Bites For Your Buck

Share

I did a pseudo scientific study this last week on a line of pistachios available in a local store. I found that the math supports one outcome but that this information does not tell the entire story. Like most other things, it’s a matter of what you value most.

Wonderful pistachios are sold in two varieties: with or without shells. The shelled bag contains 170g and sells for $4.88 and the bag with shells contains 250g and sells for $4.48. If you remove the mass in the larger bag that constitutes shells, I discovered that 190g of the larger but cheaper bag was shell mass and hence inedible to humans. This means that if you are looking at the amount of nut you get for your dollar, you get a better deal from the small but more expensive bag.

Not all things are about math. The bags do taste different, and one is easier to inhale in one sitting than the other. The shells must be removed to eat one bag, meaning you work for the nuts and hence eat fewer. Also, the shells may protect the nuts from absorbing chemicals (natural ones too) that change the taste of the nuts. In fact, one major role of a nut’s shell is to keep the environment out until the embryo within is ready to grow into a new tree. My father, for example, informed me that he prefers the taste of the nuts that he must first remove from the shell.

Each consumer must choose what he values most in making a choice from this information. Personally, I object to the notion that 67% of the bag with shells is shell. At the very least, those bags should not be more money let alone increasing in price. I have found that people make better decisions when they have more information. I spoke with a fellow at the store last night who has noticed that people report only the information most often with which they already happen to agree. Feel free to fact check my analysis. I encourage people to do their own homework. It will help you make a better choice.

Challenging Dina Titus on Education

Share

As part of Women’s History Month in March, Congresswoman Alice, aka “Dina”, Titus came to campus to speak on how we can improve academic success for women. Although I was unable to attend the meeting, I have a few things I would like to say to her and to you. I object to the premise and the proposals she brought, and here’s why.

First of all, she comes to a forum predicated on the premise that women are neither participant nor successful in college. If you look at the statistical demographics, you discover that her premise is flawed. Not only do women make up a majority of students in all major Nevada institutions of higher education but they also graduate in higher numbers than their male counterparts. If she comes in increase those numbers, that’s fine, but the supposition that most will infer from the premise is that the student body is mostly male as are most of the graduates. This is quite frankly not the case.

The following graph illustrates a summary of statistics I gathered in advance of her visit. Within one percentage point, the Department of Education, the US News and World Report College ranking as well as the College Board (ACT/SAT entrance examinations) rating of colleges as well as the Nevada Policy Research Institute as well as Scholarships.com agree.

	UNR	UNLV	NSC	CSN
% Female Enrollment	53	55	75	55
Retention Rate	75	76	54
Graduation Rate	55 (48)	42 (36)	22 (sum)	12 (8)
Transfer Rate				37
FT Rate	81	72	36	26

Retention rate is defined as the percentage of students who return for a second year. Graduation rate is defined as the percentage of students who complete a degree in 4-6 years. FT rate is the percentage of students enrolled full time. Finally, 52.8% of women graduate compared with 42.7% of men. A cursory look at the data shows us that women outnumber men at all institutions surveyed. NSC’s rate is skewed because it has only been open for ten years. The statistics show that women are more successful in college than men.

If we look at NSC, it tells us an even bigger story, which gets at the heart of my biggest argument with Mrs. Titus. She will likely argue like Congressman Horsford that we need more funding, more student loans, and the like for education. Look at NSC, and it tells you everything you need to know. Why are so many WOMEN at NSC (72% of the students)? NSC specializes in health care education, something that everyone living in Nevada is told offers jobs including some very lucrative ones. Students go to NSC so they can get into nursing, physicians assistant training, and sometimes medical school, hence the overwhelming majority of female students. I guess that fully 80% of my students are female, and I guess 75% of my students are headed into health care by their own admission. It’s a career field that actually has jobs when they finish. What good are loans and buildings and all that other quesquilia if there are no jobs when you graduate? Even more upsetting to me is the notion that, although my students know there are jobs, very few of them intend to remain in Nevada when they graduate either.

The rest of the details as to why education languishes in Nevada are not in the numbers. They require you to be in the trenches, and as a former UNLV professor, Mrs. Titus should know full well what the real problem is. Nevada has no opportunities for graduates. This is a state that neither recognizes nor rewards people for scholastic achievement. Why would you earn a college degree when you can earn more than I do as a professor by bussing tables, serving drinks, or dealing blackjack? I have students who drive Lamborghinis, live in 3000 square foot homes, and hobnob with Steve Wynn, Steve Jobs, and hordes of other celebrities. I drive a Saturn, live in an old neighborhood and hobnob with students in the classroom. Like I mentioned to Mr. Horsford during his visit to laughter from the assemblage, being a chemistry professor is not sexy. When people at parties hear that's what I do, they turn to other people, desperate for a change of topic and conversational partner.

Many of Nevada’s top high school students usually leave the state for college. Whether they leave immediately or after doing their first two years of core general education credits, they are actively encouraged to leave. Before you call me on this, I will tell you that I graduated Valedictorian from high school in Las Vegas. I was encouraged to leave for college by advisors and teachers and family members and almost everyone else because they knew two things- the name of the school on my diploma can make me look good and where they can place me can make them look good. I think the administrators view it as a badge of honor that they essentially deplete the state of its best students so they can say they did a good job as educators. Many of my classmates attended prestigious schools such as Harvard, UC Santa Barbara, and Michigan State. They were also neither white nor male as I am, and white males are relatively rare in the programs I attended except for the medical school hopefuls. Nevada ends up with sub par students because if you can get Harvard on the diploma as the granting institution it looks better on job applications than my curriculum vitae. I remember the Dean at UNR telling me that I had the highest GRE score of any student they had accepted. Instead, the students who go into our colleges are largely either average students (and there’s nothing wrong with that since on average half the people are below average) or foreign nationals who intend to leave the state. So, graduating 55% of your average students is actually pretty impressive.

For those stellar students like myself who stay in Nevada, there is nothing for them. I remember the department chair at UNLV told my sister that if she wanted a job after graduation she should not have attended college in Nevada. My brother also ended up out of state doing something completely unrelated to his educational pursuits. I am the only member of my family who is working in Nevada doing what he learned to do in school. What annoys me even more about this is why I came back to Clark County. I returned to teach science or math in high school. I have no idea why the county school district never contacted any of my references. What kind of a message does that send to your best students when you go after foreigners or less accomplished students to be your K-12 teachers especially when you consider how loudly they complain that they can’t find qualified teachers and how our students aren't competitive. Our students do not receive the best teachers we can find for the pay, and our best students leave because Nevada shows by how it treats them that it doesn’t care about them. They are a means rather than an end.

Politicians talk about money as a way to convince you that they care about your children. Money for them is the actual end. Some proponents of higher education argue that higher education ‘investment’ adds value to the economy. They never come prepared with information to validate that claim. Mr. Horsford was woefully unprepared to answer my challenges when he visited, and I'm not actually sure he understood half of what I said. According to NPRI, despite spending enough per student at UNR to place it in the top 25 of 2981 schools ranked its graduates are far less successful than those graduated in Utah, which ranks far lower on that scale. Although expenditures for education CAN add value, it does not necessarily follow that it will or that it must. It will depend on what the people do when they graduate. Right now, they leave. Even if we are investing in education, which I don't think is true, the people who reap the benefits of that investment live elsewhere.

Most politicians talk about money for education as if throwing money at it makes things work. Try that next time your car breaks down- just throw money at it. Loans don’t help if they don’t have a way to pay them off, and default rates are on the rise as students continue to rack up more and more debt. My students are paying today more than I paid in graduate school ten years ago. Money is not the problem; college costs are. They continue to pay more money to get an education that is worth less because there are no jobs that don't involve selling fries. According to the statistics for Nevada, 77% of students at CSN do not receive pell grants, which indicates that most students at CSN are not in financial hardship. More money for grants and loans isn’t the answer. Opportunity after they graduate is.

What Nevada actually needs is partnerships with industry and commerce. When I challenged Mr. Horsford on this, he told me in essence that supply creates demand, that if we graduate students then companies will relocate here, which is a canard of highest degree. Why would companies do that when they are already located near colleges that are producing better or at least more prestigious students? If supply creates its own demand, who is buying all the broken lightbulbs, Romney for president shirts, Tickle Me Elmo dolls, and scrap paper? While I was at UNR, Boeing tried to partner with UNR to establish an aerospace engineering program, but UNR refused to pony up 50% of the cost and so Boeing built its facility in Washington. There is no evidence that Nevada institutions are interested in job placement. They take our money, give us a piece of paper with B.S. on it, and wish us luck.

If they would let me and hire me full time, I propose the following plan. Rather than join a bunch of committees and all that hogwash, instead of spending time on research that benefits the institution over the students, in lieu of mentoring clubs or teams that bring in dollars but do not produce graduates, I would go out into the community. I would meet with them and set up opportunities and infrastructure to partner our students with industry. They agree to take students as interns without having to pay, and we agree to alter our teaching paradigm and curriculum according to feedback from employers so as to provide students with the things they will immediately use. That way dozens or hundreds of Nevada graduates would have actual hands on practical experience when they graduate, which satisfies the number one complaint of the hiring process. Students need experience to get a job, but they need a job to get experience, so we give that to them and hold them accountable. There are organizations that do this already, but few of them are in Nevada, and even fewer of those hire Nevada students. We have a titanium smelter, an iron company, a dynamite manufacturer, military contractors, repair shops, medical facilities galore, ad infinitum. In fact, CSN's most productive programs are those that prepare people for and partner with industries like HVAC, truck driving, and the like. That’s our opportunity to offer a niche, but it doesn’t involve the politicians and make them look good, so they ignore it. I don’t care who gets the gorram credit; I came here to help students, and the students know it.

Nevada’s college problem is a problem of culture. Demographically, all the minority groups on which they focus are doing just fine relative to each other as far as statistics evince. The problem is that this state doesn’t recognize or reward people for their scholastic achievement. Our best students often leave before college or transfer as soon as they can. Our best graduates usually leave the state because there are no jobs. If you want people to do well in college, you begin with the end in mind. The end of a college education is to prepare you to contribute to the workforce. Consequently, you need a workforce that benefits from educated people and employers who reward people for their ability to contribute to solving problems. Consequently, you need to prepare people for the workforce by teaching them to work, which is precisely what the current crop of politicians is trying to avoid. They are rewarding people to avoid work, and the people of Nevada know it and want their free handouts. Nothing great was ever earned without sacrifice, and I am willing to fall on my sword for the students. Are the legislators? We'll see.

Ripe for Repentance

Share

We tend to think that when something is ripe, it is ready. As I cut up a melon last night and realized it was harder than it should be, I decided that I preferred that to a spoiled one. However, when we look at the scriptures, the word ripe, while meaning ready, doesn’t always mean a good thing. In fact, ripening is a more complicated process than we think. In the biological field, it’s called veraison, in which the fruit weakens and is no longer fed by the plant to which it is attached. At that point, the plant leaves it on its own to start a new life.

When we are born into this world, we are that fruit. We have been left on our own to start a new life, one that either withers away on the vine or produces fruit in and of itself, after its own kind. We were considered ready by our Creator, by our mother’s womb, and later by society to become adults in our own life and replenish that which we obtained towards the perpetuation of life.

After Christ called them to follow Him, the Disciples we read ‘straightway left their nets’ because they realized the need and the way for repentance. Many people do not think they need to repent. They see nothing wrong with their actions. Others, like the Pharisees, think that they must first be clean before they can approach Christ, and yet the widow and the lepers and others show us that when the unclean come to Christ He will heal them.

We are ripe in iniquity, but that doesn’t mean we are ready to commit more sin. Being ripe in iniquity means we are ripe for repentance. Iniquity means an inequity with the requirements of deity. Repentance is how we make it right. In essence, we don’t actually DO anything. We turn to Christ, and His grace is sufficient for the meek, and with His stripes we are healed.

Perhaps this is one reason I keep my Saturn because I feel it to be an extension of my soul. It is beaten up, repaired, realigned, and repeatedly maintained to keep it in the right way. After all of that, it is acceptable to me. I don’t know exactly where I’m going with that, but it continues to serve me, and so I keep it. A friend of mine at church said this, which I found profound. He said that the Savior came, not for “IF” we sin, but for when. The atonement is for when we sin. There was never a question of if. The question has always been to bring imperfect beings back into his presence.

Most of the analogies I know for repentance involve farming. Neil Maxwell used to say that when we are ready to plant, God will stop plowing. The events of our lives exist to make us ripe for repentance. They give us opportunities to realize our need for a Savior and turn to Him. They are there to pick at us until we realize that we are unclean no matter what we do, that it will never be good enough, so stop trying to be good enough. When they were stung by poisonous serpents in Sinai, the children of Israel had but to look at a brass serpent atop Moses’ rod, but too many of them insisted on finding a cure and died. The test of life is not to be the best but to realize our nothingness and turn to Christ when we are ripe, in whom and through whom we can inherit all the Father hath.

Google Recommendations

Share

I have no love for Google, as I have previously made mention on this blog. I begin to suspect that Google stands for the opposite of the things for which I stand. When I watch videos on Youtube, a division of Google, I, like most of you, am shown suggested videos based on recent activity. Whenever I watch a video about morality or principle, particularly videos produced by my Faith, the suggested videos are explicitly antagonistic to my views and my Faith. The list of suggestions for future videos grows increasingly saturated with this kind of video the more uplifting videos I view.

The marketing model for Google relies on linking your behavior to similar things. In most other things I view, so long as they are not about politics or religion, the search matrix works very well, recommending items from similar users, similar artists, or on similar topics. It is only in politics and religion that the vast majority if not a plurality of suggested videos are expressly contrary to that which I previously viewed. It begins to feel as if it’s either a dirge of similar videos (which is unlikely) or an active collusion to steer me to specific content.

That would not be the first time Google steered people. Many of their first search results are “sponsored” meaning that those people pay money to appear at the top of the search results. Since most people don’t look past the first page or two, many relevant but free or contrary to the sponsored results are buried and never viewed. There are times when I will click these over and over, not because I want to view them, but hoping to use up the credits purchased so that other people can have unbiased search results.

In class when I teach the scientific method, I impress upon my students this truth. Everyone has an agenda. My agenda is to convince you that everyone has an agenda. They have a purpose that may be contrary or antagonistic or even openly hostile to yours. Even members of your own Faith may believe the same things for different reasons. The only way for anyone to see things the same way you do would be to walk your path and make the exact same choices for the exact same reasons, and since that’s less likely than picking a perfect NCAA bracket, people will vary from you. Be aware of that, and go only where you choose to go.

Paying the Price

Share

A close acquaintance of mine has a themed party every year that I attend. A few years ago, it was a pie party. When Charles asked me if I was going to have any pie, I told him that if I did then I was going to have to jog it off in the morning, and I didn’t feel like it, so I would pass. You see, I learned long ago that eventually if you want something you have to pay the price.

I see a lot of people who don’t seem to be paying it now. Many young folks I know and even people close to my age subsist on ramen, fast food, and corn dogs, and still look skinny and pretty and healthy. I know that if I switched to the all McDonalds diet, I would probably fare far differently. In fact, this past week I have been working out every morning as well as a few days per week after work. I have gained weight, and that is always frustrating even though I know that if I’m increasing muscle mass that makes every sense.

Some people do not deserve what they have. They think they are special or better than we are because they won the genetic lottery. So, they live it up hoping they will never have to live it down. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. It has been said that by 40 you have the face you deserve. I know a friend of mine is starting to pay only now for all the drinking and smoking he has done for the past ten years. It took a while to catch up with him, but it’s catching up with him now, and he now weighs more than I do. He’s still skinnier, but it’s probably fatty liver, and I don’t know how you exercise to make your liver smaller.

The law of the harvest tells us that whatever we sow we shall also reap. I am looking for a source, and since I cannot find it, suffice to say that I have read the following thought: we will have to pay in the next life for everything we have received in this life but have not earned, and everything we have earned in this life but not yet received will be ours in the next. That is justice. It says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It says that things come back to you. Some call it karma, some call it judgment, but the fact of the matter is that when you perturb something, the consequences come back eventually, bad or good.

Rumor Wheels

Share

On facebook this week, an unsourced image went out claiming that Easter was related to the Buddhist goddess Ishtar, patron of fertility. This they did to make it look like Easter was about lasciviousness rather than redemption. This information, propagated quickly without corroboration, just goes to illustrate that most things on the internet are pretty useless which is why they are free. It is also an example of apophasis, in which people believe what they want to believe.

I believe that the people propagating this are seeing what they want to see. The names seem to be coincidental. None of the things I have read have corroborated this claim, and none of those spreading the image have responded to my requests for secondary sources. It seems like someone made it up and then spread it, and it is becoming “true” because it is “written” on the internet. What?

The rumor wheel starts with a bit of information that is spread widely because people don’t bother to check and see if it’s true. When these come out about me, I quote from the Book of Job “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” A few weeks ago in class, I asked a student how he knew something, and he said “I read it on the internet” which of course means it must be true. Anyone heard of The Onion? Sometimes I see things that I really want to be true, but I spend a lot of time proving that people didn’t say what people think they said or that it is misattributed. However, I’m always playing catch-up, and by the time the truth gets out too many low information individuals already believe the lie because they are not inclined to do their own homework. This is folly. When you allow other people to tell you what to believe, you in essence become a slave to their will because you act on and pass on the things that they believe rather than your own.

In this case, the rumor began based on a similarity between two words. If, however, you look at other words, like Eostre (old English or Middle Saxon) similar to Eastre (god of the dawn or rising sun), it also looks like that, and let’s not forget how it was recognized before English became the primary language of the Faith. Before that, it was Pascha in latin which looks a lot like Pesah, which is Hebrew for Passover. The history of Easter has always been about resurrection. However, now we have stories of schools who are calling it the Holiday Bunny because they don’t want it associated with a religious theme. Where the devil did the bunny originate anyway? Why eggs? Do people even bother to ask or find out or do they just let people spoonfeed them hogwash and eat it all hook, line and sinker? It makes little sense to me that the word Easter (which is clearly English) would arise from comparisons to a language deep in Asia since the English probably didn’t even know that Asia existed.

Many words change meaning over time. We may see this summer a change in the definition of the word marriage. However, you can only arrive at the meaning of a thing by looking at it through the prism of those who created it. Using a modern perspective on a historical thing strikes me as silly because things have changed in nuance and meaning greatly since their first utterance. Many people think that Googling is a new term, but a century ago, it referred to a particular type of bowling. Look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. Do your own homework. That’s always good advice.

Ammunition Fleecing

Share

This week, I met up with a guy to buy some ammunition after market. The stores never seem to have any, and I need some for the weekend, and so I paid the price which was significantly higher than the actual MSRP. What prompted this post and flabberghasted me is when the seller actually confessed to the fact that he was fleecing people and he knew it and that he DIDN’t SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT. “You got to make a buck, you know?” he asked me. He has no guilt or remorse about it at all.

What makes me upset about this is that this same guy probably thinks that corporations are ripping people off. When he does it on a small scale it’s ok, but when a large company does it, it’s completely unacceptable. Perhaps that’s how those kind of people end up fleecing the public; they start small, and their company grows until we have not just some guy in a parking lot but a huge corporation that believes it’s no big deal because he’s just one person or even worse, “Everyone’s doing it”.

The people who are buying ammunition, not to shoot but to fleece those who do, need to buy something else. They are taking advantage of a crisis, then they call us whiners. They hate capitalism while they are capitalists as they do this. I find it funny when people hate a thing when others are doing it and then rationalize it when they do it. This kind of hypocrisy governs the world, but other things should. If they were really compassionate like they insist they think everyone should be, they would leave the ammunition in the store for those who use it to buy.

Note: I buy ammunition when I find it, but I never buy ammunition that I will not actually use. If I did, I would run the risk like during the Tickle Me Elmo Fleecing when people ended up with garages full of toys they did not want and could not sell.

Paying Taxes

Share

For the last several years, I have waited to file my taxes until April because I no longer get refunds. When I watch TV, I laugh at the advertisement that says “the best part of paying taxes is getting a refund”. If that’s true, wouldn’t it be best to pay no taxes in the first place or to only pay what we actually owe? The trouble is that sometimes things surprise you at tax time, as they have me.

During the Clinton Administration, I was surprised when, at the age of 14, I owed money to the IRS. My memory is a bit fuzzy as to how exactly this happened, but we somehow discovered that I needed to pay taxes and file a return even though I wasn’t actually employed. I had put everything I earned into a mutual fund, and that fund managed to earn over $400 in capital gains. Under the much lauded Clinton tax rates, capital gains over $400 were taxable regardless of income. Well, needless to say I didn’t have any income per se because I didn’t have a standard job; most of the money I earned was allowance from chores. However, I had to write a check for like $32 to the IRS, and that moment changed my life. Why was a 14 year old boy being harassed for failure to pay taxes?

This year, I discovered another strange thing. When I filed, I had not yet maxed out my IRAs, so I looked into putting more money into them. It was a good thing I checked BEFORE I made the contributions, because if I had put in more, I would have had to pay a penalty for “Saving too much”. You see, the state retirement counts as a 401K account, and since it is “maxed out” because the state matches at 100%, I am allowed to put away less money for savings. Most people cannot add to an IRA if they earn more than $98000 if they are single, but under my special circumstance, I cannot add to an IRA at all if my AGI is more than $64000. The tax professionals and the advisors at work had to look into this, because none of them had ever seen it. You see, I am the only person at my age who is single who is maxing out all of his retirement accounts, and usually people have dependents and so it went unnoticed all this time.

In essence, I am being penalized for saving too much for my retirement. At a time when they consider going after our pensions and talk about putting money aside, it strikes me as odd that I would be penalized for saving too much money. After all, what would Cyprus seize if their people didn’t put any money away for later?

Upgrading Our Speech

Share

My students noticed that I frequently rephrase things I already said so that they are grammatically correct. Last night when we went into class, there was a study group doing practice for the TEAS test, and since they didn’t vacate before we arrived, they left all sorts of grammar exercises on the board. I kind of laugh because when I speak to different groups of people I automatically change the vocabulary I use and the diction techniques by which I apply the words to fit the audience. In certain realms, I elevate my speech, and at other times I use more layman’s terms.

One of my students commented on the fact that she found the TEAS test difficult because of the grammar section specifically. All too frequently because we find ourselves surrounded by people who speak poorly, the correct answer sounds odd or incorrect. Everyone I know answers the question as to their identity with “It’s me” rather than “It’s I” because the latter sounds archaic. Last year, I had a student correct a note I left on the board from “save from erasure” to “don’t erase”; I left a note that erasure has been a word for over 200 years, and that note is still on the board to this day.

Some simple techniques can be applied to elevate the way we communicate with one another. From changing our vocabulary to changing our inflection to changing the arrangement and use of words, the way we say things makes a huge difference. It’s also important what we say and where and to whom, because words have greater and more lasting power than any other weapons, because the words wound and last for sometimes an entire lifetime.

Inflection makes a huge difference in how Americans emphasize their speech. One thing I have noticed that can be useful is to finish a sentence on an uptick, letting your voice rise in pitch or tempo or energy as you come to the end. President Obama does this at the end of every phrase, indicating that he has been taught to do it, but probably not when or how. The fact that he does it at the end of EVERY PHRASE is actually annoying. Moderation seems prescient in this case.

Finish what you say with the positive portion of your message. I notice that many great songs, great quotes and the like start with negative portions or negative words. “Don’t forget” or “Don’t Panic” seem great, but your mind frequently omits the negative portion at the beginning because it’s technically a double negative, and your mind hears “forget” and “panic” even when you were trying to give good advice. In class before the first exam, I write, “Be calm” on the board. It seems a better upgrade. Put the positive part at the end, because that's the part that echoes. At the end of presentations, we summarize the parts we hope people take with them, but we do not always do that with people that we know and love.

Emphasize things correctly. Far too many people use either the word “very” as a modifier or employ more colorful metaphors for emphasis. Years back, I gave a speech at a high school and the students noticed that I said “Saved My Bacon” and “Rassafrassin” in my Q&A section. I asked them if that made my expletives more effective than profanity because they actually registered it without my being crude. Don’t say “very tired”; say “exhausted”. Don’t say “very high”; say “exorbitant”. Don’t say “very fat”; say “rotund”. Our vocabulary is much smaller today than the average uneducated person as projected several centuries ago, yet we have more access to information than they did. So, we communicate poorly.

Scold in private while praising in public. When it is time to scold, that’s fine. Doing it privately keeps it a secret to the benefit of people who may be willing and able to reform themselves. When you scold publicly and make a scene, the people scolded may not be able to recover from the impression that leaves in the minds of casual observers who hold it against them. When coworkers praise me, I ask for it in writing; sometimes they laugh, and then I point out that negative feedback is more common and more likely to be written down, and when it comes time to decide on tenure, promotions, et. al, it is wise to have praise to countermand the complaints accumulated. Make sure that people know about the good. That will help us to believing the best about people. I like (I’m not in love with it) this quote from Jeffrey R Holland: “Think the best of each other, especially of those you say you love. Assume the good and doubt the bad. “ Why do you think I wish I could upgrade it? In fact, I frequently rephrase other people to a more positive way. I would have reversed the end to say “Doubt the bad and assume the good” because I want to leave that with you to echo and have you remember to assume the good.

Assume the good habits of good speech. It will help you communicate more effectively and transform those with whom you communicate. As with our acts, why and how we say a thing matters at least as much as what we say. Words offer a means to meaning, and as we learn to use them more wisely, we can have more power to affect people in positive ways and encourage them to reformation and growth. You can upgrade your speech, and you can upgrade others when you speak correctly and well.

Law, Truth, and Discernment

Share

I think that one of the most difficult things in life but at the same time one of the most important is the ability to discern. We are confronted all the time with claims and “facts” and “proof” and the like that X or Y is necessary, or that A or B is true. My own readings have taught me that when people disagree, it boils down to a difference in values and their value system. Ludwig von Mises taught me that the virtuous choose virtue over any advantage the alternatives afford. Recent attention to politics has taught me that even when we say the same words we do not always mean the same things.

Words are but the means to meaning, and they are only one mean. I teach my students about “organic” and “natural” and point out that some of the products labeled as such will not stand the tests if I apply them. I love chocolate cake, but that’s a different kind of love from that towards my sister or my dog or my job. In nuances of meaning, men make fake products and pretend to portended professions. Counterfeits constantly compete for our attention and resources. We are confronted with generic products and unlicensed knock-offs. We are faced with opinions masquerading as facts. We are faced with emotional pleas pretending to be reasoned arguments. We are surrounded by people playing parts, and it is important to learn how to tell them by their fruits.

Recently on Facebook, some of the folks I know have begun a protracted campaign to share jejune memes that construe a libelous assault on people of disparate views and values. As they criticize me for the mote in my eye, I think they should concern themselves more with the beam that is in their own. They can point out that we are judgmental and arrogant, but in so doing, doesn’t that betray that they are judgmental and arrogant. The thing is that they base this analysis on a misapprehension of why we value a thing.

A close friend of mine reported a recent viewing of a documentary on my Faith. He told me that he finally understood after watching this why people consider us to be preppers. In truth, we have been doing it for a long time, and if you understand why, it makes every sense. Rather than find out why, most men measure others using themselves as a meter stick. “If I were to do a thing, why would I do it?” Thus they project themselves onto others and accuse us of things without knowing why we do a thing.

Judging Righteously requires us to look at more than a book’s cover. I have seen plenty of homeless men who are recently homeless and still try desperately to look clean and fed and comfortable as they try to scrape their lives together. I have seen a few rich people who could easily blend in with the homeless population. In truly discerning a thing, like the appraiser when he looks to distinguish the genuine artifact from the artificer’s counterfeit, we must look at the details and pay attention to patterns and compare to others OF ITS OWN KIND. As Krister Stendahl used to say, it is a breach of ethics to compare your strengths to another’s weaknesses. You must compare things that are comparable in order to really tell the real from the pretenders.

All of that takes skill, which takes time, and so most people don’t bother. Instead, they watch people who declare their moral code openly for any evidence of divergence from perfection. Since it is not possible for an imperfect man to be a saint, the only option remaining in their eye is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Scapegoating the Saints, they assume that if any part is false, then the entire thing must be wrong or evil or worthless, although they would argue the opposite if the same unjust metric were applied to them. Even worse, some of them lie to win- fabricating half truths and whole lies in order to persuade via argument.

Perhaps the real reason for the counterfeits is because people talk about how they want truth when most of them want to discover they already have it. We have myriads of people who become connoisseurs of churches, who seek out a congregation or philosophy or author or politician or spouse or whatever who validates what they already believe. When they find someone or something that supports them, that’s all they see, despite the vast array of evidence to the contrary. Even worse, when they are validated in any whit, men frequently assume that everything about their belief is also true. In essence, they set up a win-win, in which either everyone else is lying or they are absolutely correct. I find it funny when Obi-Wan tells Anakin in Episode III of Star Wars that “only a sith deals in absolutes” because that sounds a lot like an absolute to me.

Truth isn’t made by man; it is discovered by him. Rules aren’t made by men; we are subject to them. Most of the truths we cling to were true before they ever came here, before we ever came here, and before we ever considered them. The real search for truth begins with a realization that as a mortal man you cannot possibly know everything or always be right. IN truth, sometimes I would rather be wrong. If we truly desire to find truth and separate the counterfeits from what is real, we have to rely on someone with greater skill and knowledge than we. It requires that we turn to God who sees far more and far more clearly than we to correct, clarify, confirm, and calculate what we cannot or do not.

An ability to discern correctly is one of the most valuable talents a man may have. Perhaps for that reason Solomon asked for it of God so that he might judge righteous judgment. Would that more men were of such a mind.