I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
April 18, 2008 - 12:17 p.m.
I have work to do but I�ll update first. Yes once again I�m making excuses.
Nothing to exciting has happened since my last update. My finite math test went better than the tech math one. It was shorter and easier. One student finished in about 25 minutes. Everyone seemed to be up to the last question in 40 minutes. Yet most people stayed almost the entire 70 minutes. Most of them were wasting their time but one student did change a wrong answer to a right one in the last five minutes.
I might actually finish the curriculum in my tech math class early. I have to check what the optional material is. I never had to use it before. I could just go back and do solving systems of three equations in three unknowns. I usually teach it but skipped it this semester. Things seem to go faster teaching two longer classes a week as opposed to three shorter ones.
The tech math students still object to my giving them the same amount of time I give day students to take a test. They think because their class is longer they should be given more time to do the test but not have more questions. They have no real logic behind this except to say that they feel pressure. These are the same students that object every time I teach them a faster way to do a problem and beg me to let them do problems the slow way they already know.
The Mets beat the Nats in 14 innings last night. They kept leaving men on base and I said to myself they�ll win it on a wild pitch. They actually won it on a hit, a wild pitch, an errant pick-off attempt and another wild pitch. They�ve won three in a row. The back of the rotation starters are doing great and that�s a great sign. Perhaps the fans will start lightening up. They have been booing at every game. They won�t give the team a break at all. You can�t expect the Mets to win every game and you certainly can�t expect them to give up no runs all season yet that is how the fans are acting. Yes last season�s collapse was disheartening but it doesn�t change baseball. It is a long season. Your team is going to have win and lose, have high points and low. You have to learn to expect that.
Somebody died at the game on Tuesday. He tried to slide down an escalator, lost his balance and fell off. When I first heard it I assumed it was a kid. It wasn�t. It was a father who had brought his daughters to the game. That makes it doubly tragic and what he did doubly inexplicable.
I don�t have time but I�m going to write this anyway. I�m an elitist and I�m not ashamed of it at all. The problem is that elitist is used in two different ways one of which I would be ashamed of. I don�t think there is a predetermined elite that is entitled to special privileges, I get infuriated at that. The purpose of things like making people wear tennis whites and black tie affairs is to keep out people who are too poor to afford special clothing for each activity. That�s just wrong. So how am I an elitist? I don�t think that everybody is equally capable of doing things and making decisions. There is value in intelligence and education. So I don�t think the laymen should be doing things like determining school curricula any more than they should be performing brain surgery. The conservative movement has successfully confounded these two types of elitism. They portray being educated, cosmopolitan, and intellectual as being elitist while portraying someone from the country club set that has no dealings or compassion for the middle class, let alone the poor, as a regular guy if he eats pork rinds and watches Nascar.
The great thing about representative democracy is that it gives the power to everyone but ideally would have the elite in terms of ability and judgment running the government. The problem with aristocracy (government of the best people) are twofold. First who determines who are the best people? Historically it has been based on family and or wealth, that is not ability and judgment. Secondly even if there were an objective way of determining who was the best once they were beholden to everyone else they would be corrupted by power. They would have no incentive to look out for the interest of anyone but themselves. When our government is dysfunctional is so often because elections are determined so much by who has the most money which leaves the candidates beholden to their paymasters, not the people.
Enough lecturing. I have to grade papers and find a good kosher bakery today. Last year I didn�t bring anything to the Seder because I discovered that Adrian�s, the best kosher bakery had closed at the last minute. I�m not sure if Lewis and Sylvia will let me in the house if I don�t bring something good this year. Damn, I just realized I should have gone to Russ and Daughters yesterday to pick up some halvah. That should be kosher for Passover. I could be wrong about that. Do any of my readers know?
One more thing; I took a picture of me in my new duds. How do you like the way I look in black? Am I a ninja? I wish I didn�t look so wooden in the photos I take with a timer. I just can�t get myself into a natural posture when I try it.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
creative commons
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile April 18, 2008
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