It’s a common experience: We try to talk about privilege or Black Lives Matter or institutional racism, and we find ourselves walking on eggshells, carefully choosing our words to avoid offending any white males who might be in our audience (oops, sorry: I should clarify that not all white males respond this way). Even if…
Category: Essays
Losing the Sense of Decency
George Santayana famously said, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Recent political events have stirred up the most famous altercation from one of the darkest times in our government’s history. On the ninth day of June 1954, American TV viewers were watching the thirtieth day of hearings involving the Senate…
Beyond ‘It Was Just a Joke’: Denial of the Obvious as a Distraction Technique
During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Scott Baio sat down with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall to discuss a tweet he’d made about Hillary Clinton. The tweet contained a photo of Clinton standing in front of the word “COUNT,” with her head obscuring the “O”; the meme contains text referring to the blocked letter. Baio had also added the…
How Police can Regain the Trust of Their Communities
We can build relationships with people so they want to cooperate with us, or we can bully them into compliance. Broadly speaking, these are the two basic approaches authority figures can take to elicit the people’s compliance with rules and expectations: Authoritative or authoritarian. As the father of a small child, a teacher with experience…
The Haves and the Have-Gots
This is a post on language and linguistics, one of my other passions. This is also largely an educated riff; there has been a lot written on this subject, and I do not profess to higher mastery than what comes before. While reading Milne’s Elements of Arithmetic (1893), I noticed questions like these: “How many boys…
Movie review: Fired Up! (2009)
We’ve gotten far enough into the summer TV season that our DVR is persistently empty and we’ve used up most of the VOD choices available to us. This leaves us with having to wander the movie channels more emphatically than we do in the winter months. Tonight’s discovery was Fired Up!, a typical summer guy…
Wisdom of the Dalai Lama
Overview: I have a German language “Wisdom of the Dalai Lama” page-a-day calendar. Each day, I plan to translate the German into English, and discuss. Juli 4: Wir müssen durch unser eigenes Handeln ein Beispiel geben, denn wir können nicht hoffen, andere nur durch Worte zu überzeugen. We must provide example through our deeds, because…
Wisdom of the Dalai Lama
Overview: I have a German language “Wisdom of the Dalai Lama” page-a-day calendar. Each day, I plan to translate the German into English, and discuss. Juli 3: Wenn Sie schwierigen Lebensumständen begegnen, denken Sie daran, dass das Leid vergänglich ist. When you have troubles in life, remember that the pain shall pass. I believe I’ve…
Wisdom of the Dalai Lama
Overview: I have a German language “Wisdom of the Dalai Lama” page-a-day calendar. Each day, I plan to translate the German into English, and discuss. Juli 2: Wir sollten lernen, gelassen im Augenblick zu leben und uns von dem, was wir mögen oder ablehnen, nicht so sehr aus der Fassung bringen zu lassen. We should…
Wisdom of the Dalai Lama
Overview: I have a German language “Wisdom of the Dalai Lama” page-a-day calendar. Each day, I plan to translate the German into English, and discuss. Juli 1: Die Dinge sind, wie sie sind, und nicht, wie wir sie gerne hätten. Dies zu begreifen und zu akzeptieren ist der Schlüssel zum Glück. Things are as they…