Run-around Thursday

It's not Randomday, but it sure feels like it.  So, I was in the middle of teaching a lesson on oddball adjectives to 8th grade this morning, and things were a bit wacky and unruly as they sometimes get when the fascination of putting inflected endings on "audax" and "celer" starts to wear off and I had inadvertently made a quip when I had translated "pueris integris" as "to the fresh boys" and then hastily corrected "to the uninjured boys, because if they got fresh they would be injured," and we were all recovering from the embarrassment of me having said that, when the classroom phone rang.  And the office tells me that Quarta broke her tooth and would be waiting in her classroom for me to come and evaluate at my earliest convenience.

Sooo... it was a molar, 2nd in from the top left, and it had split in half as she had taken a bite of pita chip.  There were two fragments out, and half of the tooth still seated in the gum.  I get pretty queasy during dental emergencies, just ask Secundus, who has had plenty.  But the pediatric dentist she sees could see her if I took her to the mall office right away, so I scrambled to give a quickly-arranged sub the information she would need to handle 7th grade (Thanks, Peggy!)  The good news is that it was a baby tooth, and came out fairly cleanly after the dentist did his thing while I studiously looked the other way and wished I had brought knitting.  The bad news, there apparently is no permanent tooth behind it.  This will mean a follow-up visit and we will see what needs to be done about orthodontics, spacers, and an eventual implant.  I keep saying, I'm hoping for the price of implants to come down to where the middle class can consider them.  Our family is going to need at about 5 in the next several years.

I took Quarta back to school (she really wanted to be there for art -- P.E., not so much) and went home for a late lunch and watched an episode of West Wing on Netflix while trying to overcome my queasy post-dental-emergency stomach.  Then it was time for the kids to come home from school.  Quarta had survived the rest of the day fine; Tertia got off her bus in tears.  Checking with the bus driver, a boy had just hit her over the head with his library book.  Well, that was a shock.  She has never been bullied before, to my knowledge, in 9 years of public school.  The bus driver witnessed it and wrote it up as a report; I emailed Tertia's teacher and assistant principal immediately and the school is dealing with it appropriately.  I can only hope the boy's parents are dealing with it as well.

In all the stress I completely forgot I needed to pick up our vegetable basket and Quarta's piano teacher for her piano lesson until 15 minutes later than I should have.  It all did happen, but I was so glad I had gone Costco shopping yesterday and had a lasagna and other elements of a pre-fab meal all ready to go.  And it is definitely an evening for blogging, putting my feet up and watching mindless TV while enjoying a Hagen-Daz salted caramel ice cream bar.  And I will be in bed by 10:00 tonight.

Political Tuesdays: Transparency

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

   -- Juvenal

 

Maybe you've seen this funny going around Facebook.  Shocker: anything you say on the internet is in the public record, and can be retrieved somehow, somewhere, by someone geeky enough to do so.  Should it worry you?  I guess that might depend on what you do online. 

Speaking for myself, I know I have an FBI file; I'm sure it's been updated since 1990 at least once, and it's probably pretty boring, although my pro-life ties might be enough to get me targeted by the IRS in the current political climate, if I weren't such small potatoes.  I think it comes as a bit of a rude shock to the next generation, though, that big brother is watching quite to that extent; but it's nothing new.  Personally, I'm not paranoid enough to be that disturbed by the phone records and the data mining on the internet.  There are plenty of psycho stalkers and cyberbullies out there who wish our nation harm; a vigorous national defense pretty much requires that we stay a few steps ahead of them, and that means government agencies will have access to these kinds of powerful tools.  In theory, no government has the resources to conduct systemic persecution of its political enemies.  That doesn't mean the government won't try.

It does raise the worrisome age-old question: Who will guard the guards themselves?  (It should be noted that Juvenal raised this question in a quite different context: political corruption and bribery were systemic in Roman government: the concept that government, whether emperor or senate, should not have absolute control would have seemed bizarre to him.  We are actually very fortunate to have the degree of freedom we do).  How can we trust our government to use this data wisely, given that the data is out there whether we like it or not?  Well, we can't.  We have checks and balances to slow government down and keep the power from swinging too much one way or another, but government is made up of corruptible people.  Some of them will figure out ways to abuse the system for political ends.  We'd better hope there are enough trustworthy people involved in government to hold them accountable.  Ordinary Americans ignoring the danger signs will not help matters.

In all honesty, I'm glad the current crop of scandals is focusing the light on this latest governmental overreach.  The best defense?  Transparency.  A free press was invented for just such a situation as this, if the government itself is unwilling to be forthcoming.  And a healthy dose of  satire.  I mean, if there is a danger that the sacred privacy of the American freethinkers is being infringed, let's invite the CIA to play Farmville, or figure out how to unfriend them.  A better use of our national resources, though, would be to radically reduce big government spending and the overreach of such agencies as the IRS.  And to demand accountability from the governmental leaders who ordered the overreach in the first place.

 

Political Tuesdays - Just How Free is Our Press?

The Obama Administration wants to pin all the responsibility for the sequester on the Republicans, for political purposes.

Bob Woodward wrote about it in the Washington Post.

The venerable Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, is threatened by the White House because of coverage unfavorable to President Obama.

Woodward is far from being the only one. 

Dr. Benjamin Carson is told not to offend the President in his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The Obama administration has such a tightly controlled message, it never deviates from the teleprompter script.  Limiting access, especially for "unfriendly" outlets like Fox News.  Never letting an opportunity pass to trash and demonize Republicans.  In the campaign, it was all a show of cooperation and compromise.  Now, when there's a real need for wise government, it's all politics, all the time.  Except for when you're playing golf or giving away Oscars, of course.

Even the ivy-covered halls of academia have their political requirements for admission to their sacred precincts.  No dissent, or you'll be persona non grata.

Reminds me (and you know it wouldn't be Political Tuesdays without a Roman history lesson!) of the original guy who had a little list.  Lucius Cornelius Sulla, dictator of Rome during the Social War, arch-enemy of Marius.  He found it easier to accomplish his political objectives if he eliminated those unfriendly to him.  It is easier to do this when you do not have a Constitution and a free press.  I'm just saying.

Source: Uploaded by user via Gerri on Pinterest

Randomday: The Amoeba Edition

Saturdays are busy, even though they're supposed to be the relaxing day we catch up with things.  Quarta has to clean Winky's cage, which means there is a mini-hamster ball bumping around the downstairs while she does that, terrorizing the cats.  Both inside cats show great curiosity about this little furry creature, but are spooked by her plastic casing and sometimes jump quite high if it happens to touch their outstretched paw unexpectedly.

We went bowling this afternoon; Tertia has been enjoying bowling for her school's team, but it had been about 10 years since the last time I went.  Secundus was working, so it was just the parents and daughters, but it was fun.  Lots of '80s music.  No scores over 100, but everyone except Tertia got at least 1 spare, and Tertia has a good attitude no matter what.  We played 2 games at Crosley Lanes.

I started quilting Easy Street yesterday afternoon.  It's almost 25% done now.  I'm using a squiggle-loop-flower allover design.  I decided on blue thread, but the fabric store had only three 250 yard spools.  I hope it will be enough.  I may need to fill some bobbins with other thread to make sure.

Source: google.com via Katherine on Pinterest

School continues.  The third quarter is always a marathon, but this year it seems to be a fast-paced one.  Third quarter is flying by.  That doesn't lessen the amount of stress any, but it does put a definite end in sight.

In probably the most random event of the week, I have acquired yet another troll on an internet site.  I seem to collect them.  It started years back with Ravelry, where I identified myself as a conservative before I realized the "disagree" and "funny" trolls would start dogging my steps wherever I went, and encountered plenty of people who seemed to live only for the chance to belittle those knitters of different political persuasions than themselves.  Then there was Pinterest, where I pinned a couple of books by Ann Coulter to my "books worth reading" board and got several nastygrams from one disgruntled Ann-hater.  So my latest borderline obsession online is the Cryptograms website.  Logic, quotations of great (and some not-so-great) literary value, pattern recognition, wordplay -- what's not to like?  They let you comment on a quote after you solve it -- and there have been plenty of nastygram comments on quotes by people like Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, etc... and plenty of nasty comments insulting them even on unrelated quotes.  So when I came across this quote: "What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years." — John Fischer
I marked it as "confusing," because, I mean, really?  More radicals would be good for the country?  Any country?  And I commented, "So he's saying that all those aging lefties are good for the country?"  I was thinking of a conversation Steve and I had recently about aging hippies.  Neither of us think they age well, usually, and keeping the same radicalism they had in their youth would be downright frightening.

Well, apparently there is zero tolerance for tweaking the liberals on the cryptogram site, because I happened to check out their chat forum yesterday, and a safely anonymous "Guest" had cited my comment  and called me out by name.  I recap the rest of his/her comments for your amusement:
"Since when 'radical' is the same as 'lefty'"
"?"
"Ever heard of the 'radical right', you amoeba?"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_right"

And another, perhaps less cowardly member commented under his own identity,
"If you are a radical idealogue, you are on the right regardless of your allegiances. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Rush Limbaugh, Joe McCarthy, all on the right."

Then there were a few confusing attempts by other members to either divert the conversation or gently say that calling out someone in public wasn't ideal, and maybe the insult "amoeba" was a bad move, etc.  There was a particularly confusing bit when two "guests" were arguing with each other and one of them, apparently the original one, was trying to stir something up with me.  I didn't even see the conversation until probably a few days after it started.  I might have remained safely oblivious if I hadn't been wasting time.  Now it's a matter of personal pride.  I do not suffer trolls or fools, whether they haunt Ravelry, Pinterest, or Cryptograms.  And I can make a snappy comeback with the best of them, but I can do far better than calling someone an amoeba.  I can only imagine how nasty things must get on Twitter or other sites where politics is the main topic.

Just another example of the intolerance of the left for free speech.  And the downright nasty thug tactics of internet bullies.

Ravelympics: Who Wins?

The Ravelympics will have to undergo a name change: Ravelry members can vote here on a shortlist of contenders, none of which have quite the same significance or resonance as the original.  I haven't even officially chosen or signed up with a team for the Event Which Must Not Be Named, but I'll be knitting.  And I'll be calling it "Ravelympics" here on my blog even if I can't on Ravelry.  And I will be taking every opportunity between now and then to put the words "Olympics" and "Olympian" in their proper context, which I do not believe is as the exclusively trademarked property of an American corporation.  Expect to see reviews of books featuring Olympic deities, references to Mt. Olympus in classical times, and maybe some talk about the Olympic Peninsula right here in Washington State.  I think I will be okay, because this is a small blog, and because it's not making a profit.  But you never know.  Just in case, I want to be buried in my orange Rhinebeck sweater.

I despise a bully, and although I understand why Ravelry feels it must comply with the U.S. Olympic Committee's "cease and desist" letter, I think there are far deeper issues involved than copyright infringement.  Ravelry itself is a for-profit corporation, yes... but it's also a social networking platform, and its 2 million members should be viewed as private individuals with the rights to free speech and free association that all Americans enjoy.  The Ravelympics is an all-volunteer effort, run by ordinary members of Ravelry and not by its employees.  So for the USOC to dictate what private citizens can call their own hobbies and groups really does ring a lot of free speech bells for me.  And if you're not a knitter, consider what might happen if you invited a lot of friends to come to your house for a party to watch the Olympics... and you used the Facebook platform to do it.  Or your email program.  Or your cell phone.  Would the USOC go after these corporations because you used them to infringe on their copyright?  And if not, is it just because those are big corporations, and Ravelry is small (in profit, not membership)?  Then shame on the USOC, because that's the very definition of a bully.

The internet is still in its Wild West phase, and the rules are unclear.  But I don't think the legal department of a for-profit corporation that is turning a tidy profit exploiting the efforts of amateur athletes (well, they used to be anyway) to market them to TV viewers should be the one to set the rules.  This is what the term "crony capitalism" means, and it's not pretty.  Now, I know better than most that knitters are all over the map politically.  I myself am a proud conservative Republican, and I like free enterprise, and I like businesses to be able to turn a profit as long as they do it honestly (which I think they do, most of the time).  Where there's real copyright and trademark infringement, I'd like those things to be sensibly protected.  But I utterly fail to see the business sense in alienating a large group of potential customers, some of whom have been eagerly looking forward to the games.  It's like winning the trademark battle and losing the fan base that made the trademark worth something.

The ironic thing, of course, is that 5 days ago most knitters didn't think one way or the other about the USOC.  They were generally positive about the Olympics and many were looking forward to watching the games while working on a project that would be personally challenging to them.  One crazy day turned that all upside down.  Very few knitters are going to be watching with the same spirit of goodwill towards the Olympic organizers and profiteers that they might have had.  It's all left a sour taste in our mouths.  It's so very petty, like the jocks in high school who picked on the artsy kids.

The USOC has created a massive PR problem for itself, and I can't say I feel too sorry for it.  I've watched with a small amount of schadenfreude as the social media have exploded with outrage about this issue over the last few days.  For sure, when the history of social networking is written, the Ravelympics will have its own chapter. 

I'm looking forward to watching the London games and cheering on the athletes who are doing their best to be the best in the world at what they do, but I'll be muting the commercials.  Or, perhaps more to the point, I'll be giving serious thought to whether I want to support the attempt to commercialize excellence.