Addendum II...

I'VE sometimes said that Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we've had since Dwight Eisenhower. Looks as if Barack Obama is trying to outdo Clinton and/or Bush II in that regard — and not only in going after leakers.

MEANWHILE, The Economist understands that "No" is neither an idea nor a solution.

Addendum ...

"...with this spill, we are helpless — by deliberate design" — but will there be consequences for the real culprits?

Friday, June 11, 2010

"spring rain" (12" x 12" oil and cold wax medium, 2010)

Thursday, June 10, 2009

THE Times' in-house conservative, David Brooks, recently wrote a column on the value of the humanities. As a former editor, I found this comment about the column especially poignant:

Carole A. Dunn
Ocean Springs, Miss.
June 8th, 2010
12:26 pm

People who study the humanities, as opposed to science and math, have never been given the kind of respect they deserve. I was hired during the 1980s by one of the big banks to rewrite their computer training manuals because the science and technical people who wrote them didn't have enough command of our language to make them understandable. The people at their tech center thought I was a gift from God, but they still paid me a lot less than the baboons that wrote these confusing books to begin with. Not only was their grammar so bad that I had to spend a lot of time scratching my head trying to figure out what they meant, I noticed the lack of logical thought patterns. I had the mistaken idea that being logical was an important part of science and technology.

Later on I worked as a proposals coordinator for one of the big engineering and construction firms. I hate to say it, but the work I was handed by foreign engineers, primarily from India and Sri Lanka, was generally grammatically perfect and I didn't have to spend much time correcting things. Most of the American engineers, on the other hand, were a bunch of functional illiterates, and I had to waste a lot of time trying to figure out what they meant.

Here in Mississippi, the state universities don't even require a foreign language for acceptance. When I went to school, my high school required a minimum of two years of Latin for college prep people before we could take any other language. Studying Latin helped me more with the English language than any other course, but I don't know if any high schools teach Latin anymore, let alone require it.

Let's face it. We are a country on its way down. Ignorance, greed and mendacity rule the day. Even with our emphasis on science, over half the country doesn't even believe in the theory of evolution. And look at the fundamentalists, who believe that every word in the bible is the direct word of God, and take it all literally. They are incapable of understanding what they are reading, and have become a dangerous influence on the country. More and more, the ignorant of the land think they, and they alone, are the "real Americans." Those who can think logically and rationally are called elites, atheists and communists. We're doomed; maybe we should all look forward to "the rapture."

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

"Oscar" (16" x 20" acrylic 2010)

AS my late father would say, "There's always some people with just enough sense to pound sand in a rathole."

Sunday, June 6, 2010

"late summer" (12" x 12" encaustic 2010)

HOPE I can live long enough to see the Millenials in charge. They seem to be the only portion of the population with some common sense (be sure to read the comments).

FOR an adult understanding of what the Constitution means, read retired Justice David Souter's commencement address at Harvard University.