BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 10:17 AM

There is neo funding of police duties such as having professionals respond to calls regarding the mentally ill or autistic. It even saves money and lives.

I call for the 22 Congressmen and 1 Senator who will vote against counting electoral votes for Biden next week to be charged with insurrection and treason next week. Yes that includes Barry Loudermilk, Barry Moore, Guy Reschenthaler, Diane Harshbarger, Mo Brooks and Josh Hawley.
As measured and forgiving as I try to be...
Some days I am for cruel and unusual punishment for right wingnuts.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 11:43 AM

Trouble is, is that half the epople in the world are below average intelligence...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 12:09 PM

I'm the product of a working class family who valued education and intelligence,
who aspired for their children to acquire the intellectual skills for social mobility...

Thatcher's reign saw to that 'undesirable' ideal
being stripped from the ambitions of the British underclass...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 11:37 AM

There is policy by the rich and for the rich to keep their servants in their place. Be it Republicans or Tories they want much of that government money for themselves. To do that you simply deactivate government agencies and hand those duties over to privatly owned busineses. You slowly dissolve schools and leave private schools for the priviledged. Close libraries. etc.

The biggest prize for privatization beasts is to sink their teeth into the Post Office. After Hurricane Katrina early attempts were made for Walmart to take care of the victims. It didn't work.
Today Wallmart/Walgreens is to dispense the vaccines and do all the testing. That is failing or never got off the ground.

The beauty of privitization -beyond failure- is that it is not accountable to anyone but themselves. 'They' define the argument of privatization as Socialism verses Capitalism. In socialism you will be taxed to death and you don't want that.
All I know is that it works and grievences are addressed.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 05:06 PM

Hi, Donuel. We one example of privatization in Missouri, where driver's licensing and vehicle licensing centers are run privately. Most of the centers are not open due to Covid, and the signs on the offices don't say when they will be open again.

They don't answer the phone, and their mailboxes are full. The DH called the Department of Revenue, and the Department doesn't even know which offices are open or closed.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 05:29 PM

Missouri? i thot you were british. The up right walker looks straight forward but you need a personal test.

I still have not perfected my sky hook.

The white house phone operator doesn't answer like it used to either.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 03:40 PM

Demonizing government has been popularied with the oft repeated Reagan phrase "Im from the government and I'm here to help - is the most dreaded thing ever said"
A wingnut said "I want government so small I can drown it in a bathtub"

Well we can see what the result is locally and nationally.
We have been attacked by a virus. If China attacked would we leave it to State govenors?

We have had Presidents who only helped robber barons and not the people from Hayes to Coolidge and beyond.

Government trust transparency and truth is needed to clear its reputation. I think even the need to know paradigm needs reform.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 11:38 PM

Today reason took another vacation.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 01:17 AM

trump, the man who put the "T" in reason...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 05:57 AM

That was good. I laughed when I thought I saw an I.
When I saw the T I was more impressed. Oscar Wilde move over.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 06:32 AM

Yesterday was either the high water mark for intolerence and will be met by law, arrest and prosecution OR
This is the modern day Fort Sumpter of a new hot civil war as Trump desires.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 06:26 PM

The Trump insurgents are beyond reason, "renaissance" or not.

They have brainwashed and radicalized each other under the beaming smile of Donald Trump.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 07:22 AM

Now 5 people have died frpm the mob violence trashing the Capitol..
because people refused to tell citizens the truth. Like leaving a cult hey were afraid to tell the truth.
Honesty is the best policy is the simple lsson Washington needs to learn.
I am in favor of disclosure of the truth'

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: gillymor
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:05 AM

Whoops, posted to this thread by accident. Oh well.

---

Transferred to appropriate thread. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:07 AM

It will take a while for this country to tell the truth.
I shall begin by admitting that I post particular topics in a particular order like playing chess; Cults, Reason, Truth, Psychology, Bio war etc.
When I see trends and certain things coming I try to shape thought about these events in stages. It is not scatter brained however temperature lowering and raising topics can be random.
Honesty is the best policy is represented by Law and Justice.

22 years ago I spooked myself by painting a 16 square fot picture of twin towers on fire with planes in the sky. Cassandra kike events are common with me as it was with my grandmother. (twillight zone music plays) Be that as it may, I feel a respondsibility to speak of these trends.
So telling the truth has its costs but as we all can see so does lieing. In the first post of this thread I hoped that the new administration tell the truth about all 'sorts' of things.
You may disagree with the truth as I know it, fine, just think for yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 08:20 AM

During my brief exposure to American education I was astonished by tests of knowledge relying on multiple-choice questions rather than essays, and by languages taught (by people who didn't speak them) from tourist phrasebooks. Later, watching from the distance, I watched Phonics (teach children to read words as they sound, before revealing to them the horrid truth that words aren't actually spelled like that…)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 09:23 AM

For many years I was an examiner with an 'A' level board, rising eventually to the dizzy rank of team leader of a group of assistant examiners. My specialism was marking and moderating the marking of biology essay papers. It is the hardest damn thing on earth. Right up to the time that the results were announced we were in the back room checking each other's marking, and even secretly checking the marking of our own chief examiners. After the results we had to re-mark appealed results too. I saw it all. Many an injustice must have crept through, and I have sympathy with exam boards backing away from essays and embracing both structured and multiple-choice questions. It may sound like a drop in standards, but it can be done and it's fairer all round. People who can get an extensive marking scheme into their heads and objectively mark the infinite variety of long essays to an acceptable standard are like hens' teeth. If we thought we were getting to within five percentage points of the correct mark for a paper with five essay questions we thought we were doing well. Examinations are unfair as it is, so stripping away at least one layer of that unfairness is creditable (in m'humble).

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 10:08 AM

Exams are really no more than a test of how young people may cope under pressure and stress...

In that respect it shows how prepared they are for survival and progress in the real adult world..

Also "cheating, and getting away with it".. which is also a respected adult business skill...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 11:39 AM

Truth, education... what other hiways are there to reason?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:01 PM

Multiple-choice exams can be brutal - if the distinctions among the choices are subtle enough.

In my experience, however, a common method is to make one of the four choices intentionally ludicrous, and the other three distinct enough so that someone with only a vague notion of what's required has a good chance of guessing the answer.

But not even the hardest multiple-choice test (which, by the way, even some instructors call "multiple guess," as though that's the proper term) demands the organizational skills and clarity of thought required by essay questions.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:27 PM

Truth is not a road.. it's a feature of a good road.

A sane political system is one way reason can be inserted into education. If dozens of variations of education continue, narrow views of 'truth' will always confuse things. Of course, in order to establish common ways to conduct education, political sanity needs to prevail... but that seems to need common education....

Do I detect a circular flaw in progress?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:48 PM

I think there are times when you avoid essay answers. As Steve has mentioned the fair posing, evaluation, and grading of them requires considerable energy and is subject to multiple tiers of correction. And what if the question is technical and the answer is graded on grammar?

My father recalled a math teacher who downmarked you if you didn't put a period at the end of an equation.

Meanwhile multiple choice can be good or bad depending on the nature of the subject and the quality of the test preparer. In school they varied with the teacher. On the SAT* I thought they were pretty good at getting your level of knowledge although it hurt to feel rushed. In the working world one runs into them in proving that you have familiarity with various tasks and licensing criteria. The official ones have been good, the trades ones have been ludicrously easy, because the people who put the tests together were probably not paid to make a good test and the test itself was mainly to show that you showed up for the presentation. I have been surprised on occasion.

As to the larger question of reason and renaissance, the recognition of reason is somewhat elusive. The actual Renaissance may have been a result of plague tearing apart a population that was educated to dark ages standards. Your village started dying, so you prayed, put poultices on the sores, burned a witch or a Jew or two, and possibly went to self-flagellation. I'll never forget a short story I read: "The Plague Comes to Bergamo".

At some point, a critical number of people start saying: "Enough is enough is enough."

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 01:31 PM

How about a required Presidential SAT as a candidate?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 01:42 PM

In my experience (of marking tens of thousands of 'A' Level biology essays, and of assessing the marking standards of examiners in my teams), yes it's grand to be able to demonstrate your skilful martialling of relevant facts, expressing them clearly and in context and putting everything together into a persuasive and well-balanced and well-structured whole. The problem is how to fairly assess those efforts. We would typically mark an essay out of 20. Each tick represented a well-made point which was relevant and in context. But our marking scheme for each question (ironed out for the paper over a whole two days of meetings), which typically covered two sides of A4, contained upwards of forty or fifty potential marking points. Three of the questions selected by the candidate typically had a part A/part B structure requiring long answers, and the other two were of the "Discuss the theories on the origin of life" type. In addition, the essay had to be balanced across that scheme (you couldn't score all 20 points by leaving out a whole area of discussion that you hadn't thought relevant/hadn't revised/had forgotten about). There was the question of overall quality of the answer (which we assessed somewhat subjectively according to several criteria, such as writing in clear and concise English, diagram accuracy, the avoidance of irrelevancies and blatant errors and giving the essay a cohesive structure), to which we allocated a maximum of three "quality" marks out of the 20. No marks were allocated for neatness, nice handwriting or effort, though we were allowed to dock a mark for sheer bloody unreadability, whilst retaining the brief that we somehow still had to process the damn thing...

Now each of the poor souls who did the marking had to carry all those caveats in their heads, as well as effectively "learning" the marking scheme - and have that sorted for all nine essay questions on the paper (the candidate had to choose five to answer). In a typical summer exam, I would personally mark about four or five hundred scripts and each member of the team about half that number. Almost all of us were working teachers, doing the marking in the evening and at weekends in term time, working to an extremely tight deadline. Essay setting is a grand idea, but, as you can see, there is another side to that coin. We have to be fair to candidates, whose careers or university entrance depends on our getting this right. Setting tasks that only superhumans could assess accurately doesn't serve them at all well.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 02:27 PM

Bill, I consider Truth fundamental while nebulus. I do not relegate truth to an adjective status.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 02:44 PM

Your essay on correcting essay tests reminded me of our far simpler method of evaluating job interviewees. On our best days several of us employed persons ran identical questions to the subjects, then scored them personally, then met and decided if we agreed with each other and if not, why not. I think we based our method on how we saw Olympics judges score performance athletics that couldn't be timed. Not a good model now that I rethink about it.

I meant to *explain the SAT
in my previous posting. For those of you not in USA "SAT" is an abbreviation for what used to be "Scholastic Aptitude Test". They were everpresent when I was a high school student. They were given at the end of American elementary education so about when the average student was 17 or 18 and were supposed to indicate how well prepared one was for post-secondary education, but not paid for by the state. Possibly subsidized, but I don't think totally. There were two separate sections to be done, one that verbal and another that was mathematical. Predominantly multiple choice. Possibly there were essays required for the verbal.

It might be a good idea to have some set of standard requirements that can be posed as an exam and must be passed to go into public service, but that would certainly indicate a society prejudice against mental infirmity or personality defects. I doubt that can work in the U.S. because it departs from the 'everyman' nature of our Democracy. Also, I believe the French have a quite elaborate system of schooling their public officials and how has that worked out? (Seriously, I'm asking, how has that worked out? I sure don't know).

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 03:05 PM

The word truth can be used several ways, just as 'folk'. But it often involves an equivocation when just tossed about. When capitalized and put in quotes, it is usually meant as dressed up word for 'fact'.

If 'facts' are known in some matter, 'truth' means honestly and accurately acknowledging facts.
A lot of what people like to wave about as truth is merely some subjective opinion on some abstraction. It gets kinda slippery.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 03:21 PM

True, and a lie is a swift WMD
Trumps election lies are years old but Mark Twain was also right
"A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its socks on".

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 04:59 PM

According to multiple sources on the internet, that quote pre-dates Mark Twain considerably. And the quote is not socks but shoes. Shoes is what people go halfway around the world in, socks optional.

Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 11:55 AM

Irish proverb: Is fearr a bheith coslom ná cosnoctaithe - it is better to be barefoot than in shoes with no socks, ie better honest poverty than a pretence at wealth.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 12:02 PM

Thompson:

Great quote!
I peddled a bicycle through the Gaeltacht in the 80s with a kid who was learning Irish Gaelic and we would stop and he'd interpret the signs. Are you fluent?

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Rain Dog
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 07:16 PM

Well I think it would be better to be wearing shoes without socks rather than traipsing around the west of Ireland barefoot.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 09:04 PM

I can't bear socks. I wear them for weddings and funerals only, and even then I whip them off in the car afterwards as soon as is decently possible. For thirty years I have had just the one pair of black shoes and they are still in very good condition. All my other footwear is sandals, and I never wear footwear of any kind in the house. So if you knocked on my door and saw me, you'd think I was in a state of honest poverty. Trouble is, I also wear shorts all the time and all my shirts are short-sleeve and extremely colourful, mainly of the Hawaiian type. I wonder if that makes me non-povera...

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 09 Jan 21 - 09:58 PM

OK when I was younger and even more irritating than I remain at present, my parents told me to put my shoes and socks on. I gleefully returned to them with my feet in my shoes, and my socks pressed onto them as far as they'd go.
In more than one way I am lucky to be alive!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 06:14 AM

One of the reasons I decided to eschew socks for ever was the dreaded phenomenon of sock-slip. I always hated those grooves that normal socks left around the bottom on my calves, so used to wear those loose-top ones. After a short while they generally ended up scrunched under my foot inside my shoe with an unbesocked bare heel to show for it. I found this to be an intensely crippling experience. I regard socks, along with the boob apron, to be among the worst sartorial inventions ever.

Subject: Is this how to restore reason ?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 08:08 AM

I have no idea what it must be like to be sock blocked.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 01:53 PM

The first ammndment has always had lilits. When radio arrived the government got involved, same with TV. The Internet revolution is in its wild west age and has proven toxic in the wrong hands. This technology is too advanced for humans? The next one will be a doozy if unregulaed. Th first ammendment is not as sancrosanct as we mightthink.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 05:28 PM

Robomatic who bought the bike?

Hahaha. Peddled vs Pedaled. Never mind. It has been a long week.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:06 PM

re:socks....

I spent most of my life in jobs which required shoes.. and often work boots... with good socks, to be both safe and comfortable. In the few years when I might have worn sandals, my feet had no protective callouses. I now, in my 'declining' years, have several pair of sandals and 3 pair of shorts.
It is interesting how people differ so much in their sartorial display. I feel gaudy in a shirt with any red or yellow in it. My favorites, both short and long-sleeved are black & while checked. My 'party' shirt is a green & gray checked thing my wife gave me several years ago. I also have a blue-gray shirt with a small wold embroidered on it. My ONLY suit is a brown corduroy with matching vest I bought for my wedding 40 years ago. I have worn it to a couple of weddings and a few other events since, including my son's wedding 2½ years ago! (I think I always wore the same leaf-green with white outlining tie).

   I think I'll put a link to me in it on my Dropbox or Google drive.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:17 PM

Ok folks.. here's me with my wife, when that suit was 'only' about 30 years old.
at a friend's wedding

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:19 PM

Maybe... it shows the file name, but slow loading.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:33 PM

Great pic, Bill.

I still have the suit, the shoes and the underpants I got married in 44 years ago. Unfortunately, due to 44 years' good living, there's no way I can get any of them on now. Well, maybe the shoes, but even they look doubtful. And just a bit mildewy ...:-(

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 08:54 PM

Mrrzy. I pedal corrected....in athletic socks.

I understand that Russian soldiers wore not socks, but portyanki throughout WWII. These were fabric foot-wraps. Cotton in summer, flannel in winter. The official word to shift to socks came relatively recent according to The New York Times.

Apparently they are similar to what the British call puttees.

I don't know how far back socks go, actually. I've got a recording of George Bernard Shaw stating that he had his socks made left and right, and I ran into that recently in Alaska, but I forget just where.

The town I used to live in in Massachusetts had an underwear factory, and I still think I have some t-shirts made in Needham. Apparently that was so the unwed mothers could have jobs!

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 06:59 AM

Lovely picture, Bill. You would be at home as lord of the manor in any English stately home in that :-) Glad to see that you are keeping Edward V11 company by leaving the bottom button of the waistcoat undone :-D

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:16 AM

I was unaware that I was in such elite company.. but I have so many ancestors who inhabited various English manors that I'd not know where to claim residence. (Some of them, unfortunately, did not follow the example of the Vicar of Bray)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:33 AM

Robo, portyanki are not like puttees, except in that they are flat pieces of cloth.

Oblong in shape, portyanki are wrapped around the bare feet and ankles, and are worn inside the soldier's boots and trousers. They work best with the felt-lined knee-high boots that are the Russian equivalent of mukluks. Puttees are long strips of cotton webbing that are wound around the leg on top of the trousers, socks and the top two inches of the British ammo boot. Infantry soldiers wind them from the ankle up to the knee, and gunners and troopers wind from the knee down to the ankle, so they don't come undone from friction against stirrup leathers.

After the invention of knitting machines and the arrival on the Russian market of affordable knitted socks, the true purpose of portyanki -- apart from saving the state money -- was as an initiation experience for recruits. Learning to wrap their feet correctly was one of the first things taught to Soviet soldiers, and the Russian army abandoned them only very recently. Puttees were adapted from clothing worn by tribal fighters in India during the 18th and 19th centuries, and were kept in wear until the 1960s because they provided easily adjustable support to soldiers' legs, they were very distinctively military, and they were cheap.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:35 AM

The photo also looks like a poster for a movie
about a nice friendly couple running a rural folksie hotel
where guests mysteriously disappear..

The hotel kitchen serves the tastiest meat pies in the county...

We want to see this film, why aint mudcat in the movie business ...!!!???

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 11:49 AM

pfr.. No family recipes for 'long pig'. Many years ago, Max did videos. You'd have to ask him. ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 02:23 PM

pfr I will second your nomination to the NYSFTTS. The licensing is up to you.

Subject: RE: BS: How can we restore a reason renaissance
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 08:06 PM

Thanks Charmion. That was a big help! Better knowledge of portyankis AND puttees! Now Kipling will make more sense!