ocean sunfish

The ocean sunfish is just one of many odd creatures that roam the ocean. Also known as the Mola Mola, the ocean sunfish is the largest bony fish on Earth. They appear to have had the back half of their body cut off. This leads to its odd shape of being taller than it is long.

They can grow up to 14 feet tall and 10 feet in length and weigh 5,000 pounds. They tend to bask in the sun near the surface with their huge dorsal fins sticking out of the water, which is how we happen to see one.

Although they are usually found in temperate and tropical waters, they do drift north during the summer. Karen and I took a day trip to Monhegan Island, 10 miles off the coast of Maine. We took the early morning mail boat out of Port Clyde, Maine. On the way back we took a bigger, slower boat. The larger boat was used for sight seeing tours, so they were used to spotting ocean creatures.

We had not left the island for 10 minutes when the captain announced that he had spotted an ocean sun fish. We rushed to the rail as the boat slowed and then stopped. The sun fish, which has colors resembling fresh water sunfish, Stayed near the boat about 10 feet under water and just swan and twisted around and gave us a great show. It was truly a unique and unexpected experience.

The New God in School

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God

Quite a few years ago we threw God out of our schools because a very small number of people said that they felt bad watching other people pray or even the mention of the word God made them feel bad.

Now, we have a new God in school-a more acceptable one,I guess, since no one has taken the New God to court. It is the God of Technology. We worshiped the old God through prayer, asked for guidance and served Him through good deeds and moral behavior. God did not demand our obedience; worship was a free choice for all humans to make for themselves. God was seen as loving and forgiving.

Not so the Technology God. The New God demands absolute obedience! The only things that he will accept as a sign of devotion are Cold Hard Facts (CHF’s.) Those who do not honor him with the right CHF’s, at the right time and on the right forms will be thrown out of the Temple of Work. The servants of the old God-priests, ministers and other designated personal representatives- have been replaced by the servants of the New God- Bureaucratic Man. Old prayers have been replaced by new mantas that are chanted over and over again by the Bureaucratic men: “If it cannot be turned into CHF’s, it is not important”;”Due dates are sacred”;”Thou shalt not question the Technology God”; and “If it is not written down it did not happen” and its’reverse “If it is written down, it must have happened.”

The old God viewed his creations as individuals possessing emotions, feelings, individuality and in need of human relationships. The New God seeks to reduce humans to mere numerical constructs that can be easily expressed in numbers, categories and percentages.  Conformity in the Temple of Education is required. Human relationships are deemed unimportant since they cannot be reduced to the necessary CHF’s.

The problem with CHF’s is that they ignore the very aspects that set humans apart from the beasts of the world. Reducing children to CHF’s requires that Education Temples to be cold and impersonal. The process of manufacturing CHF’s to satisfy the New God has resulted in the process of data collecting becoming more important than the children themselves.

Public education was started to satisfy the needs of the citizens and the country by producing educated workers and citizens. Today, the needs of the children and the country are secondary to the needs of the Technology God and the bloated bureaucracy he has developed. He decides what data is important and ignores other information that doesn’t fit into the categories he has deemed important.

The need to continually feed the Technology God places the teacher in the role of Lesser Bureaucratic Man, the lowest level of the bureaucratic Religion. Much like a woman entering a convent, today’s teacher is stripped of her individuality and creativity in the name of conformity.  Her focus is diverted from developing a positive relationship with her children, in order to teach them more effectively, to focus on obeying and pleasing Bureaucratic Man. Her role is more of presenter than teacher as she tries to get the students to focus on the information that they will need when the Data Collection Plate-the Standardized Test- is passed around.

Data is collected on how much information the children can retain and correctly answer on the Standardized Test. Now one might think that this data was being collected to evaluate the child’s learning and be used to improve his instruction; but that is not so. The Higher Bureaucratic Man has chosen to use this data to compare it self to other schools, so the best can put out a sign in front of the schools saying that they are the best. They also use the data to compare our schooling system to those in other countries such as Korea, China and Finland. Even though we spend more money and and score below many of these countries nothing really changes. The Bureaucratic Men continue their status and pay. Since social and emotional growth cannot be reduced to CHF’s no data is collected on the effect of the new schooling priorities have on the development of the children.

Should one look, the results are plain to see-not in a graph or on a page of statistics but in our rising prison population, the increasing abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs, the recent violence and shootings in schools, the presence of armed police officers in school, including elementary schools and the increasing economic divide in the country.

Only We, the People, can change the focus of 2016 election

The Atlantic Magazine has a reputation for journalistic integrity and keen insight to important issues. The most important issue in America today is the election of 2016. The Atlantic has the power to change the focus of the election from personalities and pass history to present day solutions and renewed hope for the future. You can do this by hiring me to help present the two constitutional amendments that will reduce the influence of money and politics in the operation of the government.

One amendment will greatly change the Presidency including removing the mid-term election mess, vastly reduce the influence of party politics in Presidential decisions, return control of campaign money to the voting citizens and provide the office of the President with some dignity.

The second amendment will provide some reasonable, consecutive term limits; reduce to influence of party politics in the House and the Senate; return control of election campaign money raising and spending to the legislature from the Supreme Court, which has unconstitutionally usurped it from the legislature and force Representatives and Senators to focus on the voters from their districts instead of rich corporate and wealthy individuals.

With my ideas combined with your journalist power and research ability we can provide voters with real change, returning the power to the people nas was intended by the Founding Fathers.

You can help save the sea turtles

Imagine sitting in your chair on the sandy beach on a cool fall evening. There is a full moon shining across the ocean as waves gently lap the shore. You maybe with a few friends enjoying a glass of wine or surrounded by a dozen or so island visitors eager to learn about the sea turtles from you.

All sea turtles found in US waters are on the endangered species list. Topsail Island, as well as other beach communities, has a program to help ensure their survival. Between May 1 and September 1 of each year every mile of Topsail Island is walked by a turtle walker First thing in the morning. We look for the distinctive tracks of a 300+ pound female who has crawled up to the dunes to lay her eggs. When a nest is discovered it is marked off with stakes and survey tape. A wire mesh is placed over the nest to deter foxes and animals that prey on the eggs. A sign is posted identifying the nest and warning of a large fine for disturbing it.

Hatching begins about the first week in August. Turtle project workers volunteer to sit at the nests as they near hatching time to help the hatchlings into the ocean. The volunteers help educate and control the crowd that often forms when nests are marked for hatching. Nest sitters usually stay at the nest from dark to 10 or 11 at night depending on nest activity. Sometimes a nest will hatch within a few days of being readied, while other times sitters may be there a week or more. But the experience of watching 70 to 150 baby turtles flapping their way to the ocean is unforgettable and worth the wait.

The turtle nesting project is all volunteer. There are orientation meetings in April before the season starts to educate the volunteers so that they will be able to pass the information on to interested visitors.

So whether it’s an early morning walk ans swim looking for nests or an evening sitting on the beach monitoring a hatch, volunteering with the turtle project is an enjoyable and educational experience. You can find out more about the sea turtle project at http://www.seaturtlehospital.org.

Is Sheldon from “The Big Bang Theory” really an alien?

I believe there is life on other planets because we do not know how big the universe is nor how many planets there are in our universe. There may even be other universes where life could exist. Given an infinite number of planets it is very possible that some have the necessary conditions for life-in some form- to develop. When one thinks about all the conditions for life to develop on Earth and the evolution that has taken place it is quite amazing that we are here.

If humans can imagine other worlds and life forms like those in science fiction stories maybe those images come from a cosmic intelligence that is aware of other life forms. Movies like Star Wars and tv shows like Star Trek explore the possibilities of life on other planets. While tv and movies rely on man or mammal like creatures sci fi stories show us other possible forms of intelligent life forms like insects or sea creatures. They also explore alternate universes.

Who knows? Once travel to the moon was considered impossible but maybe the worm holes or hyperspace travel of many novels might be possible some day. Robots were common in many early science fiction stories and have now become reality. The fear that robots would render humans obsolete is becoming true in the sense that they are replacing humans in many well paying jobs and who knows what the future will hold.

The New God in School, Part 1

Tags

God

Quite a few years ago we threw God out of our schools because a very small number of citizens said that prayer or the mere mention of God made them feel bad. They felt so bad that they got someone to cover the costs of going to court and finding a judge that decided that if a few people didn’t want prayer in school, nobody should be able to pray.

Now we have a New God- a more acceptable one, I guess, since no one has taken the New God to court. It is the God of Technology. We worshipped  the old God through prayer, asked for guidance and served Him through good deeds and moral behavior. God did not demand our obedience-worship was a free choice for each human to make for himself. God was seen as loving and forgiving.

Not so the Technology God. He demands absolute obedience! The things that He will accept as a sign of devotion are Cold Hard facts (CHF’s.) Those who do not honor Him with the right CHF’s, at the right time will be thrown out of the Temple of Work. The servants of the old God-priests, ministers and other personal representatives- have been replaced by the servants of the New God- Bureaucratic Man. Old prayers have been replaced by new mantras that are chanted over and over by the new servants-“If it cannot be turned into CHF’s, it is not important”; “Dues dates are sacred”; “thou shalt not question the God of Technology”; and “If it is not written down, it never happened.”

The Old God viewed his creations as individuals possessing emotions, feelings, individuality and in need of human relationships. The New God seeks to reduce humans to mere mechanical constructs that can be reduced to numbers, categories and percentages, which can be converted to CHF’s. Conformity is demanded in the Temple of education. Because human relationships cannot be reduced to CHF’s, they are presumed to be unimportant in the education of children.

The problem with CHF’s is that they ignore the very aspects that set human beings apart from the beasts of the world-emotions, feelings and the need for positive relationships. Reducing the children to CHF’s results in the education Temples becoming cold and impersonal. The process of manufacturing CHF’s to satisfy the New God has led to the process of data collection becoming more important than the children themselves.

What education philosophy?

There are so many things wrong with our schooling system that it is difficult to know where to begin to improve it. I hesitate to call it an “educational” system, it is not even an effective training system. We have developed an assembly line-like process where the process has become more important than the product-educated children.

The best place to start is with the basic question of “Why do we have an public school system? What is it that we want to accomplish? We have lost the ability to philosophize about the important issues that made the United States into the best nation in the world. When we do not philosophize by asking and discussing “Why do  we do the things we do? or What is our purpose for doing them?; we end up with the inefficient and ineffective system we have today.

Public and governmental discussion on education is limited to money, class size, test scores “fairness” and a never ending series of expensive school “reforms”- each promising to produce the ONE best way to educate our children. Lawmakers have turned schools into social service centers and data producing programs, making school staff more and responsible for raining children. Laws give parents most of the control over their children but no responsibility for ensuring their children behave responsibly and make a good effort in school.

There are no definite answers in philosophy but a philosophy does provide a road map that gives us some direction to move in and a scale to monitor progress towards our goal. We will never have meaningful education reform until we have a functional educational philosophy. As the famous American philosopher, Yogi Berra, one said “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” I don’t think we are getting there with our public schools.

The most basic question to ponder is “What is the purpose of education?” Do we want to produce competent corporate workers? or may we want educated citizens that understand their rights and RESPONSIBILITIES as citizens of a democratic republic or some other goal.

Asking and discussing these type of questions will lead us to a better philosophy than we now have; which seems to be “Our children will be forced to attend school until the age of 16 and be presented with a standard, rigid curriculum regardless of their ability to access the knowledge and experience there in nor to consider its relationship to their lives.

Let us return the focus of education to the children and the needs of the country and take it away from the bureaucrats, data collectors and legislators and their corporate handlers by returning control of our public schools to local citizens.

I am an educator/counselor and philosopher. An educator by choice; a philosopher by inclination. I spent 50 years shoveling snow in Maine and have slowly been drifting south since 1999. I have ended up in Holly Ridge, NC, after renting on Topsail Island for 3 years, at least for now. I have spent an uneven 23 years in public education- fired from 2 out of my first 3 jobs and quitting the other after one year and changing positions often after that. The philosopher in me made it difficult to reconcile what was happening in schools with what I knew should be happening. I was able to find some freedom within the school systems by leaving the classroom and becoming a school social worker/behavior specialist.

Like all us, I am taking the class to learn how to share my ideas and observations with whoever is interested in reading  and sharing their own opinions,