Education and Politicians: Politicians Are All Wrong. Surprise!

If it weren't for my Aspergian tendencies, I'd try to become a lobbyist or politician. Or if I knew I could make a good living off of it I'd do it.

I have some relatives that work in public schools, so I get to hear about lovely programs and solutions-of-the-month that are fed into the public schools by administrators and government. Most of the time I'm just left shaking my head, wondering what the politicians are thinking.

I mean...do they actually spend any time in the classroom to see what effect their various decrees are having?

I was thinking about it again when I found a Time article from a researcher who actually studied the effect of "bribing" kids with money in order to increase achievement in schools. The researcher was an economist, which reminded me of a fantastic book I recently finished, SuperFreakonomics. That book continued to build off the first book, Freakonomics, wherein the economist authors provide both entertaining and informative information while reinforcing the idea that people change their behavior based on the proper incentive (well, that's one of the ideas, anyway...he makes several observations and links between various phenomena of people's behavior).

I was thinking about the way the US is currently trying to increase student achievement. The government finds that our population is stupid. Very stupid. As in, on average, we are scientifically, mathematically, and historically ignorant compared to most other industrialised nations. Recent highlight; the NSF hid results of portions of a recent survey of American regarding the big bang and evolution.

Okay, blame schools, they decide. Enter No Child Left Behind, and the ensuing efforts to standardise education. There are lists of what kids must be able to do by certain grade levels/ages, and if schools keep underperforming, they lose funds, and if it continues to happen, schools are shut down or taken over by outside groups. Kids take a series of tests as dictated by various agencies in various state governments at different times of their educational lives.

There are huge numbers of detractors for the way education is attempting to be reformed, but it seems to me that the most fundamental problem is that the onus of "fixing" education is on the wrong entity.

There is no incentive for students to do better. If they perform poorly, the school is punished. Essentially, the teachers are told that if they have students not doing what they're supposed to be doing, then it's the teacher's fault; the teacher didn't "engage" every kid in the classroom to the point where they want to learn.

This places blame for student stupidity squarely on the teachers, as the blame is placed by politicians on the schools which goes on the administrators who then turn around and blame the teachers. And the blame stops there.

The real problem, as I see it, lay in the community. If the kids screw off in school, the school gets punished. Not them. What incentive is there to learn?

The parents of failing kids rarely seem to care. Usually that sub group is just as ignorant as the kids.

The community as a whole doesn't value education. We have a society that wanted to have a George Bush clone for president because he was someone that the "Average Joe" could sit and have a beer with, while "liberal" candidates were overeducated and out of touch with the average American, apparently because they were educated if you listen closely enough to the criticisms. How can you expect students to want to perform well in academia when we pay sports stars millions of dollars while scientists are begging for funding, usually from corporate interests only funding research that they believe with benefit their own interests?

What it comes down to, in my view, is incentive. Students have no incentive to achieve academically. What happens if they fail math or science? They still have their cell phones, ipods, freedoms for the most part...schools can only limit so much. Even things they're not supposed to have the freedom to do teachers will let kids get away with. "It's study hall, it's not worth taking away the cell phone, so if they want to text go ahead..."

Most parents don't care. The helicopter parents are usually the ones in the conferences and emailing about their child's progress and their kids aren't the ones failing or staying home "sick" for thirty days a year.

Since we don't place incentives or punishments on parents and students, and instead focus on schools being punished, of course schools will fail at getting kids motivated to learn. How do you get kids involved when all teachers hear from the students is, "What do these tests matter? It's not like we're graded on them or something."

It's simply another burden for schools to bear. The funny part is that people still think schools are for learning; they're instead a social program for watching kids. Most parents have no idea how much money is spent on so-called IEP's (this may be different depending on what your state has for helping kids) and special-needs. Schools spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on purchasing special equipment for kids that will never be able to move beyond the most basic of skills; 18 year olds with the mental development of a five year old. Schools spend resources on counseling kids, sports, and various activities that have little if anything to do with academics. It's disingenuous to label a school as an educational institution when it actually fills a niche I like to call "community spackle;" public schools are expected to fill in all the gaps that parents can't be bothered to perform in raising their kids.


The whole "No Child Left Behind" is simply highlighting the shortcomings that have been cultivated in our society so blame can be allocated onto the schools and politicians are able, for the next several years, to both look like they care about making society less stupid while simultaneously looking like they're doing something about it. What it actually does is add a greater burden to schools, which in turn puts a greater squeeze on their employees, which then makes more qualified educators flee from the field and encourage more mediocre teachers to fill teaching posts, thus lowering education quality even more.

In short:
There's little incentive for parents to pressure students to achieve.
There's little incentive for kids to achieve.
There's little incentive for good, qualified educators to stay in the field.
There's little power given to schools to actually affect any change in the situation. They're simply given a directive, and when they fail, they're punished. Ever been put in charge of something that you have no authority to direct? Isn't that the definition of being set up to fail?

There are several things I've found to be screwed up with public education but until we acknowledge that many of these problems begin and end with the public, our nation will continue to carry a reputation of being among the most mediocre countries for education, per capita, among the developed nations of the world.

Kids Teach Us About Us

I have a nearly five year old son.

The best part about observing my son as he grows and develops is that he has a lot of behaviors that I think we have learned to stifle as we age, so in a way he's a window into our "true selves." Impulse control issues aside, I am constantly admiring how much it seems he can teach about user friendly design issues and the various thoughts and observations that run through our heads that he'll say out loud while we stifle them at some point from being uttered.

The latest thing I noticed is that, like other people, he lives in a magical world. If it doesn't directly relate to something he wants or something he's directly curious about, he just takes it for granted. He doesn't ask questions about most of the things around him, and somewhere he files it away that that's just the way things are.

I can't for the life of me remember how we got directly on the topic, but I enlightened him to the fact that poop comes from food. Apparently he thought poop just appeared.

Me: "Yes, food you eat turns into poop after many hours. Where did you think poop came from?"
Him: "My butt."

We live in a world where you literally have more knowledge available to you than ever before. The Internet, your library, the bookstores...you can learn everything from how Twinkies are made to how to survive in the woods to how to grow your own food. You can learn about World War II and the sex lives of Romans and ancient Greeks. You have access to knowledge that great men and women in history would have killed to know. It's almost laughable the sheer volume of information that we have access to yet take for granted. And yet today we have people that believe the world operates on a set of arbitrary magical rules. Ignorance is almost celebrated in our culture. It's a sad commentary.

For the most part this quick post is little more than a random observation. I was simply struck by the fact that my son had naively never thought to question why he had to go to the bathroom. It just...happens.

Although now he thinks that when he eats food, he's eating poop.

Oops.

Healthcare System Thoughts: Reform

I recently saw someone make a half-headed comment about Democrats "ramming" legislation through congress for healthcare reform that "most Americans don't want" and Independents and Republicans are against.

I commented, only half jesting, asking if she had seen the recent bit on Colbert (or was it Jon Stewart?) where they did a news bit on Hawaii's healthcare.

For the most part she stayed out of the back and forth, probably because she doesn't really have a full idea of what she was whining about. She only clarified that if people were against it then it shouldn't be rammed through Congress.

Which, of course, is bullshit.

Primarily because Congress isn't looking out for the people; they're looking out for the popular vote, money, and politics, THEN their constituents. And I usually think most of the people bitching about whatever issue is on the front page of a newsmag probably do not know what a constituent is.

The bit on the "fake" news program brought up that Hawaii has had, for nearly 40 years, a law that mandates employers to provide health insurance for employees who work 20 hours or more four days a week. This means that just about every person in Hawaii is insured. There are wonderful statistics for the state showing that overall their health is among the best in the country. Of course here are problems to nitpick; employer fraud is on the rise, and some have decided to skirt the law by hiring more people to work fewer hours. It happens, of course. Apparently if something isn't one hundred percent effective then it's a failure in the minds of morons. At the same time, the numbers speak for themselves; the NY Times has an article that states that the health insurance premiums in the state tie North Dakota's for being the lowest and medicare costs per beneficiary are the lowest in the country. Hawaii has the highest incidence of breast cancer in the country, yet the lowest number of deaths.

This, of course, didn't stop someone in the Facebook thread, apparently from Hawaii, from being offended at the comment that they have a "socialized" healthcare systems (her tricorder must be missing a 'sarcasm' setting). Quick tidbit...when Republican spin doctors are spinning the ideas they oppose in oversimplified terms for an ignorant population, they like using words like "socialized" in this case to mean that the government is in control of the healthcare instead of the people; I was using the term tongue in cheek, but the fact remains that your state government is mandating health insurance coverage by proxy through the employers. When the government mandates and agent through proxy, it's still government meddling.

But in this case it seems to be helping.

A quick Google on the topic of "Hawaii healthcare" pops up several articles, most of the recent ones about a failed children's health insurance coverage system and many bouncy heads pointing to it as a failure. "See! They repealed it in seven months! We told you government healthcare can't work!"

Actually reading the information seems to show that there are kids who aren't covered with insurance. To help with that there was an initiative meant to cover the population of kids in need. What happened was that a number of people with  insurance already dropped their kids and moved them to the new system, so the money allotted couldn't handle the influx.

The actual "unworkable" system has been in place for decades for employed citizens.

On another note, I asked a friend and expat living in Australia what the health insurance system is like. He said that, like most of the modern world, it's socialized, and he'd be afraid to return to the States with the nightmare that is our insurance bureaucracy. The thing to remember, he said, is that your insurance companies are for-profit. They aren't there to help you. They have shareholders to please.

Which is true. It's against the law, last I knew, for a company to act in a way contrary to the interests of the shareholders, or the shareholders can sue. Good luck navigating this information, though...apparently big names like Blue Cross Blue Shield are fractured into a number of for-profit and non-profit sub companies in relationships so convoluted that the only thing more confusing is dealing with them as a customer.

I quickly grew tired of the crap spewing from talking heads and ended my contributions with a summary; I don't care. Any changes made not won't have a significant effect until I'm dead. Why?

Simple. Because part of the reason Hawaii is most likely doing well is because they've had it for decades. If you have state-run or federal-mandated health systems, it's going to have a large budget swell the first few decades because we're a population of gluttonous pigs. We're smokers. We're sedentary. We recognize more McDonaldland characters than we do names of astronauts or federal judges. More people can name more sports teams than ingredients in a soft drink or average calories at their favorite restaurant for their favorite meals (for those that actually provide nutrient information). So if you want to help with health issues, there's going to be a tail effect...the youth will need to grow up with better habits and lifestyles. As they become more prevalent, you'll see health effects slink up the charts, but the initial funding will be going towards those of us that have pissed away our lives in front of the television eating fast food and generally making unhealthy choices.

Offensive for some, but once we, the current generation or two, die off, then you'll see effects of a healthier lifestyled generation.

Of course at the point where we put a strain on the budget there will be a large outcry from the morons bemoaning the reform, and steps will be taken to eradicate it. People want it both ways. We want businesses to sell boatloads of frankenfoods...shakes...burgers...sodium-laden but yummy chain restaurant glop...while people just magically stay fit and healthy.

On the other hand, people living longer and healthier means that we'll have a greater population living longer and the health effects that just come from aging, a whole new ball of wax to debate and whine over.

My take? Like I said, I don't care anymore. I can't make a change. What I say doesn't matter. Any change for the better is going to take time and I'll be dead before I could reap any benefits from it (which I truly think is what insurance companies want). I also don't understand the endless debate we have in this "wonderful country" over healthcare when people literally go bankrupt because they have an illness. There's people WITH insurance that go bankrupt because of an illness. That's simply ridiculous, and the only reason I can think of that this is allowed to go on is because the asses actually being vocal about the debate are healthy or already have excellent insurance coverage, so they couldn't really give a damn about other people without voices in the matter, people who actually suffer the ramifications of these debates and political manoeuvrings, suffering because the talking heads that are supposed to be representing the interests of the constituency are more interested in the money from lobbyists.

Sad, isn't it?

Young Kids: It's Black and White

I remember when I was younger (way back in the 80's) I used to love watching cartoons like Transformers and Voltron. There were plenty of other series on like Smurfs, G.I. Joe, Dinosaucers, and many, many others.

I remember as I grew up it became fairly confusing how each of the series seemed to follow the same tropish formula. I don't mean just the examples found in series like Voltron, either, where you have a basic premise of the bad guys coming in and launching an all-out assault against the "good" planet (alway focusing somehow on the good guy's base of operations), good guys get into a scrape (how will they get out of it?) then the whole thing is resolved in the last five minutes by forming Voltron and slashing the bad guy in half with the Blazing Sword.

No, I mean the trope wherein these cartoon worlds were always divided into two factions; the good, and the evil. While in elementary school I began to wonder why the good guys always won. It was boring. We never knew why the bad guys wanted to take over the universe (who would want the paperwork involved? And what do you do once you've taken over the universe? Go to Disneyworld?)

Why were bad guys bad? Sometimes there's some trite backstory involving how the psychotic Bad Guy(tm) feels the world wronged him or the hero of the series wronged him, but there was never a decent reason given as to what motivated this Bad Guy to dedicated his life (and make a living, somehow) off making the Good Guys suffer, or why the Good Guys were dedicated to thwarting the Bad Guy.

It was always so simple, so clear cut which was good and which was bad (why didn't the bad guys just wear white? They could easily infiltrate the Good Guy base just be switching colors, it seemed). For no apparent reason whatsoever the bad guy simply perpetuated every "bad" stereotype out there for being bad. It really drove me nuts. Even in church I never understood why the Devil, Satan, Prince of Darkness, was such a trope...if God was infallible, and was the paragon of goodness, why would Satan have crossed Him? What possible reason would have made him think he could "beat" God? And even if it was just because he was jealous, why dedicate the rest of existence to this endless game of screwing with humanity to anger God? I mean, doesn't it get boring after a thousand years, and why wouldn't God just get tired of it and say, as most parents do when they grow weary of a child's petulance, "That's enough, you've had your fun. Now stop it or I'm going to invert the laws of physics holding your molecular structure intact."

The world didn't seem to play by these simple rules of Here's Good, There's Evil, and Good Always Wins, although we were always told that's how things worked. Certain political parties pandered to the citizenry as holding American values, that we're the Good Guys, that we do what must be done for the good of the world. We are the good guys, over there are the bad guys.

As I grew older I read stories of American warriors sent to other countries to destabilize their governments; we assassinated, we tortured, we killed. We reeled in disbelief at pictures held up by our government of concentration camps created by other countries as examples of their evil intentions and behaviors while simultaneously forgetting that America apparently had concentration camps for Asian-Americans during World War II.

The blinders continue to this day, but I'm not entirely sure anymore it's media that causes this viewpoint. Rather, media simply reinforces this notion that the world is a simple matter of black-and-white, good-and-evil. They're playing to an audience in order to sell more stuff to kids.

I'm the father of a four year old. Thanks to our corporate overlords my son was introduced to Lego Wii games in the form of Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Star Wars. I blew his mind when I told him these were based on movies.

So he watched Star Wars. Yes, even three. I'm a bad parent that way. But what I found interesting was his total lack of comprehension for what he's watching. Yes, he's four, but there are some things he latched onto ("Star Wars people are cool!" he'd say, referring to the Jedi with the lightsabers) and other things that flew over his head (understandably so). But in particular, he needed to divide the movie into "good guys" and "bad guys."

Star Wars is not necessarily a shining example of perfect storytelling. But it is rather complicated. It weaves a story together not just of a man's journey from his own failures and shortcomings to redemption, but of a man who plotted and achieved great power at the expense of a democratic republic, all the while the people of the republic supported his ascension to power. It told a story of corruption and of the apathy on the part of the citizenry that were in a position to do something about these things and didn't.

My son talked of the "bad guy" Trade Federation, the army of droids, in the movie. They weren't bad, I tell him. They were oppressed by taxation that they felt was unfair. Not surprisingly this didn't matter to my son.

He doesn't understand how the Republic ended up putting powers into the hands of Palpatine as supreme chancellor, and how he manipulated the events to eventually make himself emperor, or turn a democratic republic so mired in bureaucracy into a smooth if oppressive empire.

He doesn't understand how the "good guys" in the first three movies become "bad guys", or that Vader became Vader because he was selfish but driven to gain power over life and death itself in order to protect his true love (whom he ended up killing anyway).

As I live to observe kids in different ages I see fewer and fewer differences. We are, by most accounts in ways it matters, sheeple. We follow crowds. We are manipulated by television ads and print media, all the while told the television shows and ads and print media are just giving us what we want. Petulance becomes tempered and expressed in other more subtle forms as we get older, but in observing children I see human behavior in its most raw form. I see what we want, and what we want to do, in the most basic form. Children have no qualms about telling someone they're fat. Or that you stink. Or any of a number of things that we learn are social faux-pas to admit to. They want something, they say so, unlike my teenager that tries to manipulate us into getting something for her through other means.

And one of the things children latch on to is the idea that the world is simple. It's black and white. There's good, there's evil. Grey wavy lines in between are uncomfortable and take thought and critical thinking to work through.

That's why I think Star Wars is actually kind of a nice critical thinking test for my son. He doesn't yet understand what is going on in it, but someday he hopefully will. In it's own way Star Wars is a wonderful analytical exercise for understanding and critical thinking despite the obvious tropes and horrible elements put into the story for seemingly no reason (Jar-Jar? Oh geez...)

There are elements that should give pause. Why were the Jedi revered while so arrogant in their own power? Why was so little emphasis placed on the fear they placed on ordinary people, or is it unethical that children strong in the force were simply taken away for training, whether they wanted to or not? Was the Empire truly bad, when they apparently had done some good for the citizens in the Empire? And the rebels were killing large numbers of people who probably were not inherently "evil"...they blew up a Death Star that probably had many innocent people working and living on it. They killed beings whose only sin was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And at the same time, the Empire had held the galaxy in order, and by destroying the central government they achieved what? Plunging the galaxy into a system of regional chaos, overseen by regional governors with their own agendas, while trying to re-establish a central Republican (not American political party Republican) government like the one that had become bloated an ineffectual in the first place? The Empire had drawbacks; being xenophobic, killing dissidents, and a small roster of other offenses to what we consider basic freedoms, but the Empire also brought stability and actual governance where the Republic had failed miserably.

On the surface the movies are simple and appeal to people who, like my son, want superficial simple good-is-good and evil-is-evil and rah rah for the good guy action. But there are skeptics and critical thinkers that want more.

I know this because there is now a growing surge in revisiting the 80's. It seems every franchise is having an attempt at a reboot, and in the process storylines are being fleshed out and revamped, some for better and some for worse.

Not long ago I read a story about the origin of Megatron, the leader of the "evil" Decepticons in Transformers (the real transformers, not the Michael Bay productions). I truly enjoyed it. Why was Megatron bad? He wasn't, really. He was a miner whose job was being taken away through the automation of the plant at which he worked, so Megatron and all the other "low ranking" beings were being forced from a job so a corrupt Autobot government would profit. The series showed how Megatron more or less fell into the position of Decepticon leader after leading a rebellion against a corrupt government. The Autobots were not all clean and clear of fault after all, and the Decepticons, despite having a simplistic set of motives in the childhood cartoons (namely, "we're conquering the galaxy because...well, because.") had actually valid reasons for the spark of insurrection.

Other heroes eventually explored the more complicated intricacies of their backgrounds. Batman is a truly screwed up individual. Iron Man faced his ethical demons in the Civil War story arc, one of the best series I've read from Marvel. Even Voltron has had some light shown in darker recesses that question how wonderful and pure he was as a hero when you look at the original, non-Americanized (and non-Disneyfied) Japanese origin story of Voltron.

This gives me some hope that sometime down the road my son will grow to be a critical thinker. There's hope I can interest him in thinking under the initial layers of simplistic thinking, that the Empire, despite Lucas' efforts to show otherwise, isn't just an evil scourge on the universe. There are complicated undercurrents to the story that can be fascinating to explore and in the process perhaps learn more about the world in which we live.

Self-Assigned Labels

I've been having a bit of a career funk. I find myself getting increasingly agitated with my job, and as a result I spend more time wondering if there's something that would be a better fit for me at this stage of my life, something I'd enjoy doing more and at the same time generate enough money for us to pay our bills and mortgage.

I decided first to find something I can do in my "free time", defined as an hour here or there over the day that I could use to take initial steps needed to invest in a new hobby or career. I narrowed those options down to trying to write a book or spending time learning a programming language to create a potentially sellable service and opted to try writing a book. It's an ongoing process and I'm writing once in awhile about it on the New Author Chronicles blog.

My next step was to try finding some "career guides" to see what, if anything, would appeal to me as a potential career change. I poked around the shelves of Barnes and Noble, I dug through a Waldenbooks that was liquidating stock (big surprise...didn't find anything), and I skimmed reviews and advice on Amazon and B&N's web storefronts (is there anyone that can compete or come close to competing with Amazon for information despite their awkward interface?)

I decided to get a copy of Finding your Own North Star by Martha Beck. The subtitle proclaims, "Claiming the life you were meant to live."

I haven't finished the book yet. All of what I had just written was just some background on how I arrived at my topic for today.

On page 68 the author is discussing "group everybodies", basically how we tend to have this notion of a vague "everybody" that judges us or dictates standards to which we conform when in fact these "everybodies" are really a generalization based on a very small number of people that we grew up with who were critical or somewhat dangerous to our mental health while we ignored the people who supported us, since the critical people would be the baseline of "Safe."

That's the gist of the part I'm currently in. In the discussion of "everybody" generalizations the author mentions that, "This means that most groups end up with a few very vocal members and a large silent majority. We tend to assume that such silense means agreement, that the groups is totally united and monolithic in its beliefs. We're usually wrong. I made this mistake recently, during a radio interview. I tossed of a remark about Catholicism being more restrictive than mystical Eastern religions, only to have the interviewer gntly inform me that he is a mystical Catholic with a wildly unorthodox worldview, and that I might want to think twice before I lump all Catholics together."

The author goes on to say, "I've met Chinese Communists who talked and acted more capitalistic than Donald Trump, U.S. Marines who were absolutely committed to nonviolence, and devout Mormons who were also lobbyists for gay rights. Of course, they weren't the rule, but they are exceptions I would never have dreamed possible if I'd taken the groups opnions at face value."

I'm sorry but this left me scratching my head a bit. I am the first to admit that I'm ignorant about most topics involved...I'm not Catholic, I don't study Chinese culture nor have I been Mormon (I knew some Mormons, but never was a member of the LDS). But these labels cited are largely self-selected and do tend to have fairly clear-cut definitions attached (and also some common assumptions that go with them).

What right do you have to get offended at being associated with what are commonly accepted archetype for a label you associate yourself with?

The religion one in particular bugged me because I've seen so many people who say they're one thing "Except..." They cherry pick, taking what they like of one religion and branding themselves that religion but then they would get huffy if you assumed one thing that they didn't find convenient, such as the idea that the Pope is to be followed without question for Catholics ("I'm a Catholic, but I don't think the Pope is right about..." Well, how are you a Catholic?)

There are some things you can't say you ARE XYZ then go on to clarify that you're not in certain respects. You can't be a little bit pregnant. I'm told my black and white view of the world comes from my own neuro-atypical behaviors, but really, how can you cherry pick the best features of what you like then turn around and get offended at being grouped in with them, especially if it goes to a fundamental founding of their use?

Nonviolent marines? Why would you join a group that has a pretty clear-cut mission of defending a country, usually using a large caliber weapon to cut the opponent into hamburger, and define yourself as a pacifist?

Communists that are capitalists?

Mormons that are gay rights lobbyists? (I don't know if the Latter Day Saints have an official stance on gays, but if they do, I would assume that you can't be against the official doctrine and still call yourself a Mormon).

Again, I am ignorant of the specifics here. It's very possible that, like with the Mormon disclaimer, there are certain things I'm missing and so I'll take the slap on the wrist for it. But here's my stance.

If you have a group or label you identify with, you can't call yourself that label with "except" for things you don't like if it's part of that label's identity.

I can see where mistakes would happen. I'm an American. Somehow this tends to mean that people may think I can't find France on a map and that I'm a rabid pro-Christian gun nut that loves shooting people. Really I'm an American because I was born in America and am an American citizen. The rest is stereotype and propaganda twisted by perceptions by foreigners and our own internal political parties...well, the Republican party...that cites the patriotic image to shame people who don't conform to what they want.

Maybe other people could point out how these dichotomies are justified. I was simply given pause by the statements in the book. Maybe it was simply the idea of a "mystical Catholic" digging up all the memories of people who cherry pick from the Bible while having no idea what they truly believe (or having a real understanding of the religion they wave the banner of). Sometimes the tenets are kind of hidden so unless you truly devote yourself to a cause or organization you may be ignorant of certain policies, such as the Boy Scouts being anti-atheist (I was led to believe they were mostly about pinewood derbies and camping and helping the community, not condemning others for not believing in the Christian God) and the Salvation Army is anti-gay as a policy. Or these are tenets that aren't hidden but rather tacitly ignored by those practicing in such organizations when it is convenient.

Is that what it's really about? Attaching labels out of convenience instead of practicality?

Hijackers and Body Scanners

Whenever some goober gets the itch to blow up an airplane there is a small flare of public interest in keeping the public safe without much thought to the consequences.

After the attempted blowing up of a plane by a moron over Christmas via an explosive banana hammock, the news stations were all abuzz over ways to thwart terrorists in our planes. Nevermind that most of our security enhancements added to airport security amounted to little more than feel-good measures that added a ton of hassle for innocent people and very little actual effectiveness (ask Bruce Schneier) in preventing attacks.

The latest push I've seen in the news is for the deployment of full-body scanners. A quick Google turns up a number of articles on them, but this was the first time I heard our "local news" covering the idea in one of their typical short-attention-span-friendly broadcasts.

They seem like a wonderful solution. Basically using backscatter X-ray technology you can see through someone's clothes, highlighting hidden objects. They also let the TSA agents see breast and penis implants, your genitalia, and essentially remove anything that before resembled modesty or personal privacy.

More effective than pat-downs? Yes, probably they are.

Preferred over pat-downs? That's probably a personal question. Would you rather have a "freedom grope" or a minimum wage barely trained McGoober staring at your nubbins?

The TSA swears that the images aren't kept; they're erased in a short amount of time. Oddly enough, nipple slips and upskirt glances aren't visible after a short amount of time as well, but there's nonetheless a thrill from those who get to see these passing slips of modesty and for most of those who were on the slip-per side of the equation the embarrassment doesn't get conveniently erased so quickly.

Does the TSA promise that leering glances and/or smirks are going to be suppressed?  Does the TSA mind a nice fat lawsuit when some monkey behind the controls snaps a quick picture with a camera phone and circulates the picture online of the MILF that just went through the line? Or if another passenger gets the image on their camera? And what protection is there for the passenger's privacy? My doctor has seen my gross nudity (lose a lot of weight, you'll know what I mean). My wife's had doctors see her give birth, and she has doctors that explore her nether regions on a scheduled basis with a duck-billed device that I won't pretend to understand. But the doctors and nurses we rely on for care are trusted not to abuse their positions. I don't get that feeling from TSA agents that are hardly considered elite law enforcement personnel. I often worry they're one step above mall security guards in terms of training and professionalism or are recruited from Craigs List.

My parting thought to the news story...my daughter is underage and nearly legal. My son is DEFINITELY underage. What's to keep some pervert from leering at her nether regions as one of my kids go through security? It's that tantamount to child porn? Sounds to me like they're saying child pornography is okay for the government to produce but for everyone else it's wrong. I'd like to know how they're keeping perverts from going through their McTraining program just to get their jollies staring at young T&A in the airport, seeing as they have such fulfilling and upwardly mobile professional options working in those positions.

Hearing these arguments the government entities swore that they would be putting some software graphic-scrambling magic in so that you don't have your junk or nethers necessarily clear in the images. So...doesn't that defeat the purpose of the scan? Shove some of your magic exploding powder up the canal or tape it to your love stick and it'll just be part of a blurred algorithm on the screen (assuming this is actually done, or is actually effective).

I'm not entirely comfortable with this crap anymore. Air travel is becoming a bigger and bigger hassle, and now I have some half-trained halfwits staring at my wiener just to prove that I am allowed to get on a plane. I'm not innocent until proven guilty. I'm a cog at the mercy of a group of ineffectual thugs who get their jollies showing they have power over people who really are trying to get from point A to point B. The vast majority of people are innocent, but thanks to a few goobers that committed a heinous act, the innocent must suffer at the hands of knee-jerk reactions on behalf of the government trying to pretend they're actually making a difference with feel-good measures. The real question is how much more of this are we, the traveling public, going to accept before we give up on the idea that we are a country that values freedoms and privacy?

Reason for the Season

My wife and I, in a measure to help appease one (both?) of the traditions of the parents, make a trip to my parent's church one week near Christmas. Usually it's the week before the Christmas Eve service, but this year we went the year after.

I am not religious. This may shock you. As such, I don't normally dress up very fancy (clean clothes are fine, thank you...if a church has standards about who they let in, then they're not very Christian, are they?) and I usually keep to myself so as to not be driven nuts by the habits of other people around me and by listening to what I have concluded tend to be propaganda more than an educational sermon.

Yes, other people's habits. Chomping gum like a valley girl drives me nuts too. It's a wiring thing in my head.

The thing that really compelled me to write this was that the minister went over "what is the real reason for the season." Churches really lucked out on having "reason" and "season" rhyme. It helps make ignorance sound clever.

I refrained from saying anything, but Christ is not the "reason for the season". It's the reason for Christmas, but Christmas itself has other origins.

I have run into this time and time again, and every time the people spouting this stuff listen only to what they want to hear. Christmas is not the day Christ was born. Christmas, miraculously, happened to be placed in a pagan holiday to usurp the non-Christians.

Excerpted from Wikipedia: 
Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Main article: Sol Invictus

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti means "the birthday of the unconquered Sun." The use of the title Sol Invictus allowed several solar deities to be worshipped collectively, including Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian; and Mithras, a soldiers' god of Persian origin.^[53] Emperor Elagabalus (218–222^[ambiguous]) introduced the festival, and it reached the height of its popularity under Aurelian, who promoted it as an empire-wide holiday.^[54] This day had previously been dedicated to Bacchus, in the Brumalia festival. Bruma being Latin for "shortest day."^[55]
The festival was placed on the date of the solstice because this was on this day that the Sun reversed its southward retreat and proved itself to be "unconquered." Several early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus.^[6] "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born...Christ should be born", Cyprian wrote.^[6] John Chrysostom also commented on the connection: "They call it the 'Birthday of the Unconquered'. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . .?"^[6] 
Winter festivals

Main article: List of winter festivals

A winter festival was the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included the fact that less agricultural work needs to be done during the winter, as well as an expectation of better weather as spring approached.^[56] Modern Christmas customs include: gift-giving and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity from the Roman New Year; and Yule logs and various foods from Germanic feasts.^[57] Pagan Scandinavia celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in the late December to early January period. As Northern Europe was the last part to Christianize, its pagan traditions had a major influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In English, the word Yule is synonymous with Christmas,^[58] a usage first recorded in 900.

In other words, Christmas was placed in a time when people had a winter celebration of Winter Solstice.

The "reason for the season" was to usurp popular pagan holidays into a Christian holiday.

And it'll happen again, now, too. Regardless of what people will spout about to (and in) the pews and on family specials on television, the custom of giving gifts is as strong as ever. Our US economy is based on you spending money, whether you need to or not. We get things that are sometimes useful, whimsical, wasteful, and/or sentimental for people otherwise may not even think to spend more than ten dollars on for their birthday. You get a gift from Aunt Janice and feel compelled to return the favor. Coworkers spend time and money baking and purchasing trinkets for other coworkers that otherwise they spend their time griping and bitching about (at least in our case it's true). Our retailers depend on the "season" to turn about a nice profit as kids get their shot at receiving usually undeserved uber-expensive toys that they'll play with for month or two before breaking it or losing the pieces.

Once you have stores involved, you get advertisers involved. You get advertisers involved, you get media involved. You get media involved, you get generations of kids slowly growing into teens and adults that will nod their heads at the whole religious side of the holiday and begrudgingly go to services and whatever else it takes...as long as they get the presents under the tree the next morning.

Which is highly ironic. I hear the same people giving holiday plays in churches about the shopping and greedy attitudes being the problem, needing to celebrate Jesus', the warm feeling of helping others...but then these people go home and indulge in an orgy of consumerism. Somewhere the doublethink eludes them.

Now, I'm not against this. I don't have a lot of loose money to throw around, and I'd love to have the spare coin to do these wonderfully generous things like tossing money off the balcony at the mall to watch people claw each other fist into foreheads to grab the money and I will have the fuzzy feeling of knowing I brightened someone's day. I certainly won't turn down free gift cards to bookstores. I enjoy the consumer habits. What I wish is that people knew and acknowledged that today's "season" is NOT a Christian holiday.

It's a celebration of consumerism for stores.

It's a celebration of greed and selfishness for kids, often. We see acts of kindness and selflessness, but when it comes right down to it, I still see the majority of kids looking out for numero uno.

It's a holiday meant to ingrain Christianity into the culture by removing the pagan holiday and inserting a Christian holiday.

It's a conglomeration of secular and non-secular myths and traditions (do you really think Frosty is religious? Rudolph? Yule logs? Even Santa has a mixed origin; the current image of the "jolly elf" is very much an American invention, and apparently America as America is very post-Christian in origin. There are strands of the origin story that go back further, but please, I'm talking about what your average celebrant of Christmas knows and thinks they know about the holiday they're celebrating. If you're going to get worked up about "atheists stilling Christ from Christmas, at least know what you're arguing about.)

Another thing that bothers me is the continued refrain of the Christian being under attack during the holidays. The minister went on to say that it's considered wrong for you to say Merry Christmas and instead have to say Happy Holidays. Personally I don't care. Christmas gets me gift cards. I'm happy as a clam. But there are some people who think it's rather silly to tell someone who is Jewish that they should have a merry Christmas. And now we have Kwanzaa, another made up holiday that will in another few years probably get a decent number of Hallmark cards on the shelf for it.

As consumerism and other holidays and hopefully recognition that our melting pot of a country has people that don't care one way or the other about Christmas (or celebrate it as a means to an end consisting of toys, money, and an excuse to gossip about family at buffet dinners), advertisers are growing wise to the idea of just saying Happy Holidays so they don't tick off their customers. Apparently if you make customers happy, they buy more crap. In the end a lot of people just aren't pissed off at the change from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays, as long as they're getting a bargain in the electronics department.

You're not under attack. You're simply getting a number of apathetic people who don't care, and a small but growing number of people who prefer not hearing about Christmas every ten minutes while not in their home. Probably it's a side effect of being exposed to Christmas lights and Christmas ornaments and Christmas movies and Christmas specials and Christmas displays starting a week before Thanksgiving! We're tired of it before it gets here! And we have more important things to worry about than whether some dillhole tells us Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas while assaulting us with ringing bells, like what in the !@#$ we're going to find to give Grandma Bessie and whether the cards were mailed on time and whether we remembered everyone on the list and oh crap Aunt Mimi just got us a gift (why? Don't know! Haven't heard from her in ages but now we need to find a cocoa set for her at the ConsumoMart...)

Next time you want to push the "reason for the season", just don't ask me about it. The reason is that it was meant to push a religion on to the masses by stealing their food orgy to the Solstice gods.

I'll leave you with this note, also from the same Wikipedia article:
There is no evidence scripturally or secularly that early Christians in the first century commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ. In fact, in keeping with early Jewish law and tradition, it is likely that birthdays were not commemorated at all. According to The World Book Encyclopedia: "early Christians considered the celebration of anyone's birth to be a pagan custom." (Vol. 3, page 416) Rather than commemorating his birth, the only command Jesus gave concerning any sort of commemoration of his life actually had only to do with his death (Luke 22:19). It was not until several hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ that the first instances of the celebration of Christmas begin to appear in the historical record. According to the new Encyclopedia Britannica, some who later claimed to be Christian likely "wished the date to coincide with the pagan Roman festival marking the 'birthday of the unconquered sun'." The festival was celebrated with similar customs (gift giving, feasting) that are done to celebrate Christmas today.

Are there any holiday irks that get to you? Feel free to share...

Teen Marriage

I had written about my daughter's friend, Sara. She is the pregnant teen that is going to get married ("sometime")...I wrote more about it here. Read that to get a better idea of the person I'm referring to.

My household of course has people on Facebook. If you're unfamiliar with Facebook then you must not have been using the Internet for more than a month...I'm not saying you need an account on Facebook or actively use it, since I've found it to be useful only in that I've found people I lost track of years ago thanks to Facebook, only to lose them again in a deluge of worthless invites to play some farming game or joining a mafia group and spammed with happy messages that filled time I'll never get back. But I digress.

The point is that Sara has a Facebook account and apparently has her status updates posted online that members of this household see. She recently postponed (cancelled?) her wedding plans. Her mother, also apparently online with Facebook, said that the wedding was being postponed indefinitely (I got this all second-hand, so I'm paraphrasing). They got into some argument and called it off.

That was a few days ago. I asked yesterday whatever became of their canceled wedding plans, wondering what could possibly have caused Mr. and Mrs. All-You-Need-Is-Love to call off their plans.

"Oh, they're getting married now. They think near Valentine's day."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. They made up and they're going to get married again."

Quick time for slow thinkers...if your idea of resolving an argument with your fiance' is to threaten to call off your wedding for a reason short of finding him or her hammering another person in a clear act of infidelity or discovering that he or she will be out of the country or in jail for a stretch of time, and perhaps a few other extenuating circumstances that lead you to a revelation that this person is not the person you thought they were at a deep and fundamental level, you're probably about as emotionally mature as a ten year old and should not be getting married in the first place.

Threatening to call off the marriage because of a spat is pretty much the equivalent to the playground "I won't be your friend anymore!" ploy.

I shudder to think how common this type of idiocy is in our society. It makes me more depressed than I already am having to face the holiday stress.

Teen Pregnancy and Idiots: A Plea for Understanding

I need some help.

I probably don't have enough readers who follow this to give some advice, but hey, doesn't hurt to ask. If you have friends or followers that might be able to offer (constructive) thoughts, please do direct them here to leave a comment.

I need some guidance on a social issue that probably doesn't have a direct "right" answer but I have definite opinions about and I need to find a way to reconcile these ideas. Since you probably read the title, you should have no problem figuring that out.

My daughter has a friend who is a complete moron. I'll call her Sara. And when I say she's a moron, I mean she really is an idiot...ignorant, lacking common sense, and worst of all proud of her ignorance.

She is a senior in high school. I'm not sure she didn't fail a year and have to repeat; she's 18 now. Her boyfriend is in his early 20's. Sara is a sweet girl, kind, and comes off as being a total bubblehead if you met her. She's one of the kinds of people that hangs around and leaves you scratching your head wondering where her head is half the time, but otherwise seems innocent and harmless enough.

Her boyfriend was supposedly going into the military. Her mother works a job that doesn't bring in a lot of cash, and I guess her father is more or less not in the picture (I never hear anything about her father, I think they may be divorced).

The problem is that before her senior year started, she decided to get pregnant. So she did.

Her mother is overjoyed. Sara gave her a granddaughter! Yay! She also was letting her daughter "live" with the boyfriend all summer. She reported that the daughter lived with her so she'd be in the "correct" school district while she was...is?...living with her boyfriend in a neighboring school district.

Did I mention that she's a senior in high school still?

I have a few problems with this. First, it encouraged my daughter to be an idiot. They're friends, and I can't very well just ban her from hanging out with people because they're idiots or she'd have no friends. My daughter saw no problem with her being pregnant because "they're in love". I suppose this partially fits with the theory I have that part of the Twilight appeal to tweens and teens is that it gives some idealized teenager ideal of romantic love, the idea that a true relationship means finding someone that you physically and emotionally cannot live without to the point where you pine away and die because they decide that they, like, want to, like, hang out with someone else, like, ya'know? Be typical teenagers with so much melodrama in your life that every minor blip in your life is a, like, major life-altering catalyst for altering your entire, like, world?

Where was I? Oh, yes, idiot. They're in love. That makes it okay to intentionally get pregnant at 17/18. That is so not the message I want my teenage daughter to get, which I thought she'd know better since she had to live with the consequences of being the daughter of someone who was a teenage mom. It made life hard for them. It seems she forgot about the first 10 years of her life.

Okay. That brought me to the second reason I really dislike this. Their lives.

Sara has no job. No job skills. No prospects. Not even married yet.

I'm not a big believer in marriage for the sake of children or for any religious reasons (imagine that). I'm look at it practically. Supposedly the father is in the military...my daughter thought he was, but for some reason he came home on leave over the summer and simply never went back, and my daughter is too focused on herself to ever wonder why. She thought that he might kind of sorta work at a factory now. In his twenties with a factory job. Okay. It's something.

The teenage mother? Sara apparently got pregnant, got all the back slaps and smiles from her mother, then decided she was afraid of the stigma of being on of "those" statistics at school and decided to take home schooling or online schooling through her school district so she didn't have to face her classmates with the baby bump.

They're not married yet. "They're planning on getting married," my daughter says. "They love each other." Sorry...statistically speaking, this is sooo common a refrain, yet it means jack until it's really done. And until then you lost the primary practical reasons to get married...namely legal benefits. Something happens to mommy or daddy, there's no money or support available to the kid and remaining parent. I know it's common to believe you won't be "one of those people", that "our situation is different." Of course there's a chance things will work out. In families with more wealth, financial issues never figure into the equation.

But this isn't a family of means. Grandma-Mommy makes minimal income. I guess Grandpa-Daddy is barely in the picture. Daddy works at a factory. Mommy is a student with no marketable skills and hasn't even held a summer job. Which brings me to my next problem...

My taxes will be supporting them. It's one thing when someone is raped. Or hits bad times. Has a rough patch in life, etc. etc...I'm all for the government helping. When someone does something that at the time is reasonable, then the situation changes, that's forgivable. But for the life of me I cannot find any situation where you're making minimal amount of money, have no real skills, and it's justifiable to have a child at an age that stigmatizes you and the child. She intentionally did this. She set out to have a baby, and now that child will be most likely raised at or very close to the poverty line, thus statistically speaking creating the same problem when this kid hits reproductive years all over again. What happens when you have someone in that situation? Typically they're on financial support.

I work a job that is literally stressing my health at times. My wife works hard at her job. We forced our daughter to get a job and she's done a halfway decent job of sticking with that McJob. And it pisses me off to have a third of my income docked to go towards people who are in financial straits and decide it's wise to turn around and have another child in that situation on purpose. Not an accident. Have a child that will in turn be put into a disadvantaged situation with the expectation that they're entitled to a wonderful life at the expense of taxpayers because Mommy and Daddy think it's cool to have a kid.

I've been struggling with my feelings on this because before, I didn't mind her being around. She was sweet. A nice kid. Just...stupid as a rock at times. Ignorant of just about anything going on around her. She was bubbleheaded but harmless for the most part...maybe a slight danger to herself, since she had once stuck a lollipop in her eye thinking she was holding her contact lens (which was actually on the finger on the other hand). Yes, that actually happened, and isn't unexpected from her.

Now I don't want her in our house. Ever.

I can't help but see her as a bad example, and I'm overwhelmed with disappointment at the road she's setting down. I know there are exceptions. My wife was someone who led a life where quite frankly she should be probably dead. From her stories she was far more promiscuous than average in her teenage years. She did things she now regrets. What first drew me to her was that she was determined to make up for those things after she got pregnant and finally realized that she was bringing an innocent life into the world that relied on her to be responsible enough to take are of her. She isn't the nurturing type...she'll admit that...but when she got pregnant her senior year in high school, she stuck with school to graduate. Then she moved out of her parents home, got married to the father (another mistake, she concedes, as he was too lazy to hold a job and she was working whenever she could to make the bills), and then went to college over the next 10 years to get a degree with career potential. Ten years of working nights and part time. She beat the odds, and while she'll always be the statistic of being a teen mom, she's also a statistic in that she beat the overwhelming majority that ends up without an education and living in the poverty level as a single parent. She worked to have her kid have a better life, and that struck me as being someone to really admire.

Sara shows no sign of this. There is absolutely no way, in her shoes, I could see what she's done as being a good idea from anyone with a lick of common sense. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't her being a victim. It was her being selfish and self centered and now I have to pay for it. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing through this obstacle.

I was thinking of this because apparently she asked my daughter to go to Twilight tomorrow with her and her boyfriend and some other friend. Ironic. Twilight is supposed to be all about the romance-without-screwing and chastity, but Sara is going to see it. My wife and I just said that as long as she had money to pay her bills (yes, my daughter incurs bills for her driving and cell phone) as well as paying for her trip to the movie then fine. I don't like her hanging out with Sara as I see her as a bad example and influence now, but like I said...don't wan to block her from being friends with people who are idiots or she'd really have no one to hang around with.

I just need...strike that. I want to find a way to justify liking Sara again as that good kid that didn't cross the line from harmless to a tax burden. As it stands I see her as a financial burden, bad example to society and quite frankly I feel a need to punish her for her idiocy. I feel a need to tell her that she's not welcome in our home, around us or our kids. I want her to understand the immense stupidity in her decisions and understand that her actions are bringing an innocent into the world that doesn't have a choice in dealing with her idiot life decisions, and there will be a point where statistically she will repeat those mistakes for others to have to deal with.

The most difficult keyword there is feel. I could find logical fallacies and justifications to appease the rational side of either end of the arguments. But something about this...maybe it was her being judged a harmless but ditzy person previously...makes me feel anger at her disappointing my wife and I. It's not my place to punish her. I've not even spoken to her since she was dancing around with her joyful news, and I don't think my wife has spoken to her either.

Maybe that's it. I'm utterly disappointed and angry that we misjudged her so much. I have an irrational need to make her understand her foolishness and I want her to get her ass on track to becoming a productive member of society, but she's not my kid. And I'm realistic. She has enjoyed her ignorance and stupidity, and she has no aspirations to do anything in life to be productive. I guess that lifestyle works when the Daddy pulls in cash by the fistful, but when Daddy is a military dropout landing a minimum wage job, I'm thinking that is an indication that Daddy couldn't hack the responsibility and discipline of the military's basic training, Mommy already shows she lacks this, and Sara's own family lacks the means to support the children as well.

I've simply seen this pattern play out too often. My wife's sister has kids out of wedlock and lives with her parents, partially supported by them. Technically I guess it is in wedlock since she never divorced her husband, but the children weren't his. Oh boy. That life would take three posts to explain in itself.

The area in which we live is rife with poverty-level income, with a huge population of underprivileged kids according to the government. Now Sara has added another one. Each of these kids is an opportunity to change and live better and do better in life. Sara has effectively flushed her chance down the toilet.

I hope desperately that she will turn this around and beat the odds. I don't see her as being someone for whom it will happen. My wife happened to be too stubborn to not beat those odds once she actually came to her senses and decided that maybe her lifestyle choices were really stupid. Sara is too stupid to come to her senses.

Can someone give ideas on how to "come to grips" with this? How to forgive when I can't get past the idea of punishing her for her utter stupidity? I can't do that, of course, so right now I simply don't want her around at all. My wife can't offer insight on how to do this because she, too, is apparently too angry and disappointed in Sara to endorse her coming to the home as well. I guess that despite my Aspergian need for rational discourse and her irrational emotion-based decision process we both agree that we don't want Sara around.

Consequences of Using Facebook

It's funny how teenagers, and adults, have so many "duh" moments with technology. Working in technology, I tend to be aware of the issues that crop up with lack of privacy and forethought when using said technology as a medium to advertise yourself (on purpose or inadvertently).

That's not to say that I'm not going to be guilty of skirting the line once in awhile. I've posted my religious views on this blog and know that no matter what, most communities in the US will frown upon you being an atheist and it could potentially affect your job. I've posted stories that draw parallels to my work life in my tech blog and if I didn't change certain details I could risk pissing off the wrong person over something silly. These are reasons that I don't use my full name and precisely why I chance details to mask such things and in using services like Twitter and Facebook I have to ask myself whether or not my mother seeing what I'm posting would get me in trouble.

Apparently most teens fail to think about the Mommy Test when using social services. In the news today (CBC News, actually) is a woman that got into trouble with something that I would have thought would have passed the Mommy Test.

Nathalie Blanchard was diagnosed with depression and was on leave from her employer. While on leave she had apparently gone on a vacation and had a birthday party and even a bit of fun watching Chippendales dance around. Then her insurance company stopped paying benefits.

Calling them up the agent described photos of her fun that she posted on Facebook.

Apparently the insurance company decided she was no longer depressed because she was pictured having fun. She's confused because her facebook profile is locked to allow only approved people to see the pictures. In addition (this isn't in the story but rather my own take on it, hoping that Canadian common sense is at least on par with American) diagnosis for a disorder like this is usually left up to a psychiatrist or therapist to determine, not some dillhole spying on your online social web site activities, isn't it?

While on one hand this is an example of consequences to sharing your life online and the need to exercise caution in advertising your activities, I also see this as a rather creepy invasion of privacy by a corporation into your private life. I'm hoping that one of her "friends" ratted her out because if not then the alternative is rather chilling.

If she's careful with her choice of allowed friends and who is allowed to view her social media activities then I wouldn't think the things she posted were an issue. If I were diagnosed with depression (whoops...I was...) and the therapist tells me that I need to take a break, and my insurance company/employer are covering a leave of absence, why in the name of Purgatory would I need to sit around at home for a month to recover when I should be doing something to reinvigorate my life and find a reason to get out of bed in the morning? It's not like the woman was out of work for having a wounded back and then photographed carrying heavy boxes. She was on vacation and trying to have a good time. Oddly enough I would think that this is showing recovery in progress, not a tip off that the insurance company should just cancel her coverage.

I would like to think they would tell her they need updates from a mandatory visit to a therapist who in turn would share his or her evaluation of her status and whether she's fit to work again, not turn around and make an armchair analysis of her status from pictures online.

I have no idea why people would hate insurance companies...

Killing Albinos in Africa for Profit

On one hand, reading this story was shocking. On the other I suppose I shouldn't have been all too surprised given the fact that African nations tend to be rife with superstition, have no currency in science and lack basic education.

The story was about a woman whose daughter, an albino, was murdered in the middle of the night for her legs. Some men broke into the bedroom and held a large machete to her husband's throat telling them to keep quiet and not look at him while in the next room another man slit their 14 year old daughter's throat and hack off her legs while their other two daughters were told to stay quiet or be killed as well.

The husband was later taken into custody for selling their daughter out.

Why? Because witch doctors make potions from albinos for their "magical properties". And it's profitable for the people that get the body parts, whether from graves or people who happen to be unfortunate enough to, you know, not be able to defend themselves from these backwards superstitious animals.

I vaguely recalled that the Sun (a UK new source) wasn't necessarily very reliable. No problem. Quick Google for "africa albino murder" still yielded a bunch of hits, one of which was this one from the BBC.

The initial shock wore away, though, as I remembered that for these people having an epileptic attack was grounds for burning you alive for practicing witchcraft, raping lesbians cures homosexuality, and believe that HIV can be cured by raping kids.

These people are an extreme example of societies that lack science education (or education in general). It's disturbing that the mob mentality is capable of justifying such things but hey...what harm is it to let people hold superstitious beliefs? Just because your neighbor believes that is grounds for hating those people, or that vaccinations cause , or any other belief that flies in the face of facts doesn't mean that it does any harm, right?

But what happens when those beliefs become more and more popular?

I know this is a slippery slope argument. At the same time I can't help but see how easily it could move from, "today it's not believing in your sky wizard that keeps me from winning a school board election or makes me unpopular at the office Xmas party and tomorrow it's a breakout of a disease in some town that kills several kids because these jackarses are too superstitious to get vaccinated." Is it really all that hard to imagine when the nation that prides itself as being superior to any other on the planet is also proud to advocate willful ignorance?

More Drivel Published As Fact-Going Rogue with Sarah Palin

Apparently the AP checked out some of the claims in Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue", only to find that much like her ability to think critically the book is full of crap.

Harsh, I know, but seems according to the AP to be true. It fits with all the other facts that had been discovered about the woman's behavior patterns before and after the elections that it's hard to write this off as confirmation bias.

The article is found here.

From the sounds of it, this is a pre-campaign rally cry and platform builder, laced with distortions and lies. For people who are already pro-neo-conservatives or don't care about little things like facts the book is preaching to the choir. For those who didn't trust her the first time around and prefer facts over rhetoric the book is yet another example of what is wrong with the current Republican party.

(Thought for the day: while skepticism isn't inherently liberal or conservative, I do think that there are certain things that attract like minded individuals, much like you don't find many Amish doing system administration...)

Giving Kids a Leg Up from Your Own Experiences

One of the "near universals" you gain when you become a parent...if you like your kids, anyway...is the desire to give your kid the things you didn't have growing up. If you grew up wishing that your parents had given you more books, you shower your kids with Barnes and Noble gift cards at the first sign that they're interested in flipping pages. If you grew up with parents you felt were oh so restrictive then you try to give your kids more freedoms.

We want to give our kids the benefits of our experiences. We feel we knew what sucked from our childhood and don't want our kids to have to endure the things we did, or make the same stupid decisions we made.

But there's a problem with that thinking.

I thought about this after arguing with someone about the latest fads in education making the rounds in the public schools in the area. I lamented that the politicians dictating and mandating rules for schools to follow had little to no experience dealing with kids (or parents) in the classroom. The mandates are impossible to follow.

I was thinking about this recently when I was pondering what I'd do if I won the lottery (who hasn't dreamed about that?). I thought that one thing I would do is sponsor a deserving student in paying for college. I'd have slight stipulations, small conditions that if they broke the rules they would be on their own in paying for the courses, but if they stayed within the rules they'd get a free education. It would be a marvelous opportunity in a time when four years of college cost as much as my house.

Then I thought about the kids that have everything given to them. Kids that had a free Mercedes or Corvette, and if they wrecked it, Daddy would pay for another. The kids that have cell phones and treat them as if they're disposable...drop it in the toilet? Mommy will pay for another one tomorrow. Hell, if they don't like their phone for some reason, some have intentionally destroyed it so they'd get a new one.

These are kids that treat other people as property because, hey, if they're not of any use to you, why bother talking to them?

These are kids that have all the benefits I lacked growing up (and then some). And because they didn't know what it was like to have to experience some of the suckitude of the world they didn't realize just how good they have it.

I didn't have a bad childhood by any measure. Humans are hardwired to find the shortcomings in their lives and make that the "thing" that would make them happy; my family wasn't poor, but we didn't own a boat. I'd really love a boat. We never ended up homeless, but I wanted a treehouse. Things like that.

So if I made sure my kids eventually had a boat and treehouse, I'm pretty sure my kids would be impressed for all of an hour before wishing we had a bigger boat and a treehouse with outlets.

I extended this thinking to the kids that I had in mind for giving the opportunity for a college education. If I won the lottery. That part is important.

Unless they were kids that truly came from families struggling to meet the middle-class level of life, and truly wanted to have that college education and knew, truly knew that they were on the brink of not getting it, they'd never realize the opportunity they had.

Moreover, part of who I am today came from making stupid mistakes and lacking some of the things I wanted. So by depriving kids of some deprivation, I might not be doing them a favor. They'll end up lacking life lessons from their failures because I handed a success to them, rather than letting them fail and having them pick themselves back up.

I can tell my daughter about the things I ended up regretting in life. I can tell her and warn her and she'll still be the "typical teen". She blinks and stares without comprehension. She ignores what I'm saying, focusing instead on excuses for why XYZ happened rather than listening to the point.

She doesn't even bother reading the blog as far as I can tell. And this is full of lessons and ideas I've pondered and observed. If she wanted to know more about me, I'm pretty open on this website about my ideas. Not everything, of course. Some things are best left to discretion. But there's still a pretty honest baring of who I am here in this blog. She could not care less.

So maybe it's best if you have the means to simply spend that inheritance on yourself. The kids will simply squander it, and if you truly care for your kids you'll dole out the benefit of your wisdom in moderation. Let them make mistakes rather than give them the means to bypass what you recalled as a pain. Give them enough that they can stay out of jail, but not so much that they treat computers and game consoles and cell phones as if they were as disposable as paper towels.

I Don't Need God to Be Amazed At Nature

I've been reading a book called Death From the Skies! by Phil Plait, also known as The Bad Astronomer.

I am only halfway through the book and already all I can say is...wow.

Phil uses his wit and knowledge of science to spread the truth about astronomy the way Bill Nye inspired...inspires...science enthusiasts of all ages. Or Mr. Wizard. And his descriptions of how stars go supernova or condense into black holes leaves me staring at the night sky and wondering just how insignificant we as humans really are.

Can you imagine pressure and heat and gravity so great that electrons are literally ripped away from atoms?

Or having a tidal force so great from a black hole that the difference in pull from your head to your toes will turn you into organic spaghetti? Not that you'd be alive long enough to feel it...

He describes in detail what would happen if a bit of mass the size of Earth were condensed into black hole and then started on a collision course with Earth (hint: it's not pleasant, but you'll be dead long before it briefly orbits the center of Earth for a little bit and continues on its' way).

The power of stars to create through fusion various elements; a sphere of iron thousands of miles in diameter at the heart of a star, the possibility that the iron in your blood came from a star millions or billions of years ago...that you're made up of the stuff of stars. How can that not spark your imagination or your sense of wonder?

Just...wow.

The language is easy to understand. The ideas simplified enough to instill wonder and not get you bogged down in the details of how Hawking Radiation works. It even explains the most likely candidate for the origin of Gamma Ray Bursts (and why they'll kill 1/2 the planet immediately if we're hit by one). Gamma Ray Bursts are being detected BILLIONS of light-years from our planet from all over the universe.

Wow. Grab the book. Read it. Learn about the night sky in a whole new light.

Internet as a Valid Source

I have a kid in school. This child is old enough to do research papers. Said child has had many teachers say that she cannot use Internet resources as sources for papers and projects; she must cite "paper" sources, like newspapers and magazine articles. Sometimes there are particular web sites that they're allowed to use that are "valid" due to being subscription based or have parent companies that are based in the paper world (Time magazine's website, or the New York Times).

Why? Because any moron can put information on the Internet. Supposedly.

I think that teachers that use this line of reasoning clearly don't understand the nature of the Internet. Or their own chosen "Valid Citation" sources, for that matter.

They still think Wikipedia is inaccurate. There was a study done that compared Wikipedia with Britannica; the results were startlingly close. More importantly, if you are researching anything having to do with fringe or pop culture, Britannica was about as useful as a knife at a gunfight. I searched for the name Optimus Prime on Britannica's website and got a nonsense result (with offers to buy one on eBay...huh?). Wikipedia? Full character history, voice actor information, incarnations in various series...the whole shebang.

Wikipedia has also been making changes to help ensure accuracy in their articles as well.

Most sites that have information seem to draw a particular crowd; as such, the users gain a form of currency in reputation. Sites like StackOverflow and Serverfault have created entire communities based on reputation; the more you participate, the more reputation other users will give you as a reward for correct answers, the higher your reputation, the more authority you have.

There's a tacit acknowledgement in this when these luddites allow for "certain" online articles to be cited in research but not others; authority is the currency that matters. Popular sites on the Internet are popular because large numbers of people continue to visit them and use their information. Incorrect information can be separated out by the community.

But these teachers insist that printed sources carry authority because of their oversight; they have editors, while the webbertubes are governed like the wild west!

Hmm...that doesn't take into account incidents like the sheepskin pulled over Oprah's eyes by Mr. James Frey? Or reporters that make their information up completely? Including for big name news media like USA Today? Where was their oversight then?

The Fake Steve Jobs had an interesting article reviewing why mainstream media is dying. He outlines a story on TechCrunch examining a company called Zynga that was selling scam ads online with those stupid games like "FarmVille". The blog basically heavily slammed the company with proof of their scum tactics including a video clip when Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, told an audience of developers all about the things he did to generate revenue through those games.

The New York Times had a story about Zynga that completely neglected to mention any word about the ad revenue and scam tactics being used by them. It was all sunshine and rainbows being blown up Zynga's arse, and it gave Zynga positive press at a point when people should have been alerted that they're being ripped off.

Here, the online resources were more accurate and arguably more relevant than the "authoritative" New York Times.

It can also be argued that our media outlets are too biased to be taken seriously without a heavy dose of skepticism. Even searching for "media bias" on Google comes up with a site near the top of the rankings that "exposes the liberal bias of the media." The entire site is geared towards not giving you facts to interpret, but rather convince you that the media is run by evil liberals out to poison the minds of conservatives.

None of this addresses the real weakness of my daughter's teacher's view in using online resources; in research papers, you're supposed to use reason and research to back up your claims. You can't just cite one source for any fact and expect it to be taken as a given; you need multiple sources that verify the fact, or a line of reasoning that can lead you to reasonably conclude what the researcher concludes. Any idiot can parrot one thing they heard.

Hell...many of the "published" authorities do. How often do you run across the same articles nearly word for word, then realize they're all from the Associated Press? Five sources all using the same Associated Press as their source isn't five sources for your paper.

Even then, there are times when a clearly satirical news story was re-reported by "valid sources" as being true. Where was their authoritative oversight then?

The fact is that when properly researched (i.e., by applying cross-checking and reason to the topic at hand) the source of information is less important than the brains analyzing it. All the news being reported is coming from people and as such is going to be filtered (read: biased) in some way. Straight information is of little use to an audience; it must be interpreted to make sense, and that is part of the job of the researcher doing the paper. By encouraging students to only refer to and lay their unquestioning belief in certain news authorities these teachers are doing a grave disservice. They teach that there are definite authorities who should not be questioned rather than encouraging students to think and analyze information for themselves, and this is in my opinion yet another reason our students in the US are lacking in critical thinking skills.

Cheerleader Dystonia Update

Another update from Steven Novella's blog on the cheerleader with supposed dystonia. Check it out here...the plot has not only thickened, I think it started to spoil.

Movies Sway the Masses?

I was listening to back episodes of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe when they had a news blurb about UFO sightings in the UK that surge when alien-centric movies are released. I did a quick Google and found this story that basically corroborated what they said; example: Independence Day was released, and that year there were 609 sightings when the year before there were 117.

While at my followup for bariatric surgery I read a mini-magazine published by the hospital with various news reports. It said that a study found that teen smoking is finally going down. One of the reasons attributed? Movies aren't depicting smoking as cool anymore.

Of course, correlation does not imply causation. That doesn't mean there isn't a link. Just that it isn't definitive. You can't see that all the accidents in a small town involved a Ford and from that correlation assume that Ford vehicles are more accident prone.

But there is a trend in society that seems to bear out that people are really @#% stupid, or at least too stupid to think for themselves. I think we have some kind of wiring in our brains that likes to outsource stuff we don't like to think about and gradually it worms into our behaviors and attitudes. And it's scary.

Want people to stop smoking? Remove them from popular movies long enough, kids won't try it (fiercely independent, "You don't know me", etc. etc...kids, you're individuals with your own minds who apparently choose to do what everyone else does.)

Want them to see UFO's? Apparently all you need is a good sci fi movie in the box office.

Television has slowly started making science more "cool". Shows like Mythbusters, CSI, NCIS, Numb3rs, and Big Bang Theory make the geek the hero (finally) so it's okay to be the geek. Gradually...very gradually...like, ice age wall of ice creeping south gradually...is making the geek in school someone to regard with more respect than dirt. I don't see them being more popular than the jock but hey it's better than the old-school science nerd stereotype.

I don't know how to regard this. On one hand it's a great illustration of just how intellectually lazy people can be that they are manipulated by television and movies so overtly and yet they'll deny it when it's pointed out to them. On the other, I wonder if it isn't something with the way we're socially wired in the brain, that we need at some level acceptance of the flock, so when it's popular in a big movie and the people at the water cooler think it's great then maybe it's in our best interest to go along with the crowd as a social survival strategy.

Or maybe it's a good lesson to file away for use as a Future Dark Overlord (you listening to that, Mr. Scott Sigler?? Oh, yeah, I'm talking to you...)

What do you think of this? Social phenomena? Or is it just someone noticing that Fords are causing accidents in the home town?

Making Your Own Luck

I stumbled upon this Telegraph article reviewing making your own luck. Basically it said that people can make their own skill and it was a matter of skill.

Being lucky is a skill?

That's counterintuitive...working at being lucky? And I'm not talking about the skill of being dirty-lucky. Get your mind out of the gutter. Plus everyone already knew that was a skill.

I'm talking about the lucky you get when you find money laying on the ground or winning a contest.

According to the article the study found that people who were "unlucky" tended to be more tense and focused on details. Basically, the people who weren't tense noticed other things around them. Unlucky people were focused on the walk so they didn't notice the pothole. They didn't notice the money laying along the path. They looked for a specific job listing in the paper and didn't notice the unrelated job listing that happened to be a far better opportunity.

The story goes on to say that lucky people are lucky using four principles; they notice and create chance opportunities, they listen to their intuition, they use positive expectations, and they adopt a resilient attitude.

Which doesn't bode well for me.

I tend to be very focused and stuck on my expectations and routine. I am not an intuitive person; I reason things out and follow logic when all else fails. I tend to be more of a realist and cynic than a positive person. And for the resilient attitude...I'm still here and I'm still working on my novel despite my fears, so maybe I might have a slight bit of a resilient attitude, if that can be counted.

The article is actually very interesting. It's older but if true it might be something worth filing away for future use. I might have to return to it and study it some more too...maybe try integrating it into my life in some fashion. There have been a number of times lately where I really need something like this to fall back on.

The Dystonia Cheerleader: a Followup

Steven Novella posted a followup to his blog entry about the cheerleader that supposedly suffered from Dystonia as a side effect of getting a flu shot. Anti-vax groups appear to be starting to back off as Dystonia advocates are coming forward to enlighten them with how much crap the anti-vaccination groups are full of.

I had pointed to Steve's blog post here a few days ago. It's sad how quickly she was foisted up as a poster child for the anti-vax people, just long enough to get five minutes of fame for their cause, then back off just as the media is no longer paying any attention to the story and so the truth will probably never get advertised. The stigma for getting flu shots will stay in the public awareness while never hearing the followup...basically, "whoops, we screwed up!"

The fact is that she needs help and hopefully she'll get it. The anti-vax'ers aren't the ones to give it, though.