Emily Bazelon isn’t aware of the depth of the irony of her piece at Slate, that describes her apathy to space (which she defines as “astronomy”):
The other night, my boys curled up on the couch with my husband and went to the moon. They were enthralled by a grainy video of Neil Armstrong’s 1969 shaky descent onto the pitted lunar sand. “Mom, the Eagle has landed!” they shouted in unison. “Come watch!” I was in the kitchen, reading Elizabeth Weil’s New York Times Magazine story on the perils of trying to improve a companionate marriage.
She and Liz Weil are soulmates. Liz spent many months hanging around Rotary Rocket in the late 1990s (I had dinner with her once in Tehachapi), doing research for a book
I sat down, put the magazine aside, and tried to care about the moon, the planets, the stars, the galaxy. I concentrated on the astronauts and Sputnik and the race with the Soviet Union from JFK to Nixon. But I was interrupted by a stingy voice in my head: Just think what we could do on this planet with all the time and energy we spend trying to reach other ones. I know, I know: It’s anti-science, anti-American, anti-imagination. But I am incorrigibly, constitutionally earthbound. I have never willingly studied a single page of astronomy. My knowledge of the planets begins and ends with My Very Elderly Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pillows (except, no more P, as Simon has informed me). I relish stories about NASA boondoggles for confirming my suspicion that the agency is a budget sinkhole.
Well, the agency (at least the human spaceflight part of it) is largely a budget sinkhole. We certainly don’t get value commensurate with the costs. It doesn’t have to be, but because most people are, like Emily, not that interested in space, at least as done by NASA, politicians are free to do whatever they want with its budget, so much of it ends up being simple pork. That’s just Public Choice 101. If Emily and others actually cared, perhaps NASA might have to do more useful things with the money.
But her ignorance extends far beyond simple astronomy. For someone who seems to revel in the fact that NASA wastes its money, like much of the public, she is profoundly unaware of how much (or relatively, little) money it actually is:
Simon has been asking for a periscope. He also says that when he grows up, he’s going to be an astronomer and an astronaut. I mentioned biologist as an alternative a few times. But then I stopped. Now I tell him that I can’t wait for him to teach me all about the solar system. Maybe he’ll be a rebel astronomer, and someday reform NASA, or call for an end to manned space missions so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.
If she thinks that ending human spaceflight would be more than spitting in a hurricane with regard to the Social Security budget, she is innumerate beyond belief. You could either double, or zero, the NASA budget, and either way it would barely be a rounding error in SS, or the rest of the federal budget in general. I wish that more people thought that space was important, and that it was about more than astronomy. I also wish that people would think and care more about how, not whether NASA was spending the money. But as long as they’re so ignorant as to think that NASA, wasteful or not, has anything to do with the deficit, or the failure to solve intractable social problems (we saw an excellent example of this during the presidential campaign, when candidate Obama’s first space policy was written by an education staffer who thought that we could use the NASA budget for more education funding), we’re unlikely to get better space policy, or policy in general.
Wasn’t Weil the same nit-wit who wrote the NY Times magazine item that savaged MirCorp as recounted in “Children of Apollo?”
As to the twit who wants her kids to be interested in “socially conscious” matters, there are a sea of similar types in this Boston area blowing their hot air constantly. A primary characteristic is utter unwillingness to face the reality of how creativity, entrepreneurship and allowing risk-taking is the engine for creating enough social wealth to raise us all above the sharpened-stick level of technology.
No, such things are not “right,” they’re evil, we have to keep applying the same graduate-seminar theory-driven “solutions” to the human condition. And if those solutions don’t work the 1st time, apply them again and again and again.
Remind you of someone(s) in DC these days?
A fundamental problem with social security is that, in the Darwinian sense, it selects for a dependency culture. Fixing social security requires fundamentally changing those incentives. Society needs to avoid selecting for people who will be a burden upon it. Ensuring that every baby is overtly wanted, and well cared for and educated is a relatively soft and benign step towards eliminating poverty. Such changes do of course take a generation or more to start working. Preventative measures take time.
Short term fixes like higher taxes, medical advances, productivity improvements, and what not, are not sustainable and only buy a little time to implement a longer term fix – which is rarely implemented, hence the current unsustainable predicament.
“Society needs to avoid selecting for people who will be a burden upon it. “
Ja wohl!
Did I anger Godwin with that?
Bazelon is an ignorant little bint.
Fill in the Blanks time!
“Maybe he’ll be a rebel ________, and someday reform _____, or call for an end to __________ so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.”
*Maybe he’ll be a rebel artist, and someday reform the National Endowment for the Arts, or call for an end to publicly funded art exhibitions so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.
*Maybe he’ll be a rebel sociologist, and someday reform the National Endowment for the Humanities, or call for an end to grants to offensive and politically correct museum exhibits so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.
*Maybe he’ll be a rebel activist, and someday reform ACORN, or call for an end to loans for brothels so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.
*Maybe he’ll be a rebel diplomat, and someday reform the UN, or call for an end to US funding of moral relativist “peacekeeping” missions so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.
Fun!
I’ll bet she considers Sarah Palin a pathetic little know-nothing.
The article is journalistic child abuse. What kind of mother runs down her own kids in print for being interested in something as fascinating as space?
I think Rand is closer to my thinking on this than my fellow denizens of the Peanut Gallery.
I hang out with a passenger train advocacy group that advocates for . . . more passenger trains. The Bush Administration had been time in the wilderness for train people, not because Amtrak has prospered under Mr. Clinton or anyone else, but that Mr. Bush’s attack on Amtrak was more focused.
Inevitably, the “party line” in passenger train advocacy is to huff “Well, Bush (not Mr. Bush or President Bush or even The Adminstration) has all kinds of money for Eye-rack, but not one penny for Amtrak!”
I once tried to draw a comparison between Amtrak and NASA, that just is that there are us malcontents advocating for Amtrak, there is another group of malcontents advocating for NASA, and yet more malcontents advocating for other “worthwhile programs, the cancellation of which is just a rounding error.”
For my troubles of deviating from the Party Line, I was informed about how much bigger the NASA budget was than the Amtrak budget and how much NASA benefited from the clout of Tom DeLay (apart from party label a latter-day Lyndon Johnson?).
That response was so completely missing the point. NASA is indeed Amtrak in Space, or perhaps Amtrak is NASA with locomotives instead of rocket boosters, and the relative scale of NASA to Amtrak is immaterial because each of those programs is a boil on the backside of the Federal Budget. Amtrak may be a pimple, and NASA rises to the level of a proper boil, but neither covers that much backside skin.
What I see with space advocacy as well as with passenger train advocacy, each has its enthusiastic advocates, and each has a largely indifferent larger public, and each has advocates willing to scold “the ignorant public” with arguments about the triviality of their respective budgets as well as the inherent goodness of space travel/passenger trains with all manner of imputed but hard-to-quantify benefits. And each advocacy group bristles at the suggestion that they are anything like the other.
I also am beginning to see in each advocacy community some “rogue voices”, willing to challenge the orthodoxy that simply giving more money to NASA/Amtrak will “solve” the problem of more humans in space or humans on passenger trains.
What really gripes me is her trying to squash her child’s imagination and interest in space (or anything else). That is a crime just short of actual physical abuse.
I think Rand is closer to my thinking on this than my fellow denizens of the Peanut Gallery.
I don’t believe anyone here is arguing “Stupid twit! Can’t she see that NASA needs more pork!”
Rather, what’s pissing off some of us is her apparent attitude that if she isn’t interested in and can’t see the usefulness of space and the hard sciences, then that proves there is no good reason for anyone to pursue these activities — with the implication that space, science, and technology are somehow evil because they are depriving Society of the human and financial resources to do good, useful things. Useful things such as controlling other people For Their Own Good, educating people to to reject False Consciousness, and efforts to stamp out heteronormativity with federally funded performances of the Vagina Monologues.
Me: “Society needs to avoid selecting for people who will be a burden upon it. “
Bart: “Ja wohl!”
Yes I would agree, but assuming a closed system, the alternative is an ever increasing dependency culture which ultimately destroys its host or a more brutally direct Darwinian outcome – like war.
Selective breeding? Selective culling? Or ponzi scheme like expansion into space? I would prefer the last but considering that unsustainability advocates like Emily Bazelon seem to be in the majority, I am not that hopeful. Making all breeding a highly considered decision would at least buy a lot more time – without impinging on anyone’s liberties.
Pete, the nation made it for about one and a half centuries with no “social security insurance,” and I would venture the opinion that human progress in this country – by any standard, including the nebulous “social” ones – were more dramatically improved on during the timeframe from 1776 to 1926, than from 1927 onward. Incidentally, moving the latter cutoff date to, say, 1916, 1906, and 1896, would yield progressively more advances (that is, by not including the backtracking the Eugenicists Wilson and Holmes gave us).
“Pete, the nation made it for about one and a half centuries with no “social security insurance,””
Yes, but people were still living short brutish (Darwinian) lives (by modern standards), and having large families that could support them in their old age. I am not sure you could sell that these days…
Let NASA die. Suck the space exploration functions into the new USAF space command. Boosters, reentry vehicles and so on are better handled by the military just as the best commercial pilots come from the US Navy and USAF.
Near earth measurements can be allocated to the EPA (its not like the EPA will be any less honest about the carbon gasses/global warming BS than NASA is currently).
We could tap Social Security to pay for extended missions (zero gravity turns even athletes into weak-boned geezers). Lets get something useful out of SS rather than ever more blue-hairs in the left lane.
Just saying what others are afraid to.
Pete said “Yes, but people were … having large families that could support them in their old age.”
PMFJI, but the ever increasing tax burden absolutely is a substantial driver of reduced family size, at least for the net producers in this country.
You’ve got it backwards.
An idiot. May be she’s blonde.
When will scientists abandon the notion that they are entitled to government funding? The Mount Palomar observatory was built with private money, voluntarily contributed.
It works out better for science – when you ask some rich guy for money to build a telescope, you have to convince him that you are going to build a useful instrument. And no one can deny that the Hale telescope is the most successful scientific instrument in history.
Whereas, to get a politician to give you other people’s money, hey – it doesn’t even matter if the primary mirror gets ground to the proper shape, now does it? It just has to be ‘good enough for government’.
“but the ever increasing tax burden absolutely is a substantial driver of reduced family size, at least for the net producers in this country.”
Indeed, the US is now over the demographic hill, the longer the delay in fundamentally fixing the social security problem, the worse the die back is going to be.
Also, at some point, the young and productive, no longer able to afford to breed, will emigrate to avoid taxation for the benefit of the old, which will increase the taxation burden on those that remain, forcing yet more migration…
The need for space settlement is starting to get desperate. Maybe the need to escape the social security burden is what will finally cause it to happen. 🙂
While professionally I am a mech. designer, I have taken many undergrad and some upper level classes in history. I’ve known quite a few history professors. While they knew their subjects well for the most part, only one out of perhaps twenty had any interest in science. At the local community college, a few of the professors still accept only handwritten papers. They have flatly refused to put their courses online, and brag of not owning computers. But this is an area where manual drafters are still common. All of the history profs I know are city types, who would never dream of venturing out of their urban cocoons. To them, the space program has always been a colossal(sp?) waste of time and money that could have been used for collectivization programs.
Me, I still want to work on space programs again…neither my wife nor I have lost the dream. If anything, it burns more strongly as we get older.
@ Don: I resent that comment. I attended an Ivy League university, studied history, have had a lifelong interest in space and science, know computers (I founded an Internet company). Your stereotype, in my experience, is dead wrong.
That said, I agree with most of the above that the linked article is vapid and perhaps harmful to readers (based on my stereotype of the article at least as I have not actually clicked through).
(I’m with Heinlein about extraterrestrial colonization: it won’t save the Earth (putting aside for the moment the question of whether it needs saving), but it could save humanity, just by getting all our eggs out of this one basket. The number of people who would colonize would NEVER provide a population pressure valve – but that shouldn’t be the point.)
This woman… can you imagine what a bleak place the inside of her head must be? Her lack of imagination, and apparently not just about space, is staggering. (And the periscope thing was PRICEless.) I’ll give her one teeny point for not forbidding her children to care about things she doesn’t give a hoot about, but my goodness, how hard is it to fake some enthusiasm?
*Let’s takes the “guns or butter” fallacy as read.
“Me, me, me, me, me…” It’s all about her feelings. I particularly like how she tries to talk her kid into becoming interested in biology, the “chick” science — fighting a retreating action all the way — trying to force her children to become, in at least some small part, the way she wants. This woman has “control freak helicopter parent” oozing from every word she writes.
The schadenfreude-loving part of me almost hopes that when her kid turns 18 he tells her he wants to serve his country and join the military just to see her face as she frantically tries to talk him into joining the Peace Corps. That would be priceless.
And a word to Mizz Bazelon: human exploration, no matter what form that exploration takes, has always, always, always paid off. Social Security…not so much.
I’m disturbed that so many here immediately turn to blaming Bazelon’s shortsightedness on her sex. I’m sure that you didn’t blame Proxmire’s masculinity for his behavior, but rather his jackassery. Please extend Bazelon the same level of realism about her motives. If you can’t, at least have the worldly wisdom to realize that you make an interest in space look bad by doing so, and that it’s stupid to insinuate that your interest will never involve more than 50% of the population.
It’s like trying to found a fast food restaurant while advertising with the slogan, “We Know Most People Don’t Like Meat And That’s Because They’re Stupider Than Us”. Your stats are wrong, and your ignorance and nastiness make it plain that meateaters should go elsewhere.
If you don’t think there are plenty of males living next door to her with the same idiocy about science and space in their heads, you’re the one who’s not being imaginative.
Maureen, it would be easier to approach her argument from a gender-neutral position if she didn’t manage to embody every nasty Leftist/Feminist cliche about space and science out there.
For example: I referred to biology as a “chick” science, not because I believe that or because I think it is right, but because it’s apparent that Bazelon sees it that way whether she realizes it or not. Why is biology preferable to physics? Because biology is “softer”, it’s down-to-Earth, it deals with the squishy parts of nature not the hard angular bits with lots of specifically defined equations. There’s no phallic rockets or ejaculatory launches, no penetrating docking procedures, no attempt to dominate through force. And most importantly, not as many dweebish white males with pocket-protectors and poor (i.e. decidedly _male_) interpersonal skills to influence her little precious.
Bazelon evidently has a cartoonish image of science and scientists based on whatever liberal arts/womyn’s studies/communications education (I’m speculating on this, of course) she received. I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s what I’m mocking, not her femaleness.
“I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilisations out on to other planets – even though they may be utterly uninhabited.””
No. Thats static. Colonization may be necessary to provide us with the tools and experience we need to “get this place right”.
The path we’re heading down now is Global Socialism. Thats not a system that creates, or will ever get us off the planet.
“Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain’t comin’ back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me
There’s no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can’t take the sky from me… “
Consider, the New World’s contribution to the Old was not gold, it was Liberty.
And another thing, Maureen, do you think Mizz Bazelon would be ringing her hands worrying about the cost of the space program and trying (while doing to her best to look like she’s not) to discourage her children’s interests if she had daughters instead of sons? Or would she be cheering them on for their courage to “break paradigms” and lauding the benefits of Title IX? I’d put money on the latter.
If you want to point fingers and make accusations of sexism, I’d suggest you start with Emily Bazelon.
Bazelon is a leftist feminist, a scripted cartoon character made by smearing Gen X silly-putty across the face of Gloria Steinem. Anyone who understands that can extrapolate any unknown political view of hers out to 6 sigma with a 95% confidence level.
The path we’re heading down now is Global Socialism.
The Earth is so insignificant with regard to the resources available in our own solar system. Once colonies are established and begin to grow the Earth could very well become a backwater. After the population self selects for freedom lovers to migrate, only the political need to dominate others will be left on Earth as a driving force beyond orbital space.
When do you suppose the first declaration of colonial independence will occur?
Maureen, hear, hear! Well said, and I think you are absolutely right.
Hey, I think that would actually work! I’d eat there.
@dcpi,
I’m sorry that you resented my comments. I did not mean them personally. From your remarks, I gather that you are an entreprenurial type, something that none of my professors would even dream of attempting. They were nearly all tenured types at liberal colleges, which seem to be the majority. This applies to many other instructors and profs in the social sciences, and even a few in the engineering field, at least as far as being anti-space.
When do you suppose the first declaration of colonial independence will occur?
Why don’t you write it right now so you’ll have it ready?
I’m a woman, and I find women (and men — they do exist!) like Ms. Bazelon appalling. But they’ve existed throughout history, whining about the dangers of that newfangled “fire” stuff (“What if the children get burned? And I thought you were happy with raw meat!”), bitching about the hubby’s job interfering with family life (“All he does is poke and scratch at those clay tablets. They’re all over the place! He says he’s writing a poem for the king, but how do I know he’s not writing love letters to that slut at the Temple of Innanna!”), worrying about the “effect on society” (i.e., the loss of their own power) that the latest new invention will have (“He says he’s going to use his new ‘printing press’ to print copies of the Bible in the vernacular and sell it to just anyone who wants one! I’m sure that’s blasphemy of some sort!” huffed the priest)… and so on. You just have to ignore them and go on with what you are doing.
But what you shouldn’t do is try to change your focus to their wants and needs in an effort to appease them. I think that approach is a mistake and only reinforces their idea that they are right. For example, space exploration. I’ve been seeing a lot of arguments for it that take the practical approach: we can use it to find new resources to help the Earth, colonize other planets in order to take pressure off Earth, NASA’s efforts in the past helped us find all sorts of new inventions we use today and couldn’t do without… that’s all as may be, but it’s boring and sucks the juice right out of any discussion of exploring space, and gives an opening to the argument that “all that scientific discovery stuff can be done right here, from the comfort of our own cocoon!”
Rather, we should be pressing the idea that space exploration is about discovery and freedom. Or as fen put it, “Liberty.” Because that’s what frightens the cocoon people (as I call them), and it’s what energizes anyone with any spark of energy and intelligence in them. When you tell someone “we can someday grow crops on the Moon if we put our minds to it,” they’ll often as not say in return “yeah, and I can go to the 7-Eleven right now and buy a ham sandwich. Do I look like a farmer?” But if you tell them “Let’s go to (some planet or other) to see what’s there, because no human has never been there before,” you’ll get a much more positive response.
Rather, we should be pressing the idea that space exploration is about discovery and freedom. Or as fen put it, “Liberty.”
The problem with the idea that space exploration is about freedom and liberty is that that is just a hope, not a reality. Sure, it might work out that way, we all hope that it will work out that way, but can we say with any kind of certainty that it must work out that way? The future is not bound by our hopes and desires. I would not be shocked if the first space colony is a Chinese slave labor camp.
I would not be shocked if the first space colony is a Chinese slave labor camp.
I would. Unless, that is, they dramatically change their technical approach. Their current program is as unaffordable as ours, insofar as it involves any significant number of people living off planet.
My take on it is that she bemoans the fact that we’re spending too much on NASA (a not very successful government program) and not enough on a bankrupt government program(Social Security). Clue stick, meet head.
Unless, that is, they dramatically change their technical approach.
Any particular reason why that can’t happen? I mean considering all that has happened in China in the last hundred years this a change of this sort hardly seems to be out of the question.
Any particular reason why that can’t happen?
No, but it’s not currently happening, and I suspect that if it does, it will be because someone else is successful in showing them the way, in which case, they’ll be behind.
I would very surprised to see that be the first use of a space colony but very unsurprised to see that be the final use of one.
First it’s the rugged individualist, then the entrepreneurs, then the “cocoon people.” You can run, but you cannot hide.
It’s not unlike the sea-steaders: sure it’s fun for the propellerheads to pursue the technical problems of DIY floating Libertopias, but even if you’re successful, this is what will happen: some diesel ship as old as collectivism itself is going to pull alongside your plastic paradise and take the dam thing for violating some law manufactured with a ballpoint pen thousands of miles away with the approval of millions of people who never even once their premises challenged. In that smelly brig they will wonder where it all went wrong. Shouldn’t they have made their stand earlier instead of running away?
No, but it’s not currently happening, and I suspect that if it does, it will be because someone else is successful in showing them the way, in which case, they’ll be behind.
You seem to have the same contempt for the Chinese that many had for the Japanese before the war.
Things can change, Rand. Indeed, it’s not all that uncommon.
Great comment, Andrea.
In fairness to Bazelon, although she did absorb a full head of narcissist garbage from he sad excuse for an education, like all too many women of her and my generation, she is sufficiently aware of others to recognize the need to adapt in the face of the needs of her children. That’s something. Plenty of people don’t.
Also…it’s not easy, when your children want to do stuff wholly different from you, when youir little fantasies about what they’d do when they were infants turn out to be rubbish, because what they want to do as they come into their teens is quite different. It does take a certain amount of resilience to say, well, if that’s what you want, that’s OK with me. Again, plenty of parents fail this test.
A more subtle criticism of her, or perhaps her own rearing, is that the values to which she is attracted more or less amount to a misguided abstract sublimation of the values to which she now balks at adopting. That is, she espouses a value of “caring for others,” like solving the problems down here on Earth. (Put aside for the moment that her “solutions” are unworkable con games mostly advanced by charlatans and antisocials, and give her credit for wanting the problems of others solved.)
But ironically enough, it is “caring for others,” where “others” is defined as her own husband and children instead of anonymous millions, which she is being forced to do reluctantly. She is being forced to spend her time and energy being interested in the interests of her sons, enabling their success in their preferred pastimes, in exactly the same way she’d like all the rest of us to be forced to spend our time and energy advancing the interests of and solving the problems of anonymous millions of our fellow citizens (by paying taxes to let them keep their overpriced houses, or let them absorb medical care beyond their willingness to pay, and so on).
In other words, Mrs. Bazelon’s piece illustrates that her values of “caring” are a lot weaker than her professional public statements suggest them to be. She comes close to the joke definition of a Marxist (“someone who cares for others only in groups of a million or more”).
That is, if it’s a question of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and she knows neither Peter nor Paul, then she’s all for it — but if it’s a question of robbing herself (of time, energy, the realization of dreams) to pay her sons, well….she discovers her inner skinflint.
Things can change, Rand. Indeed, it’s not all that uncommon.
I didn’t say they can’t. But, as I did say, they currently aren’t. There is no indication of the Chinese taking a more sensible approach. They’re simply aping the Russians, so far. The Japanese weren’t building sailing warships in the 1930s, as the Chinese are doing by equivalence now.
The Japanese weren’t building sailing warships in the 1930s, as the Chinese are doing by equivalence now.
The Chinese are building about what everybody else is, Rand.
The Chinese are building about what everybody else is, Rand.
Not everyone else. Just every other government program. In other words, they are doing nothing that is going to lead to space colonies.
Well, I wouldn’t be surprised that one of the first uses by a government sponsored space project would be to build some sort of prison or something, but how are individuals or small business going to start a “slave labor camp”? (And where would they put it? It would be more expensive to set up a slave labor camp on Mars — they’ll need food, and water, and air, and a place to rest between whatever it is they are doing, and that will all take considerable effort and resources and capital to put together! All for some slaves!)
Anyway, your objection to my comment, Jim Davis, is just another version of “the human race is too imperfect to be allowed to explore space.” I’m not interested in that viewpoint, as it is based on something I can’t believe in: the perfectibility of the human race. We’ll never be perfect. So we should just lie down and die? The hell with that. Oh — and the hell with “certainty” too. You sound like another safety nanny — “we shouldn’t do that, it’s too dangerous, it’s unsafe… what about the children!”
Anyway, your objection to my comment, Jim Davis, is just another version of “the human race is too imperfect to be allowed to explore space.”
No. It’s a version of “Andrea Harris is too imperfect to accept without any substantiation her notions of what space must be like.”
Not everyone else. Just every other government program. In other words, they are doing nothing that is going to lead to space colonies.
Okay, I get it. The efforts of Scaled, Virgin, Armadillo, et al gives the US an insurmountable lead in the effort to settle space. And no amount of economic chaos, misgovernment, war, domestic upheaval, etc can possibly slow down the American juggernaut. Maybe you can expand this thesis into a New Atlantis article.
So funny – I just got off the phone with my wiccan new-age psychic friend (dear friend) – who like any of the aforementioned, tried her level best to bring her two sons up (with her partner – her wife) as good warlocks, wizards, new age kids etc. Her oldest (18) now works at Costco and they are putting him through business school cause they like him so much; and her youngest (13) has graduated from wooden wands (yes) to weapons and wants to be a sniper with the Special Ops. Yeah – not just a soldier, but one who definitely shoots at people (in her words).
Credit to my dear friend – she (and her spouse) are being totally supportive of both boys. Just had to laugh at the sychronicity of getting off the phone and then reading this post and comments.
Okay, I get it.
Apparently not.
I didn’t say that the private approach is a sufficient condition — just that it is a necessary one that the Chinese are not following, and seem unlikely to before it is successful.