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The New Book Burning: Rewriting Roald Dahl

There’s nothing new in having established books censored. In 2011, I wrote about the concentrated effort to have Mark Twain’s books “rewritten” and “edited” without him. Today, there is a similar effort to “rewrite” and “edit” the fine work of author Roald Dahl. These reverse efforts, after publication, to quiet the writer’s voice through “social context” editing, is absolutely the same as burning books on a wood pyre — but with the excuse of protecting children. and of being sensitive to the new emancipation of provocative social norms.

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The University Does Not Belong to the Student

We all want to belong to something. We want to feel we are not alone. We want to believe we are part of a greater whole. However, there are some who believe the world, and its hallowed institutions, owe them more than due respect, and contrived honor — they believe they are entitled to not just set an agenda, but to rewrite the future plans of us all for their benefit alone.

Students protesting university policy is ordinary, expected, and commonplace. Students want to test boundaries, and to stretch their intellectual capacity, and to learn where the levers of power belong in an arc of a history that existed before them, and that will, and shall, extend to outlive them.

All of that is fine unless, and until, the student tries to takeover those levers of power to do specific damage to another student, faculty member, or the institution itself.

The university does not belong to the student. The university belongs to itself.

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Between Virtue and Mortality: Of This Shadow We Have Known

With age comes experiential wisdom and, we hope, a certain jading when it comes to living a right life. Where once we surprised, now we are prepared; where once we were astonished, now we are bemused.

“It goes on…” is likely the best takeaway motto the elders among us have vested in the current lifetime. Life is circular and repetitive and expectation grows dark and deep as uncertainty continually erupts to corrupt the circle.

We yearn to be virtuous against our impending and inevitable ending, and in that shadow between first bursting and the final shovel is the test of our lives.  Have we behaved ethically? Were we in this world just for ourselves? Did we, in some way, serve the others among us without an expectation of a return on our investment?

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1.  Drug Laws Are Fair

2.  We Must Always Help Each Other

3.  The Boy Scouts of America are All-Inclusive

4.  Terrorism Only Happens on Foreign Soil

(more…)

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Imprinted Experiences: How to Know a Good Apartment Neighbor

If you’re big into City Living in the urban core, you likely have imprinted experiences that can foretell precisely what will happen before it happens when it comes to those living around you.  Today, I will share with you my secret for instantly knowing if your new neighbor is a good person or not — and you don’t have to meet them, or speak to them, to find out.  Their one behavior will tell you everything.

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Talent Develops Talent

Here’s an eyeful of words for you to wonder on today:  “Talent to know the talent has the talent to develop the talent.”  My explanation and exploration follows.

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Knowing What to Look for and Where to Look for It

How do we know what we know?  Do we gain memory directly through experience or through the experience of others?  Is remembering something enough ownership of an idea to give it resonance beyond our own mind?  How do we know what to search for when we don’t yet know what we don’t know?

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