On "Culture"

Some people believe culture is something you acquire via experience, travel or training. Other people believe culture is strictly defined by geography-where you were raised and what resources were available shape how you develop. And then some people believe, mistakenly I think, that culture is solely a matter of race. Let me explain why I think this last group is wrong.

I have known people of color who were born in Ghana, Jamaica and other locales. When matters of "race" as defined in American politics comes up, they admit to being mystified at how so many people can allow history or their own behavior to hold them back. I have to admit all these folks were college educated and came here legally and intentionally to pursue careers. So how come people who come here legally can overcome hurdles that people of color seem unable to surmount? If "culture" as defined by the Left, by BLM, by ACLU, by DNC and by all liberals, is a matter of race, how come so many people of color come here and succeed, often without the educational or social props our nation current provides many citizens?

What is "culture" anyway? The visible aspects of culture include how we dress, how we act, what we eat, and sometimes what we drive and where we live. Those used to be the sum limit of culture. There was a time when everyone listened to music from every culture. Unfortunately a kind of narrow asceticism has entered our nation where one must declare to be within the limited norms of stereotypes set not by the individual, but by others within the society who claim special knowledge. Thus a six year old white girl dressed as a fictional Disney princess Moana or Jasmine is accused by the media elite, such as Comsopolitan Magazine, of being racist and "appropriating culture." I'm confused by this because these are made up animated characters and as such really have no culture to speak of. While I certainly wouldn't encourage anyone to put their child in blackface or don a sombrero and claim to be a Mexican, what harm is it to dress like a cartoon of another little girl?

I'm not sure who is in charge of this cultural definition thing. It seems that like so many school elections, universities have allowed the very few who want the title to have the position. It's probably so that they can be left alone to play beer pong in peace. These mouthy little snowflakes are very open in pointing out the offenses others make to culture. This exercise prepares them to be trapped in Academia as either a student or adjunct professor for the rest of their lives because honestly, who else is going to hire them? These puffed up little twits have an entire new vocabulary of offenses to match the slate of gender nuances that everyone else is supposed to embrace. I think I speak for millions when I say-I don't give a damn what or who you do, just leave us alone.

Going along with culture is the "new racism." According to these same arbiters of cultural norms-you're racist and I'm racist and we just don't know it. If we lock our doors, we're racist. If we avoid dangerous neighborhoods, we're racist. If we don't adhere to policies that support turning over most of your income to the nearest person of color even if they make more than you do....you guessed it-racist. Racist as a term has become almost meaningless. It's just something mobs like to shout along with "death to cops" and "f*ck---whoever". I see their mouths moving but none of their sounds make any sense. And that is because the claims of racism have become so outrageous that only the most doctrinaire liberal believes all of them.

Here are just some of the things I have heard defined as racist:
Devil's Food Cake
Black Holes in space
Blackmail
Reading to your white children at night. (shame on you!)
Not taking a knee
Marriage
Intact families
Manners
Writing
School

These are just a few of them-I'm sure there are more. I don't mean to pick on these people, but seriously don't they have other things to do? Jobs? School? Something? More and more when you get on social media it's another litany of woes from the Left. I don't think they are even listening to each other anymore. Rant, rant, rant. Scream, scream, scream. Pop in your earbuds and it becomes some sort of hysterical mime troop encountering an obstacle Daddy can't just write a check to make it go away. I'm tired to death of their constructed and constrained culture imposing itself on mine. Contrary to the spox on the Left, everyone has rights. And although it's only implied, one of them is the right to be left the hell alone. I'm asking nicely on behalf of the millions of us who are thinking this, but not saying it for fear of being fired, attacked or making liberals cry.

Permanent vs. Transient

I've been looking at our society for awhile now-admittedly from a political point of view. But in the larger scale of things it appears that we are not so much warring about political views as we are over the larger scale of permanence versus transience. This war can be easily demonstrated by looking at marriage, housing, employment and other elements.

Marriage has been under fire for awhile now. Earlier and more primitive societies saw the value in permanent relationships, approved of by tribes, families and society as being beneficial as a means to solidify the nature of the culture. It's not that people didn't circumvent the institution of marriage, but more that they sought to establish rules of marriage outside the norm. We saw this with polygamous marriage, with the acceptance of harems and concubines as well as our modern day discussion of same sex marriage. It is interesting that even in the most liberal societies, the official "blessing" of marriage comes not from a house of faith, but from the state. As a result, marriage as an institution has changed from a moral imperative to a social imperative.

The true irony is the institution itself is also under assault, if you will, from those who actively choose not to participate. Many people avoid marriage and even within celebrity circles the action of marriage is either more of a media event if a marriage is broached at all. While many will say the break down of the institution of marriage is harmless, can anyone truly disregard the problems of single mothers raising children in poverty? While most social conservatives oppose same sex marriage on religious grounds, which is their right, if it is the state conferring the marriage upon a couple, perhaps for the stabilization of society it is better to have permanent same sex marriages rather than a transient relationship. I don't claim to be the arbiter of what people think, but I see less harm to society and the individual from a long term permanent official relationship than a string of temporary transient relationships that sometimes result in children who are not supported in the ways children require.

Housing is another area where this permanent vs. transient idea comes into play. Many people choose to avoid the constrictions of buying a home because it would mean they would assume the costs of maintaining a home. Even in this era of rapid increase in real estate, there are people who do not want the aggravation or responsibility of home ownership. If you drive by apartment complexes, you will notice that most of the cars are newer and more expensive than your average middle income housing development. The same folks who avoid ownership in housing frequently do so with transportation as well. It's much less expensive to lease a car on a month to month basis, you never really pay off the debt. Instead one new car is replaced with another. This points to certain internal need to have a facade of affluence even when none is in evidence.

This is further carried out with people who buy homes to the outermost limit of their credit and then partially fill the house with rented furniture. I live near a very expensive housing development. In the special area of the development, homes start in the million dollar range which is high for north Texas. A friend of mine owns a cleaning company which serves many of these homes. She has seen that the ground floors of these house are filled with luxurious, impressive furniture-all with rental stickers. Quite often the bedrooms, especially for the kids, are mattresses on the floor and clothes in plastic laundry baskets. So even though these folks attempt to attain the perception of affluence, they resort to doing so in ways that are transient. It is not unheard of for folks in this affluent area to simply abandon their houses rather than going through the public shame of bankruptcy. So it appears that the need to give the appearance of wealth is more important than doing the heavy lifting and self discipline and denial and allows wealth to develop.

Even in employment, people seem to believe or have been taught that they deserve more than their talents or education merit. This has created a strange sort of situation where uneducated people with connections (think anyone on TMZ who isn't a performer) can get a better paying job than people who have actually gone to college, done hard work and represented themselves in a responsible way. I am not a Sanders supporter, but I understand the bitterness of so many young adults out of college because my children are in that age range. All of them work very hard, some with multiple jobs. They do what they are told, do the best they can and yet see no real traction in terms of economics or promotion. Instead upper jobs are filled by outsiders who haven't been in the company and who haven't been patient after a manager asked them to just wait for raises, etc.

An example of this is one son who works for a well known bike company. He has sold $1.2 MILLION in high end bikes over the last three years. Yet his most recent raise was fifty cents an hour. His salary doesn't even pass five percent of what he has sold. Yet others in the same company who are friends and acquaintances make more. My oldest son has a degree in history and his job pays $12 an hour. My daughter works two jobs, one at a well known national bank, another at a national retail chain. As long as this generation continues to see older people line their pockets and refuse to promote them, the disaffection and disgust will grow.

This is not to say that this generation doesn't share the blame. Many of them bought into the college recruiters false assertions that they should "invest in themselves" buy attending costly private schools and racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of college loan debt. Part of this is the issue of pushing the myth that "everyone should go to college" and part of this has to do with the method of helicopter parenting that has led these kids to believe they should be given a safety net for every problem. Of course that goes back to a system of education that is far more interested in controlling outcomes than in education. But then again, they have been raised to believe that there will be unlimited do overs and that good effort trumps good outcomes. Again that lack of dedication to a job or task is the debate over permanence (staying on a job and doing the job) goes up against transience (feigning boredom or simply giving up).

It used to be that someone would train for a job and hold that job moving up the chain for 30 years. Perhaps that model is and was unrealistic. But we currently have companies whose employment needs rise and sink with the tides. This creates a type of cultural anxiety where people feel they cannot count on the future and therefore do not shape their lives for the future. We can see this in the number of educated, employed people who choose not to have children. My own children have said that they don't feel confident enough in the future to have children. Why purchase a home if you will only lose it five years later? Why buy a car when you can abuse a rental and get a new one in two years? Why bother to maintain, develop, or hold onto anything or anyone in this society if the entire culture underlay can be ripped apart on a whim? Are you a permanent person or a transient one? I think it's something people need to consider.

I Am Not a Teacher/I Am a Person Who Teaches

This is an important step. I must move away from being a "Teacher" as an identity. For too long I have put my job before my health, my sanity, my talents and even my family. This is the way the system is set up. It used to be that there was a clear division between one's work life and home life. Education, as practiced today, isn't like that anymore.

Oh sure, you'll have those trolls who chortle "but you have summers off." Define "off." In the past five summers I have attended five AP Summer Institutes, written curriculum twice, attended twenty "trade days"(which are a special torture I will explain later...), taken repetitive and often meaningless professional development (Bring your best lesson plan ad infinitum) which all are spaced just far enough apart to make taking a college course, a vacation or even getting my house clean an impossibility. I don't know of a single teacher who thinks of summer as "off" time. It's catch up on cleaning, fix the bathroom, paint the baby's room or even mow the lawn time. It's time when we get to do or have to do all the things normal people do on weekends during the school year while we're frantically grading into the wee hours hoping to make the gradebook deadline.

I have to learn to be a Person first. I can't just keep being a Teacher Creature who exists on test data, IEP's and has so little time to be an individual that I have no hobbies and few friends. This has to end. I cannot continue on this path. Please don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike teaching, but like some sort of aggressive mold, teaching has taken over my life sucking out any time from reading or painting or drawing or just taking a walk in the park. I have stories that make me smile. Like the girl who showed up today from U of Arkansas who told me that she was a Graphic Design major. We laughed because she was a mess when she was in my painting class. I celebrate that there are kids out there, some that I may never know about, who chose art and design as a career. But for every story like that there are so many others with kids who don't care, parents who live to crush the spirit of teachers and administrators far more interested in data than people.

I don't know how anyone does this for thirty years. I honestly don't know how I have done it for seventeen years. I didn't plan on staying so long. And unfortunately because of my age, I find I have to stay a few more years just to have some sort of money rolling in during what is laughably called retirement. I've seen retirement. Oh sure there are those who travel to exotic lands, sampling life by the wine glass. But far more often, especially with teachers pensions, I've seen the type of retirement where 80 year old retirees feel compelled to sub three days a week. I don't want to be doing that at 80 or 70 or even 65. I'll work as a Walmart Greeter before I do that.

It would be nice to think that teaching was some sort of shadowy modern version of "Good Bye Mr. Chips", but instead it seems to be a world that is trapped in meaningless trends hinging on test scores and special populations. In the workroom, we older teachers spend some time worrying about the future. We also discuss the past. I have watered down my lessons three different times. As more special populations are parachuted into general education classes, the regular students suffer from neglect and I fear the backlash will be horrible to behold. I look at my five year old grandson, so eager to read and do math and then I look at the tortuous methods they've concocted to teach these concepts which I fear will mess him up as New Math did me fifty years ago. What are we doing? When did teaching become facilitation rather than caring? When did scripting replace common sense? When did administrators become so wobbly that they fear even the most idiotic demands from parents?

This can't end well. But it will end. Education is a very trend conscious endeavor. I've lived through New Math, Open Classroom, Self Contained, Departmentalized, Whole Language and more fashion statements all with their own little zippy promises of higher test scores. In reality, like it or not, some things are better learned by rote.  The alphabet, the multiplication tables, the names of states and such can be learned by heart and probably should be. But the current trend is that rote learning is bad and that it is better for a student to stumble through a hundred other possible solutions before finding an answer. I've never liked estimates. I never believed them. Any contractor who gave me an estimate always ended up costing twice as much. Between this unstable method of answering questions and the electronic distractions of tablets and phones, I fear the next generation will grow up illiterate. And where will that leave us?

I suppose that's why I still teach. Someone has to care about things like deadlines and absolutes and quality. I don't like the philosophy that complete is good enough. I hate it that people, including adults, think all limits and deadlines are more like suggestions than requirements. Sometimes you have to do what you're told to do when you're told to do it. That we currently have a nation where that's not the case for everyone explains why schools are in such disarray. And that is why I must become a person who teaches instead of a teacher.

Our Brave New Generation

Despite the economic gloom in the world at large, I do honestly try to stay upbeat and optimistic with my students. High school kids have usually been very earnest and often seek approval for their views. This time around many of them gave lip service to the ideals expressed, but not demonstrated, by the Obama administration. They seem to think that they are safer, freer and richer under the current administration. I'm not about to get into a political debate with someone who hasn't earned a paycheck so I let it go.

But here's the irony. These bright young people who claim to adhere to the kinder, gentler policies seen on DNC placards are in real life quite often shallow and narcissistic in their personal behavior. Witness this. Every year our student council does a food drive for Metrocrest Services-a local food bank that provides baskets of food for needy families in the immediate area. I have volunteered there and they do terrific work. So when the program was announced, I talked to my classes. I posted information. I discussed the need for food and how in the current economic situation there were more people-sometimes even people they might personally know-who were counting on the food bank in order to survive. I brought my own collection of canned goods-about ten cans in all. But not one kid, NOT ONE, not even the kids who claimed to be so in touch with the community ideals of Obama, could be bothered to donate a can or a dollar for the cause. Of course, I don't think that kids should be badgered into donating a la United Way (ugh!) but this particular group has been so aggressively supportive of what they view as liberal Democrat goals. It appears that they are only willing to help others as long as it isn't much trouble. I guess it's a good thing we have all those backward churches and all those middle class conservatives that do things like donate time and money and effort for such causes.

I am quite fearful of the outcome if these young people-who get their opinions from Colbert and SNL-come into power. We should all be very afraid.

I'm Baaaaack

I haven't posted for awhile. The general bad taste left in my mouth from a very partisan driven and media manipulated election just left me,honestly, without words. But it's a new year, a new day and the menace is upon us. First of all, while I hope to see improvement in the economy and the way our nation is run, I doubt very much that Obama can do it. From what I have seen, the DNC is continuing to talk out of both sides of their collective mouths. They sign papers swearing that they won't accept a Blagojevich appointee, then backpedal under the threat of bad press, and do it. Obama's appointees to upper level positions are also under the microscope, although the mainstream press is content to let that slide as well. The biggest concern is and should be the Gaza/Israel conflict. How many rockets has Hamas fired into residential area of Israel? Answer: 5000. How long should ANY nation, including Israel, have to put up with such actions? Answer: Not one day. So how come the media is willing to manipulate its coverage to give aid and comfort to a nation that would gladly produce suicide bombers for Al Quaida? CNN seems to think the news is up to their interpretation. Evidently, they think the America public is just too dumb to get the nuances of what is politically correct for International Debate in this Day of Obama. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is the same fight Israel has been fighting since it was created. The Palestinians are despised by other Middle Eastern nations EXCEPT when they oppose Israel. In fact, many Middle Eastern nations don't mind using Hamas and Palestine as a catspaw to lure the Israelis into a bigger, less manageable conflict. So folks, stay tuned. Let's see where Obama leads, if he leads at all, which I very much doubt given the present leadership in Congress and their obsession with doing what is popular, over what is right.

Everything You Know Is Wrong.

It's funny how politicians predicate their fortunes on what they perceive as a stable and unchanging economic fortunes. They assume that the poor folks they champion today will always be poor, and that the rich folks they villainize will always be rich. Well that's not exactly true. It seems that of men born in the bottom 25% of income, 32% of them end up in the top 25% of income. And vice versa. The Romans used to have a goddess called Fortuna, who was to be appeased for her flippant ways. Perhaps politicians would do well to recall that those they help now, may curse them down the road for punitive taxes.
Story here.
Excerpt-or how to be a high income wage earner:
"1. High-income households are not likely to consist of one person earning a very high income (as is often assumed); rather, they are likely to have two or more income earners:
-In 2006, a whopping 81.4 percent of families in the top income quintile had two or more people working, and only 2.2 percent had no one working.
-By contrast, only 12.6 percent of families in the bottom quintile had two or more people working; 39.2 percent had no one working.
(This is Important)-
The average number of earners per family for the top group was 2.16, almost three times the 0.76 average for the bottom.

2. Census data show a large difference in full-time work and in the number of weeks worked in a year.
-Less than one-third of families in the lowest quintile had a head of household working full-time; in the top quintile, more than three-fourths of families did.
-Thus, average families in the top group have many more weeks of work than those in the bottom and, in the late 1970s, the 12-to-1 total income ratio shrunk to only 2-to-1 per week of work, according to one analysis.

3. Workers tend to start out at a low income, increase their earnings with experience, and then have lower incomes late in their careers or in retirement. For example, peak earnings typically occur in the 35-to-54 age group. However:
-In the bottom income quintile, only one-third of households are headed by someone 35 to 54; whereas, in the top quintile, more than half of household heads are in that age range.
(I want you to consider seriously the large number of single parent families in certain demographic groups AND the much earlier age of first pregnancy for those single mothers-THIS more than anything is a predictor of poverty.)
-The bottom group also has a much larger proportion of household heads more than 75 years of age — 11.5 percent versus 2.3 percent for the top group.
(This is also the result of drug/alcohol abuse that has left many grandparents in charge of raising grandchildren. So the sex and drug revolution did produce some casualties.)
-The bottom also has more young heads of households ages 15 to 24 — 10 percent

So, if you want to be wealthy, get an education, don't do drugs or alcohol, and don't have babies out of wedlock. Gee, where have I heard this all before?

This is NOT ART.

I teach art. I also happen to be a person who truly loves animals. I am not a nut. I am not a person who blows up labs or refuses to eat meat, but I don't think that humans should deliberately cause harm or pain to animals. This person who claims to be an artist, I personally think he's just a sadistic monster, claims that by paying poor Honduran children to catch this poor sick animal, and then to chain him up and watch him die is ART. This is cruelty. This is just as bad as the stupid STUPID hoax masquerading as art perpetrated by the Yale art student who pretended to repeatedly inseminate and abort fetuses. What is WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? This is why I teach art rather than work as a professional artist. Frankly, the art communities of this world have become so jaded, so intimately entranced by that which is perverted or bizarre that art as beauty has become passe. I am ashamed to be on the same hemisphere as these sick and twisted media monkeys. I am more ashamed that they dirty the epithet of "artist" with their psychotic and cruel performances. Go here if you want to lodge a protest on this petition.
Facebook Protest Link

Where Are Our Heroes?

This isn't an empty question. I don't know if heroes exist on an everyday basis or if they are only recognized long after their acts of heroism. I am sure there are those whose simplest acts qualify as efforts above and beyond the norm. I am equally sure that most of us could and should do more, but we slog through our daily lives avoiding hard questions and major impasses. I guess that would be a good analogy for modern life, we seek to be like streams that flow around the damn with all the rising water rather than being the wave that breeches that same damn then crashes to the ground. I think many of our heroes are dying. The few WWII vets left are diminishing on an hourly basis, their stories untold. Korean War, Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan, even the cops and EMT's on their daily tours of duty simply try to make it through the day. But unlike you and me, they have to wake up and do it all over again. Is is any wonder that our kids are so aimless? Their heroes are the "anti-hero"-the flawed thug sprouting hubris and regret. What sort of role model is this that works his actions for self over selflessness? There used to be a saying "Show me your friends and I'll show you your future." Instead perhaps it should be, "Show me your heroes, and I'll show you your fate."

Good News from Down Under!

I was badly needing something good to be in the news. Politics is depressing. The economy is depressing. Even the sports news is sad, stupid and yes, depressing. So with the yin and yang of things, I figured if the northern hemisphere was in the dumps, then maybe there was more optimism to be found down under. And I was right. Read and rejoice!
Kerplunk

Sign This Petition

There are still men in this world who feel it is their heaven sanctioned right to oppress women and girls, even to the point of killing a man who dares to point this out. If you think this is a problem isolated in regions of the Middle East, think again. Throughout the world, wherever this backward philosophy of life moves, women are oppressed and sometimes beaten and killed. In a relatively average Dallas suburb on New Years Day, two seemingly normal teenage girls were killed by their father. Their crime? Dating American boys, wanting to be normal, wearing western clothing. In Canada as well, a father killed his daughter for refusing to wear hijab. As Islam and the related cultures expand into western regions, we must be ready to recognize this evil behavior for the abuse it is. It is not "honor" nor is it something to be pushed away as a cultural activity to be permitted, it is the systematic destruction of females with the tacit approval of the leaders of the various mosques. This is not to say that all Muslims indulge in this behavior, but western police organization don't realize that the women who are abused are so brainwashed and so cornered, that they accept this abuse as normal. We cannot and should not permit the growth of this evil. And we should not let a good man die because he dared to say it was wrong.

"Me-ism"-Why the Liberals Could Cause our Downfall

I think I will trademark the phrase. It refers to the modern phenomenon where many people think they are what my Mom used to call "the Bellybutton of the Universe." By that I mean, there are folks who think every condition of their waking and sleeping should meet their specific criteria of "good" even when that criteria is totally insane. I blame it to a certain extent on computers. It used to be that you logged on and the window looked the same every day. But then there came a time where people could change their window. They could personalize it-and so began the slippery slope. Now we can change our computer desktops, our cell phones even our charge cards to reflect the "real me". Is this a good thing or is this navel gazing taken to the extreme? I see this a great deal in schools. We get notes from countless students who all seem to have life threatening kidney conditions that require unlimited access to the bathroom. I am not making light of kidney conditions, but the number of kids with these types of access to hallways and out of the classroom are on the rise. What happened to self-control, or-horrors-going in the more than ample time between classes? There are similar issues with grades. First of all, deadlines mean nothing. If Johnny has a club soccer practice and tuba lessons, then we shouldn't expect him to do his homework-or so the conventional wisdom goes. And heaven help you if a student fails a class because it is never ever EVER their fault. It goes beyond the classroom. My kids work in a fast food restaurant. Grown people cannot give rational orders. And they quite frequently change their minds between the order and reception of the food. The result is the expectation that their every whim, no matter how outrageous or demanding, will be granted. My daughter quit her job recently after an event where a mother decided to pitch a fit because the fire laws forbade candles in the restaurant for her daughter's party. After bitching out my 22 year old and making two other servers cry, I have to wonder what this woman was trying to prove to her kids? Was she trying to prove that being a self-centered bully is the way to make it through life? I am thinking that is the case because we are raising a generation of children who have never been permitted to learn via experience. They are wrapped in virtual cotton, with parents hovering around them like putti surrounding a Renaissance creche. On a global scale we have things like Leo Dicaprio telling us how bad we are for not allowing Gore's message of obedience to the Kyoto Accord. While I think we should always seek more efficient and less destructive forms of industry, it would seem that in signing the accord, we would be the only ones in that position. Then there is the question of animal rights. Like it or not PETA, your unwillingness to allow domestic drilling for oil in ANWR has as much to do with this war we are in as anything else. It's easy to say "oh let's just not drive" but that is not reality. Heck, gas is over $3.00 a gallon and I still see folks sitting in the parking lots after school waiting for their kids with their engines running. And by the way, if we did all magically stop eating meat tomorrow, what would happen to cows, chickens and pigs? Are they so endearing that PETA members would willingly take a cow or two home to their Soho loft? Would Paris Hilton turn over her backyard to homeless chickens? Would Al Gore advocate pigs as a means of environmentally safe transportation? And by the way, the ethanol from corn that was crammed down our throats by Congress-it LOWERS fuel efficiency, it damages older cars and it forces the cost of corn-the main ingredient of livestock feed through the roof. And WHAT the hell did you expect to accomplish? Frankly, I don't know how anyone can look at one thing pushed through by liberals and still claim that they are a viable force. Oh sure, one might get elected, but mark my words, with a goofball Speaker of the House and an ultra liberal President, you will see riots, protests and possibly the biggest overturn of a Congress in history at the midterms. What will you do then?

Those Who Do Not Learn History....

The story that is linked in the headline is one that interests me because it states some ideas that I have expressed in my classroom and to family and friends. There are those in our society who like the idea that history is dead. They see no reason to learn history, to know history or to take away any lessons from history. I think that's a huge mistake.

And there must be some credence to this because every successful military academy includes a history of war and battles that includes studying the tactics of the ancient Romans, the medieval Turks and the modern Japanese. What bothers me is that in the general population we have children and ADULTS that do not know their own nation's history, nor do they have anything other than a shallow grasp of the history of man. These same people can quote chapter and verse on the latest showing of "Heroes" or tell you the entire genealogy of the kids in "Gossip Girl", but they have no knowledge or interest in obtaining knowledge about the measures that created our modern society.