Interesting

http://www.joethepeacock.com/2008/03/how-to-actually-talk-to-atheists-if.php

Housing Crisis

Read this interesting article. Quick note, before I post it here, I think it becomes far too unfair towards Barack Obama. He did not cause this crisis, and though he did not prevent it either, he was no in a position to do so in my opinion. Nevertheless the article does raise some interesting and salient points about what happened...

By Orson Scott Card

October 5, 2008

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

Woolly Mammoth

This is a woolly mammoth. I am a Christian.

My belief in Christ does nothing to deny my belief in the woolly mammoth. I am tired of people assuming that because of one, I must be denying the other. The creationists (and Me) claim that God created the universe.Some also claim a bunch of other stuff like the earth is only 6000 years old. I think it is important to actually think. I am not just talking to Christians here, but the atheists and agnostics who can't seem to discern between the two things, or perhaps choose not to. I actually don't mind what you believe, but maybe, just maybe how about this...Just because i believe something different than you does not make me stupid or evil or even wrong. You don't believe what I do, I don't assume that you are stupid or evil or even necessarily wrong. I believe you are wrong, but I am also aware that my belief is based on faith, just as yours is. Oh I know you say, no it is science, but come on, lets be honest. you don't know how the universe was created any more than I do. We have different explanations that's all. Mammoths were on the earth 36000 years ago, okay fine. Wow, see how easy that was. I believe God created them. Oh wait that bothers you too. I bet in a discussion about evolution you don't even know the difference between micro and macro evolution. Until you do, lets not talk about your theory, lets just agree to disagree.

300 mph

I was talking with a friend of mine last night. He flies a jet for the Canadian military. He is in instructor training school and as a part of that he has to learn to do formation flying from the back seat of the airplane. The other day he was working on this, with his Commander sitting in the front seat. The commander is "old school" and thus swears quite a lot. Now he doesn't mean this to be rude or derogatory, it is just how he instructs.

My friend says to me, "the next time I feel like something is particularly troubling or difiicult, I am going to think back to me going 300 mph in a formation 6 feet from three other planes, while my boss swears at me and realize, my daughter's temper tantrum is really not so bad."

Made me think about my own "tough" days at work. I had nothing, I mean what could I say? He was right, I am exceedingly fortunate in my life, my work, my family, my Church. I am going to try to remember this when I am feeling stressed...am I going 300 mph 6 ft from three jets, while my boss swears at me, no? Then maybe I should chill out a little, it's not really that bad.

Food for Thought!

http://www.wreckedfortheordinary.com/index.asp?filename=im-done-with-playing-church

A "projection" coincidence

After entering my post (see: Perceptual Glasses) I headed over to Google Reader and wouldn't you know it, the first entry waiting for me has a connection to my post. Here it is, from Guy Kawasaki no less.

Are You Limiting Yourself?
GuyKawasaki Sep 14, 2008 1:55 PM - Show original item
Psychologists dub the tendency to presume that others react to the world in the exact same way we do as "projection." For example, an entrepreneur is reluctant to schmooze and unwilling to discuss his company in social settings for fear of annoying potential customers and investors.

According to Christopher R. Edgar, projecting can hold you back. Check out his article called "Are Your 'Projections' Limiting Your Success?" to learn more. The next time you find yourself doubting or fearing a nerve-racking situation, don't assume everyone else feels the same way. Bikshu Sangharakshita, author of Essence of Zen, offers advice on how to transcend potentially limiting projections:

“Try to discover what it is you most dislike in others, what you most often criticize and condemn them for. A little elementary self-analysis may reveal that those qualities are hidden in the depths of your own mind and that in criticizing others in this way you are, in fact, unconsciously criticizing yourself.”

Assuming that other people will react negatively to some behavior because that's the way you feel can limit you. What's trickier is the assumption that if you like the behavior, others will like it too. This isn't true either.

Perceptual Glasses

Two things have really moved me intellectually this past week. First, my research methods course presented three articles (one an original commentary on what needs to come of educational research - the other two responses to the first; one supporting the other attacking) that brought me to a new place of understanding - a flat earth moment. Second, the pre-class assignment that I have been working on tonight for my grad school seminar presented the concept that identity and reality are reflexive - that is the perceptual frame through which my identity is formed is the same frame through which I see the world. The perceptual glasses I wear cloud both my vision and my projection. Not in itself a flat earth moment - but as you will read - it lead to one.

The research methods course presented an original article where Robert Slavin (http://www.jstor.org/pss/3594400 - login required) or look it up (Evidence-Based Education Policies: Transforming Educational Practice and Research, by Robert E. Slavin © 2002 American Educational Research Association.) speaks to the US government funding available due to the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) legislation and how this is really a great opportunity for "Education" to make the jump to real research. You see, unlike hard sciences, Education has lapsed behind with very little quantitative research guiding the improvement of the profession. The majority of changes to teaching and schooling occur as the passing of anecdotal successes and the use of techniques and methods that have not been tested in true random and rigorously matched trials. Bottom line (and an examples he uses is) should a turn of the 20th century (1900) person be brought forward in time to today -- if they were a doctor in 1899, they would not be able to work as a doctor today -- but if they were a teacher then, they could easily step in as a teacher today. (This is arguable - but changes in classroom culture and content not withstanding - but much closer than in medicine, agriculture, chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) With the funding now available the opportunity exists to move education research into the quantity and quality required to really advance the field.

Reading the article, and the two responses, really helped move me to a place that I had perhaps known, but not every articulated. Education is starving for quality research. And lots of it. What a "flat-earth" moment for me. And I am surprised that it was. I have been an educator for sixteen years and a student for much longer. This I should know.

Or maybe not. You see, the pre-amble to the pre-class assignment (how is that for pre- pre-?) speaks to the perceptual glasses that we all wear. And how these glasses tint both our projection of ourselves, but also our view of the world. Both my vision and the projection of myself is tinted.

The perceptual glasses metaphor is a helpful way of illustrating this. Suppose the lens of our world is coloured blue. If we shine a light through the lens, this projects an image to the world. We could call this our self-image or identity. The light coming back to us is what we perceive to be the exterior reality. However in this situation both the projection and the perception of the exterior reality are coloured blue....The observer and the observed are inextricably tied together in a reflection. Like an image in a mirror, they are looking at one another. How does one then escape a particular reflection? (source: Course document which referenced it from: http://www.neoscience.org/reflexiv.htm)

The pre-amble goes on to say that the escape of a reflection occurs when an individual is able to "let go of how what they thought they knew and move into another place." The examples of Galileo, Columbus and Einstein are strong. And courage and honesty are key components of letting go. The flat earth experience is what I seek. It is why I study. It is why I live. It is me.

It is also my lens.

This may be harder than I thought.