David Zach, futurist

Christmas Message from 1949 and Before . . .

Each year the Wall Street Journal republishes an editorial written in 1949 about Christmas and Caesar and rendering unto each according to what one should. Caesars down through the ages have taken various attitudes and made any number of demands, but the Christmas message has remained the same. In a time when all is in flux and nothing seems to last, some thanksgiving and wonder should be offered for that which does not change. Merry Christmas and God Bless us, everyone.

Remembering History Wrong

Most everyone knows by now that Photoshop can be used to prove anything. Pixel by pixel, truth is turned into whatever a talented graphic artist wants it to be. Here's an article, Fake Photos Alter Real Memories explaining how our memories adjust to fit the picture.

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
George Orwell

Banning Legos as bad capitalist tools

The American Thinker has an article by Clarice Feldman on how Legos (yeah, those childhood building blocks) "were capitalist tools that interfered with the childrens' education, banned them and then reintroduced them with new rules after the children were indoctrinated with what the school considered correct values . . . " Riiiight.

Here's the article that the teachers wrote about their experience in improving their classroom, Why We Banned Legos. This is posted in Rethinking Schools, a self-righteous little left-wing rag published here in Milwaukee. I might be wrong, but I think they're not an off-shoot of The Onion. These people apparently believe in what they write here, though I'll agree with them on the absurdity of the No Child Left Behind Act, but its absurdity is matched by the absurdity that the educational bureaucracy had already put in place.

This is what happens when people are too busy to take an active interest in the things around them. The most important things are taken over by experts and in their closed-loop little world, all of their thoughts make sense, especially it if means full employment for them and theirs. It's articles like their Banning Lego thing that makes sadly happy that I don't have children.

Were they correct in pointing out that problems arise when there are such things as private property, limited resources, restricted use, etc.? Yes, they were correct. I think they just might have missed the fact that the problems arising from their political and economic beliefs are worse.

G. K. Chesterton wrote in The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare that "The best way to destroy utopia is to try it." When it's a government subsidy, utopia isn't so quick to fall.