Who says presidents need to be edu-mc-cated anyhow?

A modest proposal

When it comes to job qualifications for the role of President of the United States, let’s do away with archaic showstoppers like “well-educated.” Shall we?

After all, our current president “earned” his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his MBA from Harvard.  While some have argued Mr. Bush was able to gain admission and enough credits to graduate only by wholly relying on his family connections, let us assume for the sake of argument that his poor showing as President is instead a reflection on the decaying quality of higher education.  Let us embrace this assumption and conclude that top-notch education is, in fact, detrimental to one’s preparedness to lead the United States.  It’s worthless.  If the best education in the world made spit’s difference in forging leadership qualities in those who undergo such rigors, we wouldn’t be in the mess in which we find ourselves today.

And if you can swallow that line of argument, then buddy have we got the presidential ticket for you!  You guessed it, it’s the everyman’s ticket: McCain and Palin.  With investigative research and commentary by Laura Hayward, and with the caveat that Wikipedia has been found to be occasionally imperfect, we present to you the comparative guide to the educational backgrounds our 2008 Presidential & Vice Presidential candidates.

Check out McCain’s class rank at US Naval academy!!!  What a Maverick!

McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. McCain came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel, he did not always obey the rules, and that contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899) despite a strong intelligence.^[9][11] He did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he struggled with, such as mathematics.^[4][12] McCain graduated in 1958.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand had a hard time staying put anywhere for more than a semester…and no offense, but has anyone heard of these schools?? 

In 1982, Palin enrolled at Hawaii Pacific University but left after her first semester. From there she transferred to North Idaho College, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From there, she then transferred to the University of Idaho for two semesters.^[11][12] During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant beauty contest,^[13][14] then finished third (second runner-up) in the Miss Alaska pageant,^[15][16] at which she won a college scholarship and the ‘Miss Congeniality’ award.^[17] She then left the University of Idaho and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.^[11][12]

Admittedly, Biden ranking is not much better than McCain’s, but at least he’s honest – he was lazy!

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark,^[10] where by his own later description he was a lazy student.^[11] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major inhistory and political science in 1965,^[2] ranked 506th of 688 in his class.^[12]

Finally, someone with a strong academic record qualified enough to be leading the country!!!  (Oh wait…we almost forgot that George went to Yale & Harvard, proving that education is worthless.)

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.^[10] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.^[11] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.^[19]

McPalin no McDucks Story

I think perhaps the most lucid 30,000-foot view of the prospect of Sarah Palin becoming Vice President (and very likely President within a couple of years) was articulated recently by Matt Damon when he compared the possibility to a “really bad Disney movie.”  When you realize the truth in his comparison, realize also that this is the script – the playbook – the McCain campaign is following.  Running a campaign is all about writing a story, and they’re writing their story according to a generic formula with which we’ve all got womblike comfort – the Disney formula of plain-old-gumption triumphing over massive, sophisticated machineries.  In the Disney movies, it always turns out those machineries are dopey and weak (which of course they’d have to be for a hockey mom to stare down Putin), but that fairy tale conception of the world doesn’t usually reflect reality.  That’s why these movies make so much money: they are rooted in fantasy and they facilitate a deeply craved escape from reality.  A real McCain/Palin presidency won’t follow the movie-version path.

Real tragedies happen.  McCain/Palin is a tragedy of epic proportions waiting to happen to the American people and the world.  Let’s not invite us in as if it’s an innocent remake of The Mighty Ducks.

The meaning of the word Interrogatory

Yesterday, I came home from work to find 50 pages of questions in my mailbox.  Not just any questions, but questions from my ex-wife’s attorney: “Interrogatories.”  Questions about where I spend my money, where I earn my money, whether or not I’m seeing a psychiatrist.  All told, over 150 questions designed to uncover hidden money, embarrass, harrass, and ruffle feathers.

This, from a woman who spent half of our marriage lying about her alchoholism and drug abuse, keeping herself drunk or high all day long, even while at home with our kids.  A woman who refused to work (thanks, drunken incapacitation) while claiming parental duties precluded her ability to do so.  From a woman who, in the end, had three affairs – in order to end the marriage.

I can’t fathom the real purpose of this document.  I can’t imagine she really believes I’ve hidden assets, income, etc.  It’s deeply ironic to me that a document designed to uncover waste and misspent money where none exists to uncover, will cost her thousands of dollars she could (and clearly should) devote to her own support, to our children’s needs, to her betterment.

Is there a form I can fill out that will simply demonstrate that, while I had nothing to hide and wasted nothing, she squandered thousands trying to quench her endless thirst for conflict?

I took the survey

And if you’re a web professional (or amateur, for that matter), you should too.  Click here, or on the link below to take it.

Are you smarter than an American?

They should rename the game show. The humiliation this woman should feel is beyond words. Here’s wishing that American men and women everywhere will let their vision wander beyond the dashboards of their worthless Escalades and Hummers, and take it upon themselves to become meaningfully aware of the world around us.

Beyond the shadow, doubt

Well, it’s official: The US economy has the whole world worried. This week, the fed not only lowered interest rates, but also spearheaded a bold new inflationary initiative by which 40 billion dollars per month will be dumped into the global economy for months. It’s all about fluidity. But what about the value of what the US actually produces and contributes to the world? Doesn’t it freak people out that 70% of our well-being is dependent on consumer spending (how many big-screen televisions we buy, how much we waste eating out, etc)?? It freaks me out.

Do we see the shadow of doubt before we see doubt? We can’t spend our way out of decline, people. We’ve got to work our way out of this spiral, or surrender to it.

(pic courtesy of a friend of a stranger connected to a friend.  click it to enlarge.) 

When I grow up, I want to work in advertising

“I want to be so far removed from day-to-day business that I’ll need a crane to pull my bloated head out of my ass.”

Why do we do it? Why do we aspire to so many of the things parodied in this video? It’s not just us in and around advertising and marketing either. It’s all of us, it’s the nature of the corporate ladder, the rat-race, and maybe even competitive spirit. Are we all condemned to this vapid life?

In 15 years, the percentage of American GDP accounted for by consumer spending has gone from 63% to 70%. That jump should be so profoundly startling that it makes any American run for the hills to live in primitive isolation for fear of otherwise imploding with the rest of the country when the house of cards comes down. 70%.

Who Needs Monday Through Friday? (How Public Education Is Failing My Sons)

At the beginning of the current school year, Avonworth Elementary School dropped a bomb on its students and their families. The bomb arrived on a pink sheet of paper, one of nearly 40 pages of unorganized, unstructured “announcements” that made their way home in my son’s backpack during the first week of school. Verbatim, it read:

 

8/27/2007

 

This year Avonworth Elementary is going to adopt a more educationally sound scheduling practice. Beginning this year we are going to be on a five day rotation cycle. Instead of Monday through Friday, we are going to follow a Day 1 through Day 5 schedule. This revised schedule will result in no students missing their specials class. Most of our scheduled Inservice/Act Days fall on certain days of the week. (We missed over 9 Mondays last year). The Rotation Day Calendar will be sent home to you with your child at the beginning of each month so you will know ahead of time what specials class your child has. Calendar could change due to inclement weather also, and if that happens you will receive another revised calendar.

If you have any questions, please call me at (number removed).

Sincerely,

 

(name removed)

Elementary Principal

Note: This letter is published on the Avonworth Elementary School website. You can view the entire letter here.

Here’s what the resulting calendar looks like (click it to enlarge):

There’s so much to say about this, but so little required – it seems to me.  Where should I start?
At the beginning of the school year, Monday was Day 1. All was well with the universe.  But the universe has since changed.

Within a month, Day 3 was falling on a Monday.  By mid-October, Day 2 will replace Day 3 as the Monday designation.  Or is it that Monday is now falling on Day 3 and will soon fall on Day 2?  To me, that’s the source of the problem here:  Which way of conceptualizing the week is primary?  The answer is so obvious that the question is absurd.   The implicit claim here is that the importance of In Service / Act days supersedes everything – even the thousands of years old established system of the weekly calendar.  They have embarked upon a rewrite of one of the cornerstones of industrialized civilization – because the CHOICE between fewer In Service days and kids missing P.E. was one they couldn’t stomach.

When I was younger and more revolutionary, I was taught (and I embraced) that if we don’t like the way the world works, we can and should endeavor to change it.  But this change is so disruptive, so out of sync with the rest of civilization, that it has the effect of turning its back on the most fundamental purpose of education: to prepare kids to participate in the established world into which we all must flow.  To me, this is a fundamental, stark betrayal of that obligation.  Though dressed in terms like “educationally sound,” it is functionally insane.  It disrupts and confuses students and parents alike.  I fear it serves only a narrow group of special interests, with perspectives too myopic to be entrusted with my children’s sound education.

Yellowjacket Peril

If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.

I imagine we all received that simple advice. Skeptically though I received it, accept it I did when my dad insisted repeatedly that I had little if anything to fear from the wasps in my childhood yard in Texas. The lesson learned was that minding one’s own business produces safety.

To be sure, if you go stirring up a wasp’s nest, you’re likely to get stung. I recently witnessed this when a friend of my seven-year-old son held a birthday party outside on a beautiful fall day. Adults and children played in a field while cake was prepared, food set out, etc. They played chase, cricket, tag – 2nd grader games.

One of those games, apparently, had been named “repeatedly jam a tree branch into that hole in the ground, just because that’s fun.” I didn’t hear any of the kids call it that, but I came to understand it shortly after the first kid started screaming bloody murder from across the lawn. The child had evidently been stung by a bee, and was rolling around in pain on the ground, crying out for mercy and assistance. What adult can resist a child’s helpless call for help? None, from what I saw: a horde of adults rushed to provide aid, and I was no exception. As I raced to the scene of the sting though, I heard another cry – this one from one of MY sons. I changed course and soon found him – tears in his eyes, swatting desperately at his arm, screaming in distress and pain. I helped him brush multiple yellowjackets off of his arm, and ran with him away from the area. But they kept on him, and he was stung a total of six times in the course of the next 60 seconds or less.

Meanwhile, several other kids had gotten in on the screaming, and the volume and panic had reached zoo levels. My youngest son, it soon became clear, had been victim to the attack as well. The yellowjackets were everywhere, and they were madder than… well, they were madder than hornets.

All in all, 5 children were stung – multiple times each. I handed out Benadryl to anyone in need, and kids were shuffled into cars for safekeeping from the flying marauders. When we, the adults, investigated what had happened, we found that the kids – far from being victims – had been antagonizing the yellowjackets with the aforementioned game. Apparently, the motion of churning butter, when applied by tree branch to an underground nest of thousands of yellowjackets, causes consternation in the hive and leads to retribution. Who knew? …my dad did – and he taught me well.

Now, my sons know too, and the welts they earned acquiring that wisdom have all but faded. The bigger lesson though – don’t mess with others and others won’t mess with you – may have been lost. As I deal with a provocateur in my adult life right now, I am reminded by my reactions that each of us takes a turn as the wasp sometimes, just as each of us takes turns as the antagonist – and frequently cries victim when we feel retribution’s sting.

What does it take to truly teach the lesson: live and let live?

Another nail in the coffin of photograhic veracity

Before I get started here, I want to admit that, as a painter, photographer, and designer, I find the sheer ability to do what this software does incredibly cool.  Matrix cool.  Minority report cool.  John Travolta cool.   And there, the admiration must end.