Soon to be Sophia

Any day now I will become a father to a girl. It is probably one of the first times, in a long time, that I am out of control in the fullest sense. When she arrives is out of my hands, how she arrives is out of my hands. In a world of instant information and "knowledge" of everything; we can't schedule the birth of a child. It happens when it happens. The simplicity of this is both exhilarating and distressing; as it seemingly undermines our modern way of life.

What About The Children?

When did policy debates get reduced down to: "what about the children?" I was reading the news today and two articles referenced this line of argument once again:

• Residents near Rainier are getting fed up with their naked neighbor
  
  
• 
  Lawmakers take aim at 'distracted' drivers
  

The first story I can understand more than the second. A man walking around nude (there are references to exposure, but this would assume the person knows his intent and no where in the story did they prove intent). He is about to go on trial for what he has been charged; but has not been found guilty yet. That doesn't matter though, because we have to assume he is guilty and his intent FOR THE CHILDREN.

The second story is even more ridiculous. The justification for banning cell phones while driving is:

"But the question remains: Are you willing to let the next person who is injured be your child? To me, that trumps everything."

The reason quotes like this make any sense is it is a moral high ground that no one can refute and if they try they sound uncaring or cold. The reality of the situation is that people using this type of rhetoric are manipulative. The level of ethical repugnance of using children as pawns to push political or social policies is immeasurable. It attempts to forbid any discourse from taking place by putting the opponents of the "for the children" position on a footing of "evil."

The world is much more complicated than "for the children" rhetoric that we here. A good example of this is PervertedJustice.com. Here is a website that is about capturing child predators. What a great thing "for the children", right? How is it a founder of PJ Xavier Von Erck doesn't even like children? He started the operation to clean up chat rooms and the internet because he was annoyed by being bothered. What ever your view of this website and the TV series from it, the insight to gleen is this: "FOR THE CHILDREN" is a thin reason to do something. Humans are more complicated, people are more complicated.

Thinking of what is best for our children is an important question. Using the children as a political pawn is a thin veiled attempt to project our values into the world and then use "protecting children" as the method of justification. As opposed to the process of actually discussing those values and evaluating them. If we did things "for the children" then we should be asking:

• Should we be at war in Iraq? What about the next father who dies. Bring home the soldiers.... for the children.
  
• How many kids come home to a home alone. Businesses need to be required to shut down by the time school is out.....for the children.
  
• What about the next child who is injured in youth sports. Youth sports should be banned..... for the children.
  
• What about the next boy that is violated by a priest. The entire Catholic church should be shut down.... for the children.
  

And the list goes on and on and on. These are ridiculous ideas, just as it is ridiculous to use this method to justify most social/political policies. My suggestion: lose the moral high ground methods and actually discuss the issues at hand.

Downtown Tri Cities

Beautiful downtown kennewick. Hockey let's you travel to the most wonderful places!

Insight from Mr. Rogers

Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it ... I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been "You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions." Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

----------------------------------------

What do you with the mad that you feel?
When you feel so mad you could bite.
When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong
and nothing you do seems very right.

What do you do?

Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

Its great to be able to stop.
When you planned the thing thats wrong.
And do be able do something else instead.
And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
I can stop when I wish
Can stop stop stop anytime
And what a good feeling to feel like this
and know the feeling is really mine
Know there is something deep inside
That helps us become what we can
For a girl can someday a lady
and a boy can be someday a man.

—Frederick Rogers,

Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own?

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?
He walked the burning sand.
Who will cry for the little boy?
The boy inside the man.

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Who cries inside of me?


The above is excerpted from Who Will Cry for the Little Boy? by Antwone Q Fisher.

A win for the US

You may be thinking I am referencing the Democratic wins in last night's election, but I am not. I am referencing the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Whether or not the election pushed towards this is speculation, the simple fact is that Rumsfeld is now on his way out officially and maybe the US can start writing a new chapter in our history that is a little more sensible and respectable.

US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld stepping down

which is a little different tune than what was being pushed out on the 6th of November, where the response was to "shrug it off." At least now President Bush will hopefully be accountable for his decisions and not able to "shrug off" criticisms.

Military media call for Rumsfeld's resignation

Is our military smart or dumb?

I actually find this question to be kind of a pointless question as there is no set ruler for what denotes smart or dumb. But what we can look at is the educational level of the military versus citizens. I want to preface this with: ALL STATISTICS ARE BULLSHIT! Numbers can be manipulated to say whatever you want. I started analyzing the numbers due to this article:

John Kerry: U.S. Soldiers Not 'Smart'

Furthermore, there is a reference to another study that claimed that the US military is more educated the general public (this I found hard to believe). The referenced study is linked here:

Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits Before and After 9/11

What is interesting about this study is that it doesn't reference any recent data (2004 or 2005), yet this is the study that was being utilized to make a claim that our military was educated better than our citizens. So I decided to do some research.

ALL MY DATA CAME FROM THE US MILITARY AND THE CENSUS!!! I did this purposely as I figured it was the most forgiving source for analyzing the data. For education levels of the military, I took the data from and utilized 2005 and 2004 datasets:

Army G-1 Human Resources

To compare the data to the citizens, I took the general population data from the US Census located here:

Educational Attainment 2005

We could argue the validity of the numbers, how the data was attained, but the fact is simple: this data came from the government that is attempting to sell the public how educated and "of the people" our military is. So their data should support this claim. Does it?

Here are the results of the data that I came up with:

Military Overview
Number	HS/GED	AA	BA/BS	MA/PhD
1,390,093	991,543	135,256	136,142	60,037
	71%	10%	10%	4%

* Total % with HS/GED: 95%
* Total % with Some College or AA: 24%

Citizens 18-24 (numbers in thouands)
Number	HS/GED	AA	BA/BS	MA/PhD
28,009	8,384	11,141	2,258	86
	30%	40%	8%	0%

* Total % with HS/GED: 78%
* Total % with Some College or AA: 48%

Citizens All Ages (numbers in thousands)
Number	HS/GED	AA	BA/BS	MA/PhD
230,437	69,446	59,276	36,520	18,226
	30%	26%	24%	8%

* Total % with HS/GED: 88%
* Total % with Some College or AA: 58%

No matter how you interpret these numbers, there is no way to make a case that the military is more educated than the general public. A couple key things to denote:

1) Comparing 18-24 year olds to military seems most compatible, but military includes officers in that comparison which skews the comparison.

2) The military does seem to have a higher percentage of high school diplomas than the general public (this was the claim made to prove more education in the Heritage report), but what becomes quickly apparent is the quick drop off of education above the high school and/or GED level.

3) The education of the military is generally decreasing as we are longer in Iraq (this should not be a shocker).

In the end, if you want to make a straight up comparison of education levels, the military is not as well educated. It would be more accurate to say that the military is more minimally educated than the general public.

I would be fascinated to compare the education level of the average soldier to the average Senator and determine what the differential is there.

All these stats do not say nearly as much as the simple quote by Sartre:

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

Protect the Children!

Registered sex offenders told to ignore Halloween

This story made me ask a few questions:

• Are Athiests going to be told to ignore Christmas?
  
• Are Christians going to be told to avoid going to Coliseums?
  
• Are murderers going to be prevented from going to movies with violence?
  
• Are abusive spouses going to be told to avoid relationships?
  

I find this type of "protect the children" ideology to be completely anti-social. Yes, we as a society should protect its children. But let me suggest something:

Rather than worrying about the statistical minority of sex offenders on Halloween decorating their houses, how about we be concerned about all the fathers we are sending to Iraq and leaving children in one-parent families.

Statistically I am curious what is causing more damage in our upcoming generation. Sex offenders with carved pumpkins and Halloween decorations, or families torn apart when the fathers are sent to war.

Unfortunately, these issues are seldom about what they seem to be at face value. Instead, these distracting actions remain the best mechanism of social control, by making us feel warm and fuzzy while ignoring the realities of the world around us. I would suggest we refocus our concerns. We move from focusing on some inane fear that we can fix by forcing people to take down decorations, and instead focusing on what will protect the children of tomorrow the most: return their fathers to them.

Protect the children, allow them to have their fathers.