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 ...
2002-08-22 - 12:30 a.m.
Con Ed is working on a gas line down the middle of my block. They put up barriers to keep the traffic away from where they are working. At the end of the day they put the barriers up against the curb on my side of the street. This means I have to move them in order to park my car. There are no houses across the street and if they put them there they wouldn�t be inconveniencing anyone. This morning I asked to foreman if they could place them across the street at the end of the day. He wouldn�t do it. Tonight when I got home he placed almost all the barriers for the street in front of my house. I emailed my city councilman and asked him to help. This is the kind of thing the councilmen are usually good at. I�ll see if it works.
I am being really productive tonight. I wrote my councilman, talked to Carey, and now I�m preparing props to bring to the DVN show tomorrow. If you are going to be there bring a towel. I�ll explain why at the show.
I�m pulling another idea out of the archives tonight, Lies My Teacher Told Me. This has been a book or article idea of mine since grad school. We always see articles that list stupid things that students have said. This is the same idea but it�s stupid things that teachers have said to their students. I was disappointed to find out a few years ago that there is a book by that title. It is not the same thing though. It really is just an exercise in political correctness. It criticizes the school curricula in history and social studies. I�m writing about the blunders that individual teachers have made and in most cases won�t own up to. Some of these were my teachers; more were stories that people told me. If you have any good stories of your own please post them on my notes .
I was one of the guinea pigs in the teaching of the new math. We did lots of set theory in the early grades. When explaining infinity my teacher said that the number of grains of sand at the beach was infinite since you couldn�t count them. Of course this is nonsense. Given time you could get an exact count and it is no trick to estimate the number of grains. Archimedes used this as an example of something that wasn�t infinite and showed how to put an upper bound on the number of grains of sand in the universe. He had to invent a new nomenclature to do so, the largest number used in ancient Greece was the myriad, which equals 10,000.
In 11th grade my English teacher said that Jabberwocky was from Alice in Wonderland. I raised my hand and reminded her that it was actually from Through the Looking Glass. Instead of admitting that she made an understandable mix up she told the class that Through the Looking Glass was part of Alice in Wonderland. It is the sequel written years afterwards. I�m a big Lewis Carroll fan and I really had to restrain myself from making a scene then.
Lewis Carroll brought on a stupid remark from another English Teacher. She said that Cheshire meant smiling and that is why it was called the Cheshire cat. She then implied we were all stupid for not knowing that. I have never heard of this anyplace else. Have any of you?
My friend Frank�s teacher taught him that it is hotter in the summer because the earth is closer to the sun then. In reality the earth is closest to the sun in January, the middle of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. If the teacher is that ignorant why was he trying to teach the topic?
Bad Carey and his brother had more than their share of bad teachers. One HS math teacher had this question on a test: True or false, Pi is a nonrepeating, nonterminating decimal in our number system. As anyone who knows anything about math knows the answer is true. The teacher said the answer was false. Pi was nonrepeating, it was nonterminating, but it wasn�t in our number system. I don�t know what number system he used, but it�s in the number system that the rest of the world uses. This same teacher at another time said that pi exactly equaled 22/7. If that were true it would be repeating. Pi is an irrational number, which means it doesn�t equal any fraction.
Lauren�s driver�s ed teacher said that potholes formed because water expanded when it melted. the opposite is true; water expands when it freezes which is why it makes potholes. The solid ice takes up more room than the liquid water so it enlarges the cavity the water was in. When she pointed this out to the teacher he said, �Don�t argue with me, I�m a junior high school science teacher.� Years later when she told us the story Bad Carey came up with the perfect come back, �Ah, that explains it. �
One more, this one is from Hebrew School so I�m not sure if it belongs. I mean I also learned that the earth was created in six days less than six thousand years ago there. This one was a doozy though. God ordered King Saul to kill all the Amelikites down to the last child. Saul sinned by sparing the children. The teacher explained that God wasn�t being cruel that he could see that in the end killing them all was for the best. She then added that the decedents of the spared Amelikites included Haman and Hitler. This was too much for me. How could anyone trace Hitler�s ancestry back to the Amelikites? I recently learned that the Haman part was not her own invention but part of the oral tradition.
The thing that bothers me the most is when the teacher arrogantly refuses to admit the possibility of error. They so often try to make the student feel stupid when he or she disagrees.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
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 2002-08-22
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