Category: screen time

Too much screentime for kids.

Are kids able to read anything further than three sentences or more exactly do they EVER read more than three sentences strung together? Like … things called ideas, instruction, information?

We as adults are kidding ourselves and more particularly kids themselves are kidding us all that this is ‘work’ or education or learning … when it is mostly anything but. I don’t mean the bright kids or those from motivated households, but I mean the kids from households where theres never any utterance of anything remotely connected to learning.

I can think of instances in even my limited social interaction where the adults seem apparently unable to contribute anything to a childs intellectual development. And then of course once age sixteen has passed them by and the exams fizzled to nothing everyone exhibits collective blindness as to how a valuable life opportunity/ waymarker has been allowed to drift past beyond reach. A vacuum of any hope to human potential.

We also as adults in this present age collectively somehow retain this silly notion that a laptop is ‘now essential’ for learning …. WHAT UTTER RUBBISH. What most average kids learn, or more correctly attempt to learn in a day I’m sure could quite easily be typed on one side of a sheet of A4; maybe even A5.

Perhaps the Russians are right on this, no child under eighteen is allowed to use a mobile phone.

Paper and books retain the images, facts and explanations forever, no matter how many times it takes until eventually ‘it sinks in’ and I know this myself from at later middle age still retaining the pleasure of ‘finding things out’ to quote Richard Feynman, making it a hobby to memorise things, little bits of foreign language, technical theory of various sorts. How we learn has been a fascination of mine most of my life, half a century and more. It is the ability to open the page again, to revisit again and again that sets it into ones mind, the weak point of screen based learning is that mostly its a once only experience, theres no pages to flick! Another weak point of screen learning is that theres too much faffing about to find what it is you want, I reckon any serious for instance medical student or professional engineer intending to pass exams will jettison the screen for a hard copy set text in book form, but anyway they will be bright and know the material already when plunged into exam prep.

And what of writing itself, gone is the effort and eventual mastery of a ‘good hand’ likewise the ability to make quick and efficient sketches and so many times we realise already kids and young adults can barely spell. Theres too many lame excuses from all concerned why this that and the other cannot be made to happen. The antidote is called hard effort and application and this means the ordinary and the struggling are now worse off than they have ever been and to my mind certainly book based learning can be called the most efficient reward for time spent, little in life that is valuable is gained without a little pain or effort.

Minds eye visualisation is hardly mentioned but once developed sets you apart from the vast majority, its also my experience minds eye visualisation is much reduced by an overwhelming reliance on a screen. This I believe is under-reported and under-researched.

I came from a ‘humble’ background, I recall vividly over fifty years ago meeting a slick new potential uncle that was technically literate (college ‘n suchlike) and could actually recall and set down on paper circuit diagrams and explain it all and most certainly had this ten year old enthralled.

Another case in point, an ex g/f has two grandchildren, age ten and fifteen, which up until December a web fascination fed only from a phone screen is now a laptop and x-box for the just turned ten year old girl (!) and a self bought laptop a few months ago for the boy of fifteen that now spends all night camped out in the parked caravan; I wonder at what time he eventually gets to sleep? I’ve already highlighted to the grandmother the dangers of all this, the reality of web addiction, and so what happens is yet more addictive gizmos are bought for them! Am I speaking a language they understand, does it sink in …. obviously not!

I predict the lively bright ten year old girl within three months will be solemn, uncommunicative and increasingly obese. She will be obsessed with the utterly pointless so called ‘social media’ and hobby activity will be a thing of the past. Progress? I think not.

The bright and advantaged will fly ahead as more than ever, the ordinary the slow are increasingly an underclass, disadvantaged by the over zealous application of screens and keyboards. Art, creativity and handicraft, modelmaking and inventive play for the younger kids and striving to make things with their hands and make them better each time is increasingly looking to be practically a Victorian oddity in its total abandonment. So does this mean the effort to do better with increasing skill in hand eye co-ordination and visualition are becoming near extinct … looks to be so!

I had two years ago when lockdown started produced two very good worksheets for them, intending to get them hopefully with my input to lay their work out better on paper, twenty questions or topics or mini projects were covered … did either of them do anything from this attention of mine ….. nothing, zilch.

Jaron Lanier who knows all about things tech implores us all to dump the screen and keyboard to dump facebook and phony titled ‘social media’ … and how very right he is.

postscript, lets bullet point a few ideas of what troubles me of endless screentime for kids and the obscenity of mindless parents desperate to buy them more crap at every opportunity …

  • reduced attention span.
  • inability to follow a thread of educational information or explanation nor any desire to do so.
  • reduced vocabulary.
  • a world view and view of life formed by less than ideal pundits and other such nonsense makers, advertising and clever attention grabbing algorithms.
  • reduced interaction with parents and family relations, no sense of past, no anecdotal recollection.
  • becoming isolated from realtime face to face human interaction, losing the ability to evaluate who is kosha, who is spouting nonsense or fantasy.
  • impaired ability with pen and paper, cannot sketch, writing poor, atrocious layout on paper.
  • blind to any decent tutoring coming from another adult, if it don’t come off a screen they just don’t want to know.
  • seldom if ever visiting the same page twice ie for reinforcement of material learnt.
  • a world devoid of Art, of the achievements of human endeavour, many things of beauty and creativity since the Stone Age all eradicated in a generation.
  • hanging on to extremely trivial social media posts, curled up in a chair with zero exercise.
  • an acute sense of living in the here and now, trivia rules okay; history eliminated.
  • kids do nothing to please their elders, their focus or loci is the screen.
  • and parents that are no different from the kids.

Not a pretty picture is it?

Why cannot we …

Why can not we have what has nurtured and enthralled us for centuries?

Why does it have to be the next ‘big thing’ ie its only the next big thing that will fulfill us, the shit of Meta, social networking junkery or whatever is riding on the crest of technology?

I’d prefer to read a page of text, a few lines of poetry, perhaps the distilled essence of most likely an old man long dead; or a picture from the Renaissance or almost anymost century accompanied with a worthwhile and educated commentary.

Why has human experience been watered down to one technological and morose thrill after another?

Devised by incomplete humans to engender an army of other incomplete humans.

Think, read, learn …. theres more to life than the web!

My evening window …

… is open!

But no moths in two hours whatsoever have entered into my kitchen and this is from a large garden full of established shrubs and including beyond countless various nooks and crannies.

There is something wrong, that is for sure.

But a google search reveals next to nothing of up to the minute (or year) moth decline here in the UK.

Luckily my garden displays maturity, complex planting ie a great jumble of many different things and many many niche environments, all mostly never disturbed by any human ie me.

As per usual after the summer solstice the nights seem to be cutting in quickly. This is not something I revel in, luckily a couple of nights ago I treat myself to a car ride up to where for near twenty years we fed horses and me n whatever pet dog went round on our circular walk of an hour. The place is loaded with memories, I fully realise the value of this ‘extra-curricular activity’ and am moving toward when time permitting to ‘get out more’ to stay in touch with this focus of location from years gone past.

The June shutdown of birdsong seemed early this year, I generally name it as the ‘June 13th shutdown’, but this year things seem a bit off course, earlier. A pigeons nest I suspect rock pigeon, was found destroyed and eggs scattered in my garden this morning. I wonder at the new tenants in the let property next door, very cat orientated but also I suspect against garden birds and their song. Why do I think this …. leylandii next door felled to zilch, I suspect her complaints, a dark woman I suspect wanting her own way, I doubt she’ll have much to do with me. Also obviously ‘very set in their ways’, as if at thirty five going on seventy.

Good news is that both birdboxes on rear of house host bee colonies. My garden provides lots of flowering plants, but I look further afield at neighbouring gardens and its a pathetic spectacle, I look around and all is barren, ignorant nothingness and I reckon the birds, insects and small animals likewise think the same. I think its fair to say they vote with their feet so to speak and most winged things flock to my place.

These are not correct …

…. its no big deal but certainly I think these two examples show misunderstanding.

Dr Fauci tells us that trump a supposed ‘macho man’ would not wear a mask. No, d.j.trump is certainly no macho man, quite a wimp actually but what he is … is belligerent, obstructive, nonsensical, corrosive, cruel, immoral, destructive and crude. trump is a showman and certainly multi-faced and Janus faced with no idea of or respect or recognition of ordinary people, he plays and toys with crowds of people, basking in the attention and knows exactly how to win them and have them swallow whatever he says.

trump is brass-faced but not a ‘macho-man’.

Ask his creditors, ask his many many ex-contractors, all his unpaid or fifty cents in the dollar transactions, ask Atlantic City etc etc.

Dear Dr Fauci I believe you have the situation misunderstood, its my belief d.j.trump is most certainly not a macho man but what is certain is that trump has an obsession with his image in the media. This to my mind is the one and only reason d.j.trump will not wear a mask. Its a tv obsession gone mad and quite logical when one considers his totally ‘me focused’ narcissism.

The other great big fallacy being promulgated is that laptops are the necessary for schoolkids to learn, which to my mind this is nonsense. This idea is being kept in the air because teachers and educationalists and governments cannot think of anything else. The only thing that can get through to most kids is chalk and talk and particularly with todays screen hopping two second attention span a laptop will prove useless. What kids do need are worksheets and workbooks, the requirement to write your answer on paper, to structure your workings and answers.

Its a lockdown, what a great opportunity to acquire some knowledge, to practice sketching, to write a neater hand, to do these things daily to a routine. Or as with Newton, to fill a notebook with activity and also I suggest as with many of these likely topics an older text book of 1960 or even 1900 can often suprisingly offer better explanations and succinct visual presentation that is easily memorised rather than for the latter day explosion of colour in diagrams that often overcomplicate and are a hindrance. An example of this is James Lovelocks ‘Gaia’ …. its overuse of colour for diagrams irritates. Its overkill, a bit like requiring teachers to have a degree in their specialist subject, this is quite ludicrous for teaching arithmetic to twelve year olds!

Memory and the value of memorisation is much undervalued, the more average child and the under achievers being allowed off the hook, to be excused from actually having to memorise anything. The Chinese are very big on the ability to memorise, they have to …. look at their writing system!

Grumble over.

Its too quick …

… the pace at which events are unfolding. Thank goodness James Mattis and Obama and others can get word out at the culminating insanity of a trump so-called ‘administration’ …. maybe more like a mal-administration that degrades humanity, the constitution and husbanding the environment.

We have now got into the area of Orwells ‘doublespeak’ where good is bad, right is left and its always getting better (not), the screen is everywhere (tho the latter is not trumps fault). The likes of Kayleigh Macenany beggar belief, we’ve seen it before but I just cannot understand that after three years of dirt from trump anyone whatsoever could defend the total disappointment known as trump, mr tv clip himself.

Likewise the utter crass upturning of truth and fact which seems to be a code of conduct of Republicans that still persist in accepting and encouraging a false message of the merits of their beloved d j trump. Note I deny trump upper case. What drives them, corporate greed, a scramble to buy up bankrupt agribusiness, are they so very obsessed with naked self interest?

trump didn’t know what to do with a Bible, in fact if ever an inhabitant of this planet needed guidance it is donald j trump and his coterie of scrambling hangers on. Very true that total power totally corrupts, Roy Cohn the master of nastiness himself would be very delighted to see how his protégé has turned out.

Worrying to see Genl Mark Milley step into the limelight (or the gaslight) …. I’d wondered who this totally on edge individual could possibly be a few months ago at his first widespread media exposure, standing behind trump nervous as could be imagined, primed and already on hyper-drive! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_A._Milley

Is trump a useful puppet? Who are his puppet masters in the US? Certainly Pence and Mnuchin are the first to come to mind. We know fine well he is in up to his chest beholden to Russia, quite easy to see in trumps lack of desire to investigate the queasy Russia connection, the two hour alone at Helsinki, the chumminess with Russias Kysliak, etc etc … it all stinks.

To dominate the news, the media, online, is trumps agenda, an agenda to stay in the White House at all costs; therefore corporate greed, self interest and the greedy cosy up to him. trump delights that something has come along to take attention away from worsening economic problems and from trumps quite hopeless and useless covid-19 mis-management.

Its true to say whatever trump says in fact the opposite is the actual truth. He slams and points to the media as fake when he himself is the fake, he derides people of ability and learning whilst he himself seems stuck at the level of a ten year old, everyone is a liar whilst only donald j trump has the truth!

Everyone must read and learn from past times of difficulty and danger, per Dr MLK  “Be true to what you said on paper” … The Constitution. History, to read and learn from it is vital at this time.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/06/trump-finally-gets-war-he-wanted/165825/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kayleigh-mcenany-is-trumps-most-despicable-mouthpiece-yet

The following on EPA destruction and rollbacks I found on the Charles Booth site, thanks. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR3lhEM0bJon-wllBhlOoOVk7TAj-GSMwONXQdtWbJO4xHKk4lRrY5SbT8k

 

 

 

copyright climate-change-briefing.com 2020

Those clever bbc r4 people.

Greta Thunberg was Guest Editor this morning on the bbc r4 ‘Today’ programme.

Does everyone know this? I was very impressed, I only caught the last half hour but is available to listen again and download over on the bbc radio website. Only drawback is that these days we have to perform the dreaded ‘log-in’; this I shall in this instance do. At one time it was merely click and play; everyone every organisation wants their stats.  ‘The Cloud’ I read is running at 4% of annual electricity consumption and of course is set to rise!

I’m v impressed with Greta, she is erudite in English, has a v good brain and implores everyone note EVERYONE to read the science. We would hope a certain donald trump and his crooked coterie would likewise read the science but of course we know of his unshakable inability to read, inability to accept experts and inability to learn.

Science we know can be achingingly slow at coming back from the ‘front line’, we now have to stay on the up-curve, work hard to be near the crest of real-time feedbacks and data. Science too is full of vested interest, funding sensitivities, viewpoints and stances of all forms of regard and hue.

I wish Greta the greatest good luck and good health in maintaining ‘the message’. She is much too valuable to go back into a schoolroom, it would horrifying for me to see her having to plod along at dated quite needless material when her real task is elsewhere ie the whole world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na1aHtv0OKI

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z/episodes/player

For a ‘no punches pulled’  instructional overview on climate change and what we need do, the best I can think of is anything from Prof Kevin Anderson, full of intelligent  content; it is a no waffle, pure condensed informative and knowledgeable overview. He speaks with the directness and brevity of a top class experienced engineer.

 

My own ethos is, in my own immediate little world:-

  • no more long drives out into the countryside, I walk and ramble much closer to home.
  • make clothes last, wear them out.
  • cook quick meals, seldom any longwinded oven cooking (and for me certainly no  baking).
  • I wash everything by hand, wring dry and use a bamboo pole across the kitchen ceiling and/ or my washing line outside. No tumbler, no spinner.
  • get rid of the SUV…. and something that particularly irritates me, forget about letting the diesel idle pointlessly in the supermarket car park!
  • forget about airflights.
  • pester the Council, some carriageways are far too overlit at night.
  • eat less red meat; move away from ready-bought ‘burger culture’ its a con !
  • I actually prefer a £15 Melissa bench-top oven, the main oven hasn’t been used in twenty years.
  • slim down web posts, keep it brief, therefore reduces charging and ‘cloud’.

 

 

Absurd election pledges.

If it cannot be solved commercially then its utter folly to guarantee broadband to EVERY household in the UK, a wide open pledge that will most certainly come to haunt Labour if God forbid they were in power. Are we not suffering sufficiently already with web addiction?

My smug hapless and bragging IR35 friend a posturing keen to be seen Labour voter likewise will regret the tightening of iffy tax loopholes, much as Diane Abbot realised on radio interview a couple of years ago its essential you can ‘do numbers’ when promising expenditure (re increase on police recruitment). There was austerity for a reason, but its a shame much Council and Social Services were lost, pity the madness of bailing out the Banks or Gordon Brown selling the UK gold reserves at the lowest price !

Inducements like candy for voters go back a long time, originally it was “Vote for me and you get a loaf of bread” possibly a better option than in these ‘modern times’ as the compliant cannot be duped, cannot be brushed aside months or years later when the so-called election pledges are thin memories, they get their loaf.

The absurd simplemindedness of Labours pledges and bribes beggars belief …

a shorter working week,

huge extra money for the NHS,

funding lifelong learning,

comprehensive childcare,

the compulsory purchase of the jewel ie BT broadband.

I might otherwise have been thinking of voting Labour as when you get a ‘good’ or effective Labour MP they shine, but theres too many Labour crew that are woefully and dreadfully lacking. A lot of the above pledges are wide open to manipulation and potentially a needless take-up by the dishonest that is taking for taking sake. Why do we have to fund lifelong learning for someone at taxpayer expense when in fact they would never bother to pick up a book and teach themselves, to gain a groundwork of the subject at home.

For instance personal health and how common sense can save a lot of money later in life, Doctors increasingly encourage people to get out and exercise, to walk as a regular hobby, many will not do this. Look around see the epidemic of obesity. Instead for a near zero cost preventative measure in later life the NHS will have to step in and pick up the pieces.

Corbyn is a master of the soundbite, of the indignant response to injustice and failings of his adversaries, but I think his own travelling caravan of Government would be wasteful, nonsensical, quite a charade.

Its a bad way to run any system, country or business by continually reversing the work of the previous encumbants every few years. Thank God for the Upper House.

Why is it theres so much nonsense around, witness the determination on HS2 to pursue the not needed max upper speed when lowering the upper operating speed a few percent will save billions and possibly save lives and stress in the longterm for everyone.

The one thing no-one is talking about, the increase in UK retirement age which is a scandalous stratification and divisive act of cruelty, this needs to be stopped. 

Raising the retirement age hits the honest and the ordinary, the little people, in the worst way possible. If we are so-called ‘civilised’ then the retirement age should be reduced, not increased. The Chinese for instance find it incredulous we work beyond age fifty. Its all very well politicians that have the opportunity to rest their backsides on occasion to pursue the aged, the hurting and crack the whip further, but can they not realise how quite scandalous and very cruel this policy actually is. Also realise anyone with sufficient money has no need to work any more at some tedious or fatiguing low status job, those that can have already ‘got out’ therefore this stupid retirement age increase hits those that already are hurting, the most vulnerable.

 

 

The limits of knowledge …

…  its quite a high falutin’ term and has been used many times in the past, but mostly toward ‘advanced thinking’ by academics and philosophers but in my post here I mean it toward how it is often so difficult to put across in a few words areas of interest that I think others should also explore, ideas for children to build upon with activity and focused attention, a potential source of interest, joy and knowledge.

The limit of knowledge is that they are not interested and parents often now will view it as if witchcraft, ie the unusual, the less trodden pathway !!!

A case in point is encouraging young people to get a little more art and craft orientated in a practical manner, to explore images and artists from the past, to get practical  whether its cutting and pasting or sketching or modelling, clay, plaster whatever. To develop manual dexterity, to open pathways of thinking and co-ordination.  If by age ten they are not so inclined or have never known such activity then its not a given they will show any interest whatsoever in their lifetime. The curse of the screen has in a decade destroyed centuries of skill development that each child could experience so that in life they can have some facility with their hands, sketch, visualise, convey their meaning. Nursery rhymes, simple songs and poetry have for most children fizzled to nothing, become non-existent, needlework, helping with mother… all gone. Knowing the latest pop video release or minute nuanced trend in pop fashion is not building or development for rounded able citizens, just candyfloss, so much smoke and mirrors based on fantasy, endless escapism.

Looking at the Times newspaper April 29th p.29 print edition we find not even experts can agree, for instance counter to any common sense the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health decided this year there was no evidence that screen time itself was harmful!! This beggars belief. April 2019 the World Health Organisation injected some sanity to ask parents to greatly control and limit the amount of screen time children experience. Hurrah for the World Health Organisation !

Surely even a few brief seconds of seeing children hooked and over-enthusing on this junk can tell a parent or concerned adult all they need to know. Dear knows how poor their abilities will be as they progress through school, I’ve a feeling performance could be assessed as two and three years behind. Even the use of paper and being able to practice handwriting, sketch convey ideas is seen as arcane and marginal to requirements!!!

More enlightened parents will see to it Little Jonny does not skip the fundamentals the basics and will realise among other things paper and bookbased learning is essential. Theres an element of social class and background here that is being amplified and widened. A screen just cannot provide the depth quality or reinforcement to learning that is required, or the joyous serendipity of say a paper based textbook or encyclopedia.

This means there is an increasing gulf and stratification between those that can and those that cannot. An increase in differences of social class and performance. This unravels the efforts made to increase opportunity and pull up the poor performing, particularly since the Second War.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/well/world-health-organization-guidance-limiting-kids-screen-time/

Yet still in the above we hear of groups asking for evidence … answer = watch the bloody kids and see how skewed their behaviour actually is !!!

Likewise the UK Guardian in its often emotive woolly nonsensical fashion asks for evidence – as if again do they not use their eyes and ears to see things are amiss!

Kids cannot even ride in the car without having a screen installed right in front of their faces, to suck on the digital pap as they journey along; God forbid, more junk from Hollywood and endless animated crap. What we could describe as using that dire term of modern times ‘a targeted audience’. Or maybe a film about journeying thro Monument Valley … as they drive thro Monument Valley ?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/24/limit-screen-time-hour-day-5s-none-2s-says/

 

 

A test for Art.

Heres an interesting aside, a smidgeon of ‘something else’ to add some levity to the usual shenanigans called our preoccupations (ie web / trump / climate).

I’ve taken to looking at art books these last few days, the blanket nothing-ness of Christmas is proving its toll and I need nourishment. Apart from the sumptuous, educating and beautiful six parter Peter Philips ‘Polyphony’ on BBC r3 late evenings not much from the ordinary to engage me radio-wise. However the dreaded Christmas Day was quite good, well done bbc r3. Considering their library of material and skills as broadcasters it really would have taken a great effort to screw it up.

Plenty of art books here, plenty of art too that I’ve made twenty and thirty years ago, lots to engage any conversation if anyone were to visit or get access to my activities. As I’ve stated previously our web hours seldom if ever serves us any art (or images from past decades and centuries) …. of value, yet pick up a book or an encyclopedia and instantly dozens of incredible images, forms and ideas fly into our vision. I’m into planning and architecture too, I suppose all developments of human thought and ability, often the web is like peering through the thinnest of cracks in a broken door yet pick up a book and theres a feast for your mind, you instantly learn new things.

Point of this post is figuring out how to test for Art, how to evaluate a piece of nonsense presented as of merit. A case in point being trying to figure out a household where a family member makes a point to emphasise her new degree yet all around theres utterly nothing to reveal such an interest, walls bare, no book in sight. I think we’ve got a little bit of the emperors new clothes creeping in here. We have tv, we have phones and handy personal transport but does it make us work and study any better  …  I think not. So where is the Masterwork of this handy person? A masterpiece is a very old term indeed, ask any watchmaker or skilled time served worker of three hundred years ago. It will have carefulness and veer toward perfection; yet I enter the house in question and all I can recall is seeing something that looks likely, a homemade five minute drunken scribble masquerading as art. Depth ability and genuine effort seem in short supply.

My test for Art :-

  • You should immediately be able to tell which person produced it with only the merest acquaintance of the ppl involved as you enter the home. Which family member is likely to have done this, the six year old now fast asleep, or the demented grannie coping with her last years ? Can we tell ?
  • Can you instinctively put a name to it, a maker, a style of execution. Usually we can if it is cooking or needlework or handicraft … or why is the adept working so hard to conceal their supposed knowledge and enthusiasm of which I am increasingly sceptical? How much tackle is involved in its production, a work area, if none of these things present then i wonder.
  • Is this the remains of an art therapy session for someone injured or seeking recovery ? Scribble scribble, colour colour ….
  • Is this the only thing they’ve ever done now proudly or desperately displayed as a Masterwork; what is the hinterland we are drawing from? None? Ask ‘explain this to me’ … Can they speak for five minutes on this piece … I reckon not. Its all a charade in the particular case I’m thinking of.
  • Genuine application (ie our supposed ‘degree’ person) is sadly wanting,  not some few minutes  wannabe artist wishing to create an aura …  glib waffle to impress the check-out girl and strangers.
  • One hour is not a thousand hours. Please!
  • What knowledge, insight or craft was entailed in its production, show me your portfolio, your effort. Increasing ability with practice and effort.
  • What is the dialogue for this piece, references, developments, a body of work, an ongoing conversation, next step ?
  • Have a child make a copy, could anyone tell the difference?

The answer to this  (from my viewpoint a year later) … is go for the jugular … show me your portfolio, your development, your books and notes. Your enthusiasm.  Talk to me about it. In other words I’ve been duped and this is why I am so angry about this. These are wannabes and fantasists wishing to impress the girl at the checkout or a passing neighbour.  I am mighty vexed its assumed I’ll tag along with the fantasy, I don’t mind ppl acting a part or being pretentious, it generally always looks silly and raises a smile but I do not like it assumed I am taken in by this; trying to weave me into their dumb web. Thats two big scams I can put a name to for the same couple.

This highlights a problem I see more of, ppl kidding us they are something they are not. Its getting worse.

I’m all for people playing around harmlessly and maybe even learning something, hopefully to appreciate the value of books (ie a bound collection of information compiled by an expert) …  but what vexes me profoundly is nonsense, non-performance dressed up as something else, a self deluding pretension or mirage of greater things. All my reading, all my effort and I have adults playing as if children to perpetuate a no-hoper blind fantasy.

And once you hear “Oh I don’t read books!” then you know its time to quit.

postscript … something I wrote this summer … https://climate-change-briefing.com/2018/08/19/we-need-art/