The Written Peace:
Open Forum of June 9, 2005
It is with a tinge of sadness that I note that placing negative spin on the economic news of our day is not a difficult task. Putting a positive spin on such news would be a far more daunting task for the thoughtful, educated scholar. This is, of course, why it is easy for the White House and much of the mainstream media to do just that.
I do want to welcome some recently new posters to the blog. Although I mentioned her blog, expostulation, in a comment thread, consider this a formal welcome to Misty, whose blog has a color scheme almost as dark in character as that of The Dark Wraith Forums. CottonSaddieMango joins us as the first openly feline commenters here; and this is a good thing: no one can yet say that this blog is going to the dogs. Moving along, if I am not mistaken, Missouri Mule from the ever-delicious BlondeSense has finally made her first comment here at just about the same time she was posting a great article of her own at BlondeSense. A welcome is in order to Mr. Non-Descript, whom I must tell all of you is a former economics student of mine and one of the brightest I've had in a while. I should note, however, that I have recently had more than a few really good future economists in my classes, which somewhat annoys me because they're shaking the confidence I have in my ability to write tests that ruin everyone's day.
Then again, the way the regulars here have been commenting recently, it seems that solid understanding of macroeconomics is beginning to infect a lot of people's thinking. That's great news, except for the part about how, if people get too good at knowing macroeconomics principles and how to apply them to real-world issues, The Dark Wraith Forums might no longer be needed.
The slight feeling of impending obsolescence is rather discomfiting.
Anyway, pour yourselves something to drink at the coffee/hot chocolate bar; find a big, soft chair; make yourselves comfortable; and spend some time speaking your minds.
The Dark Wraith pulls up a chair for himself to relax and enjoy the company.
Published 6/10/2005 12:50:00 AM
<< 57 Comments Total
Wraith, you need to clean up your site so it works with Firefox. All I get is a popup saying "this page contains no data" and source code, instead of HTML.
Good evening, Phoenician.
I saw that you had made this same comment on a thread at another blog, and I thought you were pulling my leg; but you're not!
I am literally pulling my hair out trying to replicate what you're seeing: the blog is appearing perfectly, now, in Firefox versions on a number of computers on which I've run it, and I can't for the life of me create a set of running services that produces the catastrophic effect you're getting.
I have one more idea, and I'm going to check it here in just a minute. It might have to do with the "Transitional" setting I set for the XHTML version at the top line of code. I'm going to return it to "Strict 1.0" and wait to hear from you. Other than that, I'm going to have to think long and hard about what could be causing a version of Firefox not to render the code into a Web page.
The Dark Wraith heads to the back room to push some buttons.
Hi Dark Wraith - Thanks for mentioning us! Purrr! We're going to pass on the coffee and hot chocolate, but if you have some books or newspapers laying around, we wouldn't mind taking a nap on them. Meow!
Good evening, once again, Phoenician.
I did a small tweak on the code, but I also did some checking with a couple of fellow techies who had a whole bunch of knowledge base on this issue. It seems that this problem has been noted, and there are several possible issues involved.
First, when you're in Firefox, go to the tools and clear the Internet cache. The tabbed browsing on some computers can build a massive file that makes Firefox hit a wall with a go-to site.
The next thing that causes this in Firefox is using proxy servers.
Related to this is wireless DSL connectors, which can overrun a cache if computers and appliances are all connected and accesses to certain sites, especially those in Transitional, are attempted. I should note here that people using wireless DSL sometimes are unaware of all the things that are actually flowing through the wireless system.
As a first pass, when you come to this site in Firefox and you get that "Page contains no data" message, hit "Refresh"; if you still get the message, try that "Refresh" button again several times. If the site eventually appears, or appears partially, you'll know pretty much for sure that you've got a cache overload issue. This might not appear on other sites because those are sites you visited before the cache overload happened, so their code is already in the cache and available for use by Firefox. It would be only a site you had tried to access after your computer had hit its cacheing wall that would have a false "no data" state show.
The best solution would be to disallow cacheing, but this is pretty crucial to Firefox because it's the way that browser pulls the "tabbed browsing" trick without major slowdowns in Web page loading: by putting a whole lot of stuff from the sites people normally visit into a giant file inside of the user's computer, Firefox is able to have multiple pages available at the same time. Internet Explorer uses cacheing, too, of course, and that's why some users actually set the IE option that prevents any cacheing at all. This slows down the Web surfing quite a bit, since the browser has to load a site from scratch every time the user goes to a particular place, but it ensures that chacheing will not overrun resources.
This is my best shot tonight. I'll do another trick tomorrow, one that will take the actual coding at the top of the blog and attempt to prevent browsers from being able cache the index page. The problem is that this trick doesn't work very effectively: the no-cache tags are dicey, at best.
The Dark Wraith plans to get rowdy with code tomorrow morning.
Good evening, CottonSaddieMango.
Ah, you guys are those kinds of cats who, when they see papers on a desk or on the floor, go over and lie down on them, knowing full well that someone is actually reading or otherwise using those papers at the time.
Many have been the times when I have done mild battle with my cat, who has a penchant for plopping down right on a stack of homework I'm trying to grade.
The upshot is that the cat would be way too lenient if I were to allow her to do the grading on her own.
The Dark Wraith does not want the cat to become yet another contributing factor in the grade inflation problem in higher eduction.
Just popping in to get your take on the Downing Street Minutes/Memo. I just checked with Moveon's site & see that there are over 409,000 signers on Congressman Conyer's petition.
BTW, I think the answer to phoenician's problem is indeed a case of Firefox's cache being full-to-bursting. I have had that particular problem before myself when I have been doing a lot of surfing without clearing the cache regularly.
Um, guess I should mention that it wasn't necessarily on this site that the glitch happened.
Professor Dark Wraith,
Thank you for the kind mention as it imparts a bit more confidence for me in the field of Economics. Admittedly there have been many occasions where I would start constructing a response to one of your blogs only to start doubting my conclusions and delete the post. *grrr* With time and patience this behaviour shall be corrected.
Anyways, you will be happy to hear that this evening I engaged my coworkers with tales of economic-wonder regarding the pegged Chinese Yuan and the impending doom of international money supplies. Your fine instruction definitely provided ammunition for tonight’s conversation allowing me to go head-to-head with a rather well versed peer from Marquette University. They went back to work with such a positive outlook for their respective futures – or perhaps not.
An open question ---
Is Cam still out there - anywhere?
- oddjob
Dear Mr. Wraith,
As a first time reader of this blogsite, may I say that I really appreciate the helpful little econ. tidbits (cybergloss) spread throughout. Although I couldn't find an RSS link, I shall bookmark immediately!
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
Thanks again for adding me.
The Dark Wraith should not worry about being needed (rather, not being needed). I'm sure you will get new readers with little in-depth understanding of economics and enjoy being able to learn from your posts, as I do.
As far as the internet problems--
The cache issue just might be it. While it was not with this site, I did have an issue with Mozilla where I could not get a page to update. It was stuck at May 15th for three days on my laptop. On our regular PC (which has IE), I could get current versions of the site. Turns out the cache was full. When I set it to "0", the site read fine.
We have since put a Linux/Moxilla combination on the laptop (it was XP/Mozilla) and only use the laptop at home with a wireless connection--your site always comes up fine.
Oops, found the Discover Feeds button on my rss reader(sage for firefox,btw). You are now represented on the LEFT side of my browser.
Good morning, T Rogers.
I really appreciate your note about those Cybergloss insets. That device has been around in print publications for centuries: it's called "pull quote"; but doing it on a Web page is considerably more difficult. It took me quite a bit of time to get the trick to work exactly right without using a miniature HTML table approach, which would have made a mess in certain text-based feeds. Seeing your comment about the usefulness of those pull quotes makes me feel like the effort to get them to work was worthwhile.
As a side note, I saw in your profile that you're an old union man. So am I; and I even take two days in economics and business classes to teach students about the history of unions. You'd be surprised at how many haven't a clue about what unions have done to make the world better for workers. Some of my students come in with knee-jerk, anti-union ideas that simply evaporate once they've heard the whole story, even including the bad parts, which I don't avoid. In fact, I frame at least part of the lectures in terms of the unions as a backbone of America as the great industrial power that it has been throughout much of its history.
I like to tell the somewhat folkloric story, which supposedly happened back in the late 1980s, of the tour that was given of an American auto factory to the top executives of a Japanese auto manufacturing firm (which will not be named, here). Some big brass of the American company was waddling along an assembly line with the big brass of the Japanese company. A union representative was with them.
The foreign executives were looking in some degree of dismay and amusement at the teams of auto workers moving around the car frames, and one of these Japanese fellows finally made the comment that the factories in his country would have almost all of that body frame work being done by robots.
As the story goes, the union representative shot back something to the effect that, "Yes, but those robots won't ever go out and buy those cars, now will they?"
The Dark Wraith likes that little story.
Hey, Misty, thank you so much for giving some confirmation about what's causing that "page contains no data" error. I had a feeling that it was a cache overrun situation.
I am hopeful that Firefox will do a fix on this in the next release. It worries me that I can think of a way that an overrun problem like that could be used by a hacker to launch an attack on a computer. (There's a rare attack play that uses a RAM buffer overrun for the opening.)
I am now using Firefox about half the time, so I have a vested interest in seeing the browser become as robust as possible. The good thing about Internet Explorer 7.0 coming out some time in the near future is that this will push Firefox to get really, really sturdy to deal with the competitive heat.
Maybe the fact that Firefox has become so popular will even compel Microsoft to design and release Internet Explorer 7.0 with no bugs and lots of useful features.
...
HAW, HAW, HAW!
The Dark Wraith made a real funny with that last suggestion.
Good morning, OddJob.
Yeah, I was asking about Cam, myself, some time back. It's like she just vanished.
I suppose that happens all the time in blogging, but it just seems a little strange because she was such a good and regular commenter, here.
If anyone knows anything about Cam, please let us know.
The Dark Wraith keeps the candle burning for one of the old timers.
Good morning, Mr. Non-Descript.
Good for you. The students at Marquette have nothing on you, and do you know why that is?
Well, it's obviously because, unlike you, those students never had the best economics professor to have ever strutted the halls of academia.
The Dark Wraith has, for one moment, dispensed with humility.
Good morning, Auntie Roo.
I have been, to a large extent, silent on the Downing Street Memo, although I am running the Big Brass Alliance as the leader on blogScream as my contribution to this important effort.
In due time, I shall make my own statement about that memorandum; but I shall now make no bones about it that we all knew very well long ago that the evidence was being fixed around a pre-determined policy. A whole series of articles, first under pseudonym, then under her real name, were being written and published by a colonel who was detailed in the Pentagon to one of the Bush Administration's neo-con nutjobs, Mr. Firth. This colonel's articles were being published in a mainstream, military publication, and she was laying it out in no uncertain terms what was going on. Her name is Karen Kwiatkowski.
I want to know why it is that a lieutenant colonel, sitting right there, right smack-dab in the middle of this propaganda machine, watching the war as it was being cut right out of the whole cloth of an obsessive delusion, has no standing. Is it because that whistle-blower is a woman? Is it because she's military, and that somehow makes her less worthy of credibility? Is it because there was, at the time she was yelling at the top of her lungs, some ounce of credibility remaining in the Bush Administration?
What is it that makes a solid, no-nonsense, hard-core, military brass woman—a woman who was never even so much as asked to appear before Congress on her detailed, extensive allegations—not worth our time to hear and stand behind, but a leaked memo from Britain is somehow getting some Democrats to take notice and stand up, now that their spine has been re-inforced by the signatures of hundreds of thousands?
When did the rule of law yield to congressional fury only after the mob gathers with enough torches?
When did "Support Our Troops" mean "troops with guns in foreign lands"?
Why is it that "Deep Throat" has to have a male voice and whisper things to a reporter, for God's sake?
Okay, that's enough. The pain is shooting down my left arm, again.
The Dark Wraith reaches for his portable defibrillator.
Dark Wraith,
I have visited your site many times but was never allowed to post. I tried but it just wouldn't take. Maybe it's my Firefox.
Thanks for the introduction. Do you happen to have marshmallows for the hot chocolate? It's a blonde thang.
Happy Trails,
An Ole Missouri farm girl
(Will this inspire another Firefox rant? oddjob is curious. :-))
Hot chocolate without marshmellows? You mean, there really is such a thing?!
The Dark Wraith wonders what that would taste like.
Not this time, OddJob. That's a Blogger problem.
As you know, I retained the Blogger publishing interface when I migrated The Dark Wraith Forums to a private host. I almost abandoned Blogger completely to use another publishing interface like Movable Type, but Google finally got down and serious and repaired the massive flaws that were vexing their entire Blogger system.
What they didn't get repaired at that point was the glitch with publishing comments through Firefox. It was only a few versions of Firefox that were suffering, and it appears that the incompetents at Blogger let the problem go because they were so pleased with themselves that they'd gotten the system to work for most of the end users.
As I can tell, that issue with Firefox and Blogger has finally been overcome, but I don't know for sure.
That means Missouri Mule is going to have to come over here and post regularly from now on just so we can all know that everything is okay with Firefox.
In general, my beefs with Firefox are fairly minimal compared to my beefs with Netscape. I have high hopes for Firefox. As I noted previously, I foresee Firefox having perhaps a 30% market share within a couple of years.
From some of the discussions I have seen among Firefox developers, a stronger sense of what their browser is all about is beginning to set in. Specifically, I am seeing more and more of a sense that Firefox is either now, or soon will be, something other than "Mozilla"; in other words, Firefox is becoming a browser rather than merely an implementation of a browser. It is at the point where Firefox is seen by its developers as something that significant that we'll get a really robust and downright superior alternative to Internet Explorer.
Of course, it's not like this is going to send Bill Gates to the poorhouse. To do that, the United States government would have to have more successfully prosecuted him and Microsoft for their anti-trust law violations.
But that would have entailed taking on, in a serious and unrelenting way, the wealthiest and most powerful man on Earth.
That didn't happen; and it certainly never will.
The Dark Wraith is just a hacker in Bill Gates's universe.
"We're not going to show up with coke spoons around our neck," Kulkis said.
Porn star with political aspirations will attend Republican fund-raiser
Geez, I feel bad for poor old george. That's like having your own Deep Throat in office but no marshmellows.
Good afternoon, Mr. Goat.
Here is the link to Mary Carey's official campaign Website in her quest to become governor.
Words cannot even begin to express the Dark Wraith's disappointment at what has become the total weirdness of the American political landscape.
Since you raised it (secondarily), I'm going to ask your opinion. You teach business law. Is Microsoft most likely guilty of monopolistic behavior as Judge Jackson concluded (regardless of whether the way in which he conducted himself was appropriate or not)?
- oddjob
And here, good friends, sent to me by Peter of Lone Tree, is a picture worth a thousand words (using, as it does, only one).
Occasionally, the Dark Wraith sees the hand of God in light, shadow, and the celluloid world in between.
I wondered why that little prick was smirking.
Good afternoon, OddJob.
Insofar as anti-trust laws are concerned, the foundation is The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
Subsequent to this amazing first pass at controlling the rampant spread of monopolies, there were amendments to or augmentations of Sherman, and some of them are known by their own names. Even a brief review of some of these—a summary that I do in economics and business classes, as well as in business law classes—leaves no doubt that, from a "strict constructionist" standpoint (the one conservatives are always crying to be used), Microsoft did indeed commit acts in violation of anti-trust law, as found in Microsoft vs. United States.
That having been said, I am just thoroughly delighted that, every semester, no matter which class it is, my students read the language and abstracts of American anti-trust laws, and they start hollering about how so many companies are so obviously, so blatantly in violation of provisions of, say, the Clayton Act or the so-called "Chain Store Act" or the Federal Trade Commission Act. Last Winter, I think it was, one of my more radically liberal and vocal female students in an econ class, upon hearing the provisions of statutory law against "bundling" and "tie-in sales," just blurted out "Holy shit! We could throw half the CEOs in this country in the pokey for breaking that one!"
I had to explain to her that, first, people don't get thrown in prison for civil violations; and second, no one's going to throw 'half the CEOs in America' into prison anyway since such an act would deprive at least one political party of not only half its contributor base, but also deny both parties access to the free dinners upon which their congressional members are able to maintain their nutritional standards.
The Dark Wraith almost never gets that political, but the door was so open.
Okay Dark One, I'll do it. But only if it's not "hard work" and you always have plenty of marshmallows on hand. :) Well that and if I may wear my tiara.
Maybe the fact that Firefox has become so popular will even compel Microsoft to design and release Internet Explorer 7.0 with no bugs and lots of useful features.
Good evening Dark Wraith.
I have just one question. Well, it is kind of a question/statement/guess. Well, you will know what I mean, once I actually get around to posting said question/statement/guess.
Anyway, you've been out in the deep, dark woods where most Dark Wraiths are said to linger and have been eating those funny looking mushrooms, haven't you?
Good evening, Guy Andrew Hall.
My comment was, of course, made entirely in jest.
Sometimes, satire crosses the line and enters the land of absurdity.
On occasion, absurdity crosses the line and enters the land of lunacy.
You should expect this from one such as myself who still has a DOS partition on his hard drive and there keeps a copy of Novell DOS 7.0, along with the last issue of WordPerfect for DOS and a collection of other classic DOS programs, including Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase IV.
The Dark Wraith believes that one day those programs will once again rule the Earth.
[Well, it's POSSIBLE, y'know!]
And those of you who recognize those programs have thereby declared yourselves not only obsolete, but also ready for the re-formatting of your hard drives.
The Dark Wraith wonders what it will be like to have his mental boot sector erased.
[ARRRGH! Windows is installing a... a... REGISTRY!!!]
Hi Dark Wraith - and everyone else, too. It looks like there's been a party going on. How come all the fun happens when I'm at work?
Missouri Mule, where can I, too, get a tiara?
Has anyone seen 3 cats running around, or maybe (knowing them, as I do) sleeping somewhere? They left a note with a pawprint and an electronic trail.
I hope you don't have a fax machine, Dark Wraith.
You see, Old White Lady, it's news like that which brightens the day and makes blogging worth the while.
I can top it, though, with the folklore story about the drunken fellow who elected to urinate on the third rail of the Ravenswood tracks of the Chicago Transit Authority. If the incident did, indeed, happen, I would say it qualifies as one of the more gruesome deaths imaginable.
The Dark Wraith fights the visualization of that fellow's last moment (and thoughts) before the sweet release of Eternity set in.
In the same vein, by the way, I told another story when I wrote as the Selig Wraith in the Medieval History Forum of About.com.
This one comes from the early Middle Ages, and involves the warlord/king Edmund II, fondly known as Ironside. He was the son of the famous Ethelred.
The story goes that Ironside met his Maker when an assassin did the deed as such, quoting from THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN:
"The cause of his so sudden death is uncertain; common Fame, saith Malmsbury, lays the Guilt therof upon Edric, who to please Canute, allur'd with promise of Reward two of the King's Privy Chamber, though at first abhorring the Fact, to assassinate him at the Stool, by thrusting a sharp Iron into his hinder parts."
Yes, according to this account, Ironside was murdered by Edric, who hid in the pit under the king's outhouse and waited there until the doomed Saxon came in and mounted his throne (so to speak), at which time Edric impaled him through the ass him with a giant, iron spike.
Interestingly, a similar story is told of the fate met by a Japanese warlord of that nation's feudal era. This means that either the particular method of assassination was rather widely considered or that such folktales are transcultural and therefore reflect some deep-seated (again, so to speak) fear that bothers the hearts of men throughout the world.
One way or the other, it is not a good and noble way to die.
The Dark Wraith prefers a less degrading end to life.
Oldwhitelady, here wear mine. I have a spare. All I did was decide to be the boss of my-own-self and poof, there it was on my head. Just be careful if ya get to hair-tossing. I like to wear my marjorette boots when I have mine on. Lord how I love majorette booots. Women of a certian age--I need not name that age--will empathize with this at once. When I was growing up, the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog featured a wide array of costumes--the Bride's Dress, the Cowgirl Outfit, the Nurse Outfit, the Princess Gown, and the Marjorette Suit. With it cam some crappy little spats that were supposed to pass for boots, but you could order sparately Real Live Majorette Boots. I never go to order a pair of Real Live Majorette Boots, and had never gotten over that bitter disappointment.
So one day I just up and ordered some along with a a few dozen tiaras. What the represent for me is correcting karma--seizing the monment, recreating myself from the soles of my marjorette boots to the very tip-top of my towering tiara. Why waste your precious life moping over trhe vacancies of your childhood. Hell I'm full grown now. If I don't have Real Live Majorette Boots and a tiara at this stage of life, it's my own damn fault. So I just quit whining about it and got'em.
Good Lord, Missouri Mule, I remember the thing with majorette boots!
What was that all about, anyway? They were white, and they had insets strips of color, I think. I don't remember whether they had sequins or not.
Geez, that's bringing back memories.
The Dark Wraith needs to stop reminiscing before he gets to the bad memories... or worse, the weird ones.
Yep, they are white and have little tassels.
Weird ones, huh?
Sorry bout' all the typos, Dark One. I've been over at the Heretik's Gin Palace tipping back few. Lord the people ya have to sleep with to get a drink at that place. Shakes Sis was there chain smoking like Laura Bush. The late crowd has just wondered in, plus a few hanger-ons. Run on over and have a drink on my tab, if ya like.
Thank you for the invite, but I've learned not to drink in places like that because I end up talking to pig-butt ugly people who start to look attractive; but that's not the bad part.
The bad part is that, by talking to me, they're doing the same darned thing.
The Dark Wraith remembers the old country song, "I Went to Bed at Two with a Ten, an' I Woke Up at Ten with a Two."
Oh yes, Dark One. The girls all get prettier at closing time. That's why I always wait and go out late.
That's what happens when a person tries to get some sleep. All the fun happens without them.
Dark Wraith - The best thing about those crazy type of deaths is that once the person's dead, they would not feel the embarrassment, and they make good lessons for the still living!
Thanks Missouri Mule - The tiara is great!
Good Morning All,
I have always preferred the black leather spike heel boots - a la condosleeza -
to the majorette ones.
Oh, and could we light a fire in the fireplace?
..I prefer my marshmallows toasted golden brown!
The comments about closing time in bars reminds me of the one about:
Q.: "What's the difference between a dog and a fox"?
A.: "Three martinis".
And on novel ways to do yourself in:
I believe it was H.L. Mencken who told this story of his early days as a police reporter in Baltimore. The cops would always speak in reverential awe of the fellow who, deciding he could not continue with life, went out to one of the bridges in Baltimore and with typical Prussian thoroughness, tied a rope around his neck, tied the other end to the bridge railing, stood on the railing, swallowed a bottle of arsenic, shot himself in the head, and then either leaped or fell over the side.
Uh... that now long-deceased gentleman is a role-model for us all, Peter of Lone Tree.
If only every last American were as thorough and as focused on detail, we'd have a better country... I think.
The Dark Wraith is always impressed by well-contemplated back-up plans.
Was this oddjob, SBGypsy, or Wild Clover?Fourth call
"I just read a Saturday Trib Talk from a teenager who was talking about the six Harry Potter books. That caller said that Harry Potter books are not appropriate for third- to sixth-graders. I just wanted to say that I am 8 years old and just came out of second grade at Mill Creek Elementary School, and I have read all the Harry Potter Books and love them. I recommend them not only for third- to sixth-graders but second-graders as well."
I'm just kidding. I read it, though, and was pleased that an 8 year old was reading and commenting in this particular paper! There's hope for the kiddies, after all:)
Good Morning, Dark
My son has decided to major in Poli-sci. He will be a junior in Hofstra Honors College this fall. I am rather disappointed in his choice because he has not even bothered to check out what sort of opportunities are available for someone with that major. I suppose he could do research for a media company, be a writer or just go on to graduate school.
He has taken a very liberal arts and sciences approach to college thus far and I'm happy about that. I had told him to take a wide variety of disciplines and he did.
He's a brilliant writer and excels in history as well as science and math. Suddenly he is very interested in government and that is probably because of me. I suggested that he at least minor in Ed k-12 since teaching jobs on Long Island pay very well and there is a shortage of smart teachers, particularly in science and math. But his heart is in history and english.
He's very very shy, has social anxiety and says he could never be a teacher. I told him that eventually he may get over this and it would be good to have the teacher certification for the future.
What do you think I should tell him?
Good morning, BlondeSense Liz.
You are asking a minister what he thinks of religion.
No matter what he chooses for his major, should your son really, really care about the world, then he should obtain the necessary credentials to be a teacher.
Whether or not he actually chooses teaching as a profession, he should learn how to be a teacher. Whether or not he's heard about how difficult it is to be a teacher, he should learn how to be a teacher. And whether or not he spends one day as a teacher in a formal classroom during the course of his entire life, he should know how to be a teacher.
I'll tell you a story that I want you to pass on to him.
There was this man who never planned to be a teacher. He quit high school in his junior year, and after struggling and doing poorly in college, he left. After crummy jobs and a meaningless Honorable Discharge from the United States Army, he went back to college, where he went from one discipline that interested him to another, collecting large numbers of credits in everything from mathematics to philosophy to anthrolopogy to economics.
When he finished his undergraduate degree, he went on to grad school, completing the Ph.D. coursework in economics before switching to finance, all the while teaching for, of all things, the math department. He spent most semesters teaching the rejects, the boneheads, the learning disabled, the dumb, the failures, the resistant, the future flunkies.
And it was in that role that he found something amazing within himself: not only could he teach, but his teaching was like a new life-blood that gave him meaning, purpose, and a sense of why it was that he had chosen a life of scholarship.
Through the years, this teacher would do other things, as well: he wrote, he did business consulting, and he even managed a small, two-year college. But always, always, he taught. No matter what he did, he taught; and in so doing, he learned: he learned how to be a force for change, an accolyte for good, a shaper of futures he would never see.
There were many difficult times and days in that place of learning, wherever it was: near-poverty; stinging, burning criticism; utter dismissal of worth by those who should have known better. But all of that was mere distraction of a moment here and there to a heart that knew what was right and what constituted a rightful life.
Tell your son that he can do whatever his heart desires: tell him to take anything and everything. Open the course catalogue and just start looking at what the world of learning has to offer. If he is truly a scholar, all kinds of things will look interesting, and every year he opens that catalogue, other things will look interesting. Tell him to chase them, hunt them, devour them until he has his fill, and then move on to other disciplines. Tell him not to be afraid of falling down; if his professors are good—and they are good where he is going—they'll see his hungry heart, and they'll abide it in full measure.
And if he becomes so much a lover of learning, then he should—he must—find among the many fields of his interest and expertise the common thread, which is the ability to bring all of this to others: to new generations, to those who are older than he, to the world that so sorely needs people committed to that which is the most ancient of all noble acts a person can do for his world and the people in it.
In so doing, he will have found not merely a calling; he will have found freedom.
Tell your son to write to me if he is inclined. I can tell him more.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
OWL-
For the record...
AM NOT an 8 year old, am 5. This is the consensus and the reason why I have great delight in having poop joke marathons with 4-6 yr olds.
All age has done for me is allowed me to put a sock in my whining.
wild clover - By working in the lab, I have met several friends who work in the Bacti dept. The jokes and sayings, that occur due to the subject matter, are hilarious. One would wear a t-shirt that sa... oh, maybe, this is not the proper forum.
Ah what the hell! The shirt had a picture of two flies and a pile of feces. The caption was "Pardon me, but is this stool taken." HA HA:)
Oh, come on, that WAS funny!
Thanks Dark Wraith. I agree with you too.
I'll show him your advice :)
Liz
There was this man who never planned to be a teacher...
You left off the part about starting a great blog too.
Good evening, Mr. Goat.
I just hate to put up a new post that ends a good Open Forum thread. This one has to be among the weirdest: for the next week or two, I think that just about any keyword a person would put into a search engine query would bring this blog up as one of the first hits.
I mean, think about it:
Phoenician
Roman
Firefox
HTML
Microsoft
Netscape
DOS
porn
Deep Throat
economics
finance
anthropology
philosophy
tassles
anti-trust
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Clayton Act
Chain Store Act
coffee
chocolate
marshmellow
urine
feces
Downing Street Memo
majorette
cat
feline
fax
Prussian
Saxon
Japanese
Long Island
ass
assassin
union
...and on and on and on.
Lordie!
What a blog.
The Dark Wraith needs to do these Open Forums more often.
Once again, posting rather late in the thread, but tell me, is the hot chocolate made on a stove with milk and cocoa powder? If so, I'll take a marshmallow, unless of course there's some whipped cream. If it is the powdered add hot water mix type however, I do believe I'll have a cup substituting black coffee for the hot water. Mmmmmmmmm. I find my coffee intake is such that caffeine has little effect until you mix it with sugar and chocolate. My coffee chocolate however, buzzes me through the roof.
Yes, of course, Wild Clover. As disgusting as it sounds to some, I have for years been a fan of chocolate-covered espresso coffee beans. In fact, I've even made my own using a semi-sweet chocolate inner coating, then a light, white chocolate outer coating.
More importantly, many of my dessert recipes have coffee in them. Most people can't tell it's there, what with all the butter, sweet cream, whipped cream, and other ingredients I usually use.
The Dark Wraith is getting hungry, and it's way too late to make a cheesecake at this hour.
I've had chocolate covered roasted coffee beans before, but I find the experience a little too disorienting to fully enjoy. The intensity of the bean is a little much for me, both in terms of bitterness and even more so in terms of caffeine jolt.
Having said that, coffee in its mildest forms, such as coffee ice cream, is among my favorite things to consume. I have very, very little tolerance for the bitterness of coffee, but I love its aroma.
- oddjob
(Forgot to mention my fondness for Kaluha!)
- oddjob
An analysis of a GOP fracture with a very real chance of cracking in '06 and widening in '08.
- oddjob
ps: Obtained this via Google. Hopefully you won't have to register to access the Boston Globe article as they have now started requiring on their own website.
Good morning, OddJob.
Oh, that is delicious. The extremist religionists of the Republican Party getting a chance to call Bush out to make him show where he really stands? George W. Bush, the man who has a revolving credit account with Rent-A-Spine mogul Dick Cheney?
Give that Southern judge the governorship!
The Dark Wraith likes to sit on the sidelines to watch a family brawl.