Difficult Questions

I am reading the second book of a young adult trilogy named after the first book of the series, Renegades. It is the story of a world where “prodigies” discover they have super powers. The world is very reminiscent of Marvel’s X-Men. The themes involved are very similar as well. What do we do about people who have powers? What does justice mean in such a world? Who gets to decide?

The story takes place in a city that ten years previous had suffered a great battle between the villains (known as the Anarchists) and superheroes (the Renegades). The Renegades won and now are trying to put the city back together and establish society and culture. The founding members form a council that runs the city and much of the world through a sort of police force of prodigies.

What makes this most interesting is that the story is very open about questioning what it means to be the good guy. The characters start to question why an unelected group of people get to make all the rules. It is clear through the characters that good and bad, hero and villain, are not two sides of the same coin but rather a spectrum. I haven’t yet finished the book, but I am thoroughly enjoying how the two main characters are starting to question who they are and what side they are on.

Teaching the Skills of Science

kids around a table full of robotics looking at a tablet computer

Sometime in 2020, I decided to seek out news from both the left and right of the American political spectrum. I wasn’t interested in breaking news. I was looking for real journalism. I found one monthly magazine from the left and one from the right and have subscribed and read both of them since. As the pandemic raged on that year, I also started to look for a source of scientific news that was independent of politics and dedicated to the scientific method. I found The Skeptical Inquirer which describes itself as “the magazine for science and reason”. I subscribe to and read it as well.

In the January/February 2022 of The Skeptical Inquirer there is a fantastic article by a teacher who struggled with teaching science to non-science students. She was passionate about the scientific method as a tool for critical thinking. She saw her class as the best way to reach non-science majors with these tools. But she found that these students just weren’t interested in the “baby bio” class she taught. Rather than blame her students, she decided to examine her curriculum.

She came upon a study that showed the positive effects of teaching the skills of science rather than the discoveries and historical findings of science. So she changed how she taught. That made all the difference. Now not only do her students rave about her class, they leave it equipped to deal with fake news, pseudoscience, and conspiracies based on their own critical thinking and research skills.

A Gift Appreciated

A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat is a Newbery-Honor-winning novel targeted at eight- to twelve-year-olds. But the ideas it explores are timeless and appropriate for all ages. In one description I read it is compared to a retelling of Les Misérables. A few of the characters may remind you of that Victor Hugo classic, but it is the themes that are most similar – justice, kindness, seeing the best in others, and the consequences of our choices. It is a story of its own set in a “Thai-inspired fantasy world”, to quote the Goodreads.com description.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my sister (a middle school English teacher) gave me this book as a gift recently. I finished reading it last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters are relatable and genuine, reflecting the inexperience, naivete, and idealism of their youth. Throughout the story this idealism is confronted with the reality that surrounds them. I don’t really want to say much more than that so I don’t spoil the book for anyone. I am not sure that I ever would have read this book if my sister had not told me about it and given me a copy. I am glad she did.

Unintended Consequences

View of the US Capitol building from the South

When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in decades back in the 1990’s, one of their big ideas was that congresspeople spent too much time in Washington. Instead of living in DC, they should live in their districts. This would connect them better with their constituents and their needs instead of isolate them with other politicians in the capital. Only one problem. The same problem that seems to happen with most ideas in politics – unintended consequences.

I was in my twenties when this was happening. I remember that it seemed like a good idea. Politicians should stay close to the people they represent, right? Professional class politicians who live in DC lose touch with those they represent. But as with most things in life, it is a bit more complicated as I learned while reading Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek.

The idea was that because they stayed home in their districts so much more of their time, they would be more connected to the people. They would spend more time with them, hear about their issues more directly. Except that isn’t what happened. Instead at the urging of their parties, both Democrat and Republican, congresspeople spent a much larger part of their time fund raising. And because they didn’t live in Washington, they had much less opportunity to connect with their fellow representatives.

When they lived in DC, their kids went to the same schools, they attended the same school activities, they got together more frequently for lunches and dinners. In short, they got to know their fellow congresspeople as people outside of work and across party lines. This had the affect of making compromise easier to come to. They saw their political rivals as people like them that had goodness in their hearts with whom they disagreed. This gave them the basis to work things out.

Living outside of the capital, they lost this connection. With the greater focus on fundraising from their party, party tribalism became the focus of the day. This led to further polarization of our politics and to much of the mess we currently find ourselves in. Not only have our representatives reduced their focus to their party first, seeing their rivals as existential enemies, the parties themselves have encouraged this same vision for their members. And now particularly partisan people hold this same vision and idea about those who disagree with them, tearing apart friends and families.

I don’t have simple solution to this. I am not sure there is one. In fact, I think this is an object lesson in the dangers of simple solutions. After all, it started the simple idea that living in your home district as a congressperson would be much better for the people you represent and the country as a whole. It didn’t turn out that way. So it may be better to consider the second and third order effects of “simple” solutions before we implement them. We won’t always see the dangers that lurk ahead, but we may be able to avoid some of them. And spare ourselves some pain and difficulty in the process.

I Prefer eBooks

An ereader device is pulled from a shelf of books as if it was shelved like a book

My sister recently recommended a book – A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornavat. As soon as she told me about it, I borrowed the ebook from my library so I could start reading it when I finished the novel I was then reading. But she also kindly sent me a print copy of the book. So as I went to read it, I had a decision to make – do I read it in print or on my ereader?

First I picked up the print edition. At 375 pages, it is substantial though not heavy. I flipped through it briefly. I then opened the book on my ereader and compared the first page in print to that of the ebook. The font was slightly different but largely felt the same. It was at this point that I found myself pulled rather emphatically to the ebook. And that’s where I am reading it. But I am also grateful to have the print edition.

I wondered why this might be. One of my favorite things about reading ebooks is how simple it is to look up word definitions. I definitely miss this when reading in print. I read more that one book at a time so having them easily portable on an ereader is also a big plus. But I still buy print editions of books that really resonate with me because I want to have a physical artifact that I can refer back to and readily see. For non-fiction, I also often transfer any highlights or notes to my physical book as they are easier to reference and share.

This brief experience helped me learn about myself. I prefer ebooks when I am actually reading. But for books that I love, I still need a print book on my shelf for reference, longevity, and to share. I still want and love them both.

A Disappointing Issue

A human looking figure is surrounded by playing card sized objects in the air

I was disappointed by the January/February 2022 issue of Uncanny Magazine compared to my experience with the other issues I have read since subscribing in May of last year. None of the fiction in this issue really connected for me. I felt like too much was left unclear on the background of the stories. The topics were very interesting, but the execution left me feeling like the stories could have been improved.

The one piece that really grabbed me was “Gone with the Clones: How Confederate Soft Power Twisted the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy” (article available online starting Feb. 1). Briefly, the argument is that while the original Star Wars trilogy was based on WWII with the clear enemy being the Nazis and fascism, the prequels were based on the US Civil War, the meaning of which is much more messy due to the myth of the “Lost Cause”. The best part was the author’s amazing summary of how organizations like the Daughters of the Confederacy muddied the cause for the Confederacy from preserving slavery to a number of nebulous higher level ideas like states’ rights (states’ rights to do what?). Buying this issue is worth it just for this essay.

History is Personal

I tend to read three books at a time – one fiction, one history/biography/memoir, one business/science/psychology. This week I started reading a biography of US President Andrew Jackson. He is a controversial president whom many think was a terrible man. He was very popular and his presidency signaled a shift in our country. It’s even called the Jacksonian era. I never really learned much about him in school and decided to remedy that by reading An American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham.

The first chapter starts with him having learned at his home in Tennessee that he has been elected president in the fall of 1828. It was a bitter ccontest with John Quincy Adams, both candidates going after the character of each other. Adams’ side even went so far as to say some pretty horrible things about both Jackson’s mother and wife.

Just before Christmas, his wife of forty plus years, Rachel, had a heart attack and died a few days later. Family and country were everything to Jackson. This loss was devastating despite his victory in the election. He had expected to go to Washington with his wife. Now he was going as a widower.

Whenever I read about history, I do my best to put myself in the shoes of figures such as Jackson. How would it affect me to lose the love of my life just before embarking on the most ambitious part of my career? I felt it as a gut punch. There is a lot to dislike about Andrew Jackson as a person, but I simply can’t get over the depth of despair he must have felt even after such a victory.

I am only just starting to read this book, so I am sure I will continue to learn a lot about Jackson that I didn’t know before. Some of it may hit me like this experience. Some of it may make me angry. But I am certain that as I continue to apply empathy to all that I learn, I will better understand the history of this man and this time in my country’s history. This is what I mean when I say that history is personal.

“We Are Different. We Are One”

Last week, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at the age of 87. She was a champion of women’s rights and equal justice. But the thing that stands out to me the most was her enduring friendship (which started long before she joined the Supreme Court) with fellow Justice Antonin Scalia. Ideologically, the two could not have been further apart — Ginsburg a liberal, feminist icon, Scalia a stalwart of conservative jurisprudence. Yet, somehow, these two were still able to see the humanity in each other and enjoy a vital and lasting friendship. How? Perhaps it was because they shared a love of country and purpose. They just pursued it in different ways, ways that they respected in each other even while disagreeing. If only some of that collegiality and higher purpose could be injected into our politics in general and the naming of Ginsburg’s replacement in particular.

The Constitution is clear on filling a Supreme Court vacancy. In Article II, Section2, Clause 2 it states that “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court….” Nowhere does it state any limitation on this power such as delaying till after an election in an election year. Currently there is a lot of debate about whether or not the President and the Senate should wait. There is neither a precedent or history of this happening. The Constitution, though, is clear. There is no requirement to wait.

The Democrats and Republicans are both playing a lot of politics with this situation, which is to be expected. The real problem, from my perspective, is the road this is taking us down. Because Senate Republicans have decided to take a vote on President Trump’s nominee this year while they chose not to take a vote on President Obama’s nominee in 2016 (the very definition of hypocrisy), there is talk of the Democrat’s taking revenge. The next time they control both the White House and the Senate, some scholars are suggesting that Democrats may attempt to pack the Supreme Court. This would be a big mistake for our country.

US political power and influence have always swung back and forth between the dominant two parties, currently Democrats and Republicans. That’s how our system works. But lately, both sides have tried to set themselves up to be the permanent party in power. This hasn’t yet gone so far as to flout our constitution and laws flagrantly, but it feels like we may be headed there. We have already started to abandon our well-established precedents.

One of these precedents was to never govern by executive order. This was broken by President Obama starting in his second term. He began to use executive orders to accomplish what he couldn’t through legislation due to the Republicans in Congress opposing him. This had never been done before because of the fear that a subsequent president of the other party could simply undo all those executive orders and bypass Congress himself to accomplish his goals without Congressional legislation. President Trump has done just that. While this is not strictly illegal or unconstitutional, it is highly troubling. This is not how the Constitution designed things to work. Congress is not there for the President to find a way around. It is the governing body of our country. It is the most direct representation of the citizens at the national level. The first article of the Constitution governs the legislature and is the longest of the first three articles.

Now we have the dangerous idea of packing the court. It has the same problem that governing by executive order has. If the Democrats add four more Supreme Court Justices in order to tilt the court back in its favor, what’s to stop the Republicans from doing the same when they next control the Presidency and the Senate? Where will it end? How many Supreme Court Justices will we end up with? Thirteen? Seventeen? Twenty-one? You get the picture.

This isn’t politicians playing politics. It’s beyond that. It’s politicians trying to game the system in their favor. That has to stop. We the voters need to put an end to it. Yes, Senate Republicans are behaving as despicable hypocrites. They should have voted on Obama’s nominee back in 2016. If they didn’t want to confirm him, they should have defeated his nominee on the floor of the Senate. And the proper answer to that kind of behavior should have been to vote out those Senators who behaved so inappropriately. But that didn’t happen. Why? Well, because we as Americans have come to identify with our “side” in politics as much as our politicians. Instead we need to be more like Justices Ginsburg and Scalia.

The secret to their friendship was that they saw each other as individuals. They shared a “reverence for the Constitution and the institution [they] serve[d]” though they differed in their interpretations. But they never decided that the other was unworthy of their friendship and respect. We need to be the same way with those who hold political beliefs different from our own. Too many times, we vilify the other side, shaking our head in disbelief that someone could think that way or vote for that person. Perhaps a better response is to actually ask. What issues are important to you? Why do you think that way? But then we need to listen with a desire to understand. If we do that, perhaps we will discover that our goals aren’t that different from theirs. We just disagree on the ways to get there. Then we might be in a position to work together to find ways to compromise on achieving those shared goals. That’s what we need our politicians to be willing to do — compromise to achieve our national goals. But they sure won’t as long as the people who vote for them won’t.

So seek out opinions different from your own. Understand how others are different from you, how they think and what they value. Who knows, you might discover as the leads in the opera Scalia/Ginsburg sing, “We are different. We are one.”

Evaluating Science

Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us by George Zaidan

Before I read it, I thought this book was about specific foods or personal care items, what is in them, and whether they are good or bad for you. It isn’t. It is about a much bigger topic. How to tell when science is legitimate, especially when reported on in the news.

It is an entertaining, informative, and accessible look at how to evaluate the science behind all those headlines that tell you what is good to eat and what will kill you sooner. The section on the “potholes” to look out for in the scientific studies you read about is alone worth the time to read the book.

His last chapter is his advice after having gone through all the science in the rest of the book. His final four “bits of advice” are:

Don’t worry so much.
Don’t smoke.
Be physically active.
Try to eat a healthy diet; any doctor-approved diet will do.

Oh, and if you are religious, you might want to skip the appendix. It will likely offend you.

Malcolm X: A Man for Our Times

With the death of George Floyd at that hands (or rather knee) of a Minneapolis police officer and the protests that followed, I found myself wanting to try to understand the perspective of those who don’t share my white privilege. I thought back to the days of civil rights marches and protests in the 1960s. Growing up, I had learned about the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I also learned, but only in passing, about a man named Malcolm X.

What a learned in school about Martin Luther King, Jr. was only the headlines version, but I’ve heard much of his “I Have a Dream Speech” and read his “Letter from a Birmhamham Jail”. The only thing I learned about Malcolm X was that he was an angry Muslim that rather than believing in non-violence advocated for violent resistance. So in the midst of protests that occasionally turned violent, I decided to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Malcolm X was a complex and dynamic man who isn’t done justice by the simplistic view of him that I had before I read this book. He grew up poor with only an eighth grade formal education. After the eighth grade he moved from the Lansing, MI area to Boston. There he live with his half sister and started work as a shoe shiner. Later he moved to Harlem where he used and sold drugs. He was eventually caught and incarcerated for these crimes and served ten years.

While in prison, Malcolm X spent most of his time either in the prison library or reading in his cell. He always sought to learn and grow. He also converted to the Nation of Islam. After leaving prison, he preached around the country, opening new temples (later called mosques). It was during this time that he rose to public prominence for his views. He was opposed to integration, feeling that the white man was the problem and that the black man needed to take pride in himself and to support and nurture his fellows. His speeches were fiery, and he never shied away from telling it like he saw it. It was during this time in his life that he gained the reputation as an angry, violent man.

Eventually Malcolm X had a falling out and a parting of the ways with the founder and leader of the Nation of Islam. In the process of this severance of ties, Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Mecca that change him profoundly. On this journey he had seen Muslims of all colors and nationalities live and worship as one during the Hajj. When he returned from this trip, he no longer saw the white man personally as his enemy. Instead he took the racist actions of men as his opposition. Unfortunately, no one in the media or public life seemed willing to acknowledge his growth. They still associated him with his days as a minister in the Nation of Islam. And while he was still in the process of redirecting his life in this new direction, he was assassinated.

For me, Malcolm X represents what we need today for civil rights. The 1960s led to institutional and legal changes required to move us further toward a more just and fair society. But now we need to face the hard facts of changing the culture itself. That’s the change that Malcolm X was trying to effect when his life was cut short. He wasn’t willing to wait any longer for justice for his people. The Black Lives Matter movement embraces that spirit. We’ve removed the overt racism that existed in our laws. Now we need to remove it from where it is embedded in our institutions.

For me the lesson of Malcolm X’s life is that we are always capable of learning and growing. The challenge is often that those around us aren’t willing to accept the changes that we go through. In Mecca, Malcolm X was able to see the humanity in everyone and that softened his heart but not his resolve. That’s what is missing in our politics today. Our politics is strong on resolve but lacks the heart of compassion and understanding. I hope that we can all embrace those qualities and work to embody them just as Malcolm X strove to in the last two years of his life.