📏Tania 📐

Former 15-year math teacher. Math test developer. Nebraska Cornhusker. Sutherland Sailor. Piano player. Book lover. Football, volleyball, and softball fan.

[📏Tania 📐 @MooreMath13]

@HuskerVB Husker Power!

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

Today is the National Day for the Victims of Communism. Communism killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century.

This memorial, The Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Prague, powerfully captures what communism does to the human person.

[The Optimistic Curmudgeon @TheOptimisticC3]

"No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleaasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."

"All it means," Digory said to himself, "is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants."

Chapter two of The Magician's Nephew builds Uncle Andrew's character. Uncle Andrew is an icon of Lewis's Conditioner, described in The Abolition of Man as one who see themselves as cut off from the great tradition of western ethics; he is a scientist who sees science as a means of mastery rather than understanding. In keeping with the fairy-tale nature of the Narnia books, Uncle Andrew's practice in The Magician's Nephew is magical, but Lewis expects us to note immediately that this magic is somehow bad.

The text is not subtle. As Uncle Andrew tells Digory about Mrs. Lefay (alluding to Morgana le Fay of Arthurian fame, Merlin's seductive apprentice who traps him in the cave), Digory asks "Was there---wasn't there---something wrong with her?" Uncle Andrew replies, "It depends on what you call wrong. People are so narrow-minded. She certainly got very queer [strange] in later life. Did very unwise things. That was why they shut her up." Whatever Mrs. Lefay did, it put her in prison, which Uncle Andrew finds less worrisome than insanity.

In describing his magical education, Uncle Andrew says, "I was learning a good deal in other ways (it wouldn't be proper to explain them to a child) about Magic in general" and "I had to get to know some devilish queer people, and go through some very disagreeable experiences. That was what turned my head grey. One doesn't become a magician for nothing. My health broke down in the end." The Magic Uncle Andrew acquires is not good for him, and he implies that it involved dark practices Digory should not hear (and that Lewis did not want to describe to a childish reading audience); hints of badness are sufficient to let the imagination fill in details. His magic does not make Uncle Andrew more human. Instead, it ages him and robs him of his health.

Uncle Andrew's Magic is a mechanical application of technique to enforce his will on reality. His approach is on high display in taking his inheritance from Mrs. LeFay (a box of Atlantean dust) and transforming it into rings. His magic is not internal, but rather an external application of force that changes the nature of that which it operates on.

Uncle Andrew depicts Sir Francis Bacon's dictum, scientia potentia est, knowledge is power. Digory continues to raise a person-centric moral question: "But what about Polly?" Not matter the power Uncle Andrew can wrest from the box of Atlantean dust, no matter the worlds that can be unlocked, Digory never loses sight of the cost Uncle Andrew is willing to pay.

The contrast comes into high relief when Digory asks Uncle Andrew, "Well why didn't you go yourself then" to the Other Place? "The boy must be mad," Uncle Andrew exclaims. "A man at my time of life and in my state of health, to risk the shock and and the dangers of being flung suddenly into a different universe? I never heard anything so preoposterous...I am the great scholar, the magician, the adaept who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on."

Uncle Andrew sees himself as lofty, noble, freed from petty moral concerns. And Digory continues to ask, "But what about Polly?" Lewis, through Digory, does not let the reader evade the moral cost of Uncle Andrew experimentation, whether it is on young girls or guinea-pigs.

The chapter closes with Uncle Andrew manipulating Digory into taking rings to rescue Polly; Digory has no other option but to be courageous and rescue his friend.

The text of The Magician's Nephew raises the following questions for Gerwig's adaptation of The Magician's Nephew:

Does Daniel Craig's Uncle Andrew come off as a power-mad scientist reaching into magical realms? Does Gerwig's vision distinguish between good and bad forms of Magic? Will the moral and ethical conundrums of Polly's kidnapping be maintained? Can you imagine the boy playing Digory standing up to Uncle Andrew and calling him out as a coward?

I'll post on Monday about Ch. 3 and the wood between the world. For now, here is the trailer for Magician's Nephew one more time. Does Daniel Craig get Uncle Andrew right, based on what we can see?

https://t.co/3PCNknB7Cz

[📏Tania 📐 @MooreMath13]

Why is the Nebraska flagline flying Maryland colors when we are playing against Maryland? #Huskers

[Moms Across America @momsacross]

🚨 DRISCOLL’S WHISTLEBLOWER SPEAKS OUT ABOUT PESTICIDE OVERUSE ON BERRIES

David Harada was Driscoll’s Manager of Food Safety and Regulatory Compliance. His job was to make sure the berries families were buying met pesticide safety standards.

Now he is blowing the whistle.

Harada says he began finding problems with pesticide over-application on Driscoll’s growers’ crops and repeatedly brought his concerns to management.

But according to his lawsuit, instead of asking how they could fix the problem, a director asked whether the company had “plausible deniability.”

Harada also said that Driscoll’s removed pesticide compliance safeguards from its internal system — safeguards designed to make sure enough time passed between pesticide application and harvest so residues could break down.

He says he continued raising concerns and ultimately faced retaliation.

This is why Moms Across America continues to insist that food safety cannot be left to corporations to police themselves.

Berries are some of the most frequently consumed foods by our children. Our children are eating berries drenched in pesticides that are over the already too high safety limits set by our EPA.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

It is genuinely insane to think that this is a real SAT exam question:

[📏Tania 📐 @MooreMath13]

@swmckewonOWH 31 furlongs?? 31 lengths... 31 furlongs is several miles.

[📏Tania 📐 @MooreMath13]

They think we are stupid.

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

Hello Senator Thune,

Let's expose what you're really doing with "reconciliation."

You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You're not trying to pass this bill. You're trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.

Here's how we know:

Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are "budgetary." Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you'll shrug and say "we tried." We see through you.

Meanwhile, you WON'T use the tools that actually work:

Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as "complicated." Because if you tried and succeeded, you'd have to actually pass the bill.

Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.

Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.

Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.

You have 53 seats. You've changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.

Now let's talk donors:

• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you - top H-1B user
• Google: $75K - lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K - Zuckerberg's FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K - banks undocumented immigrants

Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for "Fly Out Days" which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act "will ultimately fail."

Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.

We see the loop.

You called grassroots anger a "paid influencer ecosystem." YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won't bend the rules to get anything passed.

What we want:

1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.

YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You're living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.

You are not "moderate." The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.

Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.

[NCAA Buzzer Beaters & Game Winners @NCAABuzzerBters]

41-year Nebraska announcer Kent Pavelka’s (@KentPavelka) call of the end of #4 Nebraska’s win over #5 Vanderbilt and advancement to their first Sweet 16

[📏Tania 📐 @MooreMath13]

@FAFOFarmsTX https://t.co/5zs2yokzmW

[Sean Davis @seanmdav]

Understand what Thune is doing right now. It’s not enough for him to kill the SAVE America Act. Thune has to kill it while also protecting his worst RINO colleagues from being
exposed for opposing it.

How does Thune accomplish his? By avoiding a simple majority vote at all costs. Thune knows a public vote where Republicans get less than 50 votes—with people like Tillis and Curtis and McConnell and Murkowski voting against IT—is electoral poison. He doesn’t want it to pass, but he also can’t have it die at the hands of his own puke colleagues.

So how does Thune do this? By refusing to move to the already-passed House bill (this only requires a simple majority because the House message is privileged) and instead moving to a new, standalone Senate bill. A new Senate bill is not privileged, and therefore the motion to proceed to it is debatable, meaning it requires 60 votes.

Thune needs to kill the SAVE America Act, not expose any of his GOP colleagues as being against it, and be able to pretend that he tried. This is the actual Senate GOP trifecta—doing nothing while pretending they tried everything and protecting the worst of the worst the whole time.

So when you watch the GOP Senate bring up a brand new SAVE America Act bill and hold a single vote on a motion that needs 60 to pass, know that they’re doing it because they think you’re stupid.

[Megan Basham @megbasham]

So, yesterday was a hard day. I woke up to the news of James Vanderbeek's death. Like so many millions of Americans, I looked at the pictures of his six beautiful children and his lovely wife and my heart broke.

But I suspect it broke a little differently than many.

When you have cancer, learning of the death of a celebrity who has your diagnosis (and announced it about the same time you did no less), is a bit of a gut punch, to say the least.

Though it's not just celebrity deaths that can blindside you. Someone will share of the loss of a family member or friend to cancer, and it hits you in a personal and fearful way. Someone in the Facebook support group who's been an active contributor is suddenly gone. To say it knocks you down emotionally, spiritually, would be an understatement.

So as a Christian, what do you do with these feelings? First, like every other human being on the planet, you feel scared. You cry. You want to hide your head.

And then you do what the Psalmists did. You stop listening to the fear in your heart and seek out the truth of the Word that stands regardless of the day's news. And you let THAT speak to you and drown out those fearful words.

For me yesterday, Psalm 91. Just a bit of that:

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you...

And (once again) you place yourself in the hands of a benevolent Father. You tell him of your fear, your heartache, your failures. You make your requests known. And you rest in perhaps the sweetest doctrine a cancer fighter (or any Christian) can know. Providence.

Providence assures us that God is not distantly watching our pain. He is not passively allowing events to unfold. He is continually, actively governing all things, from galaxies to governments to our (comparatively) small suffering.

As RC Sproul put it, "there are no rogue molecules."

What God's complete sovereignty means to someone like me is that my cancer is not random. It did not slip past God unnoticed. He was present before the diagnosis, at the diagnosis, and remains present in every moment of it. A God who loses control in suffering would be terrifying. A God who governs suffering and is making meaning from it is the only God who can be trusted.

And it means that cancer cannot touch me beyond what God allows and what he allows will always be for my good, even if in ways I can't see or understand right now.

So if you're like me and the Vanderbeek news hit you hard for personal reasons, know that you are not alone. And this day you have the opportunity to place yourself, if you have not already, in the hands of One who controls all things and in whom you can have perfect trust.

When the hard days hit, He is waiting for you.

[Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” @MrDanielBuck]

Schools of education train the teachers, train the administrators, create the crackpot theories, staff the unions and curriculum companies

If conservatives don’t reform schools of education, they’ll continue to lose schools

[📏Tania 📐 @MooreMath13]

@BiblicalBeauty My go-to's were melon, especially watermelon, and raw milk. I also used bentonite clay capsules for nausea. You need to drink lots with those, but they really helped.

[Fordham Institute @educationgadfly]

Only 13 states require aspiring elementary teachers to pass a solid math test.

@NCTQ’s new report shows how low the bar is—and which states are doing better.

Ali Schalop breaks it down.
https://t.co/OAfYqhAgGI

[Nebraska Football @HuskerFootball]

Dream Big.
Work Hard.
Stay Humble.

Today and every day, Sam Foltz's legacy lives on through the teammates he inspired, the community he uplifted, and the love we carry for him.

[Ethical Skeptic ☀ @EthicalSkeptic]

If you want to know who rules over you, simply observe who has immunity from accountability.

[Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” @MrDanielBuck]

Holy son of a biscuit. What a representation of the data.

NAEP scores compared to federal spending by the US Department of Education

But sure, more money is the answer

via https://t.co/p3oie4wkdT and @danbmurphy

[Tiffany Justice @4TiffanyJustice]

I propose that school boards tie the Superintendent’s salary to the percentage of 4th graders proficient in reading (e.g., 80% proficiency = 80% of salary).

Think this policy would incentivize a stronger focus on improving reading skills instead of Pride month?

[Alex Vacca @itsalexvacca]

BREAKING: MIT just completed the first brain scan study of ChatGPT users & the results are terrifying.

Turns out, AI isn't making us more productive. It's making us cognitively bankrupt.

Here's what 4 months of data revealed:

(hint: we've been measuring productivity all wrong)

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Patrick Henry delivers ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1895, 📸 by Brian Babineau