Off On A Tangent

Kunstler lays out pretty clearly why we won’t be leaving Iraq, no matter who is elected in 2008.  Funny, I’ve written nearly the same idea out in comments on Reddit.  But no one listens to me.  Somehow, Kunstler is famous, because he acts like an asshole while saying the truth.

Here’s another great read, this time about buddhism.

Jaime seems very mechanically inclined.  He really doesn’t get this from me, but I suppose it could come from either of his grandfathers, or his mother, who is very craft-y.  From the earliest ages, he always thought the vacuum cleaner was the best toy in the house.  He likes to take it apart and study all it’s internal parts.  He loves anything with buttons and knobs and seems to know intuitively which gadgets should be push, which should be rotated, which pulled, and which flipped.  We went out to dinner last night (at the wonderful, Timothy Patrick’s restaurant), and he spent most of the time being enamored with the cigarette machine.

This morning, we found he child proof bottle caps are no longer safe, as he opened the baby benadryl bottle and drank and dumped out the contents.  Fortunately, he didn’t seem to ingest enough to have any noticeable effects.  But those caps are tough to open, requiring one to press them down fairly hard and turn them at the same time.  I did not think he could do it, but he did.

This weekend we tackled many projects around the house - I put up a new high shelf in the computer room so that we could eliminate one of the shelves that is in Jaime’s reach.  I fixed a kitchen cupboard safety protector (keeps Jaime from being able to open the cupboard under the sink).  I started work to fix the wall in our bathroom shower, killing the mold, scraping off the paint and decrepit drywall, and layering on the spackle to rebuild the drywall.  I didn’t get to painting it yet because it took a while to dry and I have to work around Jaime’s sleeping schedule.  there is also some ceiling drywall in the garage that is starting to come down that I wanted to secure again.  This turned out to be pretty difficult since it’s very heavy, and getting one screw in does no good as it just rips through whatever holding power a single screw can exert on the drywall.  So I had Vivi with a long board holding the ceiling up while I put in several screws.  This worked for some sections, but it was hard, painful work and we didn’t get very far.  I’m hoping we can get Vivi’s father to come over and help us finish the job.

Vivi did a lot of work on the front gardens and the walkway.  She severely pruned back the bushes, weeded the front garden, cut away all the grass growing over the walkway, and laid down some nice red mulch to prevent new weeds from growing back.  While we were out there, we discovered the back part of our roof is in dire need of being replaced.  Fortunately, we have had no obvious signs of water coming in the house, but it can’t be too far off!  Scratch another couple thousand out of our non-existent budget….

I’ve started reading John Dewey’s “Philosophy of Education”, and although I’ve only just begun, what a brilliant writer he is (I’ve never read anything before, by him).   In mere few introductory pages, he has said more concisely and accurately, more insightfully, and with greater awareness of the complexities of the issues all that Richard Dawkins seems to want to say in “The God Delusion”.  I can’t believe I bought that book, but I felt that if I was going to continue to criticize Harris and Dawkins for their war on religion, I suppose I should read their books (my knowledge of Dawkins’ and Harris’ positions and aims currently comes from their websites and their on-line writings, and even a few videos of interviews).   It is saddening and maddening that our public discourse is so dominated by watered-down versions of real thinking, and dressed up in as divisive and insulting a manner as possible in order to attract attention.  I wonder what people get out of reading these books?  Can they really say they learned something from “The God Delusion” that they didn’t already know or think?  Because I very much doubt that many people with devout beliefs would voluntarily pick the book up (I mean, the very title reaches out to insult them, why would they read it?).  And if you’re not learning something from a book you read, what’s the point?  Ego stroking?  (Ha!  Look!  I was right!)