Book Review: Facing Death

Title: Facing Death and the Life After

Author: Billy Graham

Date: 1987

Publisher: Word Books

ISBN: 0-8499-0474-9

Length: 265 pages plus 6 pages of endnotes

Quote: “Only about one in everry five adults has made a will...Such situations create needless hardships and heartache for loved ones.”

Yes, of course Billy Graham’s book on Facing Death has a lot to say about the Christian doctrine of judgment and reward. “A Christian funeral should be a coronation.” I chose to quote the section on wills because Christians need to know that this book was meant to do more than endorse their religious beliefs, or some debatable variant form of their beliefs. It really is meant to help people prepare for their parents’, their mates’, and their own illness and disability as well as death, in practical more than emotional ways.

In 1987 Graham was only 69 years old. In the picture on the cover, he hardly looks that. Still, this is a book only a senior citizen could write, full of the kind of insights that come to people as their friends grow old and die. Billy and Ruth Bell Graham would remain active for several years after Facing Death was printed, but the book shows that they didn’t take their longevity for granted. Both of them had considered the possibility of widowhood, and taken steps to make things as easy as possible for the survivor.

Young people don’t like to think about such “heavy stuff.” “I’m only twenty, forty, or sixty years old. I hate funerals. If I die unexpectedly, just donate the body to medical science.” Even if the body is donated to medical science, the family will probably want some kind of memorial service. If you want to keep people who loved you from being exploited, you might as well plan something simple and sensible while you have some say in the matter. Dying costs money. Whether you pay into a life insurance policy or a savings account, your family will appreciate any financial preparation you can make, during the crisis.

Should you make a will, a living trust, or some other arrangement to ensure that your estate is transferred to the right people? Different states recognize different ways of directing the transfer of property. Graham discusses a few possibilities, but encourages readers to get legal advice about what works in their state (or country).

What is your position on life support devices? Are there medical procedures you want to refuse in advance? Are you willing to risk a transplant or transfusion? If these risky and expensive procedures seem “indicated,” hospital staff are not going to make it easy for your relatives to reject them on your behalf. If you want a Living Will that rules out certain treatments, Graham recommends obtaining legal advice, reading and signing your Living Will on videotape, and having your primary physician as one of the witnesses identified on that tape (or disk or whatever).

Usually, before facing our own death, most of us face the death of several other people. Facing Death contains some counsel for the bereaved, and for those who want to help them, too.

Shortly before writing the first draft of this review, I’d received a comment on an AC article that mentioned “excessive” grieving. By now everyone has probably heard that there is no timetable for grief. If the family really grieved for their loss of Grandpa when he became disabled, and empathized with his pain for several years, his death may seem like a merciful release for all concerned. If Grandma always seemed more like a 50-year-old than a 90-year-old and was actively involved with the things younger people were doing, they may think of her and shed tears every day for a year. If, however, you are still feeling overwhelmed by grief after a year, there is some possibility that your feelings of grief may be covering other feelings, e.g. guilt, and counselling might help. Facing Death contains some counsel for people in this situation.

Facing Death and the Life After was written primarily for Protestants, but it’s the sort of book that could be helpful to anyone who is alive. 

Book Review: Money Bona Fide or Non Bona Fide

Title: Money Bona Fide or Non-Bona Fide

Author: Edward E. Popp

Date: 1970

Publisher: Wisconsin Education Fund

ISBN: none

Length: 126 pages

Quote: “While it is appropriate to use the term usury when referring to very high interest rates, we must also remember that demanding low interest rates may be usury as well...if it is physically impossible for the borrower to pay them...also...if the lender loans counterfeit or inflationary money.”

Before Bitcoin, there were small groups of people, disgusted by the antics of the bank and money industry, who got together and worked out schemes to invent their own “money,” valid among members of the group only. It’s legal, legitimate, potentially a useful market corrective, and also severely limited. Given the alternative of being paid in Good Neighbor Coupons or in U.S. dollars...well, actually, for the duration of some very successful Town Festivals, intelligent people do exchange U.S. dollars for Good Neighbor Coupons. But not during the rest of the year.

During the recent Grapefest in the suburb-town of Grapevine, outside Dallas, wine, art, and street fair lovers shelled out the dollars for coupons, with the warning that this year’s coupons would have souvenir value only at the end of this year’s Grapefest. That’s typical. Citizens could send a message to the federal government in an absolutely legal, public-spirited, and probably delicious way. People who’ve tried it have, however, generally been tagged as wingnuts whether “left” or “right,” and alternative money has rarely reached high value even as a souvenir. Grapefest coupons just aren’t considered as exciting a collection piece as Confederate money, old-style printed food stamps, or 1940s ration tickets.

Edward E. Popp and his Wisconsin Education Fund seriously wanted to correct the 1970s’ “recession” with their own Wis-cash. (Insert jokes about cheese and/or snow here.) They wanted others to consider similar correctives: the bigger a protest movement gets, the better.

The result of which was...that Popp wrote a book that’s of historical interest to present-time protesters. The late George Peters had studied this book, while able to see, and his review is worth quoting here:

“This Mr. Popp gets out in left field about page 70.

It won’t work as he says.

Even so it can be done.

But I guess there would be some injustice.”

 Nevertheless, there was considerable appeal in the idea, as expressed on page 29:

“There will not be inflation and deflation...No one will have a monopoly...The price of goods and services will not be able to be raised or lowered by the banking system...People...would know that when the government asked for more taxes, it would be asking for the people to work harder...Government officials, as well as others, who expect the government officials to take something from everyone to give something to all, might—just might—learn the meaning of justice and they just might think about practicing it.”

One of the Islamic world’s great advantages is that, although Islamic banks demand money from customers to sustain the bank operations, they don’t charge interest that compounds into a spiral of debt and inflation. Muslims can be extremely rich or extremely poor; more of them are poor than are rich and the traditions of modesty and generosity don’t completely fix this, but they know how rich or poor they are, year to year. They pay a straightforward, reasonable fee for using a bank if they do, and keep their cash if they prefer not to use the bank, and their countries don’t reach economic conditions where they have to take a wheelbarrow full of money to the store to fill a handbasket with groceries. Some of their countries have been poor, before the oil boom, but money has tended to keep its value. 

Jewish law forbids charging interest on loans to fellow Jews. More recently written corporate law removes individual Jews from the responsibility of owning a corporation that is an out-of-control, amoral money-making machine with no religious identity, so Jewish Americans suffer as much from mortgages and credit cards as everyone else does. The trouble in the United States and Europe is that for a long time Europe allowed businesses to be operated by specific families. Jews were often barred from farming or entering trades, so they specialized in banking. While only the Rothschilds became quite as wealthy as the Rothschilds, the historical fact was that a loophole in the law of Moses allowed Jews to gouge as much interest out of enemy nations as they could get. As bankers they tended to define everyone, even Jews of different nationality, as an enemy. 

The other Europeans, who were nominally Christians and thus claimed to be adoptive heirs to Abraham, might have adopted the law of Moses for themselves and built a modern banking system as good as the Islamic one, but the historical fact was that they chose to treat everyone, even relatives, as an enemy, when it came to charging compound interest on terms limited by what had rallied a mob to run a banker out of town recently. They approached banking the way they perceived the Jews doing it only without even the constraint of kinship. And this fouled-up system, with its roots in intertribal warfare as a primary source of wealth, was what they brought to North America. Europeans learned about banking at a stage in their evolution when they still heard a claim like, “I never worked a day in my life! Every one of those cattle grazing on the hill was won from another man in a fight!”as a boast. And unless and until we start by recognizing the law of Moses, trying to fix our banking system is going to be like trying to bathe a Tar Baby—a glob of tar wrapped up like a baby (or some other object people wanted to pick up) to fool the naïve into getting tar all over their hands and clothes.

Such reforms as we have achieved have been made primarily by religious groups that are willing to be perceived as extreme, fanatical...and puritanical, with bans on all sorts of things manufactured by Unbelievers just because the community’s hoard of money is maintained by members not buying this or that.

Popp’s recommendation for reform started with using coins—“as few Federal Reserve notes as is practical”—and, if “producing or selling goods,” “issue certificates of credit,” and, “if our governmental body is in need of money and is considering borrowing it, advise it not to borrow, but to issue tax credit certificates.”

It’s still workable, Gentle Readers. Making it work will require mindful use of money, frugality, discipline, purchasing things from individuals you respect even if you can get similar things cheaper from the greedhead corporations. The Internet can help mindful communities connect across the miles but, in the long term or on a large scale, it won’t be reliable; the Internet itself is a greedhead corporate scheme and will be made to work against anyone who is using it to beat a monopoly or price-fixing cartel. (Similarly, the federal government will, if regarded as our only defense against the monopolies and cartels, become the biggest monopoly of all.) Then again, since we’re all subject to uncontrollable losses of income these days, those are ideas worth our attention in any case.

If you don’t have much income, it’s much better to live frugally on a small income than it is to have more of some things doled out to you as a welfare cheat.

If you have a decent income, it’s much better to make your own purchasing decisions and reward people who produce good things than it is to peel off money mindlessly for whatever the big-chain stores push at you.

Do you need Popp’s Money for guidance on mindful spending, or would a newer book or one relating to a community that interests you, such as the Mennonites, be more useful? Which should be your first book on mindful use of money is a topic beyond the scope of this review. I recommend Popp’s Money as a book for people who are ready to form an economic community (and not willing to affiliate with a religious one). If that’s not where you are, Money is primarily a book of historical interest. It can help you communicate with “preppers” of a certain vintage, being part of their history. It did not inspire a major economic movement all by itself, and plenty of historians will tell you it was read only by wingnuts and has no historic significance; they are wrong. But it is a short, simple, readable book that may inspire you to connect with others and become an economic community.

This review says nothing about specific attempts to create and use online community money. That is intentional. Popp obviously did not foresee Bitcoin and this web site is observing Bitcoin for a few more years.

Book Review: The Great Taking

Title: The Great Taking 

Author: David Rogers Webb

Date: 2023

Web site: thegreattaking.com

Quote: "[T]his book...is about the  taking of collateral, all of it."

David Rogers Webb worked in the "investment" business. He observed what went on in the money-handling business. Basically, people who handle other people's money want some of it. They want more than their original contracts with their customers allow. When they're allowed to work with governments, as in the Federal Reserve, they find ways to take their customers' money by setting up crashes and crises that devour what credulous people have "invested" with them. They will no doubt find ways to take money that's been invested in gold, in real estate, or in less blatantly unethical businesses, too. What can we do about it, having a Federal Reserve Bank? We can remind ourselves that money isn't everything.

Webb is preaching to the choir with me; I was brought up to despise the idea of money-handling being a business, to recognize all offerings of credit cards and sales pitches for "investment plans" that amount to lending money at interest as strictly things to light fires with. For that reason I don't think I even understand some of his detailed explanations of the scams and schemes Webb has observed in the money-handling business. I get the point of the stories: Some people paid other people to handle large amounts of money for them, and the money handlers stole it, or other money handlers stole it from theirs. I don't follow the details of how each heist was accomplished. 

I don't think this book is as well written as it could possibly be, and neither does Webb. He encourages readers to check for updated editions at the book's web site. But his point is clear. He's been a money handler. He wrote this book for his conscience's sake. If you trust any kind of money handler, even a bank owned by neighbors you have personally found trustworthy, you are at risk. And, really, what you can do about it is accept that the treasures of this world are, by nature, things moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal.

Book Review: Balance and Beyond

Title: Balance and Beyond

Author: Matt Partrich

Quote: "This chapter..." [explains] "how savings forms the foundation of your financial planning."

This is not a book for leisure reading. It's a workbook, with exercises and quizzes, for a course in recovery from debt. 

Frankly I'm surprised my computer was able to open the e-book. All the full-color pictures and graphics came through looking like copies of real printed pages. Don't count on a computer to open this one. Buy a printed copy. Each participant in the course will want a printed copy on which to write out the exercises, anyway. They involve math as well as writing and multiple-choice review questions. 

I think more religious and community groups need to be helping people get out of debt and off welfare, and this is an excellent resource. Of course, a workbook (or even a course) will be only as good as the student makes it, but this has the potential to help people achieve financial freedom.

For those who want civil liberties and deplore the Loony Left's attacks on their values, but feel a need to keep on voting for those handouts...it's time to put your back where your head is. Get this book, which can be downloaded free and printed for pocket change if it's not supplied by the course leader, and use it. You too can live within your means and know yourself to be a maker, not a taker, the moral equal of everyone you meet. 

For church groups, finances can be a hot potato--doesn't every pastor dream of guiding a flock of rich people who have no financial worries and drop hundred-dollar bills in the plate while they listen to very very "spiritual" talks that never mention anyone's personal choices? If we want to make a difference in our own real world, however, and not just go on throwing money at international projects into which, at best, a lot of waste is built, both religious and civic groups need to dig into the difficult topic of helping people live within their means.

In this book Partrich keeps it real and seems to steer clear of "investment plans" or discussions of when or whether it'll ever be all right to use a credit card. This book is about balancing individual and family budgets. But I think it can do the most good when mixed groups of older/richer and younger/poorer people work through a program like this together. Working through the details of how young working parents stretch every dollar just might motivate neighbors in more comfortable circumstances to pay for things the working parents, or the children, make or sell.   

Morgan Griffith on Conflicts of Interest

Official editorial comment: This web site salutes Congressman Griffith.

From Morgan Griffith, US Representative, R-VA-9:

"

While I travel throughout Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District, one of the opportunities afforded to me is visiting our local schools.

The Ninth District is big, comprised of twenty-eight cities and counties.

It is home to more than sixty high schools.

School visits allow me to talk directly with students and listen to their questions and feedback.

Recent school visits included several in Wise and Buchanan.

One student was interested to hear about the influence of stock ownership on Members of Congress and conflicts of interest.

Shortly after entering Congress, I sold my entire stock portfolio.

As I have often joked, I don’t know what my wife did with the $6,000. The money is gone and so is any conflict.

While this isn’t the course of action that every Member needs to take, I decided that the best course of action for me was to sell.

In recent years, Members from both sides of the aisle have faced pressure to sell their stocks or place them in a blind trust.

I would like to see this same pressure applied to government bureaucrats and regulators.

That is why I introduced the Royalty Transparency Act, a bill that requires an officer or employee in the executive branch of the U.S. Government to file financial disclosure reports and report royalty payments that they receive.

This legislation will empower Congressional oversight efforts of the financial disclosure filing system for executive branch employees.

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced a Senate companion bill.

One of the reasons for this bill is that it requires researchers in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies to disclose royalties they receive.

An article from Reason Magazine cites that some working at NIH over the last decade earned an estimated $400 million in royalties from third-party companies for medical treatments and innovations they have helped produce.

However, information pertaining to how much the agency’s employees were paid, who they were being paid by, or what they were being paid for has been concealed from the public.

This raises the question whether the agency and/or employees place a greater interest on profiting off of innovative medicines rather than studying and analyzing these treatments for the benefit of American science and patient health.

Last summer, NIH selected Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo to serve as the new director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

This position had to be filled due to the retirement of NIAID’s well-known former director, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci’s career in government spans back to the '60s, when he joined NIAID as a clinical associate in 1968.

Dr. Fauci worked fifty-four years at the agency. In 1984, he became the director of NIAID, serving in that role until his retirement in December of 2022.

A whopping thirty-eight years as head of one of our leading institutions, an institution which gives out thousands of grants! In a recent transcribed interview, Dr. Fauci told us he could not keep track of all the grants and had other people to do that.

Of note, Ecohealth Alliance subawarded $598,500 in NIH grant funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology during 2014-2019 for bat coronavirus research.

I believe the COVID-19 virus originated from bat research at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology.

From 2019-2022, Dr. Fauci made headlines for various things. One of those storylines highlighted his salary, as he earned the title of highest-paid federal government employee. In 2022, he received $481,000, more than the president of the U.S. who receives $400,000.

Also Dr. Fauci is set to receive the largest federal retirement package in history, with a reported first-year pension payout of $414,000.

Additionally, Dr. Fauci and his wife, Dr. Christine Grady, saw their net worth increase from around $7.6 million in 2019 to $11.5 million in late 2022.

This net worth increase can be attributed in part to gifts and royalties.

Such gifts and royalties raise eyebrows.

I am not saying he did anything illegal or unethical, but as a public servant, there should be transparency regarding the money you receive directly or indirectly from government service.

I am committed to transparency and bringing potential conflicts of interest of executive branch bureaucrats and regulators to light.

At a time when Americans are losing faith and trust in their institutions, we need more sunlight on why some of our public servants are receiving large amounts of compensation.

I am trying to fix that problem with the Royalty Transparency Act.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671.  To reach my office via email, please visit my website at https://morgangriffith.house.gov. 

" 

[signature graphic that seems to embed those format foulups that take so much time to go back and pick out, because they don't show up inside Blogspot, only outside, after a post goes live]

Book Review: The Lovely Lady

Title: The Lovely Lady

Author: Mary Austin

Date: 1913

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: none

Quote: “I’ve got to be rich. I’ve just simply got to.”

I downloaded this book from Gutenberg.org. If you’re online, you can read, print, or download it too, paying only printing expenses. If you’re not, I’ll print a copy for you at cost.

So says Peter, the son of a poor widow and brother of a sister with a physical handicap. (“Disability” would be an exaggeration. Sister Ellen walks awkwardly, but she gets around.) But will his quest for wealth keep him from pursuing his dream of Ideal Romantic Love?

Frankly, Gentle Readers, as I read this e-book, I found myself increasingly not giving a daam—you know, one of those little coins that went out of circulation because their production cost came to exceed their value. A great writer might have been able to weave into this dreary study of Edwardian proto-yuppies some sort of subplot, or at least some element of comedy or adventure, that would have held my attention on the dreary infidelities of a young man who pleased me only when I reflected that I don’t have a son. Life could always be worse. One could always have a son like the very realistic, and unadmirable and unenviable, protagonist of this novel. Peter flits among the cities of the Northeastern States and Western Europe, so he doesn’t even give Austin a chance to wallow in topophilia, as she did so well.

Who should read The Lovely Lady? Someone different from me. Someone who appreciates the nuance of an authentic Edwardian novel of manners.

Meanwhile, in between dealing with power outages, Googlitches (since the latest "update" Blogspot's been going offline during the hours I've been scheduling for it), and glyphosate reactions, I'm trying to read a dozen newer books, including one by Barb Taub. Trying is the word. I really did write book reviews of a batch of Project Gutenberg e-books a few years ago, and here's one of those.

 

Book Review: Lunch Money

Title: Lunch Money

Buy it

Author: Andrew Clements

Date: 2007

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 978-0-689-86683-8

Length: 222 pages

Illustrations: pencil drawings by Brian Selznick

Quote: “Greg’s greatest talent had always been money.”

Even before he started school, we’re told, Greg enjoyed earning, saving, and eventually spending money. He started by doing his older brothers’ chores for pennies, then moved into doing odd jobs. Then one day at school he noticed how many of the other middle-schoolers had pocket money to spare when he forgot his lunch money, and started selling pocket toys for his friends’ pocket money. The principal’s reaction was to ban all toys. Greg started writing, drawing, printing, and selling original comic books. The principal wanted to ban that too, because right away a few other kids started selling their own “books,” and the principal didn’t want the school to become “a flea market.”

Andrew Clements’ greatest talent has always been writing plausible “What if a kid...?”stories that illustrate what’s not likely, but possible, if kids do what it takes...to add a new word to the dictionary (Frindle), or to become a small publishing venture. And he’s right on target. The biggest challenge kids face, when they come up with ideas for earning their own money, is that some adults really don’t want kids to have their own money.

Adults want kids to be honest and ethical. Kids want to be honest and ethical, and they also want to have and do things that appeal to them, without necessarily taking the time to “sell” some adult or other on everything they fancy. When adults cling to control fantasies, blustering that fifth-graders (and older people) “don’t need to be able to buy junkfood,”or comic books or pocket toys or whatever, some parents can boast of some success in brainwashing their kids not to want junkfood—sometimes—but even goody-goody kids who’ve tried very hard to believe that buying a chocolate bar will give them acne, and that they would want not to have acne, are still likely to think they want this particular toy, or whatever. So they might start skipping lunch and hoarding their lunch or milk money...or they might decide that, in a world where adults just don’t want them to have anything they see other children enjoying, they have a right to steal either the objects or the money they want.

I once heard a sixth-grader explain that she stole a twenty-dollar bill from an adult’s purse to buy a cross pendant necklace to show schoolmates she was a Christian.

Yes, adults can try to tighten their grip on all access to the outside world and bring up children who will really stand out, when they have to look for jobs in the outside world, as too eccentric to be employable. There are people who became unemployable to the church that had supported the rigid rules that were meant to make a virtue of an economic necessity, because they really believed that some extravagance or other was contrary to the Spirit of God. And the extravagance may be trivial, but the way their refusal to embrace it has been persecuted convinces some of these people, and convinces me, that it really is contrary to the Spirit of God.

If adults aren’t able—as Amish people are—to guarantee their children a secure position in an independent economic community where they’ll be able to earn modest livings and achieve a reasonable level of status among adults, then those adults had better not be allowed to cling to any delusions about teaching their children a “better” approach to money than good old small-scale capitalism. But unfortunately that’s become a fad these days, not even among small religious sects, but among people who consider themselves “liberal.” 

The real motive is control. “It’s so sweet and lovable and innocent when children come to you begging ‘Please, Mommy, please, Daddy’...”Yes, and when we consider the kind of skills that’s teaching those children, let’s just hope Mommy and Daddy will always be able to bail them out of jail. Some parents fantasize that they’re bringing up future teachers or doctors when they are in fact training future beggars, pickpockets, and prostitutes. The rationalization used to be keeping children out of bad company, teaching them thrift, or preparing girls to be “angels in the home." Today few people take those ideas seriously, so control-freak parents have to appeal to the political cults of yesteryear. “We don’t want Alex to grow up a greedy, money-grubbing yuppie...”

Normal healthy children do not like to go to adults begging. Nature intended them to become adults, and that is the primary goal of most things children do between, say, ages five and fifteen. They like to earn their own money and spend it as they see fit.

So, our protagonist, Greg, sees school as a place to earn money because he sees that it’s a place where children are expected, even required, to spend money and have a lot of money to spend. Adults don’t want him to earn money at school, however, because some of them are control freaks...and others are profiting from protectionist contracts.

Greg, being an Andrew Clements character, does almost everything right. His mistakes are minor and quickly corrected, so they form part of a story that’s basically about how the child reader can succeed. Greg takes a bump on the nose, realizes the teacher looking at him is having a phobic reaction, and makes a horrible little speech about how, yes, his nose is “bleeding lots of bloody, bloody blood.” The mere word “blood” makes poor phobic Mr. Z. feel so queasy that he feels a need to lie on the floor.

Er, well, actually I suspect that a sixth grade boy would be thinking in pictures, and the picture in his mind would be of what naturally happens next if people who are feeling queasy enough to lie down continue to feel even a tiny bit sicker.

But anyway Greg and Mr. Z. bond by lying on the floor and waiting for someone to press ice packs on their heads, and Mr. Z. agrees to be the adult consultant as Greg recruits his strongest competitor as a partner in producing clever, informative, nonviolent cartoon books.

That competitor is a girl, Maura. Some sixth grade boys feel physically attracted to girls in a vague way. Probably more of them feel embarrassed by the idea that talking to girls might cause them to be teased about things they don’t understand. A fortunate few have sisters and know that, in grade six, talking to a girl is pretty similar to talking to a boy—individual personalities make more of a difference than gender. Then there’s a small, in some ways unfortunate, few who do in fact have the hormone reactions most sixth grade students can only embarrass each other about. Even when students this age are shaving facial hair or wearing bras, most of them are not feeling physical attractions yet. So why Clements chose to make Greg one of the few who has “feelings” other than the basic “Do I want this person as a friend and, if so, on what terms” feeling...was probably in hopes of marketing the book to grade eight, where more students do have special physical “feelings” about some classmates that they don’t have about all the others. Some readers will like the idea that Greg and Maura will become a couple and possibly marry each other in another ten years, and some will hate it. So, trigger warning. Maybe some books should reassure kids that they’re not going to die of freakishness if they have feelings at eleven that many people start having at fifteen. Maybe adults should blame the estrogen-fattened meat.

Greg and Maura and Mr. Z. now have to convince the principal that her argument that “school is a place for learning and thinking, not for buying and selling,” is unrealistic. When students buy food, pencils and paper, maybe school jackets and sports equipment, in a school store, then school is a place for buying and selling. And what a pity the school’s decisions are made by a “council of principals” rather than a board of elected members of the community, in which there would probably be a good healthy exponent of an (enlightened) capitalist position: School stores should, in fact, set a goal of having more than half the merchandise made and sold by students and their parents. What a pity, for that matter, Greg’s and Maura’s parents leave it entirely up to a teacher to advocate for their children’s economic rights to become entrepreneurs in a free, non-protectionist market system.

If anything, I think Clements handles the control-freak principal more gently than control freaks deserve. And why the relationships between the students and their parents aren’t developed further...Sometimes writers back away from trying to write about parent-child relationships because, even as adults, the writers are still learning from those relationships. Sometimes writers don’t want people who know that the writers have stayed close to their own parents to think that the writers’fictional characters’family relationships are just like the writers’family relationships. Well. If writers were more reticent about romantic relationships, for similar reasons, the improvement in some fiction would be considerable.

I find Greg and Maura, their relationship with each other, and their relationships with their parents, a bit of a strain on my suspension of disbelief, but their experience of producing “Chunky Comics”is probably what actual sixth grade students will read this book for, and that is excellent. Selznick’s illustrations even give young cartoonists ideas for layout.

 

The Best Way to Stop Fixing the Borfin is Not to Start

It occurred to me after I'd written this morning's post that it might be considered to violate this web site's contract. What I've written I've written; it's not obscene, defamatory, threatening, or libellous, but I don't want to violate a contract. So this morning's post is at https://cat-sanctuary.livejournal.com/479967.html .

Is the Internet Sneaking Into Your Net-Free Computer?

Some people Out There may reply, "Who wants a Net-free computer?"

A lot of us do. The Internet is to some extent a surveillance device that spies on what you do in your own home. When you connect to the Internet only from the office, or from a public place, where you go online to do research or use social media, there's no rational reason to object to, e.g., Google keeping a record of what Google is used for, or Twitter keeping a record of what people do on Twitter. But if you have a private, wired, non-networked computer and printer in your bedroom, and use it for things like writing personal letters, keeping track of your personal budget, or maintaining a private dream journal, you are likely to object vigorously to Google tapping into that computer. 

For one thing, many of us object to other people being able to use the Internet to see all the holes and stains in our favorite pajamas...or whether or not we wear any. Before marriage, although that was in the pre-Internet years, I used to think I needed to be modestly dressed even when I was alone in my own bedroom. I don't know what the thinking behind that was--"If the house caught fire you wouldn't want to take the time to pop a dress over your head before you ran out," or "If you saw yourself in the mirror you might be guilty of the sin of looking at a naked body--your own," or, more likely, "If you always wear some sort of clothes, even if they're special styles that everyone in your culture recognizes as having been designed exclusively for wearing in your own home and would frown on your wearing when you go out to collect your mail, chances are good that you'll be buying at least two more complete dresses or pants suits every single year! Ka-ching!" One of my husband's and my frugal house rules was to wear clothes at home only if we felt chilly without them, and since we mostly lived in steamy coastal Maryland we saved a lot of money on the sort of clothes that wear out quickly because they absorb so much sweat. The air can absorb much more sweat without needing to be replaced. I don't particularly care if the young men at Google are watching my body age, or seeing the stacks of creative clutter around my desk, or watching me recycle empty food containers to gush blood into after exposure to glyphosate, because I feel that anyone watching that sort of thing deserves to feel as disgusted as I'm sure he would, but many people do feel that way. Even though we'll never have to meet the young men at Google socially.

For another thing, our society has not done nearly enough toward treating nannyism, let alone searching for a real cure. The pills I use (vitamins when I'm not having celiac reactions, charcoal when I am), the amount of porn I watch online (pretty close to zero), or who else may be in my home (relatives, and yes, we put on some sort of clothes before being in the same rooms) are not the usual focus of these wretched people's helpistic reactions. People who use drugs (yes, alcohol, and aspirin), watch porn, and have overnight visitors may feel differently. We as a society do need to be more vigilant about, when someone squawks "I want to help those people" (any people who are not asking for that specific individual to help in a specific way), making sure that person is confined and supervised until person can focus on person's own life like a decent human being. We need to be making them write numbered lines of "Other people are adults. If they want my help they will ask me for it," and checking their penmanship, and making them do the pages over if they deviate from the models in their copybooks. At present, with all the untreated nannyism out there, none of us is safe from victims of nannyism who might begin screaming "Those poor people only ever eat toast for breakfast. I want to help them discover the joys of shopping for boxed breakfast cereals!" and we need to open a national conversation about ways to address this problem.

But why I really want to keep the Internet out of my main computer is a different concern...Google "updates." Before Windows 10, Internet connections were subject to periodic disruptions for "updates" a few times a year, and the programs we actually used for everything but connecting to the Internet was stable: you learned how to process words, numbers, or graphics using the programs of your choice, and that was the way your computer worked. I LIKE THIS. The less I'm thinking about the computer, the more I'm thinking about what I'm using it to do, and the more useful the computer is. A computer that distracts people from what they're using it to do is worth less than an old rusty Underwood typewriter, and should be replaced by one .But since Windows 10, Google and Microsoft have been allowed to interfere with whatever we do online, while "updating" themselves, daily. The "updates" never end. Nothing works the same way it did the last time we used it. We need a federal law about this. Google and Microsoft need to be told in no uncertain terms that, if we (or our company or school or sponsors) paid for the computer and for the Internet connection, that makes us THE OWNERS, and if they interfere with THE OWNERS' use of THE OWNERS' PRIVATE PROPERTY, the computers and Internet connections, THEY OWE THE OWNERS MONEY. If Google or Microsoft want to "update the system" in any way that it's possible for us to notice while we're browsing or typing or reading or whatever we do, they should have to send us an e-mail...

"Dear Lord and Master THE OWNER,

This service wants very, very badly to tweak some feature at a web site that might require a window to be closed and reopened. The results of our self-gratification in this matter (will) (will not) be detectable at your end of the connection. Because this is so inconvenient to OWNERS, but our worthless little inferior brains are so obsessed with it that we can't sit still and think about our jobs without wanting to try it, may we humbly beg you, please, of your great compassion, to indulge us in this "update." We will not bother you with another request like this one during at least the next five years.  We understand that during our next few '"update" fits our supervisors may lock us in rooms away from computers and force us to focus on useful tasks or be terminated with bad references, We will not be allowed to move forward with this "update" until you verify receipt of ($100 in cash for changes that will not be detectable at your end) ($500 in cash for changes that may be detectable at your end, such as unrequested color changes) ($1000 in cash for changes that may affect the way buttons work). We are extremely grateful for your consideration to our insane emotional cravings to tamper with YOUR PROPERTY. 

Without your confirmed consent, WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THE WAY YOUR COMPUTER WORKS. If you bought the computer in 1982 and you choose to continue using the same word processing system you used in 1982, WE RESPECT THAT whether our wretched excuses for brains are capable of understanding it or not. We are operating in Penance Mode for the amount of electronic waste that has gone on since the 1980s. We are not allowed to sell new computers or phones until ALL the old ones we convinced people were 'obsolete' are fully operational and in use. We may not be allowed to build any more electronic devices during our own individual lifetimes. We know that the easiest way to avoid wasting electronics is to avoid trying to add any new bells and whistles to them, and we know that it will cost us money if any 'updates' we offer cause any OWNERS' PRIVATE PROPERTY to require repairs.

But we really want to tweak something, please, please, we beg,

Your pathetic, attention-deficient, brain-damaged, twitching servants at (whichever corporation)."

Maybe the fees for "updates" should be even higher than that, because of what happened to my reliable, Net-free computer last summer.

I was copying a page of a printed document into a computer file, and suddenly the computer blinked and started displaying the screen sidewise. It was the first time this had ever happened. I didn't know what to try, so I just shut down the computer, disconnected the monitor I'd been using since 2006, connected the emergency backup monitor, turned the computer on again and resumed typing.

A few weeks later, the computer "died."

I took it to the shop. It could be fixed right away, but it took me the whole winter to scrape up the money to pay for it. 

It worked well, but then in March it blinked and started displaying the screen sidewise.

This time I asked the computer some hard questions about what it was doing and why. It admitted that the little logo showing that it had no Internet connection had disappeared. Once allowed to extend WiFi connections into the neighborhood, the local company was not satisfied to connect to the one device an OWNER had authorized it to connect to--my laptop. (It had not been authorized to connect to the Professional Bad Neighbor's "smart truck," which he's avoided driving into the neighborhood after realizing that it was connecting his truck to my laptop.) The company had been trying to tap into my home computer, too. What was causing the screen to display sidewise was...an update!

I reset the computer back to a reset point, and before opening Windows again I reset all the settings that seemed to have anything to do with the Internet, instructing the computer that it was NOT TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET IN ANY FORM OR FASHION, NOT EVER. Got that "no Internet access" icon back. This computer is allowed to store documents on its own disk drives or to print them. It is not authorized to release anything into "the cloud." 

But I just happened to check it this morning, and "Local Service" and "Network Service" and the "spooler" program that prints documents to files at an unidentified connection point, were running on it. The tentacles were sucking. My original, classic, functional, Internet-free Office programs could be destroyed again. 

Microsoft really, really wants to steal what people paid good money for, twenty years ago, and force people whose jobs depend on having MS Word to rent some garbage version of Word that is subject to episodic "updates" and that has been tweaked into a travesty of what people mean when they say "MS Word." Specifically, every few weeks, they make it harder to get rid of Ugly Nasty Wasteful Webby-Looking Document Format. 

We probably need a law specifying that the default setting for all computers and printers must be to print on both sides of each page, with no more than 1/2 inch margins all round, no wasted spaces between paragraphs, in the smallest font THE OWNER is willing to read. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to choose to use the amount of paper they think their documents need. I am saying that, when people have set their computers and printers for a default format that conserves paper, Microsoft should be prevented from trying to change that format. I ssve quite a lot of money by using justified margins and indented first lines to avoid wasting a space between paragraphs, and I want it recognized as THEFT for Microsoft to interfere with the default formatting on my computers and printers in a way that costs me money at no benefit to me. "Update" my computer in such a way that one printout costs me one sheet of paper? Pay me a thousand dollars, cash in advance, for anything that could by the remotest chance allow that to happen, or go to jail! 

Microsoft should probably be required, when adding Net-free Word and a printer to all computer purchases, no exceptions, to initialize the printer by setting up "OWNER'S Normal" format, and then require, when printing documents off the Internet, to offer to convert them to OWNER's Normal format automatically. On a screen it may be easier to glance at huge wasteful fonts, 12-point, 16-point, 20-point as web site administrators' eyes wear out, but when I print them out, 8-point Times Roman is actually easier to read than 18-point Arial. And it'd suit me fine if the whole Internet agreed just to stop printing anything that was not supposed to be a poem with uneven right margins, remove any extra spaces from "paragraph breaks" and require extra spaces to be manually typed in as "section breaks," and just spare the world from anybody ever having to look at Ugly Nasty Wasteful Webby-Looking Format except, perhaps, in "legacy" documents about greedhead companies that used to try to cheat people on printing costs even though that provided no direct profit to them.

What can we do to keep the Internet out of our computers? I don't know. Theoretically it should be easy to build computers that have no modems, connect them to their own dedicated printers, and just make sure no stupidphones are allowed in our homes. I'm sure the snoopers will look for ways to interfere with that, too...and we need laws recognizing it as a crime to connect the Internet to anything without the specific, time-limited, permission of an OWNER. Anything that contains a chip that can connect to the Internet needs to contain a switch that breaks the connection whenever the OWNER is not actively using it. An "Internet of Things" has the potential to be fun, but one of the ground rules needs to be that the "things" cannot be connected in any way that might cost any OWNER money.