Boreal B[l]og

A recent Fox News show claimed Minnesota was the first state to allow Sharia Law.  The reasoning included Somali cab drivers at MSP Airport, who refused to transport people who carried alcohol and a Muslim cashier at Walmart, who refused to handle bacon.  The latter was re-assigned.  The former?  Well, if a cab driver doesn’t want to take me, there are a lot of other cab drivers who would be more than happy to jump the queue.  We all must decide whether we are willing to take the financial consequences of our beliefs.

Assuming this is true, and given Fox, I would have liked to see this for myself, these are scare tactics, NOT news.  Sharia Law says that a nonbeliever must be put to death after first being allowed to convert to Islam and refusing.  I have been to Minnesota well over forty times, I have spent more than 300 nights in the state, and I haven’t even seen a mosque.  Fox plays on American fears of Muslims, the 25% who believe Mr. Obama is a Muslim (as if it mattered if he were), and Muslim beliefs.  Let’s look at a few of those beliefs: eschewing alcohol (like Mormons), not eating pork (like Jews), praying in hundreds (which every large Church does during its service).  Fox omits saying Islam requires charity outside of taxes, limits loan interest, which we would do well to adopt, believes in prayer as a time to reflect upon one’s life (doubt many do that), and fasting to remember how the poor feel. I respect these tenets, just as I respect many in Judaism and Christianity.  There is a lot of good in religion.  The Holy Books have beautiful passages.  The idea is good; the execution often is too good, using a different meaning of “execution”.

In other words, Fox News was cherry picking, and the cherries weren’t ripe to begin with.

Let me demolish the argument right now by going back to 1960, before most of the anchors were born.  John F. Kennedy was seeking to be the first Catholic President of the US.  Back then, people then said that if Kennedy were elected, the Pope would be making American policy.  Yes, I remember that.  We also know that the Pope did not make American policy.

Now, we have over 60 million Catholics in the US, our vice-president is one, and I didn’t hear anybody’s saying that an Argentinian (good heavens, a LATIN-AMERICAN) would order, from ITALY, of all places, Mr. Biden or 20% of our population what to do.  Fox missed the boat on that one.  Indeed, in the process of googling this, I saw a picture of women whose hair was covered, and thought they were Muslims.  They were NUNS. Why is it fine for a nun to cover her hair but not a Muslim woman who desires to do so?

This particular clip upset some.  One said the Somalis should “become Americans.”  What is that?  I think she meant waving the flag (even if you don’t look at it when the national anthem is played), have a yellow ribbon on your car (but never have served), go to a Christian Church every Sunday (but deny people who love each other the right to marry).  We have the right to believe what we wish in this country, no matter how detestable it may be.  They believe life begins at conception, have no idea how the fetus develops, but do not care about the baby’s welfare after birth, especially if a person of color.  The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal, but didn’t say “physically equal”: some have bad genes and really rotten luck.  As a doctor, I saw many with horrific conditions, some preventable, most not.  How do we handle them?  By dismantling safety nets?

What is an American? Somebody who believes what Fox News says, or somebody who thinks about what they say and disagrees?  Somebody who believes food stamps should be outlawed because of an abuse story, yet thinks guns should be available despite very deadly countable daily abuse?  Food stamps have less fraud than Medicare. Illegal gun sales are common, not just anecdotes.

What is an American?  Somebody who thinks America right or wrong, but tosses litter out the window, or puts a box of kittens out in the desert?  Somebody who obeys laws they don’t like, or grazes cattle on public land without paying?  What is an American?  Is it prayer at public events, Christian prayer, that is, insulting non-Christians and non-believers, like me?  Who is “big government” we love to hate?  Do we hate ourselves?  WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT.  Would we demand government tell a Somali cab driver whom he should carry?  He has the right to refuse to serve a person.  Or do rights belong only to “native born” Americans?

Does being an American mean we need to start speaking and writing English better?  I’d welcome that.  Is it knowing American history?  Then why didn’t we learn from Vietnam and not attack another country in a part of the world that we have little understanding of?

Jews eat Kosher; their diets forbid pork, so I don’t see a problem with a Muslim who doesn’t want to touch pork.  I am vegetarian and don’t want to touch meat. The Native American Church is allowed to use peyote, otherwise illegal.  The Catholic Church uses wine, alcohol, in its services, forbidden by Islam.  Ironically, “blue laws,” which restrict the sale of alcohol on Sundays, affect me, although I neither abuse alcohol nor am a believer.  I have to obey religious doctrine in buying alcohol on Sunday.

How is a Somali’s refusal to transport alcohol Sharia Law?  Do we have Jewish, Catholic or Mormon Law in this country?  No, we have religious beliefs of many types, and we try to accommodate those beliefs.  The NCAA doesn’t make BYU play tournament games on Sunday.  Jews don’t work on their holy days, and we allow that.  Catholics celebrate Holy Week, most of of us Christmas.  Sharia Law?  No.  Are there women who wear the Hijab here?  Yes. Sikhs wear head coverings.  So do nuns.  What’s wrong with that?  At the last funeral I attended, the number of people wearing jeans appalled me.  And we worry about covering hair?  I’m ex-Navy, and I soon learned when one did and did not cover.  One salutes only when covered, not otherwise.  Sounds like covering the head is special.

People have strong beliefs.  I have mine, too, that one may read in the nearly three hundred posts here on the blog.  Some are perhaps irrational; others may appear to be but are not.  Decide for yourself this belief of mine:  Fox News promotes hatred and fear, is biased, too often appears in public places, and violates the interpretation of the First Amendment. There are limits to “free speech,” and Fox has crossed them.  If I am wrong on that, correct me.  Then try to convince me Fox is “fair and balanced.”

If my wife wears a cover in Minnesota, it is to protect against mosquitoes, not Sharia Law.

At the recent Track and Field championship in Eugene, I heard numerous announcements and saw commercials on the big screen about “student athletes”. I don’t like big screen ads during competition, since it is distracting, and I doubt the money generated goes to help students in financial difficulty or to pay grad students better,

It appears the NCAA is pushing the term “Student athlete” vigorously, as former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon is suing them about not receiving compensation for the NCAA’s use of pictures of former “student athletes”.  He was joined by Oscar Robertson, who puts Mr. O’Bannon in lofty company.  O’Bannon was one of the few who succeeded professionally in his sport.  He led UCLA to the NCAA basketball championship in 1995.  He was drafted 9th but played only 2 years in the NBA and 8 years in Europe.  He now sells cars in Las Vegas.  He disappeared, but his reappearance now may be the most important thing he does in his life: change the sham that college football and basketball are played by “student athletes.”

Universities generate $4.5 billion from football and basketball alone, enough to cancel 190,000  student loans of $24K, the average for Oregon.  Or pay grad students better.  Or pay the players who actually do the work, not those who benefit from such work.  Alabama’s football coach makes $5.5 million; Arizona’s basketball coach $2 million, and he is far from the best paid.  The median salary of an associate (tenured) professor of physics is $70,000.   In Eugene, Matthew Knight Arena cost $227 million, a 2002 “facelift” at Autzen Stadium was $20 million.  The NCAA generates nearly $1 billion, mostly from the “March Madness” basketball tournament.  I heard numerous times 89 championships and 450,000 “student athletes,” with 90% of the revenue returning to the schools.  Why would the NCAA be saying what per cent goes back to the schools, unless they felt they were under fire?

So, $100,000,000 remains, and I write the number, because seeing it is often useful. The $4,500,000,000 ($4.5 billion) is one-seventh of what America spends on the NIH, which I think does a lot more good for people, but I might be wrong.  Sports are perhaps more important than finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The issue the NCAA doesn’t appear to understand, or at least doesn’t want to admit, is that football and basketball are different:  athletes and coaches involved in these sports are not the same as athletes and coaches in other sports.  John Calipari at Kentucky has well over a $35 million package for the rest of the decade.  An assistant football coach makes 6 figures, one has made a million; an assistant track and field coach makes about $20-40K.  Look it up.  I did.

The question for the NCAA is this: how much should men’s basketball and football players be paid?  It isn’t “whether” but “how much?”  These players are abusing their young bodies, not mentally mature, and vulnerable to being used.  They often do not finish college, taking a slim chance they will have a pro career, that in the case of even O’Bannon was short. The probability a college football player’s playing professionally is 2%; basketball is 1%.  OK, 1.2%.  The probability of graduating without a degree and without playing a professional sport is a minimum 15-30 times higher, approaching 70% in some places. These players are not going to find good jobs, their joints worse than mine, and I am 3 times older.  Football brain damage isn’t even being factored in here.

The concept of “student athlete” works if it is a Dartmouth runner who loves to run but must meet high standards of an Ivy League school.  The runner may perform well enough to be in the 5000 meter finals in Eugene, but he was lapped well before the end. This is a student athlete.  He loves track, but his life work will be something else.  Dartmouth, like all Ivy League schools, does not offer athletic scholarships.  If a university does, it is subsidizing an athlete, not a student.  This to me, a Dartmouth alumnus, is an important distinction.  Only a third of the 450,000 get athletic scholarships; four sports: football, men and women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball, give full rides.  Is that payment?  If it is, then they aren’t primarily students.

Football and basketball players are too often athletes who happen to attend classes.  Their graduation rates approach 70%, better than it was, but a significant number of programs graduate fewer than half. What was their major? I doubt it was physics, chemistry, mathematics, English, or literature.  Many athletes on full athletic scholarships are a farm team for the pros, leaving college when they believe they can turn professional.  To put their faces or names on a shirt, while they are in college, so that the NCAA or the school can make money, is using them as pawns.  This happened to Michigan’s “Fab Five” 20 years ago.

There are student athletes, and there are student athletes.  The NCAA compares both equally, and they are not.  The volleyball coach at the University of Arizona knew full well that successful recruiting and funding of his program depended upon a successful football and basketball program. Eleven of Arizona’s 13 programs listed lost money, including volleyball.  The profits from men’s football and basketball were about $26 million, more than enough to compensate.  Graduation percentages are tricky, and I don’t like the 6 year definition; I got through Dartmouth in 4, and the Dartmouth man who ran the 5000 at the NCAAs will likely do it in 4, too.

I am concerned about big corporations buying advertising, using handsome young men and pretty young women with nice voices to push a toxic agenda, be it chemical, like ExxonMobil, or sport, like the NCAA.  Money talks, it talks too much, and it is time to shut it up. Money could be used to pay for good professors, not coaches, lessen the burden of student debt, develop first rate researchers, writers, educators, and try to lift more poor out of poverty.  Ads? Request retired people like me to help tutor or use our experiences and wisdom.  Bet they wouldn’t cost much on a Jumbotron.   This is the 21st century.  We need educated people to understand the growing complexity of this world. Fox News has a simple answer for everything.  There are few simple answers, and that makes life difficult. Instead of embracing complexity, we pay tens of millions to a coach to help young men put a ball through a metal rim.  If your team wins, you feel better about life. Is escape the point?

When I cared about basketball, O’Bannon was a name to be feared in Arizona.  Now, I wish him every bit of success off the court.  Stay with this cause, sir, for this is where you may make your mark in life.  I bet you never expected that.

“I can’t find a goddamn parking place in this  f——- town!” we heard, while walking to the Prefontaine Classic.

The middle-aged man walked away from a series of parking meters that were good for 2 hours, not quite long enough to see the event.  On the other hand, had he been willing to walk a few more blocks, he would have been able to park for free.  Had he anticipated the potential problem parking, he might have left home earlier, wherever home was.  He had “skunk anger,” and I quickly recalled my arm, after I had begun to point out parking spots.  Nowadays, it doesn’t take much to set some people off, and with the only restriction on firearm possession these days appearing to be price, I thought it wise to quietly walk away.

Public displays of anger are scary.  I vividly remember a fist fight breaking out over who was next in line at a gas pump during the 1973 oil shock.  I saw a man pummeled in Nairobi once, and stayed far away.  Over the phone, it is too easy to express anger, for one doesn’t see the effect upon the other person.  Sadly, many who receive these nasty calls weren’t involved in setting up the faulty system or designing the flawed product.  Highly paid executives are shielded from much of the difficult work that is “customer service.”

Letters may also be hurtful. Virtually everybody has regretted at some time hitting “send” too soon.  Angry letters require rereading and preferably should sit 24 hours before being sent.  It is remarkable what will be deleted after waiting.  Many such letters I never sent.  Still, angrily written letters have a name and an address; they are not anonymous.

The Internet has brought anonymity to public discourse, which I find both disconcerting and dangerous.  Read the comment section of an online newspaper article.  The comments do not sit for a day before posting, the grammar and spelling are often atrocious, the venom almost visible, the comments close to libelous, and the points often not factual.   Anonymity allows every frustrated individual to write whatever he wants: a free pass for hate mongers, the ne’er do wells, a public voice for those who used to say their indecent words in private, or at least not in my presence.  People I never will meet vent about all sorts of topics, truth being the greatest casualty, the beautiful English language a close second.

Letters to the editor are difficult to get published, because they require knowledge of basic English grammar, which many do not have.  These letters have an approximate 150 word limit, requiring careful thought, not a long-winded exposition.  I find it ironic that many who decry the use of Spanish—a language I wish I could speak fluently—cannot write a decent English sentence.

Online, every time I read one’s advocating physically fighting the government or secession, I wonder why these people don’t have their IP addresses tracked and informed their comments are treasonous. Many say the government is incompetent, rather than taking the small step to say some people who work for the government are incompetent.  Yet, this same “incompetent government” is somehow able to keep secrets about Area 57, currency reform, 9/11, the New World Order, and faked the Moon landings.  The inconsistency of these two concomitantly held viewpoints baffles me.

What I almost never read in diatribes are detailed suggestions how we might fix problems.  Perhaps many of us have given up. Ideas are seldom seriously considered by any organization I’ve sent them to.  Message to those in power: you do not have a monopoly on good ideas; they can come from anywhere, not just your staff or the same people that have been in the public eye for decades, some of whom need to move on.  You might be surprised what we have to offer.

Simplistic suggestions: “Deport all of them,”  “lower taxes,” “repeal Obamacare” are not solutions.  Mandatory national service, encouraging national volunteerism and using the experience of older people are starting points. I have been open to different ideas, so long as they have data, inferences, margin of error, ways of tracking effectiveness, and are well thought out.  My name is visible, and information about me is available.  It’s is clear what I believe, and it is clear that I may be influenced.

I had no idea the jerk I heard—and the man was a jerk, continuously swearing at the top of his lungs in a quiet neighborhood about a city I happen to love—would lead to an article.  It didn’t quite, until I read online in the Green Valley News (Az.) that a Hispanic shot and killed by the Border Control was an unarmed US citizen.  He had a prior record, was stopped and allegedly fled on foot, not at all a physical threat.  He was hauling marijuana, not human flesh.  He broke several laws, no question, but he didn’t deserve death.  I wonder whether those who have decried illegal immigration will speak out against killing our own citizens in these circumstances.  I chose not to read the comments, because I suspected I would read “the man deserved it”, “most of these people are illegal,” “his papers were probably forged”, “we still need a wall”, and of course “this is only one instance,” which in the issue of death happens to be irreversible. Is there no shame?  The Border Patrol has a difficult job, but we cannot use that as an excuse.

Anonymity is used by cowards.  My name is on my posts and letters; I don’t hide behind “Blueheeler2”. Stating comments in public requires thought. I suggest we edit these sites, in order to make some of the comments readable, shorter, and enforce common decency.  We used to, and violent threats online ought to be investigated.  They have led to shootings, which takes me full circle.

Some say anonymity is the price we pay for the Internet.  I say we shouldn’t pay it. If WordPress wants to edit me, fine.

Please, however, don’t have your editors make grammatical mistakes in their comments.  That annoys me no end, but I will try to be polite in my letter to you.

Michael S. Smith, MD MS (Stat.)

I hiked the other day with a group, including a man who had driven to the trailhead with a “Disabled Veteran” license plate on his vehicle.  He was the lead hiker and set a good pace. He was probably my age, give or take a few years, and we started talking, since this was an aerobic hike—fast, but not so fast that we couldn’t talk.

When I mentioned I was a retired physician, he said a corpsman saved his life.  I didn’t have to ask where.  I knew it was Vietnam.  Corpsman=military=my age=Vietnam.  He didn’t say what happened, only that he ended up in Yokosuka, Japan, for 5 weeks before being sent back home.  He is a Marine (note the tense, for Marines consider themselves for the rest of their lives as a Marine), and we talked about ships, sailors, and generalities.

We did not talk about what happened to him.  He mentioned Hue (“Way” is the pronunciation, for this household word in 1968), and I was polite enough not to inquire further.  I had a pretty good idea what happened to the Marines in Hue, and it was ugly, awful, and part of the devastation we inflicted on many of our countrymen and their families plus another country and their people that year.

This man lived; 58,000 Americans died, as well as least three million Vietnamese, probably a lot more. Cambodia and Laos were subsequently sources of many more deaths.  This man wasn’t killed but wounded, and when one starts tallying the wounded, we are in eight figure range—more than ten million.  Americans never trusted the government quite the same again after Vietnam.

The man didn’t talk about the war, and neither did my late brother, who served in Da Nang.  When we start talking about the numbers of people who were indirectly affected by the war, the number is immense.

Only non-combatants like me, who served on a ship that was near Vietnam, but 6 months after “Frequent Wind,” the exodus, talk about our military service.  The guys who were the grunts, the hiker with me called himself one, remain silent.  Almost all of them do.  They don’t brag about their service, and even John Kerry didn’t throw his military record into Bush’s face in 2004, only his medals, about 30 years earlier.  A lot of men who fought in World War II remained silent for years…or forever.  The Republicans at the 2004 convention who wore bandaids, deriding Kerry’s service, were among the most shameful behavior I have ever seen.

This silence should tell everybody how bad war is.  It is so bad that people who have witnessed the tragedies stay silent.  Such is likely is a protective mechanism, but may come with a cost, perhaps PTSD.  The man was a good hiker, and we got up to the top of Spencer Butte and down in about 3 hours, a decent time, although he could have pushed the pace had he wanted.  Four days prior, he and I were part of a group that hiked up Rooster Rock, north of Eugene, 2300 feet vertical, and he was good.  He didn’t mention his military service that day.  It took a second hike with me to mention what he did.

Perhaps the men who start or continue these wars, many of whom have never served in the uniform of this country abroad might think a bit more about the cost.  No, I am not talking about the kept off budget “Emergency Authorizations” during the Bush administration, which were barely challenged by any American, let alone in Congress.  That’s just money; when Republicans spent it, we were patriotic, when the Democrats did it, there was howling about budget deficits.

No, I am talking about the cost to a CIB (combat infantry badge) veteran, disabled, who doesn’t talk about it, and the men who died and will never talk again.  What did they see that kept them silent?  What did they see that their families didn’t even know?  What is this cost?  Well, of course, there is life insurance, but that is a monetary cost.  I’m talking about other costs, something Wall Street, bankers, a good share of politicians, and too many Americans don’t think of and never will, unless it affects them.  To them, unless there is a dollar cost, they aren’t interested.  Health insurance costs money, so many don’t like the country’s spending money on it.  The fact that people feel relieved to have such insurance, and that is a fact, is unknown to them.  Wilderness is board feet of timber, cubic feet of water, a place where they should be able to mine.  The value of what I see, feel, and do in wilderness has no monetary value, so these people ignore it.

Wars are at times necessary, but in my lifetime, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were all unnecessary, fought under false pretenses, and run by old men. When I hear jingoistic phrases and see flag waving that make war romantic and patriotic, I wonder why almost nobody asks, “Why do veterans not talk about what they saw?”  I am profoundly saddened, puzzled, angry when people discover that war does bad things to people that we try to sanitize, so the public won’t be offended.  Why were only 16% of us against invading Iraq?  I saw what was going to happen, wasn’t it obvious?  It was to me.

I wonder why we still hear men push to go to war with Syria, Iran, and Russia.  I wonder, of course, where the money is going to come from, since the Republican-led Congress, and that includes the Senate, since they are running that for all practical purposes, wants to cut spending.  I wonder why we act surprised when the VA isn’t helping veterans.  This happens with every war.  That costs money we don’t have.  Why didn’t these guys die or go elsewhere?  A significant number are homeless.  They served, then were thrown away, like old furniture.

When we go to war, we are going to change the lives of every individual who serves in harm’s way.  People will die, families will change, and money will be spent.  The first two have incalculable cost.  The third we try to ignore.  If we go to war, we need to have a national discussion on this, without Fox News, Karl Rove and jingoistic “leaders” calling the shots.  We need to discuss what exactly what it is that makes this particular war so necessary., because thought and negotiation must be expended, before lives and treasure.  Lives are treasure that we cannot put a dollar value on, regardless of what the actuaries and the lawyers say.

Nothing short of the survival of the country should be a cause for war.

“640 K of memory ought to be enough for anybody.”  Bill Gates (1990).

“I’m 55, I don’t need to learn about computers.  I’m too old.”  A friend, 2001

I remember Blockbuster, the blue and yellow signs, shopping for videos along the many aisles, the late fees we tried to avoid, the drop boxes. Blockbuster was sold to Viacom in 1994 for $8.3 billion.  It was auctioned off not long ago for $254 million, a 97% decrease, and the last of its several thousand stores disappeared before this year.  In the space of a quarter century, Blockbuster went from nothing to huge, to nothing.  The building we went to for videos now houses “Beyond Bread,” a thriving, great restaurant.

Blockbuster had a good business plan, and only one thing went wrong:  the world changed.  It became possible to get videos streamed over the Internet.  I watched probably my 2000th video in German today, for free.  I can watch them in other languages, too, if I choose to.  I haven’t used Netflix, although I could. Those who plan for the world’s changing will survive.  They may not get super wealthy, unless they guess right, but to do well one needs only to see the changes and learn to adapt to them, not deny their occurrence.

The Haunted Bookshop was a lovely place in Tucson, with old and new books, a store where one could pick up a good hardcover, find a comfortable chair, read a few pages, and perhaps buy it.  It has been gone for decades.  Checkout, however, was slow, because the clerk  painstakingly wrote down the book’s name and the price.  Big chains, like Barnes and Noble and Borders, appeared, with tens of thousands of books; The Haunted Bookshop didn’t have a prayer.  Then came the Kindle, which my 86 year-old neighbor uses every day.  She doesn’t have to go to a bookstore.  Borders, which began in 1971, had its last profit in 2006.  It is long gone.  Barnes and Noble countered with the Nook, but Amazon had the books and soon had almost everything else people wanted.

Last week, I literally ran to the local REI to buy a micro SD chip with topos for Oregon and Washington.  REI was out of them.  No surprise, many stores have slashed inventory so much that they are often out of stock of the item you want, promising to have it to you in “x business days.” I find that annoying.

I walked out of REI, leaned against its wall and with my smartphone ordered the microchip from Amazon in about 2 minutes, $15 less, sent to my house.  That’s how good Amazon is.  If I want something, I often look there first.  The prices are good, I can get used books for a lot less, which is often all I need, and my information is saved, so it is easy to check out.  I want to shop and buy locally, but if retailers are going to continue to use the B-school model of “just in time inventory,” which isn’t just in time, I will take my business elsewhere.  I, like many, can be an impulse buyer.  If I can’t find it quickly, I order it. Now, had REI had a different B-school approach, and ordered it overnight from Amazon, at higher cost to them, but not me, they would have gotten my purchase.  Nobody tracked my disappointment, nobody learned, and that is a non-survivable model in the new world.  Count on it.

The topos  I got were for my Garmin GPS, a much nicer model than I had planned on,   I bought that online through Cabela’s, because all I had to do for a 60% discount was show up at the store 5 days later, when it arrived.  It takes me 35 minutes to walk to Cabela’s.

There is a lot of resistance to solar from some utility companies, blocking it wherever possible.  The oil industry wants to do the same.  I don’t know whether solar will be the new energy or something else.  I can tell you this:  the world will change, and what energy we will use will change.  I’m not sure how much, only that it will.  Movement by horse was once a given.  Building better buggies was a huge industry.  Then came the automobile.  One would have to be foolish to think the automobile and gasoline will stay forever.

Last night, a man told me that tidal power was impossible to generate in Oregon, because of the coastal geography and the storms.  I simply replied, “Perhaps not yet, but I wouldn’t count it out.”  He countered by saying it would be prohibitively expensive.  I’d be cautious about making those statements in the new world.  For a few dollars, I can buy an 8 x10 mm piece of plastic that holds 8 GB of data, including every 1:24,000 topo map in Oregon and Washington.  For a few hundred, we used to buy encyclopedias, which I haven’t seen in years.

While we have far more instantaneous information at our fingertips, we don’t have the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, truth from conspiracy fiction. The new world will need critical thinkers and those who can teach the difference.

It is not yet clear to me whether online education will work.  Through my work with one university, that had some class time, degrees were obtained with a lot less work and a lot less knowledge.  I was motivated, I was smart, but I don’t think I could learned as well with home schooling or over the Internet.  I needed somebody, a guide—a great teacher once told me—to personally explain things, give me assignments, so I could figure out the answer for myself.

Who will have trouble in the new world?  Those who refuse to adapt to the changes, want to turn back the clock to “the good old days,” which weren’t so good.  Back then, we lynched African-Americans, did nothing about child abuse (“blood was thicker than water” approach) thought getting drunk and smoking were cool and chic, woman and blacks need not apply, cars broke down, planes crashed monthly,  In medicine, “The doctor” could do no wrong, except when he (and it was he) did, it was covered up. I remember those days.

Those who want to turn back the clock would force raped women to carry babies, have unwanted, malnourished, unvaccinated, children, teach them that the Bible (substitute any other Holy Book), is the only truth, when I need just one counterexample, and there are many, called contradictions. The clock cannot be turned back.  The world is changing, and its climate is, too.  What is scary to me is not the change, or even the fact that some don’t want the change and won’t believe in it.

No, what scares me is that those people have become so popular and are damn close to running the show.  The world they want to bring back will fail, and it will take humanity with it.