You ARE old...

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

'You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
'And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son,
'I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfactly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.'

'You are old,' said the youth, 'as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -
Pray, what is the reason of that?'

'In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
'I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment - one shilling a box -
Allow me to sell you a couple?'

'You are old,' said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
Pray, how did you manage to do it?'

'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength that it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.'

'You are old,' said the youth, 'one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -
What made you so awfully clever?'

'I have answered three questions, and that is enough,'
Said his father; 'don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!

not so pro found

I think that the world's human genomes know that the jig is nearly up.

I was trying to figure out why there seems to be a rash of diseases and dysfunctions in the youth of so many of these countries. It's like some kind of weird self destruct switch has been hit.

It's like a built in mechanism designed to decrease the population or somehow make a mass of them less attractive for future breeding.

No seriously. There are like too many for this to be some kind of crappy water that is doing it all.

somepeoplegetit

I am consistently amazed by the ignorance people insist on presenting to the outside world.

I teach a civics and history class to 7th graders, these are students who are about 12-13 years old. Lately we’ve been going over the past and present of the situation in the middle east. Mainly I have also been re-informing them about the Israel/Palestine issue—since at the beginning of this they didn’t even know that Palestine is or ever had been a country. Somehow, not to my surprise, it was only footnoted in their textbook as a portion of Israel (i.e. Gaza Strip and West Bank, not one country).

Ok so that pretty much sets the stage for you. Now I have only really gone over the barest of facts with them, since, as in any school even the private one at which I work, History is relegated to a second class subject (just one step above art really) and this means we have a limited about of time to cover a large portion of world history. But even with my barebones style of information they have come to two brilliant conclusions—completely on their own:

1) The situation that the Zionists have imposed on the people of Palestine is very alike to the treatment the Jews of Europe suffered at the hands of the Nazi Government. In that, the Palestinians are relegated to refugee camps, prejudiced based on ethnicity, and have zero rights under the Israeli government. (now please don’t tire me with posts about how they are protecting themselves etc, etc. Israel started this mess. Read history. Then get back to me with something intelligent)
2) That this situation in Palestine and Jerusalem could be directly fueling the emotion of extremist Muslims that then feel it necessary to retaliate to the US’s apparent approval of the way in which Israel has chosen to govern the state.

Now tell me this. How is it that these CHILDREN with about 7 total hours of history and current events have come to these conclusions and the majority of modern American ADULTS cannot come to the same idea?

How is this possible?

This is an awful rant to begin things again on here, but teaching has been consuming my hiatus and this is the greatest revelation that came form it.

On the day the students came up with these points, I stood there dumbly for a minute and then dismissed class into a free period because it was apparent that I had nothing left to teach them on the subject.

Next week we begin African history…