Bits & Pieces

Kicked to the curb:

Dropped TV show Into the Badlands around 15 minutes into the second episode. Was predisposed to like it but I'm tired of choreographed violence highlighted by graphic slaughter. Real life has given me an aversion to graphic violence. At one time in my life I loved kung fu movies. They were beautiful, lethal ballets. Actually used to travel three hours to a big city to spend all day in Chinatown watching kung fu movies in Chinese with subtitles. (If we were really lucky, the film would be voice-over video. Time gained from not having to read what everybody was saying could then be spent watching out-of-sync characters babble hysterically before, during and after killing one another. Sometimes the disparity between the character on the screen and the voice in your ear was so funny as to provide comedy grafted within drama.) The TV series Kung Fu (1972–1975) was a favorite, too. Badlands' fight scenes were wonderfully fluid but, unfortunately, the fluid was human blood. By the bucket. Given that fight scenes have lost their allure, the show's coffin was nailed shut by comic book-inspired villains (90% the of show's characters), overwrought multitrack plots, and wooden dialogue between carnival acts. True to the spirit of kung fu, I'm walking away from this fight.

Philosophical welders:

A while back (a week?), I brought up a remark made by GOP candidate Marco Rubio about welders versus philosophers. Today I came across an article by Michelle Sowey titled: Teaching philosophy to children? It's a great idea. I found lots of excellent information about children, education, philosophy. Here's one tiny paragraph:

"By setting children on a path of philosophical enquiry early in life, we could offer them irreplaceable gifts: an awareness of life’s moral, aesthetic and political dimensions; the capacity to articulate thoughts clearly and evaluate them honestly; and the confidence to exercise independent judgment and self-correction. What’s more, an early introduction to philosophical dialogue would foster a greater respect for diversity and a deeper empathy for the experiences of others, as well as a crucial understanding of how to use reason to resolve disagreements."

(Damn! That's some powerful writing. A little atom bomb of verbal impact. College professors would wet themselves to be able to "unpack" the information in just that single graph; a paragraph built by two eloquent sentences! ) Think about the graph's huge ideas and lofty goals, then look around. Early education pleasing you? Any level of education satisfying you? Are we educating our young effectively? Maybe less Common Core and more Central Core? I think every school could use a philosopher in its ranks. Good for the students, good for the staff, good for the parents. (Except those who do not want children of independent judgment or self-correction.)

(To my educator friends I say you will love the result of having philosophy classes even at the elementary school level. Classes of young philosophers will be funny as all get-out. Guaranteed. You will like children—other people's—again.)

All for it:

I'm all for anything that makes fun of the rabid Westboro Baptist Church. This was put onto Reddit by perc10 --

(I should link you to this item over onto Reddit itself, but don't know how to do that yet. You should check out Reddit.com)