Two Dishes But To One Table

David Brin Blog

The science fiction author / scientist David Brin has a much-read (+100 comments sometimes) blog .  I'm a sucker for Purple State ideologies that depolarize the polemics of both sides for dialog and Brinner is a liberal that's sympathetic to conservatives, noting that people on the left  should be receptive when conservatives have:

"reasonable 'Goldwater-style' objections, instead of the shrill mania pouring from the Murdoch-Limbaugh-Fox nexus.  We should be ready, whenever this happens, to heap on positive reinforcement rewards!  The biggest reward of all?  To actually listen."

One long post from Brin in which he brings together a lot of threads is here.

 

Please Submit Your Resume on 100% Cotton and Then Chop the Gordian Knot

I was browsing the ads at the thorn tree cum Hyde Park forum called Craigslist (just for fun) and there was a job listing for a programmer that required the applicant to go to The Euler Project and use the Python programming language to solve one of their PROBLEMS.

Paul's Advice to Teachers and Other BUILDERS: Plan to Work Within the Limits of the Foundation

Every September for the rest of my working life I will recieve my new class.  They will  bring with them their foundation, made by another, and my role is not to focus on what isn't there, but rather to accept and focus on the foundation just as a builder must.

Writing in First Century Asia Minor Paul noted that human beings have an existing foundation, just like a building and that proselytizers of all types must work within the foundation:

"Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.  For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid."

This gives me perspective on my classroom situation.

The core of a builder's job at a New York City Charter School like mine is to be aware of the young scientist's emotional composition, level of science literacy, and attitude toward having an adult in the room running things.  Coming in from my outside culture (whatever you want to call my culture -- I'm not going to label it)

I want to remember that I will better engage the group's needs if I always keep 'builder' in my job description and not just 'broadcaster of science'. 

Paul implies a rather strict merit pay system for builders, saying that:

"(Various builders may build) on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw -- the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.  If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will recieve a reward.  If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss. "

The builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

Cost Benefit Analysis, in Palestine and Elsewhere

A Yom Kippur emailing from Gush Shalom had this to say as a reason for opposing war:

Every war . . . is superfluous: after every war we shall achieve – in the best case – what we could have got before the war.

That claim is an exaggeration.  But  it would be profitable to debate its truth.  In debating it and tearing it apart I think we would be closer to addressing the costs of war, and arriving at an economist's understanding of the red and black ink on the ledger sheet of running a war.  The cost-benefit analysis of war seems to be absent from the mainstream discussion.   The "should we have a war against country XYZ?" is usually framed in emotional terms of appeasement will bring imminent doom versus all war is utter sin.  I f we could look at war like an economist, I think we could come to better results.

I would like to join a pragmatic, non-sentimental peace movement.  One that is even patriotically selfish.  One that  that takes a Kissinger realpolitik point of view, except that, instead of thinking that Nixonian foriegn policy is the most profitable, it would find resolution to be the most profitable.  I think it would be not far from the Neoliberals, who think open market capitalism can solve more problems than war.  Is there a club somewhere for a Realpolitik-FairTrade version of a Neoliberal?

 

I got the Yom Kippur quote from a good blog, Stories of the World,  written by a Lutheran missionary to the mideast.  The organization Gush Shalom has a web page here.  Gush Shalom is described in Wikipedia as

"founded and led by former Irgun and Knesset Member and journalist, Uri Avnery in 1993.  The left-wing organization has been involved in several Israeli controversies, such as sending a “Relief Convoy to Gaza”  . . . and has elicited the mainstream Israeli media to describe it, on occasion, as "radical" and "extreme"."

Academic Symbiosis

There's a professor, John Halpin, at New York University who is really tough but really good.  The Post-Baccs seeking med school admission track credits hate him because he is a real scientist's scientist.  

So, today, while online trying to shed some old furniture, I was pleased to see  a free market response to adversity.  I came across an ad for a tutor that specializes in helping people pass this one specific professor's course.  Excellent!