They have all the energy in the world. Why? Often because they aren’t building anything.

Haters almost always accuse you of what they themselves are guilty. When they do, listen: It’s about them. You can’t chase these people. They have all the energy in the world. Why? Often because they aren’t building anything. They aren’t saying what they are for except for saying that they want things to be just. And just, often disappointingly, may mean you built stuff they now want.

Lastly, don’t confuse your critics with your haters. Critics see good in you too. Learn to value your critics. They aren’t trying to mess with you. They may not be correct but critics aren’t haters. Learn to spot the differences.

Eric Weinstein

Continue ReadingThey have all the energy in the world. Why? Often because they aren’t building anything.

A Non-Carpenter Looks Closely at Carpentry

My deck boards kept rotting through, so I decided to switch to "no maintenance" composite decking, which comes with a 25 year guarantee. I fix a lot of things at my house, but I suspected that the joists were rotted out and that work is over my head. Luckily, my favorite carpenter, "Matt," had a couple days open. He allowed me to be his carpenter's helper for 12 hours yesterday.

It's amazing to watch a professional carpenter solve challenge after challenge, many of them not obvious to non-carpenters until pointed out. This was notably imperfect existing construction that needed to be torn out. I helped to cut material, make runs to the hardware store, and carry around a lot of material, including 60 lb joists. I was mesmerized by Matt's physical stamina and his thought process as much as his skills in fitting things together into a rock solid new deck and perfect new set of stairs. Even setting up requires unloading and moving probably 700 pounds of equipment off the truck. It also involves significant planning, because getting the job done uses up lots of supplies, including blades and bits. He needs to stock an entire workshop on his truck, including backup tools.

I got back to my routine today, but Matt does this every day. His job requires skills honed over a lifetime and constant physical exertion where mistakes can be expensive and sometimes dangerous. So kudos to those of you who do physically demanding high-skill work. These are people (including carpenters, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics and many others) with a central role in keeping this country running. Maybe it's time to set aside a day in their honor . . .

Continue ReadingA Non-Carpenter Looks Closely at Carpentry

An Excellent Two-Fer: Walking and Thinking

Does walking help you think? Absolutely, I would say!  In my experience, walking gets the mental juices flowing.  Problems sometimes get reframed on a walk.  Or a new question pops out at me.  I walk for the exercise, but equally because it turbo-charges the way I think.  Or is it that walking physically calms me down so that I don't get in my own way? Exercise is suggested for people like me who sometimes seem to struggle with ADD. My own routine is 10,000 steps per day, usually divided up into 2 or 3 sessions of walking.  My Fitbit keeps me honest (about both my walking and my sleeping).

Jeremy DeSilva's "On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking" perambulates the topic of walking and thinking. He begins with the story of Charles Darwin, who took many walks along his "D" shaped path. Then he moves on to the science. Here's an excerpt:

A group of Stanford students were asked to list as many creative uses for common objects as they could. A Frisbee, for example, can be used as a dog toy, but it can also be used as a hat, a plate, a bird bath, or a small shovel. The more novel uses a student listed, the higher the creativity score. Half the students sat for an hour before they were given their test. The others walked on a treadmill. The results were staggering. Creativity scores improved by 60 percent after a walk.

Wow! Here's one more: Half of 65 couch-potatoes were put a moderate exercise routine (treadmill walking 3 times per week). The result? "[T]he walkers had significantly improved connectivity in regions of the brain understood to play an important role in our ability to think creatively."

So get out there and take a walk! Perhaps the cheapest form of exercise--and it might get your brain revving.

Continue ReadingAn Excellent Two-Fer: Walking and Thinking

Something from Nothing?

What caused the universe? "God" is not an answer for me because this mysterious "God" seems entirely made up and "He" creates many new answerless questions. So "He" is not an explanation.

Back to the question. What caused the universe? Why is there something rather than nothing. I generally conclude "I don't know." But then Roger Penrose comes along . . .

"There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future," he said, according to The Telegraph.

He added, "We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon."

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Christopher Rufo Reports: Critical Race Theory Takes Root in Public Grade Schools and High Schools from Coast to Coast

Christopher Rufo has been reporting on Critical Race Theory in our schools for the past year. His eleven headlines (and articles) below demoralize me. These are the teachings of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi in action. I hope that attorneys file lawsuits with regard to every one of these situations for creating hostile race environments. This is also child abuse, but most of the parents either don't know what is being taught to their children or they are afraid to speak up because doing so will cause them to be ostracized or branded “racists.”

Here are Rufo's headlines and synopses. Each of the eleven locations below contains a link to Rufo's full story of the way those schools are teaching CRT. Many of these stories are based upon whistle-blower oral and written disclosures to Rufo:

Seattle [Public Grade School]

Seattle Public Schools tells teachers that the education system is guilty of "spirit murder" against black children and that white teachers must "bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance."

San Diego [Public K - 8]

San Diego Public Schools accuses white teachers of being colonizers on stolen Native American land and tells them "you are racist" and "you are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies." They recommend that the teachers undergo "antiracist therapy."

Cupertino, California [Public School, Third Graders]

A Cupertino, California, elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their "power and privilege." They separate the eight-year-old children into oppressors and oppressed.

Springfield, Missouri [Public Middle School]

A middle school in Springfield, Missouri, forces teachers to locate themselves on an "oppression matrix," claiming that white heterosexual Protestant males are inherently oppressors and must atone for their "covert white supremacy."

Philadelphia [Public School - Fifth grade]

A Philadelphia elementary school forces fifth-graders to celebrate "Black communism" and simulate a Black Power rally to "free Angela Davis" from prison. At this school, 87 percent of students will fail to achieve basic literacy by graduation.

New York [Public School, Grades 6 - 12]

The principal of the East Side Community School in New York sent an email to white parents telling them that they should "subvert white authority," become "white traitors," and then advocate for full "white abolition."

Buffalo [Public Grade Schools]

Buffalo Public Schools teaches students that "all white people" perpetuate systemic racism and forces kindergarteners to watch a video of dead black children warning them about "racist police and state-sanctioned violence" who might kill them at any time.

Arizona [ Department of Education Report regarding Babies]

The Arizona Department of Education created an "equity" toolkit claiming that babies show the first signs of racism at three months old and that white children become full racists—"strongly biased in favor of whiteness"—by age five.

California [Department of Education - Primary and Secondary School Students]

The California Department of Education passed an "ethnic studies" curriculum that calls for the "decolonization" of American society and has students chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice. The solution, according to one author, is "countergenocide."

North Carolina [Public grade schools and high schools]

North Carolina’s largest school district launches a campaign against "whiteness in educational spaces"—and encourages teachers to subvert families and push the ideology of "antiracism" directly onto students without parental consent.

Santa Clara, California [Public grade schools and high schools]

Santa Clara County Office of Education denounces the United States as a "parasitic system" based on the "invasion" of "white male settlers" and encourages teachers to "cash in on kids' inherent empathy" in order to recruit them into political activism.

When you are finished absorbing the highly divisive course materials used by these schools, also consider the numerous violations of the NEA teacher code of conduct.

Continue ReadingChristopher Rufo Reports: Critical Race Theory Takes Root in Public Grade Schools and High Schools from Coast to Coast