Tue Eve Musings

After about 11 hours (4 last night and 7 today) of grading finals, I'm taking a break.  I'll just finish later this evening or, more likely, tomorrow AM.

Hey, after dinner tonight I actually read the sports section!  Yep......  I found out some things I didn't know.  The Lions lost Sunday.  I guess they were smacked around pretty well/good.  I didn't even think of them, being in Las Vegas.  Of course, last week they were on prime time Sun eve, but I opted to watch Miracle on 34th Street (the original!) instead--good choice.  BTW, I heard some guy as I was flipping through the radio on the way home from classes today.  He was either reading from someone else's op-ed piece or voicing his own view.  He bemoaned watching some NFL game, asking ESPN to "give me back those four wasted hours of my life."  Hey, why did the guy bother to watch?  Or, why didn't he just stop watching?  Back to the sports section, the Tigers signed a pitcher to some $16,000,000 a year contract--for five years, I think.  C'mon!  Give me a break.  I think he's slated, according to the article, to be the fourth or fifth starter.  (In a similar, but funny vein, I read an online article about the rich and famous.  No, I don't know why.  But this one family, with a home of 31,000 sq ft--you read that right--is adding on to the home because, as the article noted, it "needed the room."  True story......)  And some U of M football player, "basically a good person," was suspended from the team's bowl game for "violations of team rules."  This "basically a good person" was also suspended from the team in 2010 and 2011.  Yeah, right......

Some sociologist or psychiatrist on the radio this AM noted that the recent spate of mass shootings have been done by young men who expect things to be given to them and, when things aren't given to them, they resent it and react.  Boy, we might have big problems ahead!  What young men today don't expect to be handed things without earning them or working for them?  Isn't that the tenor of today's society--give me what other people have earned?  Don't make me work for anything?  (That reminds me of a very smart colleague of mine who insisted, years ago, parents' mantra had become, "Give my kid a good grade, but don't make him work for it.")  How are we going to instill the idea of working, of earning, to get things after several decades of give-aways?  I understand, although I don't capitulate, students who are upset with bad grades in my classes, even when they do little or nothing.  They've never had to work before, never had to earn their grades before.  Why should things be different now?

I heard a caller on another show, maybe Bill Bennett's?, note that 40 and 50 years ago, kids went outside to play, at the park or playground, in the yard, on the street.  Now, he said, kids go home from school and immediately turn on the video game or some other electronic device.  Kids don't learn to interact with people/other kids.  Another caller talked about "The Peter Pan Syndrome" among our young adults--they don't want to grow up.  Growing up entails facing responsibilities, failing and having to get up and go at it again, looking out for others instead just oneself.  Hmmmmmm......  That's worth some thinking, isn't it?

I'm still laughing, although it hurts, at the state legislature.  Because of the results of Proposition 2, the house and senate (and governor) felt compelled to enact a "right-to-work" law.  That's because "the voters indicated what they wanted and we're giving that to them."  Yet, the Lansing Loons voted for another emergency manager law, after the voters rejected it in the election.  I guess the legislators and governor know what the voters want better than the voters themselves.  If all this weren't so serious and potentially damaging to self-government, it'd be funny to watch the hypocritical Republicans steal pages from the hypocritical Democrats' playbook.  And, anyone who doesn't see this is either a hypocrite, too, or very dense.  Maybe, though, they are just arrogant elitists. 

I wonder about those pro-choice people.  It seems to me those who are "pro-choice" when it comes to abortion are very much "anti-choice" when it comes to gun ownership and schools.  So, I guess, a mother can choose to kill her unborn baby, but can't choose what school her born baby can attend?  Need I say anything about guns and abortion?

Mitch Rapp.  Jack Reacher.  John Puller.  Are there any better characters out there today?  Rizzoli and Isles (in the novels, not the boob tube show) and Myron Bolitar (and his sidekick Win) are close runners-up.

Out to bake blueberry/banana muffins.  Ashley says, "I love to bake!"  If time, maybe Bopper and I can go for a walk--a mile or two in the dark to see the Chris lights.

Terras Irradient.