[Morgan Freeman] It Was About the Money

Remember, it’s never about the money.

Well, it is about the money. Until it isn’t.

And frankly, the kind of fake news this BBC story describes really isn’t what concerns me. It’s so patently false on first appearances it’s simple for the reasonable to detect and ignore. Hyperpartisans in any party are going to believe what they want to believe, especially if it appears too good to be true.

What irks me is the money thing.

Pity Mr. Blair. The Great Recession killed the construction industry that fed his family. So he turned to creating fake news and reveled in the fact it brought him enough money he could quit his day job.
Then Facebook changed its algorithm and he’s not making as much money as he was in the past.
So does the BBC ask him how he’s supporting his family?

No, they don’t.

And they let him get away with saying it was never about the money.

Here is what they say:

“But once the fake news started to get clicks, he was able to use Google’s advertising platform to convert page views into money. In 2014, he quit his day job.

“’Once writing became lucrative enough to not destroy my body in construction any more,’ he says with a laugh, ‘that’s when it became time to stay at home with the kids and do this.’”

Yet later, it’s this:

“For Blair, the money began to dry up. Largely because of Facebook’s changes, he says he now makes a faction of what he did at the height of the fake news boom.

“But he insists money was never the motivator, and instead he claims to be a ‘leader of the resistance’ against President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.”

Cheers to Mr. Blair for keeping up the good fight.

But a wag of the finger to the BBC that let this contradiction go unaddressed in its story.

Because it was about the money. Until the money dried up. And it might still be about the money, though neither Mr. Blair nor the BBC tell us.

Now you probably suppose I’m pro Trump.

No, I’m not.

I voted for Ted Cruz in the primaries – not my proudest moment – and for Evan McMullin in the final election. My presidential voting record is across the board – I’ve voted for Obama. For Romney. For Bush. Heaven help me, I also voted for H. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. I’m more of a protest voter than a party-liner. That’s my way of protesting and I’ve never made a dime off it.

And also, it’s pretty harmless, my way of protesting. My protest votes occur in a solidly partisan state, where protest votes cannot swing any election.

Producing fake news and trolling conservative websites, well, we’ve seen the harm that’s done. You don’t have to look much further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to see what fake news has wrought.

Mr. Blair can protest and resist all he wants. But the biggest bit of fake news I see in this story is the lie that it never was for the money. It was, until it wasn’t. And when mainstream media outlets leave holes in their own stories like this, that’s more troubling than any number of Hillary Clinton death hoaxes. Legitimate news outlets can produce fake news of their own, wittingly or unwittingly in the blink of an eye, and by doing so they toss kerosene onto the fake news fire.

Spoon River Revisited: Rubinia deSpain

Oh we sneered at the village-folk
Coming into our big city to gawp at the skyscrapers
And eat the terrible street vendor hotdogs.
We laughed when they jumped at the traffic
And shook their heads at our big-city-“rudeness,”
Not knowing in their ignorant fashion, of course,
That it wasn’t rudeness, just big-city hustle.
Get out of the way, we said to them
Hesitating for half a second at the crosswalks
Or we didn’t talk to them at all, muttering only
About the yokels walking four abreast on the sidewalks.
Yet they laughed when I screamed
When I saw the rat in the street
They said it was a possum
And described a world of possums and ferrets and raccoons
And heifers and horses
And creeks that didn’t flow between concrete walls
And sunrises and sunsets you could see on the horizon
Not at random between the buildings.
And of the freedom to walk without car exhaust but only the smell of dung;
which we have in the city too. But not from horses.
And it sounded terrible.
And wonderful.
Ci I git, mes amis, buried in the only plot of land I could call my own.

Bringing Christ Home

I’ve never been shy about enjoying Christmas music year-round. But now with Thanksgiving in the past, I can officially begin really enjoying my music.

First, this:



Silent Night is, of course, one of the most enduring Christmas hymns. Its simple message and melody can’t be drowned out by the clamour of the world.

And the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square’s video brings Christ to us by allegory as well as by the spirit. Which leads me to one of my favorite Christmas carols:



Here we have the Catlan carol, famous in the area of France where I spent half of my mission. This simple song brings the wonderful events of Bethlehem to some unnamed Catlan farm, where the humble and faithful are invited to welcome the Christ child. Not from some faraway place. But at home. Which is where Christ should be.

"I Think it Says 'Fragile,' Honey."

Back when we switched our clocks off Daylight Saving Time, I had to replace a battery in the clock that hangs in the stairwell. I succeeded at that mission, but:
1. Did not notice the clock was dusty 2. Left two distinct finger streaks in the dust.
So tonight, my wife asked me to go dust the clock. I dutifully complied and re-hung the clock, which immediately fell off the nail, bounced down the stairs and shattered at the bottom.
I salvaged the battery -- the only functioning part of the now defunct clock -- and told my wife I'd take the rest outside to bury next to the garage.
When I came back in from the trash can, she had Alexa playing Taps, and asked if we had any glue.
I was always jealous of that clock.

Stan Lee, Who Helped Introduce Me to -- Comic Strips

As a kid, the closest I ever came to liking your traditional superheroes came thanks to the Spiderman segments on The Electric Company.



My older brother Jeff had many of the comic books. I remember glancing at a few (the one that sticks out most in my head features Iron Man locked in his outfit, with people using hand grenades to try to get him out for some reason). And I only recognize him as Iron Man now – had no idea who he was then, nor why anyone would want to blow him up in such a useless fashion.

There were other comic books in his collection – notably B.C. comic strips – that more fully engaged my attention. Somehow it was easier to relate to and understand cavemen, or the denizens of the Kingdom of Id, than it was the people who inhabited the Spiderman universe.

But still, to hear of Stan Lee’s death today at 95, takes me back to my childhood.

Superhero comics could have been my window into the comics world, had it not been for BC and Thor and Clumsy Carp. Looking back, I’m glad I chose the path I did. My personality lends more to the silliness and whimsy I find in comic strips, rather than to the more serious storylines to be found in superhero comics. And maybe there’s silliness and whimsy there too; I’m just glad I took the path I did.

I’ve come to enjoy the fringes of the superhero universe, though I’ve never seen much to draw me into the center of it. Things like The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, and such were to my liking. And the LEGO Batman Movie? Best Batman movie ever made.

One thing always confused me about those comic books though. That name. Stan Lee. Was it a guy being funny with his given name of Stanley? For a kid encountering the two-first-name phenomenon for the first time, it was confusing.

Or Am I Being Too Obvious?

So I've been teaching online English courses at BYU-Idaho since -- I realized this week -- 2012. And there's this thing to think about that's been bugging me for a while.

This semester, I found a Facebook group dedicated to BYUI online classes. It's student-run. About half of the posts in the course are from students listing the courses they want to take the following semester, and recommendations on who the best teachers are for the class. Sometimes familiar names come up -- once I even saw my own.

But part of me wonders: Are they asking the right question?

Or are they asking the question outwardly, when it's one that should be asked inwardly?

Because when we online instructors meet, together or in legion, we get a lot of education on what we're doing wrong, or, in other words, what we're not doing right. The focus, put less negatively, is on improvement. We're imperfect beings, we instructors. We have many areas in which we can improve. And whether it's to be believed or not, we are working to improve.

Is the same being asked of students at BYUI?

A semester or two ago we had an online instructors' forum where students were invited to present their desires to the instructors. They pointed out many things we are not doing to their liking -- we don't grade fast enough; we don't respond to questions fast enough, and so on.

Both my wife and I listened to that forum and had the same question afterward: Why was there no time for instructor rebuttal?

So as I see students asking questions about who the best instructors are, and creating spreadsheets and other resources to track the "best" instructors, I have to ask the question: Who are the best students? And if I see a student in my classroom who doesn't come recommended, do I get to decide they don't belong there?

I do not.

I get to teach whomever comes in, does the work, and hangs on until the end.

Now we're getting somewhere: We can't put together a list of ideal students by name and put that information on a tidy little spreadsheet.

We can do what some students do with their recommendations: Go beyond the name to good attributes.

So who is the best student at BYUI?

Here's my list:

• Good students know the learning environment enough to find their own lessons each week, where to find instructor feedback, and where to find instructor announcements
• Good students read instructor announcements
• Good students ask questions
• Good students ask questions in a timely manner. They don't wait until the 11th hour before an assignment is due to ask those questions, and get irritated when they do not get an immediate answer
• Good students do their work to the best of their ability
• Good students realize that instructors have other students. It's also likely they have other jobs. And families. And other things they like to do outside of their jobs, so if an answer isn't immediate or if a grade isn't done when desired, it's not because instructors are slackers, but because instructors -- like students -- have a lot going on outside that one class
• Good students realize that the online instructors at BYUI do not create the curriculum for the classes they teach. It's highly likely if students are frustrated with unclear assignments, or broken links, or assignments that seem like busy work, the instructors are too. It's also likely instructors are asking for better instructions and less busy work. But they, like students, have to wait until those in power decide to take their questions seriously.

I could go on. But these seem to be the core attributes I'd like to see in students. And I realize many of these attributes are mutual attributes. So I'm going to add one more:

• Good students -- and good instructors -- aren't the tail wagging the dog. They try their hardest to work together, and take a mutual interest in the class.

Re: That Previous Post; or, “But I’m Feeling Much Better Now”

Clearly, whatever is ailing me at the moment bubbled to the surface, viz. But thanks to Night Court, I’ve got a catchphrase that should put some reassurance into your heads, if you forget it’s coming from man recently released from a psychiatric institution:





It’s stress. I’m dealing with the stress right now. It’s part of my long-term strategy of becoming Wally. Or an early death, whichever comes first.

The source of said stress? Legion:

1. Full-time job. Remember the Big Failure from a while back?  It kind of revisited under a different form, but that, too, appears to be on the mend. And there was a drill today that I had little time to prepare for, but that’s over.

2. Part-time job. Which is what I do, or at least which is what it feels like I do, whenever I’m not at the full-time job.

3. Church. That explains the previous post quite a bit, in vague and scary terms. But I’m coming to grips with things better now, as Buddy might say. Also Liam is preparing for his mission call. We had a visit with LDS Family Services about a week ago, in which we discussed his position on the autism spectrum. I personally think he’d struggle on a teaching mission. But we’ll see where the Lord decides to send him. At least this is something completely out of my hands. Then I have my own inadequacies, to which I’m slowly getting a fix on how to fix.

4. Schedule. I’m always a bit discombobulated when the days shorten and I get a lot less sun in my eyeballs. With the passing of Daylight Saving Time, that means I’m full into the phase when I get up before the sun rises and don’t get home until after it sets. That piles on the stress.

5. Book. Doleful Creatures still calls to me. I have no idea how to fix it.

So that all kinda came to a head when that last post hit. Which is fine; it shouldn’t be all good news that comes to the surface. There are struggles that all of us go through.

Spiritual Entertainment

So this past weekend, I did something I've never done in my entire life: I attended the entirety of stake conference, including the leadership session.

Biggest take-home: "Spiritual entertainment without transformative action."

I think it was Elder Rollins who said this. Or maybe it was one of the other guys. My notes are kinda sketchy.

But this is what stuck with me: Am I merely being spiritually entertained, say, by watching videos like the one posted above?

Or am I acting on what's being said to me?

Some days, it's hard to tell.

Lots of stress lately. Full-time job, part-time job. No time to work on the book I started five years ago. Well, there's time. And then there isn't, because of reasons. It's hard.

I'm being pulled in a taffy-puller, and I'm one of the people cranking it to ludicrous speed. So I've got some stuff to sort out. Thinking out loud sometimes helps.

Spoon River Revisited: John Dickey

There’s something about late fall that always takes me back to Spoon River, and the thought of what Edgar Lee Masters would write today.

Maybe something like this. Only better.

John Dickey

On the bus, I wondered
what this place looked like before It needed buses.
Were there reeds on the dunes on Lake Michigan?
Were there places a man could go
and not hear even the slightest murmur of traffic?
Or the grumble of minds weary of bus seats?
Were there people who walked slowly?
Were there people who cared
whether John Dickey were alive?
And how did they kill themselves
Without buses to walk in front of?
They tell me Chicago means
“The smell of wild onions.”
But sir, if that’s true today,
wild onions must smell like buses.