TTSR Love Is A Four Letter Word

Writing inspired by The Thomas Sowell Reader, pages 48-50, Love Is A Four Letter Word.

To love someone is to have a deep feeling of affection, such that you would sacrifice greatly for them, but today, ‘Love’ can be interpreted any number of different ways.  It has become an over used and desensitized description word without further meaning than to like something.  To say, “I love him” would communicate that someone is in love if their definition of love is the same as the dictionary’s.  However, this statement is used multiple times by almost every teenage girl when referring to a movie star or someone they think is cool.  This meaning of love is now shallow and vain.

Even with the right understanding of love’s meaning, it is still misunderstood for the feelings that come from physical contact.  Lovemaking, although it is the joining of two people in marriage, has become so stereotypical to the world.  It is not even looked upon as something special because of the way it is talked about and the way is it abused. 

Lovemaking alone cannot even keep up the human race because babies need to feel loved to live.   Scientists do not know exactly how an infant senses love but part of it is through sense of touch and hearing.   A study was done in China where one hundred orphaned babies were taken off the street and taken care of.  Fifty of them were held, stroked, and spoken to along with all the basic needs.  The other fifty were given only basic care of feeding and changing without any physical or verbal attention.  All fifty of the ‘unloved’ babies died. 

What then is love?

True love is what Jesus Christ did for us when he died on the cross for our sins.  Paul the apostle wrote to the Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy or boast.  It is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way.  It is not irritable or resentful.  It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.^[1]”

[1] Paul the Apostle, 1Corinthians 13:4-7

TTSR Wars Over Values

Comments on The Thomas Sowell Reader, pages 45-47, Wars Over Values

We talk of world peace and of wars fought in distant countries but the truth is, cultural warfare is being fought all around us invisibly.  The aggressors in this war claim to want social equality and prosperity, while their true desire is to gain power and recognition among the simple, something not hard to do when government lies are taught as truth. 

For example, there is a feminist movement pushing to gain equal ‘rights’ for women in military combat, but the leaders of this movement are not campaigning so that women can physically fight in battle.  What they are after is a position of authority where they can make the decision.

In the tax arena, the Federal Government now chooses where tax funds are channeled no matter what the actual tax payers want it spent on.  On March 19th 2011, over two thousand people gathered on the steps of the Alberta Legislature to protest Alberta’s Education Minister, Thomas Lukaszuk’s new Education Act to restrict parents from teaching their children academically that homosexual lifestyles are sinful.  In spite of the upset citizens, who fund his salary, the Education Minister smilingly told them that they shared the same goals, and the bill would not be changed.  The bill did not go through, however, not because Thomas Lukaszuk listened to the people, but because of the upcoming election.
 
It did not matter whether parents could teach their children about homosexual lifestyles or not, the underlying reason was to gain authority over Home Schooled families.  The government recognizes that Home Schoolers are removed from the propaganda and control that exists in government schools.  This bill would have given the government more authority than that of parents and it would have opened the door to government control over Home School families.  When the Government sees something it does not control, it seeks to gain dominion over it and to restrain it with systems, laws, and so called “Rights”.
  

Late To Speak

      The world’s most renowned German scientist, Albert Einstein, is considered to have had the highest level of intelligence ever.  But, while many are aware of his genius, few know about the area in which he struggled. Learning to speak was a major challenge for him that turned into his first great achievement.

     As a sibling of a late speaker, I know how distressing it can be to have a loved one with feelings and ideas be unable to verbally express them.  I wanted to help my younger brother but he seldom responded to my word games.  For years he made very little progress and even now is still learning, but his speaking ability has greatly improved.

     Neurobiologists have done research on Einstein’s brain that suggests the systematic

thinking part of his brain expanded its boundaries and reached into other sections of the brain, particularly the portion controlling speech (Broca).  This has led some scientists to believe his delayed talking and his brilliance were connected.

This brain condition, although very rear, it is not unheard of. Dictator Benito Mussolini, Self-taught Mathematician Ramanujan, Nobel Prizewinner Gary Becker and pianist Arthur Rubinstein were all late speakers that are suspected of having Einstein’s brain condition

Exodus 4:11

“Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

Matthew 15:30 


”And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them”

TTSR Foreign Domestics

Writing Inspired by The Thomas Sowell Reader, pages 39-40, Foreign Domestics

Canada’s Minister of Finances, Jim Flaherty, made the controversial statement “There are no bad jobs, the only bad job is not having a job [1],” on May 15th, 2012.

There may be dangerous jobs and there may be unpleasant jobs, but there are no bad jobs. If you consider that we have a free job market where we choose to work or not, there can be no bad jobs because every working person is doing so of his own accord. The person may not like his position, but he obviously is willing to make the exchange of his time for the employer’s money or he would be out looking for another job.

People can complain all day that there are no jobs out there but what they really mean is that there are no jobs that they want to do. I recently heard of a road contractor offering a flagging job that would pay twenty-five dollars an hour and require no previous experience. He was unable to fill the position because cell phone use was not permitted on the job.

Besides being unwilling to give up certain comforts, people are not willing to work because many readily available jobs are looked down upon as lowly and dishonorable places of employment. Restaurants like McDonalds are not considered honorable places to work but they do bring a stream of income. For a college graduate, working at Subway is not what he planned but it is better than wondering what to do while his debts increase.

The American entrepreneur and blogger of The Art of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau once said, “Never despise small beginnings, and don't belittle your own accomplishments. Remember them and use them as inspiration as you go on to the next thing. When you venture outside your comfort zone, wherever the starting point may be, it's kind of a big deal.”

[1] Flaherty, James M, CBC NEWS Toronto, May 15, 2012.

TTSR Instructing The Instructors

Comments on the The Thomas Sowell Reader, pages 33-34, Instructing the Instructor

     How many times have you read through manuals and called 1-800 numbers for technical ‘help’?   The first time I took an instruction book seriously was with my brand new TI-89 Titanium graphing calculator.  Learning how to operate that machine was harder than learning grade 12 math because the manual was written so incompetently.   There was more emphasis on how great the features were than on how to use those features.  Also, the organization of the whole book, which was bigger than the New Testament, was in total disarray.  In front of the table of contents there was information regarding radio frequency interference.  In order to learn one function thoroughly, I had to jump from section to section. 

     The TI 89 can do more calculations than a college Mathematician, but because of the poorly written guidebook, owners cannot access its full potential.  Bad manuals like this have become so common that I have to wonder where all the good writers have gone?  A company as big as Texas Instruments should be able to find at least a few good technical writers.  If they did, maybe their customers would feel as appreciated as the telephone recordings say they are.

If I come across another manual like this one, I think I'll take the Tim Hawkins approach.

TTSR Autism "Curse"?

Comments on The Thomas Sowell Reader, Pages 31-32,  Autism “Curse”?

     I think that the autism spectrum allows doctors to misdiagnose without being at fault.   They use this system that makes room for ‘permissive error’ so they don’t get blamed for the unnecessary treatment of normal children.  If parents of a falsely diagnosed child confronted their doctor after undergoing expensive medical care, what would he say?  My guess is that he would blame the system for his error rather than take responsibility.  In the end, the parents would be overjoyed that there child did not have autism, but there would be no restitution for the thousands of dollars spent on pointless therapy.

     After I did more research on the Autism Spectrum, I found that in all the articles and websites describing how it worked, there was no information about who made it.  Curious, that this information was not easy to find, being that it is considered ‘the way’ to tell if a child is autistic or not.