Excuses, excuses

Why I haven’t gotten much written lately: Miles Benjamin Roberts. Striking resemblance to his grandfather, yes?

Tell me what it is exactly about these small creatures with the wise, bright eyes that so completely capture one’s heart on the first touch? How do they get that commitment that no effort is too great, no cost too high, no sacrifice too hard to protect and nourish such a little soul?

I want to say to everyone, please make the world a nicer place for my grandchildren and yours. One little smile (possibly gas) and Miles has a grandfather who would move the world for him.

Stray Sunday Thoughts

Every once in a while you time your weekends right. Yesterday was a glorious fall day, and I spent it cleaning the house, doing laundry, mowing the lawn (Hey, grass, it’s fall already, stop growing!), and finishing two books from the comfort of the porch. Today, cool and cloudy, is get down to business day – writing a “serious” paper for an upcoming conference in Singapore, sharpening my presentations for the AASL conference in Pittsburg, and continuing to edit the program for the MEMO conference. Weekends, you got to love them.

Weekend blogging should be free from the normal restraints of professionalism. So just a few random thoughts…

1. You have to love the power of satire. If you’ve not seen the Pastafarian website, take a look. The creator of the site is asking that schools give equal time in their science curriculum to his church’s belief that the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster and that global warming can be directly correlated to the decline in the number of pirates (graph included). A worthy descendant to Swift and his A Modest Proposal.


2. Another very funny, very irreverent satirist is Bill Maher, and I just finished his book New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer. I would caution that most of his thoughts are not terribly polite, and if you have a particular fondness for the Catholic Church, George Bush or mass media celebrities, you will not care for much of what he opines. But for the rest of us, he’s just about as funny as it gets. Oh, I’d probably not buy this for my school library.

3. As a guy gets older, he spends more time reflecting on what he has and hasn’t done with his life. The number of condom dispensers one finds in gas station men’s rooms has increasingly upset me. I see these machines and wonder why I’ve never had the sort of love life that’s required a fast lurch to SuperAmerica and a desperate fumble for quarters. Sometimes it just seems that everyone in the world must be leading a much more spontaneous life that you are.

4. I am now about 40 pages into Ray Kurzweil’s latest book The Singularity is Near, an optimistic tome about the time humanity and machinery evolve into a single piece of work – supposedly just after technology gets smart enough to start inventing itself. I’m sorry, Ray, this stuff still scares me silly. I keep thinking of the evil Core from Dan Simmon’s Hyperion/Endymion series. Compassion from a computer program seems about as likely as compassion from… well, there is no need to get political here.

5. My cousin Dave was once found in the attic eating mothballs. After having his stomach pumped, his mom asked him why he ate them since they couldn’t have tasted very good. His reply, “I thought they were marshmallows and I’d get to a good one sooner or later.” I think about Cousin Dave’s philosophy now and again when I’ve spent too much time waiting for a book or movie “to get good.” Life’s too short to wait for anything to “get good.”

That’s it. Off to write about “The Knowledge Worker Redux” – whatever that means. Happy weekend.

Turtles, Turtles, Turtles, All the Way Down

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Ah, yes, madame, the scientist replies, but what does the turtle rest on? The old lady shoots back: You can’t trick me, young man. It’s nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down. - George Will

When I was teaching in the ARAMCO schools in Saudi, I was told the story about a plane crash in the early days of oil exploration. On learning of the accident, the oil company asked King Saud if it could go and examine the crash site to see if it could determine its cause. King Saud denied the request, simply stating it was the will of Allah. “We agree,” said the oil company employee. “We just want to see how Allah did it.”

I was reminded of this story while listening to the speaker at last night’s Minnesota Coalition For Intellectual Freedom dinner. Our guest was Lisa Westberg Peters, the author of the children’s book Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story. She related how a number of (suburban) Minneapolis area schools have cancelled her author talks, citing fears of parental reaction to her work. A damn sad state of affairs in Minnesota, a state that has always prided itself on its intellect. Or as Garrison Keillor puts it, “..people (in Minnesota) avoid stupidity when possible, not wanting to be a $10 haircut on a 50 cent head.” (Another sad sign was the turn out of only 38 people at last night’s dinner.)

Personally, I have absolutely no problem with the teaching of either evolution or intelligent design (or the theory of Intelligent Falling, for that matter.) in the public schools, so long as evolution is taught in the science classroom and intelligent design is taught in the comparative religion classes or in social studies units looking at current controversies. The mission of the public school educator is not to create belief in any one system, but to give children the tools to formulate their own beliefs. And in order for this to happen, of course, kids need access to lots of points of views on lots of different issues and a method for analyzing the credibility, reliability, and potential bias of those advancing a view.

Librarians (or at least those with backbones) have long upheld the principles of intellectual freedom, but we need to do a better job teaching the rest of the educational community (including techies) about IF’s sometimes difficult precepts. And that kids who are thinkers, not believers, should be the product of our schools.

Oh, the inscription from Lisa Peters in the copy of her book I bought for my grandson reads, “Paul, Thank God you’ve evolved since your grandfather. – Lisa.”

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1 Comment »
An embattled author with a good sense of humor! How refreshing and hopeful, Sara

Comment by Sara — September 29, 2005 @ 8:09 pm