Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Kids Are All Right

I routinely apologize to my graduate students for my generation, and the mess we’ve made of the world we’re leaving them. I tell them that it will be up to their generation to clean that mess up, and generally speaking, I find most of them up to the task. Unlike people who wring their hands and bemoan the state of “today’s youth”–a practice that began with Socrates’ Athens, if I’m not mistaken–I find the students who populate my classes to be, on balance, thoughtful, fair-minded, evidence-based and public-spirited. They give me hope that they really will improve our common institutions.

Of course, these are graduate students I’m talking about, and self-selected ones at that. So it was interesting to get an email from my sister, who created and runs the art program at Sycamore School here in Indianapolis, about one of her eighth graders.

In my eighth grade class, my students are to keep a notebook.  Each week, I hand out a quote or comment or question about art, and they must respond.  One week, the question was, “Is there any time when art, no matter how well done, should not be displayed?”

Today as I was grading the notebooks, I came across this answer, which I thought might interest you.  (I could show you notebooks that would blow your mind!)
“No, I think blasphemy and profanity are only ever taken down by less enlightened people.  Enlightenment comes from not having a perfect society.  By not allowing both the good and the bad of living, true intellect is unobtainable..”
John Stuart Mill would be proud of this kid. He has figured out what the nation’s founders knew, but so many of our would-be contemporary censors still can’t seem to grasp–the proper response to bad speech is more and better speech–not suppression. Only when all ideas are available for examination can we ever hope to distinguish between truth and falsity.

The Road to Hell is Paved

Food for thought: In Amsterdam, over 50 percent of all trips are taken by bike; in Los Angeles, that percentage is under 1%.

It’s hard to believe now, but L.A. was an early pioneer in public transportation.  There evidently used to be a 9-mile dedicated bike pathway connecting LA and Pasadena that had electric lights the entire way—in 1897. That pathway became a freeway in 1940. The same thing happened to original bikeways in Hollywood and Santa Monica.

Here’s a data point that should make us all stop and think: the percentage of surface area in Los Angeles dedicated to automobiles (roads, parking, gas stations, etc.) is more than 70 percent, while the percentage devoted to parks and open spaces is 5 percent.

As the article from which I took those figures asked, “Is your city designed for you, or for your car?”

Yesterday, a colleague whose opinion I value commented on a previous post about the need for public transportation by saying that it would never happen–that thanks to a combination of low density and the American love affair with the automobile, we have established a “car culture.” If he is correct, our cities will continue to be designed for, and dominated by, automobiles–and increasingly inhospitable to people and parks.

I’ve been to L.A. several times. There are nice areas, but it fails as a city. It’s not a place I’d want to live–or emulate.

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Giving Christians a Bad Name…Again

I was going to blog about the controversy in Sullivan, Indiana (somewhere south of Terre Haute, as best I can locate that metropolis), where a few teachers,  students and parents at Sullivan High School are upset that gay students are actually allowed to attend the prom. They are so upset that they are planning to hold a separate, “traditional” prom. But this article from The Stranger, an alternative paper in Seattle, says it all so much better than I could.

The good news is that the school’s administration and most of the teachers reject this hurtful bigotry, leaving the “good Christian” parents with no way to make the official Prom off-limits to children who had the nerve to be born differently, so they are scrambling to raise money for their own event. We can only hope they fail, and that their own children are the ones deprived of a treasured high-school ritual they are unwilling to share with gay classmates.

I know I ask this question a lot, but what is wrong with these people?

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The Youth Vote

If demography is destiny, the handwriting is on the wall.

Many years ago, I had an enlightening conversation with friend active in Libertarian politics. He was trying to recruit candidates who would appeal to Republicans who were becoming disenchanted with the culture warriors who had seized control of the GOP. He saw a window of opportunity for the Libertarians–if they could moderate some of their positions just a little, they could take advantage of that window and substantially increase their share of the vote. The problem was, the party’s core–the absolutists–were unwilling to move even a little toward the middle, and keeping their pro-gun, pro-gold-standard, anti-public-schools base was critical to any electoral success. So the window closed.

Today’s GOP finds itself in an analogous position. The party has come to depend upon an aging, angry base that repels not only women, immigrants and minorities, but increasingly, younger Americans.  It’s caught between that same rock and hard place that has kept the Libertarians from achieving mainstream status.

The party’s establishment has now realized the problem, but solving it is going to be another thing entirely.

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And This is Supposed to be Good News?

The average amount of time Indy folks spend commuting hasn’t increased since last year, according to the IBJ. The headline suggests that this is a positive finding. We should all cheer.

An Indianapolis commuter spends an average of 41 hours in freeway delays during rush hour each year, according to a study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Forty-one hours–an entire week of one’s life, each and every year–spent behind the wheel, looking at someone else’s tail lights.

What could you do with that week? Read a book, play with your children, volunteer for a charity…sleep? Make love?

I’ve always had difficulty understanding the folks who live in far-flung suburbs, and willingly trade convenience for the privilege of mowing more grass. My own commute is less than 2 miles, and during rush hour can take up to 8 minutes, so I’m not the most empathetic person to be commenting on the waste of time involved. But let’s do a thought experiment: what if Indianapolis had real mass transit?

By “real,” I mean public transportation with 5 or at most 10-minute headways, on clean and comfortable trains or buses with wi-fi. Such a transportation system wouldn’t just improve the environment by saving lots of carbon emissions. It wouldn’t just jump-start the local economy by getting employees to work. It wouldn’t just encourage smart urban growth.

It would give that average Indianapolis commuter a week of his or her life back. Every year.

The grass aficionados could have their cake and eat it too: they could spend their commuting week reading, emailing, working–or just listening to music. Or sleeping. (Sex probably isn’t an option.)

If I were one of the people spending a week of every year stuck in traffic, I’d be down at the Indiana Statehouse demanding the right to hold a referendum. And if the micro-managing legislators actually allowed us a measure of self-determination, I’d beat the drums for a positive vote–and my chance to recapture that lost week.

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