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A Matter of Degrees
A while back I listened to a woman explain that she holds three college degrees. I’m fairly certain that meant associate’s, associate’s, associate’s. My own three are bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate. Generally speaking, under our American system, we only refer to the highest degree held, so the lower two degrees are kind of assumed to exist. Jane Goodall holds a Ph.D. (from Cambridge) but no lower degrees – the British system is a bit different than ours. Dr. Goodall’s researched and published books on chimpanzees were, essentially, all of her college career. I know that her Ph.D. is more prestigious than mine – and that her single degree is a lot more than three associate’s might be.
The Russians have a degree above the Ph.D. – but it is granted upon successful defense of the dissertation. Under our system, the dissertation and its defense are the final part of the Ph.D. A student who has completed all the coursework for a Ph.D. but has not submitted and successfully defended a dissertation is termed ABD – all but dissertation. ABD is not a degree, and in many ways can be kind of a bad thing. In order to start the dissertation, I had to have substantially completed my coursework, and passed my comps (comprehensive exams). If you don’t pass the comps, you have invested several years in education that you won’t get credit for. Had I failed my comps, I would have walked away with a second non-thesis masters. That’s kind of like having 2 heads – unusual, but not generally helpful to a career. I would like to have a quiet beer with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and learn exactly how he came to have his second Masters.
Doctorates aren’t equal – the order in which they are given at a University graduation is the only spot where I know you can see the difference in status. Generally speaking, the Ph.D is an academic research degree, while the MD, Juris Doctorate, and Ed.D. are professional degrees. Only time I got to observe this was when my daughter got her Bachelors – the new Ph.D holders went through the line first. The next week, the MDs and JDs began a lifetime of larger paychecks.
Then we can go to the Associates’s degrees – an Associate of Applied Sciences is a vocational degree, while the Associate of Arts or Associate of Science is generally the first two years of a bachelor’s program. It is quite possible to have 3 separate Associate’s degrees and never take a class with a 300 or 400 number.
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The Australian Attack
I’m tired of anti-Semites. As I look back on 75 years, I’ve been blessed to somehow find several friends. Not necessarily people who see the world the same way as I do, but generally good people. Several of those friends have been Jews. None have been anti-Semitic. That will not change – hating a person because of skin color, or religion, etc. just isn’t right.
When I was a young man, some of the older generation had the forearm tattoos – from Auschwitz. They are gone now, but during the sixties and seventies, there was a time when my consciousness of the Holocaust was rudely brought to the front of my mind by a tattoo forced upon someone before 1945. The Hamas and Isis types have more in common with the Nazis than with me. And it makes me wonder about the narrative, the story that has convinced them.
I’m remembering Bob Mendelsohn – my teacher, my colleague, my friend. His tongue-in-cheek description of Nick’s Hamburger shop in Brookings – where cheese was added to a burger as a condiment, not cooked with the burger, thus maintaining a kitchen he could regard as kind of Kosher. When Bob retired, he moved from secular college professor to studying the religion he was born to, and eating according to Jewish teaching. He described how he missed deli ham sandwiches. Bob was a Jew who loved Christmas – the trees, the decorations, the songs. He’s gone now, but part of his lessons included leaving the campus – there is nothing less needed than a retired professor.
I recall Trinidad, Colorado – when I was there, volunteers from the local Catholic church were doing maintenance work on Temple Aaron – the town’s Jewish population was too old to do the work. There was no publicity – just younger neighbors helping maintain the synagogue that their older neighbors could no longer accomplish. That’s the way to treat people.
In Suriname, I saw Paramaribo’s mosque and synagogue adjacent to each other – here’s what it looks like there:
Somehow, I want a world where the tolerance I saw in Suriname is the norm.
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Sick as Christmas Approaches
It’s an unpleasant lung and sinus infection. It goes well with asthma to cut down what I can do – yet this time, the disease vector was my grandson. Somehow, the sickness is kind of mitigated by that – it didn’t come from some anonymous student passing through the hallway in an unseen cloud of microbes.
This time, I got Remi while I was working on the old service station – and despite the illness, I had the joy of giving him the rolling magnet to pick up nails. I may feel a bit crummy – hell, I do feel crummy – but I have the memory of the toddler rolling the magnet, and smiling with every click as a nail was pulled up and magnetism overpowered gravity. He doesn’t have the words yet – but in another ten or twelve years, there’s going to be a discussion about physics with his mother. I may or may not be there to see the interest in physics develop – but I was there when he discovered that magnetism can overpower gravity. It is enough to make the illness an insignificant cost.
As my daughter took an interest in physics, and moved into quantum, I checked out books on the topic – studying to stay along with her for the next conversation, often in the car as we would drive home. It brought home thoughts to me – the realization that the power of probability combined with chemistry to make elegant experiments, while some atoms manage to stay out of the reaction. 99.9% purity is close enough for what we need – and things happen consistently.
So I look forward to the next lessons, as the little guy discovers that pieces of copper, aluminum and lead are immune to the power of his magnet. I look forward to his learning of the special aspects of ferrous metals – and possibly moving on to the relationship of a compass to the planet he inhabits. A stuffy nose, sore throat, and congested lungs are a small price to pay for being the grandfather that sets the lessons in motion.
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My Ruger is Changing Duties
Folks look at my old Ruger pistol, and see it as a Mark I. It isn’t. Made back in 1958, the markings show that it left the factory as a Ruger Standard Pistol, then fell into the hands of Jim Clark at Shreveport, Louisiana.
I never met the man – but Jim Clark was a national champion in Bullseye, and built fantastic guns. This photo of Clark’s Ruger comes from the NRA program ‘I have this old gun’:
Mine looks about the same – and has always been a lot more accurate than I am – or ever was. At 76, I’m not so steady as I once was – but I have just found (and ordered) New Old Stock Pachmayr grips for the old pistol – I’ll stash the old Herrett target grips, set the pistol in a holster (the match grips make it uncomfortable for belt carry), and I will see how it works for carrying around the place. Age makes hitting well a bit harder, but we shall see. The sights are still visible, the trigger is good, and while the muzzle brake on a 22 seems a bit of an overreach, I’ve had it for years.
Some might warn me that a 22 isn’t enough gun for bear. Frankly, having encountered a couple of Grizzlies up close and personal, I don’t believe anything you can hang on your hip is enough gun. Second, my walks are usually on the place – my pistol is more for protection of my little dogs – and they have threats that are less formidable than Grizzlies. Third, as a teenager and a young man, I took 10 black bears with my 22 single shot, and three with my High Standard revolver. So I don’t believe I’m particularly undergunned with my 67 year old Ruger.
Some folks tell me that Rugers dominated Bullseye back when my pistol was converted from a Ruger Standard pistol to a Clark converted match gun. In Clark’s hand, that was so. My memory tells me that High Standards, Colts and Brownings led the scoring more often. Anyway, as I age, and presbyopia makes it harder to keep a sight picture, and weakness makes me less steady, it’s good to give a different job to a tool that I have trusted for years.
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Capital, Labor and Lincoln
Somehow, 160 years after the war between the states, there are a lot of people who have forgotten (or never learned) that the Republican party that nominated Abraham Lincoln wasn’t exactly a capitalist. It has been fun to look at Lincoln’s writings, and quotations. I never wrote a test asking students to identify whether the author was Lincoln or Marx – but I kept these quotes on hand in case I ever decided to write an extremely tough test.
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln
“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln
“A commodity has a value because it is a crystallization of social labor. The greatness of its value, or its relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance contained in it; that is to say, on the relative mass of labor necessary for its production.” Karl Marx
“Labor, being itself a commodity, is measured as such by the labor time needed to produce the labor-commodity. And what is needed to produce this labor-commodity? Just enough labor time to produce the objects indispensable to the constant maintenance of labor, that is, to keep the worker alive and in a condition to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is no other than the wage minimum.” Karl Marx
“All that serves labor serves the Nation. All ^ that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.” Abraham Lincoln
“And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.” Abraham Lincoln
“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” Karl Marx
“Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln
“The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.” I didn’t say I would give all of the answers – figure out who this sounds most like.
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Trego's Mountain Ear 