The Devil’s Advocate

A quote dedicated to Maggie:

“There is a fine line between genius and insanity, and I’m writing with a sharpie!”

As seen on a t-shirt.

Okay, people have been saying for the longest time that “our education system is broken” in the US. I find it pretty reasonable, though with obvious flaws. Opponents want to overhaul the system entirely, shouting repeatedly how it’s so abysmal. Personally I see lots of people graduating and living decent lives and working decent jobs. The education system can produce good people, but it’s not giving enough people the skills they need.

In fact, in large portions of our country want to privatize education, or make it strictly based on test scores. These are bad ideas, because it’s not test scores that are not the problem.

The biggest problems in this country is that kids are not taught to think. They are taught reading and writing and arithmetic but not often are they taught how put those things together to solve a problem other than two trains that leave cities at different times. The no child left behind act made things worse, by forcing kids take tests and beat national standards scores rather than a real attempt at teaching kids. Scores are important, but the bar is now set too high and has nothing to do with real learning.

I have a simple way of correcting education, and by doing so fixing a lot of problems in the world. And that is by teaching logic in school. I mean logic, discrete thinking, the scientific method, and maybe some basic philosophy like epistomology. Make this type of course as important as science, social studies, and math.

My deep concern is that educators simple are not teaching kids to think! Thinking is the most important life skill anyone can learn. To be able to analyze a situation with logic is more important than memorizing the periodic table or the works of Shakespeare.

Logic is the thing that teaches people how to find an answer, rather than having answers handed to you. I can also help you find out when someone hands you the wrong answer.

Logic became big for me in college. Ironically puzzles such as my einstein post are the test material for classes like this. Logic can be fun!

It’s such a simple change and should have political will because the only reason you would not want to do it is to keep people stupid. The only obstacles are the a school boards who might have illogical reasons to block it.

Oh and I have to find the teachers willing to do so and create the absolutely awesome presentation to get it off the ground. I grant permission to anyone who wants to plagarize this idea, unless you are one if those religious whack jobs who will pervert it.

It’s about time I got back around to some “friend” postings.

Jenna is known in our group as the one with the golden heart.  She is quite possibly one of the most caring people I know.  Perhaps she cares too much, sometimes, as I worry about some people taking advantage of her good nature.  No no, it’s not me who’d do that.  How dare you think such things of me.  However, I might take advatange of… Other things…. (I’m kidding Jenna!  Don’t freak out!)
You’d also think that Jenna was sweet, innocent, and clean.  Far from it.  Get her angry, and she swears like a sailor.  She’s an accountant, so she’s dirty with money.  She once worked for a mushroom farm (unfortunately I don’t know if she still does), and if you know anything about that, well she does the accounting not the farming so she’s not that dirty.

Alex is the true brain of us all.  While he can’t fix a computer to save his life (that would be me, I’m the Jedi) he’s mastered just about everything else.  His chosen vocation is Chemical Engineer, which he is currently working on his masters for.   However, his true callings are “card player” and bartender.  I call on all my fellow Cracker Jax, think about it.  Who is more wise and all knowing than a bartender?  I think Al needs to start his own pub so we can all show up and play cards every night and he can make killer margaritas.

Jenna has the most peculiar habit of asking if Maggie and me are going to hook up.  Ironically, I think all of us are asking when Jenna and Alex are going to hook up.  They are attached at the hip and the heart.  At the same time, they do have a relationship similar to Maggie and me.  Maggie and I love each other dearly, with a deep and special bond, but as friends.  This is what I see in Jenna and Alex.

Sadly, I’ve been out of touch with them.  With Carrie and Darrell in California, it’s hard to get everyone together.  Alex and Jenna were always hard for me to get ahold of, and we are linked through Darrell and Carrie.

However, make no mistake.  The moment all the Jax are together, nothing can stop us!

So, I’m on vacation sitting on the beach, biking, playing video games, and generally goofing off. So I should have some time to blog, yanno?

This leads into an interesting segue. I don’t own a laptop, but I do own an iPhone. Now I know you are thinking “he’s just a geek, he does those things.” However, one must always examine ones surroundings and the tools we use. Don’t dismiss me as just a geek yet.

You see, a couple weeks ago Apple released an update to its iPhone software. The iPhone 3G came out at the same time. I have an original iPhone. It’s the new software that’s the real killer app.

This 2.0 software allows you to download new applications onto your iPhone. It also has a new feature called location services. This is the most underrated piece if the entire update, because for the very first time, we are not just linking information with locations, but we are able to look up information relative to our current location. That’s huge… Our current location.

Because an iPhone can tell you where you are, it can instantly look up things relative to where you are. Most people think this has something to do with looking up a local restaurant but it’s so much more than that. There is an application on the application store which creates lists and applies them to locations on a map. You could create relative to do lists on this map and then plot where you need to go and remind yourself what you need to pick up. That’s a huge step forward in efficiency.

Applications also exist to show you jobs, movies, and retail items relative to you location. So far I’ve only used the free applications but there are so many more.

One complaint of the app store for the iPhone is that applications don’t exist for things people used to do. Ironically the iPhone isn’t built for these functions. It’s built to organize, categorize, and search for information. If you are a unix or sysadmin, get another phone or PDA.

However, this should lead to another step in the information revolution, as I predict Apple will expand this to their laptops and other companies will follow behind. This will be one more brick in the future building of computers and information. Information gets easier to access, and more information becomes available to us.

It’s a shame the iPhone is $200. I hope it continues to drop so that more and more people can get ahold of more and more information.

Several nights ago due to a strange and extended bout of insomnia, have jumped online into a chat room and stumbled onto a extremely bizarre and yet fascinating discussion about the population of the earth.  The people you find online are very unusual, but it’s this kind of discussion which the internet truly is meant for.  Radical ideas spreading across the country and the world, changing and refining themselves and taking root in fertile minds… such as myself!

The discussion started off by the fact that the population of the world is growing, and because it’s growing we are putting a drain on the worlds resources.  Oil is the first resource that that may go, but eventually it’s going to get to something far more important… food and water.  Once we reach a certain point, what we discussed as the “population bottleneck,” we’ll have too many people on the planet for the resources we have and entire populations will die out and the human population will decrease instead of increase.

The major solution provided was mandatory sterilization.

Okay, take a deep breath, relax, and let’s look beyond the obvious emotional response, just as an exercise.

Now for the race to continue, we can’t allow unchecked human growth on the planet forever. We need a plan at some point. Sterilization starts to sound appealing when you think of billions of people starving and living like ancient man trying to scrounge for fertile land to grow a few meager crops. Dystopian movies we’ve made so far can’t compare to the possible reality.

Some people rejected this idea, that sterilization was just wrong. I personally am not suggesting it now, but if things become drastic it might be necessary. Also, the religious may reject this, as many more extreme religious sects look upon reproduction, even birthing 19 children, a right. To quote a cliché, there are people starving in Africa and you want to have 19 children so they can eat up food the Africans can’t get?

Others voted for sterilization based on an educational standard. These were of course those who thought themselves elite but in my opinion would have been the first to be snipped.

The only fair solution I could see would be a mandatory across the board limit of one child per family. If you had a second without permission, you automatically get sterilized. If a couple is infertile they can give their right to a lottery. To get rights to a second child, join the lottery. If for some reason your child dies before they are 18, you can have another. And of course all rules are subject to review depending on where the population is in several years.

This would have to being implemented in most developed nations have an effect, and its an extreme measure, but its an interesting exercise in “what if.” Before you reject outrageous ideas, ask what would you do if the population grew too large? If you don’t think it can, your imagination is far too limited.

I for one hope we simply develop reliable space travel by that point and find new planets to settle so we can spread out.

One of the greatest things one can do for someone else is to help someone else.  Today I remember someone who impacted hundreds of lives in her time, and never failed to be able to help those.  My friends, the Cracker Jax, found this person very near and dear to our heart.  She was a friend and very much like a parent to us all.  You couldn’t help but love her.

Today I remember Antonia “Toni” McMenamin.  I mourn the loss of an angel here on earth.  I, and those who went to Drexel University with me, will all miss her terribly.