Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom with the Call of Freedom, and Public Libraries?

Libraries are part of the community gathering and information sharing system for all Americans that must not be forgotten, nor underfunded. 

So, how do we each help our society to become more fully inclusive for all of us, and to give more money for local branches of Public Libraries?

I believe that attention to connecting community institutions, like Public Libraries, may provide part of an answer.  I started a note about that, a few years ago, on page nine of my book Stayed on Freedom’s Call:

“Chapter 1: Shared Oppression, Shared Cultures, Shared
Resistance, Shared History Of Oppression:

“You accepted 400 years of oppression, I have just accepted three thousand years of
oppression!”

-African-American Dr. Jean Cahn, upon converting to Judaism, by permission, E. Cahn

   The rabbis say that it took one man plunging into the Sea and wading in
up to his neck before the waters parted and the Children of Israel were finally
able to be free. As Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of the land of Egypt, up
and out of bondage, so the Negro slaves looked to their faith, even as the
spiritual waters of oppression seemed to rise up to the necks of people of color,
both free and enslaved.

People of color formed communities in spite of the
oppressive atmosphere, overcoming great prejudice to do so, as mistrusted and
often denigrated Jewish citizens also had to do. From Benjamin Banneker in
1791, to Isaac Polock in 1795, the first non-White residents of the city faced
unique challenges, having to prove themselves to their White contemporaries.
In 1850, abolitionists and free people of color advocated for the rights of slaves,
while Captain Jonas P. Levy and the Sons of Israel fraternal members had to
advocate for the rights of Jews, overlooked in our very own treaties.
Just as free individuals and families of color formed connections in the Capital, as with…

Page 9″

So, it turns out that my endnote references to this page were too “dense” for some reviewers.  Some fresh reviews would help me decide that specific.

Page eight was last week…

Action Items:

1.) What are your thoughts on the function of libraries as community information centers?

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how continuing empathy-building cooperation might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at least for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this

GoodReads button: ,  Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.   Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The last GED lesson 67/67 , and the first lesson 1/67…), and Babylon 5 review posts, and

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and Human Rights as Justice

This post  goes on to begin the rough draft of my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: A possible Vision for Making Society Suck Less, in 60 Years.   (Thanks, once again, to JYP and Tammy for the title ideas!!)  The overall goal has been to lay out a roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, so, I am turning, this week, to the introductory chapter, Chapter 0, of the book, in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met.  This book lays out one possible path for getting to that point.

Introduction part II: Peace and Justice

 

   Peaceful change revolves around various types of justice.  Social justice is perhaps the first type of justice that comes to mind, but economic justice, both of outcome and of opportunity, and also climate and other sorts of justice count heavily when considering the factors involved in building a just society.

 

  Social justice is one of the more obvious types of justice, or more visible, in terms of how we human beings treat one another.  The basic human rights to dignity, equal treatment under the law, and equal access to resources as seen in the right to due process, competent legal representation, etc, have been the focus of civil rights activism and litigation, most prominently in the 1960s, but reaching much farther back than that, in the United States (Jones, Stayed on Freedom’s Call, P. 20). Cooperation between many oppressed groups over time has led to a variety of policies aimed at addressing mistreatment of vulnerable people in public venues, often based on visible characteristics such as race, gender, etc.  The right to associate and travel, live in safe areas, access social venues, etc, has often been addressed, however, without actively acknowledging the fact that the realistic exercise of these rights is dependent upon the actual ability to pay for access to these rights, as most of our venues in the US require some form of entrance fee, or payment.  What often goes unaddressed, and ignored, is the right to economic justice that forms the bedrock of one’s ability to gain access to nearly all of these rights, in practical usage.  Yet, this lack of acknowledgment and action is not due to lack of warning.  Many have pointed out over the years that providing social justice, without providing economic justice, is paying mere lip service to the ideal of a just society.

 

   The calls for economic justice as part of social equity in the United States go back far, but a convenient start might be the most well known of those calls, from the 1960s.  In 1963,The March on Washington was a march for “jobs and freedom” as part of the long struggle to end Jim Crow, implemented both as social segregation, and also as economic segregation.  The economic part of Jim Crow, preventing most Negroes from working in most professional job positions, was the true motor of inequality, leading to both the formation and enforced permanence of a deliberately poverty-stricken underclass constantly obligated to accept any jobs offered by the dominant members of society.  The codification of this system based on skin color meant that even after the end, de Jure, of social Jim Crow, the majority of the members of that underclass remained stuck in the position of living in substandard housing and having to accept the lowest paying of jobs because the dominant culture had not changed, even when the laws did.  Thus, the legal ability to attend the same cinemas, the same schools, and the same concerts did not grant the financial ability do take advantage of these new rights.  Jim Crow was still, economically speaking, alive and well despite new social justice laws.  Many observers, from Dr. King himself, who called for a Citizen’s Income just a few years after that famous march (King, Where Do We Go From Here, 1967), to Joseph Stiglitz, to Steve Pressman, to Thomas Piketty, have continued to point out that economic inequality both hampers all forms of justice for vulnerable groups.  They also argue that economic inequality exerts increasing pressure toward injustice on all groups, from the dominant down to the most vulnerable, in that society.  Thus, social justice and economic justice must really be considered one: two sides of the same coin.

 

A society which would like to consider itself just toward all of its members, and indeed attempts to provide social and economic justice for all groups, would still be missing something crucial, if social and economic justice were the only types of justice to be considered.  While public goods such as libraries, health care, transportation, and education may be considered part of the social or economic spheres, these systems are also part of a set of pieces of social infrastructure which work in our society both as common touch stones, and as common points of concern.  Each person needs access to information, and to community level places for gatherings and  entertainment, provided by local libraries.  Each person needs health care, and the health of every resident in a society affects every other resident, from the hospital system right down to the sewage and water treatment systems.  Transportation is a concern that touches every resident as well, whether driving in a private car, or riding on a trolley, and the culture and education of every resident of a society inform how those modes of transportation will be used, or abused.  Yet, information and communication systems, sanitation, transportation, and even schools all impact the local environment, and also pull resources from the local environment.  And, as many Native American Tribal councils, like that of the Black Hills, in South Dakota, can confirm, not all lands are treated with equal care.  Thus, climate and land or commons based justice must also be considered, as part of the foundation of any just society.  Hence, social, economic, and commons based justice must all form part of any discussion or offering of a potential vision for a just society.  Those three fundamental forms of justice must also then be made tangible by codifying specific examples of what that might look like.  One offering of an example was given to us by a president who saw the need to end both segregation and to list necessary freedoms.

 

That is the rough draft of the first part of my introductory chapter. 

Last week was the third installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to visions for a better world.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how Commons Justice (or bad) can affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.   Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The previous lesson 51/67 , and the most recent lesson 52/67…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Minbari Mondays, The War Prayer, and Empathy for the Other

This is the continuation of our fictional letter (reviewing each film and episode of Babylon 5) that I receive each week from Ranger Mayann.

Here is her 9th report:

—

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa, Greetings from Tuzanor:

In this report, in your Earth year 2258, it is the second year of operation of the station. This station which has so much of the love of my people, even when we were not loved there.

This report revolves around two intertwined incidents, both of which relate to the other, and to the need for empathy among all sentient species. You humans, just as we Minbari, continue to learn this lesson.

 

While one of our revered poets was on the station to visit with her old friend, Delenn, since before she was either Satai or ambassador, a terrible series of crimes was committed. The crimes affected not only the person of our Poet, but also the sense of safety, or lack thereof, for all of the vulnerable aboard the station. Even vulnerable humans, despite the attacks being carried out by human beings.

Attacks of hatred always carry a double message: one for those who were directly targeted, and one for those who were not directly targeted, but as members of the “in” group are also being reminded to “stay in line,” as you Humans put it.

Our Ambassador Delenn, and her friend, our well-known Minbari poet, were brought into closer contact with Ambassador Mollari. This series of incidents helped set Mollari, I humbly assert, on his path to possible redemption, as our Poet showed him a needed insight.

From the city of  Tuzanor, on Minbar

Earth year 2278,

Anla’Shok Mayann

  Addendum to Ranger Mayann’s report, by Shira:  This episode is one of my favorite episodes!

I think of this as the tight shoes episode!

We get to see love and hate up close and personal, and a beautiful opening, with two friends discussing the maturing of a poem begun long ago. Garibaldi makes a still valid and saddening point about the hateful attacker, as he grunts that there are

“too many who agree with them, and too many more just don’t give a damn.”

I love the conversation between Mollari and the Minbari poet, where he snaps that

“I would expect such logic from a poet,”

and she comes back with a beautiful reminder that

“all sentient beings are best defined by their capacity and need for love.”

This episode has an excellent juxtaposition of love and hatred, with the consequences of both linked through an inter-generational exploration of an existence without love. That would be the existence of ambassador Londo Mollari.

This episode also shows the importance of the role of love and visits to the sick by their loved ones in healthcare.

That would be the empathy part of healthcare.

–

 

That was part of Ranger Mayann’s letter on the history of the Babylon Project.  It can be seen from another point of view by watching the Babylon 5 Season 1, Episode 7: The War Prayer, which I most highly recommend.

See Ranger Mayann’s eighth report, from last week.

-Shira

Action Items:

1.)  Share your thoughts on hate crimes, bullying, and cultural dominance, if you will.

2.) Share your thoughts on how we Human Beings might start to build a more fully inclusive society for all of us, and how this episode of Babylon 5 could help that process.

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses these thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)! 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The previous lesson 67/67 , and the most recent lesson 1/67…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Day 63/67 of GED in Five Months, sedimentary rocks, and Public Libraries

By now, we should all know how entropy connects with motion, so what can entropy possible have to do with rocks, since rocks never move in any way, or do they?  Maybe your local branch’s Reference Librarian can help you find out…

Today’s reading :

“ Sedimentary rocks are formed from pre-existing rocks or pieces of once-living organisms. They form from deposits that accumulate on the Earth’s surface. Sedimentary rocks often have distinctive layering or bedding. Many of the picturesque views of the desert southwest show mesas and arches made of layered sedimentary rock.

…”

 Week 17/18

Day 63 lesson plan

Grammar: Adverbs

Math: Linear relationships from a table of data

Today’s reading comes from where?

Please see the Lesson plan for Day 63’s Exit Tickets

Action Items:  

1.) Did you see any interesting facts about your home area, those who live in the SouthWestern United States?

2.) Please tell us where the information for today’s reading comes from, how you know that the sources are reliable, and who funded them,

3.)  Feel free to answer the exit ticket questions in the comments, or pose any other questions you may have about the lesson, if you wish.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa…

(RiP, Mira Furlan, aka Delenn…)

ShiraDest

January, 2021 CE = January 12021 HE

(Day 62 … Day 64)

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Day 61/67 of GED in Five Months, language as a function of context, and Adult decision-making as a function of community

Our language varies based on the context in which that language is used. Mathematical language always has a very specific meaning and a precise context: the mathematical context.  We use words everyday that have different meanings, precise meanings, in different contexts.  An Adult must understand the specific meaning of a given word before making decisions that will affect anyone, including just themselves, since our decisions never really affect only ourselves, do they?

Today’s reading starts looking at functions as applied in our physical world:

“ force F as a function of time. …”

 Week 17/18

Day 61 Lesson Plan

Essay Writing -Continue working on your concluding paragraph

math: Identifying and evaluating functions

Science reading:

Please see the Lesson plan for Day 61’s Exit Tickets

Action Items:  

1.) Did you see any interesting new mathematics (for once you finish this course and move on to higher level learning) on the reading page?  Does it look interesting?

2.) Please tell us where the information for today’s reading comes from, how you know that the sources are reliable, and who funded them,

3.)  Feel free to answer the exit ticket questions in the comments, or pose any other questions you may have about the lesson, if you wish.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa…

(RiP, Mira Furlan, aka Delenn…)

ShiraDest

January, 2021 CE = January 12021 HE

(Day 60 … Day 62)

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom with the Call of Freedom, and Pro-bono Adulting

Terms change over time.  So do laws.  Thus, the importance of a free and continuously self-updating public consumer legal local education system for all Americans  must not be underestimated. 

So, how do we each help our society to become more fully inclusive for all of us, with a fully inclusive system of free continuing financial education which includes updates on debt and tax laws for all of us (by state and/or locality…), and build the needed empathy to make that happen?

I believe that attention to terminology may provide part of an answer.  I noted that, a few years ago, on page eight of my book Stayed on Freedom’s Call:

“

*Notes:

This book will use the terms Colored, Negro, Black, and African-American interchangeably, depending on the time frame under discussion.

This refers to the terms which were in use during the periods in question.

Also, the term Community Cooperation will be defined here as institutional groups, such
as religious and community-based organizations, which bring people in the
aggregate together to cooperate or act together collectively, rather than simply
on the individual level.

Page 8″

So, it turns out that  this note refers to words that we no longer use, for the most part, today.  The sources I looked up used those terms, as they were often written during different time periods, but some authors seem to be using only the phrase African-Americans, these days, even when referring back to times when that phrase was not yet in use.  Some more reviews would help me decide that specific.

Page seven was last week…

Action Items:

1.) What are your thoughts on the importance of everyone having access to free and on-going legal and financial information, especially in the context of this pandemic and medical debts that many people have incurred as a result, and the next pandemic to come?

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how continuing empathy-building cooperation might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking, and inclusive health care, and

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at least for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this

GoodReads button: ,  Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.   Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The last GED lesson 67/67 , and the first lesson 1/67…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Day 60/67 of GED in Five Months, constant rate of change med. reactions, and Health Care science for Adults

We use health care related words every day, but do we see how those words are related to the mathematics and to the concepts that we must remember, or relearn, from our science basics?  Noting the relationships and patterns between various interacting concepts are important for every Adult in a republic, where we each have a responsibility to understand public health care issues, and to help protect one another.

Today’s reading starts looking at chemical reactions, and the concept of half-life of a reaction, which is a linear relationship to the starting point of the reaction:

“The half-life of a reaction, t_1/2, is the amount of time needed for a reactant concentration to decrease by half compared to its initial concentration. Its application is used in chemistry and medicine to predict the concentration of a substance over time. The concepts of half life plays a key role in the administration of drugs into the target, especially in the elimination phase, where half life is used to determine how quickly a drug decrease in the target after it has been absorbed in the unit of time (sec, minute, day,etc.) or elimination rate constant ke (minute^-1, hour^-1, day^-1,etc.). It is important to note that the half-life is varied between different type of reactions. The following section will go over different type of reaction, as well as how its half-life reaction are derived. …”

 Week 16/18

Day 60 lesson plan, Week 16

Grammar: Review of compound subjects and coordinating conjunctions

Math: Write an equation given two points

Health science: dose absorption and rate of change…

Please see the Lesson plan for Day 60’s Exit Tickets

Action Items:  

1.) Did you see a familiar graph on the reading page?

2.) Please tell us where the information for today’s reading comes from, how you know that the sources are reliable, and who funded them,

3.)  Feel free to answer the exit ticket questions in the comments, or pose any other questions you may have about the lesson, if you wish.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 Nos vemos!  

ShiraDest

January, 2021 CE = January 12021 HE

(Day 59 … Day 61)

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and Human Rights as Equity

This post  goes on to begin the rough draft of my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: A possible Vision for Making Society Suck Less, in 60 Years.   (Thanks, once again, to JYP and Tammy for the title ideas!!)  The overall goal has been to lay out a roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, so, I am turning, this week, to the introductory chapter, Chapter 0, of the book, in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met.  This book lays out one possible path for getting to that point.

Introduction: Empathy-building as an ongoing part of all
4 Phases

Having cited some of the reasoning which led up to the inception of this project, we now delve into the foundational concepts behind each phase. Empathy-building, through various means, is a continual part of each phase, as without empathy, no society can be just or safe or kind.

This vision of one potential just society is based on the ideas that such a society must be defined by its levels of both empathy and of full respect for the Human Rights of every living person. Such rights as the right to equity, the right to help create peaceful change, and to have each of those four freedoms that President FDR spoke about, embody the essence of a just society. But that essence still requires some tangible way to measure the level of justice, change institutions and systems that need changing, and to define specific ideals upon which those justice seeking institutions build, and to what particular ends.

Human Rights must be the starting point for any society which seeks to be a just society.  The application of named rights for each human being in an equitable manner is essential for a
society to be truly just. Some way to measure that application is also necessary. John Rawls proposed a test for determining whether a given society could be considered just, via a thought experiment. While that test will neither be debated nor explained in full here, further exploration of his writings will show that his proposal involved imagining oneself, after having designed a just society, as being given the choice to become part of that society, but without any knowledge of the position in which one, personally, would enter it. Rawls suggested that if a person would not be willing to enter a given society with no knowledge, or under a thick veil of ignorance, as to what that person’s position would be in the society, then that society might not be a just society. For example, no reasonable person, not knowing what position he or she might have, would consent to become part of US society, because if the position of that person turns out to be one of a homeless person, then the lived experience of the vast majority of people who experience homelessness would indicate that entering society in that position would very nearly doom one’s chances in life. Thus, Rawls’ test would show that the current state of American society is not that of a just society. As many have pointed out. Like Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky and others have written many books and articles detailing a variety of critiques of US and other current societies, in terms of the damage that governments of the United States and other developed nations allow to be done in the name of economic competition. A just society must be just for its own citizens, and must also promote the ideals upon which it is founded in its dealings with other societies. On that basis, Chomsky finds that US treatment of other nations is especially unjust, and that injustice is a reflection of treatment withing US society of the most vulnerable communities within US society, as well, such as Black Americans, refugees, and women of all races. So, the treatment of citizens within a just society must also be mirrored by how that society treats those outside of its boundaries with whom it has dealings, as Chomsky points out on page 83 of his book Profits over People: unfairly vilifying and then crushing a nation for the sake of economic competition is unjust not only to those outside of a society, but even to those within the ‘winning’ society, as the reality of such behavior is evident even to small children, when viewed without the coloring of propaganda. The effects within US society, for example, of the embargo against Cuba over the long term, have been to harden views in some quarters against any compromise or opening of discussion on the topic, while others in American society have come to see hard-liners insistent on the embargo as both anti-Cuban and even anti-immigration. Thus, unfair treatment of outsiders by members of even a just society affects all members within that society, causing divisions and even justifying mistreatment of dissenting opinions, rendering that formerly just society unjust in the act. This shows that even a just society would have to have ways of interacting with other societies that set boundaries and spell out ideals to which all connected societies could aspire.

Eleanor Roosevelt, in helping to redact the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, drew heavily on the concept enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence “that all
men are created equal… that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights…” which include the right to be treated with equal dignity to that of every other human being, regardless of momentary state of being, such as poverty or wealth, gender, religion or lack thereof, etc. As crucial as to whom these rights apply, the document defined an international standard of what rights should be considered as basic to all human beings. The right not to be tortured is, for example, a basic human right which applies to each and every human being at all times and under all circumstances. Likewise with “the right to life, liberty, and security of person.”
Certain rights, such as that negating slavery, which is in direct contradiction to the 13th
Amendment to the US federal Constitution, were visionary in their global scope, considering that many nations had not yet completed the rebuilding from the destruction of the second world war, and even that of the first, the Great War. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is thus a fitting starting point for our definition of what, in terms of tangible rights, a just society ought to look like. The definition of those rights does not, in itself, show us all of what a just society looks like, but it is a start, beginning at where we are today, from a documentary and international legal point of view. It shows that to build a truly just society, we do not really have that far to go. With a set of basic human right in place to which everyone around the world has agreed, in principle, we can move on to look at ways in which those rights could potentially be implemented in a way that would be equitable for all human beings on the planet. Given that the current global systems of finance, trade, etc, are clearly highly inequitable, a just society must therefore have mechanisms in place to allow the peaceful changing of the systems of governance, and even of government, allowing citizens within the society to change parts of the system of governing that show themselves to be unjust. Such peaceful revolution, though, revolves around several connected but distinct types of justice, and depends upon the ability of all citizens to make their voices heard in absolutely non-violent, non-threatening, and non- aggressive manners, so that all citizens can feel both heard, and protected.

That is the rough draft of the first part of my introductory chapter. 

Last week was the second installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to visions for a better world.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how good governance (or bad) can affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.   Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The previous lesson 51/67 , and the most recent lesson 52/67…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Day 59/67 of GED in Five Months, elements of an argument, and elements of a molecule

We use words every day, which many have different meanings in different contexts.  Pros, cons, and rebuttals are elements of a basic argumentative essay, while hydrogen and helium are basic chemical elements.  Language is important, and shouldn’t it be?

Today’s reading starts looking at one of the basic tools of understanding the world around us:

“The Periodic table characterizes the known elements in increasing order of atomic number. It starts on the top right hand corner with Hydrogen and continue from left to right which then repeats in the horizontal row below the last element. This is not just a list of elements it is organized in very different ways like properties and atomic mass. At first glance the periodic table may seem disorganized with only a couple elements on the top row and a block on the last row but it is very specific in the way that they are organized.”

 Week 16/18

Day 59 Lesson Plan, Week 16

Grammar: individual help to finish essay

Math: review linear inequalities

Science: Elements of life

Please see the Lesson plan for Day 59’s Exit Tickets

Action Items:  

1.) If you found a mistake, typo, or other concern with the web page you were reading, how would you find out who to contact in order to raise that concern?

2.) Please tell us where your information for your essay comes from, how you know that the sources are reliable, and who funded them,

3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses your essay idea, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.

4.)  Feel free to answer the exit ticket questions in the comments, or pose any other questions you may have about the lesson, if you wish.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

January, 2021 CE = January 12021 HE

(Day 58 … Day 60)

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Day 58/67 of GED in Five Months, graphing via Slope-Intercept form, and forensic science

We use rate of change every day, for transporting ourselves and our needful things, for instance, perhaps without even recognizing it, but what else can an equation of a line tell us?

Today’s reading shows one application of slope-intercept form, with several more applications further down the page:

“Imagine you are a forensic scientist working in the Central Identification Lab at JPAC (the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command). Your job is to help identify human remains believed to be U.S. military personnel reported missing in action during World War II and other conflicts. A team of your colleagues recovers skeletal remains consisting of a pelvic bone, several ribs, and a femur from a 1943 military plane crash on Vanuatu.

When the remains arrive in your lab, you photograph and measure the bones. From the shape of the pelvis, you can quickly tell that the remains most likely belong to an adult male. You note that the femur is 18.7 inches long. Bone length, especially the length of long bones like the femur, is related to an individual’s overall height. Simply put, a tall person will usually have long legs, and a short person generally has shorter legs. This relationship is so strong that you can predict an individual’s height if you know the length of one bone in the leg (Figure 1). You plug your measurement into an equation used to estimate the overall height of an adult male based on femur length:

 

H = 1.880(L) + 32.010“

Does the above equation look familiar? A little hint:

Y = m(x) + b

 

 Middle of week 16/18

Day 58, Week 16

Grammar: Subject verb agreement with indefinite pronouns as subject

Math: practicing graphing with slope-intercept form

Science: history and forensic, civic (water storage), and geological uses of linear equations

Please see the Lesson plan for Day 58’s Exit Tickets

Action Items:  

1.) Search for two different reasons that answer this question: “Why is Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi considered the “father of algebra”?”

2.) Please tell us where your information comes from, how you know that the sources are reliable, and who funded them,

3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses your findings, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.

4.)  Feel free to answer the exit ticket questions in the comments, or pose any other questions you may have about the lesson, if you wish.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

January, 2021 CE = January 12021 HE

(Day 57 … Day 59)

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.