The Conversation

                 Time published an article on 4/20 titled “New Report Finds That Book Bans Have Reached Their Highest Levels Yet.” As an avid reader I am immediately bothered by this, but I think it is worth explaining why.               First, over half the country is functionally illiterate, and even more don’t like to read, so who are we banning books for, anyway? It’s not like online ads that subliminally change your thinking. If you want to read a book, you have to physically get it, let someone else know what you’re reading (checking it out of a library or buying it in a store), and spend hours reading the material, depending on how fast you read. Reading is also self-selecting, as you can figure out by the book cover and back if you want to spend the time to decipher its contents. Reading social media and news is anonymous (except for the data points being collected on ...

Lawyer argues fetus of jailed pregnant woman is being illegally detained.  By The Guardian  -  February 23rd, 2023     Okay, this is treasure trove of hot button issues, and in my desire to make everyone happy, this gave me pause because of the quagmire fetal rights is becoming. Basically, a woman in Florida is pregnant and being held without bail awaiting trial and alleges she is not getting adequate care and the fetus is being jailed unconstitutionally. So many issues to unpack in this one.     First, there is the can of worms that is giving an unborn fetus the same rights as an autonomous, living person. I'm not sure how I feel about this movement and find it hard to discuss because it is such an emotional issue for so many people, including myself. I think the first thing we can do is stop doing the Either-Or argument with fetus and mother. Mom and fetus have equal weight until it has a bearing on the economy and governmental health, then the ...

       It is hot. It is too hot. It is unbearably hot in California this week, especially if you don't have an air conditioner. Even if we all had AC to make this heat wave bearable, there isn't enough energy in the grid to provide it. What do we do about this? What CAN we do about this? I don't want to live through another heat wave when someone has to die because they can't cool off.      AP reported this week that the heat was so bad that California, standard-bearer of clean and green energy for the nation, used natural gas to cope with the 52,000-megawatt demand of Tuesday (the hottest day of the wave). Natual gas is the (haha) natural backup supply for wind and solar. In a couple decades, in part because of the statewide push for moving to electric vehicles and appliances, we will use far more energy in a normal day, let alone extreme heat. How are we going to have the infrastructure to provide for these needs?     Any realistic sol...

Article Title : US Schools Need an Infrastructure Upgrade Source: California Educator (CTA monthly magazine) Date: 2021, month unknown (I tore it out of the magazine months ago)      Okay, both an obvious and boring opening topic, I know. This is also not really breaking news, and I wanted the stories I wrote about to be more recent than last year. This is news because I have only just left the teaching profession in part because of this issue, and the infrastructure issues featured in a graph in this article clearly demonstrate how critical this issue is to the future (of everyone, not just the kids who have to learn in these conditions). When I say school infrastructure, I mean the basics that include running water and roofs that don't leak, let alone mental health services and internet access.             The article itself is only a few paragraphs, but it is the graph that tells the real story. The key takeaway is that at leas...

 But What If We... Had Community Policing     This is an introduction for the public of the work I intend to finish this year. It is also a working title for the book, since my original idea has been taken. What if we didn't argue about the problems or judge the victims, but looked for a real solution to those problems that continued to work long after its implementation. This work takes solutions that have been presented from many different perspectives and political leanings. Throughout these writings, there are ideas you may be interested in advocating for, while there are others you will think are crazy (and you may be right). I want to throw out ideas and show how, with some intentional work on the part of the public, make these ideas become reality to have true democracy and representative government.     The first idea I want to run by everyone is the RUOK Squad. This is a new way to look at community "policing." Communities need to be cared for and held ...

This is one of my ideas that will have to be implemented in The Study in order for some of the programs to work.               Melania Trump had a point when she said that women need hard evidence before they accuse a man of sexual assault. Women are not believed as victims, and he said-she said is very hard to prove. We also live in a culture where the woman is often blamed for the incident, including by herself. We live in a culture where “boys will be boys” and we train women on how to avoid an all-too-common scenario, as if they have the power to prevent the situation from occurring. All this means that if women need hard evidence to see their accusers brought to justice, they need a way to gather evidence in a way that is less traumatic for the survivors, so that more will be empowered to come forward.               Talk to someone who was strong ...