Paul's Perambulations

WWII COs — My Heroes (and friends) in the fight for true peace.

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:33:16 +0000

I was at the annual PYM Peace Picnic recently and spoke with two WWII veterans (Neil Hartman & Warren Sawyer) – pacifist COs in medical experiments intentionally infected with hepatitis by injection or by drinking fecal water. My friend Russ Tuttle wore lice underwear in typhus tests. These are my heroes…they saved many lives. Incidentally, our governemnt says none of these COs died, although admitting that some were very ill. But COs say that some of those who became chronically ill were released from service and later died of “unknown” causes within a few years after discharge. The dieseases they received were often of a chronic debilitating variety. Incidentally, U.S. law mandated the same salary for COs as for other draftees. But because COs were hated (and often abused…ask me) and politicians want to be re-elected, Congress refused to authorize/budget this money for COs in service. This was very hard on the wives and children of these draftees…they got nothing and the government let them suffer. (Truman thought COs no better than the enemy, after all [ref. elsewhere on this site]. Interesting to consider that Truman always considered himself a good Christian. I wonder what he would have thought of Jesus?)

Fran Sheldon commented on Facebook: From the school newsreels in 1959 I heard about medical experiments on humans and “positive eugenics.” They were definitely presented as a good things, how science works for humanity. We also had videos, lots of them, from the Korean war, of Americans using flamethrowers against individual enemy soldiers. (Of course they never said Korean or North Korean, but used some ethnic pejorative.) We’ve come a long way since then, but the progress is being eroded.

Paul Sheldon replied: I think you’re referring to the forced sterilization practiced in America in the first half of the 20th century after your cousin Wendell famously declared “Three generations of idiots is enough” in the majority opinion by the Supreme Court that approved the policy. But what COs got was:”The first experiments were to study the transmission of scabies and to determine the water requirements of shipwrecked sailors. These were directed by Dr Kenneth Mellanby and were described by him in his book Human Guinea-pigs.The vitamin A and vitamin C deprivation experiments were initiated by the Medical Research Council at the request of the Ministry of Food because it was necessary to know, in planning food rationing, how much of these food factors were needed for health.”

The Roots of White Anxiety (NYTimes 7/18/10

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:04:12 +0000

This article helps explain some of my issues with what has become of Affirmative Action. ML King and Bayard Rustin had it right when they said poverty was a “people” problem, not a “black” problem. Expensive tuition is the price wealth pays to maintain its privilege of prestigious private education. Better that this be done by (and for) the people through their government than by a small set of prosperous individuals (of whatever racial background) who finance it and reap the privilege. IF their kids have the ability, they would reap the benefit, but not otherwise. I remember some real dummies at Princeton. Click Comment for some comments I copied from the post.

Original at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html?th&emc=th

A truth about Kagen — Supreme Court Nominee

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:30:22 +0000

Glen Beck declares that Harvard banned military recruiters from campus when Kagen was Dean of Harvard Law School. Not so. Harvard’s Office of Career Counseling followed a policy, fully in accord with U.S. law, of not scheduling any recruiters who discriminated, and the military met the definition of a discriminating entity. In fact the military DID regularly recruit on campus because it was invited to do so by an official student organization, the Harvard Law School Veterans Association. This arrangement was well known and advertised, fully in accord with traditional academic freedom. There were conflicting legal issues involved in this case, and Harvard (along with many other law schools) chose to follow the non-discrimination law with respect to its own institutional policy. But their policy in this regard was not forced on other campus organizations. Harvard’s policy was eventually challenged, taken to the courts, and found to be constitutional.

One difficulty with Beck, Fox News, and the like, is that a one sentence error (I won’t call it a lie, because that word implies intent, and a sense of fear can lead people to believe the grossest of errors) may require many sentences to set right by telling the whole story (cf. http://mediamatters.org/ http://mediamatters.org/research/201007080004)

All my life I have been committed to liberal (literally translated “freely open/unlimited”) education, and I am disturbed by efforts to the contrary. A comparable oft-repeated “error” is that ROTC was kicked off campuses in the 60’sand 70’s. As I have written elsewhere, some Universities reviewed their policies and decided that if ROTC were to receive full academic credit for its courses, their courses should come under the same academic review that applied to all other courses for credit. There was always the alternative that an on-campus ROTC program continue but not for academic credit. A colleague of mine speaks about receiving academic credit for an ROTC course that, despite its high-sounding name, was effectively marching and drill. To get academic credit for marching is a problem for me, as one who sincerely believes in education and development of the intellect. This is a reason why many institutions never accepted ROTC in the first place.

How Many Graduates Does It Take to Be No. 1?

Paul — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:02:10 +0000

An article in the NYTimes today (6/27/10) reports that many high schools have given up on trying to determine who is the class valedictorian and simple give that designation to every student in the class who has a 4.0 GPA or the equivalent, resulting in many valedictorians every year. Each of them can honestly claim to be class valedictorian. Sounds pretty stupid to me, as I expressed in the following two NYTimes Comments:

“We have not lowered the bar to achieve more valedictorians,” he said. “More kids now are getting over the bar.”

“I feel like as long as you reach that point, it doesn’t matter how many you have,” said Yvette Leung, one of the Jericho seven, who is bound for Harvard. “To be named valedictorian is an honor and a testament to how hard we’ve tried.”

First Comment (#173 NYTimes):
With due respect, the preceding quotes from the NYTimes article indicate a rather pathetic sort of “valedictorian” or “valedictorians.” At one point, I felt that students had been taught (i.e., rewarded) to complain, and so were complaining about their grades when they received Bs or lower. But then my institution announced how talented our incoming class was, with an average GPA of 3.8. Now I’m taking an alternate explanation. They are simply clueless about this, and it appears that they have acquired this gross misconception from their high school institutions. The writing skills of some students I see are atrocious. With so many valedictorians, I’m concerned for the few genuinely very bright students. There IS a difference…I have seen it. Simply put, for whatever reason, we are not all born equal or near equal in this respect. A few, a VERY few, absolutely amaze me. They do exist, and they are distinguishable. I hope they can be identified out of all this mindless noise.

I heartily dislike the notion of standardized testing, but we have brought this on ourselves by our personal weakness and laziness. Yes, we’ll teach to the test, but just be sure the test emphasizes language skills, computational skills, and logical thinking (indeed, the latter can be measured, to an extent, and some folks are sadly lacking here).

Second Comment (#211 NYTimes):
I can readily accept that some of the “valedictorians” referred to in this article and by Commentators #24 and #154 are extraordinarily bright students, having met some of this sort. But what I can also attest to by the fact of direct personal experience is that some whom I have met coming from comparable situations can barely string together a sentence. And that makes the whole concept of “valedictorian” (in the sense that it is described in this NYTimes article) essentially meaningless.

“Forget experience, you lose discrimination. Lose discrimination; you lose life’s only purpose.” Bhagavad-Gita

Original Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/education/27valedictorians.html?th&emc=th

I am a co-complainant to the U.N. Human Rights Council

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:25:02 +0000

I am a signatory and co-complainant in a formal complaint to the United Nations. We are waiting to receive a full response.

Submission to the Complaints Procedure of the United Nations Human Rights Council

The signatories of this submission are citizens and residents of the United States of America. We lodge this complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council as individuals who are forbidden by conscience to participate in war or any military activity. The government of the United States violates freedom of conscience rights by forcing us to pay for war….We are therefore victims of a violation of our freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, as defined in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights….

(excerpt)

Supreme Court says counseling Peace to terrorist groups aids terrorism.

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:32:43 +0000

The NYTimes today reported on the Supreme Court’s decision that advising about peaceful or humane alternatives with groups that the State Department has designated as terrorist is the equivalent of aiding and abetting the enemy. I guess the U.S. follows the “shoot first, talk later” approach – oops, we can’t be doing that, that’s terrorist. So what IS the Supreme Court thinking?

One of my NYTimes Comments in response to their articles was the following: The Supreme Court seems incapable of making distinctions in this case. Did they think carefully about the various issues involved? To quote today’s headline NYTimes article “This decision basically says the First Amendment allows making peacemaking and human rights advocacy a crime.” It’s a sad commentary on this country. I support appropriate peaceful civil disobedience when laws work against the appeals of conscience for peace and justice. So I will do what I feel I have to do, for conscience’ sake. http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22tue1.html?permid=124#comment124)

Are incompetent folks too incompetent to know it, or do we teach them false self-esteem?

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:37:27 +0000

This NYTimes article presents research that attempts to establish that incompetent people are too incompetent to realize their incompetence. The authors note that those grammatically challenged actually believe that they are good writers. Sometimes overall incompetence may be the answer, but there is another possible explanation for why incompetent writers think that they are doing so well. I posted the following response on the NYTimes Comment site. If we’ve got some folks with authority and assumed competence telling students who are incompetent in grammar that they are “coming along” “improving” “that’s better” and everything else to encourage students by giving false praise, the idea of being competent to identify incompetence becomes more complex and perhaps circular. I would say that the authority figures who are giving this false praise are showing their incompetence and that the learners are simply and appropriately learning what they are being taught. But heck, that means that most of the teachers and leaders (us?) are the incompetent ones for saying what others want to hear without regard for the facts of the matter. How well will that fly with the power structure?

In response to http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/?src=me&ref=general

A 50th High School Reunion

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 05:11:33 +0000

Fifty years ago I graduated from Mount Hermon, a preparatory boarding school in the middle of nowhere in northwestern MA. They have since combined with their sister school across the Connecticut River, Northfield School, to form Northfield Mount Hermon. The schools were founded for bright kids of limited means – this is not the place for the Bush’es of the world. The campus looks much the same, because it’s defined by being on hilly ground (outskirts of Berkshires) in the middle of a heavily heavily-wooded area. Fran and I were at the reunion for four days, and the dorm room we had was unchanged from a half-century ago except for a computer outlet. We visited the farm where this suburban kid learned to milk a cow. Back then we grew much of our own food, cooked it, cleaned the buildings, and provided the muscle for everything from the commercial laundry to shoveling coal for the steam plant. There were high academic expecations, and academic success was admired. An observation: We were nerdy kids then; we’re older now, but still mostly nerdy. But a nice group of people overall.

Some days I wore a shirt quoting John Kennedy, that war would exist until the day the conscientious objector enjoyed the same respect as the warrior. One woman said pointedly “John Kennedy was the biggest war mongerer that ever lived.” What do you say to such an irrelevant ad hominem comment? Perhaps fortunately, she walked off before I could ask how her feelings toward Eisenhower related to his famous statement about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Other days I wore a button with Support the Troops, Bring Them Home Now . Another alum called me “still the rebel.” How nice – I never knew I was. On the other hand, a Northfield alum told me that her roommate had a crush on me 50 years ago. NOW you tell me. Fran and I enjoyed hiking through the woods, and one morning I participated in the alumni run. I hope that we are all doing as well for the 60th.

Costs or Benefits of the Technology Age? (NYTimes Comment)

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:52:53 +0000

This article illustrates an extreme example of technology ruling our lives, but many of us experience the conflict between technology and “real” (human) interaction. The almost-continuous use of electronic devices has become a significant problem for some of my students. When I get up in the morning, I walk into our home office to give my wife a kiss at the keyboard. However we also do a lot of physical activity. Intellectually, we’re aware of the pros and cons. I’m setting up the Father’s Day schedule with my kids via email, informed family via Facebook that I’ve just returned from my school reunion, and will post a more thoughtful review of that occasion on my blog (I use it as a journal for reflection). I take time-outs, mostly by hiking with my wife, going to concerts and lectures, getting together with friends, etc. Solo backpacking without cell service or GPS is a miraculous feeling.

It does feel like Catch-22 to be sitting at my computer commenting on this rather lengthy article about the time we spend with computers. I hope that by writing about it (and posting this on my blog), it will remind me to think about this issue more carefully. Maybe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html?emc=eta1

Blumenthal’s dubious “Vietnam Service” political campaign

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:02:17 +0000

I posted the following Comment in the NYTimes in response to the Senate candidate’s misleading speeches (“lies” may be too strong a word for it) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/nyregion/19veterans.html regarding service in Vietnam:

What bothers me even more than his inferences of having served in Vietnam is that Blumenthal’s Vietnam campaign strategy works directly against the nation’s welfare today, as he tries to generate anger over Vietnam so as to garner veterans’ votes. I could say as he does “I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.” But not done against veterans (his audience), but against those who served their country by speaking out against the Vietnam War. I could say much. It then becomes a pointless argument about who abused whom, who started it, how much, and so on.

GET OVER IT. That is not the issue confronting American voters (including veterans) today.

(Incidentally, the NYTimes op-ed article by Pressler published this same day regarding the after-effects of the Vietnam War is both misleading and superficial in limiting itself to the single topic of those who cynically avoided the Vietnam War such as Blumenthal. At that stressful moment in our history there were heroes and villains and many in-between, and they existed on all sides of this controversial war.