The Alternative Secret History of the World

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On the Fourth of July Americans will cynically celebrate the greatest setback world progress has ever endured in all of human history. The rest of humankind will, of course, be grieving over the dark day when the United States of America was born. To understand the full scope of this tragedy we must look back at the pre-7/04 world and see what it was like to live on planet Earth before 1776.
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Prior to July 4, 1776, not a single person in the world starved, got sick, worked hard for a living, or experienced any pain and anxiety. No one had ever been oppressed or unfairly exploited because the oppressive and unfair American system had not yet been created.

Since the beginning of time employment had been equally guaranteed to anyone who cared to work, along with an equal pay of exactly $1,000 a week regardless of outcome, occupation, or the geographical area. All work was equally pleasant and enjoyable. Those who chose not to work also received $1,000 a week in unemployment compensation and Union benefits. Other guaranteed people's rights included the right to housing and free universal health care, as well as the right to 100% literacy through federally funded public education.

People never heard of wars, crime, corruption, slavery, torture, murder, cannibalism, and man-made hurricanes. Peace and harmony reigned supreme because the concepts of greed, selfishness, and private property had not yet been invented by the American corporate interests and maliciously spread around the world as part of the American cultural hegemony.

Each person in that ideal world practiced his or her own peaceful spirituality, worshipping Earth, Nature, and the Sacred Feminine, while honoring the spiritual traditions of everyone else. Benevolent chieftains dispensed benefits to their subjects to each according to their needs, making sure that ethnic and sexual minorities were equally and proportionally represented in all spheres of public life. Habeas Corpus was the law of the land, along with Exit Strategy and Geneva Conventions.

Family planning, effective birth control, and early sex education ensured that every family had exactly 2.2 children per household, which prevented overpopulation and famine. Commerce, travel, and international trade were uncommon; everyone lived and died within not more than a five-mile distance from their birthplace. People didn't feel the need to migrate, set up colonies, take over other countries, create empires, settle in uninhabited areas, or fight one another over a creek in the desert.

All farming was organic and for subsistence purposes only. The environment was clean due to reliance on alternative fuels and invigorating manual labor. As a result, everybody lived in comfortable, carbon-neutral houses, eating plenty of good food on a regular basis, and driving fuel-efficient automobiles when they weren't riding their 18-speed urban cruiser bicycles.

This was an amazing achievement of indigenous cultures considering that there had been no division of labor and most people lived on farms. In the free time that remained after toiling the soil and tending to the animals, the indigenous farmers discerned the laws of nature, developed vaccines for deadly illnesses, stretched out the average lifespan prodigiously, and fed the starving in far away places.

This Golden Age lasted from about 20,000 BC up until the American Revolution. After 1776 everything just went downhill.

Immediately upon declaring their Independence, the Americans began the theft of native Indian lands, industries, highways, and communications infrastructure. The Americans used Black slave labor to invent things that would give them an unfair edge over other cultures: cotton gin, bifocals, steam power pumps, self propelled amphibious vehicles, coffee pot, sewing machine, power tools, ether anesthesia, mechanical refrigerator, cylinder printing press, passenger elevator, burglar alarm, oil well drilling, repeating rifle, pin tumbler lock, roller skates, offset printing, barbed wire, dental drill, mimeograph, telephone, light bulb, hearing aid, electric fan, skyscraper, disposable camera, escalator, motion picture camera, safety razor, air conditioner, airplane, assembly line, frozen food, radio astronomy, television, chair lift, nylon, defibrillator, microwave oven, atomic bomb, carbon dating, Polaroid camera, polio vaccine, integrated circuit, oral contraceptive, laser, computer, operating system, optical fiber, calculator, product barcode, space shuttle, artificial heart, internet, and graphic user interface.

Once they stole enough wealth and power, the Yankees moved on to exploit the rest of the world, setting up corporations on every street corner in order to oppress and humiliate people of other cultures, races, and religions. The corporations launched wars and endemic diseases to create economic need and political chaos from which, like Venus from the sea foam, the greedy bourgeois class was born. With the help of the local bourgeoisie, the Americans overthrew all of the free world's honest and caring chieftains, replacing them with corrupt democratic regimes in order to steal their oil and destroy local ecosystems.

American preachers and missionaries confiscated all means of birth control from the aboriginal tribes, causing disastrous demographic explosions, followed by famine and more wars. Once the world was subdued and demoralized, Americans lowered indigenous people's salaries to ten cents a day, at the same time forcing them to buy American goods by way of boldfaced advertising.

The American TV commercials insulted the refined tastes of subsistence farmers so much that they often threw organic eggs and vegan burgers at their plasma screens, destroying them and unwittingly creating a demand for even more TVs. With all the commotion they missed the advance of Global Warming, a clandestine project executed from the secret climate change centers paid for by American imperialists.

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UPDATE:

NOW AVAILABLE ON A T-SHIRT:


buy this T-shirt
 

UPDATE:

Howard Zinn Imitates the People's Cube:

http://www.progressive.org/media_mpzinn070106

Just as Pajamas Media published A People's History: The "Progressive" Version that makes fun of Howard Zinn's version of history and begins with the words "Excuse me while I question your patriotism, comrades progressives," a magazine called The Progressive published Howard Zinn's essay Put away the flags that illustrates all the points covered above.

At the same time James Taranto in his Best of the Web Today comments on Howard Zinn's essay (see Pinin' for the Fjords part), ending it with the words, "Finally, someone whose patriotism we can question!"

It's funny how it all came together on the night before the Fourth of July.
 

I think it is pretty funny that a majority of the comments made at The Progressive (in regards to Mr. Zinn's rant in particular) are CONSERVATIVES! Are we the only ones who watch their shows, read their publications and go on their websites? Hmm, methinks so, comrades, methinks so. I guess such an occurence would explain why the Democrats have to turn out the dead vote every election cycle since rational minded folks vote the other way.

Before I go, I want to thank Mr. Zinn and his lunacy for turning a few more independent swing-voters to our side of the aisle. Thank-you, Mr. Zinn! Expect a Non-Religious Holiday card from me this December, Mr. Zinn, for your efforts in helping our cause!
 

Finally!!  All my history books can be shortened into one simple chapter that is easy to read, and contains nothing but truth!  I can't wait to start burning the old ones and replace them with these new lightweight, eco-friendly, paperback history lessons.

(The scary thing is that it isn't much farther from what is taught in skool)
 

Don’t get to excited yet Betty, everything that is taken out from the kapitalist version of history, will be added in the progressive history when we talk of Indians and 1970s.
 

Ha! The old "secret history trick"! But Rove and Cheney have known all along, haven't they? The Republicccans - uh - I mean, the RepubliKKKans have been hiding this all along, haven't they? The Bush administration has been sitting on this secret history since 1776, maybe even since 1492!
 

And - as if any of this needed additional proof - our progressive comrades in San Francisco wouldn't be who they are if they didn't prove all the above points once again.

Anti-American July 4th

http://www.zombietime.com/anti-july_4th_sf/

As always, Zombie does an excellent job documenting progress in the Bay Area.

For example, I don't think even my perverse imagination could have prompted me to make a parody of Che as a founder of this nation. I'd be afraid that would be over the top as even the most progressive historical revisionism doesn't go that far. Apparently it can, as shown in this representative sample of "propaganda art."


 

I have been appointed twice, but never elected, making me Bill Clinton's dream, to be a director of small water district with fewer assets than I have and I am not rich. It is an onerous job, with no rewards, and all I get is a knife in my back. I do not care about the district; I do not care about its finances; I do it to help Alan, the president, and an old and valued friend.

One of the other directors is acting in a way that I cannot fathom, for I've been looking at it from a modern, therapeutic view: stupidity? Greed? And I could not get my mind around it. Today Alan, who embroiled me in this gawdawful imbroglio, came in to discuss what we're to do about Cecil, who has, inter alia, owing to incompetence exposed us to criminal prosecution owning to utterly nothing that we did.

Alan, knowing my atheistic bent, said that it might go against my grain to consider that he is evil, but Alan thinks that he can smell evil and although I will not attribute it to demonic forces, I agree that there is evil. And we see it in Algore, Our Many Titted Empress, and these people. It's a great deal of fun calling them moonbats, and many of them truly are, fetched by evil people, but there is no excuse to idealize Che except pure unadulterated evil.

There. I've really come out of the closet.
 

Quote:

I don't think even my perverse imagination could have prompted me to make a parody of Che as a founder of this nation.


But, wouldn't that make him really, really old?  Like, older than Queen Hillary, or Madame Speaker?
 

Betty, you have given me an idea. It is possible that Queen Hillary is actually older than the rocks which yield oil, for who can gauge the age of a tapeworm? You cut one in half and you have two. Things which reproduce by cellular division have no life span. Hillary could be as old as the first things that crawled from the sea.

And her hair sometimes looks as though it is.
 

Funny you should mention her in conjunction with tapeworms.  After all, people only realize that they have been infected with them after part of it comes out their ass.
 

I am embarrassed that I did not recognize her as a tapeworm in the body politic, having looked at her since 1992--and it seems like two centuries. But then I am not in the habit of checking my stool. I define civilization as the ease with which one can separate one from one's ordure, and in this I equate the flush toilet, the television clicker, and closing the window on the guano of the Moonbat cave, the DKos.
 

I just signed up to the Daily Kos.....you know...."Hold your friends close...your enemies closer....."

LMAO......On this communist, red, skulking website it takes a few seconds and you can post.


LOL....The Daily Kos can't endure the onslought of new members poking them in the eye so they say...."Remember...you can't post for 24 hours and one week on the blogs".



To me...this is just another way them to say.....my liberal ideology is crap and simply not strong enough to stand up to interrogation.

They should be welcoming the unwashed conservative hordes.......but they tank 'em in a salt water brine for at least 24 hours.

What a bunch of stinky, stained underwear the Left remains.!
 

They hate the responsibility of their own existence and are perfectly willing to subject themselves to someone else; intellectuals often tire of the responsibility for their own lives and out of hubris make hugely complicated meliorist idea which, if enacted, they believe will make the world better. But control is control.

The single tenet of the left is to divorce actions from consequences. You will find that it explains everything about them. If you do not want to be responsible for yourself, for your existence, then you tend to be totalitarian, with capricious punishment, shifting blame, witch hunts, pograms. And not a single one of these people will stand on his own feet and say, "I exist. I am. I take responsibility for me."
 

Commissar Theocritus

The single tenet of the left is to divorce actions from consequences. You will find that it explains everything about them. If you do not want to be responsible for yourself, for your existence, then you tend to be totalitarian, with capricious punishment, shifting blame, witch hunts, pograms. And not a single one of these people will stand on his own feet and say, "I exist. I am. I take responsibility for me."

These tools that we shall use for the advancement for our progressive ideology are like children grasping at the truth but always missing. It is not the divorcing of actions from consequences that is important, as they will discover once the revolution is complete, rather it is the divorcing of history from the factual base that is critical. He who controls the history controls the present and the future. This is why it is imperative that we control the perception of history. It is of course true that as you said, their erroneous thinking leads to capricious punishment, witch hunts, and pogroms - not that there is anything wrong with witch hunts and pogroms that lead to the establishment and strengthening of the Glorious State as well we know. But as they will discover, their punishment will not be capricious at all when we line them up against the wall, and then of course we will be sure to have their written confessions where they will take responsibility for their actions.
 

Comrade, I have just been reading an interesting study done on animals. You know of course that an animal can be conditioned to respond to, say, a sound. When it hears the sound and it moves to one place, it gets food. If it does not move, it gets a shock. In a short while, the animal is a great believer.

Now I think that this is a wonderful impetus for right thinking, but there is a step forward. If there was no correlation between the sound and punishment or reward, the animal merely quivered. So we  need totally arbitrary and capricious power, utterly unpredictable. Stalin, you recall, had a man shot because his dog barked all night. Note that the man was not barking.

To do this, we need a source of random behavior. I would suggest asking Harry Reid or Dennis Kucinich--you may make sure that their responses will not make the slightest of sense.
 

I hope you will be pleased to discover that when I was studying in the imperialist institutes of alleged "higher education," my main course of study was in behavior modification. Now of course these fools here gave far too little credit to the true genius behind behavior modification, our own dear Ivan Pavlov, but much of the work of BF Skinner, such as you mentioned, can be put to good use toward the furtherance to our glorious State.

But while you are of course right to note that arbitrary power and capricious punishment is quite valuable as our beloved Uncle Josef showed, it is only arbitrary and capricious from the point of view of the subject of both the experiment you mentioned and from the huddled masses in need of education. To the experimenter, or the Party Leader and it's organs, the power and punishment is not capricious or unplanned at all. The randomness of the punishment is delivered with the accuracy of our most glorious MIRVs. We can choose the time, the amount, and even who we focus it on, and not only will it benefit the subject, but also lead to the further good of those who witness it.
 

Comrade P., I do admire your scientific accuracy but you have left out fun. Have you never driven a tank through an arbitrary village of peasants, going through the huts, and seeing how many passes it takes to knock them all down? The game, the way Zampolit, Meow and I play it, counts every stone building for two huts for it's rather harder that way. And you lose a point for every peasant who can crawl more than 100' outside the periphery of the village.

Poor Meow; I rigged the rules and did not give points for corpses, so he didn't think to count the nubile women, whom I'd spirited off to my Rancho del Rio Grande.

I think that BF Skinner is much underrated. He raised his own daughter in a cardboard box, which left her incapable of having human interaction--even worse than welfare-mothers who drop a child as often as possible, change it twice a day, and by the time it's 6 it has an IQ 15 points lower, and is sociopathic. The Party could use more people like that. For after all, look at the work Guzman had to do with The Shining Path in South America to get children to kill without compunction. He had do start on animals. I know, there's no reason to shed tears for an animal but the waste of time, of ammunition. If BF had been in charge of it, these people could go directly to the front lines.

I think that I need an expedition to Sierra Leone to investigate how this is done. I'm particularly intrigued with the government cutting off peoples' hands to keep them from voting.
 

Again I must bow to your wisdom, for I did indeed neglect to consider the sheer joy of the capricious use of power. It has been a long time since I have engaged in wanton destruction, and that is a character building exercise indeed.

However, I am compelled to point out that you may have fell victim to the typical lies of the imperialist media. Of course, while their lies can further our cause by moving their working class in a direction we desire, as Party members we must know the truth, at least until it is changed. But I have not received a memo on this as of yet, so I must inform you that Skinner's children were not truly raised in a "Skinner box," nor did they grow up to be crazy or inferior in any way. She was essentially placed in an enclose crib that was climate and humidity controlled so there was no need for any clothing or blankets other than her diapers. One of his daughters, Deborah, is now an artist in London, and as Skinner himself said, he was not worried about her development as much as he was his other daughter Julie Vargas who became a PhD in behavioral modification.

http://www.snopes.com/science/skinner.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Vargas
 

How fascinating about B. F. Skinner; better that one not be a monster of course, unless it's for a good Party cause and then the sky's the limit. A friend of mine while at Harvard had a girlfriend, now a law prof, who was one of Skinner's special students. Every year he would choose one student who would spend a lot of time with him, and she said that people who disagreed with him could not argue with him--there was simply no comprehension possible between them as though they were talking separate languages. And indeed there might have been.

I have seen similar disconnects between people whose minds are ordered by fact and whose minds are ordered by faith; between stupid and intelligent people; and between hysterical and impatient sober people. And indeed one of the wonders of the world is that people do not realize that to try to impress one's ideas on someone who cannot or will not receive them is a waste of time and an irritation to all concerned. But if you're nasty, like me, you can be indifferent and really piss 'em off.
 

First off, since I would not wish to give a wrong impression, but as you said, in camera, I too am a person of faith. Of course that will not prevent me from focusing on the Party's needs as being the best way of bringing heaven on earth for the working class.

That being said, BF Skinner belongs in the Pantheon of Hero's of the Glorious State. I was a self described Skinnerian for many years. In fact, I did not study psychology out of some misguided desire to help people, I was what would be called a rat psychology major. Even the title of one of BF Skinner's most famous books, "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" brings a warm spot in a true party member's heart.

Take this quote taken from this book, as shown of Wikipedia....

People are not free

   "In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomous in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can therefore be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view, together with its associated practices, must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment."

What a man! What an insight into how to manage the masses! Our problem is that we have allowed the bourgeoisie business masters to have cornered the market in his techniques to control the people to enrich themselves rather than to serve the state.
 

In camera, I am afraid that I misguided you. The Cube seems to be formed of a great assemblage of people of various stripes--Red, the owner, has told me that people range from atheist to devout believers. The common element is a hatred of compulsion and lies used for control, and that is what I find entertaining. But for example, one member is a graduate student in Virginia, one a 17-year-old young man living with his mother, but with a female screen name, at least one ex-military, one a 42-year-old woman with severe medical problems, of Jewish extraction but a practicing Zen Buddhist, in Toronto, one a woman pretending to be a dog, and I have suspicions that several of us have more than one identity. I do. A certain fat-faced drunkard Massachusetts Senator who is harder to animate than I thought for nothing is really outside belief for him. But this idendity, absent the persiflage, is more true to me. I'm single, and a great illness, which I by unprecedented good luck survived, last year completely divested me of any faith in anything of any sort whatsoever except empiricism. And the poor cowering servant that you hear people talking to, Lupe, is the standard for the stepped-on serf. But when I call for Bruno, it is assumed that he does more for me than bring me Bombay Sapphire, er Mumbai Non-Conflict Gem Gin and tonics. Or that I do more for him.
 

Quote:

one a woman pretending to be a dog

That would be Hillary when she's missed her daily injection of Vitamin K.
 

Golly Wally,
Since we are are telling lies about ourselves......
I was a Boy Scout.
I can tie knots real good.
I am a father.
Married 30 years but not in a row.
I believe in God
I'm a capitalist pig.
I believe in a profit motive.
I think BigOil earning record profits is good for America....Way cheaper than me making gas in my backyard.
I believe in a free market
I believe less government is better
I believe in an intelligent electorate.
I believe in the Law of Supply and Demand.
I believe a good price is what a willing market will bear.
I believe there is little outside the constitution that concerns the government.
I believe this is the funniest satirical conservative website on the planet.

and...
I believe Liberalism is the root cause of all evil in America.

Careful...I have a loaded badger and am not afraid to use it!


 

Navigator, welcome to the Cube. Wait until Sister Massively Opiated gets back to health and you'll be in for a treat. It was once proposed that she and I do a lucha libre on a troll here, which would have been great good fun but the troll went back under its bridge, lurking, to eat more billy goats. Sorry. Hircine quadrupeds who have chosen to exhibit male sexual characteristics, without intending in any way to suggest that exhibiting male sexual characteristics is inferior to exhibiting female sexual characteristics, or porcine sexual characteristics, like Rosie O'Donnell, bovine sexual characteristics like, well, Rosie again, when her mouth is open really really wide, or lupine sexual characteristics like Barbara Boxer.

And Navigator, do no descry liberalism! For after all, it is the most liberating of all ideologies. We have decreed that actions do not have consequences--for those who commit them. Blame goes to people we don't like and feel we can shame. Rewards are given to people who do not deserve them. How cool is that? You don't even have to have tests. Just stick a gun in the rib of some poor white heterosexual male and take his wallet and hand to the next person on the street who doesn't look like him. Now that's a rush.

Being a liberal frees me of entirely of the bother of thinking. I never think; it makes my head hurt. And when my head hurts, Bruno goes and hides in the closet. So I just do whatever I want to and point the finger at someone else. It's never my fault.

And ethics? Pardon; I soiled my shorts laughing.

And you should also realize that here in the Inner Sanctum we are all close and trusting allies. Why I'd trust Meow with anything, and he knows that so well that he took all that Stuben that I had and that da Vinci notebook that I'd stolen from l'Avvocato Agnelli's house, the one that Southeby's thought that they could get $30 million for, but when you've got Fiat, why bother? Well, it went out the door with me.

And I found that it was missing just after Meow took off in Laurie David's Gulfstream V.  She was down here with Sheryl Crow and damned if they didn't take all the toilet paper in the house.

But Meow will come back. I know he'll come back.

...Bruno! Don't feed Mrs. Punchenko too much and don't get friendly with her. You know how you were the last time you formed an attachment with one of my "guests."
 

Commisar Theocritus!

Your opinion is need over in the Blog Section!

Check "Bridge Breaks Bush to Blame"

Are those the biggest areolas you've ever seen?
I swear they're bigger than the 165g Frisbee.

The Empress wants a transplant. Can it be arranged?

L.
 

Of course it is our diversity that will make our Party stronger! We need a diversity of workers to do the hard work that must be done. So we have a woman who poses as a dog? Well, she is no match for the Mighty Pup, the Pup of a thousand faces! Why, the Pup is even referred to as the Pup or the Data Pup at work. The Pup does not pretend to be a dog, nay, he is the King of Hounds!

But let the old Pup try and encourage you Comrade. See, the Pup is also an old (357 dog years) single hound who has never found a wimmin foolish enough to marry the Pup. The Pup supposes 3.7 billion wimmin can't all be wrong eh? But more to the point, the Pup also had a very bad year medically speaking last year. In fact, a year ago at this time, the Pup was lying in a hospital bed where he called home for nearly 3 months. Your very own Comrade Puperinko had throat cancer last year and was being treated with radiation and chemo. Then the really bad thing happened. In the time span of 5 days, the Pup went from a semi normal hound to one who could not walk and when he came to in the recovery room, discovered he was being given but a 35% chance of living. The chemo had of course suppressed my immunity, and apparently as a result of that, the Pup developed necrotizing faciitis of the left leg. That is, the Pup developed a flesh eating infection. Believe the Pup, he plum quit even thinking about the cancer! The Pup wouldn't even wish the pain he went through on the worst enemies of the State. The Pup was out of work for over 5 months last year, between the cancer, the necrotizing faciitis, and the resultant skin transplant.

The Pup is happy to report, that as of now, the cancer is in remission, but the leg still gives him much pain at times, and the Pup has that "old man" walk. But you know the truth? The Pup actually feels blessed, not just for surviving, but it drew him closer to his faith, and you simply would not believe the way the Pup's online friends came to his aid, and the way the Pup got to meet up with old dear friends that he had not seen in over 30 years in some cases!

The Pup hopes he is not out of line here, for he knows that otherwise he could be put in a line up so to speak, one for which his family would be charged the price of a bullet no doubt! But the Pup would be proud to share with you his homepage, and from the many links there, you can read about the Pup's history, the true Pup nature of the Pup, and hopefully, a lot of other things that you will find of interest. The Pup always urges everyone to read a story you will find linked there called "Ol Job Boudreaux." It is pretty long, but a great read. Any way, you would honor the Pup greatly if you would check it out.

http://members.cox.net/mightypup/MightyPup.html
 

Pup, congratulations on your survival and I understand fully your appreciation of life. It is not facile to say that Paris Hilton's behavior is atrocious because she's never had anything bad happen to her. Now you I expect have found that everything you really liked sounds new again; music that you loved you get to hear again with fresh ears. I did. Mozart's 20th piano concerto for example.

It is astonishing how staring death in the face will clarify things entirely. My near death in 2006 rid me of my right-wing ideology--ideology, not reasoned opinions which happen to be conservative--but really let me loose on fools of every stripe and I find so many of them around, thank Lenin, to operate on. And I understood the imperative of being a man of one piece and therefore came out of the closet to the world, which gives me the wonderfully good fun of coming at the left from a quarter that they thought was secured. I wandered off the reservation. They're preparing blankets infected with smallpox just for me.

But that's not true any more; there is a building network of really pissed-off gay conservatives and libertarians, and I'm afraid that sharp tongues come with the territory. The only problem is that the entire Tony awards doesn't have enough sharp tongues to hack off even 5% of Our Many Titted Empresses' cellulite natural reserve ass.

Laika, I shall heed your mellifluous bark and hie me thence.
 

One thing about it, I am not scared of death, some nerves of course, but no fear. In fact, other than the furtherance of the Party of course, I will welcome it as I know what is awaiting. Actually, given my medical history on my father's side, and my biker days when I truly expected to go out in a blaze of glory with sparks from my Harley sliding down some highway (Alas, I miss those days... haven't had a life since LOL), I really never expected to make it past 42 or so.

Now the Pup can confess he lost a lot of interest in political issues after his experiences this past year, that and the sheer spinelessness of many in a certain party that even led the Pup to write the National Committee chairman asking him to give one good reason why the Pup should even bother to waste the gas to go and vote again.... a question that has yet to be answered. Frankly, this Pup really is in favor of a second American Revolution, armed if need be.

Oh forgive me comrade! My mind has wandered into the morass of potential thought crime! I will now go immerse myself in Das Kapital now and say 20 Hail Lenins! I can only hope the Dear Leader will not see this till I can find someone else to turn in and blame it on them.
 

I have learned that if there is nothing you can do about it, don't get riled. Turn away. Listen to Mozart. They'll still be howling if you turn your head back.
 

Commissar Theocritus

I have learned that if there is nothing you can do about it, don't get riled. Turn away. Listen to Mozart. They'll still be howling if you turn your head back.

You are right on target again, and the Pup had been doing better after his medical struggles last year, about not getting overly riled over these political issues since he knew who was in control, and lets face it, these things do have a way of working out. But lately I have been slipping. Thanks again for reminding me. Yet I still think I better find someone soon to denounce, just to be on the safe side.

Wait a minute! The Pup doesn't need to actually find someone to denounce does he? After all, I have a full Potempkin village of people to denounce, and then report on how I dispatched the unworthy scum to a glorious death in service to the Party!
 

Of course not. Denounce whoever pisses you off. Got a pimple on your ass? It's George's fault and I bet you could open a blog on the Daily Kos and find people willing to form a demonstration line outside 1600 Pennsylvania avenue to denounce George W. Bush who makes people's asses grow pimples.

And if someone gets one more pimple than you, meaning he can be angrier than you, then you get to denounce him.
 

Commissar Theocritus, I am pleased to report to you that I have uncovered a small circle of traitorous dogs that had been withholding almost 78% of their crawfish catch on the west bank of Pierre Part bayou. Now I must tell you, that this was not in my district, so strictly speaking I had no responsibility in allowing this festering sore to develop in the first place. I did not wish to bother you with such petty problems, so I have taken the necessary action and dispatched them, and have put them to use as pier pilings for the glorious naval base we are building to further the Party's peace fleet.
 

I hope that you're not spending any money on safety for the sailors; they're cheap to replace. Well, the submariners cost money to train so we can make things a little safer for them. And we'll have a use for the the women too old to bear more of the People's children, as comfort hostesses for sailors.

They won't be pretty, I know, but we'll have a picture of Rosie O'Donnell on every wall, and with that comparison we won't have a problem.
 

The meager money spent on the sailors is mostly confined to the cost of having a trained political officer to keep the men safe from political error. Between that and the fear of drowning is generally all the safety measures that are needed. The other risk we have safety wise is the infiltration into our glorious factories of bourgeois traitors who sabotage our factories. But we are making progress in this area and dealing with such in the prescribed manner, and we will again surpass our 5 year plan by 175%!
 

Comrade Pup, do you think it's time to start book reservations for our next five-year plan, in, oh, say, five months? I think that I'll need some R&R. Let's book the Luxor. How about that?
 

Commissar Theocritus

Comrade Pup, do you think it's time to start book reservations for our next five-year plan, in, oh, say, five months? I think that I'll need some R&R. Let's book the Luxor. How about that?

One can never have too many 5 year plans can one? We need a 5 year plan to keep our 5 year plans updated in a timely manner. The Bureau of 5 Year Plans needs to tighten up a bit in that area.

BTW, have you seen the sad news? Yet another traitorous comrade, a former intelligence officer in fact, was holding out, hording valuables from the Party! His corpse should be drug through the streets behind our Dear Leader's Zil.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292397,00.html
 

In regards to Comrade Zinn’s article in “The Progressive”—talk about a truth in labeling violation—his little bio at the bottom identifies him as a “World War II bombardier.”  I find it hard to believe he would admit to once annihilating European peasants for American corporations in the 40’s.  Did Mother Russia have Bombardiers in the great war against fascism?
 

It is possible that he sabotaged the bombs, or the airplanes that he was not flying. After all, a good Progressive would always do the best he could where he was. I'm sure that Dr. Zinn would always have undermined the people there. With his intelligence, he could easily have led people to believe that each death was pointless and a useless sacrifice doomed to fail to halt the inexorable march of history. And he is a historian, isn't he? I'm not quite sure how he interprets that, but Dr. Zinn's great strength is that he's an artist. And after all, with his combination of existentialism and solipism, we can only confer on him the title of reality artist.
 

Commissar Theocritus

It is possible that he sabotaged the bombs, or the airplanes that he was not flying.

Honored Commissar, speaking of sabotage, I am distressed that I must report some alarming news, if I may be so presumptuous to think you have not already heard. Some fool at the Ministry of Truth has either maliciously, or through his/her incompetence, created a situation that has exposed an important AgitProp operation.

"News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic."

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2146373,00.html

This fool/saboteur put out a news story so ineptly produced that a 13 year old capitalist swine was able to expose to our embarrassment, which was then confounded by an inexplicable admission of the truth by our lackey at Reuters!

This Pup longs to taste the blood of the fool at the Ministry of Truth that allowed this to come to pass. His mother and parents should also be investigated closely, as well as the people in his neighborhood.
 

Navigator

Golly Wally,
Since we are are telling lies about ourselves......
I believe this is the funniest satirical conservative website on the planet.
...and...
I believe Liberalism is the root cause of all evil in America.
Careful...I have a loaded badger and am not afraid to use it!

Commissar Theocritus

Navigator, welcome to the Cube. Wait until Sister Massively Opiated gets back to health and you'll be in for a treat.

S'okay... as long as it's dispensing only "Laika Approved Official People's Cube Badges", and the Kollektive gets its cut, we are not specieist about our weaponry around her. Betty and I do a great deal of R&D related to the much maligned and often ignored science of Poodle Ballistics, and I am a self-emancipated navy-trained Marine Sniper Dolphin, though really, my skills are much more... diverse... than that...

So... "Badgers!... we don't need no stinkin' badgers!..." But we do appreciate them and as munitions go, they are a good solid addition to any animal-based personal arsenal... Just keep it locked when you're in the bunker, please, and remember that as Range Safety Officer, Dolphin Aki is very strict about maintaining the rules, particuarly if you are still on probation. Also, no jacketed badges may be fired from your Badger while on any of the ranges, particularly indoors, as they pose a severe ricochet risk.... and you might want to have a look at your weapon - his teeth look like they need oiling. I'm sure one of the other members can lend you some Boogle Oil. Happy firing!

Commissar Theocritus

It was once proposed that she and I do a lucha libre on a troll here, which would have been great good fun but the troll went back under its bridge, lurking, to eat more billy goats. Sorry...

Comrade Kommissar Theocritus,
I promise we will tag-team something equally fun as soon as I am up to it and can put up an entertainment-worthy fight... Just keep your costume and mask at the ready. In the mean time, I have not forgotten to practise my 4-fluke pin-downs, though I must still be cautious of straining my dorsal fin... We will have them tapping out in no time!

!Ole!
SMO

<Aki>
 

Sister Massively Opiated

...and I am a self-emancipated navy-trained Marine Sniper Dolphin, though really, my skills are much more... diverse... than that...

Comrade SMO, the Pup can not but help but ask how do you feel about cross species, shall we say, mutual Party dogma exchange sessions?
 

SMO, I shall hold you to your word about the lucha libre. I wondered, at first, if we ought to do some planning or strategizing, but then thought that the natural rhythm of things might prove appropriate, like a two-piano duet, if I may be so bold.

But I feel so left out. I am relatively new the Cube, only since December, and there has not been a real troll. Blue Bell dances in and out of Trolldom, and sometimes actually makes sense. I long for the Mime.

And I was dragged into the Cube by the assault on King Mulva, and was bewitched by that raging idiot. In The Bank Dick one character says, "I've been a perfect idiot."

Fields: "Nobody is perfect."

Mulva is the perfect idiot, able to get the wrong end of every stick.
 

Comrade Pupovich,

As a Kommissar of The Cube, I must uphold the will of the Party and as such, any time I post I am exchanging "mutual Party dogma", as you put it.  But need it be asked at all?  I am a tool of the Party Organ, and if one but only looks around at the multiude of species The People's Cube and the Party admit, it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that to be a member of the People's Cube is to eschew and condemn specieism.  I and my pod are dolphins, while Rev. L. Dogged is Friend of People - a true hero dog and DJ par excellence (please see most recent Blogs and adjust your tin foil hat)... Chairman M. S. Punchenko is a party animal... While Betty devoted to Poodles, as am I...

Many of the members have long-term relationships with both vegetable AND appliances, and are active in the liberation and equal rights movements of both groups.  Our dearest Vulpine member was only recently a Hedgehog before his successful operation, and yet continues to raise his hedgehog young with his pointy wife... Pravda is actually a human being, if you can believe it!!!  (I know!!!... and yet, his shovel is as sharp as any of ours!)... and Dr. P is actually a doctor... well... a Ph.D. but he practises medicine, if you can believe it!!! (I know!!!... and yet, his wit is as sharp as any of ours, and his fashion sense much much better!!!).  

Theocritus is the official Party Chimera, having made the ultimate sacrifice for The Kollective, and now takes on whatever role he feels best serves the Party Organ, sometimes several at once... it is a most difficult and demanding task and though I may be responsible for cleaning up after Meow, I am in awe of Theocritus' dedication.  Proud Comrade Otis has given up his maritime duties to serve as a nurse at the Karl Marx Treatment Centre for the Criminally Confused and Terminally Kulak - it is sad and draining work, especially when it is FOR THE CHILDREN!  Finally, our Glorious Leader, Red Square, has given up his animal/biological nature altogether, and for the Greater Good, has become a Pythagorean Ideal, The Great Incarnadine Trapezoid!  

These are my fellow Kommissars, and beside them I am humbled.  I can only follow their example... MUST follow their example of tolerance and acceptance and so I practise the exchange of  "mutual Party dogma" (but unlike Meow, not bodily fluids) each time I contrive to post to The People's Cube, and in the service of The Party and The Cause... In the service of The Daily Truth*  I know I have left out other deserving and dedicated Cubists whose most excellent example I attempt to follow, however poorly...

And so, Comrade Pupovich, I can only answer your query in the affirmative... That said, on the issue of MIMEs (aka MM, Mikael, Troll-Prime), I must defer to the judgement and wisdom of the Politburo, and all questions related to the aforementioned Homonculi/Golem should be placed through official party lines, in accordance with Party Policy.

Character Counts!
SMO

*The Daily Truth ™ is subject to change without notice.
 

Commissar Theocritus

SMO, I shall hold you to your word about the lucha libre. I wondered, at first, if we ought to do some planning or strategizing, but then thought that the natural rhythm of things might prove appropriate, like a two-piano duet, if I may be so bold.

Theocritus,
Boldness often wins the day.  Together, we shall be invincible!  However, I would not be at all averse to practising to a little Prokoviev... something marshall... what's that bit from Romeo and Juliet when the soldiers come in... it's always makes me want to go and kill something... or at least give it a good whooping... like when Micheal Moore tries to come in the bunker uninvited (we've had to actually start locking the front door, lest we have to shoot him... and we're just waiting for that until we have a bit more room in the freezer, as winter is coming and we are a bit behind on food collection... )

Commissar Theocritus

But I feel so left out. I am relatively new the Cube, only since December, and there has not been a real troll. Blue Bell dances in and out of Trolldom, and sometimes actually makes sense. I long for the Mime.

You must remember - I was away for almost an entire year! (Polonium poisoning is such a pain in the fluke, and the chelation therapy was most unpleasant... f**king Putin!... you'd think he could be a bit more targetted... does it seem so odd that one might find a dolphin in a shushi bar?... I swear, the quality of... ach... don't get me started... I did get a kewl "umbrella" from him as a get well gift though... a true Bulgarian original!!!)... Not to worry, though... it will come back, just as Trotsky the Kulak Monster does every full moon, without fail... and if not MM, or Mulva, then another.  The  world is rife with them and although it may seem quiet (remember... it is summer and they are often busy hugging trees and bathing in granola at this time of year... and with Mother Moonbat in hiding... well... it's bound to be slow), as we get closer and closer to the elections and debates and chances for embarrassing onesself making funny noises during speeches,  and carrying around old footwear become rampant, I guarantee you that your chance will come... So, do not feel left out... rather, think of it as a time for meditation and practise, and for marshalling one's resources.  We will need them.

Commissar Theocritus

And I was dragged into the Cube by the assault on King Mulva, and was bewitched by that raging idiot. In The Bank Dick one character says, "I've been a perfect idiot."
Fields: "Nobody is perfect."
Mulva is the perfect idiot, able to get the wrong end of every stick.

Yes yes... but you must also remember that this was coming from someone who believed that because his cat and his table both had four legs, that they were one and the same...

Remember... everyone needs a hobby... Your time to shine in battle will come, but you must know that in them mean time, your service here has been invaluable!!!  

SMO

 

Sister Massively Opiated

Comrade Pupovich,

As a Kommissar of The Cube, I must uphold the will of the Party and as such, any time I post I am exchanging "mutual Party dogma", as you put it.  But need it be asked at all?  I am a tool of the Party Organ, and if one but only looks around at the multiude of species The People's Cube and the Party admit, it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that to be a member of the People's Cube is to eschew and condemn specieism.

Comrade SMO, thank you so much for clearing this up. I had suspected as much as I have immersed myself deep into the wisdom of the Party here. I am sorry that I may have wasted any of your time that could be better put to use to further the Will of the Party. This old Pup has been "out in the cold" working undercover for the Kanine Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti so long though that what is common knowledge to the inner circle here is as ambigous as Comrade Theocritus. The Pup has been in a tight relationship with appliances for many years himself, as he has been too busy working for World Domination by the Peaceful People's Party to form any sort of relationship with greenhouse gas emitting biological forms.

BTW, for background, perhaps this humble Pup has much in common with Comrade Otis. The Pup has worked for the past 14 years in one of those mean nasty institutions for Mentally Retarded/Developmentally Disabled proles. While one could say that it too is "For the Children" so to speak, it is a hard and thankless job. Most of this time the Pup was what was called a Qualified Mental Retardation Professional... fancy titile Da? Fortunately for the Pup, the Pup was found to have a real talent for Excel and Access databases, and so now am known as the Data Pup, where the Pup works almost exclusively with a whole pod of PhD psychologists.
 

Comrade Pupovich

BTW, for background, perhaps this humble Pup has much in common with Comrade Otis. The Pup has worked for the past 14 years in one of those mean nasty institutions for Mentally Retarded/Developmentally Disabled proles. While one could say that it too is "For the Children" so to speak, it is a hard and thankless job. Most of this time the Pup was what was called a Qualified Mental Retardation Professional... fancy titile Da? Fortunately for the Pup, the Pup was found to have a real talent for Excel and Access databases, and so now am known as the Data Pup, where the Pup works almost exclusively with a whole pod of PhD psychologists.

C. Pup,

Is interesting... very good friend with whom I studied film, but who is really writer at heart, works with developmentally handicapable adults in one-on-one and group home situations.  Is late addition to the profession but one of the few who I have known who is truly good at it and has astounding capacity not to 'burn out' as so many I know in health - mental and physical - fields do.  He says it is because he can write about it, or rather, use it in his writing, though certainly without abusing the privacy of his clients.  He has a special talent for assessing difficult cases that others seem not to be able to get to or to find the root cause of behavioural problems of, and to be able to communicate situation to his fellow workers in a way that somehow also encompasses a solution... and he manages to do this without becoming overly political or make them feel threatened, which is not uncommon in this kind of work... He is just very good at his job - very good at making his clients and his fellow workers feel comfortable and safe - when there is every possibility that both clients and co-workers are psychotic (among other mental illnesses and challenges)... I believe he is the antichrist... ;-).

But I joke, as I am a dolphin of Jewish decent who comes to The Church of Latter Day Goremans by way of Zen... and yet, Red Square sees fit, despite my past thought crimes to, even now, be patient with my overly heterodox and sometimes disruptive ways... I think perhaps it is because I clean up Meow's puke...

As for Excel and Access, since I left my second career in management (I was accounting dolphin with MBA... There now, you see just how forgiving Glorious Red Square can be!!) and returned more to the Fine Arts, I have not had much use for the Windows Suite of Office type programmes... and as Theocritus knows, although I am whiz with Excel, my DB skills are horrendous and I have never been able to master that or any other DB programme... but then, I am a true techlexic and cannot learn anything on a computer from a manual.  If I do it while someone teaches me, I can learn it, but I cannot read a manual to save my life... I believe that as a calf, my mother's pod swam too close to the run off in Malibu from Timothy Leary's beach house and it somehow effected certain parts of my melon... on the other hand, I can field strip and clean almost any weapon in record time and blindfolded (was required learning when studying for film degree... and in Marines, but not so much) and I have a overwhelming fondness for tritium night sites and... well... I'm considered a bit of a gun-nut as dolphins go... my personal preference for in-close sniping is the Steyr AUG .223... light and easily.  Do you have a favourite weapon?  Also, I take care of all party wet-work and... well... I am Cube's Dolphin-of-all-Trades.  When the boys get in a scrape, I am the one they call to clean up the mess and extract them.  Also, in addition to R&D with Poodle Gun, I am working on developing several new techniques for preserving necro-proxies for the party - we get votes AND we get royalties from patents AND we get R&D money from government... Yes... I was damn good accounting dolphin... but I must remain humble...    

On a lighter note, I am also studying Adlerian Therapy, as I appreciate its utility and unlike Freud or Jung, Adler was neither a coke-head or screwing his young female patients... You must admire a therapist who believes that at some point, there must be an end to the therapy and a beginning to living one's life in the moment again, without one's head shoved too far up one's ass...

Welcome to the Cube!
SMO
 

Sister Massively Opiated

He has a special talent for assessing difficult cases that others seem not to be able to get to or to find the root cause of behavioural problems... and he manages to do this without becoming overly political or make them feel threatened, which is not uncommon in this kind of work...

...although I am whiz with Excel, my DB skills are horrendous and I have never been able to master that or any other DB programme...

I am also studying Adlerian Therapy, as I appreciate its utility and unlike Freud or Jung, Adler was neither a coke-head or screwing his young female patients... You must admire a therapist who believes that at some point, there must be an end to the therapy and a beginning to living one's life in the moment again, without one's head shoved too far up one's ass...


I know exactly what you mean. We have improved a great deal in regard to the sort of psychological and psychiatric services we can provide (we just recently got out of a DOJ settlement agreement), I personally do a lot of work for a great lady psychologist that is a whiz with the psychotropics, and the Data Pup created a database just for tracking side effects of these meds. We also have a rather brilliant, absolutely delightful psychiatrist, who also happens to be a very strong Christian (which as you can imagine, is most unusual for the Psychiatric profession). We have recently been expanding into taking more and more temporary emergency placements, individuals that were living in a community situation but were having problems so they come to us and hopefully get them straightened out. As it happens, the Data Pup is currently working on a database for another agency that is involved with "crisis teams" in the community.

The Data Pup has never received any formal training in either Excel or Access, or any computer programs, at least not since nearly 30 years ago when still in school and using mainframes with punch cards LOL. But he has found that you can learn just about anything about any program by  simply not being scared to try what this button does, or trying out the various drop down menus (Just always make a copy of the file before you start experimenting!). The Data Pup has read some books on Access, and a few of For Dummies books, but for the most part the Data Pup's education comes from Google and the many forums out there where one can see what the experts do. Basic database work is really not that hard to learn, the main thing I would say would be to learn the importance of what they call "normalization" of your tables (isn't that a great term for the Party.... normalization?!) Actually, the Pup finds the hardest part is designing the forms in such a way to limit input errors. What I have enjoyed most about learning this is that the Pup now knows the hows and whys of the drop down boxes, check boxes, and all the other things you see on the internet.

Now the Pup has never been a real fan of the various therapies as you mentioned, but he really appreciates your comment about a therapy that doesn't last a life time! LOL! The Pup studied psychology for about 7 years, and as I said, have been working with psychologists for the past 14 years. Now the Pup was a true rat psychologist in the university days. The Pup didn't go into the field with the goal of "helping the people," he was more into Behavior Analysis, learning theory, and physiological psychology (a great background for the Pup's work in the Ministry of Truth da?)

Sadly, the Pup must report that while he is a true Dog of the South, he has never owned a weapon. He wholly supports and encourages the use and open possession of such tools for peace though! The Pup is pretty sure of one thing, had this been the law, while there would have been a number of students killed at Virginia Tech for instance, the Pup bets that not every one of those people in the class room would have had to die had some of the students and professors had a gun and knew how to use it. Actually, that is one problem the Pup has to reconcile....for clearly traditional Party dogma is that it is dangerous for the proles to be allowed to carry weapons, yet I see it as a necessary right and duty of every citizen to be armed to the teeth. Now of course while the Pup doesn't carry a weapon, he can be quite formidable when he goes into Genghis Pup mode. Perhaps you could clear the Pup's mind on this issue so that the Pup doesn't fall prey to bad think? So sorry this is so long.

BTW, should you wish to see just who the Pup is and a bit of his history....

http://members.cox.net/mightypup/SomePupHistory.htm

Oh, and check out this to see if you are cool.... LOL

http://members.cox.net/mightypup/Cool.html
 

Comrade Pupovich

I know exactly what you mean. We have improved a great deal in regard to the sort of psychological and psychiatric services we can provide (we just recently got out of a DOJ settlement agreement), I personally do a lot of work for a great lady psychologist that is a whiz with the psychotropics, and the Data Pup created a database just for tracking side effects of these meds. We also have a rather brilliant, absolutely delightful psychiatrist, who also happens to be a very strong Christian (which as you can imagine, is most unusual for the Psychiatric profession). We have recently been expanding into taking more and more temporary emergency placements, individuals that were living in a community situation but were having problems so they come to us and hopefully get them straightened out. As it happens, the Data Pup is currently working on a database for another agency that is involved with "crisis teams" in the community.

WARNING:  The Following Response Relates to Religious Practise in a respectful and positive tone, or so the author believes... you may choose not to continue reading it if you fear you might be offended... but don't come bitching to me later if you do continue and don't like what you read... You may disagree with me, but if you want to be offended, that's a choice you make for yourself, so be forewarned that I won't engage.

I don't know that being a 'very strong Christian' is necessarily as unusual as many might assume... or having a strong religious conviction of any kind.  Therapists who deal with individuals who are not psychotic or schizophrenic - who are not non compus mentis - would have to exercise ethical standards in terms of how they approached religion in their therapy work with patients who don't share their views.  In other words, unless religion were an issue for a patient, the therapist would not introduce it and certainly not introduce their own religion as a means of treatment.  It's a question of modality... It would be ethically and professionally wrong for a therapist to try to convert someone or use their strong religious convictions as a method of treatment... certainly an abuse of power.  But insofar as therapy involves, one would hope, the ultimate goal of understanding onesself more clearly (and one's place in the world) and this requires a certain mindfulness on the part of the patient... therapy is not a passive exercise - and prayer is often a function of mindfulness, I don't think that it lacks a place in therapy.  It simply must have an appropriate place, and I don't think it is necessarily as inappropriate as many people believe it to be.  I think if a patient finds devoted religious practise useful in their therapy, then it is appropriate, though again, it should be the patient's beliefs, and not the therapists.  That said, most therapies require their practitioners to undergo therapy themselves, and so if the therapist is a devoted Christian, their experience would include that practise as well...  I hope that makes sense...

I guess what I'm saying is that there are a lot of different forms of prayer.  As a Buddhist, I know many Christians who, when asked if they would meditate would reply that it is against their religious beliefs. By the same token, I know many devout Christians who would say that their prayer is a form of meditation, or vice versa... just not Buddhist meditation, of course... I recently saw a documentary on art in the Vatican and in one part it showed an order of nuns whose sole purpose within Vatican City is to care for and maintain the tapestries, of which there are thousands of exemplary pieces, obviously... All this order of nuns does all day, day after day, with the exception of their 'prayers' is sit and repair these tapestries... they rarely speak, and some have taken vows of silence. They interviewed one (who was speaking, obviously), and asked her what it was like to do nothing but get up, go to the prescribed services she was required to attend as part of her practise, and sit and repair tapestries all day, before going to bed and repeating the entire process, day after day, except Sundays and holidays, and she said that repairing the tapestries was a form of prayer... so... people practice their beliefs in many different ways, and we can't always be certain when we encounter them in the world that they aren't practising devoutly.  I think much of that misunderstanding comes from the notion that 'meditation' in many people's minds means classic Buddhist or Hindu meditation where someone is sitting crosslegged with their hands in a certain position and in a certain attitude, sometimes chanting a sutra or not, but that it is strictly a part of an eastern practise. But most devoutly religious people I know, no matter what their religion, equate meditation, whether it is sitting in quiet prayer or practising mindfulness as they go about their daily lives, with practising their religion, and so for a devoutly Christian therapist, simply practising his work mindfully and with a personal purpose, isn't at all anathema to what therapy is about, nor is it ethically inappropriate for their patients... I'm not sure how else to explain my take on that...

Comrade Pupovich

The Data Pup has never received any formal training ... But he has found that you can learn just about anything about any program by  simply not being scared to try what this button does, or trying out the various drop down menus ... Actually, the Pup finds the hardest part is designing the forms in such a way to limit input errors. What I have enjoyed most about learning this is that the Pup now knows the hows and whys of the drop down boxes, check boxes, and all the other things you see on the internet.

The Techlexic Sister is a long way from the days of being scared that I would push the wrong button... Although I've never worked with punch cards (except to play with them when I was little), my first computer was an Apple II Plus that required two 5 1/4 inch floppies just to boot up and I did a 10 month stint as a computer operator for a large gas pipeline firm about a year after I graduated from film school and the industry dried up for a while... we had two IBM mainframes (with the 1/2 inch tape drives) and were in the process of switching over to a department by department Digital Vax system - mini-mainframes... sort of the midstep between mainframes and server farms, and involving ridiculous amounts of ethernet cabling, while at the same time the company was moving from T.O. to Calgary and so we were setting up a parallel system there and testing it, and I walked off the street and into the job without a knowing a thing about computers at that point, having just spent four years learning to make films using 16mm cameras...

No... my problem is a technical dyslexia... I cannot for the life of me learn almost anything technical from a book.  I have to do it, and I that means, usually, that I have to be shown how to do it... once... If someone walks me through it, I will learn it, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.  It is simply that when I look at what is in a book and try to translate that to what I have to do in a programme, it doesn't work.  It was no different when I returned to school for my postgrad and had to learn, for instance, Finance or Economics, and had to read a textbook full of equations and relate that to the concepts I was learning in Finance or Econ, or my personal favourite, Derivatives... I understand the definition of weighted average cost of capital, of present and future value... of annuities or perpetuities... of price/earnings ratios... but show me the equation for calculating them and my brain shuts off... however - walk me through solving the mathematical problem once, while explaining what each term is, and I understand it perfectly and how it relates to the definition.  Which means that giving me a textbook by itself is less than useless... but give me the answers to one or two problems and I can work backwards and learn the material no problem... Give me instructions for anything 'technical' and I'm lost - walk me through it once, and I know it... Techlexia... but I have other learning... people call them disabilities... I just think I learn things in a different way than what is considered 'normal'... and I don't think it's a particularly unusual problem, in general... people simply learn their own learning style and come up with strategies for doing what they need to do... So it's not that I can't learn it... I just have to learn it a different way, and again, I don't think that it's really that uncommon.  Just look at someone like Temple Grandin, who is severely autistic but high functioning... She doesn't have Asperger's.  She's fully autistic, but she's written five best-selling books, she teaches university, and her work has completely revolutionized animal farming... because she learned how she needs to learn.

Before I go on though, I have a question... why are we referring to ourselves in the third person?.... or more specifically, why are you referring to yourself in the third person... because I tried it at the beginning of my last response and it feels sort of weird...

Comrade Pupovich

Now the Pup has never been a real fan of the various therapies as you mentioned, but he really appreciates your comment about a therapy that doesn't last a life time! LOL! The Pup studied psychology for about 7 years, and as I said, have been working with psychologists for the past 14 years. Now the Pup was a true rat psychologist in the university days. The Pup didn't go into the field with the goal of "helping the people," he was more into Behavior Analysis, learning theory, and physiological psychology (a great background for the Pup's work in the Ministry of Truth da?)
I am no fan of Freud or Jung, though I find Jungian therapy less... full of s**t than Freudian therapy... My personal belief is that both styles speak more to their founder's issues than to general application.  I understand learning theory, and rat psychology... I have many friends among rodentia... I understand the basic structure of the brain and what the different parts do, and what this means for different species... is that what physiological psychology is?... because I have a feeling that it doesn't have anything to do with cognitive behavioural theory, but that it might explain why my Husky can sucker me out of cookies so easily...


Gimmeeee a coooookieeeeee... look closely and you'll see that my brow is furrowed... worried... I need loooooove... I need yoooour love.... and a cooookieeeeeee..... c'mon... just look into my big brown eyes and gimmmmeeee a coooookieeee.....


Suckah!!!... 20,000 years of parallell evolution has made me capable of controlling your mind utterly... Now... gimmmmeeeee some steeeeeak...

Is that what physiological psychology is?

Comrade Pupovich

Sadly, the Pup must report that while he is a true Dog of the South, he has never owned a weapon. He wholly supports and encourages the use and open possession of such tools for peace though! The Pup is pretty sure of one thing, had this been the law, while there would have been a number of students killed at Virginia Tech for instance, the Pup bets that not every one of those people in the class room would have had to die had some of the students and professors had a gun and knew how to use it. Actually, that is one problem the Pup has to reconcile....for clearly traditional Party dogma is that it is dangerous for the proles to be allowed to carry weapons, yet I see it as a necessary right and duty of every citizen to be armed to the teeth. Now of course while the Pup doesn't carry a weapon, he can be quite formidable when he goes into Genghis Pup mode. Perhaps you could clear the Pup's mind on this issue so that the Pup doesn't fall prey to bad think? So sorry this is so long.

No need to apologize... it invites equally long responses that most other Cubists will get bored reading and simply ignore... though they'll probably think the doggy pictures are cute... As a Kanadjian, I've actually read your constiitution, and find that most people's understanding of the Right to Bear Arms confuses the concept of militia and government somewhat and so is not just about some Bubba having the God-given right to drive his duelly down to the local Walmart and buy a Buckmaster for his 8 year old... and that there is a great deal of misunderstanding generated as a result of a seeming lack of civics in schools.  I don't even mean the old argument over interpretation of whether the right is applicable to individuals or to the militia, but also whether that militia is a government body or formed independently and in opposition to the government.  

Unfortunately, the entire debate seems to have devolved into simply a matter of Bubba, his duelly, the Walmart and giving an 8 year old a firearm (which may or may not be patently stupid, depending on the situation... says the dolphin who actually grew up on the Kanadjian prairies and knows lots of people who rely on hunting for part of their food)... I don't understand people who leave loaded and unsecured handguns in between their boxsprings and their mattresses for their kids to 'accidentally' find and 'accidentally' blow their friend/sibling/pet/self away with... just as I don't understand my own government's (Liberal government's) waste of millions and millions of dollars to force legal gun owners to register their weapons in a centralized registry for the purposes of protecting the general populace when violent crimes aren't often committed by people using their own legally owned and registered firearms, but rather, in Kanada, most often with stolen firearms smuggled in from the US and to a lesser degree, stolen from legal gun owners who didn't lock them up properly (which means they shouldn't have owned them in the first place)... Having grown up among people who had firearms, whether handguns, rifles or shotguns, and used them to hunt (well... not the handguns, but I know an awful lot of people who shoot targets recreationally... but we don't seem to need to protect ourselves from home invasion up here too much, and those that do, seem to be as likely to invade someone else's home as have their's invaded... generally speaking... weird how that works... )...

In any case, we have lots of rules about how to store firearms and most people are pretty responsible about how they do... and although we do have school shootings up here, they also find disturbed individuals with homemade explosives, and I suspect that if someone is disturbed enough to shoot up a school, they're disturbed enough to blow one up, and taking one weapon away from them won't stop them from the determined application of another... "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."... How very ambiguous... do you focus on the Purpose of the Amendment or the Right of the Individual, and where do they diverge?  Although I support the second amendment in principle, I believe that it should be mandatory for anyone wanting to own a firearm to have completed a course in... civics and history... since the Amendment is directly applicable, no matter what your interpretation of it is, to one's place in The State at a given time, which includes context... purpose or right?  If one doesn't have a grasp of even the most basic concepts related to the general idea, then they don't understand why they should be able to own that firearm, or what they should be using it for... I don't think it's too much to ask, given the context in which the Constitution and the Amendment were written... but then, we Kanadjians tend to be a bit cerebral sometimes so maybe I'm overthinking the whole thing and should just go with "from my cold dead hands".... though civics classes strike me as less harsh and maybe of more value... and who knows... maybe both are applicable, and it depends whether you have to defend your country when it and so your liberty is threatened from outside, whether your government has become a threat to your individual liberty or even to your life (says the Buddhist dolphin of Jewish descent), or whether a violent criminal is breaking down your front door and threatening the lives of you and your familiy... maybe all three are valid... but I think that if one is to demand the Right to Bear Arms, one must take on the responsibility that comes with that right - otherwise the Constitution and its Amendments cease to be the profound document that they should be... a social contract that guarantees your liberty while outlining the responsibilities you must take on in return.  As Robert Heinlein was so fond of saying, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

But I'm just a dolphin who's up way past her bed-time, so what do I know... it's not even my country...
Nighty-night...
SMO
 

Sister Massively Opiated

I don't know that being a 'very strong Christian' is necessarily as unusual as many might assume... or having a strong religious conviction of any kind.  Therapists who deal with individuals who are not psychotic or schizophrenic - who are not non compus mentis - would have to exercise ethical standards in terms of how they approached religion in their therapy work with patients who don't share their views.

This is not even an issue here. First off, about 85% of the individuals where I work are totally unable to respond to such things as the types of psychotherapy that you mention as they can not speak. For instance, the men I had on my home for 10 years had an IQ shown as <10, in other words, it could not be registered with a simple number. We are talking profound mental retardation. Some were considered severe MR when young, but age dropped them down into the profound range. None of my guys could speak other than a few who could say a few single words. We do have others out there with much greater ability, but they are the minority, and many are people who came to our place when the state closed another facility. Now we do have a lot of individuals with dual diagnosis, which means they have both the MR/Developmental Disabled diagnosis in addition to psychiatric diagnosis such as psychosis or a wide variety of various disorders with names such as the Arspergers that you mentioned. Hence the need for a database that tracked psychotropic side effects as I mentioned I created, it was required by the Dept of Justice. The psychiatrist I mentioned is of course a major part of their treatment for diagnosis and medication purposes. It is not like she is having some couch or group therapy with our people.

When I described her as a strong Christian I meant in the sense that she is not just someone who "talks the talk," she "walks the walk" by her life as well. I was actually unaware she was so deeply involved till she gave me a present of the Prayer of Jabez, and I found out she is even an... aw, I can't remember what this is called (the Pup is of the protestant upbringing), but she is a person of the laity that is ordained so she can provide the eucharist. This is surprising because as the Pup knows from his years of psychology, the schools do their best it seems to squash any belief in the supernatural, which of course is understandable to a degree in that you are studying the natural world, and the scientific method. I was pretty much an atheist back in those days myself.

You are close in your description in regard to physiological psychology. This refers to the study of the underlying physiological causes of behavior. For instance, I remember one of my questions in grad school was just 3 words: "What is seeing?" That meant the Pup had to start with the photon of light that enters the eye, describing what that photon does at the molecular level in the retina to cause a neuron to fire off a message to the brain, and how the brain then interprets that message as both the hard wiring and the "mental" interpretations of that sensation. We had a lot of former NASA people in my grad school. For instance, my main professor there was an expert on physiological psychology and specialized in vision, and so helped design the layout of controls in the Apollo capsule and design the face shield of the helmet. There was actually a lot of work there that one can imagine because you don't want the face shield to bend the light rays in such a way as to change their depth perception for instance.

Sister Massively Opiated

Although I've never worked with punch cards (except to play with them when I was little), my first computer was an Apple II Plus that required two 5 1/4 inch floppies just to boot up and I did a 10 month stint as a computer operator for a large gas pipeline firm about a year after I graduated from film school and the industry dried up for a while... we had two IBM mainframes (with the 1/2 inch tape drives)

LOL! I well remember how once I was going to major in computers, then decided I didn't want to work for a machine and turned around and went into psychology! That worked for a while, till I got to grad school and we actually had to program a mainframe with punch cards to calculate a standard deviation! But what was really the big thing was to get time on the computer to play a text based Star Trek game where the only video was a grid of "space" with an E representing the Enterprise! My stats professor was all up to speed though, and had a "PC" that used an ordinary cassette tape for a drive! My first computers that more or less looked like ours now, came when I worked for Exxon Research and Developmental Labs. Of course they could afford the best! LOL When I first started working where I am now, I started on a Wang! Remember those? Ah, these younger proles haven't a clue about those days! LOL

I also understand what you said about text book learning. I have had problems just learning something simple such as VBA which is so needed for Access in particular it seems. But you can find examples of just about any code you want through Google, then try and break that down to see why it works.

As for the right to bear arms and the well regulated militia issue, to truly understand it, one must look beyond the Constitution and into the writings of those who wrote it and the very arguments they made to the citizens of the land while trying to convince them of the need to adopt this constitution. In the Federalist Papers, it is quite clear that they meant that even Bubba should be allowed to have his weapon, for they saw the right to bear arms as a constraint on the state from becoming an oppressive  tyranny (whether the prove wrong or right is up in the air right now it seems). They specifically noted how the European powers of the time tried to deny arms from the people as a means to preserve their kingdom and tyranny. So the bearing of arms was not only so that the people could defend the state against an outside enemy, it was also a means to keep the state itself from becoming too arrogant in it's power. I must admit the Pup assumed you were an Amerikan since you mentioned being in the Marines?

Finally, the Pup talks in the third person (almost entirely on line mind you) out of sheer habit from his decrees to his minions in the forums! The Pup has problems using such egotistic terms such as I, me, mine.... LOL! Actually, the Pup's full title is "The Mighty Pup, Lord and Master of All that He Surveys, the Great Kahuna, Master of Space Time, the Big Cheese." But just about all my friends now call me the Pup. Actually, there are many "Pups." There is also the Pup's lawyer, Sir Pup Esq (of the firm of Pup, Pup, and Canine), Edgar Alan Pup, 00Pup, Sherlock Pup, Atilla the Pup, Genghis Pup, Stonewall Pupson et al. Hmmmm, perhaps the Pup needs to spend more time with his psychiatrist friend?

Oh, what a handsome canine you have there! You are truly blessed!  In honor of this, the Pup has posted 2000 Puppy Points to your account.
 

Those were the good'ol days!
 

SMO

Theocritus is the official Party Chimera, having made the ultimate sacrifice for The Kollective, and now takes on whatever role he feels best serves the Party Organ, sometimes several at once... it is a most difficult and demanding task.

I had never thought of myself in terms of having several sets of DNA but that is entirely possible, although, and I take back seat to no one in admiration of SMO and her pointy teeth, the nip of which you have not seen yet, I did not know that whatever I do is difficult.

For I have always had a tart tongue, and I can pass a dictionary and words fly out of it to stick to me, and there is the essential bitchiness which I am afraid comes naturally to a man who, when he slept around, did so with men rather than women.

And I have found that can be a source of great gaiety in other venues, for I'm supposed to be one of the captive minorities, my snout and trotters firmly in the trough of victimology, swilling others' rights and monies and I have inflamed more than one person by wandering off the reservation.

That is why I have found the Cube to be a pleasant home, for no one seems to get upset at some of the truly lurid flights of fantasy I have had regarding three-phase sexual appliances, Our Many Titted Empress and Mr. Reno. And I may say that once or twice Meow has even encouraged me in it, but he is young and has yet to learn the folly of that.
 

Commissar Theocritus

And I have found that can be a source of great gaiety in other venues....

Not that there is anything wrong with that...


Sorry, the Pup couldn't help himself!
 

But bitchiness really does come with the territory. But not everything else: can't decorate, and hate Cher and Streisand. Math major. Go figure.
 

Commissar Theocritus

But bitchiness really does come with the territory. But not everything else: can't decorate, and hate Cher and Streisand. Math major. Go figure.

Careful Commissar, you surely misstated that you hate those loyal Party comrades? (Note to Pup: keep a record of this and see what profit which Politburo member may be interested.)
 

Comrade Pupovich, I must state that Dear Babs and Cher do not in fact exist. Babs is merely a nose and an ego, all else having crawled up the asshole of her self regard years ago.

Cher has had so much work done that she is genetically identical to an Easter Island statue.
 

The Pup stands corrected by a master.... but the Pup must confess he can handle Cher much more easier than Babs.
 

I agree but then there was the time that Babs appeared on Okrah, insisting on sitting on the opposite side, the one that Okrah normally uses, for it is her better profile. You heard me. And she wears nothing but ivory for her friend Donna Karan says it flatters her. You mean that something other than bug-eyed queens flatter her? Do tell. She even sang into an ivory microphone. Okrah asked, "And you even brought an ivory microphone?"

"I had them paint one of yours."

Fade to credits. I wet 'em when I heard that.
 

Happy 4th of July 2008!
 

Comrades,

This subversive "I'm a capitalist pig!" neo-reflexivism has to stop! While I acknowledge that the nature of this Truth and its timing (the AmeriKKKan Declaration of Dominance) can yet trigger unpure unre-educated selfish motives and admissions, let's not let ourselves get carried away, lest we find ourselves getting carried away, far away beyond the suburbs of Yakutsk!

While I currently reside in the Great People's Democratic Republic of Canuckistan, I am not yet proposing anyone be hauled before Canadian Truth in the Human Rights Controls board. My motives are pure, for I am a Marxist-Leninst and comrade--for so is my name, is it not?--but I must point out that others might have motives less selfless than mine, eh.

Indubitably Yours,

Comrade Tovarich
 

Red Square

Happy 4th of July 2008!

Please note I am not holding a shoe to my ear. THANK YOU for not using that more non-inclusive, insensitive, jingoistic term "Independence Day" which the neocons cling to like they do their flags, their flag pins, their guns and their religion.

The true Independence Day will be January 20, 2009, when the illegal, immoral, failed regime of George W. Bush will finally come to an end, and ALL the people of the world will be forever free of war and tyranny!



Please note there's now a shoe on the ear. Thank you for reviving this thread that dates back before the advent of Pinkie. Reading through it, I learned some interesting, perhaps even useful things about some fellow Party members.
 

Red Square

.


On the Fourth of July Americans will cynically celebrate the greatest setback world progress has ever endured in all of human history. The rest of humankind will, of course, be grieving over the dark day when the United States of America was born. To understand the full scope of this tragedy we must look.......

Вы Comrade Sq. for some Truth we can believe in.
 

Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor

Quote:

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock, and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.
Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half -24- were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, 9 were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.
With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so "that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward." Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately." Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone.

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember: a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.
They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics, yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers (it was he, Francis Hopkinson – not Betsy Ross – who designed the United States flag).
READ ALL
 

Premier Betty

Finally!! All my history books can be shortened into one simple chapter that is easy to read, and contains nothing but truth! I can't wait to start burning the old ones and replace them with these new lightweight, eco-friendly, paperback history lessons.

(The scary thing is that it isn't much farther from what is taught in skool)

First off, grab as many of those books as you can Premier Betty, so as you can burn them for warmth in your house, but make sure you have a Party approved CO2 trapper, for obvious reasons.

Second, this is what we are taught in our Party Skools.
 

Good post Maksim.

On the same mindset "Our Sacred Honor" by Bill Bennett should be a mandatory read in every college and we'd have only half the number of liberal sheepdip that we do today.
 

UPDATE 2009

July 4th Tea Party Posters from the Cube (Tea Party Organ)



MORE >>
 

I went to the Zinn article, again, and puked. He fled Communism to come here to do more of it.

I found it fascinating though to see an ad which showed an iPhone being booted out of the way for the Blackberry Credo--which "generates millions for progressive causes."

Ah. Don't buy it because it's good or cheap or you want it. Politics in everything. Let's sell Progressive air. "Don't breathe the air that wingnuts breathe! Breathe ProgAir! It has that refreshing smell of other people's money, other people's liberty, and other people's property. Be an OPPortunist!"
 

Happy 4th of July 2009 everyone! Let us remember those who wanted freedom from the British crown.
 

Commissar_Elliott

Happy 4th of July 2009 everyone! Let us remember those who wanted freedom from the British crown.

Amen to that, fellow dweller in AlFrankenfurterland.

I was thrilled to hear this speech by Daniel Hannan delivered to a crowd in Colorado on the Black Friday of the Cap&Trade passing.

With a shameful plug for my blog (where I posted this video, the Declaration, and brief commentary) here:

Scribble Bibble



God bless America and all the good she stands for.
 

"All governments tend to develop according to the DNA present at their inception." Cells can mutate into cancer. And it's so much trouble to go to the doctor to have that little blemish cut off... Dreadful analogy I know.

Thanks, Rex, for that video. Very good.
 

AbecedariusRex

Commissar_Elliott

Happy 4th of July 2009 everyone! Let us remember those who wanted freedom from the British crown.

Amen to that, fellow dweller in AlFrankenfurterland.

I'd of gone with the Al Fûherland, but that's just me.

Quote:

I was thrilled to hear this speech by Daniel Hannan delivered to a crowd in Colorado on the Black Friday of the Cap&Trade passing.

With a shameful plug for my blog (where I posted this video, the Declaration, and brief commentary) here:

Scribble Bibble


God bless America and all the good she stands for.

I enjoyed listening to him. It's funny, the differences between our Constitution, and the EUs?
 

I like to think of it more as a persistent infection (implying a perennially invasive malignancy alien to the original body) rather than terminal cancer (which would imply something accruing from the natural status of the democratic experiment). What is remarkable is that if the NATURAL tendency of the human race is rapine, power, abuse and self-deception, then the attempt, for the first time in human history, to create something that dealt with that tendency directly (rather than sweeping it under the carpet) resulted in this form of government and society. Whatever its flaws, it is very hard to find any other country on the planet that enjoys a similar standard of life and espouses similar values. Of course, if such a country did exist and was free of that malignancy of human corruption (which manifests so readily in socialism, fascism, leftism, candyassnannystatism) I'd probably move there. But then, if men were angels governments would not be necessary.
 

There's a reason government is called a necessary evil. It's necessary in the sense of creating order, but it's power, pure unadulterated power, in any form of government, and give it to the right person, and as the old saying goes, "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"Any man can stand up to adversity, but if you want to test his character, give him power."
-Abe Lincoln.
 

Comrade Tovarisch sent me a link to a Reason interview with P. J. O'Rourke--always worth reading, except for one book and that's a tremendous record.

His view is that people oscillate between freedom and getting things for free, which gives me hope. However, the end result is always more government, and always more people dependent on government, which is what they want.

His best quote in this interview is that politicians love trains because they know where the tracks are going. They hate cars because of the freedom. Which makes sense.
 

Barry Rubin linked to this post today complete with the cartoon of the Founding Fathers:

Life in an American Fourth Grade: Self-Made Villains, Teaching American Kids that They're the Bad Guys

Barry Rubin, referring to this story,

And also don't miss the funniest satire ever on how American history is being taught today.

Barry Rubin holds a PhD in U.S. history and has taught the subject in universities. He is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
 

I find it amusing that of all the white-collar students in college, the education majors have the lowest SAT scores.
 

Commissar Theocritus

I find it amusing that of all the white-collar students in college, the education majors have the lowest SAT scores.

LOL. Don't get me started on the whole "education major" thing. I have a masters in education (as well as in Literature - two soft sciences, DANG) and am engaged in the whole education world as a teacher of tomorrow's community organizers in Minnesota. There seem to be many education majors in college who find that learning about teaching learning about teaching is somehow not a closed system. Amusing.
 

I have very fond memories of some teachers--Mrs. Kelley, my high-school Latin teacher, taught me so well that four years after only two years, I went directly into second-year Latin at Rice, and knew the grammar better than anyone else in the class. But most important, she taught me to think. She'd put down the book and ask, e.g., "Theocritus, what do you think your rights are?"

You could say anything, as long as you were thinking. If you were trying but wrong, she'd guide you. If you were flippant, she'd chew your head off. I loved the woman. And I had professors I thought the world of.

They knew their subjects, not the science of pedagogy.

Literature is enviable. I did nothing but hard sciences and am catching up, or trying to do so in a desultory way. My knowledge of literature is slight, and only by reference. A good vocabulary is lipstick only.
 

Nice lipstick Bruno!
 

Er, RR, this lipstick is the only drag that I do.