So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Fading Fast]

...It could certainly deprive us of those who might make fine leaders without ever having amounted to much academically. The one thing I am certain of more than most else after all these years in the academic sector is that when we assume superiority as a matter of course for our own kind, we can be as narrow-minded as those who dismiss the value of tertiary education out of hand.

Well said sir.

 

[sheeplady]

I think there's an attempt to educate the general US public about separation of powers, but it's not (overall) well done. Politicians also play fast with the separation and often lead the public to view someone as having legislative power (or responsibility for it) when they have very little.

 

[Harp]

I think there's an attempt to educate the general US public about separation of powers, but it's not (overall) well done. Politicians also play fast with the separation....

The United States Supreme Court legislates in direct violation of its assigned constitutional role.

 

[Fading Fast]

Both in grammar school at a, obviously, simple level and, then again, in high school in more detail, the basics of how the US Government is structured / works / elects its officials / passes bills / etc., was covered. Is that not standard in our schools anymore?

 

[Fading Fast]

The United States Supreme Court legislates in direct violation of its assigned constitutional role.

I just discovered that we don't have an emoji for a hand grenade being thrown into a room.

 

[sheeplady]

Both in grammar school at a, obviously, simple level and, then again, in high school in more detail, the basics of how the US Government is structured / works / elects its officials / passes bills / etc., was covered. Is that not standard in our schools anymore?

It is. Maybe all the people I encounter who are clueless are failing those units, though.

I do know that in Virginia they don't require students to memorize the amendments in the bill of rights, which I had to do (25 years ago in New York). They know part of the first and the second.... And that's it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"I'm only a bill, yes, I'm only a bill,
Sitting heah on Capitol Hill..."

I'd memorized the Preamble to the Constitution by the time I was ten years old, but not because I learned it in school. I cannot *recite* the Preamble without hitching, but to this day I can *sing* it.

(Incidentally, the "I'm Just A Bill" song was written by jazz great Dave Frishberg, the man responsible for the greatest baseball song ever written, "Van Lingle Mungo." Eventually, everything comes back to baseball.)

 

[2jakes]

I'm late to the game but feel somewhat responsible as to where the topic
went when I mentioned having met President Bush Sr.

All I know is that I'm very proud of the men and women
that I served under during the Vietnam conflict that
saved my butt!
Sorry for the interruption.
Please continue....


"PLAY BALL!"

 

[ChiTownScion]

It could certainly deprive us of those who might make fine leaders without ever having amounted to much academically. The one thing I am certain of more than most else after all these years in the academic sector is that when we assume superiority as a matter of course for our own kind, we can be as narrow-minded as those who dismiss the value of tertiary education out of hand.

Your countryman, Winston Churchill, was one. But truly self educated intellectuals are a rare contemporary commodity. If I had to wager a reason for that, it would be too many electronic distractions. Our own Miss Lizzie, and Nicholas von Hoffman, are the only two examples of my lifetime who immediately come to mind.

 

[ChiTownScion]

"I'm only a bill, yes, I'm only a bill,
Sitting heah on Capitol Hill..."

I'd memorized the Preamble to the Constitution by the time I was ten years old, but not because I learned it in school. I cannot *recite* the Preamble without hitching, but to this day I can *sing* it.

(Incidentally, the "I'm Just A Bill" song was written by jazz great Dave Frishberg, the man responsible for the greatest baseball song ever written, "Van Lingle Mungo." Eventually, everything comes back to baseball.)

And then there was the hysterical parody on the Simpsons:

 

[Bugguy]

I've had it with the airline gate agents who feel they need to scream into the mic to be heard over the PA system. Their boarding process is dysfunctional enough without them screaming for every group number and lost passengers who are probably still in the bar. Now, if it was sexy and sultry I could tolerate it, but its usually the high pitched most obnoxious sounding agents that need to be heard.... and they're endless.

As you can guess, I'm sitting in the American terminal at CLT drinking $6 worth of Starbucks fat. Its curdling in the cup.

 

[tonyb]

Shelving books with the spines pointing in.

It was bad enough to see books arranged by size, and then with them all covered in various brightly colored fold-'em-yerself dust jackets and "artfully" arranged on the shelves. But this spine-pointing-in fad is beyond silly.

Here's to its quick demise.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's the kind of thing that could be thought of only by people who don't actually read.

 

[GHT]

Your countryman, Winston Churchill, was one. But truly self educated intellectuals are a rare contemporary commodity. If I had to wager a reason for that, it would be too many electronic distractions. Our own Miss Lizzie, and Nicholas von Hoffman, are the only two examples of my lifetime who immediately come to mind.

Churchill had a lifelong affinity with America, he was born and raised in the UK, but made many Atlantic crossings to visit his maternal relatives in the US.
His mother, Jennie Jerome was born in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn in 1854, the second of four daughters of financier, Leonard Jerome and his wife Clarissa. She was raised in Brooklyn, Paris, and New York City. There is some disagreement regarding the time and place of her birth. A plaque at 426 Henry St. gives her year of birth as 1850, not 1854. However, on 9 January 1854, the Jeromes lived nearby at number 8 Amity Street. It is believed that the Jeromes were temporarily staying at the Henry Street address, which was owned by Leonard's brother Addison, and that Jennie was born there.

 

[sheeplady]

As a teen living at my parents, salacious books always went binding in.

 

[tonyb]

That's the kind of thing that could be thought of only by people who don't actually read.

Most of my books haven't been cracked open in years, but when I do wish to refer back to any of them I don't wish any mysteries as to their location.

In my three most-recent residences I've had a room mostly given over to books. Moving those books has been a genuine pain in the rump, as was moving everything out of their room this past summer to make way for new flooring installation. But I have no desire to be rid of them. I know what's in those books, and the sight of them reminds me of all of that.

But, as was alluded to recently in another thread, books are becoming, if not primarily items of decor, significantly that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Then I guess the dangerous piles of assorted books, magazines, and papers heaped on every flat surface around my bed would qualify as "modern art."

I like to arrange my books on the shelves in the living room in such a way as to comment on their contents. For example, "Mein Kampf" is shelved next to "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," and a biography of Babe Ruth is next to a volume of Homer.

 

[tonyb]

I just discovered that we don't have an emoji for a hand grenade being thrown into a room.

And aren't we the wiser fish for not taking the bait.

 

[tonyb]

Then I guess the dangerous piles of assorted books, magazines, and papers heaped on every flat surface around my bed would qualify as "modern art."

I like to arrange my books on the shelves in the living room in such a way as to comment on their contents. For example, "Mein Kampf" is shelved next to "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," and a biography of Babe Ruth is next to a volume of Homer.

I got a system of my own, which a careful observer could probably decipher if he went to all that bother. (Don't know why he would.) Any jokes therein, though, are totally inadvertent.

But maybe I will shelve "Fire and Fury" next to "Being There."

 

[vitanola]

Then I guess the dangerous piles of assorted books, magazines, and papers heaped on every flat surface around my bed would qualify as "modern art."

I like to arrange my books on the shelves in the living room in such a way as to comment on their contents. For example, "Mein Kampf" is shelved next to "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," and a biography of Babe Ruth is next to a volume of Homer.

I keep a copy of "Naked Lunch" in the cookbook shelves in the kitchen, between two favorites; "Housekeeping in Old Virginia" and "The Gold Cook Book".