Shockingly, it turns out that I may actually be a good saleswoman--!

The poor can't just eat oatmeal

It's finally happened--it's the rare conservative opinion which strikes me as too harsh on the poor.

The Agriculture Secretary was promoting his department’s new hunger (or, in contemporary parlance: “food insecurity”) survey on CSPAN this morning, and promising to expand the federal government’s role in feeding children. We do a good job with school lunches and breakfasts, Secretary Tom Vilsak said, but in the summer months, when kids are out of school, we need more centralized locations to give them their breakfasts and lunches.

Is it really the case that a minimally competent mother (we won’t even contemplate fathers here) in this fabulously wealthy country where food is so cheap cannot give her child a healthy breakfast in the morning? Granted, doing so at low cost entails shopping for food low on the processing chain and, horrors of horrors, actually cooking it. A portion of rolled oats in a large discount container costs pennies and takes five minutes to cook. Too onerous? I know that there is a shortage of decent supermarkets and fresh food in the inner city, a result of low demand and high crime. (Actually, there’s not a decent supermarket in all of New York City.) But a little planning should be able to overcome that shortage by occasional trips to someplace where you can buy in bulk. Here’s a test of whether someone is really suffering from hunger or even just “food insecurity”: Are you willing to cook legumes for a few hours? If not, you’re not starving and have no claim on the public purse.

If such minimal foresight and involvement is beyond the reach of a mother, she obviously shouldn’t have had a child in the first place, and now that it’s too late, maybe should not have custody. Of course the feds, ever eager to expand their reach, are not going to point that out. But the more that the government acts as a surrogate parent, the less parental responsibility we will get.

The author of this article writes from the perspective of a rich person; she asks herself what she would do if she suddenly had no bank account and a smaller income. But a rich person without money does not a poor person make. Instead of pursuing a rich person's lifestyle on a smaller scale, you have to pursue a whole new lifestyle. What is easy for a rich person becomes difficult, sometimes insuperably difficult. A special trip to a bulk store like Costco seems easy to the author--she has free time, money, transportation and social support. Without all of those, a store like that would seem impossibly far away.

What the author calls 'minimal foresight' may require more mental energy than a person living on a subsistence level can spare. You have to have the knowledge and strength of character needed to make plans, as well as the organization and free time needed to execute those plans. And keep in mind that the people we're talking about are not only poor, and in most cases congenitally poor, but also single mothers, often of many children. I can't imagine how stressful that would be. It's easy to say that people should be able to make plans and follow through, and should be able to put aside a small amount of money. They can't. It's harder for them.

It also seems unrealistic to expect the poor to spend as little money as possible in all situations. No other social class does that--how could they? People need to alleviate their feelings of deprivation sometimes--whether it's through buying a third car or through buying cereal rather than oatmeal. And poverty-alleviation programs, like everyone else, need to work with the realities of human nature.

I also love the fact that the author implies that the government should take away a mother's custody of her child--because the alternative is government "acting as a surrogate parent" and overreaching.

Landscape of Thorns

Check out this article on communicating the dangers of nuclear waste to humans 10,000 years in the future: my favorite is the "Landscape of Thorns." However, as the article basically concludes, if human beings in the future aren't smart enough to figure out that being around radioactivity is unhealthy, we probably can't help them, and they probably deserve to die out.

Glorious wisdom of Chairman MAO

What is work? Work is struggle.

We shouldn’t read too many books. We should read Marxist books, but not too many of them either.

I don’t believe that men alone are capable of having two hands. Can’t horses, cows, sheep evolve? Can only monkeys evolve?

Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty did pretty well in his early years, but afterwards he read many books, and didn’t make out so well anymore. He died of hunger in T’ai Ch’eng. It is evident that to read too many books is harmful.

The principle of preserving oneself and destroying the enemy is the basis of all military principles.

It is not true that everything is good. But neither is it true that everything is bad.

We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.

Some play the piano well and some badly, and there is a great difference in the melodies they produce.

It is difficult to do good all one’s life and never do anything bad.

Vulgar locutions on the rise

Here's one I came across recently:

*The bird couldn't reach its beak through the cage.

where the proper English would be:

The bird couldn't reach through the cage with its beak.

or

The bird's beak couldn't reach through the cage.

Another example is:

*Can you reach me that book?

Instead of:

Can you reach that book, and can you hand it to me?

I think the improper usage is becoming more common, and I can see why: the meaning is clear, the sentence structure more direct, and there's no conspicuous vulgarity (I doubt most people would recognize the impropriety at all.) Also, note the confusion with 'stretch', which, unlike 'reach' can be used transitively.

One that is equally logical is the use of 'itch' as a verb:

*I itched her itch.

For the vulgar, it's easier to remember one word than two, and 'scratch' already has separate meanings as a noun and a verb:

The cat had scratched me, so I had a scratch on my hand.

So, predictable, but annoying. Since there is no gain in logic or directness, this locution just seems like a way for the uneducated to decrease their vocabularies even more.

Football, dogfighting, and brain damage

I know, I know, sports are boring, but what about this:

"How many people who we assume have Alzheimer’s—a condition of mysterious origin—are actually victims of preventable brain trauma?"

Here's the article.

Good advice–and a bit of BDSM–from Montaigne

Good old Montaigne!

"To have my opinions contradicted doesn’t offend or harm me; instead it wakes me up and challenges me...I don’t mind being rudely attacked by my friends (You’re a fool, you’re dreaming). Among gallant men, a person should express himself boldly, letting his words go where his thought does. I like a strong and virile friendship, which prides itself on the acerbity and vigor of its conversation, as love prides itself on bites and bloody scratches. When someone contradicts me, he attracts my attention, not my anger; I feel drawn toward the person who contradicts me, who instructs me, and I love to gratify and nourish his liberty to warn me of my mistakes by my easy surrender; yes, even at my own expense."

Les contradictions donc des jugemens ne m’offencent, ny m’alterent; elles m’esveillent seulement et m’exercent...estre rudement heurté par mes amis : "Tu es un sot, tu resves." J’ayme, entre les galans hommes, qu’on s’exprime courageusement, que les mots aillent où va la pensée...J’ayme une societé et familiarité forte et virile, une amitié qui se flatte en l’aspreté et vigueur de son commerce, comme l’amour, és morsures et esgratigneures sanglantes...Quand on me contrarie, on esveille mon attention, non pas ma cholere ; je m’avance vers celuy qui me contredit, qui m’instruit...aymant à gratifier et nourrir la liberté de m’advertir par la facilitié de ceder ; ouy, à mes despans.



Montaigne, 3.8, De l’art de conférer