Why I'm here; or, John vs. Ignorance, Part I

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I was reading Salon’s website today, and read Maria Russo’s article on “The Marriage Hoax”. In her article, she makes the argument that the ‘Golden Age’ of marriage that social conservatives wish to return to never really existed; she also argues that marriage has, at the very least, a socially neutral effect, if not a socially derogatory one.

I have quibbles with the latter, but I generally agree with the former. However, in order to butress her historical argument, Ms. Russo states:

The impression that this paragraph gives is that A) Andrew and Rachel Jackson (along with their peers) merely accepted their bigamy as fait accompli and never gave a second thought to it and B) the public at large didn’t really give a good goddamn about the issue.

In fact, once news reached Andrew and Rachel that Rachel’s husband had never really filed for divorce, Andrew and Rachel immediately split up and avoided being seen together in public until Rachel filed for divorce and her divorce was officially granted, whereupon Andrew and Rachel held a new wedding. This seems to me to indicate some sort of stigma associated with even accidental bigamy, which Ms. Russo seems to intimate never actually existed. In addition, Jackson later fought a duel with someone who called Rachel a bigamist; this again doesn’t quite seem to fit with Ms. Russo’s premise.

As for the second matter- it’s hard to say. Yes, Jackson won election in 1828 easily; but four years previous he had been denied the White House (while he won a plurality of popular and electoral votes, he didn’t achieve a majority, and the House of Representatives decided to award the Presidency to John Quincy Adams). True, the statements that he had been caught in bigamy didn’t destroy his political career; but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt him. There’s a world of difference there.

As a final point, Rachel Jackson passed away shortly after the election of 1828; Andrew blamed her death on the slander (i.e., the stories of bigamy) that had been spread about her by his opponents. Not exactly the sort of thing he’d do if there was no scandal attached to such bigamy, now is it?
I have written a letter to Salon regarding this. We’ll see if it gets printed (somehow, I doubt it- the normal letters Salon prints seem to be about a paragraph long and either vocal defense or vocal opposition to a writer’s main premise. My little “ya got your facts wrong on this one” is likely to roll off them like water off a duck. But maybe I’m just too cynical).

But either way, I’ve tried to fight a little bit of ignorance today.
Anyone else fought a little ignorance today? Tell us of your triumphs and failures!

2

Does yesterday qualify?

I was at the grocery store being checked out by a young and enthusiastic checker. He was having a lively conversation with the equally young bagger. They were discussing how funny it is to use “real formal English” with people; how much it throws others off. I had no idea what they meant (Biblical? Elizabethan?) until I listened further. It turns out they meant using words with lots of syllables, bigger words, a fancier vocabulary. Anyway, the checker started throwing around “Supercilious” in a really knowing manner. Using it in a sentence a coupla times, asking the bagger if she knew what it meant, etc. Only he was mispsonouncing it. Badly. Farbeit from me to squelch the vocabulary interests of young people, but he was distracting the bagger so badly she put 8 cans of pears and two large bottles of juice in the same bag. Finally I sighed and said “You know, I’ve always heard it said super-sill-e-us.” He quickly agreed he’d heard it that way too and used it 4-5 more times, this time saying it right.

The damn bag ripped, of course, on my way into the house.

3

Someone on another board I frequent put up the “Kurt Vonnegut commencement speech” in one of the chit-chat forums. I politely replied that yes, it was deep and meaningful ( :rolleyes: ) but was actually written by a Chicago Tribune columnist, and included a link to the subject at Snopes. The person who posted it replied “Hey, thanks! I think it’s important to give the right people credit so I’m going to change it before I send it to anyone.” Yay! It’s not much, but every little bit helps.

4

My mid-70’s mother-in-law no longer sends out UL spam.

I “reply to all”-ed a few of them, with a short cut-n-paste and a link to Snopes.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from her along the lines of: “I was going to forward an email about <random urban legend>, but I checked the site you sent me first and saw that it was a hoax. See? You CAN teach an old dog new tricks!”

The only thing I’ve gotten from her since then was a request that I check into the PPA thing for her…which is, of course, one of the few things to come down the pike that’s not a hoax.

She still sends prayers and glurge, but at least I no longer have to worry about her sending warnings about asbestos in tampons and cancer-causing anti-perspirant to her entire prayer group and bridge club.

5

Last Friday I had to show a PhD electronics researcher how to step tune a radio frequency driven inert gas sputter etching reaction. He was attempting to ignite a glow discharge well below the partial pressure of most neon signs. His tuning network’s inductor and air capacitor were pegged as well, so the auto-tuning mechanism was unable to recover to a null point. He had effectively painted himself into a physics corner.

After my boss pointed out how he had to dial in some midpoint values on the tuning network (which I was about to do) I got the reaction going for him. I had to show him how to strike a glow at a much higher partial pressure and gradually reduce the mean free path (density or flow rate) of the argon gas until he got to the desired operating pressures. I think I’ve lost count of the PhD’s I’ve had to train.

6

Wow, Zenster mate, a very similar thing happened to me last Friday too!

I was at my sister’s house playing with her kids and Kylie kept having trouble undressing her Summer Glow Barbie. I was able to point out to her that the Summer Glow model has bendable arms and you can use that feature to slide the sun-suit top off the front, rather then taking it over Barbie’s head. Thus the Sun-Kist Hair feature remains undisturbed, of course

We also explored the challenge of undoing the velcro ALL the way when removing the bottom of the sun suit. Kylie was thrilled!

Some coincidence, huh?

Fighting ignorance, nothing like it.

7

What he said. Up there. Barbies, glurge, partial pressure.

8

Salon did print your letter. Thought you would like to know.

9

here’s the link way to go, John

10

I’ve been in a training class this week <yawn> and to break the monotony, the instructors have been tossing out jokes and trivia and such. Unfortunately, one of them was spewing glurge - first the Mel Gibson/Man Without A Face myth, then some hokey story about the Blue Angels delivering organs for emergency transplants. I didn’t embarrass the guy in front of the class, but on the back of my critique form, I gave him snopes and the Blue Angels site… Hope he stops telling those stupid stories…

11

Um, actually I think this is the link. Right?

Cool John! Too bad it didn’t say…

JOHN CORRADO
Ignorance Fighter

12

http://www.salon.com/books/letters/2001/03/22/marriage/index.html

I think that’s what you’re looking for.

13

damn. I took it from the page where I saw his letter, honest I did. ::grumble grumble grumble ya try to do something nice in the Pit grumble grumble::

14

I convinced my mom that John Edwards was a fraud.

However, I STILL cannot convince her that there is no such thing as Big Brother trying to run our lives. She thought the Vchip was so the government could check out what we were watching, and now she’s going off about how “they” want to put cameras on street corners or something. So I asked, “Mom, who are ‘they?’” She replied, “Big Brother.” “Uh, Mom, there is no such thing as Big Brother.” Then she started yelling at me to get off my soapbox. (We were discussing something, I forget what it was, but she’s always getting mad at me for having political opinions.)

:rolleyes:

15

I was in my Victorian Lit class last Thursday. We were discussing Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and “Fra Lippo Lippi,” and the professor asked us how we thought Browning compared to Tennyson (whom we had studied earlier).

I raised my hand and described how I thought Browning truly enveloped the character he was examining, rather than Tennyson, who used rather didactic story-telling, as evidenced in “Ulysses” or “Tithonius.” I also talked about how Tennyson grounds his eponymous characters in the outside world - there is always a tangible, solid setting; whereas Browning tends to forgo that altogether so that we are left with a sense of placelessness that adds to the philospohical, introspective nature of the poems.

After all that, the Dr. and I talk back and forth a little, and then someone in the back raises their hand and says, “What does didactic mean?” So I told him.

I also made a comment to my manager on Tuesday that I would be fastidious in my cleaning of the department, and he didn’t know what it meant.

I read a lot, so I have a big vocabulary, and I sometimes unintentionally throw out words (I’ve used supercilious, for instance) that aren’t so well-known. I always feel like I’m fighting ignorance when I know that person will go home and use the word I just taught them.

It’s not really annoying as it sounds, I promise. People only get pissed when they say, “He don’t…” and I say, “He didn’t?” :slight_smile:

16

Whenever I see didactic, I think of the little phrase I use to remember the difference between strategy and tactic.

If it’s prophylactic and emphatically didactic, then it’s not tactic.

Uh, anyway…