The one about Venus and stuff

Several years ago, in 2004, I started a search for solar filters for my binoculars so that I could watch the transit of Venus.  It was not easy!  If you live in Korea, you know how nearly impossible it is to get specialized items, so you can imagine that in 2004 it was even harder.  However, I eventually found a little astronomy club in Seoul that ran a shop for that sort of thing and I got my lens filters.  They worked great!

Unfortunately, the transit of Venus took place for us in Korea late in the day, so it would be visible only during sunset.  It was also on a work day.  I told the hagwon owner where I worked what was going on, that the transit was a rare event we would probably only see once more in our lifetimes.  I also suggested that since I had the binoculars and the filters, the middle school children might be interested in the phenomenon, too.  We could talk about it and then maybe look up information about Venus.  Hagwon owners are notoriously anti-education, and lest you think that it is strange for educational institutions to be anti-education, let me remind you that hagwons are for-profit businesses and are run as such.  Not only did the hagwon owner say no, emphatically, he forbade me to go outside during work to see the transit of Venus.  Of course, I went outside anyway, and some of the students came with me to see this rare event for themselves.  I'm a teacher; I'm not a businessman specializing in education for profit.  The business of education in Korea gets in the way of education all the time here.  This was just one example that I experienced, a rather glaring example of why Koreans don't learn anything.  They are some of the most ignorant and ill-informed people on the face of earth.  They start out with curiosity just like anyone else, but the business of education, that reach for the almighty won, squashes curiosity in favor of the ruts that lead to company jobs and million-dollar apartments in Gangnam.  Don't ever tell me that Koreans are better learners than Americans.  The only thing Koreans do better is memorize formulas, equations, and facts.  Americans go outside and see the world, experience the universe, learn for the sheer joy of learning whether it makes them rich or not.

Everything is finished!  The students have all had their final one-on-one interviews with me, and all the grades have been posted, the absences entered into the university system, and my semester portfolio turned in.  The students have two weeks to contest their grades.  Two weeks?  Yes, in Korea, a tiny country where almost every house has high speed internet access they still give students two weeks to contest their grades.  Usually, if they want to contest what they got, they'll do it right away.  So far no one has ... oh wait.  One student wrote me this email:


Hello!

Last semester I'm happy to listen your lecture.

I enjoyed talking with you and many students.

However, I saw my conversation grade yesterday.

I thought that my grade is a little low.

And I heard that in absolute evalutation many students get good grade.

Is everything left to your own discretion?

Why did I got grade B+? 

Please tell me~ㅠ_ㅠ

Would you upgrade my score?

I really need your consideration!

If I get A0 , I can take classes more. It is school rugulation.

The reason is that I complete a course in teacher education.

It means that I have two major subject.

I have to take lesson more than other people.

I need to take three required subjects next semester.

If I give grades 4.0 , I can do it.

But I can't do it. I got B+, so I lack point a little.

Please consider it again~^,^

My guiding criterion in that class was how much they talked.  It's a conversation course after all, and the more they talked, the higher their grade.  This young lady didn't talk even enough for a B+, but I was generous.  Now, I can guarantee that if I don't up her grade to A, there will be repercussions that could eventually result in my contract not being renewed,  That's how they do it here.  Korea is not known for its high academic standards, and every semester we have to decide whether our academic integrity is more important than our jobs.  I have learned from several mistakes that the job is more important.  It's their country; they set the standards.  They threaten us all the time not to renew our contracts unless we do as they say, and happy students mean they will stay at our school and therefore mommy and daddy's money will stay here as well.  Follow the money.  That's where "education" is these days.

The one that needed to be said

Nobody in my family will come and get me at the Detroit airport when I fly in from Korea. So, I had to make a car rental reservation to drive to my hometown of West Branch. The closest place to my hometown where I can return the car is a small airport 50 miles away. Even at that short distance, a mere 50 miles, an hour's trip (after my 6,700 miles and 13 hours to get there from Korea), nobody wants to go that far on "the fourth of July weekend" to drive me back after returning the car. They're afraid of the horrible traffic, even though the weekend doesn't start until Friday evening and the car return is Friday morning. Here is what I wrote to my family, then deleted and didn't send. However, I needed to get this off my chest:


The entire state of Michigan has a population that is one third the population of Seoul, South Korea, a single city. You do not have traffic, trust me. If everyone in Michigan decided to go to one place all at the same time, you still wouldn't have traffic.

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my own family believing that me traveling literally halfway across the planet to see them is easy, cheap and stress-free. It isn't. There is not a one of you I wouldn't go meet at any airport, literally any, or risk life and limb to pick up even if you had only gone a few miles to get there. I could never allow anyone I love to be stranded anywhere for any length of time if I had the means to prevent it.

I know my value to my family, I have known it for years, but I persist in visiting you all anyway because you are dear to my heart even though I am of little account to you. When you're gone, any of you, I will be beside myself with grief. On the other hand, if I were to die tomorrow I can guarantee that not a single one of you would bother to come and collect the things that were special to my life or see where I lived or show any interest in my accomplishments. So enjoy this visit; it is the last I will make. There are places I would like to see, but I haven't, because I thought visiting you was more important. No more. I will see the places I want from now on, and if you want to see me, you'll do the traveling, you'll spend the money, you'll take on the stress.

Love,

Mike

The one about nothing

“For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves.”

Letter to the Galatians 6.3

To accept that we are nothing is one of the hardest things to do. The more we understand about the universe and how it works, the more we realize that we aren't all that special as a life form. The rise of life on this planet has been remarkable. It's survival has been phenomenal. Life began from a single source, a simple cell that somehow multiplied and expanded into all the marvelous variation we witness today. However, for generations, for millennia actually, Mankind has believed that he is not just distinct from all other life, he is specially made. He has a soul that, unlike any other life forms, will survive beyond the death of the physical body.

Something about us wants to live on after the death of the body. We don't want to think about an eternity of nothingness, non-existence, and oblivion. Oblivion, a state of non-existence, a real oxymoron since “state” implies existence! See how hard it is to talk about this? Our very language constrains us because we have rarely confronted the true nature of human life. Like all other life that developed from the same humble beginnings as we did, at the end of our lives, we cease to exist. We do not have souls that go to heaven or hell to be rewarded for our good and punished for our bad. We do not become ghosts to wander the earth waiting for the resurrection of the dead on judgement day. To believe that Mankind is a special life would require a dividing line between our current form and our ancestral species. At what point did our evolving species gain these souls? There would have to be a generation of humans/protohumans where the children were granted souls and the parents were not. That's a very unpleasant thought. The first evolved humans with souls would not be able to live in eternity with their parents or grandparents. It is that logical reality that demonstrates the idiotic mentality of those who believe Man is a special creation. We are obviously evolved. It's a proven fact. But who is willing to draw the line in our evolution where this generation has souls and the previous one does not? The only logical conclusions are all life has a collective soul, each life form has a soul, or no life form has a soul. There is no evidence of the first two, so only the third option remains.

We are nothing more than a variation within the world of living creatures. We are not special except among ourselves. When the sun expands and engulfs this planet down the road a couple billion years from now, everything we were, had, built, or spoken will be disintegrated. Not even the dust particles of our long dead bodies will remain intact. Perhaps the descendants of our species will survive and learn to live among the stars. Perhaps another species will evolve and do so in our stead. A billion years is a long, long time.

Not wanting to die and disappear from existence is one thing. It's an understandable longing. Creating a fantasy where that really doesn't happen despite all evidence and observation is quite another. Facing reality is better. It's honest, and honesty is really the best policy, as the old saying goes. Knowing that this life is your only life compels you to live better. It urges you to live it to the best of your ability. It makes you stop to enjoy it more often. It chastises you for taking life for granted in yourself and others. It tells us that even if we are nothing in the long run, we are something in the here and now.

The one on the waterside

This weekend I had hoped to enjoy a motorbike trip up the eastern coast of Korea, and yesterday, I did do that, but I ended up coming home at the end of the day instead of staying at a min-bak (B&B/inn) or camping. I didn't like being alone. It kind of brought me down a little to be seeing all this beauty and experiencing the trip without having anyone to share it and talk about it. It was a gorgeous day, though, and I saw some interesting things, like this old lighthouse.




Some folks gathering and sorting seaweed to prepare it for drying.

People fishing off these old rocks at the base of the lighthouse cliff.

A lone fisherman.










A crew headed out to sea...













... from their peaceful little town.





Even though I felt as lonely as that man on the rock seems, the ride and the scenery made up for it. The Korean coast is a good excursion on a motorbike. It has several beaches, parks, seaside villages, inns, and little ma & pa diners, but also long stretches of open road to enjoy the view of the sea and the hills and the peaceful waterside life here. On the one side is the smell of the sea, a smell that reminds me of some of the happiest days of my life. It's the smell of untold ages of life on earth, the smell of danger, bravery, and power. On the other side is the smell of farms and barns and chicken coops, the scents of my earliest memories. I breathed deeply, and the simultaneous aroma of the sea and the farm aroused primal longing that ran through my soul so freely I couldn't stop it. I reveled in it. I stood naked and still within it even as the wind embraced man and machine.

I've never been comfortable with being alone, though it seems to be my destiny. However, even alone, the Korean coast is an adventure. Take it, if the opportunity arises. It is not the usual Korea.

The one about a parasite

America is torn sharply between the Republican view and the Democratic view. Both sides believe that the other is destructive. However, let's look at what is actually destructive about them.

Democratic governance, if we ever see it again, tries to limit the impact of excessive greed on the average citizen. It demands a lighter burden on the poor and lower middle class, a higher burden for the upper classes because they can shoulder the burden without diminishing their standard of living in the least. It demands that large corporations who benefit from the protection of the United States pay for that protection by paying taxes on their activities. Democratic governance tries to make sure that primary and secondary education are available to all in order to ensure the competitive edge America has traditionally enjoyed in the world. It refuses to consider the weak, handicapped, and elderly as useless appendages not worth the time and expense. It does not turn its back on children who happen to be born in poor families as unworthy of medical care simply because their parents are too poor to pay for it. Democratic governance uses the public money to invest in the growth, prosperity, and success of the nation collectively.

Republican governance tries to ensure a shield of separation for the wealthy that excuses them from paying taxes according to their ability. It makes sure that corporations pay little if nothing in taxes to the country that makes their activities possible. Republican governance tries to dismantle public education by undercutting the rights of teachers, introducing sectarian religion into the curriculum, planning to take apart the Department of Education, cutting education budgets, and propagating the lie that educated people are unproductive elitists. Republican governance sees no relationship between the prosperity and success of the United States and the skill of its population. It cuts money to train the handicapped. It takes away funding for the elderly and children. It fights to stop children from poor families receiving medical care. Republican governance uses the public money to prop up a tiny select class of wealthy patrons whose growth, prosperity, and success garner the nation nothing but more poverty, fewer job opportunities, and wider gaps between the social classes. The inevitable outcome of this short-sighted avarice is class warfare.

To look at the two sides honestly, it is obvious that one of them is destructive of society while one is not. One is a parasitical pest that uses the American public to gain obscene profits on the backs of the lower classes without any sense of obligation to help the nation that supports them. One needs to be swatted like mosquitoes, and I, for one, am willing to gladly join in the swatting.

The one about stupid people

I shouldn't, for my blood pressure's sake, but I do anyway.  I read and listen to stories about how the christ cultists around America are doing everything in their power to corrupt the educational system of our country.  Lately it's a bill in the Tennessee legislature that is about as blatant an attempt to make religious mythology a valid alternative to the life sciences as anything we've seen in the last 80 years.

I listened to a scientist from Vanderbilt University give a statement before the Tennessee lawmakers, a good statement, a solid statement, making the clearly reasonable point that the bill is religious in nature because there is no scientific controversy about evolution.  It is purely a religious controversy, hence any discussion of evolution as controversial is religious in nature and thereby beyond the purview of the government.  The logic is unassailable, and yet the religious lawmakers stumbled over themselves to declare the scientist's words mere "opinion" on a par with anyone else's opinion.  Let's call that what it is, stupid and arrogant.

It's frustrating to listen to stupid people.  It really is.  People who believe that religious dogma and doctrine are true are stupid people.  Can you think of a different word for those who take unfounded assertions and believe them as fact?  They don't "hope" there's a god.  They assert it as true in the face of no evidence.  They don't "wonder" if there was a universal flood 5 thousand years ago; they proclaim it as fact when there is no proof.  Stupid is the only fitting term for this behavior.  It is like knowing through observation and logic that the square of 9 is 81 and yet having to deal with somebody in authority who says it is not 81, it is something else,  and that this opinion must be allowed in math class.  That is not doing the young people of the state or the country a service.  It is not doing anyone a service except the business of church.

Evolution is a fact.  Natural selection is the only theory that anyone has put forward that has survived the countless tests and charges against it.  Religious mythology may, I mean a big MAY, have meaning to some people on an artistic level, but it is not fact.  Genesis is not true.  It paints pictures that may inspire something in the minds of its readers, but it is not history. It is not science.  It is not truth in any reasonable meaning of the word.

As the American public grows stupider and stupider (by choice), and as they continue to elect their stupid comrades to high office, it will not end well.  America will lose its scientific edge.  It will lose its leadership base to nations that do not put stupid people in charge.  America will lose. Period.