January 25, 2010.   God and Disasters

I will never understand the mentality of people who blame natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes on God.  Especially, I do not comprehend those individuals who say that these events are punishments for some sin or sins that the victims of these disasters have committed.  The nuttier of these individuals go so far as to declare that even manmade disasters (such as the leveling of the World Trade Center in 2001) are vengeance or punishment for mortal sins.

What kind of God do these people envision – one who wrathfully creates disasters that indiscriminately kills thousands of people, even children and babies?  That's just the opening argument of a long list of questions.  Where do these people acquire such arrogance that they presume to know the mind of God?  What are their real motives for spewing this nonsense?  By what crazy-quilt set of mental steps do they attribute, say, an earthquake that can be scientifically explained to the action of a supernatural being?  If God does indeed punish wickedness, why aren't these people punished for spewing venom that contradicts the very principles of compassion that, in many cases, is a central part of their own religions?

It is easy to dismiss these individuals as crackpots or as deluded egotists who feel that they have a direct line to God and hear God's voice in their own demented brains.  Yet some of these individuals, despite the evidence that they are certifiably insane, manage to convince thousands or tens of thousands of people that what they say is true.  How do we explain the people who buy this nonsense?  Stupidity?  A desire to find meaning in random acts of nature?  Mass hysteria?

The individuals who promote this poppycock – and all those who blindly follow their lead – do great harm to the religions or churches they represent.  Those who are critical of organized religion in the first place point to these people and say, "See – this is the kind of claptrap that religion leads to."  Those who have faith in a God of forgiveness and compassion should speak out against these people – loudly, clearly, and often – saying, "No, you are wrong.  This is not what we believe, not what we stand for, and we condemn you for misrepresenting our faith."

February 1, 2010.  More Bits and Pieces – and Some Serious Reflections 

> Our Wii system (see the January 7 Mudgelog) arrived on Friday, and we set it up over the weekend.  I always approach these tech projects with some anxiety, but this was painless.  With some research and good advice, I was able to connect everything to our large HDTV and surround sound system through the A/V receiver.  We did the system setup "by the book" (manual), and everything worked just fine, even the wireless Internet connection.  We used one of the simpler games to test it (especially the placement of the sensor bar, which concerned me because it is not exactly by the book).  It took some will power not to try out the better game package (Wii Resort) that we had bought separately, but I knew I would be hooked for hours if I did.  I had papers to grade.

> Yes, class is underway, and my students once more took a very basic diagnostic quiz.  (See the September 2009 Bonus Edition of The Grumpy Grammarian for a report on how miserably last semester's class did.)  I haven't yet calculated the average, but this group knows even less than last semester's class.  I estimate that the average will be slightly above or below 50% – probably in the high 40s.  On this very elementary test of grammatical knowledge, all but three students out of twenty-nine scored below 60% (i.e., they failed).  Two of these three scored only 61%.  One "outlier" made 80% – a veritable island of genius in a sea of cluelessness.  I shall report the details in the February Grumpy Grammarian.  Readers should be shocked and ready to descend upon the local schools with pitchforks because this abysmal ignorance is not limited to my small sample of community college freshmen.  Even if community college students skew slightly below average, they aren't the worst to whom our schools grant diplomas, yet you would be justified to wonder how they made it past 8th grade.

> Along the same lines, I met a lady at my auto mechanic's garage this weekend,  We struck up a conversation while we were waiting for some minor work on our cars.  When I found out that she is a teacher (I never learned at what level she teaches), I launched into a description of what I've been facing in my last twenty years of teaching freshman comp.  She was absolutely incredulous; her mouth literally dropped open when I told her of some of the basic things that my college students do not know.  Therein lies the crux of the matter.  If someone who has been teaching and is part of the system – in any capacity and at any level – is oblivious to the pathetic state of American secondary education, the public as a whole must be even more blind.  Yes, health care, unemployment, the economy, and national security deserve all the concern and ranting and raving that is going on, but we have a longstanding and deteriorating situation in our schools that is just as threatening to the welfare of the nation – and, except for an occasional murmur of discontent (reported in the back pages of newspapers that people never read and that many high school graduates couldn't read and understand), nobody pays any attention.

> I guess I'm just an old poop who does what most old poops eventually do – ranting about how the younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket.  Yet I believe that I put a new twist on it.  I don't think the kids are stting out to wreck everything.  They are the victims, not the perpetrators.  We're seeing a major shift in values that penetrates into the 30-something and 40-something generations (the parents themselves) and perhaps even to older groups.  Concurrent with the huge improvements in creature comforts, thanks largely to technological progress that is unrivaled in history, our emphasis is increasingly on tangibles – not just wealth (which humans have always coveted) but things.  The more abstract and intangible values – abiding and meaningful social relationships, courtesy, selflessness, and (yes) knowledge for its own sake or for the common benefit of all – receive lip service and little more.  We say that these values are important, but we don't act that way.  Our only hope may be that a significant number of our children, seeing how twisted the world can get under these conditions, will invoke youth's natural instinct for rebellion and start to value what we adults have discarded (while hypocritically claiming that we still believe in these values).  Our only hope is that our children will say, with the fearless candor that so often characterizes youth, that they've had it with adult pretension and hypocrisy, that honesty, courtesy, selflessness, genuine relationships, and a universal quest for knowledge and understanding are worth practicing, not just talking about.

February 3, 2010.   Fun, Games, and Learning

As a retired geezer, I enjoy my toys.  There's much truth to the saying, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."  I also believe that we should keep on learning and trying to improve ourselves.  When we've gotten this far in life, however, we should have recognized that learning and self-improvement are not altogether separate from fun and games.

Solving certain kinds of puzzles (crosswords, word puzzles, and the like) is something that people do for fun, but we sometimes learn something from doing them.  Furthermore, studies show that engaging in these activities helps to exercise the brain, which can be as important for mental health as physical exercise is for physical health.  This "fun" type of mental exercise may not be as strenuous as intense studying is (just as bowling or golf is not as strenuous as a workout at the gym), but it has benefits besides merely passing the time.

I believe that computers, technology, and the Internet have given us geezers the opportunity to develop ourselves further – and have more fun – than we could in the past.  Just learning to use these new toys is good mental exercise, and it can be entertaining if we have the right attitude.  Of course, if we expect to pick up on the new technology as rapidly as the kids do (or, worse yet, are afraid of it because we think it is beyond the grasp of our aging brains), we will be frustrated.  Nonetheless, many of us geezers have more mature judgment, more highly developed logic, and more patience than younger people do, and these attributes more than make up for the intuitive grasp of technology that kids seem to have.

I must confess that I rarely do anything these days primarily because it's good for me or because it will contribute to my mental or physical development.  I'm not even sure that I ever did, but now that I'm "over the hill" and can rationalize that my years of achievement and accomplishment are largely behind me, I am much more inclined to do what I want to do rather than what I ought to do.  I can also get away with it because I don't have a parent or a boss standing over me with a horsewhip.  (Spouses are a different story; we're stuck with acceding to their demands if we want to preserve some tranquilty in the realationship.)  My principal motive is to have fun.

Nevertheless, enjoying myself and living a purposeful, constructive life are not mutually exclusive.  I kept on teaching part-time after I retired from my 9-to-5 job mostly because I enjoyed it, not because of some utterly selfless drive to educate students.  The latter did come into play, of course, but I firmly believe that any success I had as a teacher was dependent upon my enjoyment of what I did.  Soon I shall be giving it up, and, though one reason is that our dysfunctional schools are producing larger numbers of uneducable and unmotivated students, the overriding reason is that I'm not enjoying it as much anymore.  I have enough experience now to know that, if I go into a classroom because I ought to be there and not because I want to be there, I shouldn't be there.

This website is another example of the fusion of fun and purposeful activity.  It gives me an outlet for my writing (even if hardly anyone reads it) and thus keeps me in practice.  It provides some social contact through the message boards and may contributing toward educating others.  Still, I would give it up in a flash if it stopped being fun.

I learn about new technology or advances in existing technology partly because it's useful but mostly because it's interesting to learn new stuff.  If I give up on any project, it's usual not because the project is not worth doing but because it has lost all its entertainment value.  Although some of life's activities are anything but fun and cannot be turned into fun no matter what positive spin we put on them, I am convinced that we're doing something wrong if a reasonable proportion of our time isn't spent "playing" or doesn't involve at least some element of "play."

I like my toys, and any spoilsport who wants to take them away from me can crawl back in his miserable hole and leave the rest of us alone.

February 8, 2010.  Super Bowl Ads

During the Super Bowl game, I couldn't help noticing the number of commercials that featured men in their underwear.  We had our usual number of ads with cute, anthropomorphized animals, slapstick comedy, talking babies, and raucous soundtracks pitched to people whose hearing and taste have been utterly ruined by pop music, but, for some reason, advertisers have decided that men wearing undershorts have an appeal to the mass market.  This represents a dramatic shift away from the premise that curvaceous models in bikinis can sell anything from cars to beer and mouthwash.  This was especially striking when an ad for men's slacks featured men in their skivvies.

Making men look ridiculous seems to have been a recurrent theme, too.  For instance, one commercial showed a series of quick scenes in which the man was succumbing to a succession of demeaning tasks and does not assert himself until the last few seconds when he insists on buying the car he wants drive.  (I question the effectiveness of this ad because the car and its name were on the screen for such a short time that I don't remember what make it was.)  This ad bucked the trend, however, because the man was fully clothed.  Maybe this ad agency missed the memo.

I wonder why these ads prevail.  When companies pay millions of dollars for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, I assume they or their ad agencies have thoroughly researched what type of ad sells the product.  I assume that they've run focus groups, consulted psychologists, etc., before they invest this kind of loot.  Has there been a paradigm shift in the Super Bowl audience or, more significantly, in the cultural landscape?

My wife noticed this trend as well but not because she found men in underwear attractive.  Of course, she's nearly as old as I am, and the effect on younger women might have been different.  However, while babes in bikinis tend to appeal to men of any vintage, I doubt that men in jockey or boxer shorts create the same drool effect among women, regardless of their age.  I'm open to theories, but Madison Avenue types need not bother to offer them because I'm convinced that, despite their research, ad agencies don't know what they're doing.  It's trial and error, commercial carpet-bombing, not science.

One theory advanced by my wife in response to all the Super Bowl ads, not just the ones with men in underwear, is that advertisers assume that a reasonable proportion of viewers of the Super Bowl are drunk before the game starts.  After all, Super Bowl Sunday offers a wonderful excuse for imbibing.  The appeal of these ads is analogous to the amusement that drunks derive from seeing other drunks make fools of themselves.

My hypothesis, supported by other observations of human behavior, is that commercials reflect the increasingly large current of feeble-mindedness that flows through the population.  Madison Avenue knows that even idiots have money to spend; in fact, they may even have more disposable cash than many intelligent people do.  If not, they are at least more likely to spend it without thinking, since they usually don't think about much of anything for more than thirty seconds.  I'm sure that business schools must teach the concept that a successful pitch to the inner imbecile within our collective minds makes the difference between robust and anemic sales.

Here's a sure bet for next year's Super Bowl:  a commercial in which an underwear-clad male celebrity (preferably a well-known athlete or rock musician) falls off a ladder and literally bounces on his head with a stupid grin on his face, while his wife, a talking baby, and an incredibly cute talking animal ridicule him to the accompaniment of deafening and discordant rock music.