I live quite near Mayflower, Arkansas, site of an oil spill and ongoing cleanup efforts. You’ve probably seen it in the news.
Living in a landlocked state, we did not have “oil spill” on our worry-lists here.
You may live near this pipeline, too, and not even know it. That’s why I’m posting this map (which I did not create, but simply found with a Google image-search). There may be other such pipelines here, as well. Few people notice them — until one breaks.
[Later edit, in October 2015: a friend of mine questions the authenticity of this quote, but did find a source for Mark Twain saying this: “The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.” He may well be correct; my friend is an expert at detecting false quotations. If anyone knows of a source for the quote in the pic above, please leave a note about it in a comment to this post.]
Someone close to me said this recently. My response was immediate: “There’s no need to be insulting!”
However, the observation has proved to be accurate. I did not know then than I would run for, and win, an officer position in my labor union, nor did I expect to spend a day at my state capitol, lobbying against a bill in committee. I did not anticipate becoming a near-constant activist. However, all these things have happened.
I could say I’ll never run for a governmental office, but my record on pronouncements doesn’t seem to be good. I do know this much, though: I didn’t go looking for this. Events simply happened to my co-workers and myself. We didn’t go looking for a fight.
Living through a protracted struggle isn’t easy in any line of work. Teaching is no exception. The simple fact is this, however: we aren’t giving up.
No matter what.
Since I’ve started blogging on WordPress, there have been several surprises, but the most puzzling to me is the recent rise in popularity of my blog in India. I live in the USA, so it’s no surprise that most hits on my blog come from here. However, I have no explanation for why India is #2.
This blog has a high math content, compared to most blogs. Might that have something to do with it?
Whatever the reason, I’m glad I have readers there.
The part of this map I don’t like involves China, Iran, and North Korea: zero hits from each nation. That has nothing to do with the content of my blog, of course, but with heavy censorship in each of those countries, all of which have notoriously bad human-rights records. In at least one of those nations (Iran), my blog has been read, but that doesn’t show up on this map because of the extreme lengths my friends in Iran have to go to simply to surf the web without detection and interference from Tehran.
I would like, someday, to visit all of these countries. In the cases of Iran, North Korea, and China, though, I’m waiting for regime changes first.
I have actually heard two different high school principals say, to assembled students in one case, and a faculty meeting in the other, that “mediocracy” was not acceptable, nor what we should want as a school, from our students, blah blah blah. Use a non-word like that, and you’ve lost me as a listener, possibly permanently.
Clearly, the fact that two different principals (neither at my current school, by the way) in central Arkansas did this same SNAFU means it is likely that someone nearby is teaching this to people, spreading the idea to replace “mediocrity” (a perfectly good word) with “mediocracy.” They’re probably doing this at a nearby teacher school, er, I mean, “College of Education.”
This got me wondering about possible definitions for “mediocracy.” One comes to mind very quickly, and that is a system of government: rule by the mediocre.
Oh, wait, we have that already, and have had it for as long as I can remember. I guess we are willing to accept mediocracy, at the federal, state, and local levels, and in all branches of government.
Sigh.
If you aren’t certain who racked up the higher body count, just ask anyone from Iraq.
According to this map, I live in Little, Oklahoma. I work in Rock, Louisiana, not far away. I buy most of my Chinese food (>50% of what I eat) a few kilometers to the North, in the former North Little Rock, now renamed Argenta, Missouri.
It was fun partitioning the state I live in (using the Arkansas River, and “Tornado Alley,” also known as Interstate 30, to do it), and otherwise playing around with the map of the country and continent where I live.
By the way, I actually do believe that if the USA ever falls apart, Soviet-Union-style, Texas really would be the only former state to give itself a subtitle.
RobertLovesPi.net 