Tagged: family
We, The “Idiot Savants”

One delightful aspect that accompanies the hobby of reading that I did not expect when I began to read could best be called “following my whims”. In my case, I wanted to be a bit methodical, so I began with a couple sets of liberal education type books (AKA classical education), filled with essays by great and influential writers. (Keep in mind, this “began with” is after master’s level coursework, age 35ish). The editors of these sets would have pleasant introductions which included “for more on this topic” recommendations. And ebay supplied the steady-stream of follow-on books at minimal cost.
Math History is my main “whim” of late. This is because I have a belief that “there is no math in the Bible” and want to be able to explain the importance of my claim eloquently.
After you read Math History for long enough, to the point of being half-way through the first of four volumes of The World of Mathematics, you find essays on “Idiot Savants”.
Here I want to say I have provided enough information to not need to explain what “Idiot Savants” are, but to be clear, we are talking about people—a very, very few in number—who can perform, say, 10 digit by 10 digit multiplication problems in their head. The interesting part is that this ability has no apparent correlation to life skills or general wisdom or even other talents, professional or otherwise. IE, most jarring, even these “Idiot Savants” can be not good at math in the complete sense. In a word, to modern man, they are perplexing. Just what exactly is their “skill” or “talent”?
The above picture of the plate is something I took in a downtown toy store, one of the last holdouts of its kind, in my city. There are a couple of problems with it; can you spot them?
- If a kid can’t eat, a kid can’t read.
- If a kid can’t put food in his mouth, a kid isn’t hungry.
- Eating does not require plates.
- If a kid can’t distinguish plate from table (as manifested by their inability to keep the food on the plate and off the table), then they certainly aren’t able to distinguish individual sections within one (1) plate.
- Some forks, especially kid-sized, have three prongs.
- Lastly, and this may be picky, but if you’re going to put dinosaurs on a baby plate, I think the least you could do is label them with their names, followed by phonetic spelling. How else will the child learn?!
Faithful Readers, there is a big world out there. If your world is small, in other words, if you feel like you’re really close to finally being fully tooled and comfortable at, this, our problem-riddled life, then I challenge you to consider if you are, in fact, an idiot.
On Somalis
The best thing, if you ask me, about what’s happening in Minnesota regarding the Somalis is, wait for it, the Somalis have literally no idea what is happening!
They don’t know what Minnesota is. They don’t know what America is. They wouldn’t care if they woke up back in Somalia. They, by every measure, are utterly ignorant people who also are illiterate. Their only path in life is following the herd. Can they even commit fraud if they don’t know how to commit fraud?
It’s great to actually ponder these facts at the deepest level and significance.
What is man?
One (Actually) Interesting Question For Your Bible Study Group
I find professionally procured Bible Study questions to be, in a word, terrible.
Questions developed on the spot by well-meaning Bible Study leaders are, to be blunt, worse.
Why is it so difficult to ask meaningful questions of fellow Christians? I do not know. I think it has something to do with the idea that “no Christian should feel stupid or challenged in their faith”. (This sentiment, of course, being found nowhere in scripture or defensible as the cornerstone of strong faith.)
The following is one good question. Try it out, if you dare.
“In Aristotle’s The Athenian Constitution we find,
The earliest of these offices was that of the King, which existed from ancestral antiquity. To this was added, secondly, the office of Polemarch, on account of some of the kings being feeble in war.
(Italics mine.)
“In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, we find,
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord…But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable.
1 Corinthians 12:4-5, 7 LSB
Are these two ideas reconcilable? If so, how? If not, what is the difference?”
Happy studying!
It’s Not “Happy Veterans Day” Anymore
I say this because of two reasons. First, I saw a headline about a British, 100 yr old Vet who said plainly that his brother’s-in-arms sacrifices (WWII) were not worth it, looking back. I’m only 44 and I agree.
I didn’t see anything I would classify as true combat. I only knew about a few AF pilots and crew from my squadron that lost their lives or were injured while in OIF/OEF. But, if they ever were sound in theory, the whole “fight them now rather than later” or “fight them over there rather than back at home” concepts have been blown to shit now. I see now that the only defensible reason to fight and sacrifice has to be in the framework and timeline of “now”. “These people must be killed now.” “These buildings and capabilities must be destroyed now.” Put another way, the main feeling I had when I got back from Iraq remains: While I was over there trying to stop them, y’all let them in the back door here? WTF, Over?
Secondly, over the past couple of years, as covid restrictions and pandemic mentality lifted, my Ethiopian wife has seen more instances than she ever did between 2011 and now (met me in 2018) of me standing and receiving applause (and me applauding) upon being asked to stand at certain events which take a moment to honor Veterans or First Responders. As I learn more about my wife, which includes learning more and more about how little she knows or understands about America*, I can’t help but wonder (I will laugh in your face if you think there is value in me asking her directly) what goes on in her mind when she sees this exercise of up-and-down, wack-a-mole. If I was to give it my best shot, I’ll be damned if her thoughts go beyond, “Oh look! People are happy and clapping!” while her face uncontrollably forms a smile to match the group’s mood. I ask you to likewise look around America at the first-generation immigrants’ faces during these moments and see if they have a clue.
What to do? Who knows.
——
*Keep in mind, this is despite being married to yours truly. It is a significant feature of the uneducated to hold strongly to their uninformed beliefs through the barrage of all contrary experience.
Everyone Who “Knew This Would Happen”…
…now owes the rest of people, those without the gift of foresight, what happens next.
Predicting moohammedans’ boom in America is now merely part of history. There is no rhetorical power in claiming, “I told you so.” The rhetorical power now in great demand is, “What happens next, Oh, Great, Divinely-Touched, and Accurate Doom-Foreteller?”
This isn’t a “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” taunt.
My foresight says two, and only two, options remain available.
- Insufferable mediocrity until America is a caliphate.
- Actual religious war, which results in everyone losing, except “hope”.
How’s that for Negative Nancy, on this Happy Hump Day?
The Final Paragraph of 11th Edition Encyclopedia Britannica’s Entry “Gunpowder Plot”
(For purists, this is also the infamous 10th Edition’s entry; the 11th is the 10th with three extra volumes.)
Just now I was catching up on my CBS Psalms study from last week, where I date the Psalms as I read them—a new habit to illustrate to myself and others how much of the Bible is actually ever read—when I saw the date and mechanically uttered V for Vendetta’s, “Remember, remember the fifth of November.”
I then moved to teach my 3 yr old, J-, the poem. During this, my conscience showed its face and I thought, “What even was the big deal? And was it successful or not? And did V really like the plot?” Etc.
Here’s the aforementioned conclusion (keep in mind the “Brit” of “Britannica” were the victims of the plot).
So ended the strange and famous capital Gunpowder Plot. However, atrocious its conception and its aims, it is impossible not to feel, together with horror for the deed, some pity and admiration for the guilty persons who took part in it. “Theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the lowness of the ordinary criminal.” They sinned not against the light but in the dark. They erred from ignorance, from a perverted moral sense rather than from any mean or selfish motive, and exhibited extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what seemed to them the cause of God and of their country. Their punishment was terrible. Not only had they risked and lost all in the attempt and drawn upon themselves the frightful vengeance of the state, but they saw themselves the means of injuring irretrievably the cause for which they felt such devotion. Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the Roman Catholics than their crime. The laws against them were immediately increased in severity, and the gradual advance towards religious toleration was put back for centuries. In addition a new, increased and long-enduring hostility was aroused in the country against the adherents of the old faith, not unnatural in the circumstances, but unjust and undiscriminating, because while some of the Jesuits were no doubt implicated, the secular priests and Roman Catholic laity as a whole had taken no part in the conspiracy. (Philip Chesney York, an Oxford man.)
****
A post-script for my dad who says he struggles to connect what I see as the “obvious” connection within my posts.
Beyond the bald facts (as presented here), the following questions remains, “What particular training did the Britannica author have which allowed him to make his claim? Was it secular? Or support of some branch of Christianity? And how does the Bible study I am engaged in influence me? Towards sinning ‘against the light” or “in the dark’? By what measure can that be answered?”
For me, the true “Christianity” prevails. “Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the Roman Catholics than their crime,” being the key notion. Fighting may be part of the road to prevailing. But if the fighting causes Christianity to lose, the sin was designed in the dark.
Using Nebraska-Corn-Fed Boobies in 2025 and Beyond
This is mostly intended to entertain international readers who find themselves daily longing for Americana. But the wisdom herein is universal just the same.
I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City, KS. Picture an endless, rolling sea of clothesline-less backyards in neighborhoods of single-family homes. Try and imagine that the size of the houses and yards grows proportionately to their distance from the city. Got it? Good. That should give you some idea of it.
Our perspective on girls was probably exactly that of any group of boys anywhere on earth. There were hot ones, “doable” ones, and ugly ones. Also similar to any group of boys, these designations were perfectly harmless as no boy was actually going to approach a girl, no matter her place on our assessment.
After highschool came college. I chose to go to a small, private college in a small town of the neighboring state of Missouri. This was the first time I heard the description “townie” as applied to the citizens of that small town. These townies were, as expected, totally different than us college kids. It was fascinating to me. Also fascinating was how the girl situation suddenly changed and its vocabulary too. It was here that kids from all the across the midwest and bread-belt of America gathered, mostly on-scholarship, and it was here that I first noticed, what I quickly learned were colloquially known to rural boys as, “Nebraska-corn-fed boobies”.
The concept at once made me chuckle. My mind was flooded with questions. Was such a thing really possible? If so, why did Nebraska’s corn, in particular, produce big boobs? Why had I not heard this before? How many other people knew? Why wasn’t Nebraska’s population booming? Was Nebraska’s population booming? What else about our world do I not know?!
Okay, hook over—expect a return of concept. But here comes the wisdom.
About two years ago, as I discussed the merits of homeschooling with my brother and his wife, I noticed something that I hadn’t before noticed. They continually shot down every benefit of homeschooling, while also agreeing that the weaknesses of public school I identified were real. Finally, and proudly, I said what I thought was the fairest thing I could, being, “Here’s the thing. You’re sniping everything I say, but you haven’t made one positive claim. I know what you’re against, now I want to hear what you are for.”
That was the last line and last conversation on the matter. I still have no idea what they would do with their kids, which, as should be expected, is moot because they don’t want kids anyhow.
The other day, Scott Jennings was doing his thing, the topic being the No Kings events. He said the exact same thing to his co-panelist. “Okay. But what are you for?”
This is very sad to me. It is sad because I believe we, those in the right, should be able to make a dent during conversations. If we can’t make a dent, then the new question and problem is, “Why even try?”
So when I listen to the current, only critical mind-set of the Left, I would say that it can be fairly summarized in some relevant sense by, “DJT is the source of all my problems.”
In my most empathetic attempt at understanding them, I say to myself, “Just give them this as a fact”. So I do.
I concede, not just for argument’s sake, that it is gospel truth that Donald J. Trump is the source of all their problems.
There.
I said it.
Truth be told, it wasn’t as hard as I expected.
Okay. What happens next?
Because while Trump is the source of all your problems, Donald J. Trump is not the source of all my problems.
And this is where “Nebraska-corn-fed boobies” re-enter the picture.
Like Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss before us, we have two sides of an equation in apparent inequality. Who among us can find the missing variable?
Symbolically, we can write [DJT➡️p] ~ [DJT,p] = 1.
Spelled out, “IF -Trump-THEN-I-have-problems is relationally equivalent to Trump-unrelated-to-problems EQUALS UNITY”.
Put plainly, how can one person, one man, simultaneously be and not be the source of problems?
I submit to you that the variable is Nebraska-corn.
Now, you might be tempted to generalize and say, “I think I see. You’re saying, Pete, that the variable is ‘internal’ to the person—nurture, though, not nature. Something like ‘the way someone is raised inescapably equips them for life, and these people for whom Trump is the source of their problems weren’t raised right’, correct?”
No, I mean Nebraska-corn. 😘
Yesterday Was A Good Day
Took A- and J- on probably their longest hike and highest summit yet (4.2 miles/8000’). Sausage, cheese, crackers, and a cutie at the top.
Stopped at Crumbl for cookies on drive home.
Watched Starship 11 test flight (success).
Ate at Freddy’s.
Traditional Archery club at night, before driving in to work.
The Proper Way to Speak To Your Father
From George MacDonald’s Heather and Snow.

“Am I not your own blood daughter? Where would I be with a father that didn’t keep his word? And what less could I do than help any man to keep his word? If a breach for something other than the family’s truth opened through me, my life would flee from me. What would you have me tell the boy’s mother? I don’t want to expose the folly of him, but if you think it’s necessary, I’ll go to her this morning.”
One Set of Lyrics to Newsies’ “Carrying the Banner”
“We need a good assassination
We need an earthquake or a war
How ’bout a crooked politician?
Hey stupid, that ain’t news no more”
****
The young kids were taking so long to eat dinner that I three on this oldie but goodie soundtrack from childhood in the hopes of keeping my sanity.