Lift Up Your Hearts!

Here we go again. The series in response to the Fowler essay starts here.

American Christians are not under attack. We are not being persecuted. We wield so much power in this country that politicians pretend to be Christian just so we will vote for them. No one is trying to take your bible away from you. The gay people are not destroying our families — we don’t need any help from them, thank you. We do a fine job of that by ourselves. So stop saying we are persecuted. You sound stupid.

Well, this covers a lot. Where to begin?

Persecution?  On the one hand, of course we are not experiencing persecution. It is not illegal to be a Christian in America. Unlike people in many other countries, we do not risk our lives by walking into a church. If we want to become Christians, or atheists, or Muslims, or Buddhists, or whatever, our families may disapprove, but they're not likely to kill us. We can be Christians and still get jobs, write books, speak in public, educate our children according to our beliefs, and many other freedoms others are dying for.

On the other hand, I think Christians are right to be vigilant, and concerned. Persecution rarely starts out large and obvious. There's sufficient evidence that in the extraordinarily influential spheres of both academia and the media, there is plenty of intense, deep-seated prejudice against Christians. (Against conservatives, too, but that's a different issue—and the failure of so many to recognize the difference is a big part of the problem.)  If it's not illegal to be a Christian in the United States, there are more and more social and yes, legal restrictions on how we act as Christians, and belief without action can hardly be called faith.

Where does he get the idea that we think people are trying to take the Bible away from us?  He's right; that does sound stupid. But I don't know anyone who believes that. What's more, unlike Islam, in which the Qur'an, the book itself, is considered holy, it's only the contents of the Bible that matter. While it's certainly possible for Bibles to be banned in the U.S.—and it could happen faster than we'd like to believe—I'm far more concerned about the many of us who have Bibles but don't read them, or read them and don't care to apply what we learn. In any case, Fowler is knocking down a straw man again.

"Gay people" destroying families?  Yet once again he's taking a very complex issue and making it something it isn't. A hollow straw man. 

Our local Publix grocery store often gives out samples of products and recipes. The other day I was offered what was called non-dairy chocolate pudding. I'll grant that it was non-dairy, but chocolate pudding it was not. Made of bananas, avocado, cocoa powder, and who knows what else, it did meet the Merriam-Webster simple definition of pudding: a thick, sweet, soft, and creamy food that is usually eaten cold at the end of a meal. And it wasn't unpalatable, if you like bananas. But it certainly was not that lovely concoction of milk, sugar, cocoa, and cornstarch that said "chocolate pudding" to generations. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

Family—that lovely concoction of husband, wife, many children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, in all its inclusive, complex, and messy glory—is indeed under siege. It's not the fault of "gay people." The redefinition of the ideal and purpose of marriage and family began decades before homosexual marriage was ever considered an option instead of an oxymoron. From the misuse of birth control to helicopter parenting, from the worship of sex to the devaluation of single people, from rampant abuse to rampant divorce, from hyper-patriarchy to the exclusion from our families of those who differ from the norm, and above all because of selfishness and the coldness of our hearts, Fowler is indeed right that we are our own worst enemies. But knowing it's wrong to single out one crack in the dam among many doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned that the edifice may collapse and flood the valley.

I may have to eat your banana-avocado-cocoa dessert. I might even enjoy it. But don't tell me I have to pretend it's chocolate pudding.  And don't try to make me stop promoting the real thing.

Christians in America are not being thrown into the arena with wild beasts, nor used as human torches, beheaded, tortured, stoned, torn to pieces, kidnapped, raped, sold into slavery—at least not solely for their faith. But would you have us wait until it gets to that stage before being concerned?  If you really have no idea how quickly a society can go from mere prejudice to the gas chambers—ask a Jew.

There aren't many movies I'm so excited to see that I'll venture into a movie theater, but Hidden Figures is one of them. A movie about mathematicians and the early space program? I can't wait. The embedded YouTube trailer will probably not come out. Something has gone wrong and none of my embedded videos currently work in Chrome, Firefox, or IE—at least not for me. On the other hand, they do work on my phone, so I don't know what's going on. But this link will take you there in any case.

Mark and Livy:  The Love Story of Mark Twain and the Woman Who Almost Tamed Him by Resa Willis (Atheneum, 1992)

Mark and Livy was a gift from a friend, who thought I might be interested because Samuel Clemens' wife was a Langdon. As it turns out, we are not related through the Langdon line—unless our common ancestor was back in England and in the 17th century or earlier. The book sat on my shelves until my 95 by 65 project (goal #63) encouraged me to pick it up.

I was going to say that Mark and Livy does not meet my primary criterion for being a "good book":  that it inspire me in some way to become a better person. On reflection, however, I realized it has left me with a determination (which needs to be won repeatedly) to be less judgemental of others, especially those of other times and cultures. There are so many advantages we take for granted here and now—and how easy it is to believe that our good characteristics are the outflow of our good character, and not simply because we are not in pain!

Samuel and Olivia Clemens lived in the latter half of the 19th century. They died years before antibiotics were available. They didn't even have aspirin. Common vaccines had yet to be developed. Diphtheria took the life of the Clemenses' firstborn when he was not yet two—as it did so many children of the time. Headaches could last for weeks, and infections linger for months. In an age of great medical ignorance, treatments were often worse than the diseases. It is now known that even three weeks of remaining in bed does terrible damage even to healthy bodies, but at that time bed rest was the go-to cure for everything. As a teenager, Olivia was kept in bed for two years. Even mental exertion was considered harmful and to be avoided as much as possible.

No wonder so many middle- and upper-class women of that time suffered from a malaise sometimes called nervous prostration. With careers and mental stimulation mostly closed to them; with cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, wet nurses, nannies, and tutors doing all the meaningful work around the house; and with every illness sending them into darkened bedrooms, deprived of most human contact (visitors, even beloved husbands, put too much strain on the system)—they were bored out of their minds. And out of their health much of the time as well.

Some things never change: Doctors blamed the problem on the demands of modern life:  "...the fast ways of the American people, with their hurried lives, late hours, and varied excesses, wear upon the nervous system of all, especially that of sensitive, impressible women."

Should I be condescending over Mark and Livy's susceptibility to every quack and crackpot philosophy that came down the pike?  Needs must when the devil drives.

For more about health and medical care in the 19th century, don't miss The Luxury of Feeling Good from The Occasional CEO, coincidentally published this morning.

Langdon Clemens, the couple's firstborn son who died young, was considered sickly all his life. He was born a month premature and never seemed to be healthy. It was diphtheria that killed him in the end—it killed many who were otherwise healthy—but the book gives no clue as to what caused him to be "sickly."  What struck me, however, was that he was considered "slow" in his development. Perhaps he was, but I'm not convinced by the concerns that he wasn't walking by nine months, nor talking when he was "almost a year old"!  What did they expect in those days?  And of a preemie who started life a month behind?

Here's a fun fact:

Livy and Clemens felt the need to get away [from Hartford's summer heat]. In July they left for New Saybrook, Connecticut ... where all could enjoy the cool winds off Long Island Sound.

New Saybrook?  Old Saybrook I know well enough!  But New Saybrook?  Where on earth is that?  Here's a hint:

...they lodged at a hotel called Fenwick Hall....

New Saybrook, it turns out, is an old name for Fenwick!  Here's a bit of its history in a New York Times article from 1995, though it doesn't mention a thing about the best-of-all-Fenwick-houses. Still, it's rather amazing to think that Mark Twain could have walked past where the Maggie P. now stands.

Despite being wealthy enough to vacation at Fenwick, the Clemenses had endless money problems and often lived in Europe because that was less expensive for them. That tells less about Europe than about the difficulties of living up to the expectations of their Hartford social set, I'm afraid. Still, it was fun to read:

Clemens ... walked to the top of the Rigi in the Alps.

We've been there!  We did not walk, however. I wonder from which point he started his hike?

Despite the strictures of the day and her onerous social obligations, Livy found some outlet for her considerable intelligence. The best part of her day was when she felt free to teach their children:

After breakfast and after she had given the servants their orders for the day, Livy and her daughters worked diligently in their schoolroom on the second floor. Their studies included German, geography, American history, arithmetic, penmanship, and English, with some extra diversions of tossing beanbags, gymnastics, and sewing. [The girls were five and seven at the time.] If they finished their lessons before twelve-thirty, Livy read to them. [Clara] at five and eager to please, knew all the answers but often got her questions confused. When her mother asked, "What is geography?" she replied, "A round ball." When asked what was the shape of the earth, she replied, "Green."  

Moreover, Livy was Mark Twain's most important editor, smoothing off the rough edges of the wild writer from the West and making his books acceptable and marketable.

This she far preferred to her social responsibilities as the wife of a famous author and the scion of a wealthy family. (Yes, the Langdons were wealthy—further proof that we're not closely related.)

She increasingly questioned her role as hostess and felt bad because she did.

This is my work, and I know that I do very wrong when I feel chafed by it, but how can I be right about it? Sometimes it seems as if the simple sight of people would drive me mad. I am all wrong; if I would simply accept the fact that this is my work and let other things go, I know I should not be so fretted; but I want so much to do other things to study and do things with the children and I cannot.

In the plus ça change department, do you think we suffer from helicopter parenting today?  The Clemenses kept their daughters close in what today would probably be considered an unhealthy relationship of mutual dependence. Further,

[Clemens] insisted his daughters be chaperoned everywhere they went, and Clara was until she married at the age of thirty-five [emphasis mine].

That makes being on your parents' health insurance until 26 seem almost reasonable.

And still more:  I'll admit I'm weak in history. I knew about the Great Depression, but if I thought of it at all, saw it as an anomaly, a one-time, terrible event. Thus the economic problems we have been having lately have been particularly concerning. I had no idea, until reading Mark and Livy, how common market crashes, panics, and recessions have been throughout history.

Just as John Marshall Clemens never recovered from the Panic of 1837, this panic [of 1893] nearly destroyed his son. It began who knows where but was aided by a drain on the gold reserve by foreign investors who sold their securities and withdrew them in gold from the U.S. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act, allowing gold to be used to purchase silver, further depleted the federal gold reserve by nearly one hundred million. Gold meant confidence. Without either, the dominoes began to fall. The stock market crash eventually took with it 160 railroads, five hundred banks and sixteen thousand businesses. It was estimated by 1894 that 20 to 25 percent of the work force was unemployed. Those with jobs went on strike to get decent wages as there seemed to be no money anywhere. Miners across the nation refused to work. Eventually the Langdon coal mines and Livy's income shut down.

Rich or poor, black or white, first- or third-world, centuries ago or yesterday morning:  our tragedies and our trials, our worries, our hopes, and our joys are more universal than not.

We are humanity.

My father was left-handed, and so was my mother-in-law.  Hence we were not surprised when Heather turned out to be left-handed, too.  I believe there are left-handers on Jon's side of the family as well, so it is a little surprising that only one of their kids (possibly two, it's too early to tell) joined the lefty club.  Probably they all are somewhat mixed dominant, anyway, as most of our family is.  I, for example, am strongly right-handed—scoring 24% on this left-handedness quiz—but nonetheless am left-eyed, left-eared, and have some other left-handed traits (the arm position questions on the quiz).

Be that all as it may:  To Heather, and Jeremiah, and any reader I'm leaving out (feel free to chime in with a comment), I wish you a

Happy Left Handers Day!

(And a Happy Birthday to my friend for whom this day was special long before there was an official Left Handers Day.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts (Noonday Press, 1991; original published 1962)

This is must reading for the generation that never knew the Cold War.  It's short and quick reading, 182 pages of fairly large print.  Not easy reading, because of the subject (Soviet prison camp life), but although it's a little coarse in places, I'd still highly recommend it for our not-quite-13 grandchild.  Solzhenitsyn is a Nobel prize winner with good reason, though America liked him a lot better when he was criticizing the Soviet Union than when he subsequently criticized the United States.

One year ago I was part of a spectacle that entertained a small segment of the population of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and gave their emergency responders a chance to exercise their vehicles. I guess life in a small town like Old Saybrook must be a little on the slow side, even in the high season of summer, if capsizing a small boat and swimming to shore causes so much kerfuffle.

This year, Noah, now 10 years old, invited me for another sail in his Sunfish. It was at that point that I realized I had left my bathing suit at home, but that did not deter me:  the wind was fresh but not difficult, and what were the odds we'd capsize again?

Pretty good, apparently. After several minutes of uneventful, enjoyable sailing, it happened. One moment we were coming about, or jibing, I don't remember which; the next we were in the water. I'm a little hazy on just why—I think I heard later that a sheet wouldn't release from a cleat, or something....

Whatever the cause, this flip was a piece of cake compared with last year's. We were closer to shore and therefore not in danger of being driven onto the causeway, our greatest problem last year. Noah had a year's growth on him, and this time needed no help quickly righting the boat.

The tricky part came when I tried to climb back on board. Despite having written, in last year's story, about the wisdom of climbing in over the stern instead of the side, I completely forgot that advice. I did remember my own determination that if I capsized again I'd take off my life jacket, because that's what makes it so difficult to climb back aboard, though I didn't do it. I would have, but decided to make an effort first, and after a couple of tries, developed a successful strategy. Since the life jacket would not slide along the deck, I would give a strong kick with my legs, which lifted me briefly and made it possible to make forward progress by pulling with my arms. After a few heaves I was back in place, and we were sailing once again.

Why was I able to get back on the boat this year when I didn't succeed a year ago?  A number of factors, I suppose. My new strategy, the fact that the water was less rough and we weren't worried about crashing into the rocks, and certainly the arm-strengthening swimming and brachiation exercises I've been doing. Oh, and one more thing: my absolute determination to get on our way again before some well-intentioned but interfering onlooker called 911....

Noah is a remarkable person. Barely 10 years old, he handled himself like a pro. He didn't panic; he never even got upset. He just fixed the problem. Best of all, unlike most of the rest of the world, he never thought about who was to blame. He didn't yell, he didn't accuse, he didn't apologize. Capsizing was just something that happened and could be fixed, so he quietly did what needed to be done. That's character.

So next year I'll be happy to capsize with him again. I hope this time I remember to bring my bathing suit.

I started playing with Duolingo back when it was in private beta, though I didn't make it a regular habit for another year or so. I've been pretty regular since early 2014, however, and I think it's great. I've been doing French and German the longest. I'm at Level 24 in each of them, and have finished all the lessons available in French. I had been on track to finish German not much later, but suddenly the German lessons were revised to add a whole lot more material. I'm not complaining, and hope they will do so for the French at some point. For now, I'm still making my way through new German lessons while constantly reviewing the French. I chose French because that's the language I spent 3.5 years learning in school, and German because of our Swiss family. Sadly, Duolingo has no Swiss German lessons, so High German will have to do. High German is more generally useful, anyway, but I do find myself resenting having to type the eszett, which isn't used in the Swiss version of High German but is required by Duolingo.

At some point in 2015 I added Spanish (now Level 13), out of a feeling of obligation. I live in Florida, and that makes Spanish the most practical foreign language to learn. No doubt because I am learning it for duty rather than love, it is my least favorite of the languages. I'm hoping I'll like it more as I get better at it. It took me quite a while to start liking German....

This spring, when we travelled to Venice, I added Italian (now Level 9), just for fun. I'm enjoying it, especially when I note the similarities and differences with Spanish and French. I'm hoping we'll eventually manage a trip with friends to Cortona, where it will be polite to have at least a little Italian.

Am I learning anything? I'm certainly not becoming fluent. (I have yet to figure out how Duolingo does its calculations. It claims I'm 49% fluent in Spanish, a bald-faced lie if there ever was one.)  And even though I practice speaking along with reading and writing, I know I couldn't carry out a decent conversation in any of the languages. Or even a halting, broken conversation.

However, that does not trouble me. What I am doing is increasing my familiarity with the languages, educating my ear and my speech, picking up some grammar and vocabulary, and preparing pathways in my brain for a time when I might have the opportunity to learn in a more interactive situation. I hope that by laying a foundation now, I will make faster progress at that hypothetical time. In any case, it's fun to understand a few things I did not before: When I saw a restaurant named Cena, I recognized the Italian word for "dinner."

It has also been interesting to note changes in my learning as I progress. At the beginning, I made sure to separate my language learning sessions. If I studied French in the morning, I'd tackle German in the evening. Otherwise, I'd get confused. Then suddenly, I didn't. And I really mean suddenly. All at once I could switch between languages with no interval in between. I don't mean that the German word won't sometimes come to me first when I'm working in French, or vice versa, but it doesn't happen often, and it no longer bothers me. The hardest, now, is between Italian and Spanish, because both are new to me and so many words are very similar but not identical.

I do Duolingo both on my laptop and using the app on my phone. The interfaces are different, and each is valuable in its own way. Right now I'm in a routine of using the phone most of the time, because I do my Duolingo lessons as part of my daily exercise (more on that later). For each language I generally do the suggested review ("strengthen") and then one additional lesson (except in French, where I've reached the end). The process is slower on the phone, but since I'm exercising at the same time, that's not a problem. Obviously I can't keep the same learning schedule when we're travelling, but as long as there's an Internet connection available, I can do enough that catching up is not difficult.

It's even more fun to share Duolingo with family members and friends!

Now I'm realizing how long LaMonte Fowler's essay really is. But I plod ahead with my even longer series in response.

Racism exists. And you are probably a little racist and should work on that. Seriously.

Yep. Guilty as charged. Human beings—and most animals—have always assessed a situation by matching up observable facts with previous experience as quickly as possible. That's how we survive. If you're a rabbit and see a shadow that could be an eagle flit by, you don't stop to think that it might be a seagull, or an eagle with something other than dinner on his mind; you dive into the nearest briar patch. If all your experiences with law enforcement have been negative, you duck around the corner at the sight of a policeman, no matter how innocent you are. If you are ever mugged by an old lady wearing a hoodie and quoting Shakespeare, you'll never look at old ladies, hoodies, or Shakespeare the same way again. You won't look at anything the same way again that you don't immediately recognize as familiar and safe. This gut reaction is not wrong; it's a hard-wired survival skill.

It's also far from limited to racism. In myself I recognize "culturism":  my instinctive prejudice kicks in much faster in the presence of tattoos, body piercings, falling-down trousers, foul language, or blasting music than it does for a mere difference in skin shade. But I'll continue to use "racist" as a catch-all term, since that's the one Fowler used.

Because this kind of prejudice is instinctive, not rational, it's useless to try to counter it through rational means. What we can do, through argument, laws, and social pressure, is counter what happens after we've had a chance to analyze a situation and rethink our instinctive response. We can't control our reactions, but we can and must control our actions. It's no sign of guilt to instinctively duck into the alley at the sight of a police car, but when we are stopped by the police, it is our responsibility to speak and act with respect and reasonableness. We may legitimately feel the grip of fear at the sight of a hoodie-wearing old lady with Macbeth under her arm, but that's no excuse for gunning her down—or even for calling the police.

In working on this kind of racism, it's not helpful to call someone a racist. What good does that serve?  It would be much better to point out racist actions. One of the first things new parents learn is to separate a child's actions from the child himself. You might say, "It's wrong to hit your sister," or "I can't allow you to hit your sister," or "It hurts your sister when you hit her," or any number of alternatives, but you do more harm than good by saying, "You hit your sister!  You're a bad boy!"  What is your goal? To built yourself up by making other people feel bad, or to make real progress in human relations?

There is a way to work on the internal racism as well, though it has nothing to do with laws or reasoning or shaming. What alters our instinctive survival reactions?  Experience. The more we have positive interactions with people of different races and of different cultures, the less their appearance on our internal radar screen will provoke negative responses. As I've said so many times before, the best antidote to the irrational hatred that is sweeping our country is to seek out the commonalities that show our enemies to be human beings much like ourselves.

Sadly, the process of really getting to know others is often difficult, and always slow. However, it turns out that our brains are remarkably indiscriminate as to what constitutes experience. Studies have shown, for example, that violence in television and movies (and no doubt in video games as well, at least the more realistic ones) provokes neural responses similar to actual, physical violence. The influence of the shows we watch, the games we play, the music we listen to—and also, I would say, the books we read, though many these days give books a free pass—is astonishing.

That influence can do terrible harm. Do we really think we can listen, day in and day out, to lyrics that extol the virtues of raping women and shooting cops, and not see a negative impact on real women, real police?

But it can also do significant good. The power of positive images is enormous. If our favorite TV shows feature likeable, intelligent, kind, positive characters that we can for other reasons identify with, be they black women, Norwegian children, homosexual bankers, Jewish homeschoolers, or Shakespeare-toting old ladies, our deep-seated impressions of the classes of people they represent will be changed—because our experiences, however virtual, have been changed.

This is "Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws," squared.

Thanks, DianaDR, for sharing this.  I've never had anything to do with Pokémon in any form, but with several nephews playing the game, even I can't miss the Pokémon GO phenomenon.  I enjoyed this video for both the fun of it and the views of one of my favorite cities.  I hope you do, too.

Will Rogers:  Wise and Witty Sayings of a Great American Humorist (Hallmark, 1969)

Perusing my bookshelves with an eye on my 95 by 65 goal #63 (Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves), I came upon this little book of quotations from Will Rogers. He lived from 1879 to 1935 and much of his wit is just as appropriate today. 

Rogers was the eighth child in his family. Developing a sense of humor was probably self-defense.

Enjoy!

We will never get anywhere with our finances till we pass a law saying that every time we appropriate something we got to pass another bill along with it stating where the money is coming from.

No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting as pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is go and buy it on credit. So that leaves us without any economic problems whatsoever, except perhaps some day to have to pay for them.

Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.

Why don't they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything?  And if it works as good as the Prohibition one did, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

Personally I think the saloon men put this prohibition through, as they have sold more in the last year than in any ten previous years before.

A good man can't do nothing in office because the System is against him, and a bad one can't do anything for the same reason. So bad as we are, we are better off than any other nation, so what's the use to worry?

If we didn't have two parties, we would all settle on the best men in the country and things would run fine. But as it is, we settle on the worst ones and then fight over 'em.

The Republican Convention [1928] opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see his way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking for it.

There has been many who has had to say, "Mister, can you spare a dime," but President Roosevelt is the first man in the history of the world who looked a nation in the face and said, "Mister, can you spare ten billion dollars?" Well, Congress and the American people considered it such a compliment to be asked for that much that they really liked it.

One way to solve the traffic problem would be to keep all the cars that are not paid for off the streets. Children could use the streets for playgrounds then.

We have killed more people celebrating our Independence Day that we lost fighting for it.

If all the time consumed in attending dinners and luncheons was consumed in some work, the production of this country would be doubled.

It's funny how quick a college boy can find out that the world is wrong. He might go out in the world from high school and live in it, and make a living in it for years and think it wasn't such a bad place, but let him go to college and he will be the first one down on the square on May Day to shout down with the government. But as soon as they grow up and go out and if they happen to make anything, why, they backslide.

The banker, the lawyer, and the politician are still our best bets for a laugh. Audiences haven't changed at all, and neither has the three above professions.

If we can just let other people alone and do their own fighting, we would be in good shape. When you get in trouble five thousand miles away from home you've got to have been looking for it.

Nobody wants his cause near as bad as he wants to talk about his cause.

Heroes are made every little while, but only one in a million conduct themselves afterwards so that it makes us proud that we honored them at the time.

A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it, but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics has ever read.

No nation has a monopoly on good things. Each one has something that the others could well afford to adopt.

You know I have often said in answer to inquiries as to how I got away with kidding some of our public men, that it was because I liked all of them personally, and that if there was no malice in your heart there could be none in your "gags," and I have always said I never met a man I didn't like.

Ten years ago I discovered xylitol and the positive effects it had on the health of my gums. Four years later I reported on my unintentional experiment in which I discovered that regular use of xylitol in my dental care routine kept my teeth in better shape than they had ever been.

I'm still a huge proponent of xylitol, but today I must report an important caveat:  be careful to check the ingredients of any xylitol product you use.

For years I had swished pure xylitol around in my mouth before going to sleep at night—and sometimes during the day as well. That led to a huge dental health victory for me. But I was concerned that most xylitol comes from China, and I try to avoid food products from there if possible, because of their many known abuses. So I was excited to discover a North American-based source of xylitol, and even more so because they also sold xylitol mints and candies that were both more convenient and more interesting than plain xylitol.

Then the reports from my dentist started going downhill, and I was having to have crowns replaced that should have lasted for years, because of decay at the gumline. My dentist was dumbfounded, and so was I. Then I looked at the ingredients list on my xylitol candy packages. Many seemed fine—if flavorings alone caused problems, they would not be in toothpaste. But it turns out that some of the candies, particularly the fruit-flavored ones, also include citric acid.

There may be other factors that led to my dental problems, but certainly it could not have been good to be bathing my teeth in citric acid at night, particularly since I would let the candies disolve slowly in my mouth as I fell asleep, and would also reach for them in the middle of the night to calm a dry cough. After all, it's not so much the bacteria that cause dental caries, but the acid created by the bacteria.

So I'm back to using pure xylitol for my teeth, and taking care to avoid the xylitol candies and mints that contain citric acid. I share this for everyone, including my own grandchildren, who chew xylitol mints as part of their nightly routine, because their dentists have recognized the value of xylitol for dental health. It's still a great idea—but have a care for the other ingredients.

The History of the Renaissance World:  From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer (W. W. Norton, 2013)

Three years ago, when I finished reading Bauer's The History of the Medieval World, I wrote a brief review. With very minor tweaks it could serve just as well for a review of her history of the Renaissance. I'm still looking forward to her next installment, whenever that may be; I'm still tired of "kings and battles and political intrigue" factor and want to hear more about art, music, and everyday life; I'm still hopelessly confused by the endless repetition of the same names for European rulers and the unpronounceable names of rulers everywhere else; and I still love seeing the connections between European history and my genealogical research.

Slowly, slowly I am building up a historical framework in my mind. When I was in school, I didn't have the least interest in history. I had negative interest in history, actually. Math was important, science was important—but history?  Boring and useless. Out-of-date. Now I know better. For all I know, history in schools may still be boring, but that tragedy doesn't diminish its importance. Without knowing where we've been, we don't know where we are, and we certainly don't know where we should go and how we might get there.

I would still put the ability to read well and excellence in mathematics at the top of my list of educational priorities, but a solid grounding in history would come next.

Having grown up without air conditioning, I remember the days when it was important to turn off lights that you weren't using—not merely to save money, but because lights made the room warmer. One advantage to the trend toward fluorescent and LED bulbs is that they don't do that so much.

On the other hand, I don't want incandescent bulbs banned, because sometimes you want that heat. I can keep my composting worms from freezing on a cold winter's night by simply turning on a light under their coop. If it had an LED bulb, they'd freeze to death.

The new, highly-efficient incandescent bulb developed by MIT won't help me with that problem. Nonetheless, I'm glad to hear about it, since (1) it can be cheaper than the flurescent and LED bulbs, (2) it's safer, and (3) it gets the colors right.

Back to LaMonte Fowler's essay, for the fifth in this series.

Science is real. We know things because of science. Don’t be afraid of it. You have an iPhone and Facebook because of science. It’s your friend.

It's hard to respond to this without knowing what he means by being afraid of science. I've certainly never been afraid of science itself: growing up an avid science fiction fan, in an era when SF was more science than fantasy, in a family where anyone who was not an engineer was a mathematician. Math major in college with a heavy sprinkling of science and engineering courses—later I worked as a software designer in a university research lab. No, I never was afraid of science. 

But here are a few things that do cause me concern.

Misuse of technology  I've loved computers since paper tape. I think technology is wonderful. The Industrial Revolution was wonderful, too, but it had a dark side. It's foolish to believe the advances in computing, medicine, and agriculture, for example, can be safely accepted without serious environmental, ethical, and social considerations. So yes, I'm scared of science unbounded.

Science politics It doesn't take long working in the field to realize that scientific research is as plagued by prejudice, good ol' boy networks, and partisan politics as anywhere. It doesn't matter how good your research and reasoning are, if you run afoul of accepted doctrines, they may never see the light of day, and you're not likely to get funding. This is nothing new, having been around as long as science itself has, but it still scares me. If the work of Ignaz Semmelweis had not been ignored because it contradicted established tenets, much suffering and innumerable deaths would have been prevented. I'm afraid of missing important breakthroughs and making dangerous mistakes.

Science-as-religion  Science is a wonderful servant but a terrible master and a worse deity. There are many people, usually professing themselves to be atheists, whose devotion to Science displays all the characteristics of the religious fervor they despise. "But what we profess is the truth," they may object. Q.E.D. Science fanaticism scares me as much as any other—maybe more so, since it's a fundamentalist faith that's flying under the radar.

Science isn't my friend. It's much too powerful and overarching to be friendly. It may be one of the greatest tools we have, but it's more like a chainsaw than a friendly nextdoor neighbor.

Global warming or “climate change” as the cool kids call it IS REAL. Anyone who tells you it’s not real is not a smart person and probably should not be dressing themselves or caring for children.

Once again skating past the gratuitous insults, I have to say that if Fowler thinks the objection people have with the current climate change ideology is "it's not real," then he's not listening very well. Sincere and serious issues that I have heard include: 

• Questions about the reliability of the computer models used to predict the future—especially from those of us who have seen how badly computer models have sometimes performed in other areas
• Questions about how much of the change is due to man-made causes and how much is part of a natural cycle
• Questions about the efficacy, sustainability, and social consequences of any actions we might take to ameliorate the situation—especially from those of us old enough to have lived through the time when the worry was global cooling, and it was seriously proposed that we might improve the situation by spreading sun-absorbing dirt on the ice caps
• Concerns that the issue has become less science and more religion, with those who venture to question the orthodox creed suffering ad hominem attacks and the full force of science politics as mentioned above

To be clear: I don't question climate change. I do have serious objections to using straw-man arguments and insulting language instead of listening carefully to those with whom we disagree and responding calmly and rationally.

I rarely read Doonesbury anymore, as I've greatly cut back on my comic reading, and get too much political ranting as it is.  But here's one I can appreciate! (Click to enlarge.)