Sunday, July 15, 2012
Choosing books
I enjoy reading, but I have a terrible time deciding what to read next. Mostly I beg friends to make recommendations or scan the groups at goodreads. Just ran across a couple of new ways to get recommendations, though. The first is whichbook. Set up to four range choices, such as Happy .... Sad or Easy .... Demanding, and the site makes suggestions. The other is BookLamp. It calls itself "the home of the Book Genome Project" and works similar to Pandora.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Pain of politics...
We're deep in the throes of an election cycle now, and it's all I can do to bite my tongue.
Yes, I'll admit it... I tend strongly toward liberal ideas. That doesn't mean I LIVE them. My life is actually lived very conservatively because I choose to align it as much as I can with the tenets of my LDS (Mormon) faith. However, I make a conscious effort to think in such a way that my beliefs do not impinge on the rights of others to have their own beliefs. That is, believe it or not, one of the basic tenets of my faith.
Here's how it plays out for me. I find abortion to be abhorrent. However, I know that many women find themselves in circumstances I cannot begin to imagine. So, even though I believe abortion to be wrong, I understand that is my personal belief, born of my personal faith. And it is a faith-based position that is NOT shared by everyone. Thus, I must leave procreation decisions up to the woman who is facing them. Only she knows her circumstances. Only she knows her position on abortion. Only she can make decisions for herself because SHE has agency over all her own choices (another of my faith's tenets). Because of this, I would never fight to overturn Roe v Wade.
So what in the world does this have to do with our current political climate? Too many of the Republican objectives are intended to directly interfere with the rights of others. They seem mean-spirited to me. The goal of overturning Roe v Wade or of preventing same-sex marriage is a matter of circumscribing someone else's life based on religious convictions that other person may not hold. What would those who rail against same-sex marriage have to say if they were faced with being required to wear a burqua? Outrage about their rights being infringed would ensue, and justly so. None of us should be forced to adhere to religious principles which we do not hold.
In the meantime, I will continue to live my life as closely as I can to LDS principles, but I won't be voting for Mr. Romney.
Yes, I'll admit it... I tend strongly toward liberal ideas. That doesn't mean I LIVE them. My life is actually lived very conservatively because I choose to align it as much as I can with the tenets of my LDS (Mormon) faith. However, I make a conscious effort to think in such a way that my beliefs do not impinge on the rights of others to have their own beliefs. That is, believe it or not, one of the basic tenets of my faith.
Here's how it plays out for me. I find abortion to be abhorrent. However, I know that many women find themselves in circumstances I cannot begin to imagine. So, even though I believe abortion to be wrong, I understand that is my personal belief, born of my personal faith. And it is a faith-based position that is NOT shared by everyone. Thus, I must leave procreation decisions up to the woman who is facing them. Only she knows her circumstances. Only she knows her position on abortion. Only she can make decisions for herself because SHE has agency over all her own choices (another of my faith's tenets). Because of this, I would never fight to overturn Roe v Wade.
So what in the world does this have to do with our current political climate? Too many of the Republican objectives are intended to directly interfere with the rights of others. They seem mean-spirited to me. The goal of overturning Roe v Wade or of preventing same-sex marriage is a matter of circumscribing someone else's life based on religious convictions that other person may not hold. What would those who rail against same-sex marriage have to say if they were faced with being required to wear a burqua? Outrage about their rights being infringed would ensue, and justly so. None of us should be forced to adhere to religious principles which we do not hold.
In the meantime, I will continue to live my life as closely as I can to LDS principles, but I won't be voting for Mr. Romney.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Dumbing down doesn't help
Two FB posts intersected this past week and caused me to groan loudly. The first was an article describing a list of words the NYC Department of Education thinks should be banned from standardized tests. Okay. Maybe they planned to get rid of every 7 syllable word under the erroneous belief that students would not know what they mean. Nope. Turns out words like divorce, disease, poverty, and dinosaur. And the reasons were unbelievable. They might upset a child who did not believe in dinosaurs or didn't celebrate a particular day, such as a birthday, or may have a sick relative.
The second post was an image of President Obama carrying a book as he boarded a plane. The post asked friends to send it on to at least 20 others, with the clear connotation there was something horribly wrong with the photo. And what was that horror? Our president was carrying a copy of Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World.
These seem to signal a deep-seated mistrust of words and ideas. How can we be expected to function in a world-wide society if we actively court the level of ignorance that would have our children protected from actual words and our president dumbing down his reading list? I'm afraid that active fear of ideas is part of the reason there is such a schism in American society today.
A third event, only tangentially related, but troubling nevertheless... This semester a student objected to the "liberal crap" I was asking students to read. He took his concerns to his father who then took them to the vice president of instruction. The irony is that the text being used was only an example, and students were asked to examine and challenge the writing, not to accept it. The student chose to drop the class rather than be exposed to such unacceptable ideas.
The second post was an image of President Obama carrying a book as he boarded a plane. The post asked friends to send it on to at least 20 others, with the clear connotation there was something horribly wrong with the photo. And what was that horror? Our president was carrying a copy of Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. These seem to signal a deep-seated mistrust of words and ideas. How can we be expected to function in a world-wide society if we actively court the level of ignorance that would have our children protected from actual words and our president dumbing down his reading list? I'm afraid that active fear of ideas is part of the reason there is such a schism in American society today.
A third event, only tangentially related, but troubling nevertheless... This semester a student objected to the "liberal crap" I was asking students to read. He took his concerns to his father who then took them to the vice president of instruction. The irony is that the text being used was only an example, and students were asked to examine and challenge the writing, not to accept it. The student chose to drop the class rather than be exposed to such unacceptable ideas.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Derek Sivers' unique perspective
This is the coolest way of interrupting my thinking!
"There are doctors in China," [Sivers] says, "who believe it is their job to keep you healthy. So any month you are healthy, you pay them. Any month you are sick, you don't have to pay them because they failed at their job. They get rich when you are healthy, not sick."
"There are doctors in China," [Sivers] says, "who believe it is their job to keep you healthy. So any month you are healthy, you pay them. Any month you are sick, you don't have to pay them because they failed at their job. They get rich when you are healthy, not sick."
Friday, March 2, 2012
Changes...
For the few of you who ever stumble across my thoughts, it seems appropriate to point out the changes that are happening on this blog. It started out as a space for my classes and for posts about education. Now I find that I'm posting more about the events and ideas I find most disturbing in today's world.
Recently had a student drop a class because of all the "liberal crap" I was teaching. Since when is teaching people how to read and write "crap"? It is dangerous, of course, to those who would prefer not to think or not to have their own ideas challenged, but that's tough. I'm proud to "live conservatively but think liberally".
So, who am I? I am a woman, wife, mother, Latter Day Saint, and an American. I am proud to be each of these things because they combine to inform my personal values. I value fairness and honesty and compassion, and much of what I find most disturbing in the world is because those characteristics are missing.
Recently had a student drop a class because of all the "liberal crap" I was teaching. Since when is teaching people how to read and write "crap"? It is dangerous, of course, to those who would prefer not to think or not to have their own ideas challenged, but that's tough. I'm proud to "live conservatively but think liberally".
So, who am I? I am a woman, wife, mother, Latter Day Saint, and an American. I am proud to be each of these things because they combine to inform my personal values. I value fairness and honesty and compassion, and much of what I find most disturbing in the world is because those characteristics are missing.
Worried about women
It's nearly impossible, especially for those of us who came through the battles to make birth control the province of women, to envision the vitriolic turn in the politics of womanhood. The double standard is alive and well and becoming sufficiently powerful to effect a return to oppressive regulation that should not even be a question on political radar. How dare a woman want control over her own life?! How dare a woman think birth control should be insured just as Viagra and other such drugs are for men?!
Cynthia Beard has done an exemplary job of articulating what I feel but have been unable to write. I hope that everyone will read and consider her thoughts carefully.
Cynthia Beard has done an exemplary job of articulating what I feel but have been unable to write. I hope that everyone will read and consider her thoughts carefully.
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