Thomas Jefferson's take on the Bailout

It looks like Wamp gets it (I have not heard, but I hope he is one of the holdout Republicans.) and Corker and Alexander don't! Wait, does Alexander expect me to vote for him even if he is a Republican behaving badly? I sure hope not, my days of voting for RINOs are over.

Calling all Philosophy Majors

For several months I have, not so secretly, wondered how to help others get out of this neo-federalist thought process that both parties are stuck in. I feel strongly about the revival of a more pure and historical constructionist view of the constitution needing to take root.

The problem is that it took me years (3-10) of reading and studying history to finally be open to the possibility that the reality be presented and the arguments being made in our current political paradigm are a result of, for the lack of a better term, us having lost our way.

All that said, Blackburn, Jason, and myself were on the way back from lunch today, and we were talking about politics when Jason brought up a principle or study he had heard of that basically goes like this: New concepts, to which someone has little or no reference point, take time to introduce or else the person will think they are either silly or misguided and will dismiss them out of hand.

Does anyone know what this principle is called? I'm sure this principle is covered in a freshman philosophy class, but for the life of me I can't seem to pin it down.

I am kind of working with these keywords: conceptual change pedagogy and knowledge reconstruction

Please, someone fill me in. I really would like to understand this concept a bit better.

timing is everything

One thing we are learning about Nicholas is that he does not like to eat breakfast. This morning Aunt Heather had fixed French toast, and we were all working as hard as we could at encouraging him to eat. I tried to encourage him to try it with some honey with the hope that he would like the taste of the honey and keep eating. He finally took a bite of the French toast with nothing on it. Not liking that he agreed to try some honey. After about a minute of Nicholas staring at the French toast on the end of his fork he very slowly started moving the bite towards his mouth. I held my breath waiting for that honey soaked piece of toast to touch his tongue. At the point where the toast was millimeters from his lips John David busts out with:

"Did you know that honey is really bee vomit?"

John David's timing could not have been better. All the adults in the kitchen had so much emotionally invested in that bite that all we could do is bust out laughing. Then all the kids started laughing and Nicholas took the bite. I think he thought John David was just being silly...