Musings of an Old Fool

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The death of Johnny

A dichotomous existence, a hypocrite's lie.

A double entente to every step forth.

Youth filled with illusion always masking the dark.

Live by the Book and die from deception.

Openly closed, too inquisitive in private.

Wide-eyed with apparent wonder,

Privately relishing forbidden knowledge.

How far back did this juxtaposition go?

Always so, or with some finite beginning?

Odd that the answer remains so elusive.

Always the selfish, self-serving approach.

Never a moment's remorse truly felt.

A new life path taken, new people approached.

A new brotherhood, new lease on his soul.

What would Johnny make of the new?

In the refreshing new environ he grew.

Considered alternatives to a lifetime of habits.

Improved upon the good, diminished the bad.

Work, achievement, leadership, faith

Loyalty, brotherhood, all manhood refined.

In this new bliss, hubris emerged.

Selfishness transformed, hiding , cloaked.

Desiring to experience things thought undeserved,

Sought out experiences, indulgences, love.

Found what he wanted, a fool's bargain was made.

Promised what he did not know,

Offered what was not his to give.

Sought what was not his to keep.

Enjoyed what was not his to have.

Mourned what was never his at all.

In selfish pettiness, lashed out at the Potter.

Gave in to the anger, hurt, and revenge.

Found solace in work, indulgences, and misdeeds.

Desired and obtained control,

Discovered knowledge that has a Janus face.

Throughout this rebellion, work flourished and grew;

A seed being planted, importance yet unknown.

Health in a crisis, a free fall almost.

Blind and foolish continued, resisting remorse.

Lucrative life, engrossing life's work.

Yet no work, money, or indulgence can fill

A void created by a dearth of true purpose.

Johnny resisted this encroaching knowledge.

Pushed back did the Potter, unrelenting and steady.

The Potter finally destroying the malformed vessel.

Healthy life a distant memory.

Hope for a future a fading idealism.

Plans for tomorrow on permanent hiatus.

Work split into the fulfilling and intolerable.

A breaking point finally reached.

Johnny finally realized what had to be done

He could not continue on the failing path.

He could not invest in a failing life.

He must choose whether to live this life.

Or give in to the Potter's unrelenting wheel.

A difficult decision, and yet inevitable.

Johnny knew he must die.

Tentatively set forth on this task most grim.

Not even knowing fully how to begin,

Not knowing where it would end.

Slowly but surely, a past life dismantled.

Attitudes shifted, priorities reoriented.

As health further dwindled, a soul rekindled.

The date is unknown, but the act is certain.

Finally the day arrived - the day Johnny died.

Yet from the cinders of all that was once

Began to emerge a new life's direction.

Within a life devoid of the promise of health,

The new man was born in fits and starts,

Emerging slowly from the miasma of old.

In the vacuum of certainty,

New affirmations discovered.

In the absence of prior largesses,

New passions emerged.

A new person, a new man, the Potter's next try.

Already the new man has experienced more:

More love, joy, peace, and satisfaction

Than his predecessor ever could know.

The new man discovered true agape love,

A possibility the old had barely grasped.

The new work, refreshing and satisfying,

Providing an avenue for previous wiles;

Allowing the positive to grow from old habits.

Planting the seeds of thought

Spreading the hope that stems from clarity.

Though it took the death of Johnny,

In health made a Shrodinger's cat of the new man's life,

The Potter's decisions, though painful and troubling,

clearly seen throughout gossamer threads of causality.

The Potter begins on a new vessel.

No promise of perfection, longevity, or success,

Always the potential for the wheel's cycle again,

Yet found thankful for the Potter's steady hand.

Dear Potter, the new man does wonder

Will the new vessel work any better than the last?

All this new joy and all this new wonder,

Did come at a price, steep yet estimable…

Though the new man may balk at paying it anew;

He knows he would again, should the Potter thus call,

Just like the day Johnny died.

Thoughts on the current state of education

After the sadness induced by the following comic on PhComics -

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd102008s.gif

- I posted the following thoughts on two of Scott Adam's thought experiments from his daily blog:

First, on a post he made on Education Rankings,

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/education_ranking/

I would have to strongly agree with many of the people making the point about critical thinking. As a Ph.D. candidate in engineering, just because my math and science skills have been more "important" to the coursework does not mean that the time I spent studying literature, history, political science, etc. were completely pointless. Rather, this entire process was meant to generate an individual who was more capable of critically evaluating concepts and new ideas, hopefully becoming a more productive member of society. I would argue that the level of science and mathematics expected from a High School student, or even most general university-level degrees will not make rocket scientists out of our students (pardon the pun). Instead, when applied correctly, these courses will contribute as much as literature, rhetoric, history, etc to generating a cogent, balanced, useful citizen. What we have today is a sad dearth of thinking citizenry, most so lazy they'd rather let a talking head on the television or favorite blog make the decisions for them.

I answered a similar question on LinkedIn about the Texas SAT scores, regarding why the scores continued to slip even though spending had dramatically increased (~40%). I believe the answer also applies well to the post you made here:

-----------------

Several great points have been made here already by the other posters.

First on my list has got to be the level of teaching that goes on at home, and how involved parents are in the educational process. We cannot expect to simply drop off our children and have them come back to us well educated. Education is an ongoing, immersive, total experience that continues throughout a person's life - and to a much larger degree during the formative years. If there is a lack of interest in learning, education, or advancement in the home, we can hardly expect our students to develop these interests on their own. The value that parents place on a good education is often reflected in the attitudes of the students themselves. Obviously there can be extremes that are counter-productive, but those are difficult to be rid of in any case. We need to bring the average parental involvement and interest UP.

Second, we have developed a culture that relies too much on "feeling good about ourselves", while completely ignoring the fact that EARNING the accomplishment is a huge reward in and of itself. We have way too many parents howling that their little special one didn't score top marks, when those marks were simply not earned. Teachers get put under tremendous pressure to make everyone appear to be the same honor-roll success story, or pass a certain exam (the "teaching the test" argument), and are left powerless to truly educate our children in a broader "critical thinker" sense.

Third, we have become a culture that has an attention span of about 12 second (hyperbole, but close enough). If we don't present something with immersive and constant pizazz, it must not be worth the attention. Unfortunately, many of the accomplishments in education require HARD WORK. Now, teachers may find creative ways to make the hard work seem more interesting, but we can never make it easy. It is the process of working for it and achieving that is a huge part of generating a successful student.

We culturally find it very difficult these days to make people work hard, and then face the cold reality that they may not have been as successful as another. I don't believe in "bell curves", but without the accomplishment of a superior grade and achievement meaning something, we sap the incentive for students to pursue these achievements with all the hard work and determination that they actually take. The emerging movement to change the color of a teacher's pen so that the students are less "emotionally affected" when they get corrected is still a bizarre concept to me. What the students should be working towards is reducing the number of these marks by improving their work, not worrying about whether they feel depressed about the color on the page.

If we do not wake up to the fact that we need to generate adults who can think critically rather than simply regurgitate prepackaged answers on a multiple choice exam, we will find ourselves in an intellectual recession that may be difficult or impossible to reverse. This is only anecdotal to me when I have taught courses, but the classical "word problem" lack of capacity in our students seems to come across loud and clear. If I present a question that simply requires multiple choice, fill in the blank, or a purely mathematical solution, many of my students do well. But if I present the problem as a real-world example from which they need to extract relevant information, discard the irrelevant, make assumptions, and explain their reasoning, I am almost always sorely disappointed. This kind of thinking and reasoning ability is absolutely essential in all walks of life, and yet we are producing answer machines rather than thinkers.

------------------------------------------

Second, on the follow-up post he made regarding practical education:

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/unlearned_skills/

After reading this follow-up post of yours, Scott, I do have an addendum to my comments on education I made to your previous post - having a teacher who is closely connected to the students, and able to make the topics relevant is extremely important. I owe my engineering career to a very timely intervention by just the right teachers at just the right times. One example: right about when math was becoming too abstract and pointless to me (trig in high school), a teacher spotted my growing frustration and helped me see how trig could describe many things in the world around me - vibrations, signals, etc., etc. It didn't take much of this "practical" approach to make the whole subject relevant to me again. We were able to continue studying the abstract concept, but the few relevant examples were supremely important in making the subject both palatable and meaningful.

In my own teaching, I find the hands-on application of knowledge to be an absolute necessity, usually in the form of some project that extends beyond a simple homework assignment. It is difficult to motivate students to do the extra work these days, but I believe that when they do, the benefits are immense. Real-world application of theoretical abstracts are some of the best ways to cement concepts in the mind of a student. One of the additional benefits of real-world applications is the harsh reality that there are real problems and unexpected Murphy intrusions to anything that is attempted. No matter the subject they are working on, they will have to draw from more than one knowledge area to be successful.

It is not enough to generate critical thinkers, but we must be able to generate purposeful, intelligent, and cognizant people able to operate in the real world. "Ivory tower"-type critical thinking skills without the link to practicality are much less important to me. Throughout my engineering career and education I have discovered that the teachers I enjoyed the most and learned the most from were teachers that had gone through career evolutions that involved non-academic jobs at some point in their post-baccalaureate careers. The vast difference in having a teacher that could relate the abstract to a real-world problem, an on-the-job experience, or an interesting example versus one that had never left the comfortable confines of the education environment was impressive enough to encourage me to work in the "real world" for a few years before pursuing my Ph.D. and teaching goals. One additional example: when our engineering project management course was taught, the teacher spent a week discussing mortgages and loans, explaining how we needed to take our applied economics and be able to use it not only in engineering business decisions, but also in our own personal lives and finances. The tips and knowledge gained there were extremely $$$ valuable $$$ when I negotiated my first new car and home loans.

I reiterate my previous post's assertion, however, that we cannot take the hard work and abstraction completely out of the education equation. An integral part of learning is to learn how to deal with complex abstractions, and you cannot have a complete educational process that focuses solely on a "practical-based approach". Learning and achievement are meant to be difficult - students have to push and stretch to reach goals that are unreachable without the appropriate effort.

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As an addendum after many people commented it was not only a teaching problem:

Parental involvement is a MUST. Without parents interested in their children learning, the children are left to muddle through life on their own and are at the mercy of the unionized bad-teacher-retaining education system. I did not learn to read in school, I learned to read at home.

When I was 2-1/2 years old, my baby brother was born. For the first 6-9 months of my brother's life, my mother would put him down for a nap, and then to keep me quiet would read to me for an hour or two. Always the teacher, my mother would run her fingers along under the words she was reading, drawing my eye's attention to the words she was saying.

After the first many months, I had memorized entire books of my favorite stories that I made my poor and Mother Theresa-esque patient mother read over and over again. However, a few MORE months of this, and I found myself reading along. Granted, very simple children's books, but still...reading. By the time I reached the "sound it out" phase in school, I was reading my favorite stories on my own. That early love of reading is something that has never left me, and contributed greatly to my long-term education.

Really interesting talk by a linguist, and why our kids are growing dumber

This is really worth listening to, especially with the discussions it may spark. I am not often interested by the folks in the Humanities/Anthropology/Linguistics, etc, community, but this was really worth a second look.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html

This is just a cool and interesting piece of visualization work, and a new and interesting way to look at such a complex piece of writing…believe it or not, I got the link from having the first image on the page be an award winner in this week's Science journal which had the best images competition for 2008:

http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/index.html

Have a great week!

PhD Comics' Salary Chart

This reflects the real priorities in today's institutions of higher learning. Sigh.

Engage geekiness maximizing function

Engaged.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/impostor.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/zealous_autoconfig.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/math_paper.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/convincing_pickup_line.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/large_hadron_collider.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/unscientific.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nightmares.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/journal.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/slides.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nerd_sniping.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/couple.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/network.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/success.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ballmer_peak.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dating_pools.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/floor_tiles.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/misusing_slang.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/substitute.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/centrifugal_force.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/useless.jpg

Our plans are not our own

No matter how many times I say it, it never ceases to surprise me how much our plans are not our own.

Tonight I should have been on my way to the border to begin a trip to a research hospital. The doctors finally decided my case was strange enough that they would take me and see if they can find a root cause or how to fix the teetering three-legged stool problem (see earlier blogs).

However, at the last minute, with my bags already packed (mostly, at least), they canceled my appointment and moved it to the end of the month. While this means that I will have to wait yet another month before possibly catching a glimpse of what can be done to straighten me out, it also comes at a time when I actually needed to stay behind in order to take care of a variety of issues that cropped up here. I was going to be absolutely unable to take care of those issues because missing the appointment at the research hospital was not an option.

I think it is also giving my poor parents a little bit of a break. My sister was involved in a car accident, and she is going to have to undergo a long time of physical therapy to ensure that the damage to her neck does not lead to permanent nerve damage. For many of you this is now old news, for those of you that didn't know this, I'm sorry it seems so cavalierly put. I assure you it's not, it has been something at the forefront of all of our minds. However, my parents were wondering how they were going to manage the church, the school, the school for the deaf, a daughter in rehabilitation, and a son in the hospital - with the two medical issues being about 3 hours apart from each other.

Needless to say, my parents were already under a lot of strain, and this will give them an opportunity to handle one of these issues at a time. It was unexpected, but at the same time, just what we actually needed.

From my first blog ever, about a year ago, until today...you, my friends, have been told of some of these happenings in my life - and yet, it continues to amaze me how things happen as they should (at least in 20-20 hindsight, that is. ;-) ).

This week has been filled with a variety of other random events.

-I have managed to put to peace a long and unduly sad chapter in my life. It is interesting how such small things as a few simple words can make a big difference.

-I have regained a bit more mobility in the hand that underwent surgery, enabling me to type longer. Hopefully this will help more as the dissertation really gets underway. :-)

-I got to listen to an amazing speaker who came to inspire the undergraduates, but left me grateful as well. Many......ALL...of the points I usually try to make in class to the younglings were in his presentation. In him, I got the chance to see the possibilities of a life spent teaching and pursuing those very principles. I am grateful for the opportunity to have met this man, and encouraged by the positive impact that this focus CAN have. In a way, I feel it is a potential foreshadowing of what "could" be. Even if I never live long enough to see it, at least I know the path is not a desolate or worse...wrong...one.

-I have kicked more younglings out of the proverbial nest that teaching grants us, and hope to see them fly.

-I was able to begin the process of clarification and hopefully growth with a long time friend and sometime roommate.

-I have been able to share how much I was impacted by the friendship and love of a single wonderful person, though it's been more than a year since we've been face-to-face. A different me emerged from that friendship, and it's always wonderful to remember such exquisite though sadly rare joys in life.

-I have been able to share some of my life's story with a peer, to encourage this person in their own budding teaching, and seen success come of this.

-I have been able to remind those I care about of how much I love them, and look forward to as many chances as I can, but am grateful for any I've gotten.

-I have been able to share some of my old writing with my parents, to whom I am continually grateful.

-I was given another chance to share my thoughts with you, my friends. God bless you all...thank you for helping make me...ME.

Health Update

So, the results of the food experiments are finally back from the doctor.

I'm less than thrilled.

The food and ingredients were changed every day, with major changes tracked.

Long and the short of it is, there were two major groups that were identified to cause me harm.

1) Fresh fruits/vegetables, including salads.

2) Things with gluten.

I'm going to have to start supplementing my diet with vitamins and supplements, because there's no way my allowed foods will give me the necessary nutritional value (according to the doc).

I feel a little melodramatic, but it's been a little bit tough to get used to the idea. I have been wondering for the past couple of days how many different things I can make from rice, potato, dairy, and meat. Vegetables were what gave my dishes and cooking variety.

I'll eventually get used to it, I'm sure, but it has been interesting as an idea to get used to.

At the moment it seems more abstract, because I have not yet experienced the truly painful and devastating symptoms of destroying my gut with these foods, but it's coming. So, like a diabetic on strict sugar control, I can still enjoy small amounts of the above mentioned verboten, but each time is simply one time closer to the last time I'll be able to do so without serious complications.

So, as it stands, here is what we know about my health:

1) I have an insulin resistance that is so severe, none of my doctors have ever seen insulin numbers like that. The insulin in my body is literally at toxic levels, and yet I survive it every day. However, it has ballooned me in size to 200% of my freshman days. The only medication on the market for the condition has recently been taken off the market. No medication is available. Without surgical solutions (that is, finding a tumor that could be operated), there is likely no solution in sight.

2) I cannot sleep without a breathing-assistance machine. After reviewing a sleep study, it was determined that I ran the risk of a heart attack every night that I spent without it, with a heart rate of over 220 and a blood oxygenation of less than 35% (90% being low-healthy). The doctor believed it could have been up to two or three years before the machine since I'd had normal REM cycles and rest. So now I depend on a small box to keep me alive every night.

3) I can no longer eat fresh fruits or vegetables. In fact, cooked vegetables need to be kept to a minimum.

4) I can no longer eat products that were in any way associated with wheat - which makes me sympathize greatly with my Celiac friends who have for a long time discovered how hard it is to shop gluten-free.

5) The doctors don't know how related they are, but they suspect autoimmune degenerative diseases in my gastrointestinal tract and in my musculoskeletal system - to the point where I am unable to use my hands to the same extent I could a year ago. Steroids form a large number of the treatments available, and yet are counterindicated for the insulin problem.

6) My thyroid is suspected to be malfunctioning. So far, one lobe has shut down, and the rest of the organ is growing larger to compensate. Doctor is afraid to start me on thyroid medication without extensive additional tests - afraid of tipping the balance and causing me a heart attack.

7) My blood is so acid that when it's normal it's off the charts, and when I have a gouty ureoarthritis condition I can have more than double normal values. I have grown allergic to all the types of medication for controlling this uric acid. I've had to control it with diet for years, but that included lowering my meat intake and replacing it with vegetables. That plan is currently in jeopardy (see 3 and 4). If we don't find a workaround, I may slip back into the having mobility-impeding incidents a couple of times a month instead of a few a year.

Any more discoveries will be put on hold for awhile until I can get myself checked into the research hospital and be poked and prodded by a research team.

Needless to say, I've had to go back and read my OWN previous writing exercises here to pep myself back up. With the list as it stands, I don't know why this food thing has seemed so much heavier than the other things, but it has been.

All you prayers are greatly appreciated...I take comfort in them, and in the friendship you all extend to me.

I know I am a blessed person, and that many others have much more difficult trials, but on those bad days its good to know that there are people who care and we can count on. Thank you for giving that to me.

Gluten, produce, sierra, and 41er's

This is a random catch-all...Well, things are indeed progressing as the doc suspected - and I admit that this is much to my dismay.

Now that I have had many days of gluten- and fresh fruit/veggie-free foods, going back and experimenting with these foods has produced sharply more acute responses. Not necessarily unexpected if I was growing unable to deal with these foodstuffs, simply a disappointing confirmation that this is a new reality to be dealt with.

Gluten-rich pastas have become my 1 enemy. 29 hours on, I'm still paying for that last encounter.

I spent a good time on the phone with my father today, reminiscing about the good life lessons learned from visiting the sierra villages, and remembering what truly thankful people look like (not me, but I have been blessed to know people who ARE).

It was a refreshing walk down memory lane, and a reminder that there are rich experiences to mine for comfort and support...thanks mostly to the dedicated parents I had.

This has been an especially difficult week, because for the first time in 12 annual events for freshmen orientation, I have been unable due to these health complications to participate. This event is one of my favorite times of the year - inducing new brothers into this life-shaping experience as they embark on their college careers.

It's sad how it takes missing something to realize just how important it is to you and to your own personal morale. Some of the most uplifting times I've had in my adult life have been with those brothers, and I wish this new crop of brothers a wonderful beginning to this new year.

I hope to meet with you 41ers soon, and share some wonderful memories as we begin a new year. Until then, you are in my fond memories and prayers...Once a 41er...always a 41er! ~Nacho

Musical accompaniment to the randomness:

Brother
Through the Glass
My Friend of Misery
Duality
Me Inside
Stone Cold Crazy
Snuff
Outlaw Torn
Frantic

More late-night musings - Writings of a Teacher

Current mood: tired

Below are words written thousands of years ago by a man called Teacher, said to be the wisest human ever to grace this earth. Amazing how human experiences don't really change over the millenia...the only things that change are the actors playing the characters in this play of life. Of course, there is much more text than this, but this is a good nutshell.

Basically, he reminds us that without enjoying the EVERYDAY ASPECTS of life - simply being satisfied with your life, with your work, and throwing yourself into it with cheerful passion, then the rest of life is simply pointless. Our joy comes from the everyday...or not at all. Time and cruel chance can validate OR undo a lifetime worth of work - and if we were not happy in the everyday, well, we'll find ourselves with a pretty meaningless ending.

The serendipity of recalling these words is awesome...I needed an attitude booster shot...as I sit here 50% sure that tomorrow will be an episode where I'm unable to walk (I can feel the pain starting to shoot up the foot, and it may be gone when I awake, or render me immobile) and added to the rough week I just had with the dietary experiment, which was nothing but an exhausting series of bewildering failure after another. So far I know that eating...wheat, wheat derivatives, anything that ever looked at a wheat product, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables (salads included), fruit juice, and certain ways of preparing starches like rice and potato...are all sure-fire ways to have an exhausting and bad day. Not the results I was looking for from this past week.

But, it's easy to get bogged down in the morass of self-doubt. Trust me, I know from many days of personal experience...and these words were a great reminder that I enjoy my life now immensely compared to only a few years ago. I can honestly say that other than the time I lived in the dorms with such a great group of guys, this has been some of the most personally satisfying work and time in my life.

And it took beating me upside the head with my own health for me to force myself to take the time out and give this whole teaching/academia thing a chance in the first place...so, regardless of the circumstances, I resolve to eat, drink, and be merry in the work I have before me, for outside of that and the love of those around you, there is no true meaning in daily life.

And now, the words:

"So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him.

All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, ...

As it is with the good man,

so with the sinner;

as it is with those who take oaths,

so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead...

For the living know that they will die,

but the dead know nothing;

they have no further reward,

and even the memory of them is forgotten.

Their love, their hate

and their jealousy have long since vanished;

never again will they have a part

in anything that happens under the sun.

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do...

Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

I have seen something else under the sun:

The race is not to the swift

or the battle to the strong,

nor does food come to the wise

or wealth to the brilliant

or favor to the learned;

but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:

As fish are caught in a cruel net,

or birds are taken in a snare,

so men are trapped by evil times

that fall unexpectedly upon them."

Songs keeping me company during such late night musings –

'The Nobodies'

'Hurt'

'Ugly'

'Thorn Within'

'Nothing Else Matters'

'Mi Soledad y Yo'

The Weather Underground (or how I realized I AM South Park's hippie-blasting Cartman)

Current mood: annoyed

I just got done watching the Weather Underground documentary (2002-2003). I would certainly recommend watching it. It's not a documentary in the sense that there is an overbearing narrator, but rather, mostly the "veterans" of that group talking about themselves and what they did back in the day.

I knew I always disliked smelly hippies, but I never knew how much like Cartman I really am. Oh my God do I dislike smelly hippies...Cartman's actions are the fantasy of my psyche playing out when it comes to them, especially after watching these kooks. However, as opposed to the Weather psychos, I at least simply chuckle at this fantasy in a cartoon rather than seek out these people who are so offensive to me and plant bombs.

What freaks me out is that these guys are merely the militant ones that got themselves in trouble. But the thousands and even millions of people that thought much like these guys did before the group splintered into it's crazy "revolution", have now all grown up and are the "respected community members" in our society - many without having grown up out of these angsty teenager attitudes.

It's endemic to the country, and it's all a bunch of over-idealized children who wanted to have a rose-colored world where we all hug each other with flowers in our hair, without recognizing the truly permeating truth about humanity: it's a rotting corpse of selfish horror and greed that will never, never, NEVER function the way they envisioned it could. Not that I'm glad it's that way...it's actually a sad and depressing thought...but mankind will never simply be "good" to each other. Strength will always be needed, and authority will always be necessary to be exerted. The human social animal requires a structured society. Even in the deepest, darkest, wildest jungle where humanity has established itself in isolated tribes, social STRUCTURES, with RULES, PUNISHMENTS, and SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS have emerged. It is a necessary thing to deal with this crazy creature called man. It's when the rules prevent us from doing something we want that we explode at how horrible this system must be. Like a petulant child denied a box of candy, wailing and weeping, and gnashing of teeth ensues.

That ideology is as crazy and dangerous as the emerging terrorist ideology of the recent decades - the one that says if the world does not think like we do, we will force it to change and accept us, and then conform to us. These are children who always resented authority, and never learned to grow up. Now, I am fair in my accusations - I no more like the emerging Pat Robertsons of this world that would like to do the same to the planet, only substitute "Jesus" for "Allah" in many of the terrorist ideology handbooks. It's when we seek to mold society to fit OUR selfish and INDIVIDUAL wants, goals, and desires, that we can end up in a dangerous location.

Want to make a TRUE difference? Bring education to those in your country. Reach out to the poor and the needy. And, if you must, proselytize your beliefs. For, if enough people think like you, then the government will eventually begin to shift in your direction. But don't take shortcuts. Change rarely happens overnight - and these "revolutionaries" are merely people who are too impatient to allow change to occur without the violence and upheaval. Impatient, impertinent little children who must see the world work the way THEY want it...and see it NOW, or dammit they will do something "revolutionary" about it.

To the patient and the persevering will go the spoils of ideology. Or to those with enough crushing might to fully stamp out the opposing viewpoint (I'll grant that point ahead of time. :-) ).

Wow...I haven't let out a diatribe/rant like that in a while. Phew, felt good. Glad few people read this, or the interminable flames and trolling would commence, as there are few people in this world willing to have a discussion - instead, everyone must try to "convince" you and "win" an argument rather than simply discuss the issues in a level-headed way.

I admit to sometimes slipping into that category myself. It IS after all, grotesquely satisfying to take someone's ideology and crush it like a piece of overripe fruit. But, such arguments and tactics rarely lead somewhere useful.

I have been surprised how in Graduate School I have had very few opportunities to have deep, meaningful, level-headed discussions of this kind - as opposed to having them on a weekly basis when I was in my last year of undergrad or in the years I worked. I miss that quite a bit - those were some wonderful people, and I miss them all dearly. Many of my fondest memories are with the SMELLIEST of hippies...but smelly hippies near and dear to my heart, who were willing to simply discuss issues and not get involved in a monkey-poo-flinging session.

When I read this again in a few weeks, I'll probably wonder what came over me to write it. I may even delete it. But at least it's out there for a while, and I feel some catharsis. :-)

Music that accompanied the diatribe:

Prince Charming
I Stand Alone
Divide
Wait and Bleed
Robot Love
Execute
Snuff
Nothing Else Matters