World Wide Words explains that the “original dilemma in rhetoric was a device by which you presented your opponent with two alternatives…” The opponent loses the argument regardless of the response. A famous example is “Have you decided to stop beating your wife?”
The origin of the expression goes back to as early as the mid-fifteen hundreds in which a scholar says “…it doesn’t matter which of the two points a person made a direct answer, either way he would run on to the sharp of the horn.”
The AARP organization is asking for people to sign a petition addressed to President Obama and their representatives in Congress to not change the way the cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) are made for Social Security. President Obama has said he would be willing to accept using what is called the “chained” consumer price index to calculate the COLAs in the future.
I’ve read a few descriptions of why the COLAs should be changed. One is that retired people don’t have some of the expenses involved in standard inflation calculation. For example, retired people typically aren’t looking for a new home, so an increase in the price of housing doesn’t need to be used to calculate their new benefit. Another reason is that people can shop around and buy a less expensive substitute. An AARP explanation of chained CPI gives the example that if beef prices go up people can buy more chicken. Continue reading
Dr. Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University. She studies animal science and is a consultant to the livestock industry and to zoos. She is also known as an autistic person who leads a successful, even famous, life. After I recently heard her interviewed on a Commonwealth Club radio broadcast, I picked up the first of her books (coauthored with Catherine Johnson) I came across: a 2009 book well worth reading today.
Animals Make Us Human is an insightful book. Her clear-headed, factually based observations are compellingly presented in accessible language. Both adults and students will appreciate this book. Grandin seems open to learning in a way all scientists are supposed to be. She describes times when her experiments contradicted her own beliefs and even contradicted her doctoral advisor’s own work. I admire her willingness to follow the data where they lead.
Grandin explains what animals need: a good mental life as well as physical health. Animals need to be happy. Continue reading
This is another folksy expression in the book “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingsolver. There are some disagreements whether the expression is about the Creek Indians or whether it is about the more mundane level of water in the creeks. My Missouri relatives used the term “crick” instead of creek, so I go with the reference that says the saying referred to flooding and not the Creek Indians.
An article in the October 2012 edition of the ABA Journal titled “Detention Dilemma” describes legal problems created by continuing to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. One very interesting part of the article is an argument whether “…the balance between gaining detainee intelligence and the high cost of defending detention decisions has precipitated a shift away from detentions and toward targeted killings.” The article then says, “Taking the judge at her word–that the high court hinted at the need for more killings–would be profoundly unsettling.”
The official policy seems to have accepted the “hint” given by the high court. We are killing terrorists with drones instead of trying to capturing them. Another point for that argument is given by the accounts of the night bin Laden was killed. Those accounts lead me to believe there was no intention of taking him captive. He was said to have been killed when he raised a hand and his rifle was nearby. Continue reading
This book is subtitled “How Women (And the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future.” I read this book because I wondered how two male authors, John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, separated “thinking traits” into masculine and feminine. They used a practical approach. They created a list of 125 human traits and asked sixteen thousand people in thirteen countries to categorize them as masculine, feminine, or neutral. Then they asked sixteen thousand different people to rate the traits’ importance to achieving a good life. They also asked “big-picture” questions, which struck me as somewhat prosaic, about governments and the world economy. Some pertinent information is left out. The authors don’t discuss, for example, how they dealt with different languages. The results of these surveys provide a frame for stories of people, both men and women, succeeding in business and government by applying winning “feminine” traits. Continue reading
