Life and learning must be accompanied by curating what we do

I saw a blog post this morning that was titled "This is how to 'work smarter, not harder.' " The top advice came down to "do less -- then obsess." The writer backed this up with research but common sense also seems like support for this idea.

Imagine the opposite: do MORE -- then lower your standards and don't reflect much on everything.

Just putting in the time, or in the case of a writing class, typing lots of words, won't magically produce better learning or writing or government or sales or anything else. I shot a lot of baskets in the driveway in my youth but never rose much above mediocre. Other facts have to be involved.

Gladwell's theory about 10,000 hours of practice needed to become truly expert may work if the practice does not challenge us or qualify as "deliberate." Mindless repetition is not a winning strategy.

I find that asking student to write a lot of quite short pieces of writing is the best way to focus on the HOW of writing. Those weekly short pieces may not produce deep analysis that helps change some area of research or solves some problem but they keep the focus tight enough that the writing instructor (me) can zero in on, for instance, first paragraphs, and really dig into rhetorical and logical choices that could provide needed energy to an eventual longer piece of writing (or a more complete argument).

You might be thinking that the idea of doing less sounds attractive, in the same way that "decluttering" your house or apartment sounds attractive. You might also be wondering about how to make decisions on what to cut from your life. After all, what if you make a poor decision and end up cutting something that really WAS worth obsessing over -- perhaps it was just hard or time-consuming.

I have long tried to convince students that the content of their writing is not really where their writing instructor (me again) should spend time and effort. Content is certainly important, but where I can help is in working on HOW students write, how they makes decisions about diction and syntax and larger structures of their writing. 

My job is not to get into discussions over student beliefs or passions or proposed solutions but to discuss making those statements more accessible for the intended audience and making smart rhetorical choices that avoid confusion and maximize clarity.

I will also mention that being told to "work harder" is a crappy piece of advice. We could think about HOW we can work harder... which is likely what we mean when we talk about working smarter.

As we wrap up the semester, both my online writing classes have fairly large projects/essays to complete. It's almost irresistible to end a course without some culminating, more involved writing.

I'm just not certain anyone learns much more than they would from a more regularly scheduled, tightly focused series of 400-word assignments. 

And that includes the instructor.

I'm a little unhappy with how fast I got through security

After an agonizingly long wait to even get to security at Denver International Airport in mid-October, we made certain we arrived a whopping THREE hours prior to boarding on our two flights this past week to Seattle and back.

Of course, we whisked through both security lines in record time. Denver clocked in at ten minutes, while Seattle was even quicker, at seven. 

I felt both relieved and annoyed by the efficiency of TSA in full emergency mode, or far more people working, or whatever happened. It's always better to be a bit earlier than needed, as Kathleen often reminds me, but there is also something to be said for minimizing the time we spend confined in a airport.

My hope is the recent announcement of the newest of the Covid variants -- omicron -- might produce the same emotions: a mix of relief and annoyance. 

As always, the news media have opted for mostly "worst case" scenarios -- which may turn out to be true, BTW -- over other, perhaps more logical ways the new mutation may go.

Most viruses TEND to evolve into more contagious but less deadly versions, and that makes sense even to a layman such as myself. If the "purpose" of a virus is to replicate itself, killing off your hosts leads to elimination, so instead developing quick transmission mechanisms seems evolution-friendly.

Our instruments in fighting the virus are quite blunt, it turns out, as the world once again attempts to slow or stop the spread through travel restrictions. But this is always too late, since the mutations have already traveled.

We just have to do SOMETHING.

Just as wearing a mask into a restaurant before immediately doffing it to eat or drink seems like a bit of theater, and just as putting our shoes on a conveyor belt to be examined for explosives -- but not a bulky sweater -- seems based on fears from 20 years ago, so imposing a travel ban AFTER infected people have traveled seems like too little, too late.

My three Pfizer vaccine doses may help me avoid omicron or may not. There's a chance the drug makers will need to produce yet another version of the vaccine that directly addresses omicron's threats.

All I know is that you can't go wrong buying stock in a drug company that is fighting the pandemic. Human nature means there will be no end to the threats. 

And no end to the profits.

Checking in with myself and with 'ghostly' readers

Today will be my only blog post this week as we travel to Seattle to enjoy food, rain, and cold, but (most important) family time. I did want to note that this is #202 in my little personal blogging experiment, which reminds me that life, progress, change, learning, and so much more tends to happen over time. Sometimes we need to look back to even realize what has been going on that brought us to wherever we are.

I tend to write about 450 words per post (and I know I should write tighter and leaner... but I am the first audience for my blog and each morning that number of words basically fills one screen on Blogger. That's as good a reason as any to settle on a particular length.

So my first 201 posts weigh in at about 90,000 words. That's at least one novel (though without a clear plot, characters, etc.). 

I have come to appreciate the satisfaction of writing five days per week, with no particular pressure to perform or to meet expectations or to argue some point of view. 

My hope for my writing students is that their fluidity as writers can change as they write more regularly but without the pressures of so many high stakes assignments. I have often wondered if I could teach a writing class based on the idea of writing 300-400 words per day, five days a week, with the instructor (me) simply responding to each post and focusing on one or two strengths or areas for improvement.

It is important to practice correctly, of course -- otherwise we are simply cementing in place bad habits -- and consistent practice may be the key to long-term success.

The more we write, the more we forget to consider the pressures of writing and the difficulties of getting what is in our heads onto a screen or page. I had a few college classes in which my entire grade was determined by a midterm and a final exam (they involved "blue books" that we tried to fill up since we all suspected that the poor grad students doing the marking would be impressed by sheer volume). 

Two tests determining a grade for an entire term automatically created pressure and stress. And that strategy continues today, I am sure, in classrooms around the globe. 

But you don't become an accomplished pianist by practicing once ever two weeks for six hours. And you don't become a great cook by only creating Thanksgiving dinner each year.

Writing is thinking made visible, and we should be thinking every day, and lots of times per day. 

A group of people I meet with each week was discussing core values this morning and I now realize that regular practice and regular reflection are part of some core value of mine.

Now I need to think about exactly what to call that core value.

Echoes of McCarthyism remind us that history may not repeat, but it rhymes

Politics is an ugly business in the best of times, and these are definitely NOT the best of times. But sometimes the ugliness is so public and transparent that we all need to pay attention.

And, perhaps, vow to never descend to the depths that humans are capable of.

Big news lately has been the censorship of Rep. Paul Gosar, who tweeted an animated version of some fantasy comic showing Gosar killing AOC and attacking President Biden. He was properly censured but almost no Republicans joined in condemning his appalling "joke" or symbolic images or whatever his weak defense may be.

The whining about Democrats being "too touchy" or "too literal" reminded me of my frustration with the two ongoing trials of white men killing others, and how they now claim they feared for their lives... therefore the killings were in self-defense.

Ha! The logic of this escapes me, since if those self-righteous white males had simply NOT taken their guns to a confrontation they should never have had there would have been no violence. Their logic must be like this: "Sure I broke into your home intending to steal from you, but then you resisted and you seemed quite angry. I feared for my life so I shot you."

Even in America, that defense won't fly.

Somehow, something even worse occurred yesterday during a hearing for Saule Omarova, nominated to serve as Comptroller of the Currency. Her story is classically American and she is an immigrant whose family left the Soviet Union many years ago. She is an academic who has explored all sorts of economic positions, and those are what her detractors focus upon.

When I saw the clip from Louisiana Senator John Kennedy (definitely no relation) last night, my jaw dropped. Here is his statement: “I don’t know whether to call you ‘professor’ or ‘comrade.’”

Character assassination much, senator? Republicans don't like Democrats and vice versa. I get it. But we have now reached the point where we don't even bother to cloak our disdain with a veneer of courtesy.

I know tomorrow (or likely this morning) may bring us another fresh outrage, but that intentionally provocative rhetorical choice by the Louisiana senator may mark a point where we reached bottom as a nation.

That Professor Omarova sat politely, responded clearly and logically about how her family had suffered under Soviet rule and about how EVERY youth was automatically enrolled in a communist group... and she held back her anger and hurt.

I admire that but could never manage it myself. 

The politicians don't care how their words translate into physical violence, particularly the Republican cult members.

I fail to see what mechanism can change this dynamic.

Evolution sometimes happens in plain sight

I was reading a blog post yesterday that mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect, which boils down to: Those who are incompetent also cannot accurately self-assess their competence. 

As David Dunning wrote: “If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent … The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”

Trying to sum up behaviors with one "effect" is never totally accurate, but the D-K effect goes a long way in explaining rising hospitalization rates and stagnant vaccination rates and a significant portion of the population putting themselves in harm's way of the virus (the willfully unvaccinated).

The same D-K effect helps us understand why Americans seem so negative about the economy right now, despite the "facts" being that unemployment is dropping, that gas prices are related to world-wide events, and that several large federal bills have either passed or will soon be... and they will provide all sorts of needed benefits.

BTW, when asked, most Americans seem to favor the various programs the infrastructure and "build back better" bills contain. 

This paradox seems related to not being able to recognize what you don't understand, which I think of as willful ignorance. But if you are an incompetent thinker and citizen, the word "willful" may not be accurate.

A simple example of incompetence and ignorance has to be in the common writing errors people tend to make. Most people don't intend to use the wrong form of "you're," (almost always choosing "your") but if you can't recognize the usage error, nothing changes. 

Built-in spell- and grammar-check software should be at least a partial fix for this lack of competence -- after all, the word or phrase is underlined right on the screen. Just right click to find options. Yet spelling and grammar are not much better today than they were decades ago, prior to word processing.

I have spent decades pointing out these sorts of errors to students but clearly have not found some secret to overcoming this incompetence with the English language.

No one seems to know how to create a work-around to change perceptions among an incompetent citizenry, but it will be interesting to see what rhetorical strategies the Democratic Party develops in the next few months to shift attitudes.

As always, the media must be considered, since they are still gatekeepers of information. I saw that the backlog of shipping containers in California was down 39 percent from the peak chaos, but nothing has surfaced on that in the papers I read daily.

Yesterday we learned that employment rates were much better in the late summer than the big headlines proclaimed, and those headlines must have something to do with the general feeling of frustration many Americans are feeling.

Or maybe we just need to hang in there, hope that gas prices come down a little, and that all that money people are spending on goods (not services) will eventually dry up. After all, how many new freezers will each family need to purchase?

Or, in the case of the virus, we can wait patiently for the incompetent, the stupid, and the fanatical, to die off or give in to outside pressure.

What would Darwin do?

More fun with the media and math

Journalists devote a large chunk of their work simply responding to reports and statistics. But in today's paper we find strong evidence that those reports, often filed in haste, are led astray. And that means lots of Americans are led astray.

Employments numbers this summer seemed to indicate that the Biden administration's plans were floundering and that the economy was stuck in place. But the system of gathering data in a vast country like ours means that economic reports must rely on sampling and then several revisions.

That would indicate that the media should both hold off on the quick takes while also playing the revised figures as prominently as the initial stats. Ha! Fat chance of that.

Here are two illustrative grafs:

The revisions have recast the narrative of a summer slowdown. In August, when economists expected a strong follow-up to the 943,000 jobs the economy added in July, the BLS announced the U.S. added only 235,000 jobs. Headlines dubbed it a “colossal miss” as job growth took a “giant step back.” Two months later, revisions based on additional data showed August jobs grew by 483,000, more than double the anemic original reading. It was the biggest positive revision in almost four decades.

When it was reported the economy added just 194,000 jobs in September, headlines called it “ugly,” “dismal” and “disappointing.” A month later, a revision showed the economy had actually added 312,000 jobs in September.

This story, BTW, is buried on the Washington Post website and I saw zero coverage of this in the Denver Post or New York Times. 

Life is not reducible to a horse race or contest, but journalism simply can't resist comparing and measuring and jumping to conclusions. Here, most of us had to take away a feeling of confusion and despair, however our own personal finances look. And then the media moved on to the next shiny object.

Look, I'm a fan of great journalism, but it is good to be reminded that we are at the mercy of forces that no individual can stand against. There is great journalism out there but there is precious little great analysis of the numbers, the stats, and the general trends. 

That is because time is required to let things sort out and clarify. 

And time is something the media can't afford. Of course, the federal government agencies that issue these preliminary reports are equally inefficient and imprecise.

No wonder so many Americans feel free to question pretty much anything.

And so we will continue to stumble into the future without a clear foundation of reality.

Let's talk about cause and effect again

Our national tragedy of the moment may boil down to a simple refusal to acknowledge cause and effect.

Let's see. When did the great disruption begin? Ah, about the end of February, 2020, when the country and world started shutting down to slow the rise of Covid. 

That caused many businesses to cut back and certainly shifted consumer spending from services (like restaurants and travel) to "things" they could put in their homes (where they were suddenly spending much more time).

When the big industries cut back on buying from manufacturers, who could be surprised when restarting the entire supply chain ends up messy and spotty and frustrating?

A large number of people get a flu shot, but still get the flu. Their first thought is that the shot is to blame, despite the fact that the flu shot does not contain live cells. No matter. Many people settle for correlation and never go farther. The cliché among those who think about logic is "Correlation does not equal causation." 

Yet a majority of Americans appear to blame Joe Biden, of all people, for our ills. I get it. He is the president and his decisions have SOME effect on the economy (though not as much as some people think).

The federal government really did distribute trillions of dollars in aid to help everyone manage, and there is more to come. Yes, inflation is higher than it has been in three decades, though still far less than I recall from the mid-1970s, when we had an 18 percent mortgage rate for some years.

But here's the bottom line, and few seem to be willing to focus on this: If we can overcome the virus, many of our supply chain issues, our missing worker issues, and inflation itself will soon return to something approaching normal.

Here's my modest proposal: Everyone wear a mask indoors for four weeks, vaccinated or not. Cut the rate of transmission of the virus. Get those new Pfizer pills out in every doctor's office and hospital... the ones that cut hospitalization rates by 90 percent. 

I am well aware, however, that common sense and even a basic understanding of cause and effect is not happening in our "greatest nation on earth." Our myths and our tribalism have overwhelmed basic logic.

That is why I have come to believe that we are in for a decade's worth of pain and upset and changing mores and expectations. That, and gerrymandering, which warps our representation and which only happens every ten years. 

I am constantly surprised at how many times life comes down to accurately assessing cause and effect. 

I am hopeful that the new infrastructure money will make a difference for decades to come in our lives, and the Build Back Better bill may improve many lives in this country.

But everything balances on that root cause: the pandemic shut down the world and the world is having trouble restarting. I hate to oversimplify, but there it is.

Tamp down the virus. It is the most direct action that will improve lives.

Building community with projects makes sense

Saturday was a long one for me, with final rehearsals for the Wesley Players' musical review "All Together Now!" beginning at 8 a.m., followed by shows at 2 and 7. It was exhausting but fun.

Most important was the community of 25 or so people of all ages who came together to quickly put it all together, and the realization that our little theater company was one of nearly 2,400 all across the planet who put on this show sponsored by Music Theater International.

MTI publishes and distributes a large percentage of musical scrips to theaters and the event was limited to a menu of song options. But MTI provided backing tracks and projections and more for free. Ticket sales went to the companies so the shows could be fundraisers as well as celebrations of live theater after 18 months of many stages being "dark."

Live theater really is a unique pleasure for both audiences and players, with no two shows being exactly alike. In my case, I can easily slip from nailing a number in one performance to flailing hopelessly to find the right notes a few hours later. That happened Saturday, but at least it went both ways. Some numbers were better at 7 p.m. Others? Not so much.

Unlike essays and reports and posts, live theater is ephemeral. Video can't quite capture it, so memory is where past shows have to live.

I was also reminded that most in the audience are blissfully unaware of the foul ups and wrong notes and premature entrances. They simply take it all in.

One similarity between writing and live theater is that there are usually opportunities to try again, to do some more work and invest more practice time and thinking... and produce something closer to what we had in mind.

Anyway, that quick show is already a bit hazy in the memory.

Like most of life.

It turns out that education has its limits in building a better society

Statistics reveal that about 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September, which is about 3 percent of the working population. That seems bad, but nowhere in the coverage of this is there a mention of how many of those same people took a different job, perhaps just a few days or weeks later.

A lot of journalism is like this: basically many articles are stenography, simply repeating press releases or parroting something said in a press conference or speech. Getting deeper takes much more time than most journalists have. And a startling percentage of Americans have rejected over 100 years of journalism traditions at this point.

One of the "expectations" that I used to have is that there would be shuttle busses to take us from satellite parking lots to DIA in a quite efficient way. For the past 20 months those satellite lots have not been open other than for a few days here and there, despite entering and leaving being essentially automated. 

The culprit is the lack of shuttle bus drivers. So my question is about where the former drivers went. I'm sure the gig is not lucrative and the airport is not close to where most potential workers live, but really... did everyone find alternative work? And is that work enough of an improvement to keep drivers from returning?

No one seems to have an answer, but news outlets will continue publishing incomplete data that ends up causing more confusion than prior to seeing the data. If the point of journalism is to make events and trends and situations clearer, this is not helpful.

In Colorado, we have near record numbers of hospitalized people suffering from Covid, yet we have a quite respectable percentage of the population partially or fully vaccinated. Hospitals report that over 80 percent of their Covid patients are NOT vaccinated... and some are abusive about that fact. 

National stats reveal that those who live in counties that voted for Trump by 70 percent or more are three times more likely to be dying of the virus. Colorado has plenty of counties like that, though few of them have a very large population. 

So are the proudly unvaccinated simply ignorant of those statistics, or do they just not believe anything that comes from an institution that is not right wing radio or FOX news? Or is there some other reason?

I suspect that Covid patients are filling up Denver area hospitals due to being transferred from their small local facilities. 

We need some reporting on how clumps of vaccine deniers spread the virus and affect statewide stats. I see that the country in which I live -- Douglas County -- is now at over 50 positive Covid tests per 100,000 people. The state's goal is to stay below 10. 

And Douglas County is rich and well-educated. 

I am aware that some percentage of Americans will never believe that 750,000 Covid deaths have occurred in the past 20 months in this country. I despair for us and for them, though I tend to trust Nature to eventually sort out this situation. You can't fight basic biology and "survival of the fittest" realities.

Bottom line: we are never going to be "over" Covid. Maybe that was never likely to happen.

But it's easy to imagine our stubborn ignorance adding to the problem.

Today America pretends we once were part of one team

It's Veterans Day, and I am a veteran. My near-the-end-of-the-Vietnam War service mostly consisted of office work -- I was assigned to base funds management -- and I spent my nearly three years in the Air Force in England and then a short, very cold stint in Grand Forks, ND. 

I was released a full year early from my four-year enlistment due to the war winding down and the Pentagon trying to cut expenses, and that worked well for me. In the early 1970s, GI Bill money was earned by the month, up to 36 months, and I ended up using all my 35 months in getting my BA and MA.

It is quite easy for people my age to share memories of "back in the day" and to claim that they don't understand much of today's problems and issues. My wife and I were talking just today about how we earned very little from our full-time jobs in the 1970s, but how we DID enjoy some "subsidies" that really helped us out as our family began.

For instance, for quite a few years we were free to stop by the locker and grab as much beef and pork as was available from my grandfather's account. We were a bit spoiled, I know, but it was quite something to be able to drive to Gay's Locker in Iowa City and grab packages of hamburger and roasts and steaks... all "free." Thanks, Gramps.

My education expenses -- tuition and books -- were covered by GI Bill, so that was another welcome subsidy. For a couple years we lived rent-free in an old former country schoolhouse my grandparents owned, and that allowed us to save enough money to buy our first house.

Veterans Day is a weird sort of holiday, originally created to honor Armistice Day (11-11, 11 p.m.) when the fighting officially ended WWI. That original holiday connected directly with peace and not war.

I'm not sure what Veterans Day now represents. I hope it still has something to do with peace but we are not a nation much interested in discussing peace and the future.

Most Americans not only haven't served in the Armed Forces but have not experienced the deprivations of war. We hired some of our neighbors to go off and fight in the Middle East, etc., but most people were and are blissfully ignorant of the fighting and suffering in far-off places. 

We will celebrate veterans during church this coming Sunday and the choir will sing "America." We vets will stand up and get our flower and applause. 

And maybe we can get a free entrée at Old Chicago. 

We need more focused political parties, and (maybe) more political parties

I haven't spent enough time with a recent Pew Research Center report, but the results illustrate some of the difficulties our two-party system has run into over the past decade or so.

Here’s how Pew describes the nine groups they came up with after recent polling, on a rough spectrum from right to left:

• Faith and Flag Conservatives (10 percent of the public, 14 percent of the 2020 electorate): Intensely conservative and much more likely “to say government policies should support religious values and that compromise in politics is just 'selling out on what you believe in.'”
• Committed Conservatives (7 percent of the public, 9 percent of the 2020 electorate): Broadly conservative “with a somewhat softer edge, particularly on issues of immigration and America’s place in the world.”
• Populist Right (11 percent of the public, 12 percent of the 2020 electorate): These voters are less educated than most other “groups and are among the most likely to live in rural areas, are highly critical of both immigrants and major U.S. corporations.”
• Ambivalent Right (12 percent of the public, 9 percent of the 2020 electorate): The youngest of the Republican-oriented groups, the majority of them “favor legal abortion” and legalized marijuana even though they “hold conservative views about the size of government, the economic system and issues of race and gender.”
• Stressed Sideliners (15 percent of the public, 10 percent of the 2020 electorate): The least politically engaged group, they “have a mix of conservative and liberal views but are largely defined by their minimal interest in politics.”
• Outsider Left (10 percent of the public, 9 percent of the 2020 electorate): The youngest Democratic-oriented group “voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden a year ago and are very liberal in most of their views, but they are deeply frustrated with the political system – including the Democratic Party and its leaders.”
• Democratic Mainstays (16 percent of the public, 16 percent of the 2020 electorate): The biggest and oldest Democratic-oriented group “are unshakeable Democratic loyalists and have a moderate tilt on some issues.”
• Establishment Liberals (13 percent of the public, 13 percent of the 2020 electorate): As “liberal in many ways as Progressive Left” but “far less persuaded of the need for sweeping change.”
• Progressive Left (6 percent of the public, 8 percent of the 2020 electorate): The only majority White group of Democrats, its voters “have very liberal views on virtually every issue and support far-reaching changes to address racial injustice and expand the social safety net.”

Some quick addition gives us the following: 40 percent of Americans are "right of center," with 15 percent definitely in the center, and 45 percent of Americans "left of center." 

Among the 2020 electorate, the numbers are: 44 percent right of center, 10 percent in the middle, and 46 percent left of center.

There's a lot more in the report, which can be accessed here, but the country is a bit stuck right now. Those 10-15 percent sitting in the middle tend to NOT be very engaged in politics at all, but that group appears to be the most likely to be persuaded to vote one way or the other in a particular election.

My take is that neither party is currently offering many persuasive arguments that might change minds and that means no clear majority opinion is likely to arise any time soon.

That leaves us free to argue Aaron Rogers vs. Big Bird, and that gets us nowhere.

Control the pandemic and we control the economy

The United States recently passed 750,000 Covid-related deaths, and that number barely caused a blip on the national radar. I mean, what's a few hundred thousand deaths scattered across a nation of 330 million? 

It's much easier to get worked up over a fertility clinic in California mixing up the infants of two couples, and their shared stories of pain and anger. The difference in news coverage reveals most of what we need to know about how news works and how the media finds content.

Most experts now say that herd immunity will never be achieved, so we might just need to learn to live with the disease, much as we have learned to live with colds. We get a cold but that will not our last one, most likely, despite our systems now being able to defend against ONE particular virus. There will always be another.

The economy and the pandemic seem closely interrelated, with improvement in one likely to produce improvement in the other. President Biden's approval ratings are in the tank, though I have no idea what that really means beyond people are generally pissed and depressed and anxious.

The nonvaccinated continue to die in much larger numbers than the vaccinated, and people who have had the virus and recovered are nearly nine times as likely as the vaccinated to be hospitalized. 

Vaccine mandates produce almost a knee jerk response from many people. How dare any government require me to submit to a shot in the arm? Heck, say some, I'm not anti-science and not a kook. I just demand sovereignty over my own body.

But the mandates force people to make a decision. Is my current job worth sacrificing my libertarian principles by getting vaccinated, allowing me to continue complaining about the damn government while making myself a bit less likely to face serious illness? Or is the trade-off just too much? 

"Give me liberty or give me death!"

In the short term, mandates will damage the ratings of the government. In the long term, doing the right thing rarely produces lasting damage... and we may eventually just shrug over long-established mandates.

Being forced to wear a seatbelt produced all sorts of wacky arguments 50 years ago. "But I will drown in the creek I have crashed into if the belt gets stuck." Just ignore the fact that driving into water is quite rare and that the trapped-by-seatbelt scenario mostly happens on TV. 

For most of us, buckling our seatbelt is automatic and it never occurs to us that we are sacrificing any freedoms in doing so. 

We would be amused to find a candidate for office basing a campaign on opposition to seatbelt laws. 

When five percent of some town's police force refuses a vaccine mandate, my view is to simply fire them. Their choice should be respected, but society's needs are more important. If a town finds itself with five percent fewer police officers for some time, that's just the price of taking care of all our neighbors.

It really won't take much time for people's need for gainful employment to sort all this out. And public service employees who clearly express antagonism toward the public? 

See ya.

Sports provide regular little morality plays for us all

One of the many reasons I love sports is that the very act of keeping score means there are likely to be surprises. The Denver Broncos dominated in most areas in yesterday's game in Dallas, for instance, and looked like a terrific team. Last week they looked awful. The Cowboys are still a better team but for one afternoon, the Broncos were in control.

Unlike most of life, where it is quite difficult to discern winners and losers, particularly in any longer view, athletic contests (with a few exceptions allowing for ties, which seem un-American) produce discrete results. 

But the scores are not really the story, and not really why I am a sports fan. In the case of the Broncos, there was a sense of the team creating a sort of mind over matter approach just a few days after the team traded away a defensive legend and so many players were unable to play due to Covid and/or injuries. Heck, the starting quarterback didn't know he could even play until just a few minute before warmups due to being near a backup quarterback who has tested positive.

Second- and third-team players stepped up and played quite well... perhaps only needing a chance to shine. And, of course, those same (maybe?) overachievers may drop back to mere mortal status next game. 

I have always been a fan of having some sort of opponent to battle against. I am a particular fan of labeling those we are in competition with as "they" or "them," which makes the battle less personal and more existential.

I remember so many conversations with other teachers where we moaned about what "they" were doing to our school or program or particular interest area. I'm not sure we really knew who "they" were, but they were certainly in the wrong. When we are battling the forces of evil, no matter how illogical that may appear when it comes to keeping score of a game, we can manage all sorts of feats, playing a bit "over our heads" for a time.

I wondered if the Packers, forced to play without their All-Pro quarterback due to his Covid infection (not to mention his lying and egotism about the entire issue), might rise up and find a way to defeat the Chiefs. That might have been satisfying to some, but I found the fact that they lost a close contest to be precisely the correct result.

Someone on the Packers didn't really play fair and the team suffered. That sort of cosmic balance doesn't occur enough for me in the world outside sports. The last administration, for instance, went out of it way to NOT play fair, and not much negative has happened to any individuals. Maybe I just need to be more patient.

I have mentioned this before, but sports are not as much about scores and results as about people overcoming challenges, exhibiting amazing skills, inspiring entire communities and much more. Upsets are expected, oddly, and undefeated teams sailing to championships are a bit boring.

Here's to our underdogs and hats off to people not being satisfied with "almost."

More rich people enjoying being rich

A couple of news items reminded me of a truth I have shared on this blog before, several times, but it bears repeating: There's the very rich and then there is everyone else. And guess who has the power?

Our Democratic governor, worth hundreds of millions, has paid little to no income tax over the past five years (and likely much longer). That seems relevant as Congress fiddles with taxing the extremely wealthy to help pay for needed social and infrastructure programs. Progressive voters may have been in error when they conflated the fact that he is openly gay with progressive politics.

Gay or straight, liberal or conservative, the very rich tend to share one basic instinct: they want to keep and grow their wealth. They have the sort of head start on this that guarantees success. The key is to remember Polis not as our gay governor but as our fabulously wealthy governor. He is not one of "us."

The second news item analyzed the extraordinary sums pharmaceutical companies are spending on lobbying to keep drug prices as high as possible, thus insuring their continued high profits.

A conspiracy theorist might enjoy imagining a Big Pharma company starting a global pandemic just to expand profits to atmospheric levels. Nah. That couldn't happen.

Anyway, for the vast majority of Americans, we stand on the sidelines watching as fabulously wealthy and powerful people make decisions about our lives. No wonder it gets tougher and tougher to convince people (voters) to participate in our political system. 

Sorry about my cynical tone today, but really... what grounds do I have to wax optimistic? 

On the other hand, my family and I are fine and healthy and busy going about life, raising kids and supporting grandkids, and growing businesses and all the things I had hoped for us.

Is the best solution to my cynicism problem simply ignoring the news and keeping my head down? That's tough for a guy who eagerly opens several newspapers each day and who still teaches journalism from time to time.

For most Americans, ignoring all the pontificating and changing reports is much easier. And (maybe?) likely to be happier.

It's all about keeping score and settling grudges

It appears that parent concern about public school classrooms, curricula, and teachers played a large part in the Republican candidate's win in the Virginia governor race.

And the guess is that this concern over schools and what gets taught will remain with us as a political issue for years to come. 

After all, modern politics has basically devolved into winning vs. losing, and actual policies don't get much attention. I am sure there would be counterarguments, but the Republican Party seems to have settled on culture wars and limiting who gets to vote as their entire reason for being.

Here's another strategy that may be emerging: NOT having Trump on the ballot saps a lot of the energy that Democrats tapped in the 2020 election. He is so odious that many voted against him rather than FOR anything in particular. Keep him off the ballot (but retain the basic ideas of whatever his positions are) and R's will return to power in 2024. They likely will control Congress after the 2022 elections. After all, how much worse could it be than a continuing pandemic, rising prices, delayed goods, and the clarity we all have about all politicians being in the pockets of the rich. 

SOMEONE must be blamed. And it certainly isn't going to be US.

We saw a bit of that locally, here in Douglas County, as the four radical right school board candidates, mostly motivated by masking rules but more generally concerned by standard Republican talking points, swept into office and start their agenda in about three weeks.

Interestingly, everyone on the school board is basically a Republican -- you can't win elections otherwise in our rich, white, insulated country -- but some of them just aren't radical enough. So they have to go.

Of further interest is that a quite small percentage of eligible voters made this decision, with most voters not intrigued enough to even put a stamp on their mail-in ballot or drop it off at one of many voting boxes. The state mailed everyone a ballot, weeks ago. You can lead a horse to water...

Maybe it's good to be reminded that most people just don't care enough about local issues, or even national issues, to be bothered. Life is demanding. Kids need to be driven to practice and after-school tutorials, and music lessons. Our patience is at its limit as we imagine even global pandemics being tamed quickly and normalcy restored ASAP. 

Impeachments and insurrections and all types of misconduct by the previous administration are old news for an America that has the memory of a goldfish.

BTW: the defeated Dems in Virginia congratulated their opponents and vowed to do better next time, which is how politicians coming in second have always behaved (well, with one notable exception). There were reports that Republicans had lawsuits lined up alleging fraud in Virginia if they did NOT win. 

Dems have the moral high ground. And they are being punished.

So it goes.

I'm not ignoring you... really.

A term I had not thought about much lately appeared in the paper today: "benign neglect."

A fellow educator taught me the term long ago, with the general meaning being to not hover over students, to give them some space (but stay nearby physically and/or psychically), and not try to impose my own sense of how much time was necessary for a particular task.

This likely flies in the face of modern educational theory, with its emphasis on near-constant interactions between teachers and students, but near-constant interaction is not only exhausting for ONE person (the teacher -- students get a break once the teacher moves to the next group or individual), but all that hovering and engagement often creates a culture of "wait for the teacher, and THEN I will know how to proceed."

The way this works in in-person classes is that we assign a discussion question to a small group, and then we (the teachers) stand in the back of the room or sit at our desk, observing but not doing much interaction (unless some group insists). 

Benign neglect doesn't really amount to giving students that much freedom. It's not like rolling a ball our on the court and instructing players to create their own offense, for instance. Nor is it handing a text to a group and asking them to discover themes in the writing with no preparation or "scaffolding" (an educator terms that just means maximizing chances for success).

I would still be nearby, and it would be my job to bring the class together at some point, to prompt a bit deeper thinking, and to allow each group to report out on what they had talked about.

The drawback for some might be that the groups may take things in directions the instructor did not see coming, and that demands a lot of agile thinking on the part of the teacher. THAT requires careful listening, not to mention giving whoever is reporting their ideas some room. Answers may wander a bit, and few people are comfortable speaking in perfectly formed sentences off-the-cuff.

The longer I taught, the more I valued a bit of chaos, a bit of the unknown. 

After all, education is not really about knowing the answers, but about realizing what we DON'T know (and then digging in to find more answers).

It helped me to learn the truth of this educational saying, "Training makes people more alike. Educations makes people more different."

You can train me to use the tools in some software program, for instance, and there are established "best practices." But what I do with the program? That might be wildly different from student to student.

The unknown is what scares people about education.

What's in a word?

To no one's surprise, the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen "vax" as the 2021 Word of the Year. "Pandemic" seemed like a close second, as the online dictionary found that the use of that term increased 57 times over the past year in searches. Perhaps the somewhat hopeful meaning of "vax" made the difference, though the word also is part of "antivax." 

Previous selections over the four years leading up to 2020 were post-truth, youthquake, toxic, and climate emergency. In 2020, the OED expanded its award to lockdown, bushfires, Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, WFH (working from home), keyworkers, and furlough.

Ten years ago, in 2011, the winner was "squeezed middle." which seems both applicable still and a very long time ago, psychically.

Fifteen years ago, in 2006, the winner was "carbon neutral," which again seems apt for our time but overlooked as the entire world panicked.

According to Google Trends, today "Von Miller" has been searched over 500,000 times -- and that makes sense since he was traded just yesterday to the LA Rams from the Broncos. Maybe people just wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

"Where do I vote" has been searched about 50,000 times today, which may be a wakeup about just how apathetic most American voters are -- or it may indicate that voters are more organized than to wait until Election Day to figure out where to cast a ballot.

Collecting huge aggregate numbers on Google searches may not seem very scientific, but the results certainly feel accurate, if not helpful.

Trending searches are a decent way to start assessing where we are in terms of interests. At least it's a starting point. The most searched term on Google for 2020? "Election results."

Interestingly, a dismayingly large percentage of Americans may still be searching for results on the last election.

In 2016, the top search was "Power Ball." 

I have no memory of the lottery being big news, though I assume it corresponds with some huge winner's payout.

This sort of "bird's eye view" of searches mostly reminds me that things change quite slowly, if at all. I do wonder what all those searchers found and whether they changed behaviors or simply became a bit wiser.

Searching does not equal "changing" or "fixing" or even "caring."

Those results require much more research and thinking.

Today's example of the 'magic of three'

Here is the lead from a story in today's Washington Post:

A bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Ithaca College costs $132,656, on average, and two years later, graduates are earning $19,227. A philosophy degree from Oberlin costs $142,220 and graduates two years later make $18,154, on average. At Syracuse, a bachelor’s degree in studio and fine arts costs $137,888; two years later students who got one are earning an average of $17,624.

For more than 11 years, colleges have fought off attempts to hold them accountable for one of the most basic measures of student success: whether what graduates learn will provide them with the gainful employment they need to make it worth the price.

But with more data available, the hard truths about financial success (at least over the first two years after college graduation) are out for anyone to see and consider.

What caught my eye first here was that the reporter used precisely three examples, not two and not four. Three examples continues to be the most satisfying number of support items for most claims. One time is an outlier. Two times is coincidence. Three equals a pattern. Four examples seems like overkill.

This is quite important when we are creating thesis statements, organizing our claims and support, and writing our openings to essays.

From a strictly factual point of view, those comparative costs vs. income are startling, and most of us would at least pause to think about whether attending colleges with that disparity is a smart investment of time and money.

Of course, statistics are always vulnerable to cherry picking and to blinkered choices. Anthropology might not be a smart major to choose at Ithaca, for instance, but perhaps that degree in psychology produces much higher incomes. And maybe that foundation from Ithaca sets the stage for much better income as people develop more experience and they progress through their career.

The second sentence is the one that struck me as most negative. If universities know they are not giving graduates the assumed boost we predict, it makes sense for them to cover that up. And there are lots of other reasons to go to college beyond future salaries.

So, a couple takeaways: 

• when in doubt, use THREE examples to support a claim.
• beware of picking and choosing among the limitless stats that are out there.

Experience eventually teaches us that life is rarely as simple as we hope, and the nuances are where the fun and the wisdom lie.