Is it unreasonable to think that more people should give up procreating and just raise apes, instead?

It might be a much nicer world were we to see apes walking around with their guardians in the street, signing away, taking care of their own pets (cats and dogs).

I know some people who should never have procreated. But they might have been fine guardians of apes.

For one thing, the fact that apes could kill an irrational guardian suggests that the guardians would likely be less irrational than they are with their children.

I generally am unimpressed with arguments for animal rights (except of a very limited sort), but rights for the apes seem to make sense to me.

I'm glad I'm not an educator. Trying to teach kids while at the same time nanny them in accordance with the bigotries of the parent population — as interpreted by administrators — would wear too heavily on me. Take this story:

At issue is whether Chase's opinion column advocating tolerance of homosexuals was suitable for a student newspaper distributed to students in grades 7 through 12 and whether newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell followed protocol in allowing the column to be printed.

A kid writes a column advocating tolerance, and her supervisor gets fired. Oh, that's almost funny.

Of course, this kind of nannying is precisely what you have to expect in schools, especially public schools. Which makes this point seem risible:

"This is a real threat to quality student journalism if an adviser can be removed for not having censored a perfectly legitimate story that there was no legal reason why it shouldn't have been published," said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Virginia.

What is quality student journalism? I'm not sure I've seen it.

I'm not suggesting that public schools shouldn't censor student journalism. Why not? Institutional self-censorship happens to journalists all the time. Might as well prepare the little blighters for the real world of blight.

Still, that doesn't mean we can't protest every instance. Why? Because these instances all originate in other people's protests. So, the public (especially the government-run) sphere must be and always will be a contentious one.

But in this case, the whole thing appears more idiotic than usual: Tolerance can't be tolerated. That seems to be the upshot.

Of course, little children, no matter how hairy their crotches, must be protected from mere mention of homosexuality. They may see it on the tube and hear about it (and see it) in the halls . . . and experiment beneath the bleachers. But let's not let the school paper address it!

When I was in school, I knew I would some day work as a writer. But I avoided student journalism for the same reason a sane man avoids a madhouse. Yes, it has something to do with the matter at hand, but it undoubtedly teaches more bad habits than good.

My friend Don H. is now a teacher, but in high school he worked on The Comet. This student newspaper was as forgettable as any, but the one issue that had some hope of being lively was confiscated by the principal. I never saw it. Why? Because Don interviewed my friend Naki, who was heavily into hard rock. In the interview, Don asked about the prevalence of drugs in rock 'n' roll. Naki responded by saying that he thought it was too often overdone, but in moderation . . .

Oh, that opinion (and a mere opinion, at that), was too much for me to read. The fact that I already knew Naki's opinion (after all, anyone in the small school could do the same as I: just talk to the lad) didn't matter. I was not alloweed to read it. And thus it was not allowed to be debated.

That's how administrators and teachers make of student journalism a cesspool of inanity and pabulum. Nothing else is allowed. A real debate? On a controversial matter? Where young people are encouraged to think? Not allowed. Not in our schools!

The principal in question was much admired in the community. In that same year he came into my World History class and gave a little speech. It was about how the job of the school wasn't to teach, but to help us learn how to learn, as he put it.

I almost chortled aloud.

I had been in school over eleven years at that point, and I had indeed learned how to learn. But did I learn this at school? Well, in the first grade, perhaps, when I started reading encyclopedias, and when my teacher had me lecture on solar astronomy. More important, though, was Sunday School, provided not by the taxpayers but by tithing Christians, where we read good literature (the Bible) and discussed (if not debated) interesting concepts, and where I was encouraged to read church history and apologetics. And on my own, as I read perhaps hundreds if not thousands of books by the time I listened to the principal lie to me and my classmates.

Few of my fellow students could learn a damn thing without help. They had not learned how to learn. And their best chance, that year, was suppressed by that very same educator. A real debate of interest to them? Nope. They had to be protected from that!

I often think about the suppression of our school paper. As bad as teachers often are, I remind myself that they are ruled by administrators doing an often impossible task: trying to corral students and teachers in a system most useful for purposes other than education.

What purposes? You know, such high-minded purposes as babysitting and indocrtrination into the sports culture.

My father turned 90 today. There was a party at his church, and many members of the community showed up. One old friend brought a dinner from the Community Hall Annual Chicken Feed for my father. Lots of people signed a large card, and even included money. One of the organizers of the event gave an amusingly apt gift: a pack of Cherry Cokes! My father has a passion for only one soft drink, really, and that's Cherry Coke. (Of course, he remembers the Fountain version of this drink, from days of yore. There are few fountain bars left.) I met some of my cousins, old and new, and talked with neighbors and relatives from the area.

Robert Michael Pyle stopped by, and gave my father a signed copy of his new book, Sky Time in Gray's River. He added a very nice inscription.

Bob spent a fair amount of time mingling with the nice crowd, and then left as the party started to wind down. But he had noticed me talking to my aunt, Alma, who is herself over 80. He walked back in the door and asked to be introduced. I introduced the two, and explained that my aunt is the mother (step-mother, really, but who's particular at such times?) of someone Bob knows: Bob Saari, local tree-climber extraordinaire.

What impressed me about this little chat is how socially adept author Bob Pyle was. He made time for an ancient woman whom he'd never met. He was polite, interested, complimentary.

Most people wouldn't try. I think that some of that interest in real people is detectable even in his book, which might remind people to be good neighbors, even in places where there's more anonymity than in Grays River Valley.

I missed most of the Don Imus Issue when it was big in the news and the pundit circuit. I saw moments of the Jackson/Sharpton sharp rebuke, and I saw the send-up of same on Saturday Night Live. I read a few paragraphs here and there about the event, from the commentators, pro and un-.

And, well, maybe it's just me, but when somebody says something as dumb as Imus did (not all that funny, not all the perspicacious, rather offensive), polite people should try to ignore the slight. Running somebody out of his job — a job with a fair amount of insult and comedy allegedly built into it, strikes me as going a bit overboard.

Of course, in less modish times, calling a group of women whores who were not, in fact, sex workers, would have been quite offensive. And even perhaps worth kicking someone out of his public job. But, as everyone seems to remind us, a whole community of men do call women and even girlfriends hos.

The great divide of our times, regarding language, appears to be racial, and black men have more freedom than white men.

We could call this divide the Tough Row to Ho, or simple the Ho Row.

Hi ho, hi ho.

The revival of naturalistic humanism under the term The Brights has sparked some interest far outside the usual core groups. The main idea is naturalism. Why, with perfectly good terms like biological naturalism and secular humanism another term was needed is not obvious to me. But, here we are, a movement of people calling themselves brights.

I immediately think of intelligence as processing power, speed and mental agility with which to think up solutions to complex problems. I was considered bright as a kid. And to now don the mantle of Bright? Odd.

You be a Bright; I'll be a Cobden.

Why this term, and not another? Well, I suppose it has something to do with the Enlightenment. I am a partisan of the Enlightenment, and am an unashamed one at that. I lean to the Scottish version, but still, Enlightenment all the same.

I've only skimmed the literature. I haven't read Dawkins on the movement yet. Daniel Dennett, in reply to a religious humanist preacher, has this to say about the new term:

I prefer bright to enlightened, which smacks of revelation, a phenomenon we brights are more than a little skeptical about. The opposite of gay isn’t glum; it's straight — a nice enough epithet, unlike, say, crooked. The opposite of bright isn't dull (or cloudy); it hasn't been coined yet, and could be, if you like, great or splendid. Let those who are not brights hijack the word of their choice and see if it will play.

Well, I'm strongly tempted to disagree with the last point. The opposite of a bright is quite obvious: the benighted.

Can we make a nicer term for them, something they can be proud of? That's up to them, of course, but may I suggest beknighted?

Think of Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith. Think of the religious person's sense of chivalry, of going about doing the duty and calling of his or her Master. They see themselves as knight errants. Like knights of yore, they speak very personally of their fealty to a Lord. So call them The Beknighted!

I rarely join organizations. I am rarely tempted. But I almost wish I worked in the lumber or forestry industry — or in some way with wood products — to enable me to join the Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo. Established in 1892 by five businessmen stranded in Gurdon, Arkansas, this fraternal organization was designed not merely to encourage the health, wealth, and longevity of its members, but also to allow a bit of harmless fun.

With a name like The Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo, it couldn't help but succeed.

Hoo-hoo, I learned recently, was a tuft of hair on the bald head of a friend of the founder of the order. Hoo-hoo, I had prevoiusly read, was the name members of the organziation used for all the silly medals that more enthusiastic members of such organizations wore to their meetings.

The Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo's symbol is an Egyptian black cat, tale curled to a stylized 9 . . . and because of this mascot, members often met on the ninth minute of the ninth hour of the ninth month of the year. They can probably hardly wait for the ninth year event, in September 2009.

Yes, the order still exists. It has a website. It appears to be a not-insignificant organization. One motto associated with the group remains of some significance: Health, Happiness, and Long Life. It is pleasant to see that the whimsical nomenclature remains, with the officers adorning names such as these:

• Snark of the Universe
• Supreme Nines
• Viceregent Snarks

Hmmm. The phrase dressed [up] to the nines is listed as obscure of origin in my references. I wonder if its origins lie here, in the nine-obsessions of the Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo.

The Coen brothers are known for writing characters with the gift for gab. Some of these characters use big words in situations where big or strange words rarely get an outing.

This is funny. Hifalutin speech coming from low-status characters (recidivists, escaped convicts, Bible salesmen) helps make O, Brother, Where Art Thou and Raising Arizona such great movies.

When I was in high school, I too inculcated a gift for gab and a passion for twisty sentences and big words. After all, I was reading big words all the time. And the people around me regularly used low words, vulgar words, to put down others and raise themselves up. My strategy amounted to a sort of ironic counter-thrust. My deliberately out-of-place constructions formed a kind of self-defense. I was serious about my agenda, but engaged in the tropes and figures of speech, as well as the extended subordinate clauses, with a sense of humor, too. I realized (to some extent) its limitations as speech.

Real communication should not be so closely tied to establishing hierarchies, I came to realize. Real communication would be, in essence, post-conflict. (In high school, post-conflict meant one thing: after high school!)

In my own writing, big words still appear. And some of my sentences go on longer than Hemingway's. Or a newspaper reporter's. As a reader of James Branch Cabell, these constructions often conjure up a languorous irony that functions, by turns, as beautiful and witty.

But I don't write stuff like this (I hope):

Connectivity has been called the genius of feminism (by theorist Robin Morgan 53), and this genius is being realized in electronic spaces and texts in more totalizing ways than in any other medium to date. The multidimensional networks of the new media and the structural models of computing offer methods and approaches that I have freely adapted as a feminist pedagogy. Cyberfeminism is a process of dynamic interaction and fluid boundary-free practices that pose new strategies for navigating real and virtual worlds, and navigations in the cyberspaces of networked literature point to potentialities for how it might be possible to escape the white western male power structures that tend to rule technological discourse and our classroom work as well.

It, too, is funny, in a sort of Coenesque way. But it is, I think, unintentionally funny. The metaphor of fluidity is risible in and of itself. And the piling on of jargon is mind-numbing. That it comes from a philosopher's pedagogical manifesto strikes me as sad.

But, could I put myself in her shoes? What would I say if I believed and taught as she believes and teaches?

Here's a quick attempt at a revision:

Connectivity is the genius of the Internet. Everyone knows this. A new science now gestates: the science of networks. It used to be "who you knew" that was socially important. Then it became "what you know." Now, the connections themselves rise in importance, and both What and Who become subsumed by connectivity itself.

This may be new, but it is not unprecedented. Feminists have had an inkling of this, for as Robin Morgan (aged 53, or is that note 53?) has suggested, connectivity is the genius of feminism. The expanded dimensions of networks in new media, along with the structural models of computing, suggest methods and approaches that I freely adapt to teach and advance feminism.

We could call my method Cyberfeminism, I suppose. But let's smile as we say it, for as jargon goes, it conjures up a few unfortunate terms from science fiction: cyborg, for instance. We do not want cyborgs, or "the Borg," or any hive mind or mechanistic computation. Real human minds are more fluid, limber than A.I. constructs, -- at least so far. And with the dialectic now possible in the dynamic interaction of today's . . . .

But I can't conclude her passage, because she seems to believe that what characterizes science and computing theory is male. She speaks of white western male power structures that tend to rule technological discourse; is she suggesting, as so many feminist theorists have suggested, that rational thought, and the requirement to break things into pieces and then put them back together, are inherently male and thus inherently domineering?

Not human, but male. And sexist, to boot?

If yes, the proper response is dismissal, for such a gambit deprives women taking her courses (and those willing male victims, ready to be psychologically lobotomized by a figurative castration) from the tools that might allow them to think their way out of any sort of trap that social custom and political power has, in fact, set against them.

Rationality is not about sex. Or gender. It is the ability to distinguish one idea from another, and weigh them. Compare them. Privilege them, perhaps.

At a fairly early age I came to hate sexism, the very kind of thing the above-quoted philosopher hates. I saw it as both unnecessary and unjust.

And I quickly came to believe (based on observation, not ideology) that sexism arises naturally from childish attempts to sort out the world. It is a fairly obvious dogma that both men and women (or, perhaps more accurately, boys and girls) cook up almost spontaneously, probably out of fear and insecurity. They identify aspects of their own sex and then reinforce them in illegitimate ways.

I, as a youngster, noticed that my sisters were given piano lessons as a matter of course, but I was not. My interpretation was: boys don't play piano; that was unmanly.

This dogma, never once spelled out to me, was disastrous, for music later became for me an abiding and deep interest. But I had waited too late to master the musical instrument that fascinated me most, namely, the piano.

Should I blame my parents for not sending me to piano lessons at age seven, like my little sister did? Or the sports-obsessed society I grew up in, for its numerous clues about what it is to be a man?

Or myself, for too long accepting such notions?

Blame isn't the point. Harping on it isn't the point. A truly liberating education would simply assert a more humane and open course for each individual life. Idiotic limitations, like boys don't sing and girls don't play sports should be rejected simply as a matter of course.

I began to suspect, years ago, that feminism itself was too hung up on blaming people, too hung up on the past, and on human foibles, rather than offering up effective alternatives.

And this philosopher in question, with her ridiculous mélange of jargon and periphrasis, she, too, seems to think that everything is the result of male dominance. But I was prevented (to the extent I was prevented from anything) not by male dominance, but mostly by a limited view of sex roles that, as a boy, I took to with eager readiness. That I came to see it as childish, and other men and many women do not see such extra limitations as childish, is a problem. But it's not a question of men are wrong and feminists are right. It's a question of ethics and rationality and manners and norms and order and . . .

You get the idea. To call the remedy for foolish dogma on matters of sex feminism is itself foolish. An equal standard of conduct applied to individuals of both sexes should not be named after one of those sexes, and not the other. The very unequal (privileged!) naming leads its adherents, as if by an invisible hand, to espouse doctrines that are in fact sexist rather than equal.

The standard is not feminism or masculinism. The standard is individualism.

That may be a big word, but I'm not using it for comic effect.

Dick Armey, at a Cato event (you may be able to purchase a video of it here), admitted that his opposition to legalizing drugs comes from prejudice. He elaborated:

I think you are perfectly allowed to have prejudice if you are decent enough to admit it. . . . I got a real problem with Norwegian Lutherans, I got to tell you.

Otherwise, he came off pretty well for an alleged economist who sounds more like a drunked-up Rotarian. I'm at last becoming something of a fan.

And I'm saying this not because I share his prejudice about Norwegian Lutherans. Finnish Lutherans are much worse.

When I was very young, I was fascinated by other peoples, such as Indians and Mongolians and the like, and read as much as I could about them. This led me into the strange problems associated with classification by race.

In a conversation with my uncle and cousins, one evening when I was about nine, I used the term "Mongoloid."

For my trouble I got a lecture from my uncle about tolerance. He thought I was talking about what nowadays we call people featuring Down Syndrome. I appreciated the lecture, though it also annoyed me to think that my uncle thought that I was a nasty name-caller. I was simply using the anthropological term (not in itself without problems or controversy) for the skeletal and facial features of many people who live in Asia.

I don't think my uncle understood that a 9-year-old could be interested in physical anthropology, and was actually fairly well read on the subject. He thought it more likely that I was speaking ill of disabled kids.

Funny thing was, it was he who demonstrated prejudice!

But no great matter. I never harbored ill will towards him, and was even rather happy that he felt compelled to lecture me on tolerance. Tolerance and good will seemed like a good idea to me even at nine.

I was beyond tolerance at that point, however: surrounded by white people, I found people of other color and other character fascinating. White people were, comparatively, boring.

Sometimes a government bureaucracy is right and the people are wrong.

It's hard to think of examples, but there have to be some. Oh, here's one: the tit on the 1916 Liberty Quarter.

The coin's design went up for contest, as usual, and the best design for Liberty was chosen. It is, I think, the best design on any American coin ever, far surpassing the famous St. Gaudens $20 gold piece.

But Liberty's right breast was exposed.

It went through all the proper channels, but when it hit the public, there was an uproar. Indecency! Obsenity! Filth! Oh, the humanity!

There is nothing filthy about an exposed female breast. Some exposures aren't exactly high art (think SuperBowl), but to get upset about an occasional baring of a breast is the sign of a truly stunted moral development, a dirty mind, or . . . American Christendom, c. 1916.

I have no sympathy with those yokels. Or today's yokels who still worry about such small matters. (And a breast exposed on a quarter is a small matter.)

Now, I do think it good manners to go around clothed most of the time. I don't want to see most female breasts.

But, should one hang out here or there, I won't get into a tizzy. And artwork that exposes the naked male or female form doesn't bother me.

This episode in American history helps give me some sympathy, some sense of cameraderie, with the state functionary class. When so many citizens are so foolish and prudish and crazy, it's not easy to think highly of the people whom you serve.

And yes, my Liberty has her breast exposed. If your Liberty does not, then, well, your Liberty does not represent the right liberty.

In the early days of my using Macintosh computers, my boss at the time wanted me to get chummy in the local Mac Users Group. Why? Because he wanted me to borrow hardware, like an external floppy disk drive reader that read the new double-side/double-density disks.

I hated begging, especially since I knew that my boss was rich. I didn't like begging for myself, and rarely did. Begging for another, and, especially, a wealthy other, was especially loathesome. I only worked up my courage to ask one person that particular favor. I remember how he looked at me, in extreme puzzlement . . . bordering at once on both awe and revulsion at my effrontery. We barely knew each other. He did not let me borrow his drive.

I sympathized.

I have done many things that I'm ashamed of. That was something I was ashamed of at the time. But I was under orders.

One of the great things about self-employment is one feels under no compulsion to do whatever it is some boss or other says. You have no boss. You have clients.

This makes a lot of difference.

Most of my regrets in life are not for saying No but for saying Yes. My favorite idiomatic phrase is Nothing doing. In my mind it unites emphatic resistance with subtle wu wei.

Children are a lot safer than people think. Most sexual predators are not lurking in alleys or on the net, waiting for kids, asking for naked pictures or a teensy-weeny peak: they are at home, demanding far worse.

That is, most sexual predators are parents.

But most parents aren't sexual predators.

Perhaps one problem with instilling good sense in kids is that the ability to just say NO FUCKING WAY to someone who asks you to do something you don't want applies against teachers and parents as well as against strangers. Train a kid to resist suggestion, and the kid may be less willing to toe the line in class or at home.

I mean, if you have been taught independence, that independence may very well show up against authorities at home and in school. Neither parents nor teachers really want that. So, despite many efforts to inculcate such a good habit as resistance, the inculcation gets muted at the start. It's not in the interest of authorities to make their charges GENERALLY less compliant. So the mute their lesson, and may even be a bit lax on training. Or spin it, espcially in the case of teachers, who sometimes do manage to impugn parents, but try to exempt themselves.

I'm glad I'm not a kid any longer. I'd hate to be at the receiving end of a modern education. But, if I were a kid again, I would be a lot bigger pain in the ass to my teachers than I was when I was corralled into the classrooms. My biggest regret with my schooling was that I was too compliant. As it was, one teacher called me the worst influence in the school. She was surely wrong, but she was not appreciative of my open criticism of her teaching methods. Her methods? Yes, they did suck. But my criticism were unexpectedly harsh.

I wonder, when I was in high school, had I been approached by someone asking for my picture, naked, what would I have said?

I wouldn't have said fuck off, because I did not use that kind of language. But I do think that a nervous and disgusted bout of laughter would have communicated my response well enough.

Why would any other kid do otherwise? Why do some kids complly with goofy, off-the-wall sexual come-ons? Because, perhaps, in some sense they wanted the attention? Because they might want sexual attention of that sort?

That's probably not the answer we're supposed to give. Kids are impressionable. They aren't SEXUAL.

As the kids say: Yeah, right.