Anything Better to Do?

Just this past week I criticized my Republican Senator for wasting time by bringing to the floor a vote condemning Moveon.org for their ad criticizing General Petreaus.

Now the Democrats are joining in. Harry Reid actually wasted time circulating a letter around the senate condemning Rush Limbaugh for saying "phony soldiers" in regards to troops who criticize the war.

Don't these fools, Democratic or Republican, have anything better to do than attack websites and radio hosts...liberal or conservative...for simply stating their opinion?

No wonder dictators around the world can get away with murder. No wonder poverty spreads and health care costs explode. No wonder AIDS runs rampant in Africa and gas prices rise. No wonder carbon emissions increase and etc...etc...etc...

Our "representatives" are too busy posturing and indulging in worthless attacks to actually lead.

Tesla was robbed!

Tesla was robbed!

The Puppet Masters

I love teaching Chinese history and culture. I would love to visit someday to see the Wall, the Qin Dynasty terra cotta warriors and much more. But let's not fool ourselves. Just because China is not ruled by an overtly evil man like Mao Zedong does not mean that the current regime is any less evil.

For years the idea was that the more we engaged China through capitalism the more likely we could affect positive change. The communist government, however, has shown that it can make money through free enterprise yet still destroy the humanity of its citizens and the defenseless around the world. Military options of course should be off the table...but China can be hurt in other ways.

China desperately wants to be respected as a modern 21st Century superpower. They especially want to show off the "new China" in 2008. It's time for the international community to gird up and propose a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China buys most of Sudan's oil. China is financially supporting the regimes in Burma, North Korea and Cuba.

The Chinese always vetoes UN Security Council mandates that seek to sanction totalitarian regimes. China's vetoes in the past have assisted Milosevic in Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran along with countless other tyrants. Christians are imprisoned and executed on a daily basis. All dissent is forcibly quelled. China is still a totalitarian regime which supports evil around the world. It's time for the international community to speak out. China is often the puppet master behind the crazed despots making headlines today. It's time they're called out.

Of course money talks and the West makes too much money off China (and sees even greater market inroads there in the future) for anyone to speak the truth in ways that carry any real weight.

Free Who?

My fundamental problem with the recent events in Jena, Louisiana is that the central figures in the case (the African-American teenagers who assaulted a white classmate) are not heroes by any stretch of the word. Victims of heinous judicial (and perhaps prejudicial) injustice...yes, but they are not heroic victims.

There are not many heroes in the Jena case. The white students responsible for hanging nooses should have been expelled and punished much more severely. The African-American students who beat up one of those white students should have been tried as juveniles for their crime of assault and battery. And it was a crime. Let's not forget that. There are no innocents here.

There are serious issues of racism in Jena. That obviously needs to be dealt with. Those African-American teenagers should not have been tried as adults for attempted murder. However, Jesse Jackson and Sharpton are acting like these African-American young men are heroes for a new 21st Century civil rights movement. If that's the case, that movement is in serious trouble.

The movement loses its moral authority if these boys become the symbols used in its cause. Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest of the civil rights leaders, would have never supported violent means to affect change. Non-violent protest was his mantra and his life work. King would never endorse these young men as the ones to pity or lift up onto a pillar of reverence.

As a Christian I believe injustice should never be met with violence. The most successful and morally legitmate battles against tyranny have been peaceful. These young men should have been guided to follow the model of Christ, Gandhi, Mandela, The Nepalese in 2005, and the Burmese monks of today on how to conquer an immoral system of racism or totalitarianism or other travesties against mankind.

Jena should be a rallying cause for those wishing to continue the fight against the horrible plague of racism. But that cause should not include lionizing people who perpetrated violence against a fellow (albeit dispicable) human being. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Stand up man!

We've entered a whole new ballgame folks...the little man is pulling to a stand without help from us.

Aggie Tirades

Well, I guess all Oklahomans are weighing in on Mike Gundy's postgame meltdown over Jenni Carlson's column questioning QB Bobby Reid's attitude. No secret I'm a Sooner fan so I'm not exactly impartial. All I have to say is that Carlson is a sportswriter who's written dumb things for years. But I don't think her column was that far out of line. Poorly conceived, as all her columns are, perhaps...but not worthy of such a performance from Gundy. And Mike Gundy (who I always liked in the past) is acting like an idiot ("A mother of children!!!"). But hey...the whole thing's been fun to watch...even if you're not a sports fan it's worth taking a look at the Gundy explosion on youtube.

Rocket Boy

Here is a video of Jackson as an astronaut.

Move On To Something Important

I'm so glad to see my senator, John Cornyn, spending his time drafting and introducing a Senate censure of a website. Why spend time trying to solve immigration issues, epidemic foreclosures, spiraling housing markets, rising gas prices, endemic poverty, third world Texas colonias, lack of health care, political corruption, campaign finance reform, unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear ambitions in Iran, genocide in Darfur, earthquakes in Indonesia, and whatever and so forth...

Yes, I'm glad to see my honorable senator from Texas and all the other yokels in D.C. spending time censuring a website that now has even more attention because our highest legislative assembly dignified it with an official rebuke from the United States of America. Way to go...That's the way to show 'em!

College Life

Notes from my Moleskine during a UIL Competition Conference (Saturday 9-15-07):

Sitting in the student union at the University of North Texas in front of a 'Mean Green for Obama' poster reading "The Dharma Bums" while listening to Coltrane on the iPod feeling a bit like a college student...but those days were long ago.

Now I'm outside because inside can be so stifling and its beautiful outside. I'm sitting on a bench under trees facing a gazebo with a fountain splishing and splashing nearby. I'm next to the Independence Hall looking admin building and the trees have been planted in rows like that scene in 'House of Flying Daggers' where a cool fight takes place. The benches are all lined up like the Central Park ones where George Peppard sat on in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" when he confronted the Barnaby Jones Bev Hillbilly guy. (turned out he was Holly Golighty's husband).

It's nice until three of my students spot me and want to gab but they let me use a cell phone to check on the fam in Forney and all's well. I get rid of them by convincing them to splash around in the fountain. They're relunctant at first but I appeal to their inner 'Rage Against the Machine' Zen lunatics. So they're gone now and it's so quiet that when I sneeze (one time!) a butch coed feminazi soldier a few benches up whirls around and gives me a if looks could kill glare. I just smile and say "Hey...how bout a God or whatever you believe in Bless You?" She's not amused.

I saw two guys, one faintly south Asian with a digital camera, taking action pics of a pasty white dude with a taliban beard carrying a black furry stuffed monkey as he walked up the hill with the massive screaming eagle statue.

Others doing Tai Chi or somesuch in unison on a mean green lawn. I love college campuses cause weird stuff's normal and on campus weird is not weird...it's normal. I also love college book stores but I need to stay out of them because I can't afford anything.

Now I drink green tea just about every day. I've even blogged about green tea in the past. But I'm not sure I would go far as Jack Kerouac when he writes in The Dharma Bums...

"The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth ecstasy." Maybe he was putting something in his green tea besides honey.

Hurricane Jackson

Here's a short video clip of Jackson being destructive and attacking the paparazzi.

Beatific Paths

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's literary masterpiece, On The Road. I couldn't let today go by without comment. Kerouac is one of my favorite authors and I have read On the Road at least seven or eight times. I read a variety of stuff in a year but I always save time for at least a couple of Kerouac reads. There is something tragically poignant in Kerouac's search for meaning and joy. As a fan of jazz music I appreciate his free form improvisational style and frequent mentions of Bird and Dex. And I look forward to traveling to Austin when the original Kerouac teletype scroll of On The Road goes on display at the University of Texas in March.

The White Man Crawleth

Yes, Jackson's crawling now. Here's video to prove it. Unfortunately we are still using our analog camcorder. So any video I download to the computer comes from my digital photo camera. So it's a bit primitive. Yes, Jackson is chasing Ringo and Simba. No, there has been no injury in the pursuit of the cats. He is everywhere now. We are now in the mobile Jackson phase.

Houston, we have lift off...

So yeah, haven't blogged much in the past couple of weeks. School started this week and it's been superbusy...but my classes seem great this year. Would like a bit more participation from my Euro class...but my reg World History classes seem as well behaved as I ever seen. My AP Worlds also seem ready for some intellectual discourse. Better to be a maverick than a lemming.

The weekend before school started we headed down Houston way for my buddy Lance's wedding which was great...except for the part where us groomsmen walked into the sanctuary to the UT song "The Eyes of Texas." Nice suprise Ringnald.

Lake Jackson (the site of the wedding) is an hour south of Houston down in bayou hurricaneland...right off the gulf. We ran into the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin on the way down...nasty big drops. We were made nervous by all the hurricane warning signs flashing throughout Houston due to Hurricane Dean...which fortunately ran south toward Old Mexico. Unfortunately Lance had to change his Cancun honeymoon plans. Not sure yet where Hurricane Lance eventually landed.

Had a great time down there. The trees (palms and spanish moss) are surreal, the humidity thick and the mosquitoes as big as hummingbirds down in Clute/L.J.. Wish Lance and Sarah the best...despite the Longhorn cuff links.

photo: Ted (and picture of his two boys), me and a sleeping Jackson and Q and Jud at the Stallberg reception.

The Grassy Knoll Theory

Diane (my mother-in-law) in all the years she's lived near Dallas had never been to the Sixth Floor Museum in the old Texas Book Depository Building. This is of course the place from where Oswald shot JFK. So we took her there on her birthday. The whole Dealy Plaza area is a bit spooky because so many people still come and discuss in whispered tones all the conspiracies that float around the Kennedy assassination. Over 40 years later and people are still debating these whacked out theories. Unfortunately the old Conspiracy Book Store across the street, which added to the weird aura of the place, lost their lease and went out of business a few years back.

Another weird note...the website of the Sixth Floor Museum runs a web cam from Oswald's vantage point. Bit gruesome to me. Worse yet, they (some enterprising capitalist, not the museum) used to have 1963 convertable limos you could take a ride in from the starting point of JFK's route to Parkland Hospital where he was pronounced dead. I haven't seen those limos the last few trips to Dealy Plaza...but they used to lurk right outside the Depository. Out of taste for sure...but this whole place is weird. And this time I parked the truck right behind the wooden picket fence on the grassy knoll where supposedly someone saw gun smoke and heard shots.

Seattle in Texas

This has been the rainiest summer in the ten years I have lived south of the Red River. But the Texas sun is back with a fury. Reached 100 degrees for the first time today (as opposed to last summer when we had already had 40 days above the century mark). Usually I begin watering my grass and foundation in late April. This year...I watered for the first time yesterday...August 8th. Wow. Our water bill has been fantastic this year. And I hear that TXU's profits are down 76% this quarter partly due to the cooler weather. I have to admit I'm not shedding many tears for little ole TXU.

Jackson on the Move

Jackson is getting closer and closer to crawling. He really wants to real bad. He gets on all fours and rocks...then lunges six inches or so. He gets frustrated because when he really wants to move forward he usually shoves himself backwards instead. Then gets mad. Moving seems very important to him so it reminded me of the quote by Jack Kerouac...

"We all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move."

So I better get in shape...soon there will be no more of this setting JDW down in the middle of the living room and running to the kitchen knowing he'll be in the same place when I get back. Soon he'll be performing the noble human function of moving...all over the place.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Interesting statistics from the Energy Information Administration...a division of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is expected to contain a mean average of 10.3 billion barrels of oil (compared to 246 billion barrels located in Saudi Arabia). That would, according to the U.S. Government, sustain the equivalent of two years of American oil usage...at current consumption rates.

If used at the same rate as the Prudhoe Bay Field the ANWR reserves would be virtually tapped out in 20 years. The U.S. Government predicts that over that twenty year time period Americans can expect to save $0.1 per gallon of gas during that time period.

The two major groups that would profit from oil drilling in ANWR would be the oil companies (which produced the largest profit margins in American business history last year) and the citizens of the state of Alaska (who are exempt from sales tax and received an $1100 dividend per taxpayer last year from oil receipts.).

If you don't trust me...find these figures out yourself by accessing the U.S. Government's own website and type in ANWR.

It begs the question...how much is it really worth to the average American to drill for oil in ANWR? According to the U.S. Government...one penny per gallon of gas savings for twenty years for two years worth of American gas consumption.

Is the potential damage, no matter how small, to the coastal plain of Northern Alaska worth that amount of savings?

That's up to you to figure out.

The Double Dave Dilemma

So tonight Kim, Jackson and I ate at the new Double Dave's Pizza in Forney with some friends of ours. Good pizza...but that was not the first topic of conversation. The topic that provided great enjoyment to my friends at my expense was the fact that I turned down free pizza for life and perhaps $1000 in cash for giving up my phone number to Double Dave's when they first came into town.

You see, a few months ago, Double Dave's made the offer because our phone number ends with the numbers that spell out DAVE. I didn't want to give it up because we have had that number for five years and I didn't want to have to contact everybody in my life to notify them of the change. Plus, I really like my phone number.

Well the pizza was pretty good tonight. So maybe I should have made the deal after all...unfortunately they had already found someone with the DAVE numbers who took the deal without hesitation.

But hey...I still have my phone number.

Teaching Conversation

This year I'm diving headfirst in teaching my European History class as a seminar course. Last year I waded into the shallow end and it went well. The seminar course is taught in a conversational way that requires students to actively participate in a classroom dialogue. My lectures have never really been one-sided anyway...I've always engaged the class in discussion. But now I'm going to dive in even deeper. It requires much more work on the student's part because they have to be ready and prepared for that day's discussion. They can't fake the reading and research. The teacher also has to work harder to be read up on the subject and have stimulii ready for potential lulls and red herrings. The teacher also has to know the subject backwards and forwards so they can be flexible enough to discuss the topic from whatever direction the disscussion heads.

My Euro class is much smaller than my world classes and usually features the best and brightest of our social science students. They can handle the seminar. If I had more room in my classroom I would buy an oval table and try out the Harkness Method seen in America's most prestigious prep schools. I am pumped and ready to get talking and getting students engaged in critical thinking.