Professor Bob

Prime Minister’s Day 

I was eating breakfast with my 14 -year-old Granddaughter and I asked her, "What day is tomorrow?" Without skipping a beat she said, "It's Prime Minister Day!” 

She's smart, so I asked her "What does Prime Minister Day mean?" I was waiting for something about Trudeau, or Martin, Harper, etc. 

She replied, "Prime Minister Day is when the Prime Minister steps out of the Prime Minister's Mansion, and if he sees his shadow, we have 4 more years of  Bull Shit." 

You know, it hurts when hot coffee spurts out your nose.

Professor Bob

Professor Bob

 

The Stroke Economy

Hmmm. That sounds a little kinky. Let me explain. To give someone a stroke, in this context, is to pay attention to them. A stroke might be any sort of interaction; a compliment, a criticism, a question, an answer, a comment on the weather, holding the door for someone, dropping a coin in a homeless man’s Tim’s cup. A stroke validates a person’s existence. The statement contained in the stroke says; “I see you.”

Professor Bob

 

The Balancing Act 

If you read and agreed with my post, “Animals All,” you will want to explore with me what it means to have an animal and a parent as part of our makeup. To deny that reality and proclaim that we are fully rational beings is to set ourselves up for a fall. As we explore human nature, we will encounter the number 3 as being key to a balanced, satisfying life. 

Professor Bob

Choose

You likely have listened to kids playing in a sandbox or a playhouse, and have seen them get into some sort of an argument. They can easily escalate to a shouting match, where one or the other or both disavow their friendship. They may angrily shout they will never be friends and never speak again. They might divide the play area in half, move to opposite ends of the sandbox and ignore each after a few more insults. 

But go back in an hour and you will likely discover they have patched up their differences. 

They are playing together, friends again, their disagreement forgotten. How do they do that? Why do they do that? The answer is simple. They choose happiness over righteousness. 

Season’s greetings, my friends. There is much to be learned from the young. 

 Professor Bob

Professor Bob

Enough, Already 

Is it enough? What is enough? Do I have enough? Have I done enough? 

The dictionary says: occurring in such quantity, quality, or scope as to fully meet demands, needs, or expectations. 

Crap!! That is no help at all!!

Professor Bob

No wind will take you there 

If you don’t know which port you want to reach, no wind will take you there. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Yahh, OK, so what? Let me introduce a character out Larry Niven’s book, “The Mote in God’s Eye.” As Niven says, he is more of a state of mind, a way of seeing the world, than a real person. Call him, ”Crazy Eddie.”

Professor Bob

 

Animals All 

That’s not to say that we are not very intelligent, thoughtful, able to plan ahead to the future we want. We can do those things. We know that we live in the present moment, suspended between the past and the future, on a thread that runs from what was to what will be.

Professor Bob

 

It Is What It Is. What an amazing statement, three simple words arranged in such a way as to lead us to an acceptance of what is reality. Reality is. 

Professor Bob

Animals All 

That’s not to say that we are not very intelligent, thoughtful, able to plan ahead to the future we want. We can do those things. We know that we live in the present moment, suspended between the past and the future, on a thread that runs from what was to what will be. 

Cats can know that the wildebeest come to the watering hole every afternoon and they head that way when the sun is high, but they cannot communicate that information to other cats. The young watch and imitate the actions of their elders. 

Chimps can collect tree nuts and take them to a large, flat rock. There they select a hammer stone and break the nuts open, while the young watch and imitate the actions of their elders. 

Homo Sapiens can talk. We can share our thoughts and feelings. We can teach our children. We can tell them where to find food and how to coexist with other members of our tribe. We teach them how to construct a shelter against the weather. We tell them where to be when the rains begin and how to predict when that will happen by watching the stars at night. We actively show them how to fashion and use tools or maps or clothing, or to avoid threats. 

But when we look at the “why,” there is less to distinguish us from animals. 

We need to survive; to breed, to protect the young, and pass our genes and knowledge on to the next generation. We have evolved to want to do this. This desire is instinctive, inborn, as it is with other animals. The animal who does not survive, breed and protect their young, the animal that lacks these impulses will not pass their genes on into the next generation. And that is the name of the game, the thing we are driven to do. 

Our senses and abilities have evolved under the same pressures as those of the entire animal kingdom. We can see, hear, smell and taste in order to find food and mates. Few animals can see the color red, but we and our primate kin can, for we are fruit eaters and red is the color of ripe fruit. Our sense of taste has evolved to stop us from eating poisonous things, our sense of hearing to hear sounds in the range of frequencies that carry important information. 

Our senses are tuned to the need to find food and mates, and protect the young, just like all the other animals. 

We are, in fact, animals all.

 Professor Bob

Professor Bob

Gettin’ Paid for Gettin’ Laid. 

Yep, it’s true.!!! Stop the presses, re-write the headline, this is big news, the story of the century. This will re-write history.

NOT!!

Men and women are different. As if you hadn’t noticed. Evolution has pushed the two sexes apart, in many ways. 

How many guys have wondered about their partner’s ability to get lost?? When they have specific directions, like 5 blocks, turn right, next lights, turn left, stop at number 161 Apple Avenue, they get lost. Like, is your brain made of tofu?? 

Women, why doesn’t the guy get it?? He watched you drool all over your cousins patio set, you left a flyer on the back of the toilet, stopped at the patio sets in Home Repo, talked about having people over for a barbeque, did everything but send him a registered letter, and he asks, “What to get for the house??” Like, is your brain made of tofu??

Listen, guys, for millions of years, it was your job to go hunting and bring back the bacon or antelope, or paddle off over the horizon in search of fish. The guy who got lost, while carrying a haunch of meat, ended up being late night dinner for the local predator. Getting lost in the jungle was a deadly mistake. Talking scared away the prey. Call it evolution in action. 

Ladies, for millions of years, it was your job to care for the kids, keep the home fires burning, arranged communal activities and division of labor, read the look on someone’s face, and settle disputes between those brain dead guys. Talking and listening prevent spear fights and dead people, which are bad for the survival of the community. More evolution in action. 

So why be surprised when a noted journal asks, “Why do men buy sex???” Why are some women willing to trade sex for resources?? Evolution says that a man’s best chance for passing his genes into the next generation is to have many kids with different women. A woman’s best chance is to see that the few children she can have in her lifetime get well carried for. This has been true for millions of years. Again, evolution in action.

Women have a problem with daddy material and husband material. Attracting a guy with the best genes is much, much easier than keeping him around after the act. The best husband material she can attract, the one least likely to stray, is likely not the best daddy material. And the guys know this is true. More evolution in action. A woman is always certain who the mother of her kids is. A man can never be sure who is the father. These are politically incorrect things to say. Too bad they are true.

If you like, go read the article. Everybody has their own take, depending on the author’s sex and culture. One thing for sure, it truly is “The Oldest Profession.”

  

LOL 

Professor Bob

Professor Bob

Pound the Nail, One More Time

Democracy is a pretty good system, the best we have tried in recorded history, depending on how you want to measure things.

If individual liberty, and freedom of association and expression matter to you, then it doesn’t get any better. If social engineering and conformity to the norm turn your crank, then some form of autocracy is where you want to go.  All forms of gov’mint have their Achilles heel, a way in which the system can be subverted by a relatively small number of people.  A democracy can be derailed by special interest groups, associations that can deliver a modest sized block of votes in return for a “consideration,” such as funding for a cultural center. Combined with general apathy and low voter turnout, these special interest groups can hold a balance of power well out of proportion to the actual numbers. Suppose the voter turnout is 35% of 200,000 voters, then the number of voters casting a ballot is only 70,000. A margin of victory of 5% requires a swing vote of only 3,500 ballots. If a special interest group comprising 2% of the population can deliver all their members to a political party, they can deliver 4,000 votes, enough to swing the election one way or another. If I can do the math, then so can any old political hack, looking to win any way he can. “Sure, we’ll fund your community center as part of our cultural enrichment program, and given the special architectural needs of your building, I’m sure we can accommodate a short list of acceptable contractors.” If the short list turns out to have only members of the special interest group, that is to be expected. After all, it’s a cultural thing. So, a 4,000 member cultural association gets a multi-million dollar community center, built at a profit by its own members. The politico wins the election and gets a sizeable campaign donation, and the 200,000 residents get to contribute $5.00 or $8.00 each to the welfare of an invisible minority. Of course, suspicious minds might consider this type of arrangement to be ethically somewhat questionable, so care is taken that the connection between the politico and the special interest group be minimized. Naturally, though, he would be invited to the inauguration, and get to take his shoes off and wear a funny hat. It’s a cultural thing, doncha know. Multiply this by several special interest groups and it becomes clear why unseating an incumbent member of parliament, an incumbent senator or a sitting congressman, becomes a difficult proposition. 

Well, the answer would seem to be, on the face of it, for the silent majority to work together to protect the interests of the society at large. Isn’t that reasonable?? Hmmm. In Toronto, there is an annual beauty contest in which the “Queen” of a particular cultural group is chosen to “reign” over a cultural festival. The participants in the beauty contest are limited to members of that ethnic group and the voters who chose the “Queen” are also limited to members of that particular culture. If your skin is the wrong color or you don’t speak the language, then you are actively discouraged from joining the association, participating in the contest or voting. It’s a cultural thing, doncha know. Okay, let’s form a WASP cultural association, have our own contest and elect our own “Queen” to “reign” over our own cultural festival. Just watch what happens. There will be 17 dozen gov’mint agencies in there, laying charges of racism, giving media interviews, denying permits and drawing comparisons with the KKK. An elderly gentleman, a member of a visible minority, once told me that racism was a whites only problem. A man such as himself, could not, by definition, be a racist. I told him that that was a racist thing to say, because it discriminated on the basis of color. He shook his head, said nothing and walked away. Clearly, I missed the fine points. Hmmmm. Who says we don’t have a culture?? 

Professor Bob