Common Sense

Common sense provides us the ability to differentiate right and wrong. Whether for a huge moral question (e.g., abortion) or for simple household safeguards (keeping sharp objects away from children), common sense is the compass that allows us to think, determine a course of action, and predict the outcome of those actions. But common sense is under siege. Elected officials, activists and others use the mainstream media to bombard us with an agenda that defies this internal compass.

Educators are still pressured by the "publish-or-perish" syndrome even if only in a letter to the newspaper expounding some idiotic idea that increases the cost of education. Requiring Spanish to exit is one; forcing college students to buy computers is another (fine for the computer companies, bad for students and parents struggling with high tuition bills). Years ago when I first saw the new-math book my kid brought home I almost went into orbit. As an engineer I knew it was a bad idea: too rigorous.

THE NHL MAP is finally in order with Detroit and Columbus heading east, and Winnipeg moving west. "We're thrilled, absolutely thrilled," Blue Jackets executive John Davidson said on a conference call Thursday, shortly after the realignment plan was approved in a vote by the league's board of governors. "We tend to use the [term] common sense around here. This seems to make a lot of common sense. " The new format goes into effect next season, and will feature two eight-team divisions in the Eastern Conference, including the Red Wings and Blue Jackets.

One of my favorite subjects in college was logic. Naturally, I couldn't get enough of Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Spock: Random chance seems to have operated in our favor. McCoy: In plain, non-Vulcan English, we've been lucky. Spock: I believe I said that, Doctor. That kind of talk never fails to give me goosebumps. Admittedly, my time in college was a long time ago, and over the years, the dapper Professor Adalja's carefully drawn distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning has decomposed in my mind into something less.

When it comes to human biology, technology is about three football fields ahead of common sense. The simple act of human reproduction was once a private matter between a woman, a man, her family, his family, the priest-rabbi-minister-shaman and the entire village. They all agreed, at least, on what constituted a proper home for a child. No longer. Now reproduction can take place between a dead man and his wife, or a divorced couple who froze a few embryos, or a man and a woman who have never met each other but communicated through a turkey baster.

Ten-year-old Porsche Brown's childhood was cruelly interrupted on Dec. 9. This fourth-grader from Holme Elementary School in Philadelphia was removed from her classroom, handcuffed by police, loaded into a police wagon, and driven to the police station. Her crime? A pair of scissors was found in her backpack, and she was promptly suspended. Across the country, schools are criminalizing behavior that used to be handled in families, neighborhoods and the principal's office, and Philadelphia is no exception.

Early this year, while Sheldon Hackney was busy posturing his way into an appointment to head the National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Pennsylvania - where he was nominally in charge - was torn apart by two incidents that mocked the ideals that should define campus life. In January, when five African-American undergraduates claimed a white student had called them "black water buffalo," a nationwide debate on speech codes was set in motion: The accused took his case to the Wall Stret Journal editorial page, while his accusers tried in vain to get the matter resolved through Penn's byzantine internal judicial procedures.

It was a little after midnight, the day after Christmas, when I heard unusually loud thumping from the stairway of the house adjoining my father's. I rushed outside and saw a woman I did not recognize, but assumed lived in the adjoining house, leaning against my car, looking up to the house. "What's the matter?" I asked. "The house is on fire," she answered. I was incredulous. I wondered why no one in that house had the presence of mind to warn me, my father and cousin.

We recently celebrated the 210th anniversary of one of the great literary products of America - Thomas Paine's "Common Sense. " One of the most quoted passages from Paine's classic tells us a great deal about today's Philadelphia: "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. " Unfortunately, Philadelphia's government is not in the best state today; we may be approaching the intolerable stage....

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Let your natural state overtake you. If your body feels relaxed and comfortable and free, there's nothing more you need to do for physical health now. TAURUS (April 20-May 20). You may feel the warmth of love inside you, though that is useless to the object of your affection unless you also express the feeling with your actions. GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Today brings lessons about enjoying the ordinary. Errands are a chance to connect with the people in your neighborhood.

THE NHL MAP is finally in order with Detroit and Columbus heading east, and Winnipeg moving west. "We're thrilled, absolutely thrilled," Blue Jackets executive John Davidson said on a conference call Thursday, shortly after the realignment plan was approved in a vote by the league's board of governors. "We tend to use the [term] common sense around here. This seems to make a lot of common sense. " The new format goes into effect next season, and will feature two eight-team divisions in the Eastern Conference, including the Red Wings and Blue Jackets.

DEAR ABBY: I'm a 43-year-old single mom with three young boys. I am also a veteran and getting ready to go back to school. I have been dating a gentleman for two months now, and we get along great. He's three years older than I am and good with my kids and family. I like him a lot, and we seem to have a LOT in common - more than most. I really want him to kiss me, but I don't want to seem pushy. He's a real gentleman. We have gone from hugs to holding hands while sitting on the couch watching television.

SCHOOL DISTRICT Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said Tuesday that he plans to release revisions to the district's controversial school-closure proposal "sometime next week" before the Feb. 21 School Reform Commission meeting. Hite said the changes are in response to his contact with the public. "We have heard about quality programs, travel time and supporting students with special needs," Hite said during a hearing with City Council's Education Committee. "We have listened and are continuing to listen.

For 70 spellbinding minutes Thursday night at the Annenberg Center, the English dance troupe Motionhouse defied gravity - and common sense - in a multimedia spectacle that was joyous, tender, frenetic, disturbing, funny, and absolutely thrilling. Much-traveled Motionhouse is on its first U.S. tour, celebrating its 25th anniversary with Scattered , created by artistic director and cofounder Kevin Finnan. This series of loosely interrelated scenes focuses on the theme of water and its various states: ice, snow, rain, steam.

RE: ABDUCTION of kindergarten child. In watching the case of Na'illa Robinson, I am surprised that nobody in that school asked this lady to show her face to make sure she was the girl's mother. As a retired correctional officer in the prison system, I know that if you want to visit an inmate, you must show your face or you will not be let in to visit. This rule should be made in the school system. Gregory Betancourt Philadelphia I think it's time to restrict Muslim garb to the mosque.

By Harold I. Gullan In that most of my New Year's resolutions, from losing weight to gaining liquidity, have proven as fruitless as yours, it seems more realistic to inflict my gratuitous desires on everyone else, starting with entities of sufficient size to make a difference. Here are three: For the next Congress: Abolish midterm elections. The founders had their reasons, but not all of them still make sense. Yes, it's hard to amend the Constitution, but you could pass a bipartisan (!

AS A FORMER law-enforcement officer, homeland security inspector and intelligence analyst for both federal and municipal jurisdictions (and a law-abiding registered voter), I have written to my elected officials to plead for their support in common-sense solutions to recent rising trends in violent crime, to include tragedies such as the mass-murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. As a citizen with a specific skill set in crime suppression, I believe in the inalienable right to self-defense, and am aware of the statistical disparities between crimes committed by legal, responsible gun owners and those who succumb to criminality or are afflicted with a mental-health disorder.

CAN YOU "GIFT" financial common sense? That's a question I get from a lot of people, although it's not phrased quite the same way. People often ask me to recommend books for their financially trifling parent, adult child, sibling, cousin or friend. Yes, I said trifling . Many people are tired of supporting or enabling grown folks who are not handling personal business the right way. So the holidays are a good time to gift some common sense. It's not too late: A survey released this week by Visa found that 73 percent of consumers still haven't finished shopping for Christmas gifts.

In the fall dance of exchanging the shorts for the sweaters in a back hall closet, I saw them: my mother's shoes. The sight instantly carried me back to the last hour of the last painful day of cleaning out Mom's apartment after her death. There had already been weeks of sorting and stacking and disposing. There had been cartons carefully labeled for local thrift shops with pieces of Mom's life piled high in them. Our daughters had been choosing from among the necklaces and tiny bracelets - Mom's hands were remarkably small - and the pins from the 1940s and '50s that had grown familiar to us all. So many decisions were swimming in my head that I would literally dream of those objects when I fell into exhausted and troubled sleep at night.