prominent Berean Greek women (mentioned in a place of emphasis)
3. Many of the prominent Berean Greek men

You can read a lot into this understanding of the passage; for instance, among the nobility the women were the first to respond to the gospel, and then went on to lead their husbands to Christ. But this isn't how the CBT saw the situation. Despite the above three classes being explicit in the Amplified Bible, Zondervan went on to sponsor a rendition which has yet to be revised, and yields the following classes of new believers:

1. Many Berean Jews (gender left unspecified as per TNIV philosophy)
2. A number of prominent Greek women
3. Many Greek men (these last two classes, by implication at least, also being Bereans)

The problem again is one of referent. The Greek plural adjectives (which in the genitive case are gender-neutral) ellhnidwn (Greek) and euschmonwn (honorable) are only found once in the passage, but the TNIV does not apply both of them to men and women equally. This, even though they take just two mentions of 'numerous' and apply them to all three classes.

In other words, the CBT translations--like a straightforward reading of the KJV, implicitly depriving the Berean men of their prominence--nonetheless grant them an explicit Greek identity. This they do differently than the KJV, which allows the possibility of the Berean men being honorable, but not being Greeks. While I wouldn't want to encourage one approach or the other, either is allowed in the complex world of Greek-to-English translation, and most revisions of the KJV up to the present decade have retained its ambiguity. One of the most recent of these, however, the NRSV, while attempting to make more explicit the honor due the men, practically went the other way with the women. In trying not to mention the women in their usual grammatical place (after the men), the NRSV comes to within a single comma of implying to the English reader that they weren't prominent, even though that is explicit in the Greek:

Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing.

This revision also perpetuates the NIV's overgeneralisation of including Greeks in the class of Scripture-searching Bereans--even though it calls them 'Jews' in the previous verse!

If I might add one more dig here, consider the refusal of the CBT to include a woman named Damaris in a class called 'men' in light of The Message's take on this passage, which, like the NRSV, includes Greeks in a class called 'Jews' (something not entirely impossible in biblical English, but certainly not understandable as such to Today's Young Person):

The Jews received Paul's message . . . . A lot of them became believers, including many Greeks who were prominent in the community, women and men of influence.

In Acts 6, Eugene Peterson referred to the two classes of Jewish believers as "Greek-speaking believers--'Hellenists'" and "Hebrew-speaking believers." I don't believe he actually intended to equate the two here; had he consulted the NIV instead of the RSV in preparing this paraphrase, he probably would have caught the inconsistency.

Now in conclusion, I have to say that the CBT may very well have made a conscious decision not to include 'men' in the class of honorable Bereans--at least not in verse 12, that is. And it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility to translate the text thus--the NLT did it as well, though not as explicitly. But there are actually two levels of inconsistency here, at least one of which is inexcusable.

First of all, the TNIV identifies the men as Greek, but not as honorable--although their honorable status is fully as implicit in the text as their Greek identity. This perpetuates a grammatical inconsistency in the RSV, which was apparently a favorite version of quite a few of the original members of the CBT. But at least the RSV, unlike the revision that replaced it, was able to keep the Jews straight from the Greeks.

Secondly, the TNIV, again like the now-defunct RSV, restricts the application of the adjective 'honorable' to just the Greek women of Berea. While this may be an acceptable translation, it shows a glaring inconsistency in the CBT's translation philosophy as it comes through in the TNIV. In the TNIV, the CBT has bent over backward to include the women in every possible explicit reference to men, but has made no such effort not to overlook the men whenever women are explicitly mentioned.

In the process of fixing a grammatical inconsistency of racial identification in the supposedly gender-insensitive NIV, the CBT has perpetuated the very philosophical inconsistency that made it insensitive to gender identification--but couldn't seem to see it through their pink-colored glasses. Is this not always what happens when, in an attempt to forcibly eliminate entrenched discrimination, those who tamper with societal norms must needs send the one class down in order to bring the other up?

How Africans got black skin

I once heard this story from an authority on West African oral culture, and since it doesn't seem to have made its way online yet, I thought I might as well share it with the world. I hope someone will come along with a better version that I can link to.

In the beginning, God made everybody the same: they all had black skin. But God appointed a time when everyone could come to the watering hole and wash the blackness off their skin. He set the time at ten o'clock in the morning.

Now, the European had a watch, so he made sure to be on time. But the African didn't worry so much about the time, and he got there late. Alas, by the time he arrived, the European had used up almost all the water washing the blackness off his skin. There was only enough water left to wipe the blackness off the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet.

This is why Africans to this day are black everywhere but their hands and feet. And it is also why the Europeans always go by the clock.

A Great Mind That Didn't Go to Waste: A Lesson from History

Growing up, The White Man never considered the possibility that he would not attend college. It was, after all, what people in his social class did after graduating from high school. And he certainly would never have dreamed of stopping his education short of a high school diploma--especially with his level of intellect. In fact, he early on set his sights on that pinnacle of academic achievement, a doctoral degree.

But while he was in college, getting to know the woman was soon to become his wife and the mother of their large brood of children, he began to reconsider the whole idea of a formal education. After all, neither of his parents had graduated from a four-year college. And none of his grandparents even had high school diplomas--not even the schoolteacher who considered 11 years of formal schooling quite sufficient preparation for enrolling in summer courses at the state college that eventually granted her a degree in elementary education.

So it is that none of the White Man's children have attended college--nor even matriculated into high school. And it's unlikely that any of them will, with the way public education has gone in the past half century.

Let's step back just three generations, to when my children's four great-grandfathers reached school age. They were farmers, all of them, which meant that by age six or seven they were already participating in the daily and seasonal chores that were vital to their families' livelihood. School was a building usually no more than a mile or two away, taught by a young person, usually single, who boarded with one of the local families. Fellow scholars were neighbors of varying social strata and educational ambition, but a good education could be had by those with the time and determination to receive it.

Time could be a problem. One boy was repeatedly needed on the farm, even during those few months every year when school was in session, and as a result it usually took him around two calendar years to advance one school year. By age fourteen, when he left the schoolhouse for good, he had not yet attained the fourth grade. This lack of education was a disappointment to him for the rest of his life, as he was never able to attain to the profession of his choice, but was doomed to a live of drudgery in the factory or on the farm. Another boy, however, never aspired to anything higher, and was glad to be free of the schoolroom once he reached the upper limit for compulsory education. The others got somewhat farther, one of them even making it through high school by riding his horse every day into the nearest city.

But what all these boys had in common was the expectation that they would leave their home on a more or less daily basis to get their educational needs met by, and with, their neighbors. And this arrangement did not extend beyond eighth grade, at least for country folk. There were no school buses; one ancestor boarded in town, only eight miles away, in order to attend high school; she being a girl, a daily horseback ride of that length was out of the question. And those who did attend high school only did so in order to reach a specific career objective, like teaching in a modern big-city school.

Fast forward a hundred years to the present day. The neighborhood schools have all been closed, the buildings themselves now fallen into ruins or housing farm machinery. Now gigantic school buses, each one containing several times the number of children formerly enrolled in a country school, lumber down country roads, blocking traffic in all directions while they pick up children as young as five years old. These they disgorge at a spacious campus to be educated with and by people unknown to their parents. But in order to even get in the door, the tots will need a birth certificate, a shot record, proof of guardianship, and, within a few more years, a state-issued photo ID linked to a federal registry. These barriers to entry are enough to keep out any children who don't see public school as their best route to the career of their choice--and whose parents support their independent mindset.

And such is the case with my family. My children would far rather spend their time learning at home and on the job than be cooped up in a classroom, and, as one who spent eighteen years as a full-time student, I can't say I blame them. Within the lifetimes of the older ones, school has stretched out from the 9 months it was when my parents were children to the current 10 months of the year. The 3 R's are still taught--after a fashion--but more time is devoted to social engineering of malleable young minds. Rather than being something temporary a young person does to get started in the workforce, schoolteaching has become a profession with certification, continuing education, and union membership. School has become so expensive that, were I to pay for enrolling even half my school-aged children, it would cost more than I make. And alas, with all this, children graduating from high school--and often, even college--are no better prepared to make it in life than my grandfathers were, working sixty or more hours a week by the age of fourteen.

If there were a community school within walking distance, charging perhaps one fortieth of my income per child, without any of the modern barriers to entry, I'm sure that some of my children would attend it. And it would no doubt be of considerable educational benefit to those who took advantage of it. But alas, that era is gone and unlikely to ever return. My children are still receiving an education--and a considerably good one--but not the sort of education they will ever be able to pass on to anyone but their own children and grandchildren; even though, with modern technology, they won't ever have to work nearly as long or hard to make a living as their great-grandfathers did, leaving plenty of time for self-study and self-improvement for as long as they live. But let's step back and look at one man, contemporary with my children's great-grandfathers, who grew up in that environment and, as such, was able to share the fruits of his learning with the entire world.

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) did not grow up in the country, but moved from city to city with his parents while his father was settling on a career. His father died only a few years after Linus began school, but lived long enough to see that his son was destined for greatness; he advertised in The Oregonian for suggestions of reading material for young Linus, who devoured every book he could get his hands on.

Without the drudgery of farm chores, Linus was able to learn as much or more outside the classroom as in it. He wandered over to a shuttered steel mill and helped himself to enough chemicals to set up a basement laboratory, and mastered the art of testing milk for butterfat content when barely a teenager.

By age 16, Linus had learned everything the city high school would teach him--even then, he was frustrated by the administration's refusal to let him take the classes of his choosing--and he dropped out of high school to enroll in college. I love this part: the high school that wouldn't cater to his educational plan granted him a diploma forty-five years later, after he had become the first (and still the only) person to win two separate Nobel prizes, in different fields, all in his own right. I'm sure he didn't think much of the oft-repeated mantra that high school dropouts are doomed to the lowest strata of society.

Linus showed such ability that he began teaching college courses while still a student--sometimes a course that he himself had only just completed. And he was able to earn enough while a student to completely pay for his college education--another norm that has essentially been lost forever. I barely earn enough, even working a full-time job with seniority and benefits, to pay for just the tuition costs of one student--with nothing left over for living expenses.

Linus Pauling was a groundbreaking researcher in three scientific fields--chemistry, biology, and physics--in addition to being a forerunner in the field of grass-roots politics. He first conceptualized the helical structure of DNA, being barely beaten out by colleagues Watson and Crick in determining that it was a double rather than triple helix. He was even involved in the development of the atomic bomb, but later led the drive to end above-ground nuclear testing when he realised the danger that it posed to the public health.

In 1941, at the height of his scientific career, he developed a then-incurable kidney disorder and turned his attention to the role of diet in preventing disease: specifically vitamins, which were unknown when he began studying chemistry in the first decade of the 1900's. His research and experiments on his own body were so successful that he was able, at age 86, to write How to Live Longer and Feel Better. He actually lived longer after the diagnosis of fatal renal malfunction than he had prior to it.

By living when he did, Linus Pauling was able to become one of The Twenty Greatest Scientists of All Time. He grew up in an age where a teen was free to experiment, innovate, and even teach college as a high school dropout. That age, like the man himself, has now passed into history.

What if a child today, with the same gifts Linus Pauling enjoyed, were to try to succeed under the current barriers to education and scholastic employment?

What if, but for those barriers, one of my children might be the next Linus Pauling?

Keep the schools, close the prisons

Michigan is probably not as safe a place to be as it used to, now that the goverment has decided to close prisons in order to open more schools. Closing schools, of course, would mean releasing former students into the general population. Michigan's governor Granholm sees that as a greater risk to public safety than releasing former prisoners--many of them sex offenders--into the general population. But hey--maybe they'll go back to school--as high school Health & Human Reproduction teachers, maybe?

They will be monitored by the State, of course. Just like the State of California "monitored" regular sex offender Phillip Garrido.

Parents in Michigan, I suggest you keep a close eye on your children. And whatever you do, don't assume that they'll be safe in a public school.

The NIV and the King of Sheba

The Washington Post reports that a secretary in D.C. is now the king of a village in Ghana.

There's a problem with this; she's a woman. Not a problem for the people who allegedly elected her, but a problem for the English language, which has never referred to a woman as king before.

The word queen has always had an exclusively female connotation, even before it took on specific reference to royalty. In recent centuries it has been used both for the consort of a male monarch and for a female monarch; queen mother is now used for the mother of the monarch (a distinction already made in the NIV). But the editors of the Washington Post now want to call a female monarch king--without bothering to mention what they will call her husband. Or, actually, husbands; kings in Ghana are always polygamous.

The Committee for Bible Translation believes that literary English changes measurably every generation; certainly this is a new English term for female monarch, and they had better take it into consideration for their upcoming revision of the NIV: "Queen of Sheba" is sexist, outmoded, and discriminatory. Time to start getting used to calling her "The King of Sheba," or the New and Improved NIV will be obsolete before the ink has finished drying on its pages.

Why piracy? Why now? What next?

Almost ten months ago now, I made some predictions about what I foresaw would be an Obama Presidency. I was right on that point; let's see how the rest of my predictions are stacking up.

For one, I look to see the printing presses shift into an even higher gear, with the demise of the penny coming by the end of a second Obama administration. I kind of doubt, though, that we will ever see the $1000 bill again; cash transactions will be more and more restricted.

Wow, have they ever. The word "trillions" became a regular part of a grade-school vocabulary before Obama had even taken office, and he's continued to throw money out the window in frequent doses ever since. But what has happened? I went in to pay my property tax, and noticed signs saying that $100 bills would not be accepted. Why? I guess it had something to do with counterfeiting. Once a $20 bill won't even buy you coffee, guess what that means--a cashless society. O boy.

I expect the federal deficit to double. Any takers for the negative on that one?

I expect, by the end the first Obama administration, to see Social Security Numbers made mandatory for medical treatment.

No question that this is in the works. I may be the only American left with dependent children who have health insurance coverage without having SSN's, but then again I haven't tried to make a claim on any of them yet either. And my agent says that although it isn't actually illegal, he certainly doesn't recommend I try.

I expect to see more raids on religious groups, with all the children taken away from their parents regardless of any evidence of abuse.

I'm glad to report that, as far as I know, this hasn't happened--yet. They must still be waiting for the furor to die down from the last such incident.

I expect to see all churches lose more tax exemptions, or more churches lose all.

Still waiting for the hammer to fall on this one, too. But when it happens, it will probably be part of a Hate Crimes bill.

I expect riots should Obama fail by a thin margin to be re-elected. Too soon for this one.

And lastly,

I expect some well-placed Americans to be held hostage in a rogue state for years.

Well, this hasn't turned out quite the way I anticipated (does it ever?). True, some well-known journalists were held in one of the Axis of Evil countries for a few weeks, and some lesser-known journalists are currently being held in the other, but that's not quite what I had in mind. Instead, low-level Americans were held hostage on the open seas for a few days, necessitating a multi-million dollar effort to bring them home (with no rogue state protests in the UN to complicate things).

Piracy has made a comeback.

Why piracy? Well, it all boils down to the convergence of three factors:

1) Law Enforcement's hands are increasingly tied with red tape. Just bringing a teenage Somali gunslinger to trial for an outright act of piracy involved flying him halfway around the world (no doubt his first plane ride), putting him up in a jail cell far more luxurious than anything he's ever lived in (he must still be wondering how they keep the power from ever going out), and spending the next year or two paying high-power lawyers to argue over whether it was really his fault or not that he hijacked an American-flagged vessel. What it that his geographical education was deficient and he mistakenly took the Stars and Stripes flying from the masthead for the much more common Liberian flag? And so on.

2) There is well-published reluctance on the part of ship owners to allow their crew members to arm themselves against potential pirate attacks. There has been no corresponding reluctance on the part of pirates to arm themselves against potentially uncooperative crew members.

3) To make up for their inability to actually put criminals behind bars for any reasonable length of time (thus protecting the communities they are supposed to serve), Law Enforcement increasing focuses on its own protection from at-large criminals, thus becoming increasingly belligerent towards any who question their sense of self-importance. Witness the sad case of Professor Gates. The situation throughout the world is rapidly approaching that of Israel, where, although the death penalty for a convicted murderer is not allowed, firing a missile into a vehicle thought to be occupied by an unindicted "enemy of the state," along with whomever else might be in the vehicle, is.

The logical outcome when these three factors collide is just the sort of drama currently underway in the North Atlantic, where the Arctic Sea was apparently hijacked by pirates masquerading as law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, when one is being attacked in such a way, it is actually very difficult to tell from their tactics whether the attackers are legitimate law enforcement officers in the pursuit of justice, or pirates in the pursuit of booty. Should the pirates manage to get a few police uniforms off Ebay, the task becomes nigh impossible.

Unless one these three factors change, I predict that piracy will become a global pandemic.

The Law Killeth--and killeth--and killeth again.

The White Man has not been in any mood lately to blog about political matters. Nearly every day another e-mail arrives, duly certified as being from an unmonitored e-mail account at The White House. The thief sending the emails tries very hard to convince me that his plans to steal from me are all in my own best interests, but I remain unconvinced. As does he; soon it will be a crime not to gamble over my health. Sigh.

But at any rate, my keyboard has not yet been muzzled, and I take to cyberspace today to comment on yet another dead child, found strapped in a car on a hot day. Hardly a week goes by in the hot summer months without another such report, despite the fact that in some states it is now a crime to leave an infant strapped in an unmoving car. Of course it was already a crime to leave an infant unstrapped in a moving car, and that is the point of this blog.

All laws have consequences, and the consequences of a law are never fully foreseen at the time it is implemented. No one suspected that children would die in unmoving cars as a result of it being a crime to allow them to get hurt in a moving car, but that is what it appears has happened.

It is not easy to strap a child into an approved car seat; it's much easier to hold him on your lap. But the fact is, it's just plain safer for a child to be strapped in a car seat while the car is moving at a high rate of speed down the road. Just for safety's sake, most parents would want their infant securely buckled in while out on the open road.

But ah, the law doesn't allow parents to use their own judgment in such matters. A 5-minute stop-and-go drive to the grocery store 10 blocks away may necessitate spending another 5 minutes just buckling all the children in. And in many families' case, the laws now stipulate that every one of their children needs his own car seat--thus requiring a van for what in most countries of the world a compact car would more than suffice. Stopping at the store adds another 2-3 minutes unbuckling them all, then another 5 minutes getting them back in to go home.

Is it any wonder, then, that many parents prefer to leave their sleeping children strapped in the car while they run into the store quickly to buy something? I certainly do. And thus as an inevitable result of more and more draconian car seat laws (especially the one making it a crime to put an infant in the front seat where he could be killed by the mandatory air bag)--coupled with the wide availability of vehicular air conditioning and a paranoia over car theft--duly imprisoned infants continue to roast to death in their parents' cars.

Yet another unintended consequence from yet another series of laws "in our best interests." Sigh.