Day 298 of 1000
I think this is the best investment I made all year. Too bad it is too warm to wear it in the summer, but it will be rested and ready for use with the right kind of weather by this fall!
Category: Politics
At lunch today, Andrew mention that when he lived in Seattle he was very impressed with the way the government provided online support and information for things like the DMV, the tax office, etc., but how that when he walks into the office or call on the phone to get help, there is either none or it is surly, lazy, and passive/aggressive. With North Carolina, it is just the opposite. Online infrastructure is not so great, but the people at the counter or on the phone are happy, helpful, and kind. Amazing. It is absolutely true and I prefer the latter most of the time.
Stepan stopped by my desk again and told me a little story about his great grandfather, Nikolai, who was originally from the Ukraine. Nikolai was a successful, small family farmer. So successful, it turns out, that In the 1930’s, Stalin’s thugs took the farm and sent the whole family to Siberia. Somehow, Nikolai was able to bribe two guards so the family could escape. They changed their names and lived as illegal aliens in Murmansk. I looked up Murmansk on Google maps. It is in the very Northwest corner of Russia, not too far from the border with Finland. His family probably did not live too far from our relative in Northern Finland during World War II. It is an amazing story. Stepan’s family did not hear about it until Nikolai’s wife told them about it after the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990’s.
He also told me about his wife’s great grandfather who is German/Dutch extraction. During World War II, he got sent to a horrible concentration camp in Kazakhstan where the vast bulk of the prisoners died. He had abandoned his factory in the Ukraine and made his way to the south of Russian when he saw that Stalin and the communists were going to come and take it from him.
Needless to say, Stepan does NOT have too many warm fuzzy feelings about atheism, communism in general, and Joe Stalin in particular.
Day 107 of 1000 (213.7 lbs.)
I still say The Other McCain is a trainwreck, but he really nails one of my pet peeves today. His description of how Jesus dealt with religious authorities seems to be spot on. The upshot is that Jesus was quite aggressive with religious authorities who were out of line in their admonishments and spirit. He was also very kind to sinners who knew they were sinners and wanted to repent. McCain is truly a gonzo journalist for our time. Now if he would just dump that Rule 5 thing…
Update: Oops! I just saw this post came from Smitty, not Stacy. He is The Other McCain’s trusty, gonzo journalist sidekick. And he is a conservative Oregonian, so that pretty much doubles his credibility in as much as survival as a conservative in Oregon is not an easy trick.
Kelly and I just had the following instant message exchange. The first link is an article she wrote. The second link is about students who study hard stuff versus students who don’t. After the exchange we discuss why it is OK to finish your career in something other than just STEM stuff.
Here is a great quote from the second article:
…people with an undergraduate STEM major make $500,000 more over their lifetime than non-STEM majors.
Kelly
hey dad check this out
12:48 PM
Kelly
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/9828
and also this : http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/9824
apparently lots of STEM majors leave the STEM work after 10 years in a STEM career
which is sad
me
Very, very cool! No it is not sad! They move up in the world so they are managing STEM people. You need experienced ex-STEM people to manage STEM people and sell STEM created stuff.
Kelly
oh ok
me
Some STEM people move right into the the sales/managment/marketing mode–that is not bad either.
Kelly
wow cool!
me
I am going to be wearing a STEM and a marketing hat.
Kelly
yeah that is super cool
12:51 PM
Stepan, my Russian, chemist friend and I got into one of those discussions common to rooms full of engineers: the relative benefits of the different ways to go into space. He has a very interesting theory. The mundane part is that it is cheaper to send up rockets than maintain a space shuttle fleet. The really good part is that he is against the private sector getting to deeply into making rockets for space travel.
He says, “Can you imagine, the next thing you know, we will have an atomic exchange between IBM and Cisco!”
Day 99 of 1000
The following is the transcript of Kelly’s texting from today’s class. It speaks for itself.
Kelly
in communism, ALL ppl who work a socially useful job get whatever they need whenever they need it
mantra switches from “me, me, me, s***w you” to “US”
we TRANSCEND
we are above the fray
8:58 AM
it’s a beautiful thought but should’nt we be free to choose whether we want to be selfish or sharing?
from the Marxist perspective there is no human nature
me
Exactly. You are forced into stuff. I work with my Russian buddies and they HATE communism.
9:02 AM
Kelly
how are you going to change human nature? it’s very unlikely that you’re going to change you’re forcing everyone to subscribe to the same view… under capitalism you have the freedom to choose to be selfish or sharing
in capitalism you’re rewarded for being greedy. socialism is different
9:04 AM
Kelly
this guy thinks he’s so smartttt
me
They kill people off.
Kelly
how are you going to remove human nature from this equation?
9:07 AM
Kelly
the only ppl who are going to go to med school are the ones who want to help other people, not the ones who make money. socialism rewards people for making the right decisions
9:09 AM
Kelly
two things: who decides what’s right and what gets rewarded under socialism and how can you depend on the good of people if you know that people are so greedy? human nature is impossible to remove
Kelly
these kids are getting brainwashed
Day 90 of 1000
Andrew posted this on his Google+ account. I like it a LOT.
I listened to some of his other stuff on YouTube. If you like this genre Justin Townes Earle is definitely worth a listen.
Update: Should have known this was Steve Earle’s kid. He sounds like he has had a rough life. He surely is talented, just like his Dad. I hope Justin’s politics are not as misinformed (I am trying to be gracious here) as that of his father, even though I love his music when I do not listen too closely to the words.
Day 81 of 1000
As many already know, Kelly and Christian take a “writing” class at the community college where the dear leader of the class lectures on the evils of all things Christian, the beauty of communism and atheism, and the righteousness of drug legalization and abortion. Today’s topic was Christianity. He said he spoke about Christianity because we live in Raleigh. He would have made his outrageous, silly arguments about Hindu if we lived in India. Kelly read up a little over at the Wintery Knight blog to prepare and got a nice response after she tweeted Mr. Wintery Knight himself.
The “good” professor went on for about a half an hour about the evil’s of the organized church, for which the kids would have had a great deal sympathy if it were not for the his smuggness and arrogance. Like all stories, that of the organized church has two sides. He mentioned nothing about universities, hospitals, scientific method, the printing press, and all the other great foundings and inventions inspired by Christianity.
At the point when he made the claim that Adam and Eve could not have existed because of the scientific evidence for evolution, Christian raised his hand and said, “There is just as much scientific evidence against macroevolution as there is for it.”
“You don’t believe in evolution!” exclaimed the professor incredulously with a look of disdain and horror.
“We DO believe in microevolution. It is grossly arrogant for you NOT to question your own beliefs when it comes to evolution” said Kelly. “That is what you are demanding from us.”
The professor said, “Evolution is established scientific fact” and used several of the standard canards (fossil record, etc.) to establish his point.
Then they were off to the races. Fortunately, during homeschool, Christian and Kelly had read books like The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark, Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language by William Dembski and Sean McDowell, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl, and Intellectuals by Paul Johnson. The professor was armed with shibboleths about the truth of macroevolution and quotes from John Shelby Spong about the virgin birth. John Shelby Spong!?!! You have to be WILDLY out of touch with both current scholarship and reality if you quote John Shelby Spong about virtually anything. He quotes the losers like Noam Chomsky and Bertrand Russell, too.
It is frustrating. Here is a writing a professor who fervently believes he is making students question their beliefs through these profoundly silly arguments. The subject matter is objectionable, but this guy’s incompetence is even more objectionable. He does not appear to understand the difference between scientific method and historic method (very important in discussion of the resurrection). Neither does he understand that it is impossible to argue for the primacy of scientific method without consideration of its philosophical underpinings. I guess I should be grateful he is incompetent with respect to his arguments–he does nothing to get the kids to question their faith or worldview. Still, a lot of taxpayer money is wasted on professors like this throughout the land.
Kelly found this blurb about the fearless leader of The Other McCain in an article in Yahoo’s The Ticket, that bastion of fair minded reporting:
As it turned out, I wasn’t the lowest on the pecking order. Members of the Press Club staff were strictly checking for official media badges, and when they found Robert Stacy McCain, a non-credentialed gonzo type who writes for the American Spectator and has probably covered Cain longer than anyone else in the room, they swiftly escorted him out.
McCain is probably the funnest and funniest guy to read on the internet although we DO have our complaints about his style. He is arguably better informed and provides more cogent analysis than George Will, those establishment RINOS at The Corner (excluding Kathryn Jean Lopez and a few others), Hugh Hewitt, Peggy Noonan, Jennifer Rubin, and their ilk. We are on your side Stacy, even though you continue to feature Rule 5 posts. We LOVE our fellow Oregonian, Smitty, too.