Tuesday 8 January 2019

Warren Story

This came up today about Elizabeth Warren.

As a kid (one might assume around age 17)....1966....she came up and won some type of Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow scholarship.

I read through the piece....this was done at the local high school....not at the national level.

Basically, you took a 50-min test....loaded with 150 questions.  Do the math, that means every 20 seconds or so....she had to come to a conclusion.

The subjects of the test?  Family relationships, religious stuff and moral values, kid development,  health, safety, money management, leisure time, home care and beautification, your local community and further education.

How she won the contest?  My humble guess is that there were only five or six girls in the group who attempted this, and maybe out of the 150 questions.....she got sixty of these correct.  The mere suggestion that she even got a hundred questions answered in the 50 minutes?  No, I just can't believe that's possible.

Would that Betty Crocker business hype you to vote for her?  That's the oddball thing.....southerners like that kind of stuff, but you notice.....this was not for a cooking or baking project, it was just for a test of knowledge.

Delusional People

The first time in my life that I had some introduction to delusional people....I was around 13 years old.  My dad had a vehicle with serious transmission issues, and had decided that he'd take it to his mechanic (local guy, someone that done several mechanical projects for my dad).  So we left the vehicle for four days, and returned on a Saturday...hoping to pick it up.  You have to remember, this is rural Alabama, in the early 1970s.

In four days time, the guy had done absolutely nothing with the car.  So this big 'chat' occurs, and I'm standing there eyeballing this guy with my dad.  The guy is mid-30s and I'd met him on at least two other occasions.

He couldn't get to the car issue because of all the UFO's flying over his house.  Yes, a 8-minute conversation is carried on.....mostly with my dad responding 'uh huh'.  It wasn't a positive 'uh huh' or a negative 'uh huh'.  It was just to acknowledge that the guy could carry onto the next part of the story.

For me, I was quiet entertained and astonished at the level of UFO traffic over his remote farm (it was about four miles from our farm), and kept wondering why I didn't didn't see these UFOs if they were in such abundance.

At some point, my dad responded that we'd take the truck, and maybe return in a couple of weeks.  Then he told me to take the car and he'd return in the transmission-issue truck.  I responded that I was only 13 and I'd have to travel on the county road, and the cops might stop me.  He assured me....this just wasn't a problem.

I settled back into the LTD.  If you've never sat in a LTD.....it's made for four folks to sit side-by-side in the front seat, and a seven-foot tall guy could easily lay out in the seat.  It was my first real 'on-the-road' experience.  Luckily, this was mostly a chirt or dirt road, and I didn't cruise more than 40 mph. If you've never done a dirt road at 40 mph in a LTD...let me assure you....there's a fair-sized dust trail that is achieved. 

Upon my dad's arrival back at the house, and after his phone call to find another mechanic, I engaged in the UFO conversation.  He used the word 'delusional' but with his southern drawl.....it came out something like 'de-lucy-nel' (sounding almost French).  I took the 15-pound dictionary that we had in the house later, and spent at least 15 minutes paging through out it to arrive at a meaning.  The word 'paranoid' really didn't make any sense to me (that's what they wanted you to grasp).  But then it came to imaginary and I began to understand the whole thing.

Throughout my Air Force years, I came across three or four people....who were figured out to be delusional. Some got onto drugs of some type, and that helped them to think various things.  Some just fell apart at some point, maybe through some breakdown, and went to this delusional sequence.

Over the weekend, I was watching some German cop movie, and in the midst of this.....they had the script arranged so that two delusional people met and both were engaging in each others fantasy world.  Yeah, it was a great script, I have to admit.  But I sat and thought over the story as a kid....over the UFO mechanic.

In some way, I would have stood there for a good hour listening to the guy and been impressed by his description.  Luckily, my dad saw through this fairly quickly.

Debate: Being 'Morally Right' Better Than Being 'Factually Correct'

This 'concept' (amusing enough) is a discussion that Ocasio-Cortez has dragged out of some university memory that she had, and used for a basis of our path ahead in the political sphere.

So, I'll ask some questions.

1.  Can you make any argument or discussion without facts?  Someone living in a fantasy world....wanting to argue that unicorns are faster than horses, could start a discussion.  Could it go anywhere?  If 'Bigfoot' were born in America, would he be able to run for President?  If 'Casper, the friendly ghost' were fat and chubby....would it be right to bully him along to lose weight?  Could the Coyote beat the Road Runner, in a fair fight?  All of these are discussions, without facts.  Arguments or discussions without facts....simply don't work.

2   Does being morally right win in every single argument?  It depends greatly on whose morales you intend to use.  There are often a hundred degrees of morales, and each one will go down a path that some people simply aren't devoted to or willing to attach themselves. 

3.  Do the two terms (morales versus facts) connect together?  You can make a case that it helps to have facts....to arrive at a decision, but you can also make the case that morales will drive the decision process.  It's like arriving to a raft after a ship sinking and it can only hold twelve people, while you have twenty people there in the water.  Eight of those people won't be able to do much other than float on the water and hang onto the side of the raft.  Facts generate the dilemma and the resolution.  Morally, you might be willing to overburden the raft with the twenty people, and help sink the raft in a quick fashion, so that fairness has been shared, and everyone now will have a zero chance of survival.  Morally, it's a positive thing that all have the same equal chance now of dying.

4.  Do you really want some Senator, Congressman, or President....yanking on your morales chain?  Most people can remember how the prohibition era went in 1920, and how that morales effort by the government led to an absolute failure.

5.  Finally, is O-C suggesting that facts might be downplayed, and their value marginalized?  This might worry some people because our lives are built, assembled, and layered with facts.  Our jobs only exist because companies have a record of predicting success with factual sales, and factual profits.  Our medical situations are mostly resolved because a doctor works with facts and prescribes the more predictable treatment for a positive outcome.  Could we even exist as a society, with less facts?  I have my doubts.

The problem I see here is that you have some 29-year old adults....with a university degree, who is trying hard to impress upon you that those years in college achieved something.  Sadly, the more she talks....the less convinced you are about her university background.