Impressions from today:
Claudia Gardner/Jex/Marsden — education not recommended as a profession by educators. Them that can't succeed at teaching move on to administration and law-making. (Rob Marsden). I had just left the driveway on the little Mongoose BMX bike and headed down 9800 So to find Jorge and his family. A CRV passed me, then pulled over and out came Claudia, asking if my bike wasn't too small for me and whether I wouldn't want to use her large bike as she was leaving town for a day or so. "Never say no," right? She recommended two Brackenberry children as possible tutoring needs.
Ed Liebing — Andrus, Hyrum. Pearl of Great Price Commentary... Skousen, Eric (?). In the Beginning.
Bishop Clare and Ed both said that this last year (much longer, really) has been a time of proving, and that God now knows my heart. Ed reminded me that our choice to express joy, love, praise, and gratitude is what keeps us the Lord's. Will I praise and love Him no matter the circumstance, degree of blessing, in sickness or in health. If I have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, can I feel so now?
Zion is a matter of the heart.
Jake Jackson.
Also, 11 policemen were shot at a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally last night, 5 fatally. Another officer was shot when he responded to a 911 call that turned out to be an ambush.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
(apparently) [Un]common wisdom
"As a former criminal, in a time way back when, if the officer had his gun out and said stop, you stopped. And p.s. I don't know where all these "innocent" victims came from, because I spent years in prison and didn't meet one innocent prisoner, not one. Now as an adult with children, I teach them to respect the law and it's officers. I have friends on both sides of the law and am quick to call bullshit if someone tries to say something is unjustified just because some Facebook post says so..."
de labore sub tyrannis
Today I went down to city hall to order trash service. I didn't expect to receive from the experience such condemnatory argumentation against government employment.
But first, a few definitions:
Government — an organization whose providential income stream is effectively ensured, no matter the quality (or disquality) of the services/goods provided, or even the desireability of services/goods provided. An organization whose monopoly is ensured by law. see also "racket"
By extension, government employee is any person working in any organization whose income is assured regardless of the worth or quality of the service provided.
Income — what you get from elsewhere or else-whom; that for which you are dependent upon something other than yourself for obtaining.
(Please note: this is an iron-clad, exceptionless definition, despite seemingly obvious special cases. Let's look at a few. "Income is what I earn." — Thank you. What you once did not have was brought into your possession. Whether you deserved it or earned it means nothing in this regard. "God causes the rain on both the just and the unjust. Is that income?" — Yes, income includes everything that you get possession of that you once had no possession of. The definition is not limited only to our narrow idea of "payments" received after satisfying the requirements of a person or entity who withholds until you perform. Income may be, and, in matter of fact, most often is, free and non-compulsory. Sun, precipitation, air, Granting this, we all may rightly count ourselves among the very rich. Passive, residual income for even the least deserving of us.)
Income may be earned or un-earned, deserved or undeserved, fair or unfair, but it is that which comes from somewhere else. If it already "belonged" to you — if you already had full and free access to it — it would be something different.
It is societally unsustainable and morally reprehensible for one or many sectors of a population to receive without condition and be justified or protected by the law to do so.
The issue here is accountability and feeling the bite of actual costs. If you are accountable to no one but an internal personal or corporate morality, there is no external check or balance to the universal im-, a-, or sub-morality of your actions.
Everett would love to ensure his own income. (Who wouldn't?)
But he can't.
Why? Because he wants what others have and they have no reason to give it to him.
But first, a few definitions:
Government — an organization whose providential income stream is effectively ensured, no matter the quality (or disquality) of the services/goods provided, or even the desireability of services/goods provided. An organization whose monopoly is ensured by law. see also "racket"
By extension, government employee is any person working in any organization whose income is assured regardless of the worth or quality of the service provided.
Income — what you get from elsewhere or else-whom; that for which you are dependent upon something other than yourself for obtaining.
(Please note: this is an iron-clad, exceptionless definition, despite seemingly obvious special cases. Let's look at a few. "Income is what I earn." — Thank you. What you once did not have was brought into your possession. Whether you deserved it or earned it means nothing in this regard. "God causes the rain on both the just and the unjust. Is that income?" — Yes, income includes everything that you get possession of that you once had no possession of. The definition is not limited only to our narrow idea of "payments" received after satisfying the requirements of a person or entity who withholds until you perform. Income may be, and, in matter of fact, most often is, free and non-compulsory. Sun, precipitation, air, Granting this, we all may rightly count ourselves among the very rich. Passive, residual income for even the least deserving of us.)
Income may be earned or un-earned, deserved or undeserved, fair or unfair, but it is that which comes from somewhere else. If it already "belonged" to you — if you already had full and free access to it — it would be something different.
It is societally unsustainable and morally reprehensible for one or many sectors of a population to receive without condition and be justified or protected by the law to do so.
The issue here is accountability and feeling the bite of actual costs. If you are accountable to no one but an internal personal or corporate morality, there is no external check or balance to the universal im-, a-, or sub-morality of your actions.
Everett would love to ensure his own income. (Who wouldn't?)
But he can't.
Why? Because he wants what others have and they have no reason to give it to him.
To work
The word is engagement.
I taught a student a math lesson for the first time in a year.
What I noticed:
1. He was just as quick to pick up on the concepts as students always have been. Me having lost degrees of my touch did nothing to blunt the simple elegance and effectiveness of presenting Math as a language.
2. Today I lacked a long-term vision about where to take this student.
3. I need to speak regularly with people who are also interested in the subject of math -- either teaching it or learning it.
4. My work is no longer one-on-one. If it isn't expanded to something much broader than that, it is dead.
5. The basic tenets of mathematics really can be taught in a matter of months -- it is the presentation of their application that should fill up the majority of a child's educational time. Heavens -- who studies French or German for 12 years? For how many does basic conversational proficiency in Russian require 10 years of regular study?
MATH IS A LANGUAGE, PEOPLE.
6. Words do not give a person understanding of a concept -- experience gives understanding. Words provide tools to communicate and share, especially in the absence of present experience (not the absence of experience at all -- without experience, words can never anything other than sound). A child feels hunger, sadness, and happiness long before it has words to describe them -- language does not teach them how to feel, but how to communicate our feeling -- how to experience feeling in a context over which we have some control, some perspective. Words (spoken, gestured, or quantated) never take the place of experience, but the broader our vocabulary, the closer to real experience hearing becomes -- the greater the likelihood that our hearing the word approaches to experiencing the meaning the word is meant to convey.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Children-peers
Our children will be adults for much longer than they will be children. All things considered, it is more justifiable to view the act of conceiving and creating a child as the conception and welcoming of a peer.
As with everything, the Latter-day Saint theology proves here to be remarkably profound: the bodies that women conceive, carry, and nurture, become the mortal shell for personages coeternal with themselves. Paul's words here seem pertinent that they, without us, cannot be made perfect. They need a way to get to earth*, we can birth them here.
Who is greater, the one who opens the gate, or the one for whom the gate is opened? No condescension, no magnanimous act from us, no stooping to render service to lesser creatures -- children are not children.
The decision "not to have children" isn't just a decision not to have a small, cute human to hold, lose sleep for, clean up poop for, get stretch marks for, be needed by. It's also a decision not to have a grown-up.
* Article title: "We are the aliens we've been looking for"
As with everything, the Latter-day Saint theology proves here to be remarkably profound: the bodies that women conceive, carry, and nurture, become the mortal shell for personages coeternal with themselves. Paul's words here seem pertinent that they, without us, cannot be made perfect. They need a way to get to earth*, we can birth them here.
Who is greater, the one who opens the gate, or the one for whom the gate is opened? No condescension, no magnanimous act from us, no stooping to render service to lesser creatures -- children are not children.
The decision "not to have children" isn't just a decision not to have a small, cute human to hold, lose sleep for, clean up poop for, get stretch marks for, be needed by. It's also a decision not to have a grown-up.
* Article title: "We are the aliens we've been looking for"
Friday, July 22, 2011
What should be LAW and what should not?
Anything I find myself morally justified in forcing my neighbour to do, or not do, could be written into law. Any act that I would not force, at gunpoint, or with the threat of imminent incarceration, another person to do, or refrain from, should never receive my approval to be done by any government or police force.
How can I give my consent for one group to use the threat of force when I, myself, would not use it?
How can I give my consent for one group to use the threat of force when I, myself, would not use it?
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