Economics has been called the “dismal science” by many people for many reasons. Personally, I’d like to think that it’s because, when employed properly, it reveals the aspects of human behavior very few people want exposed. One of the fundamental and simple principles of economics is that scarce goods are more highly valued and plentiful ones are less valued, and certainly human history continually shows that.

In fact, in that vein, if one applies basic economic principles to religion, the inescapable conclusion is that the wealthy and the privileged benefit disproportionately from religions and cultures that encourage the less fortunate to have lots of offspring.

Am I crazy in saying that? Or anti-religion? Hardly. It’s just the dismal science revealing what too many religions won’t or can’t admit. A few lessons from history might be instructive. After the Black Death ravaged Europe in the 14th century, killing well over a third of the population and possibly as much as sixty percent in some areas, a strange thing happened. Over the following centuries, life got a whole lot better for the working classes. Why? Because there was a shortage of labor, and even laborers became better paid. The higher cost of labor eventually led to the development of more innovations that were labor-saving and resulted in higher productivity and less brute manual work.

While China also suffered from the Black Death, the majority of the deaths were in the west of China, in the area dominated by the Mongols, as well as across the steppes, where in some areas as much as seventy percent of the population perished. This led to the collapse of Mongol rule, and the return to more traditional Chinese social and class structures… and continued reliance on a great deal of low-paid labor, of which there continued to be a great numbers… and no real incentive for the upper classes to build on the innovations that China developed centuries before the west, such as blast furnaces, gun-powder, and ocean trading.

Why did so many immigrants flee Europe for the United States? The ostensible and often-given answer is “for a better life.” But behind that answer lies economics – the fact that there was a shortage of labor in the United States, enough of a shortage that even unskilled workers could do better here than elsewhere.

Areas with high birthrates generally have lower living standards and an aristocracy of sorts that continues to live well and pay labor poorly. They’re generally also areas where women have fewer real rights and opportunities. There may be exceptions, but they’re very few and don’t last long. In such lands, the poor need to have large families just to survive, and the great numbers of the poor insure that wages for the poor remain low. With low wages, education is hard to come by, and that means only a small percentage of the poor ever rises above poverty. It also means that there are plenty of cheap servants, and most services are inexpensive.

When anyone talks about “right-to-life,” they’re really talking about a very selective “right.” They’re talking about the right to be born. The problem here is that these people’s “right-to-life” doesn’t extend to the right to live a decent life, and the higher the birth rate in any area, the more depressed wages tend to be and the fewer opportunities available to women.

So the “sacred” right-to-life really means that whatever divine being is behind it essentially supports misery and oppression. That’s sacred?

In all the hassles and kerfuffles involving the issue of education, it seems to me that one critical aspect of the problem has been totally overlooked, and that is the difference between the “right” to an opportunity as opposed to an outright right. All “rights” come with conditions, whether those are legal or physical or mental, or financial, or some combination thereof. One has to be a certain age to vote. One cannot exercise his or her second amendment rights under certain conditions… or if one has exercised those rights unwisely and ends up in jail.

Likewise, the “right” to an education is really the right to have the opportunity to gain that education. Not all individuals have the ability to become engineers, lawyers, physicists, or other professionals. Some individuals do not have the intellectual ability or the temperament to persevere through college and or graduate school. Saying that anyone has the unequivocal “right” to any particular kind of advanced education is either wistful dreaming or delusion. Saying that they should have the right to pursue education as far as their abilities may permit is far more accurate, although that still doesn’t address who will fund those studies and by what means. Nor does it address, as I’ve noted earlier, whether that education will lead to a job in that field.

The reason why the distinction between the right to an opportunity for education and the right to the education itself is vitally important is that if legislators insist on an unqualified right to a specific course of study that course of study will be dumbed down (while grades are inflated) in all but the most elite institutions, which is what has already occurred in U.S. public education, and which is why many parents mortgage their futures and everything else to pay to live in elite school districts and to send their children to the best colleges possible [or the best ones that they can afford].

Once upon a time, the vast majority of students who graduated from high school could write coherent sentences and understandable paragraphs and had a solid basis in fundamental mathematics, history, and science. Today, almost two thirds of all U.S. high school students have never written a paper exceeding five pages, and three quarters of them cannot write anywhere close to proficiently. Sixty percent cannot read with enough comprehension to effectively handle college level work, yet surveys show that over seventy percent of parents believe that public high schools are adequately preparing their children for college.

Those statistics are also another reason why more and more employers are requiring at least two years of college, not because the students need the college courses, but because only students who can complete two years of college are likely to have the basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills for most jobs.

So… if you want to finish destroying secondary and undergraduate education in the United States, by all means insist on every student’s “right” to higher education.

A week or so ago my wife and I went out to dinner at our favorite local Italian restaurant, a modestly upscale establishment, and as such, one of perhaps three in our entire geographic area.

We enjoyed the meal, as always, but I have to say that I was definitely distracted by the couple at the adjoining table, given that the male of the pair was wearing a tee-shirt of the type I usually reserve for exercise and yardwork, complimented by non-matching shorts that looked more like those worn by basketball players, and sandals. The woman with him was dressed very slightly more suitably.

Now, I know why the restaurant didn’t turn them away on grounds of attire – simply because it’s newish and is still running on the bare edge of profitability – and, in fact, one of the reasons we frequent it, in addition to the excellent food and setting [disregarding the attire of some patrons], is because we want it to survive and prosper and to continue to provide a higher level of food and service than all the fast-food outlets and mid-scale chain restaurants that proliferate in a regional university town.

Nonetheless, I am frankly baffled and astounded by what so many people wear out in public in the name of comfort(?) or convenience (?). The Italian restaurant is not exorbitant in its pricing, but it’s anything but bare-bones cheap, either, and I’m certain those thankfully few of its all too casually dressed patrons could certainly afford better attire than tee-shirts and running/basketball shorts, although from what I’ve seen advertised some of that sort of attire actually costs more than clothing that would seem more suitable to public appearances and dining in restaurants.

I understand the supposed lure of comfort, but what I don’t understand is why so many people wear “outfits” (for lack of a better term) that make them look their worst. There are plenty of clothes that are comfortable, affordable, and enhance the wearer’s presence – or at least don’t worsen his or her appearance. One fashion designer was reputed to have said that his clothes were designed to make a woman look more attractive than if she were stark naked, and as I unfortunately age, I know that my clothed appearance is definitely more attractive than my unclothed appearance.

The same general observation goes for men’s and women’s grooming. Why are hair “styles” and beard styles seemingly designed to make the wearer look worse? Or have people gotten so narcissistic that they can’t tell what does look good? And don’t tell me it’s for convenience… beards so unkempt that they get into everything including food, and that everything gets into, aren’t exactly convenient. I’m not against facial hair per se, and I have several acquaintances who look far better in their well-trimmed beards than they would bare-faced, but what’s with the growth of slovenly clothing and grooming that seems to be spreading? Is it just another aspect of the “shock culture? If so, I’ll admit I find it shocking, shockingly stupid and ill-mannered. But then I’m an anachronistic troglodyte who believes in wearing in public clean clothes that are actually clothing, as opposed to excessive skin-exposing exercise gear, and at least vaguely match, and grooming that doesn’t make people want to move away in fear and disgust.

One of the most regrettable trends I’ve seen in recent years is how many acquaintances and friends have given up landlines entirely for their cellphones. Included in this trend are several of our grown offspring. At first, this trend was a mere inconvenience for me, solved by making certain I had a personal directory of all their cellphone numbers, both in the directory of my seldom-used cellphone [except when I’m traveling] and in a short hard-copy list on my desk.

Now, I know why people are shutting off their landlines. First, it gets rid of – at least for now – a huge percentage of the obnoxious charitable and political telemarketers (who are exempt from the federal do-not-call regulations) as well as the scam artists and shysters who ignore the lists. Second, it reduces total telecommunications expenses, sometimes significantly. Unfortunately, it also does one other thing. It makes it just about impossible to contact people who aren’t either relatives, close friends, or frequent business associates, for the simple reason that, unless there’s a service I don’t know about, it’s just about impossible to find out someone’s cellphone number except on a personal basis. On more than a few occasions, when urgent work issues came up or when power failures occurred, my wife was unable to inform some faculty members because, when the computers crashed at work, so did email access, and without either email or their telephone numbers…

Now, I suppose, for most people, all of that is just fine, but what it means is that, effectively, people who rely just on cellphones are narrowing their contacts with the wider world. Sometimes, this is more than a mere inconvenience. On one occasion it took us days to discover whether one of our grown children had in fact survived a hurricane because, first, the cellphone towers had been disabled, and second, they were without power for almost two weeks.

Then, too, on more than one occasion, we’ve wanted to include people that we’ve met at various gatherings and invite them to one social occasion or another. In several cases, it took weeks before we could get in contact because they had no lineline and were new to the area. Without a listed telephone number, it’s hard even to find an address to send a written invitation.

And, finally, the last problem I have with exclusive reliance on cellphones is that it’s a reflection of the “me” generation, the idea that what’s convenient and cost-effective for “me” is all that matters. It doesn’t matter if people have a hard time reaching you, but then, I understand that, too, because ninety-five percent of the calls our land-line receives are from charitable organizations or political shysters, and I’d just as soon not have to even look at the caller listing, let alone answer them, which we never do. Although the other five percent are still important, I can definitely see the temptation in just ditching the landline, and its costs, and regrettable as what that represents is, I wonder how long we’ll end up holding out.

Depending on who’s taking the survey and when, between forty and fifty percent of recent college graduates are underemployed, meaning that they’re working in a job that doesn’t require a college degree. Add to that the ten to seventeen percent of recent college graduates who have no job at all, and that adds up to more than half of all recent graduates being either unemployed or underemployed. A Federal Reserve study which examined this problem both in current and historic terms discovered that historically around thirty percent of college graduates tended to be underemployed, but fifty percent is unprecedented.

Yet almost everyone keeps touting higher education as a way to a higher income, and, I suppose, in a way, even with these statistics, they’re right, because the income and employment picture for those without degrees is far worse. But isn’t there something wrong with a system where the number of taxi-drivers with a college degree has gone from 1% to over 15% in the past twenty years? Or where being a telemarketer and phoning every number the computers dial is one of the great opportunities for those with bachelor’s-level English and psychology degrees?

One of the answers that pops out of all the statistics is that college graduates with degrees in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] fields have higher rates of employment, and that may well be… except that, on average U.S. colleges and universities graduate twice as many degree holders annually as there are jobs in those fields.

In some ways, higher education has become almost what amounts to “the Red Queen’s race” [borrowing from Lewis Carroll], in that students have to invest more and more in higher education, in essence to stay in the same place or to find jobs with modest additional returns compared to past generations.

When we as a society are producing what amounts to twice as many degree holders as there are jobs for them, at an ever-increasing cost to the students, their parents, and society, shouldn’t we be looking at whether we need more college graduates, especially given the costs involved? This doesn’t even consider the costs to those who cannot afford higher education and who are effectively barred from jobs they could do, and often do well, by employers who look for college graduates they really don’t need but that they can get. Nor does it consider the costs to graduates with degrees, sometimes with multiple degrees, who are rejected for jobs because they’re over-qualified.

And now that we have candidates for president advocating free college tuition, exactly what would we get for the tens of billions of dollars that would cost, at a time when so many existing graduates can’t get jobs commensurate with their degrees? Or maybe, just maybe, we should allow more students to enter college, but toughen up the curriculum so that only the brightest and most determined graduate?

In any case, for the moment, doesn’t ensuring that there are more people with a college-degree education appear to be the one-size-fits-all answer that isn’t really the solution to a far more complex problem?

More than a few people have asked the question “Why can’t Congress simplify the laws, rather than making them more complex?” Similar questions are asked about federal regulations all the time as well.

They’re good questions, but they unfortunately also have fairly simple answers. The first is that, in a political system that allows “popular” input, laws can be changed, or tweaked, to benefit those with enough political or financial power to influence the lawmakers. Such tweaks add complexity.

The second reason is that the United States is overflowing with attorneys, and almost every law ever passed is challenged in some way or fashion, either to get benefits under it, to avoid being covered by it, or to widen the coverage. While not all those challenges require changes in the laws, a great number do. In turn, those changes spark additional legal challenges, which in turn often spawn more legislation…and more litigation… and possibly more legislation…

The quick answer to this is to keep the laws “simple.” And, it’s true, “simple” laws don’t offer as much opportunity for legal challenges. But, unhappily, if laws are too “simple,” they can also turn out to be horribly unfair in many cases. So, politicians, never wanting to seem unfair, try to craft laws that are more “fair.” More fair is also more complex, and often the provisions that are meant to make things fair are then challenged by one group or another claiming that the law should or should not apply to them, whichever is to their advantage, and sometimes on the grounds that the application of the law is inequitable.

And when you have a large and complex economy, based on complex technology, with global implications, the legal structure becomes equally complex, and more often than not, the idea of fairness becomes twisted into something that is anything but fair.

In the United States, the “outsiders” continue to dominate the Republican presidential nomination contests, and even among the Democrats, outsiders are gaining ground. What makes this all so surreal is that the same voters who are backing the outsiders are the ones who backed the insiders in all previous elections, because they’re frustrated that elected government isn’t doing what they wanted.

What very few seem to recognize is that what has led to governmental deadlock in so many areas is that voters penalize any official who tries to work out a compromise by throwing them out of office. So there are few compromises. With neither party able to muster a clear majority, compromise is the only way to get anything done, but compromise has essentially become political suicide, because of the polarization of the two main political parties.

So now the voters want to penalize the mainstream and experienced candidates because they didn’t commit political suicide. These voters are doing that by backing candidates who promise results they cannot deliver because their promises are based on ignoring reality. And anyone in the media or political arena who points this out is shouted down, mocked, or ignored.

Is this the result of the “me” culture? The “I want it now and I’m going to have a tantrum if I don’t get it” culture?

That may be, but I think it’s also largely the result of the two-fold failure of most Americans to understand that (1) none of us deserves special treatment merely because we exist and (2) none of us are exclusively self-made successes.

I’m not saying that successful people didn’t have talent and didn’t work to get their success, but I am saying that without all the social and physical “infrastructure” provided by American society and government, few if any of those successes would have been possible. Just having clean water and decent sanitation provides a great advantage. Almost half the world doesn’t have one or the other. Having a basic education is another great advantage. Roughly over a sixth of the world’s population is illiterate. Having enough food to eat with the right nutrients means that children don’t grow up mentally and physically stunted, but some 13% of the world’s population is malnourished, and in large areas, such as Africa, almost a quarter of the population is undernourished.

Wide-spread corruption and arbitrary laws stifle development, ideas, and success, and one of the major factors behind the success of the United States and Western Europe has been the development and enforcement of more equitable laws and regulations. Likewise, the encouragement and development of national and regional transportation systems by governments fosters success. There are scores of other factors in our culture without which individual genius, determination, and effort would be totally thwarted… and yet the myth of the totally self-made individual persists.

We are in great danger of losing everything if we persist in ignoring that our greatest strength is not survival of the individual most fit, but a culture of cooperation and compromise that allows those with talents to flourish. It might help to remember that the deadliest individual predator on the planet is the tiger – and it is an endangered species.

The other day I went to the grocery store for just one thing. Now, I’ll admit that, since I was there, I did pick up several other items, but I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t wanted to pick up that one item, which, by the way, happened to be Canadian bacon. When I left the store, I was departing without the Canadian bacon, because out of every single item in the meat department, the only thing the store was sold out of was, of course, Canadian bacon.

I should have known better. The time I wanted my particular shaving cream and nothing else, they were out of it. The same thing happened a month before when I went to pick-up extra-strength buffered aspirin for my wife [this is more than occasionally necessary for those who teach college students]. Or the time that I went just for dry cat food.

It’s also why I pick up two of all of those items, and try to remember to get replacements before we’re all out… because… exactly, when I wait until we absolutely need just that one thing, more often than not, the store happens to be out of it.

Whether this is because I have an unerring instinct that enables me to run out precisely when the store also runs out, or because the universe is perverse in dealing with the procurement of otherwise minor and insignificant items, I have no idea.

What I do know is that, at least for me, running out of anything leaves me with a fifty-fifty chance of finding the store without it at all… and that’s why we have a pantry with lots of duplication… and why I STILL have trouble picking up just one thing [because when you have duplicates/backups, you tend to think you have more than you do].

Enough of the surveys! Enough of rating everything! And especially enough of tests and studies conducted or designed by “impartial outsiders.”

Today it seems as though any business or institution of any size is trying to assess, study, and measure its effectiveness in doing its job and meeting its goals, from Amazon to education, from big banking to start-ups not even off the ground. On top of that, supervisors and managers are flooding subordinates with emails wanting instant progress reports on a daily basis, if not sooner, and the amount of time spent on answering such largely pointless communications continues to rise.

One of the critical points that all these “assessors” in search of data and accountability seem either to ignore or to never have learned is that every minute and every dollar spent on assessment is a dollar or minute not spent on achieving the institution’s or business’s objectives, and more and more assessment inevitably leads to less and less real achievement, no matter what results appear to come from such additional assessments.

Education is becoming the poster child for excessive and counter-productive assessment. No matter what those proponents of great testing and assessments say, and no matter what statistics they cite, American education remains at a crisis point, because, particularly at the elementary and secondary levels, and even to a degree at the baccalaureate level in college, instructors are in point of fact essentially being forced not only to test more and more, but also to “teach to the test.” Add to that the fact that at the collegiate level, they also have to teach to “student evaluations.”

While the tests show a slight improvement in basic skills, what they do not show is the losses. The fact is that the majority of graduating high school seniors cannot write a logical, coherent, factually based, and grammatically correct paragraph. They cannot analyze anything with much complexity involved, and they cannot integrate data, skills, and knowledge. Nor can they apply skills learned in one area to problems in another.

These are not skills that can be accurately measured by any “objective” test, yet they are skills vital to the continued success of a high-tech society.

We’re also seeing similar problems in the political and media arenas, as Americans seem less and less able to integrate data and analyze all the sound bites they receive, many of which are factually incorrect, contradictory, and logically flawed. Businesses over-focus on immediate short term goals, all too often in opposition to what would insure greater long-term success, because success in meeting short-term goals can be far more accurately and quickly assessed.

Metaphorically speaking, we don’t need to kill all the lawyers, as Shakespeare’s King Henry VI asserted, but a good start would be decimating the assessors.

It’s now approaching the halfway mark of the fall semester at the university, and certain all too predictable things are happening. A significant percentage of students, especially first year students, are getting sick. More of them are zoning out or only half- awake in class because of lack of sleep. A great many of them are also realizing that they’re way behind where they should be in terms of learning, reading, and getting assignments done, and the undone assignments are beginning to pile up, especially when they spend too much time on social media.

Then there are those upon whom it has dawned that they’re not special. In my wife’s field – singing and opera – this is particularly noticeable, because probably half of the incoming voice students were the top performers in their high school. Then they discover that they’re in college, amid other first year students who were used to being the center of attention, and all of them also discover, mournfully, that the singers in the upper classes are generally much better. Most of them learn that they have flaws in their technique, and that they need to learn their music far more quickly than ever before – while taking music theory, which is a far tougher course than most would-be music majors have ever seen before in their life, and also taking diction and literature, which requires scores of hours listening – on their own – to music the majority of which most of them have never heard, by composers whom they largely know only by name, if that, and not by their music, while learning things like the international phonetic alphabet (IPA)[so they can learn songs in foreign languages correctly].

And no, they won’t get a lead role. In fact, many will only get minor roles in the operas, or chorus roles. They also discover that they have to practice, and develop, if they haven’t already, basic piano skills and improve their skills enough to pass a proficiency test by the end of their second year…or be washed out of the program.

In short, many of them discover… they are not special in the slightest. They also discover that a great voice, a beautiful natural voice, is only the beginning. One of the problems is that too many of those with great natural talent have been praised every day of their high school life and have never really worked at music. Now they have to work, after discovering they’re no longer special, and every year at least one, if not more, student with great natural ability bails out or flunks out because they actually have to work, because they can’t accept that they just can’t get up there and sing, that they’re expected to develop a good technique, and learn not just arias, but art song, and things like secco recitative. These are just a few of the skills and knowledge that a good program will teach a student, the ones whose mastery will make a student special, rather than providing largely empty praise.

That’s because, in the real world, what makes one special is that you sing not only “beautifully,” but precisely and with emotion and expression, day after day, often under conditions that are anything but ideal. Only the results count, and that’s a hard lesson for students to learn, especially today. Some will… and that’s where their education for life truly begins.

Over the past several months, ISIS elements have either been in the headlines and news shows, particularly for their use of force, violence, and media savvy in getting across the point that nothing is sacred, except their own narrow beliefs, in their attempts to establish an Islamic religiously-based nation state. To this end, ISIS operatives have beheaded journalists, tortured and killed anyone who does not believe as they do, destroyed ancient cultural artifacts, sold whatever they could to raise funds for their holy crusade, and made it crystal-clear that women are not the equal of men and should be their slaves.

Much of the world, including the United States, has been appalled, disgusted, often horrified, and made the point that ISIS is not what a civilized nation should be, particularly because ISIS denies any freedom to anyone that is in the slightest against what they regard as Islamic Sharia law.

Yet…everyone tends to forget that we have an analogue to ISIS right here in the United States. And no, they’re not Muslim. They regard themselves as God-fearing, good religious Christians who often cite the U. S. Constitution – or at least their version of it – in much the same way that ISIS cites the Koran to support its horrific actions. If you haven’t guessed, yet, I’m speaking of the extreme right-wing, fanatical Republicans.

These people aren’t terribly interested in anyone’s freedom except their own, no matter how much they declare they are, except perhaps for the freedom to carry deadly weapons [another similarity to ISIS]. Their idea of freedom is exemplified most recently by Kim Davis, the county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because the idea of gay marriage is against her faith. Let’s get this straight. No one is forcing Ms. Davis personally to marry someone of the same sex. The law and the Supreme Court have stated that any two single individuals, regardless of gender, have the right to get married. No one is forcing anyone into a single-sex marriage. But her freedoms are infringed because she can’t impose her views of marriage on others?

These right-wing groups also oppose environmental regulations in almost any form, claiming that such regulations are everything from excessive to unwarranted because the costs infringe on their rights to make money. In effect, they’re claiming that their right to make money trumps the right of the public to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and not to inflict huge ocean level rises and higher global temperatures and more massive storms upon our children and grandchildren.

Despite the fact that the minimum wage is well below a living wage, the right-wingers insist that they should be able to make a living by paying other people less than is adequate for those people to make a living… and then they complain that government should cut back on programs for the poorest Americans because taxes, especially on right-wing capitalists, are too high.

Likewise, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court declared that, under certain reasonable conditions, women had the right to have abortions. The most violent members of the Republican right wing are insisting, literally, that a woman who will die if she brings a child to term has no right to save herself by having an abortion. This is anything but the defense of freedom; it is the use of religion to dominate someone else.

And let’s not get into the “life is sacred” or “right to life” simplistic mantras. Both are largely right-wing hypocritical propaganda. The same people who spew this crap are the very ones who oppose all the programs for the poorest and most disadvantaged. If there is such a thing as a right to life, then it should be manifested by support of all lives throughout their lives, not just until they’re born… and then left on their own. As for the sacredness of life, where did that come from? From religion, of course, and that means that using religion to restrict a woman’s freedom to control her own body — and to survive – is effectively using the law to arrogate one particular set of beliefs over every other… and that is, at least in spirit, the use of law to push a particular religion, and not all that different from using the law to create a nationally required church [which, by the way, is in fact forbidden by the Constitution]. Also, as for life being sacred, these are the same people who want, under the right to bear arms, the right to defend themselves by killing other people, waging war on other nations, and using and shooting every form of life that can be hunted, while supporting actions that have effectively resulted in the latest great extinction of planetary life-forms, suggesting that what life they regard as sacred is a tiny fraction of planetary life, and essentially white-skinned.

Admittedly, the Republican right wingers are making this assault on the personal freedoms of those who do not share their values largely through two essentially American tools – money and law – although in some cases, a few more fanatical right-wingers have actually used weapons to gun down doctors who performed abortions. Not only that, but each year the extremists push for more and more measures to restrict the freedoms of others, continually threatening to shut down government if they don’t get their way.

And, frankly, like all too many moderate and good Muslims, who are loath to strongly and publicly criticize Islamic extremists, all too many of the more decent elements in the Republican party have also been loath to speak out, largely because, I suspect, they immediately tend to be attacked, ignored, or ostracized.

As a life-long Republican, who retains his registration in spite of seldom being able to find a Republican candidate I can support, and who served in positions from precinct committeeman, state delegate, Congressional Staff director, and the politically appointed director of the Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs at the U.S. EPA during the Reagan Administration, I am absolutely disgusted and appalled that the most conservative elements of the Republican Party have more in common with ISIS than with the Constitution drafted and envisioned in their writings by the Founding Fathers… and that they fail to realize that fact.

Over past years, I tried to explain what my wife the voice and opera professor does, day in and day out, and why what she does is so brutally exhausting. I’ve largely given that up, because no amount of explanation seems able to convey the totality of what she does to people who don’t already understand the profession and little explanation is needed for those who do. I also tend not to talk about certain aspects of writing for similar reasons.

Since I am most obviously not a racial minority, gay, or a person of color, I hesitate to make comparisons, but I do think the same mental mechanism is at work in the majority of people of any culture or society. There’s an old saying about not judging until you’ve walked and worked in another person’s shoes, but in today’s digital and data-driven world, all too many people make judgments based on their own experience… and data. The problem with data is that it reveals demographics, distribution, and results… and, for the most part, not much beyond that. Sociological data can be so badly skewed by a multiplicity of factors that it’s difficult to determine which studies are truly valid for what purposes. Add to that the fact that today’s American society is perhaps the most segregated it has ever been in terms of income, occupation, and education. On top of that, pervasive but subtle racial and cultural segregation also still exists, and sometimes and in some places, that segregation is still anything but subtle. Not only are there glass ceilings for women, but those ceilings exist for others as well.

Yes, there are those who have lived with or in sub-cultures or groups outside those into which they were born, raised, or educated, but they often remain a minority, often untrusted by those in the group from which they came and often by those in the minority group.

Data, statistics, policies, and bureaucratic programs don’t solve the problems of feelings, especially the feeling of not being understood, especially in a society that has become more and more centered on the “me culture.” People, especially those with light-colored skin, tend not to look outside their own self-selected groups. And the less they do, the less they can even come close to understanding.

All one has to do is to look at some of the numbers. Despite all the rhetoric about police killings of blacks, for example, in New York those deaths are a fraction of what they were forty years ago. What hasn’t changed significantly is the ratio of black men killing black men, compared to whites killing whites. Death is far more omnipresent in black minority communities than in even the poorest of white communities. Yet while police killings of minorities have dropped, the other homicide levels have not fallen to the same degree, and the discrepancy between black and white homicide rates remains.

Under these conditions, it shouldn’t be that difficult to see why minorities, especially black minorities, are protesting and essentially saying, “You don’t understand!” And they have reasons for making that claim, because they believe if the rest of us really understood, we’d make a more meaningful effort to address the problems that lie at the root of all those black-on-black homicides, and not just to address police behavior alone.

There are two basic aspects to any problem that an intelligent person should consider: (1) the cause of the problem and (2) the most practical solution. The first aspect is a good idea so that you either don’t repeat the problem [if you’re the cause] or that you can hopefully do something about a similar problem if you see it happening again [or at least get out of harm’s way]. The second aspect is the starting point for doing something to remedy the problem.

But what if the problem was caused generations ago, and since then all sorts of other problems have been created as a result of the original problem? And what if your forebears weren’t the cause of the original problem, but either weren’t in a position to do something about it or chose not to? Maybe I’m just being simplistically pragmatic, but it seems to me that the pressing question isn’t who was to blame back then, but what’s to be done right now… and what CAN be done right now.

I’m making this generic, because there are a great number of difficult situations across the globe where various countries, people, cultures, and sub-cultures are fixated on WHO caused the problem, rather than on what needs to be done. Not only that, but in a number of those cases, it’s not all that clear who was originally to blame. Blacks in the United States tend to blame the United States and white slaveholders for the institution of slavery, but virtually all of the original black slaves shipped to what became the United States were enslaved and initially sold by other blacks. It was wrong to buy and have slaves, but there wouldn’t have been any slaves if the institution hadn’t already been established in Africa, where, by the way, it seems to be undergoing a resurgence.

We now have refugees flooding out of Africa, out of parts of Asia, even out of certain parts of southern Europe. There are millions of refugees crowded into small areas on the edge of Israel. The United States has millions of illegal immigrants who fled terrorism and poverty in Latin American countries. In all of these instances, dealing with WHO created the problem has very little to do with how the world or various countries need to deal with resolving how to make these people safe and productive. And frankly, even when the problem has a current cause, the costs of dealing with those who caused it may not be practical. The United States, and even the world, doesn’t have enough troops and equipment to mount a military takeover of much of the Middle East and Africa to get rid of all the rebels and regimes that have created the massive flow of refugees.

Original sin is great for theologians, but it’s a lousy excuse for solving problems, and it also gets in the way of solutions, because people hate being blamed for what their ancestors did, and that just makes fixing things even harder politically and practically. But then, blame is far easier and cheaper than implementing solutions, especially when it’s far from clear how much blame belongs to whom and when.

Mark Twain is reputed to have said that, on average, a man with his head in the oven and his feet in a bucket of ice water is comfortable. Today, that aphorism is more worth heeding than ever. Everyone seems to be obsessed with numbers, but most people really fail to understand all the numbers they so blithely cite or follow.

For example, in Cedar City, in January the relative humidity is often over 70%. Sounds really humid, doesn’t it? It’s not. Not in the slightest. The average high temperature is 42 degrees Fahrenheit, the average low 17F, and the altitude is close to 6,000 feet. At those temperatures, the maximum amount of water the air can hold [at 100% relative humidity] is between 2 and 4 grams per kilogram of air, and with the higher altitude, that kilogram of air is larger than at sea level, which means the water vapor is even more diffuse. By comparison, on a mild spring day, at sea level, with the temperature at 70F, and a relative humidity of 50%, each kilogram of air would hold 8 grams. So 50% percent relative humidity at 70F means twice as much water vapor as 100% relative humidity at 42F. Of course, that’s why it’s called relative humidity, and why it doesn’t mean near as much in the winter as in the summer.

In terms of income, averages can be extremely deceptive. In 2014, the mean [or average] U.S. family income was $72,641. That doesn’t sound so bad, but the median [the midpoint income, with half the incomes above and half below] family income was $59,939. And neither the median nor the mean indicates that 15% of American families, or roughly forty-five million people, have incomes below the poverty level of $23,500 for a family of four or $11,770 for a single individual [before federal and state benefits], that 66% of all Americans earn less than $41,000, or that half of all income was earned by the 20% of families earning over $100,000.

EPA estimated mileage numbers are another case where it helps to know what’s behind the numbers. The EPA test protocol is based on the car model in question being driven at legal highway speeds 45% of the time and in city traffic 55% of the time. Virtually all cars get better mileage at highway speeds than in local traffic; so if you drive exclusively in the city and suburbs, your vehicle is almost never likely to reach the EPA estimated mileage figures. Nor will it reach those figures if you’re one of those drivers who drive at speeds in excess of 80 mph.

Another problem with numbers is that far too many organizations are so obsessed with quantifying performance that they insist on quantifying the unquantifiable. My wife the voice and opera professor faces this every year, and each year the quantification demands get stronger and the insistence on a wider range of objective performance data gets louder… and the accompanying paperwork gets more involved and more time-consuming. One of the basic problems with rating voice performance is that, to begin with, unless a singer can match pitch, sing on key, and in the proper tempo and rhythm, they fail. Above that basic level of performance, objective quantification becomes close to impossible. Beyond that level there are no objective standards that apply across the board. Some professional singers are limited to two octaves or so; some few can sing a range of four. How does one quantify the richness or timbre of a voice, or the phrasing, or the breathing? What about the occasional voices that are unique, that go beyond mere technique? But the educational mavens want numbers! The same is true of writing. I’ve seen a great deal of writing over the years that is grammatically correct… and terrible. I’ve seen great storytellers with terrible grammar. Objectively weighing writing through a set of rubrics or “objective” parameters is close to useless – except for weeding out those who can’t write at all.

So why are we so obsessed with numbers when it’s very clear, at least to me, that there are places for numbers and places where relying on numbers makes no sense?

One reason is because, as a society, we fear what we think is the “tyranny of subjectivity,” of relying on personal and professional judgment that can be warped by factors unrelated to the quality [or lack thereof] of what is being measured or judged. Numbers seem so much more “impartial.” The problem is that they can be just as biased in their own way… and very few people seem to realize that. Except Mark Twain, who also said, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Yet we are swamped in a sea of statistics demanded by more and more institutions and organizations, and government bureaucracies who all seem to think that the numbers, and only the numbers, hold all the answers.

This past weekend I was in Denver, visiting family, and I took my usual morning walk along one of the walking/running/biking paths… and it seemed like I ran across more than a hundred people, most of them incredibly fit-looking, not exactly a surprise, given that Colorado is rated as the most “fit” state in the union. As a walker, albeit a fast walker who can almost keep up with the slower joggers, the few other walkers and I were definitely outnumbered by runners and bikers. And I was definitely outnumbered by all those who carried water-bottles and water back-packs; even some of the slowest walkers seemed to be carting water bottles.

I’ve never seen so many people carting water, and I have to ask why.

Living as I do in Cedar City, which is high desert, and dry enough most of the time to make Denver seem tropical by comparison, I’m well aware of the dangers of dehydration. I always make sure I’m hydrated before I take my walk, and then again after I return.

While the average humidity in Denver is around 50%, in Cedar City, from April to October it’s around 22%, and the high temperatures are close to those in Denver. But I don’t see the same proliferation of water paraphernalia in my home town as I was seeing in Denver.

What exactly is the concern with hydration that goes with the physical fitness cult?

I definitely understand the need for adequate fluids, especially on hot days,or if you’re well away from civilization. I certainly understand the need for endurance and long-distance runners to carry water bottles… but for 20 to 40 minute walks or runs, especially early in the day when it’s cooler? But then, when I did a little research, it turned out that if you’re exercising and in good health, it’s just about impossible to drink too much water.

But I still wonder if hydration is being overemphasized. Does everyone need to carry water all the time, especially in the middle of a city?

From my point of view, there are four basic reasons people read: (1) for entertainment, which includes escaping reality; (2) for knowledge, or to learn about things they don’t know in some fashion; (3) for inspiration, and/or to think about matters in new or different ways; and (4) for occupational/scholastic necessity, although I’d hope scholastic necessity includes learning (which it doesn’t, unhappily, for all too many students today).

People also delude themselves about those reasons. Reading about cinema stars or the Kardashians, or reading tabloid stories about natural disasters and the like isn’t learning; it’s entertainment. And reading to obtain knowledge in order to use that knowledge to reinforce existing thought patterns is certainly reading for knowledge, but it doesn’t do much for thinking when the mindset is already ossified.

One of the great benefits of fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is the best of books in these genres can not only entertain, allow a certain escapism, but also impart knowledge and spur thought. On top of that, they can provide income and a following for the critics who review them, although, from what I’ve seen over the years, a certain percentage of those critics neither learn anything from some books nor are able to think about what the book contained, but then they probably weren’t the best students, either.

In any case, F&SF at its best does all of the above, and at its worst still provides entertainment…and that’s not something you can say about an awful of aspects of society today.

So… keep reading.

One of the latest political polls I saw showed that the three “non-political” candidates [Trump, Carson, and Fiorina] for the Republican Presidential nomination now hold over fifty percent of the likely Republican voters. Another showed Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton in several key primary states. Whether these numbers are totally accurate or whether they rise or fall, they’re highly significant in two regards.

First, they show how much anger and dissatisfaction there is among the electorate with professional politicians and Washington, D.C. And second, they show the lack of political and economic understanding on the part of most Americans, not to mention a high degree of hypocrisy.

I’ve already written about the anger, and that’s pretty obvious to many Americans as well as the political commentators.

I’ve mentioned aspects of the lack of understanding before, and some comments in response to my observations also illustrate that there’s a wide-spread failure to understand why seeming “simple” and “common-sense” solutions, as many proposed by Trump and others are called, are neither simple nor common-sense…and certainly not affordable under current taxation levels. A tremendous percentage of the American people, when it comes to government, have no comprehension of the costs involved, one way or the other.

Most Americans believe that wasteful federal spending should be eliminated, but they won’t support the elimination of excess military bases, because they represent jobs in their districts. The army has more tanks than it can use; that’s one reason why the army had no problem turning over excess armored personnel carriers and other equipment to police forces. The BLM runs essentially runs in the red because federal grazing rates are between half and a fifth of what private grazing rights go for. IRS audit rates are the lowest in years, if not forever, and getting to the taxpayer assistance lines takes hours at times because Congress cut IRS funding so much. Lower audits mean less revenue and more successful tax cheats. The list of Congressionally mandated requirements that reduce tax revenues and subsidize special or popular interests, virtually all in response to popular or contributor political pressure, would take pages and pages to even summarize.

There was a huge hue and cry over corporate profits and American companies moving their headquarters abroad, and the popular and political response wasn’t to deal with the reason behind those moves, which is the U.S. tax structure, but to make it more difficult for companies to do that… which is already proving ineffective and giving more companies to move their headquarters abroad — exactly the opposite of what would be desirable.

Minimum wage workers want higher wages, and need them if they are to be able to support themselves without federal aid, but small businesses don’t want higher wages mandated, and most voters who aren’t minimum wage workers don’t want to pay higher taxes to provide income support and welfare benefits to the working poor who need those benefits because their wages are so low.

In short, voters want lower taxes, but no cuts in federal programs that benefit them, only in “other people’s programs,” and they also want to beef up programs such as immigration enforcement, law enforcement, without any increase in taxes.

Yet they’re angry that the “career politicians” can’t deliver this impossible package, and they get angry at any politician or public figure who points out that what everyone wants costs more than anyone wants to pay.

So they’re voting for the “outsiders.” The problem is that basic economics doesn’t care whether a politician is an insider or an outsider. We’ve reached a point where we can’t keep borrowing more than we’re willing to taxes ourselves… and a huge percentage of the electorate isn’t willing to face the problem. They just want someone else to pay for it, and they’re voting for anyone who will support their delusions.

With all the conflict during “Hugo season” about diversity, multi-culturalism, social justice and their relation to story-telling, I thought a little perspective might be useful, particularly with what I see as an underlying and incorrect assumption that F&SF was a white man’s province bereft of diversity and multi-culturalism until recently, say, perhaps the last twenty years or so.

To begin with, multi-culturalism and diversity in science fiction and fantasy didn’t start in the 1980s or 1990s. Andre Norton [aka Alice Mary Norton] was writing about full-blooded Navajos in the 1950s. Leigh Brackett featured Eric John Stark, with skin almost as dark as his black hair. The Left Hand of Darkness, the acclaimed novel by Ursula Le Guin featuring a biologically hermaphroditic alien human society, was published in 1969, and those are just a small smattering of the F&SF novels featuring diverse racial and gender settings and themes published long before the current “diversity” movement. Ironically, of course, a good many of those novels were written by women and published under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms. And yes, such novels were not in the majority. They were a definite minority, and often such efforts were overlooked when they were plainly there.

Ursula Le Guin has noted more than once that the dark skin of the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea has been continually overlooked by readers and cover artists [or perhaps that artist was instructed to overlook it for marketing purposes]. Heinlein’s main character in Starship Troopers was a young man of Philippine heritage who spoke Tagalog, something that still gets glossed over in critiques of the novel.

By the 1ate 1980s, more than twenty-five years ago, F&SF novels with culture, race, and gender issues were certainly prominent, and the works (and death) of James Tiptree, Jr. [Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon] had inspired even greater discussion of gender and diversity in F&SF. Octavia Butler began publishing short stories in the early 1970s and went on to become a major voice for black themes and writers by the 1980s.

A number of other writers have quietly incorporated multi-culturalism, gender and gender issues, and other forms of diversity in their books as well, even if they have not been recognized as “standard bearers.” I’ve written eight books strictly from the female point of view and another three with multiple POVS, one of which is female in each of those three books. I’m also known for strong female characters. I’ve written two books from the “minority” POV, one a black male officer in a predominantly white space force, the other a blond Anglo in a predominantly Asian/Shinto culture, both of whom face quiet discrimination. I’ve also had strong minor characters [and not villains!] who have been gay, lesbian, and transgendered. I didn’t do any of this in service to any ideology. Those were the stories I was telling, and they were based on the kinds and types of people I know. I’m not claiming any honors or demanding praise, but I am saying that too many authors who quietly include what might be called multicultural societies and diversity in their worlds and who write a good story often have that diversity ignored or dismissed because it isn’t blatant enough, or because diversity itself isn’t the story. This often amounts to the minimization of non-obvious excellence and the elevation of often less-excellent message stories.

I’ll also admit that, at times, diversity can and should play a larger part. The Left Hand of Darkness is an amazing novel, and was especially so when it was written and published, particularly because it featured a straight protagonist facing politically and physically life-threatening situations sparked by the interplay of his very presence and two cultures whose hermaphroditic nature created a far more ambiguous and indirect weave of societal pressures than the protagonist could ever have anticipated. The story and the culture cannot be separated, and that’s the way it should be.

That doesn’t mean that every good or excellent F&SF story needs to be about diversity, or gender, or multi-culturalism, although not including a diverse cast of characters, given the makeup of our world today, strikes me a highly unrealistic. Nor should a novel be elevated unduly or praised merely because it features diversity, but a novel that has a good plot, and good characters, with diversity as well, should rate higher, in terms of literary value, than one that is simply a rip-roaring adventure story.

All of which underscores what I’ve been trying to point out for months – it should be the totality of the story or book, not the current flavor du jour [or decade] of what’s on readers’ social agendas, that determines the value of a book.

As a result of some of my comments about the Hugo kerfuffle, I’ve received several comments, here and elsewhere, that state or imply that I just don’t understand what happened and why. I think I understand it very well. But I obviously need to go back to some of the basics that appear to have been overlooked.

Human beings work through groups. Those groups range from cliques and gangs to various organizations and businesses all the way up to government. All these groups have rules. Those rules fall into two categories: explicit rules and implicit rules. The explicit rules can be verbal, but in modern society are usually written. The implicit rules are always unspoken and supposed to be understood by members of the group. Often, if people don’t understand the unspoken rules and follow them, they’re considered to not really be a part of the group. Generally speaking, the more structured and larger an organization is, the more it operates on explicit and formal rules. And the more diverse it is, the more it needs a greater amount of written rules to make sure that everyone understands what those rules are, and the consequences for breaking them. That’s why governments tend to accrete more and more laws and regulations as they grow and age.

The World Science Fiction Society is closer to cliques than to governments. It has specific rules and written procedures for how the Hugo awards are determined, but, as the recent Hugo kerfuffle demonstrates, there are clearly unspoken rules of behavior expected by the group I’ve termed “the new traditionalists,” which has dominated the proceedings and award selection process for at least two decades.

Just in the past few days, author and editor Eric flint offered an essay describing, with statistics, the change in F&SF “literary”/award standards and how the field has changed from one where there was considerable overlapping between “popular” fiction and the works getting awards to one where there is very little, if any. This change suggests that “story” alone is no longer as important a factor in determining “excellence.”

The “sad puppies” were formed by a loose group of writers and fans who felt, rightly or wrongly, that the new traditionalists were sacrificing “story” to other factors such as diversity and gender issues in determining what represented the “best” in F&SF. They raised the issue, and, predictably, because they constituted the minority of those voting, were effectively ignored and their concerns dismissed and minimized. So, after several years, this past year, they came up with a “slate,” something that was not prohibited (and, in fact, probably could not be prohibited in any way that would be effective).

Immediately, Vox Day, aka Theodore Beale, came up with an even more radical “rabid puppies” slate, out of motives that appear to be far more grounded in self-interest, and possibly gaining lots of publicity for his small publishing house and the authors he publishes.

At this point, the new traditionalists and their supporters expressed outrage, and have continued to do so, claiming that the puppies “gamed the system,” despite the fact that what the puppies did was well within the written rules. Why such an outpouring of outrage? Because the method used broke the tacit and unwritten rules accepted and followed by the new traditionalists.

What is continually overlooked in this kerfuffle is that the sad puppies expressed a concern, which was overlooked and minimized. Exactly why did they have any incentive to follow unspoken rules which they believe put them at a disadvantage in expressing their concerns?

This underlying conflict then provided Vox Day with the perfect opportunity to “self-publicize” and gain a platform he could not have possibly gained in almost any other way… as well as, incidentally, to further negate the actual underlying issues originally expressed by the “sad puppies.” The reaction to his acts clearly confirmed that there are unspoken rules and that the majority of Hugo voters did not like others breaking those rules. Whether the Hugo majority actually represents the feelings of the majority of F&SF readers is also another question, because even the massive increase in the voting membership of WorldCon represents less than one percent of all fantasy and science fiction readers.

In any case, the fact is that the unspoken rule against “slates” has been broken, and if the new traditionalists and their supporters do not greatly increase their participation in the initial nominating process, something that a number of others have already stated, the same sort of slate versus anti-slate confrontation could happen again next year. And if it does, the only “winner” will be Vox Day.

We have two groups with very different perspectives on what constitutes excellence. Each believes the other is wrong, misguided, or the like. Those on each side can argue quite logically their viewpoint. The problem is that, all too often, people with fixed mindsets believe absolutely and firmly that their understanding of a situation is the only way it can be accurately perceived. It has nothing to do with whether one is liberal or conservative, or any other social outlook. It has to do with a certain firmness of thought, described as “principled” by each of themselves, while describing their opponents as misguided or unprincipled.

In the case of the Hugos, as I see it, and I’ve certainly been criticized for the way I see it, there is some truth in both the cases of the “sad puppies” and the “new traditionalists.” [I have to say that I don’t see much truth or objectivity in the points of the “rabid puppies,” but perhaps my mindset just doesn’t accept what seems to be hateful provocation or use of hate to self-publicize.] And, as I’ve said before, not only do I think the field is big enough for both viewpoints, but the sales of a range of authors prove that rather demonstrably.

Yet each side is contending that the other did something hateful and discriminatory, largely because one side refused to abide by unspoken rules that they believed minimized their concerns. In the end, the other aspect of groups that this conflict illustrates, again, is why unspoken rules tend to be superseded by written procedures in larger groups.

One thing I have observed over a moderately long life is that when two sides both feel so strongly, usually neither is as “right” as it professes… and until each addresses the other’s concerns in some fashion, the conflict will persist – unless one side just destroys the other, which has certainly happened in human history.

Last week I attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, Washington, where I was on a few panels, signed books, met and talked with fans, editors, and other authors, and attended the Hugo ceremony, where awards in various categories were presented – or not. Over the course of the past year, there has been a great controversy over who was nominated for these awards and by whom. The “puppy” crew claimed that the voters in recent years had become more and more fixated on race, diversity, and social justice and nominated only works with those underlying settings and themes while ignoring basic story-telling. The “new traditionalists” claimed that the puppies only wanted works by white male authors, or the equivalent, and urged that all those who cared about science fiction and fantasy vote “no award” in any category dominated by “puppy” nominees.

The resulting kerfuffle ended up creating the most votes in Hugo history, and ostensibly the “new traditionalists” won. When the vote totals were finally released, essentially all of the areas where the “puppy” nominees dominated ended up with the winner being “no award,” even in the case for best editor, where the top nominee – Toni Weisskopf – received a record number of votes for an editor. In addition, last year, she placed second, but because she was considered as “puppy nominee” this year, she was denied that honor by 2496 votes for no award – more than three times the number of votes for any winning nominee ever.

I’m not so sure that everyone didn’t lose, because the real winner was the “NO” vote. It became a question not of what was the best work or writer/artist of those nominated, but of what works or people were acceptable or “not acceptable” because of the reputed philosophical/gender stance of those who nominated them.

As a side note, though, I’d have to ask all those male authors who were “no awarded” because of gender perceptions, many of them inaccurate, how it feels to be marginalized the way women and minorities have been for years. I’d also like to ask all the “new traditionalists” who drummed up the overwhelming “no award” votes how it feels to be just like the old-style chauvinists who marginalize on the basis of color and gender, because they just marginalized a number of good writers and editors on the basis of who nominated them, rather than on the basis of how good they were, although I have to admit that a number of the “puppy” nominees weren’t close to the best.

In any case, as I’ve noted earlier, this same current of negativity underlies the current contest for presidential party nominees, with candidates such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders effectively representing a vote against the current political structure.

In both F&SF and national politics, ideas and concepts are not being evaluated on their individual merits, but upon who happens to be proposing what, rather than on what is good and workable. The cults of blind belief and personality are becoming ever more dominant, and that’s anything but a good sign for either politics or literature… or for society as a whole.