Season 6, Episode 8 September 24, 2023

Hello! Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley, and yes, I’m wearing a coat and tie! On this episode, we’ll hear about the original Indeed, the Rosetta Stone, and the Department of Education...but first, (Not the Headlines!)

You may have heard me say on this program that my goal is to live until the age of 150. Well, it turns out I may or may not be on the right track. A story by Aditi Shrikant on CNBC dot com spoke to a man who was a professor of personality psychology at a well-known American university. The headline was pure clickbait: “The No. 1 personality trait linked to a long life: ‘The effects of just being positive are overstated,’ psychology expert says.” But as is often the case, you have to read beyond the headline to get the whole story. The headline suggests being positive isn’t the key to a long life, but we now know what is. For somebody like me, that’s a pretty good headline. I’m always interested in learning how I might extend my life, as long as I don’t have to do anything extra. Having a positive attitude is an easy thing to do, so if you’re telling me that’s not going to help, then I have the option of being negative if I so choose. So what is the best personality trait to have for a long life? The professor says it’s being conscientious. But what other traits are there, and why is conscientious favored? The story cites what’s called a Five Factor Model, and those five are, in no particular order, agreeableness, extroversion, openness, neuroticism, and the aforementioned conscientiousness. So, positiveness isn’t even among the categories! Why the hell am I being so positive all the time? Yes, sir! Let me get that for you, ma’am. It’s gonna work out. I know you’re lonely, but you don’t have to worry about getting anybody pregnant! 

So how do you be a conscientious person and how does that help you live longer? Well, the professor says conscientiousness equates to how organized and disciplined you are. That doesn’t bode well for me. I’m not a good planner and my desk at work is a mess. As for discipline, the first kind I had was the kind you need to play a musical instrument. That tuba got me through high school. Other than that, all I ever wanted to do was rid myself of discipline. After high school, I realized I needed discipline more than I thought I did. That’s why I joined the Air Force. I knew I needed to be taught discipline. Don’t get me wrong, my parents did a good job, but I needed an adult-level refresher course, and I knew it. Not a Marine Corps level of discipline, just an Air Force level of discipline. That was most of what I needed to get along in life. 

Seeing that I’ve made it this far, does that make me conscientious? Drinking alcohol in moderation and eating balanced meals are two attributes the professor says are by-products of being conscientious. Well, I drink alcohol and eat food. Moderation and balance are subjective. I’m gonna call that a wash. But he also says conscientious folks don’t do stupid things. And no, he’s not talking about starting your own podcast! He’s talking about things that cause accidents resulting in physical harm. Well, when I think back on all the risks I took, all the stuff I climbed and jumped from and hung off, I’m kinda shocked that I’m still alive. Those days are behind me now, as I’m extremely cautious when it comes to putting myself at risk. I’ve gathered enough experience to know what my limits are. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still do stupid things. But my accident rate is pretty low. Sometimes I’ll trip a little going up the steps or I’ll bump my arm on the wall if I try to take a corner too sharply.

In hindsight, I’m glad I wasn’t all that conscientious as a younger man. My life would have been less exciting and less enjoyed. Maybe I’ve got to the point where being conscientious is less of an advantage than it would have been when I was younger, but I lived through it. Sure, I’m still careful when crossing the street, but crossing to the sunny side of the street is what makes life worth living. As the great Ray Charles once said, “You better live every day like your last because one day you’re going to be right.”

While forgiving student debt is all the rage of the extreme left, very little seems to be done about the root cause of the problem: High tuition costs and low return on investment for many of the degrees offered by colleges. Sure, it would be great if you could study philosophy for four years and then open a philosophy store, but you can’t earn a living that way. Too many college degrees are awarded for studying subjects that are mostly useless in real-world applications. There’s a difference between the amount of money you can earn by studying civil engineering and Urban Studies. While social subjects like gender studies and women’s studies may be interesting to some, and there may be a few who rise to the top of the heap in the fields and might earn a living as a consultant or new contributor, most people who study such things will never get a return on their investment of time or money. If you want to study these things on your own time, great! But you shouldn’t have to have a college degree to learn that spending your college fund on a worthless degree is a bad investment. It’s also a bad investment for states that fund public universities where these worthless degrees are handed out like the Army hands out medals. When the state is funding worthless degrees, the state isn’t getting it’s money’s worth, either. Especially if your the state of Mississippi, where most of the state is rural, and college graduates leave the state to make a good living. So, while Mississippi has a brain drain, they’re subsidizing other states by educating people on these subjects that only have a chance of paying off in a big city. The state auditor of Mississippi is calling for dramatic changes in the way public colleges are funded with state money. He’s arguing that if the state is going to fund an education, it should be in a subject that will enable the recipient to stay in Mississippi to earn a living. That way, the state and the student will be more likely to get a return on their investments. As it stands now, Mississippi is experiencing what the author of the Associated Press story called outmigration. Okay, I’m just going to stop right here. Even my word processor knows outmigration isn’t a word. We already have terms for the two types of migration. Immigration, for those coming in, and emigration, for those going out. So, what the Associated Press meant to say was that Mississippi has an emigration problem, and the state is helping to pay for it. The auditor says that keeping graduates in the state would be a huge benefit to the state in the form of talent and money into Mississippi’s economy. Sounds like something an auditor should know about. And if you only know what I just told you about it, you might think it makes a lot of sense. The state of Mississippi should get a return on its investment, and the student should be encouraged to pursue a course of study that will benefit them. It’s a win-win, right? If you want a degree in African-American Studies, go ahead and get one, but if the state doesn’t need any, don’t expect the state to pay for it. The military does the same thing. If the army doesn’t need any psychologists, they’ll talk you into being a cook. The state of Mississippi probably doesn’t need any more people with German Literature degrees. You can only open up so many German book stores. 

So what’s the downside? The AP story tried hard to find one. They pointed out that the stat auditor is a Republican, showed a picture of him so that you knew he was a white guy, and compared his ideas to Florida’s law that they labeled the “don’t say gay” law and a Texas law that already does something similar to what he’d like seen done in Mississippi. The story also equated the idea to the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, even though those aren’t degrees. The story went on about identity politics and gender and sexuality. 

This is another example of what that Barstool Sports guy pointed out when he called the Washington Post reporter on the phone a few days ago. He showed us that the reporter had an agenda, and was trying to intimidate sponsors of an event he was hosting to promote pizza parlors. You might think the food column would be void of politics, but when you work for the Washington Post, you’ll find a way to politicize the obituaries. The Associated Press isn’t far behind. This story about the Mississippi State Auditor was an excellent opportunity to start a real dialogue about the best ways to create beneficial outcomes for the individual, the community, the state, and the nation. Instead, it was poisoned with unrelated rhetoric with the expressed intent of manipulating your opinion. The question remains. Should Mississippi continue down the same path, subsidizing college degrees that add no value to the student or the state, or should Mississippi shift focus on investing in degrees that have real-world benefits? The answer seems clear. But you can make a good idea seem bad if you write a story about it that threaten to cut degrees in things like Gender Studies, which strikes at the very core of the extreme left’s agenda, and lump it in with two other laws in conservative states. Just remember, if you’re going to be skeptical, be skeptical of news stories with the word, “outmigration” in them. 

Let’s Go Back liner

1650

Henry Robinson opens his Office of Addresses and Encounters in Threadneedle Street, London. I’m not sure why Henry Robinson gets any credit for opening a company that would supply prospective employees and employers with the addresses of each other. Not that it wasn’t a valuable service at the time. One might even compare it to modern day services similar to job search websites. But Henry Robinson wasn’t the first to do it. That honor goes to Theophraste Renaudot, who’s “bureau d'adresse et de rencontre” was begun twenty years earlier. Okay, cool for him. Big deal, right? Well, yea. Not only can you compare the service to today’s job-search websites, but back then, it was more like what search engines are to us today. 

1777

Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the capital of the United States, for one day. The American Revolution was ongoing, and the British were advancing on Philadelphia, where the government was formed. The Constitutional dot com tells the story of how, the last time the government had to flee Philadelphia, they went to Baltimore to conduct business, but that wasn’t possible this time. They fled west, the entire Continental Congress, and wound up in Lancaster. They even brought the Liberty Bell with them, to insure the British couldn’t use it to make cannonballs. Well, business had to be conducted, so an official session was held in the county courthouse. Uncharted Lancaster dot com says the business of the day was two-fold. Men like John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Charles Carroll would insure that General Washington would have the weapons and other supplies they would need, and they would also decide to keep moving, as there were inadequate accommodations for them in Lancaster. Plus, getting to the other side of the Susquehanna River, the nation’s largest non-navigable river, would provide an extra barrier of security. So they immediately packed up the plantation and move to York, Pennsylvania, where the nation’s capital would stay until July of 1778.

There may still not be enough accommodations in Lancaster to support the U.S. Congress. Today, it’s mostly known for the lifestyle of the Pennsylvania Dutch, where you can throw the horse over the fence some hay.

1789

The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men. After the Revolutionary War, men just wanted to go home. It was a tough recruiting cycle for the military. The war was over, right? Now we can live in peace. Sure. Centuries of wisdom has demonstrated that it doesn’t work that way. If you want to be a country, you have to be able to defend it. In 1789, several hundred men were still willing to do that. We don’t know exactly how many or who they were, as the War Department headquarters, with all the records, burned down eleven years later, in 1800. Today, wikipedia says about 26,000 people work the Department of Defense headquarters, the Pentagon. I drove by the Pentagon once, by accident. My GPS told me to go that way...during afternoon rush hour. On a Friday. That’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back. 

1822

Jean-François Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta stone. If communication is our most valuable tool, the Rosetta Stone is our most valuable jewel. Someone, or some group of people, took it upon themselves to carve in stone a decree that was issued almost two-hundred years before the time of Christ, in Memphis, Egypt. What the decree says is irrelevant. The wow part is that the same decree was written in three different languages. The newest being Ancient Greek. Above the Ancient Greek were two Egyptian languages: Hieroglyphic and Demotic. You’ve seen hieroglyphic script, such as the stuff on the walls inside ancient Egyptian tombs, but Demotic looks more like a letter and word language, like English or Arabic. We already had an understanding of Ancient Greek, but the old Egyptian languages were a mystery. While rediscovered in 1799, it took a bit to realize it was the same thing in three different languages. The first translation of the Ancient Greek text happened in 1802. But because the Rosetta Stone was not found completely intact, translation of the Egyptian languages took 23 years. Being able to read the same edict in three different languages opened up a new world of exploration and understanding. Lesser Rosetta Stones have been found as well, some including two languages, and one other with three. Those languages are Old Pesian, Elamite and Babylonian. 

1889

The first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice. This wasn’t the first definition of a meter, nor would it be the last. A meter was first defined at one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole. That was almost a hundred years earlier, in 1791. Okay, I guess it’s possible to double check the math on that. And yes, the metric system has been around a long time! In 1799, an actual bar was created that became the official length of a meter. It was this week in 1889 that that bar was updated, so, 90 years later. There have since been two more changes in the way the length of a meter is calculated. The length of a meter is now based on the speed of light in a vacuum, and since then, the definition of a second was also updated. For fans of American football, a meter is about three inches longer than a yard. 

1905

The physics journal Annalen der Physik received Albert Einstein’s paper “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”, introducing the equation E=mc². Perhaps the most famous mathematical equation of all time. Well, other than “you plus me, baby!” Is that because of it’s simplicity? Probably. It’s easy to remember, even if you don’t know what it means.

1906

In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, Spain, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control. Today, Ukrainians are using them to destroy a Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

1928

The U.K. Parliament passes the Dangerous Drugs Act outlawing cannabis. I wonder what science they used to determine it to be dangerous.

1949

The Communist Party of China writes the Common Programme for the future People’s Republic of China. Today, it’s the blueprint for world domination. The justification for the Chinese Communist Party to run roughshod over anything and everything to achieve the stated goals. Unfortunately, their number one financial backer is the United States of America.

1970

The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, California, burning 175,425 acres. Climate change! Said nobody.

1971

The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 banning the medicinal use of cannabis. Boy, England sure has it in for cannabis.

1979

The United States Department of Education receives final approval from the U.S. Congress to become the 13th US Cabinet agency. More on that in the epilogue.

1983

Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a likely worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike. Nice job, Stanley. The Soviets didn’t reveal how close they came to firing nuclear missiles at the United States until 1998, long after the fall of the Soviet Union. Petrov got some initial praise from his commander, but was never officially rewarded for his non-action. He cited a number of reasons for determining the computer error and averting a world war. In the end, had he been recognized, that would have meant others would have to be punished. 

2005

The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Can I describe what it looks like? They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but what about the spoken word? If I were to describe what Muhammad looks like, would my words assault the ears of those who practice Islam? Is what I say as concrete as ink on a page? Are my words as concrete as a statue of Muhammad? What if I only describe the drawings themselves? Am I describing Muhammad, or am I describing the drawings? It depends. I can describe the drawings as cartoonish, without any attempt to become masterpieces someday. They’re not contour-line drawings or oil-on-canvas. If I were Muslim, I might find some of them offensive. There are a number of different depictions that were published. Maybe two out of a dozen or so have any attempt at a dignified depiction. So, I can describe the drawings without describing Muhammad, but not with great detail. Would my words be blasphemous if I said one of the drawings depicted Muhammad as a handsome man with a beard to rival Zeus? Oh, great. Now I probably just pissed off a bunch of Greeks. Anyway, nobody really knows what Muhammad looked like, so any depiction of him is bound to be incorrect. We don’t know what Jesus looked like, either, but that didn’t stop us from creating pictures of Him with eyes that follow you around the room. Neither did that stop 15 of 42 union illustrators who were asked to draw Muhammad from submitting their ideas. The request began as an idea to see if the illustrators were self-sensoring because of the potential threat from radical Muslims. Wikipedia says three declined to submit a drawing without citing a reason, one said the project was vague, one said it didn’t pay enough and one said he was afraid. Twenty-seven didn’t reply at all. It’s thought that they were contractually obligated to other publications.

The initial reaction of the drawings of the man with the steely eyes and the bravado of a valiant leader one might follow were mixed. Some newspaper sellers declined to sell it, keeping it from the public while doing what they thought was in their best interest. Some accused the newspaper of trying to stir up trouble in which the public had no interest. The publication of the drawings did ruffle some feathers. A teenager called the paper and threatened to kill the cartoonists. We know he was a teenager because his mom turned him in.

But not everyone was saved. Protests in early 2006 resulted in more than 250 people killed. Diplomatic missions of Denmark and other countries were attacked by enraged Muslims and others seeking to fan the flames. Churches were also attacked. Those attacks led to peaceful counter-measures in support of Denmark’s freedom of speech like “Buy Danish.” Other newspapers around the world reprinted the cartoons of the man who, in some cases looks like a warrior prince and in others a childish bumbler of ideas and humanity. But then again, I’m only describing the drawings. 

Phone and email liner

Getting back to something we touched on earlier, the federal Department of Education was approved in 1979. I’m a high school graduate of 1980, so I’m fortunate enough to have gotten out of the system before the federales took over. 

I’ve talked about education before on this program, specifically on the pilot episode and the fifth episode called “Teachers, Uranus and War,” one of the few episodes that had a subtitle. I have a lot of respect for teachers as a group. Individually, there were some I didn’t like, one or two I didn’t respect, some I feared and others I loved. I’m sure most teachers are doing a good job, some are doing a great job, some are just floating along. At the same time, there are some teachers who have political agendai, agendas, whatever the plural of agenda is, and they seem to be concentrated in certain areas where for some reason, second-graders know the plural of agenda. But test results show most educational goals are not being met by students at all levels, and high school graduates are showing up a college lacking the skills and knowledge to succeed. 

Well, just this week, and not this week in history, but within the last seven days, well, okay, I guess that does make it this week in history, the U.S. Department of Education recognized 353 schools as National Blue Ribbon Schools for 2023. The recognition, it says, is based on a school’s overall academic performance, or progress in closing achievement gaps among student groups on assessments. This is exactly why our schools are failing under the direction of the federal government. Oh, sure, we’ll look at your academic performance, but the important thing, and you know it’s important because they added it to the qualifications for the Blue Ribbon School designation, is that more students have similar grades. You must close the achievement gap. In other words, we don’t want anybody sticking out, either as an over-achiever or an under-achiever. You will be rewarded as long as you make it seem like every student is getting an equal, or more accurately, equitable education. Closing the achievement gap doesn’t just mean making sure the slower kids get the extra attention they need, but also suppressing the kids are moving ahead too quickly. Now, you might be thinking, “But Bob, they’re not gonna do that!” Really? With federal funding on the line and the teachers unions making the rules, it doesn’t matter what effect it has on individual students. The only thing that matters is everybody passes and they all have about the same grades. Whether or not those grades equate to a good education is secondary. Secondary education. Literally. It’s not the amount of education that counts, it’s the amount of everybody knowing the same thing that’s important. We have to make the weaker kids feel equal to the advanced kids, so to solve the problem, we’ll make the lessons less informative and the tests easier and make the grading system give an advantage to the students who do the minimum, because that helps the school close the achievement gap. It rewards the under-achievers, and punishes those who strive to succeed. All in the name of equity. I’m not saying it. The Department of Education is saying it. The United States Department of Education is essentially saying, “Give us your children. We will welcome them as blank slates for us to carve upon. When they leave here, they will all be engraved with the same thoughts.” What isn’t taught is that whoever creates the textbooks decides what’s learned, or learnt, depending upon where you live. 

I once had a voice and diction instructor who pronounced comfortable with three sylables, as in comfterble. When I called him out on it, he covered his ass by saying it was an accepted pronunciation. Maybe where he grew up. So, maybe there’s a role to play for the federal government when it comes to education, but for more than 40 years now, they seem to have forgotten what’s important. Yes, it is important for our citizens to get the best education possible, regardless of any group society has created to describe them. But is that what the federal government should be focused on? I’d feel a lot better if the federal government promoted a search for the smartest and most teachable students. Education is best addressed at the local level. Instead of the Department of Education trying to make everyone equal, they should be the ones knocking on the door and offering your child accelerated educational opportunities because they’ve shown promise. More like a recruitment mechanism that seeks out the best of us and gives us opportunities to contribute to our country and our society as a whole, perhaps in a way we would never have imagined. But no, the Department of Education is, and has been, a white elephant. Wow, that sounds like a racist thing to say. White elephant. Is that also body-shaming? I don’t know! I may have pissed off the Greeks and fat white women. There’s only one way I’m going to get out of this…

Look that up liner

Well, as it turns out, white elephant doesn’t have anything to do with fat white women. So I feel exonerated. But it does perfectly describe the United States Department of Education. A white elephant, according to wikipedia, is something that has more cost to maintain it than it is worth. Phrases dot org UK says it’s also a way to describe a doomed enterprise on which large sums of money are spent and which is then abandoned. Well, the Department of education hasn’t been abandoned yet. But another description of the phrase is a burdensome possession, which is where the phrase originated. 

Albino elephants were considered holy in Thailand as far back as the 16-hundreds. A Thai King would reward subordinates who displeased him with a white elephant. The elephant would need to be cared for and fed. Plus, you had to allow people to come to your residence to worship, and you were not allowed to make the white elephants do any work. It was more of a burden than anything. The first use of the phrase to describe something like the Department of Education came in 1851 in something called G.E. Jewbury’s Letters where it said, “His services are like so many white elephants, of which nobody can make use, and yet that drain one's gratitude, if indeed one does not feel bankrupt."

Are we getting our money’s worth out of the Department of Education, or is it a drain on society? The Department asked for 88.3 billion dollars for the 2023 fiscal year. That’s 260 bucks out of the pocket of every man, woman and child in the United States, not including the 2-million illegal aliens the ruling party has let in. They don’t have to pay. Research dot com says there are about 50-million students in the country, so it comes down to the Department of Education costing $1,743.68 per student, per year, for what? Never mind. I already know for what, and we’re not getting our money’s worth. The Department of Education’s own statistics, as cited by U.S. News and World Report early this year, only half of students are performing at grade level. Part of that is hold over from the Pandemic, but even before Covid, the rate was 36 percent. If you’re currently a student, that means before the pandemic, if you were in a room with two of your buddies, one of you wasn’t as educated as they should be. Now, if it’s just you and one other buddy in the room, one of you isn’t as educated as you should be. If you’re not sure if it’s them or you, it’s probably you, unless you go to the same school, then you both might be under educated. 

Unfortunately, those who are behind will be able to catch up more quickly than usual because in order to create equity, the standards will be softened in order to give the slower kids, or the ones who find school boring, a little more self-confidence at the expense of the kids who excel. Now, you might be thinking, “Sure, Bob. You were probably one of those teacher’s pets who always got good grades. You don’t know what it’s like.” Well, I don’t want to tell you too much about how poor of a student I was in High School, but I found it boring and mostly useless, and did only what I needed to get by. I enjoyed getting to play a tuba first period every day for four years, and I always looked forward to English class, regardless of who the teacher was. I just think it’s important to stick up for the smart kids, the kids who apply themselves, those kids who value education. I always liked the smart kids, because they kept the attention off me. The last thing I would have wanted was for anything I did to result in a diminished education for them. Their education shouldn’t have to suffer because I wasn’t interested in making acetylsalicylic acid in Mr. Williams chemistry class. What a headache! 

Our Department of Education is less interested in education than it is in equity and manipulating our kids minds to meet their statistical goals. It’s time our education systems were brought back under local and state control. The federal government has done nothing in the last forty-plus years to justify their involvement. When they say all politics is local, that starts with your local school board. If states want to get together and create standards, that’s fine. There are certain things we all should know. The first thing on that list is that the federal government doesn’t do a good job of deciding what should be on that list.

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2023. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. Subscribe today. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.