Meryl Streep puts in another very good performance. The movie is not a complex movie of weaving the lives of many characters to form a mosaic like her movie August:Osage County, nor does she depict a character that spans a number of years to show dynamic change in a person's life like Sophie's Choice and The Devil Wears Prada. However, she delivers in a movie that shows the strength of a static character, a mom who is needed to help her daughter in a particular situation.
She depicts a divorcee who has found her own truth in life apart from what her wealthy husband could live with. Her interaction with each of the story's characters, mainly her biological children, shows the trials she has to face as an "outsider" to her own children. Her children have had a hard time accepting their mother's life and dreams, so they portray their disdain for her during the entire movie except at the very end.
It is this part of the story that carries the clear and poingnant message of the movie. In the trailer above,that message is found at 2:12-2:18. She is at her son's wedding in the midst of a very wealthy crowd. She lives a rather hand to mouth lifestyle, so she knows she can't participate to any monetary level worthy of this crowd. So, she takes her participation in the wedding to an arena the others can't participate in. She gracefully says, "I have never been a traditional mother. But I am a musician. And I'd like to give all I have to you."
It is that last comment, "And I'd like to give all I have to you," that moves me. I am motivated to be that gracious and giving to those I have in my circle of contact every day. Years of practicing music made Meryl Streep very good at music. That is what she had to offer, so she offered it. I hope those around me see me constantly doing the same.
An acquaintance put a post on her Facebook today encouraging teachers to "fight the good fight." By that she meant to keep fighting for literacy. She included a link to a Mississippi newspaper article talking about a literacy program that had helped literacy test scores in that state.
I'm all for literacy, but my definition of that term is very different from anything that would show up on a test score. The acquaintance went on to say that she knew that cursive writing, sentence structure, and diagramming "had gone by the wayside." It's good she noticed that they've been gone for a while now.
Newsflash! Those three things are not returning. They're gone into infinity. Fight that fight all you want to. Literacy has changed direction and meaning. It's just one more sign for those who want to remain in denial that even the die-hards like my acquaintance are noticing that reading and writing are about to hit a hiatus. I'm serious. They will be pretty much gone by the end of 2017.
The commercial on the radio today pretty much sums up where young people's heads are these days. There's a new app out for your phone. It connects everything you do on your phone to a screen in your car so that you can do everything "hands-free". Texting is done by voice command. Touching icons for app activation is a thing of the past. Icons are voice activated too. Search is by voice command. Call directory is by voice command. And more. All via bluetooth to a screen in your car.
Yep. Writing is pretty much out the window, down the toilet, and otherwise gone with the wind with this new app. Mississippi better start preparing students in a different way or it will really be a sinkhole of a state to grow up in. That would be true for any state that tests reading and writing literacy skills. I'm thinking that video and voice presentation has more than adequately shown it is the new literacy. It's past time to swallow that pill.
It's hard to say sometimes how much of a person's behavior is due to personality given by genetics, and to conditioning of our training given by others, and to experience given to us through life's situations. From observing people I have known a long time, I can see the merit of the saying, "You can't change the stripes on a zebra." Genetics play a large part of our behavior. But the idea that "clothes make the man" lends itself to the environment and its influence on our behavior. And, Janet Fitch's words, "The phoenix must burn to emerge," cannot be counted out of any formula for dealing with people.
Psychologists have been working for years on what shapes a person's behavior. Studies include changes in behavior due to hormones and medication, changes in one's environment, manipulating routines, and changes to one's preferences in established routines. Still there are no definitive answers.Since the science of the mind can't really produce the ultimate answer on why people act the way the do, I don't mull that question too much.
Personality to me drives behavior, so understanding personality is the path to enlightenment on this issue. But personality is a tricky thing. It has facets to it. It seems to be related to genetic makeup more than any other factor. In a lot of cases, knowing the pattern of the stripes on one side of the zebra allows for one to predict what the other sides of the zebra look like. Personality is not divided into four quadrants showing primary and secondary traits as major companies have presented this idea. Personality has a blend of traits that react to all kinds of circumstances, even to elements in a circumstance that may seem minor to an onlooker. The trigger that activates anger in one setting is allowed to pass without reaction in a different setting by the same person. Why?
One way to find out is by analyzing the words people use. Words can serve as the windows to see into the mind. Patterns develop with words that indicate the patterns developing in the mind. That allows one to see behaviors such as lying, risk, preoccupation, depression, nurturing, and love. To a great extent, patterning the words of someone, reveals the patterning of a person's mind. So, knowing how to listen is a real virtue these days.
Where was I? I stood at the front door. They were made of heavy metal and locked from the inside. 20 feet glass panels were on either side of the doors. Through the doors I could see students eating at cafeteria tables. They could also see me, but no one moved an inch to allow me to enter. Faculty members with badges on lanyards around their necks also walked past the door. I punched a button on the wall next to the door, and answered the voice that asked me what my business was. Click. The door had been remotely unlocked.
I walked past the students eating lunch to a reception area, showed them my ID, received a lapel guest sticker for my shirt pocket and waited for my party to show up. I accompanied him to a classroom but had to change buildings on the way. The doors behind us in the first building shut, and I heard the click again of the door locking. Across a courtyard we had to enter the second building. My friend whipped out his ID badge and tapped the scanner to show that we were authorized to enter.
We went to his office, unlocked the door for him to get a piece of paper he needed, then departed the building for his car, the door to the building locking behind us. We left in his car from his designated parking spot, stopped at a gate that he opened with a remote opener, and left for about an hour to eat lunch.
Upon returning, we went through the gate using the remote opener again, parked in the designated spot, tapped the scanner with the ID badge to reenter, then walked to his second story classroom. I visited the bathroom on the way. I opened the bathroom door, entered, and the door clicked lock behind me. It had all the automatic amenities - flushing toilet, water spout motion sensor, automatic towel dispenser, and something I had never seen before... but why not in this building. To dispose of the towel, I had to wave it in front of the disposal receptacle so that its cover automatically opened for me to deposit my used paper towel and automatically shut after the towel was dropped in.
I joined my friend in his room and sat in front of the newest version of a smart board which was the focal point on the wall at the front of room. He and I visited, then left, but not without scanning our way through locked doors of two buildings, retracing our steps to the receiving desk where I had started my visit in order to check out, then leaving the building, the door clicking behind me to lock it remotely.
Where in the world was I? One would think that I was visiting my friend in a high security prison. But no - it was just a good ole American high school. It was renovated and parts of it newly built, but it was certainly a state-of-the-art, extremely high tech building. I was informed that next school year the cafeteria was going to be converted into a technology court that would replace the library.
Easily this school could have been used in a science fiction movie for a future school. I plan on returning to see this futuristic library next year. I don't know that it is the most 21st century school in the country, but it might be. For sure, it is one of the 3 safest places I have ever visited.
From time to time I get to see people after a hiatus of several years. It's always interesting to catch up and see what has happened, how things were dealt with, and what the outcomes have been.
I ate lunch with a friend today that I have known since I was in 7th grade. We have periodically kept in touch, so we don't have to catch up in ten year leaps, but it has been interesting to see how things have turned out for him after all these many years. In the last two years his two children have both married, so he had to spend a whole lot more time with his ex-wife than was bearable at times. Over the last 12 years he returned to what he wanted to do in life the most - coach basketball at the high school level. And before that he owned several businesses after starting out from college as a banker.
One of his real talents is with investments. So, he has done well over the years dabbling with different entrepreneurial ventures and putting money in building value with various instruments. Most surprising to me, however, has been to watch his philosophy of life. In high school, I was raised in a more conservative home than he was. Over the years, he and I have switched places completely. Now, he has become really worried about society's values, and has opted personally for a devout religious life. My bent has been to liberalize most of my views and to opt for a more open religious life.
Nonetheless, we had a great time talking about everything under the sun, parting friends, and pledging to eat lunch again soon. These kinds of days are the way life should be rolling.
Gifts are always nice to get. It's the thought that someone cared enough to get you something that you didn't have that's nice. The object being given is also nice because it's symbolic in nature if nothing else, but many times it's something that is useful or that you desired to have. But then there's always that one gift that has a special quality - it multiplies itself. It delights you when it is first given, but then you are able to use it again and again, in many instances for to help other people.
I was given a gift several decades ago, and it was something I had desired and worked for. It blended with my personality, and lo and behold, here several decades later it still is giving me the thing that enchanted me about it in the first place. I can see that it will give me quality of life until I die, so I am forever grateful for having it. From time to time, I have seen others enjoy receiving the gift when I would regift it in a form useful to them, and I have been told by others who received it of benefits they have received.
I worked hard for the gift that keeps on giving and received it, but unwittingly didn't know it would be that way. It is my hope that everyone can receive the gift of their desires and in return, shower others in her/his sphere with its benefits. That's just how the world is made a better place.
Me: Thanks for the birthday wish. I feel the heat from it coming from your place. (My cousin lives in Arizona) [I'm thinking of temperatures between 112 and 121.]
Cuz: It's not as hot as you think. I don't live in the Phoenix area where they get hot temperatures. It's about 20 degrees cooler here. [She's thinking between 85 and 90 degrees.]
Me: 118-20=98. Even so, that's still hot. [I'm thinking upper 90s and low triple digits. I'm thinking her next remark will be to say OK, you're right.]
Cuz: OK. Maybe 30 degrees cooler. [118-30=88.]
I have been talking to other people for several decades now, and it seems like communication has never become easier. One would think...
Some things feel bad at a particular moment. They sometimes feel intense or hurtful. We tend to compare them to the worst of times. When this happens, comparisons are sometimes the balm we need to feel better or to know the severity of something.
A little lesson from the stock market illustrates the point. Over the last two weeks the stock market has dropped a thousand points on the Dow-Jones, 500 of the points in a one-day slide, yesterday. The market underwent a correction. Everyone knew it was coming because historically, it was long overdue. The bull market run was longer than usual, so the correction was more severe than usual. And how severe was it?
Yeah, 2008 was worse. 1932 was worse. 1928 was worse. Black October was worse.
So, when circumstances around me seem more than a little bad, it's always good to compare. It really could be worse.
The poster said that storms would come but not to be worried. The storm would stop, and you would come out on the other side just fine.
Several different versions of this poster have surfaced over the last 50 years. I think the gist is good in that one needs to maintain a positive outlook on life. But the particulars of the poster don't reflect reality. A storm is something that is not a soft, gentle rain. A storm is something that has high winds, sometimes rotating winds, lightning, thunder, sometimes hail. Storms in winter bring heavy, damaging snows or blizzards. It's numbing cold. Sometimes winds dump rain from hurricanes, or at other times leave sheets of ice for people to slide around on.
Storms change the landscape and lead to a healthy respect for the part of nature that isn't controlled by humans. In our lives those two principles season us from the time we enter adulthood until we depart the Earth. Storms come on us sometimes with warning, sometimes without, and they pound away on our philosophies of life, our core values, our relationships, and our direction in life. They change the landscape around us and they change us directly. They cause us to change directions, to meet or need new people, to redirect our steps, to challenge our beliefs, and to reevaluate our philosophies.
Storms come and go. That part of the poster is true. And the part about our coming out on the other side is true as well. But, now whether we're fine or not is up to how accepting we are of the changes in us the storms bring. They make us play the shoulda, coulda, woulda game. They make us have regrets sometimes, only if temporarily. They drive us to accomplishments, and proud moments. They drive us to strive so we don't have regrets.
Experience tells me what the poster should read: Storms will come and we should prepare for them ahead of time and be accepting of the changed landscape after it leaves. Respect every single one of them that hits your life.
Tracking aspects of life is everywhere in the world around us. As an example, one of my daily routines is to follow a graph of the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the British pound. The graph tracks the value of each as it rises and falls yielding the difference in value between them. It is really helpful to see the track so that one can make predictions about the currencies' future paths.
Every night when I watch the news, the weather report contains the track of several aspects. Maps show where the drought is in Texas and how severe it is. The series of maps shown show the growth or decline of the drought area and the severity. The report also tracks a comparison of today's weather features to other years in the past. Today, for instance, is the 43rd day since the last rain, that is fourth in the all time record's list of days between rains. Ten more days without rain and it will be number one on the all time record's list.
Tracking is just helpful to put things in perspective. Historically, it's good to track events too. The naysayers of the current president's political decisions usually don't use history to form their opinions. If they did, they would pipe down a bit. The detractors say the president is giving amnesty to thousands of immigrants unnecessarily. Looking back just about 30 years shows a president of the opposite party granting official amnesty to about 5 million immigrants. Detractors say that the Affordable Health Care act is a terrible burden forced on the American people. Following the track back through time shows a number of public programs forced on people, not the least of which was the income tax. The income tax dates back to Congress' passage of the bill in 1909 and states' subsequent ratification in 1913. Yes sir, the American people passed the onerous income tax themselves and made it an amendment to the constitution.
People are short sighted, though. That's called myopia and it's caused by a lack of knowledge of the past or the lack of willpower to look back in order to see tracks in the sand behind. If they would just look at the tracks everywhere around them, people would be happier because they would be better informed .
I read the national news in several areas, sports and technology being two of them, avidly every week. Today, a couple of stories from different sectors highlighted my reading. First was a sports article that was telling of records established by the top 10 teams in the NFL. About midway through the article, the author said that the "record books" would indicate his point. But immediately following the words "record books" was a parenthetical expression "(kidding: what are books?)."
The next article was really an explanation of a specialized training school. It began with "Wanna know how to code?" It went on to tell about a school that offered only programming courses including to know how to write code for mobile apps. It also offered classes for kids called "Coding for Kids." The name of this specialized training center was The Iron Yard, and the article showed a map of about 10 training centers scattered throughout the states.
I had two simultaneous thoughts. One, how appropriate at the beginning of another school year that I should see these two articles on the same day that tell the story of what education should be, not what many, many children will be receiving. They will go to a liberal arts school to prepare to give answers on tests that don't resemble the world they will enter. Two, further proof that the dinosaurs who want to continue with the current educational landscape are very shortly to meet their demise.
And that's the size of it. A sports page sarcastically referring to books and a specialized training center for children and adults learning something to prepare them for being really productive and well paid. The article for Iron Yard predicted 1.4 million jobs available in 5 years for mobile application needs and only 400,000 people to fill those jobs.
Two years separate us from the magic number 2017, the end of the ten year war for supremacy between the education of books, reading, writing, simple math and the education of algorithms, programming, general computer savvy, and holographic virtuality. I think by now the dinosaurs really do see the meteorite streaking through the sky and know that they are about to be decimated. But they seem to have accepted their fate.
I find that many people don't like history. If I ever follow up on that sentiment, I usually find that the people don't know how to organize history, therefore they find it hard to understand. At the base of organizing history is to know chronology. Timelines are basic. Those who can learn to put events on a timeline usually know how to categorize in other ways to. For example, if one can put Sumer in ancient history (between 3500 and 2500 BCE), then it is also easy to know that there were three other civilizations that were similar under the category of River Valley Civilizations. When learning the history of England, if you know that the Romans left England open around 450 ACE, then it is much easier to understand how the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes decided to inhabit the vacated lands, begin the Anglo-Saxon culture, and start the English language. Pivotal dates are probably the next most helpful organizing method. People don't know which came first, the Romans, the Greeks, or the Phoenicians. Not knowing that doesn't really hurt anything in anyone's modern life, but it is evidence that probably the same person doesn't know if the Civil War happened before the Revolutionary War or World War I. Which doesn't hurt, either, in the modern world, but they probably then can't tell you whether Roe vs. Wade happened before Brown vs. the Board of Educaton or The Affordable Health Care Act.
None of it matters in a person's daily life except that it is also an indicator of the organizational level. one has in general. Of course, personality plays such a huge part of organizational ability, that at any given time there are more people who don't care a whole lot about organization as opposed to those who do.
Strangely there is some balance, a yin and yang, between those who can live in the moment, spontaneously, and those who need structure. A word of caution is in order, however. Those who get overwhelmed by life and meet their demise, more times than not, come from the camp of those who don't organize well in their minds.
Play the odds: If you start life not knowing chronology, it might become a rather random series of events, unconnected, and a little overwhelming. That could spell u-n-d-e-r-d-o-g for a person and that's not a good position in life to be in.
I remember well a friend of mine calling me one Sunday afternoon 20 years ago to discuss a topic he had heard in a Sunday sermon. The topic moved my friend and changed his understanding of one of Jesus' analogies. The topic was found in the first two verses of John 15 about pruning grapevines. The person in the sermon was saying the translations had not translated accurately, that the analogy was not to pruning grapevines, but in lifting them off the ground so that they could produce since they couldn't produce while lying on the ground.
Translation of any language to another is full of explosive mines, so it was credible that perhaps a new understanding of ancient Greek could change a usual translation, especially if new manuscripts had been discovered. We talked about the topic, but I remember that the conversation didn't end with any kind of definitive answer on the accuracy of the concept of what was happening with the grapevine.
Today another person raised the exact same topic referencing the same author that my friend had called me about 20 years earlier. It's strange how things keep getting circulated even it's a generation apart. I've seen ideas being put forth before with how people deal in naming things that are indigenous to their area in sociolinguistic studies. Outsiders don't do well when they translate without knowing the culture intimately. I think what happened in this case is that the translators of traditional versions didn't know what was involved growing grapes. On the other hand, it would appear that the man challenging the traditional concept of pruning didn't allow for or know the number of methods and reasons for trimming, so he overstated his case.
If I were to interpret the first two verses of John, I would use words more adequately depicting the "vinedresser" of verse 1. The man you hear in the video below is a true "vinedresser." He is deliberate in his descriptions, a slow-talking, country man who knows from vast experience what he is talking about. What word or words would you use to describe him? I'm fairly certain "vinedresser" would not be your choice. And watching how and why he would trim leaves to make his grapes thrive would not call to mind the word "prune." It would seem that the person tending the grapes knows how to make grapes grow by properly trimming in the right places at the right times of the growing season, not arbitrarily inspecting branches to yank and tear off the branches without fruit.
A person can watch the video and be able to discern more properly how to translate the two verses. The cultural overlay of knowing how to grow grapes does help in knowing what Jesus said more than the just the words, more than attitudes of the listeners, and more than a narrow way of seeing how to trim grapevines.
The point of the analogy is probably not getting rid of those who don't bear fruit, nor is it in helping those who need lifting from the ground so that they can't grow fruit. It has something to do with a holistic view of stimulating healthy, growing vines, like trimming leaves for sunlight, trimming clusters for large grapes, and trimming a certain number of stems so as to nurture the branches deriving from a main, or true vine, as a whole, which is the summary of the analogy found in verse 8.
Hemingway wrote Hills Like White Elephants in order to show how hostile an environment had been created surrounding women out of wedlock having babies. In the short story, his main feature was the setting he created, that of Spain in the heat of summer at a non-descript, remote train station. The characters dealt with the heat by moving around and eventually to the inside of a bar and by drinking alcohol. Constantly, Hemingway narrated or put in the mouths of his characters how severely hot the day was.
What was the point of creating such a setting? It was, of course, to depict a hostile, harsh, and forbidding environment. The station was located at a crossroads, which symbolized the crossroads of a decision by the pregnant woman on whether to have an abortion or not. But, the setting overpowers the decision so as to show the harsh sentiment of society that drives the woman to opt for abortion.
As I write this blog at midnight the night has only cooled from 106 degrees during the day to a mere 92 degrees. It's really, really hot. There has been no rain in a month, the humidity is low, the grass in the yards is burning, turning green to brown. The forecast offers only more 106 degree, rain-free days. I think I am a character in Hemingway's short story.
My next thought was whether the deep heat was some symbol as to what was going on around me (as if I were a character in this story). I think so, society has changed so much, but its values have taken a rather flat track in many areas such as religion, education, interpretive history, and political policy. The device that has changed our way of doing business is again about to change our way of communicating altogether. Everything we see on screens, which are monitors mounted on a device for the moment, will now be moving as the person moves, that is, untethered visuals.
Such a change is as monumental as the young woman opting for abortion in Hemingway's era. Our values conflict with changes that must take place, away from incumbent methods of how to interact with the environment and each other. The current environment is harsh for moving in that direction. But people will have to deal with it. It's not going away. What's the answer? The same one that the woman made. She was driven to make a decision that progress allowed her to take. We'll make the same one. To fight it will be to die in the too oppressive heat.
There are pathways in life just as there are roads between towns and trails in the country or the mountains. There are actually many of them. The beauty of adulthood is that you get to choose which paths you want to take at any particular time. And, you can change to a different path any time you want to. You can't help but to notice that some paths are wide, some are narrow, or that the some are worn, others grown over.
Another parallel is that when you are on a path, or when you see a different path, you can see it for its present value, but you can't see the end of where it leads usually. You just have to trust the hints of the path as you see it or the information you have heard about it.
That's a pretty good parallel to the way life works. One great difference is that paths don't tell you anything about the people that have taken it. In life you get to see some of those people, their results and their personalities. That helps. Every hint helps because there are so many paths to choose from. Some of them come out at the same place, so it doesn't matter which one you take. You get to take one depending on your personality. But they don't all lead to the same place. That's what keeps the selection process interesting.
I'm sitting by dim lamp light at a table in a mountain cabin far away from the 100 degree weather of my hometown. I can hear the stream babbling by the cabin just 20 yards from the front door. Windows are open letting in the fresh mountain air that makes for good sleeping. The canyon I'm staying in is quiet. It's blue moon night, so I can really say that I was away in the mountains once, in a blue moon. The sides of the mountains on either side of the cabin are invisible because the darkness outside is so black.
I like being comfortable, relaxed, hidden, unbidden, and off the beaten path. Many people call it being off the grid. I wouldn't since I have internet access, but at least I don't access the internet unless I want to. It's not a necessity here.
My mind certainly clears when here. The last time I was here was 10 years ago. The English saying is "What a difference a year makes." Now if I extend that by ten times - what an immense difference 10 years makes. So, I have taken the time to review the last ten years while I have been here. The decade started in a desert area and ended in a metropolitan area. I am gainfully employed for only half the amount of time now than I was 10 years ago. My outlook on life has changed fairly radically. I had a middle of the road kind of philosophy that swerved to the left on most issues. My beliefs about religion, politics, and work day issues have mostly changed by almost 180 degrees.
The saying is that the only constant in the world is change. It's true. Raise any issue, such as marriage, raising teenagers, managing money, working, or vacationing, and I can tell you what a departure my words would be now compared to 10 years ago. Things solidified for me a little over 5 years ago. It hasn't been the same since. I have a good life, an acceptable life - not always what I have wanted, but what I can live with. The last 10 years could have been better, but they could certainly have been worse. The thing I wanted most in life didn't happen during this period, but wanting something and getting it are two different matters.
I need to live in both the literal and figurative place where waking up each morning is worth it. I have reached that place. And sitting here by dim lamp light at a mountain cabin table far away from 100 degree weather drives home these thoughts.
I have passed this road no less than a couple of hundred
times.I have passed it so often that I
know how to pronounce its name by heart.Finally, I drove down the road to see what this Wat was all about.The spire
is symbolic to the Buddhists for the reverence that should be shown to the
deity, the higher power.The design of
the temple courtyard and the temple itself is conducive to conveying a humble
spirit, a decent journey in life, and reaching as close as possible to Nirvana.
So be it.Such is
Buddhism.Any concept I have of Buddhism is only from what I
have read, not from experience.So, my
limited knowledge is not enough to make me an authority on Buddhist beliefs at
all.It seems like a really strange
religion.Its tenets are foreign to
the American way of thinking mainly because its eastern flavor of seeking takes time, seems to lack direction, and takes away
from the pursuit of making a living or becoming happy because of its total neglect of
anything material.The words Wat Buddharatanaram are indicative of how far away from American
idealism this religion is since they are written in a way that is unmistakably
NOT English.
I ponder the things that have happened in life more than I
should, trying to analyze them, thus to understand them.Many events defy my understanding.They are as foreign as the near-eastern words
are from English.I don’t stand for
them.I didn’t train to accept
them.They don’t represent me in any
way.Yet they happen.I can’t control their happening or the way
they happen.Anymore, I just refer to
such events as my Buddharatanaram events or moments. They make me a more accepting person to refer
to them that way.I sure don’t
understand them, but I have to live in the same country that they are in.
It's one thing to look at words and see whatwas said. It's quite another to look at words and see why something was said.
If someone were to say, "I enjoyed the trip. Nothing really happened other than I was a little cold most of the time," and then subsequently you came into knowledge that during the entire trip snow covered the ground, the cabin had only a wood stove in the main living area, and each night for two weeks the temperature fell below 32 degrees. It would be easy to see that what was said was either an understatement about weather conditions or that the speaker wanted to emphasize enjoying the trip even against nature's odds of trying to spoil it.
Why someone would say something this way is not so clear. This is the domain of pragmatics where context is important. For example, the words might be a part of a joke, so that understatement (a little cold) contributes to the humor being created. Or, the speaker is trying to spare the listener's feelings because the listener had paid for the speaker's trip. Or, the speaker is trying to brag about her or his prowess in extreme conditions. Or, the person speaking didn't want to ridicule the poor living conditions the listener has to endure regularly due to the listener's inability to pay for a better way of life.
But, given a context, why did someone use the word, "enjoy" if that were really not the case? Why would someone say, "Nothing really happened," if something happened "most of the time?" If the context is plain, it helps to understand the motive, but to ask why someone would use a circuitous way of speaking would yield information other than motive. Perhaps a person's style is round-about because of a self-esteem problem. Circuitous speaking means that a person has room for error in speaking since she or he is not assertive enough to speak with certainty. Perhaps a person thinks that minimizing the conditions enhances the emotions (s)he feels about the trip. Or perhaps the person wanted to lie about how (s)he felt about the trip for whatever reason by enhancing enjoyment and diminishing the cold.
The word choices definitely had a reason for being chosen. Establishing context is the first step in understanding the reason. Focusing on the semantics also helps to narrow in on the motive of the speaker. But the word choices are indicators of something more exact, the bedrock that produces motive, the logic behind the motive. One has to consider why "nothing really happened" instead of "nothing happened?" Does the word really strengthen the statement of fact?Or is the speaker hedging? The only thing that happened was in the speaker's mind, not in the real world. Why make a general statement, "Nothing really happened," and then negate, maybe refine, the statement with "other than" unless the speaker wants to highlight a negative quality? Why use the words, "the trip," which is inclusive of the whole time, then say that something was not enjoyable "most of the time" except to further highlight the negative quality of the trip?
The answers of course tell you about the personality of the speaker and the pattern of logic he has used. And that information is the well guarded secret most people want to keep from listeners.
I was speaking with a young adult tonight who mentioned in the course of the conversation that he had quit school very early in life. By the time he was 15, he wanted to return to school, but it was too late for him. So, he has paid for it with hard work the rest of his life.
He's not alone by any stretch of the imagination. Most young adults in the U.S. don't really like school well enough to choose more education after high school. Roughly 25% of young adults didn't really like education enough to finish high school, and about a third of that crowd decided to drop from school before that. The National Center for Education Statistics has a lot to say about education buried in the numbers it has compiled for over 50 years.
I feel for my young friend who is working so hard to make ends meet. But, he has made the best of life. Really, he has done quite well over the last 3 years. He is in business for himself and seems pretty happy with his family of 6. On both of those counts he has much on his educated counterparts. He works hard, but he plays hard and holds family time at a premium. In addition, he is currently learning to read and write in a second language.
I really don't know what the quality of life is for the vast majority of people without much formal training. But, if the people in that category are as industrious and resourceful as the man I spoke with, I think that I will gladly trust what comes for the last part of my life. I can sleep with that.
Sometimes I am reminded of an event that I was a part of by someone who has a clear memory of it. I try really hard to remember the details of the event, but usually to no avail. What has happened? Has my brain deteriorated? Is someone trying to plant a memory for an event that never happened?
Sometimes, if it's one of my family, the memory difference or gap is merely a matter of perspective or maturity at the time. But at other times, it seems that anything could have happened because truly I have no memory of that event.
Tonight one such mention was made of an experience my son had. I was with him at the time of the event that had been brought up. I didn't think that the experience happened in the way that was being told. I was there, though. I should have known. It's possible that the person telling of the event totally confused two events and told the wrong one, or that we snapshot the event from different aspects and so, in the retelling, only one aspect showed through. Maybe my memory of the aspect of the experience and the other person's perspective of the aspect could both be true.
Our judgment is only as good as our information - at least that is how the saying goes. But what if our judgment is wholly colored by the aspect our memories snapshot. That changes the whole game. And, if that's true, then all of life in our memories is not reality as a whole, but merely a slice of much more robust reality.
That makes me a little more understanding. And I also realize how arrogant I was when I was younger. My how youth is wasted on the young.
I received a call from my friend and scholar buddy today. It's always a pleasure to speak to him. We mainly talked about, as we do each time he calls, his endeavors in his field - his conferences, papers, courses, etc. So we talked today about those and his newest project.
Recently, I heard that one of the professors at a local theological seminary had dubbed my friend the best Greek scholar in the area. Hmmm, I thought. The next time we speak, I'll just check out whether I can keep up with him in a discussion or not. Today was this next time.
We talked about his newest project and his upcoming class in the Fall semester. In particular, we talked a while about the discourse structure of the Greek works he was teaching. Nice. I always learn a thing or two from such conversations. Once in a while, I get to throw in something so that it looks like I have a contribution to make. We differ mostly differ in the online tools we use and in the authorities that have been in our backgrounds. But, we mainly enjoy comparing notes from our different approaches to language.
By the time we finished, we had touched on the nature of tone in indigenous African languages, the Hasa language, the Pame/Xixuay language, Greek, Spanish, and English. It was a nice little trip... and, I didn't fare so poorly I'm glad to report.
In the middle of the desert, it's a little hard to do some of the basic things - walk for any distance, drink water, cook a meal, and orient yourself as to where you are headed.
People don't live in the desert for those reasons. People live where there is food and water aplenty, they can easily get to places they need to go for shopping, work, and play, and can establish themselves in their work and avocations. I have to admit that I have ended up in a place where all of the ingredients for living a full and more-than-adequate life exist everywhere around me.
But, being here is paradoxical like being alone in a crowd or being thirsty in the middle of the ocean. Why, you say? I'm in the middle of the desert where it's a little hard to do basic things...
Something's going on. I just don't know what it is. I hear various theories of what it is, but information is sketchy.
Fact 1: In 1989, a man named Bob Lazar had an interview with a reporter in L.A. in which he spoke of reverse engineering an actual UFO at Area 51. He was really lighthearted about what he did, seeming not to care about ramifications for revealing such classified information. 25years later the same reporter interviewed Lazar again, but this time Lazar was not so indifferent to the ripple effect of his actions. He was hesitant and said he regretted revealing the information he had recounted. Over the last 25 years, every record of his college experience and work record had been expunged. It's almost as if he never existed. Now, people just relegate Lazar to the looney bin.
Fact 2: One of the pieces of evidence Lazar offered in his original interview was that the UFO he worked on was powered by Element 115. He even gave the physics of how it worked. Was that unusual? Well... that element didn't exist, and officially still doesn't exist. In 2006, scientists began to theorize about the element, but only started experimenting enough to know that it could exist. They called it Upupentium. How did Lazar know nearly two decades ahead of the idea that Element 115 existed? Was he that good of a physicist? Of course, there's no record of his college career, so we don't know.
It's intriguing. The next thing you know, I'll be hearing about an alien base of operations on the dark side of the moon. Oh, wait. There is that rumor already.
The film is worth watching. It is very good at showing about how every family rolls. The characters are stereotypes of the kind of people one would find in every family.
The clip below I particularly like because it hits home personally. I have to deal with the same scenario on a recurring basis. The son shows how loving he truly is. His mother comes in and spoils it all by castigating him. The conversation following the incident between the dad and mom, starting at 2:40 is the one I could have any given day. It's so sad in a way. But it's also so typical.
I have a daughter I love very much. She shows how loving she can be regularly. But, she receives castigation on a regular basis. It would be good for me to have one of those "fat, Irish ass" moments with the perpetrator.
I totally can identify with the line saying, "I don't understand this meanness." I react by longing to be around someone who is cheerful and encouraging. I better understand these two attributes.
If you change the way you see the world, then you change the things you see.
It's a pretty incredible world that is available now. Many can't see what is being offered. That's more than a shame. Google Glasses are old news. The next generation of computing is now seamless with the real world. It will change the things a person sees - guaranteed. I plan for my granddaughter to be educated only in places that offer what is available now so that her future is not on the streets regretting what other children with parents of foresight provided for them.
Those in the field of education should demand to lead, to take this technology to the children and young adults who will take the seamless world of reality and irrealis to a whole quantum height above the world now.
The norm has been for education to lag about 10-15 years behind what technology has offered. It was fortunate that most people were in the same boat. But this time is different. Education will not be turning out what the business world has to have and has to offer if it lags behind. And that will make education irrelevant. It almost is already. The work force has dwindled. Fewer people are working full time hours. College graduates aren't working in their career fields. It is up to educational leaders, especially those who are experts in their field, to totally ignore the voices that tell them that schools are okay, change is gradual, schools will change with the times or that the school is already on the leading edge. It's different this time.
The educational application is shown in the video below from 11:15-14:15. It's simply astounding. Those who possess the skills of this kind of learning will indeed lead, change, affect, and innovate for all others on the Earth.
Five years in virtual time is the same as 25 years of real time. Schools will be divided in 5 years. The ones who prepared will lead. The ones who plodded will exist no more.
Town Square is usually a term to denote a one block area with a city courthouse in it from the 1920s through the 1950s, and around the four opposing sides of the street are lines of store fronts decreptoit from age. Town Square doesn't conjure up ideas like upscale, trendy, ungodly rich, or opulent.
Within a radius of 20 minutes from my house are 4 town squares. The closest is 8 minutes away. It fits the usual concept and is called historic Oak Street. It has restaurants and novelty stores down a street that ends at a courthouse. The buildings and houses are really old even though they have been restored.
Another town square is about 10 minutes away and follows the same pattern, the historic section of Main St. with old houses and restored brick buildings containing well established businesses and restaurants with a couple of novelty shops thrown in.
About 15 minutes away is a third town square, but this one is modern. The oldest shop is a little over 10 years old. It is located on a major thoroughfare, so it is heavily trafficked. It is a shopping center with 20 different eating places and double that number of places to shop. It's called a town center.
The town square 20 minutes away is much different from the other three. It is actually called Town Square. At its center is a courthouse, but it is fairly new about 20 years old. Unlike the historic sections, honeycombed modern streets weave in and around stores - all kinds of stores. But, they all have one thing in common. Let me explain.
In a recent visit to this square, I ate in a Mexican food restaurant. I split the food in the meal with another person, but I paid $40 for the one dish, $3.50 for teas, $8.99 for the appetizer, plus the obligatory tip of 20%. I do have to say we were waited on hand and foot though. We walked across the street to an apparel store. T-shirts started at $125. Polo shirts began at $189, and some of the silk shirts and other rare fabrics placed the shirts at above $350.
The ladies' store across the street had the same kind of offerings. I didn't try the jewelry store, but the costume jewelry store had the prices of a jewelry store selling the normal stock of diamonds. The cars in the two parking garages and designated parking areas bore the labels Audi, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes, Cadillac, and BMW. A person can stay the night in the Hilton in the square if need be. Businesses vary from Central Market and Whole Foods to Brighton, Sephora's, Soma's and Malouf's. There are two fountain areas with trees and benches (miniature parks) where live music plays during the summer months fairly often.
I come often to this town square. I particularly like eating at the Cheesecake Factory there and a hamburger place called Snuffer's. I browse and occasionally buy a shirt from Brooks Brothers and another locally owned men's wear shop. I have to do business there to register my cars and frequently use the postal services in the square. Investment bankers have offices there if a person wants that service.
It's really refreshing to go there. People are overly nice and easy-going. The many stores and park areas are relaxing. And I probably need to mention that this town square is different in another way. Of all the towns and cities in the U.S,, this town square belongs to the 6th wealthiest city in the entire country. I love going to my historic Oak and Main streets closer to my house to eat and shop on occasion. I even like catching a movie and meal at the town center a quarter hour away. But, there is nothing like the movie, shirt, or dinner from the Town Square just a short 20 minute journey down the road where the concepts of upscale, trendy, ungodly rich, and opulent are the norm.
The bigger patterns surrounding the questions of how people got here and how long have they been here fascinate me, I suppose because I don't accept very many of the answers that have been given to me in my life.
If I look to space, it seems plausible that another very advanced civilization from one of the billions of other planets around the Earth has visited and shared k nowledge of their existence with Earth's people. Seeding the Earth is plausible if the original premise is accepted.
If I stay on Earth for an answer, it seems that Earth through all of its phases of heating up and cooling down, forming land and breaking apart, and finally melting ice enough to allow civilization to flourish around the equator is what happened. Even though the last Ice Age diminished 13,000 years ago, it would appear that humans have been around in various places trying to find warmth to live for at least double that number, perhaps even 20 times that number.
One would think in all of those years that people would learn to live together in harmony. Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, makes the claim that humans are becoming kinder and gentler a millennium at a time. He presents good evidence that that is true. I hope so. Progress is so slow, though. One would also think that people would figure out how to make friends, pick mates, compose laws, and deal with society's rule breakers in some compatible manner to them. Somehow, it seems that there is a ways to go in these areas also.
If I live long enough I will, perhaps, see that the origin of life on this planet will become clear and that people will decide to be honest, hopeful, realistic, and a little less crazy and malicious. Our children could make quantum leaps in lifestyle if this comes clear soon.
This poster represents the person that can see you as you are, your essence. Nearly everyone I know, sees me in terms of my age and weight and miles. If someone were to say the words or even one or two of these words to me, I would appreciate that person above all others and say the same. Souls would blend.
Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist that has written extensively about the inner workings of the brain. Part of his findings deal with the ability of the brain to fill in what we selectively want to see, hear, smell and touch. In his book How the Mind Works, Pinker has a lengthy section about the eye's perception of what it is seeing. He compares the process to the eye seeing things as a checker board. The white squares are not seen, but the black ones are. Even though the picture is not complete, the mind fills in what is not seen venturing a guess at what is being seen.
A conversation with my mom about two years ago proves Pinker's point. She was driving on a street that she has driven on many, many times. She pulled to the stop sign, looked both ways, then began to accelerate into the intersection. A car whizzed by and nearly hit her. I told her that she was not expecting to see anything because she normally doesn't. So her vision was controlled by her expectation. Mother didn't buy the explanation, but the incident exactly illustrated Pinker's findings.
To illustrate further, I offer the video below. People think of Disney as a company for children, so they aren't really looking for sexual innuendos in the animated movies Disney produces. But our expectations control what we see.
The same is true about how we hear language. If we think someone is questionable, ignorant, or deceitful, then that's how the words are heard. If we think that someone is being honest and trustworthy, then that also is how we hear the words. Fortunately, forensic methods can overcome this "blindness." The field helps in judging truth value with accuracy. That's helpful on a number of fronts. It cuts through the chase in the legal and law enforcement arenas for sure. It keeps people from babbling dishonest statements at a rate of one every second because they know you understand the language they are using. It's just nice to have equalizing techniques at your disposal. It's like going into a battle with an equal number of weapons in your arsenal as what the enemy has.
Around the world are structures of stone that mystify the best archaeologists. The stones are huge, made of granite usually, and bear some shape that required power tools. Archaeologists have largely ignored the finds and have relegated them to anomalies that are as old as they appear to be. About 10 years ago, people began finding more and more stone structures besides the standard ones, such as Stonehenge and the statues of Easter Island.
Now amateurs and experts alike have amassed such a wealth of stone shapes that they are obligated to start offering explanations. Some of these stones are majestic because they are precisely carved like the perfectly round spheres, some 8 feet in diameter, and perfectly planed obelisks more than 30 feet high. Others are roughly carved but monumentally heavy statues of faces. Still others are found in out of the way places and require aerial observation to see them or educated guesses on how they would have been used. Some seem religious in nature while some are definitely aligned with constellations or planets for reasons unknown.
More than one researcher has now come away from the "ignorance is bliss" approach and has begun to consider that civilization sprung up on the Earth a really long time before currently established timetables. Some have gone so far as to hypothesize, seriously, that Earth had visitations from beings from the sky. Many more conservative scholars can't agree to radical theories such as these two, but still hint that civilization must have existed in some highly intelligent form before being wiped out by a catastrophic, global flood.
The most recent disappearance of the ice age some 11,000-13,0000 years ago remains a mile marker for archaeologists, and they pin events and human movement around those dates. They should. And, they should reconsider other milestones - genetic reduction of 70,000 years ago being one of them. What exactly happened that only a few genetic types of humans exist now, but that maybe as many as 12 types existed before the 70,000 year marker? The eruption of Mount Toba in the Peloponnesian Islands only 4000 years before is another marker. Were humans alive at that point? How did they survive when many other life forms didn't?
I look forward to the scientists and archaeological experts of tomorrow to bring us some informed ideas about the mysteries that elude us now. Their answers will give us a much greater clarity and give our civilization a quantum leap into the next stage.
Disney movies are highly metaphorical in nature. They are called parables by some because they have a lesson to teach. Their characters are not always human, but the characters all speak and have human conflicts, so in effect, they have the same approach as a parable in conveying a principle for life. These movies are called allegories by others because of they tell stories that have symbols in them.
Tomorrowland is one of the stories from the same mold as other Disney movies, but it isn't animated. The reason for that is that the story writers want the viewer to have a more realistic interpretation of the symbols than if these representations were placed in an animated film.
The symbols are good ones. The main character symbolizes the people who have the determination of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, and the hundreds of other determined leaders who have not been content with the landscape of current reality and have offered something more. It gives the viewer hope that no matter what generation is trying to hand off the push to get better, that attempt will be successful because there are talented and willing young people to carry the torch. It's a hopeful movie.
It's also a movie of reality because the main character encounters obstacles from both he people who might hold the future for them and those who simply live in the present. Even the character who has experienced the same when he was young is hesitant to help someone in the next generation. That's reality, for sure.
Other symbols were used as well, such as the transmitter to recruit the next generation. It's good to show the type of person that is needed to answer the call. The archetypal villain is a great symbol of those who would pose the greatest setback to progress. He manipulates both truth and circumstances to create the sense of defeat. And the transportation used to transport the main character to Tomorrowland is a good symbol of the symbiotic relationship of the younger generation having to trust and depend on the older generation to provide a means for them to arrive at the city and the older generation having to trust that the younger generation will know what to do next "because they know how things work."
This is the kind of story that encourages people to do more, to do better, to reach higher, to go farther. I am a great believer in using the allegorical form of storytelling to encode what we want the next generation to do. I support Disney's great attempt to get the next generation off their rear-ends as they pass to adulthood.
The Disney movie Tomorrowland has many meritable qualities to it. Among them is the message about the resistance people have to what is coming in the next stage of civilization. Change itself morphs rather naturally, so to glimpse something in the future without the benefit of the morphing transition is to glimpse something rather jolting and abrupt.
The clip represents this abruptness so well. The main female character gets a glimpse of the future, but people try to keep her from getting to the world she has glimpsed. Fortunately, in the movie she makes it despite the best efforts of people in the present to keep her from making it to the future.
There is a great message here for those in the field of education from the bottom to the top - from kindergarten to doctoral programs: glimpse the future and try with every fiber of energy to overcome the forces that would keep you from bringing the world of tomorrow to the world of today. Most educators are much too like the robots who come to thwart the ones who are chosen to lead the way out of the present. The forces are strong against morphing. My hope and work is to help develop and help others to develop the way to get from today to tomorrow - that is George Clooney's character. Tomorrowland is a great allegory for the truth of morphing from status quo to a better way of life in the vein of Plato's allegory, The Cave. I stand with Plato and Disney. We're way behind schedule. It's time to morph.
Really, no one should have heard of Robert Ritchie. He was born in a small town of 3500 people at the top of the U.S. on the thumb part of the "mit" of Michigan, not too far north of Detroit. He wasn't monitored too well as a child although he wasn't the youngest of his family. At age 15 he decided to run away from his boring little town to Mt. Clemens, Michigan, a bigger town (about 20,000) to him with more opportunity (and less supervision). He found a job at a car wash, but it wasn't long before the local gang had him selling drugs from his car wash job. He was a nobody, washed up before life even started for him.
In high school things changed for him slightly. One can never tell where humble beginnings take a turn for the better. A neighborhood adult decided to do something about the rotten and dangerous living conditions and organized a rap group for interested kids. Robert had a great interest in that, so he joined. A little later he was DJing for basement parties. That's not the big times exactly, but it was Robert's start. He continued performing his rap music and befriending locals also interested in rap. It so happened that D-Nice, producer of Boogie Down Productions, was one of his local friends. He was invited to open for this group and meet a representative of Jive Records. This led to a record deal at his tender age of 17. But, this part is not where you know "the rest of the story." This part is still the humble beginnings part.
Jive decided to give Robert the boot because his lyrics were laced with such offensive words and images. A radio station in New York received the largest fine to date (1989) for playing his song Yo Da-Lin. A "7 years of famine" followed. He went through two other record labels who dropped him for lack of interest in his work. He made one of his romantic interests pregnant, so a son was born to him. He worked janitor jobs in order to pay for studio fees because he could not let his interest go. He learned how to play 5 different instruments so that he wouldn't have to hire others to play for him. Instead, he could mix the music himself. Days, weeks, months, and years were dark and turned darker with each one that passed.
But Robert had a date with destiny in Miami, Florida, in December 1998. He was invited by MTV to perform with many other artists on the show MTV Fashionably Loud. Jay-Z was also at the event and was upstaged by Robert. That was his magic moment. His music took off, his singles began selling, he began making the TV circuit.
The details of every phase of Robert's career show dogged determination on his part. He was always aware of the constant odds against him on the path he faced in order to get his music heard. He started early, never gave up, and was friendly to everyone he met. Eventually his network came through for him. Like nearly all the great musicians, his story is filled with failure and dark times. It wasn't a stroke of luck that made him famous, it was his incessant, unwavering belief that he would be successful or die trying.
Never heard of Robert Ritchie, five-time Grammy winner? Of course not. His nickname since age 17 has come from others noticing how he rocked the crowd he played to. At the time he was just a kid, so they called him Kid Rock. Now it makes sense.
More and more, brilliant people are coming to the conclusion that the past has a much more different existence than was known a mere 20 years ago. The television show America Unearthed begins every show by mentioning "the history we were all taught in schools is wrong." It cites many runes and artifacts as its evidence. Ancient Aliens is also a program that poses the question of whether ancient humans were able to build the monuments we find with the tools that are known to have existed. Recently, Planet Egypt raised the question of how many of the artifacts discovered over the years can really be made with the tools the Egyptians left behind.
Of particular interest in the most recent program was a core sample that seems to have been discarded after drilling it out of granite, the hardest rock known. The only known drilling material we know that the Egyptians had is copper. But cutting granite with copper is impossible. So, how was it done? No one knows. The striations on the granite indicate that the amount of pressure put on the drill to form the number of striations appearing is more than is possible with today's drills.
I love mysteries like this one. They show me that we don't really know what the past was like. We see backwards into time so dimly that it is almost not worth the time to speculate. Some day we will perhaps know, but not today. Time continues to hold its secrets despite our best efforts. And that is the gospel truth. The only way to have a clear picture is to have lived through something ourselves.
I think about that sometimes when it comes to events in my life. For those who were there, it's an open book, but for those who weren't, everything is hidden from public view. For those who knew me at one time and now look at my life and say they can't believe this event or that happened, then I say, "Stand back, look and respect, or look and disbelieve, but you can't know the real events since you were not there." That's a good thing, just like it is for society as we peer back into the ancient past.
I have never really been in the path of a hurricane on land or sea. I intend never to be on the water at any time during a hurricane, that is certain. I have been in the outer band range of hurricane winds and rain before. When various hurricanes have made landfall, I have watched their paths to the east or west through newscasts and wondered how they differ from other storms. But, today I'm sitting here in the middle of a hurricane that moved inland.
So, today I can tell you. There's nothing in the way of bursts of winds, lightning streaking across the length of the sky, or thunder sounding in the background like a drum roll for half an hour. Skies don't get dark, dark gray or purple. None of that.
The wind is constant, not turbulent like tornadic winds, but straightline winds about 40-50 MPH. They blow without stopping. The rain is just as constant. It lightens, then pours, lightens again, pours, alternatingly. It's been raining about 8 straight hours without stopping.
It's really pretty pleasant. There is a saying in English, "Into every life some rain must fall." Rain can fall from other types of storms, granted. But, when this is the kind of rain that falls into one's life, then bring it. Rain doesn't have to be bad or dreaded, nor do life's events. I've actually had one of these "hurricane rain events" in my life. It was really very pleasant. Things didn't get destroyed, it was a pleasant change of weather, change of pace, a needed rejuvenation. I didn't know how to categorize it at the time it happened.
So, let the good rain fall... and fall... and fall.
I remember all too well a conversation I had with someone my senior by 10 years over a grammatical issue. Her training was through an English degree. Mine was from linguistics. The topic was over the phrase than me, as in the sentence, He had a bigger ice cream cone than me.
Her position was that the phrase was not grammatically correct. That's because the phrase is an elliptical clause. The word than is a coordinating conjunction followed by the subject of a verb, but the verb is implied. In the sentence above, the elliptical clause is than I (had). So, the sentence should have been spoken as He had a bigger ice cream cone than I.
My position was that the phrase was grammatically correct. That's because the phrase contains two words and there is no ellipsis. The word than is a preposition, so it is followed by the object case pronoun me. Thus, the sentence in paragraph one is correct, He had a bigger ice cream cone than me.
The conversation happened about 15 years ago. At the time, the woman I was engaged in conversation with responded to my position, probably sarcastically, maybe graciously, "Well, others are not as malleable as you." That's not true any more. Dictionary.com presents the argument in a usage note even though it retains the notion of the traditional elliptical clause as the explanation for its occurrence in the officially listed definition.
The general rule is that the language has changed from a rule if a threshold of 75% has been reached for a use different from the traditional rule. I can't even remember the last time I heard thanI other than from an English teacher. That means the threshold rule should apply. I'm thinking the usage percentage of than me is more on the order of 95% acceptance as grammatically correct by American English speakers.
Dictionary.com should have already switched from presenting the argument in a usage note to putting the traditional explanation in a derivational note and including the current use in the definition.
Language is slow to change, generally, but once it has changed the only thing slower to change is the number of die-hards who won't change. And, although this blog is about language change, there is a principle here that applies across disciplinary lines from language behavior to human behavior. We're expected to change as we grow older. We grow in knowledge, so our experience informs our behavior. I find myself having little tolerance for adults over the age of 35 who have adopted wholesale what they were taught as children. Not only are rules to bring you (like a tutor) to a fuller understanding of life's principles, the world changes so that the rules we learned don't apply so much to a different world.
Long live those who pay attention to change as it happens and to change as experience informs them.
What gets marked in a language? That's a question people ask (most of the time subconsciously) when they learn a new language or analyze the one they natively speak. How people know when a noun is the recipient of the action of the verb, in English, is a matter of word order, the noun follows a verb. But in Spanish it requires the word a after a verb and before the noun it marks if the noun is a human or includes a human. Neither word order nor marking with additional words applies to ancient Latin and Greek, however. They marked receiving an action with a case ending on the noun.
Nouns that receive the action or that are the result of the action are marked a number of different ways in the languages of the world. And other parts of speech and functions of words get marked as well. It's just the efficient way the brain has been set up to recognize functions and aspects in a language.
The brain is efficient in marking our experiences in life as well so that we can categorize them according to their function and aspect. The events that happen to us are forgotten by default because there are so many of them. So, we have to make markers for the event to stick for one reason or another. Events that are pleasant are marked because we want to repeat them. Events that are painful are remembered because of their dire effects on us. There are other ways to mark events as well for our long term memories.
This Phillip Phillips song is a perfect non-scientific, very artful way of saying the same thing as the words above. I have many markings in my experiences as I do in the languages I know. And I will continue to have those markings. I'm not done... so, I extend this song.
Lady Antebellum sings the songs that I wish I had written. They represent what I think about and often how I think about them. She phrases the lyrics in beautiful symbolism sometimes and with vivid imagery at other times. In this song, she captures so well the indelible link that exists between the way life is and the hope a person carries that something will trump life's bends and breaks, that something will happen to stop life from moving beyond the point of those bows and cracks.
There's something about a song that makes it live longer than its own lifetime. It lives on in our hearts, the origin of heartstrings holding real events of two people deep in their minds, never to be forgotten, ever to be recreated.
I heard a speech today from someone who hasn't really ever studied psychology. But his opening setup for his speech was on what drives a person. I am assuming that he was talking of intrinsic motivation. He mentioned that people make decisions based on their driving force. He singled out one driving force of one individual and then went on to talk about how we all should adopt this one driving force.
That flies in the face of everything we know about the decision-making process. One of the best descriptions of decision-making is from the book by Gary Klein called Source of Power: How People Make Decisions. His book is based on ten years of observations and takes into consideration a great number of articles written by experts in psychology as he applied the principles found in these articles to his observations.
Another view of decision-making is given in this 3 1/2 video. It shows the affect of stress on decisions. Other views exist as well, but this is a good sample of the plethora of ideas that exist on the subject.
The bottom line is that someone's driving force for doing what one does is a misrepresentation of how people make decisions. Many factors contribute to decision-making not one driving force. And, the factors that contribute to making one decision are not necessarily the reasons for making the next decision. Even when a hierarchy of reasoning exists for decision-making, the hierarchy is flexible from one decision to the next and can change over time. \
So, the premise of the speech I heard today was erroneous, the examples, though moving, supported only one factor in a hierarchy on one occasion. That's too bad since one person's strong belief in what he spoke on wasted my time because of lack of knowledge. I try to limit the times that waste mine. But, today my decision to listen to this speech failed me. I need to make better decisions. There are a plethora of books on that topic you can be sure. Using Amazon's search engine for their site will give you a good picture of what's available on that topic.
