When I was in college I had a 4.0 GPA. I'm not a genius! The main difference between me and the guys who flunked out was that I paid attention in class, and I studied.
Once in algebra class, after a big test, everyone was comparing grades. Most of the
people around me had scores below 60. Mine was 85. One guy asked me how I did it. I explained to him that I had spent approximately 16 hours studying. "Well then, you deserve it," he said. He looked very sad, though. I think he had been hoping
I would reveal some magic trick that anyone could do. Actually, that's what it was.
Later, when I became a teacher, I noticed there were many students who believed the only way they could get good grades was by cheating. They would put a lot of energy into devising clever
ways of cheating. Sometimes they got away with it, but in the long run they did not do well, because they didn't learn much. They were never able to pass the carefully proctored final exams.
If only they had taken all the time,
effort, and ingenuity that went into cheating and used it for actual studying, they would have easily graduated with honors. Instead they had to take classes over, and some never graduated.
There was a time when all our phones were landlines. We didn't call them landlines; we just called them phones. They were attached to the wall by cords. Some people equipped their phones with extra long cords so they could walk across the room while talking.
My friend Char, who lived in a small studio apartment, had a cord long enough that she could get to any spot in the apartment while she was on the phone. On a couple of occasions, while we were conversing, I heard the toilet flush.
"If you're going to use the toilet while we're talking," I told her, "I don't want to know. Please flush after we hang up."
Now that everyone has a mobile phone, it seems that making calls from the toilet is a common practice. I notice this in public restrooms, where I often hear the person in the next stall chatting away. Some women like to use the handicap stall as a phone booth. (These are probably the same people who use it as a dressing room.)
At home, it doesn't occur to me to carry my phone into the bathroom. In a public place, my phone is in my purse and goes where I go. If it rings while I'm busy, I don't answer.
Some people, though, can't resist answering a call. And if the call of nature happens simultaneously with the call of the phone, they multitask. Some see their toilet time as an opportunity for privacy, and schedule their calls accordingly.
A recent study suggests the 39 percent of people take their phones to the washroom, and that nearly half of those people have dropped the phone into the toilet. This isn't good for the phones. I once managed to accidentally drop my phone into a glass of water, just a week after I got it. Fortunately, it was insured, and I got a quick replacement. As silly as I felt at the time, how much more embarrassed would I have been if the phone had vanished into the commode?
Although the obvious solution is to stop making calls in the bathroom, it seems unlikely people will change that bevavior. I suggest wearing the phone on a lanyard. Many people have already thought of this, and there is a wide choice of suitable products available from all the usual places.
My college friend Eleni had both sets of grandparents who were immigrants from Greece. Both her parents grew up bilingual, speaking mostly Greek at home, and English in the world.
Describing her childhood, Eleni told me how annoyed she was by her parents and all her older relatives, because when she was little, they spoke Greek as a way of keeping secrets from the kids. "It was rude and sneaky," she grumbled. "They treated us like we didn't have the right to know what was happening."
One day I had a conversation with Eleni's mother. Reminiscing about the past and the days when her children were younger, she told me she felt sorry that her kids had never learned to speak Greek. "We tried to encourage them," she said. "We would often speak Greek around them, hoping they would pick it up, or that they would get curious and want to learn it. But they never did."
Historically, authoritarians have censored dissidents and others they dislike by accusing them of being pornographers who corrupt children.
Something many people don't know about Project 2025 is that its authors intend to make pornography illegal again, but not before they first change how pornography is defined.
Pornography is typically defined as sexually explicitly material (video, written, or audio) that is intended to cause sexual arousal. Educational material, such as medical books or sex-education texts, are usually exempt from being considered pornography, as is material which has "socially redeeming value".
Currently in the US, pornography is not usually illegal, unless it depicts children, or if it is provided to children, or if it depicts people who did not give consent, or if it is determined to be "obscene" - completely lacking artistic or social value and offensive to community standards.
The key thing to remember is that, legal or not, throughout history, pornography has been understood to be explicitly sexual, or to be "indecent" in its portrayal of the human body. (There are longer discussions to be had about how different societies define indecency, or what kinds of things were or weren't taboo in other places at other times.)
Project 2025, however, would expand the definition of pornography by including anything that depicts or mentions gender identity or transgender information. Christine Jorgensen's autobiography would be labeled porn, as would the song, "Take a Walk on the Wild Side", as would my posting an anecdote about how my nephew became my niece. Librarians who allowed people to check out these newly forbidden books would face prison time and would become registered sex offenders. See Page 5 of the manifesto.
This new concept of pornography is just part of the Heritage Foundation's drive to demonize LGBTQ (with a particular emphasis on the trans community). On page 4, they claim that certain words and phrases - sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights - "deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights" and must be purged from "every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."
They do not explain how the existence or use of a word can deprive people of First Amendment rights (which include the right to free speech).
Project 2025 is no longer just a proposal or a looming threat. Donald's advisors and other Republicans have now openly stated that it is their agenda.
The Project 2025 manifesto is difficult reading, most likely deliberately so. It is over 900 pages of academic-style writing, heavy-handed propaganda, strange fantasies, and outright lies. It often uses code words and convoluted language to disguise its true intent. Nevertheless, we should all become familiar with it. A good way to start is to read the comic book version.
