Government should be fired.

In a democracy, people elect officials to manage the social and economic well-being of the nation. In corporate and business institutions, economists and sociologists are hired to fill such positions, but, generally people elect political scientists, lawyers and rich people to look after their social and economic needs.

Sometimes I listen to punditry and laugh.

Schools, data mining and statistics

Many policy makers, school administrators and sometimes the general public attribute the problem of America's poor and increasingly failing education on the lack of financial resources and most of the time poor teachers. I believe they're only ten percent correct. 

As an analyst I am charged with deriving all of the possible reasons for an observed behavior, and then crunch the data down to a few variables that can be used to predict behavior.  One of the problems that I usually encounter with modern analytics software, is that most of them were designed for crunching numbers. In studying social phenomena, I believe that we should be crunching words, or at least we should work on software that can help us crunch words.

If we deconstruct the word education, the following key concepts are at play: learning, knowledge, imparting, acquiring, and evaluation.  Simplistically speaking, educators have to optimize the ability of teachers for imparting, and evaluation, while students have to optimize their ability for acquiring and learning the curriculum.  In the public discorse and the literature, we have extensively studied  the "imparting" and "evaluating" aspects of education, and  often marginalized the "acquiring" and "learning" aspects.  Very often policy makers rangle over hiring better teachers, or building better schools, while paying little focus on creating environments for learning or improving the students ability to acquire knowledge.

Knowledge, which I will loosely define as understanding, perception and reasoning of concepts, is a skill that has to be taught. Knowledge, like any other skill has to be imparted in environments that are conducive for retention.  For example, if a person wants to become a home builder, they need to learn facts about the trade, apprentice, and gradually become professional.  In the same way if our students have to learn the schools curriculum, they have to learn the skills necessary for acquiring random and perceptively useless information.  Next students have to apprentice, that is do homework, and gradually become proficient in learning.

For the homebuilder in training the motivation is internal.  If you ask many elementary students why they attend school you could imagine answers like "To play with my friends," "Because my mom says I need to learn" and so on.  In many cases the motivation for attending school is external at best. The question then becomes, How can we change the students perceptions of education, and, who is responsible for making students want to learn? 

Game changers

If you think about how any game is played and you realize its components you can change the game.

But you have to be patient and grow slow.

The nature of human sex.

People say that men think with their dicks. It is also true that women think with the opposite.  Nature intended it that way.

So I am free versing. I didn't think before I started writing, so there's a great probablility that someone will be offended. Reader beware.

I am not a girl, I have no sisters, and I have few female friends who are open enough to speak about sex.  I have read a lot, but well rounded people know that theory is an over simplification of any process. In the physical world theory works well most of the time, but humans... well we're all different. 

So boy's brains hang towards the left. And it is easy for gravity and motion to swing it either way.  Girls, on the other hand are anchored in place taking in the world (huge metaphor).  And were both driven by our brains.  Women hold the key to what gets in, while guys figure out how to get in. Of course the brain of the woman holds the key to life, and so women essentially have two brains. One, to let men's brain in, and the other to figure out how to keep the rifraff out.

To make this situation more complex, women's brains communicate with each other, and in making a decision the vote must be unanimous for a favorable outcome.  (Actually, men have two brains too, but the hanging one is buffer,faster, quick to decide, and high on natures best drug: testosterone. Heck it hangs above the supply of that good stuff. Thus the other brain is rendered to the role of the appendix, that is unless big brain gets in trouble. In those times big brain shrivels like skin in cold water).

I can say that nature was unfair making it this way, but that is just my illeterate brain speaking.

More on this later.

A new experiment

Since this weblog is essentially me shouting at from the top of the mountain, I suppose I wont be offending any one if I begin to focus on sex.

Sex is possibly the most fascinating subject that humans think about. It is possibly a fact that sex just like politics and religion, are the things most of us think about but feel hindered to speak about.  But me,  I have decided to join the ranks of those who speak openly.

So here goes.

I love talking about sex.  It is possible that I do so because I suck at it. Maybe my sex IQ is so great that my ideas about sex just freak people out.  Or maybe I am hanging with the wrong crowd.

So, in order to figure this all out, I am using writing. This may be educational. It may be offensive, and it may also be perosnal. Proceed with caution.

Looking Back.

Sometimes the best things are ahead of us.We learn more, we do more, we achieve.  And, as one learns, she can use the skills that were learned to apply in situations that are new, or in situations unrelated. 

One reason that some people work so hard is so that they can become better in the future.  One thing that many loose when focusing too much on the future, is the beauty that lies around us.  Sometimes, when we focus too much on what lies ahead, we miss the beauty that is so present and so beautiful behind us.

Catching the American dream.

This note is about American exceptionalism.  This is the idea that the united states of America is the awesomest place on the planet earth. In. The US anyone can be vertically mobile. Anyone can become anything they want to if they try hard enough.  While this idea is true, in general, this can happen anywhere in the world.
It may seem that I am highlighting the obvious, but if we consider how the statement of American exceptionalism, which for convience we will hereafter abbreviate as AE, is shouted around we would think that it was easy.

Truth be told, it is easier to become happy than achieve the American dream.

Bold statement right? Not really.  I started from zero. And, from this point I can see why people do all kinds of strange things to just taste a little of the pervibial American pie.  From an outsiders perspective, poor people in America own cars,have have cool gadgets like big televisions, smart phones and such.  Food is cheap. And one can find any job to make a living.

Of course the missleading notions  of the above statements is that just because one can pay ones bills they are self actualized.  That expensive objects make most people happy. 
These ponderings have lead me to conclude that AE is BS.