To School, or Not to School?

I just discovered a new word today: unschooling. It assuages all my misgivings of the public school system and at the same time seems to be a step above "home schooling," which may or may not take place at the home.

I have long been an opponent of mandatory education, especially that which is taught in public schools. There is far too much focus on studying for "the test," and too little attention paid to developing critical thinking skills. Past the basic educational skills necessary for survival such as reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, grades K-12 do nothing more than bombard students with facts that are no more helpful than knowing which Friends alum starred in films with Bruce Willis. (It was Matthew Perry) Not to mention the ridiculous knowledge teachers and curriculum designers decide is necessary for one's development in American society. Well, they won't be able to understand a cost-benefit analysis of liberty versus security, but by God! they will know what the water in A Tale of Two Cities references.

Critics of non-traditional education claim that learning outside of a public (or private for that matter) school building would be detrimental to the child's social development. How can children learn to interact with people of all creeds and backgrounds if they are segregated by learning outside the masses? Studies have found that self-esteem is hardly different, and in some cases better, in homeschooled students than in traditionally-taught students. Since self-esteem is often used to guage one's social skills--whether they are confident, friendly, capable of having a conversation with others--it seems that this would be a good source of data to use.

Others claim that it is important for kids to be with "people their own age." This further stimulates their social abilities. But as a graduate of a mostly-traditional education, I can say that being with students my own age did little to further my own ability to succeed in life. First, people my own age will almost always have the same problems as me. The success of overcoming a problem in the midst of peers with the same problem is highly dubious.

Second--and this applies more to secondary school students more than primary--kids in public school are over-indulged, self-absorbed, neurotic attention-seekers. This ties somewhat into the first point; if they are surrounded by other kids who are the same way, there is little motivation for them to change. It wasn't until I got to college that people from my high school past began to act friendlier to me, as if they were ready to cast off the clique-oriented persona that had encompassed their entire teenage life.

By participating in "unschooling," students interact not only with other kids that are also being unschooled, but with adults as well. There is no emphasis placed on age-base classes; everyone talks to everyone. People come together because they are interested in studying the same thing, not because they were born the same year.

"Well what about kids getting indoctrinated? Shouldn't we stop parents from turning their kids into racists or bigots?" some people might ask. I can't give nearly as good a response as John Holt did, but to sum it up:

"The first question we have to answer is, do we have a right to try to prevent it? And even if we think we do, can we? One of the main differences between a free country and a police state, I always thought, was that in a free country, as long as you obeyed the law, you could believe whatever you liked. Your beliefs were none of the government's business. Far less was it any of the government's business to say that one set of ideas was good and another set bad, or that schools should promote the good and stamp out the bad... One of the reasons why growing numbers of people are so passionately opposed to the public schools is that these schools are in fact acting as if someone had explicitly and legally given them the power to promote one set of ideas and to put down others."

Public schools are far more dangerous and likely of indoctrinating young minds than any homeschool program. For starters, they have the potential to reach many times more children. Public schools, whether by purpose or accident due to time or budget constraints, also tend to have very specific curricula, and can leave out vital parts of information that would be necessary to encourage critical thinking and the establishment of one's own opinion.

As someone who was homeschooled for a few years, I think it's fairly easy to say that it doesn't damage one's ability to remain sociable (Editor's note: at the time of publishing, the test results had still not been compiled). In fact, one of the main reasons I chose to graduate high school one year early (contrary to the popular belief that I was some sort of genius boy) was because I was tired of all the social politics and bigotry that I encountered on a daily basis at public school.

The only problem I can find with non-traditional education is that it produced one of my main nemeses, Little Timmy Tebow. But if students are actually being taught to think for themselves, and that it's not the knowledge itself that's important, but the ability to learn, then even the retinal cancer I develop everytime Tim Tebow comes on SportsCenter is worth enduring.

The Downfall of Canada is Canadians

Let's consider this possibility for a second. It's 1812, for some reason we're at war with Britain... again. But this time when we decide to march into Canada and defeat the British, we don't do it the wrong way. Now flash forward to present time again and Canada has been divided into additional states of the Union. All her precious resources are American, we have far more frontier, oil reserves, timber, and caribou than we know what to do with, and best of all these new territories have less French influence.

Allow me to set some things straight. I don't hate Canada. I think it's a bountiful country with great fishing, camping, and maple syrup locales. It's colder, which means less people would want to live there, thus making it a great place to vacation. Plus, it offers the U.S. a buffer zone against nuclear attacks.

But there's a problem with Canada. A big problem. Canadians live there.

"What's wrong with Canadians?" you may ask. Well for starters, they can't even refer to themselves properly. They live in Canada, and yet they are called CanadIans?? They should be "Canadans" or they should live in Canadia.

Second, they gave us Pamela Anderson, who can be seen as the birth of the decline of American civilization and the reason we were attacked on 9/11. While it's true that Bo Derek in 10 might have been first, Pam Anderson glorified the role of girl running down the beach in a swimsuit. This then led to her getting celebrity status, which turned into a failed marriage to drummer Tommy Lee, which led to her doing an ill-advised sex tape with him that got leaked, which ultimately allowed anyone to make a sex tape and become famous.

So Pamela Anderson paved the way for faux-celebs like Paris Hilton who contribute nothing to society and are a blight on our television screens. In 2001, just seven months before the heinous terrorist attacks, this article was published in The Guardian. The article calls Paris Hilton the "next It girl," even though she never did anything in her life to receive such a title. This article must have been the tipping point for al Qaeda, and they decided to move ahead with their plans and attack America, where people are celebrated in spite of no accomplishments whatsoever.

If Pamela Anderson's opening up the door for the faux-celeb isn't enough to turn you off of Canada, perhaps you would be shocked to know Keanu Reeves calls himself a Canadian. Born a naturalized U.S. citizen (through his father) in Lebanon, Reeves was nevertheless raised in Canada and holds Canadian citizenship. And even worse, he's proud of it!

We all know what kind of actor Keanu Reeves is. Sure, he brought us a great time with Bill and Ted. And he pushed the limits of our imagination in The Matrix Trilogy. But he still acts the same way in every movie. If dull, flat acting is what it means to be Canadian, I don't want any part of it.

I can imagine you're still arguing with me in your head. Maybe you've had a friend who went to Canada and said it was great. Hey, so have I. But that's the thing; your friend had a great time visiting Canada. They don't want to live here. That's like everyone who tells you Japan is amazing when they went for two weeks, but as someone who lives there, I'll tell you it's not nearly as great.

So last we come to Canadians in general. Have you ever had the displeasure of talking with one? They come across as extremely arrogant--must be the French half in them. They glorify the wonders of their health care system. They brag that their air is so much cleaner. And worst of all, they rub all their Stanley Cup victories in everyone's faces.

Quite simply, Canadians are the Frenchmen at our backdoor, and if we had done what was necessary back in the early 19th century, we wouldn't have to deal with them anymore.

But alas, all we can do now is wonder at what might have been. Imagine the utopia of a world without Canada... No Avril Lavigne and her feel-good punk rock; no Hayden Christensen and his terrible portrayal of the formerly baddest-ass badass in science fiction; no Sandra Oh and her weird pinched face and awkward stares; and no William Shatner. Well, maybe not all Canadians are bad.

Al Gore's Claims Refuted by 75-Year Old Man

In a pretty interesting article (considering it talked about the formation days of the Net, before cool things like YouTube, Facebook, blogging, and Google were made available), the man credited as one of the founders of the Internet talks about how it all went down, what he intended it to be used for, and his current take on his creation.

You can read the article here.

Leonard Kleinrock, working at UCLA at the time, essentially experimented with the first "instant message." As he tells it, "...all we wanted to do was log in -- to type an l-o-g, and the remote time-sharing system knows what you're trying to do. So we typed the l, and we asked over the phone, 'Did you get the l?' And the response came back, 'Yep, we got the l.' We typed the o. 'Got the o?' 'Yep, got the o.' Typed the g. 'You get the g?' Crash! SRI's host crashed at that point."

They just don't make computers like they used to... unless you have a Dell.

He says that his test between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute was the first message sent over a data connection. For those who aren't computer nerdy, this blog that you're reading, every picture you upload, every video you stream is really just a series of 01011011000110011s (sorry robots everywhere... I may have unwittingly insulted your mothers) that are sent between servers through said data connections and end up on your computer screen in little packets that we can view.

He also goes on to say he believed the internet would become a way for people to use devices and be connected at all times, but that he didn't know it would involve into the world of Twitter, Google Maps, and instant gratification that we know it as today. We've come to a point now that so many programs are put out, so many applications that in turn have so many features that we are experiencing what Kleinrock calls "feature shock." It's the reason some people are fine running Windows 95 still; they are too used to that system to try and change things, even if it does promise faster speed or more user-friendly controls.

Currently Kleinrock is working on a system that allows the cyberspace to interact with the physical world, and collect data from your house, car, living room and even your body. When asked what he thinks about computers being made smarter and if that means humans will get less brain exercise, he responded that "free us up to do the things that humans do so well, like pattern recognition and putting thoughts together, intuition and innovation." At first I thought he wasn't aware what sort of monster he had created, and if he was oblivious to the mindless drivel of reading US Weekly online or internet phenoms such as Dramatic Gopher. But he does confess that he is disappointed with today's youth and their inability to do calculations without a calculator anymore.

Like every parent's worse nightmare, the Internet grew bigger and stronger than Kleinrock ever expected, and allowed for demons the likes of spam, spyware, and identity theft to grab hold of his child. In the early days, Kleinrock says, everyone knew each other and there was a netiquette in the early stages. There also used to be a time when women were barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and all was right with the world. Haha, just kidding folks... but seriously, where's my sammich?!

Lastly, Kleinrock states that privacy as we have come to know and love, and various amendments in the Constitution supposedly uphold, is dead. There are cameras everywhere, and I don't even mean the Big Brother kind (well not just them, at least). Every junior high school brat with a negligent parent has a camera phone now, not to mention every drunk college kid or rapping granny. Kleinrock thinks the only one can truly have privacy "is to go to the edge of the ocean, strip down and jump in and hope there's no sonar down there tracking you, by the way, which there will be soon." Well, at least in his old age he hasn't become some crackpot conspiracy theorist.

So all in all, we learned the Internet was not invented by Mr. Gore (sorry Al, I guess your lie of a Nobel Prize will have to suffice), we can no longer go to the bathroom in peace, and there are still more pornographic websites than any other kind online. But hey, one out of three ain't bad.

Can We Stop Calling Each Other Racist?

These days it is more likely for soylent green to be referred to as people than an actual human being. Everyone has to referred to by their ancestry, which may or may not even be accurate most of the time. A so-called African-American could be a 6th generation American, and his ancestors didn't even come directly from Africa then but from Europe. A Latin-American inaccurately refers to South Americans as well as Central Americans, not to mention immigrants or descendants of immigrants from those countries in those areas; all this despite the fact that none of those countries uses Latin. The worst is Asian-American, since Asia is the largest continent in the world and contains people from the middle east, Russia, India, Malaysia, and the far east. Why can't we all just be called "people?"

While researching the old mascots of my college--which I found out to be the Citronaut and later Vincent the Vulture; the latter name dropped because vultures are disease carrying harbingers of doom--I came across the Student Profile entry on Wikipedia. I was astonished, flabbergasted, mildly outraged, calm, greatly outraged, and finally annoyed with our country after reading that bit of information.

You see, the entry contains a little chart that divides the student body up into categories. Rather than allow the population of UCF to be counted on a one-by-one basis, students have to be divided into demographics, a fancy word for categories based on physical attributes. I thought the whole point of the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s was to shed these barriers and show that despite a person's misplaced beliefs, all Americans, and in this case all people attending an American university, are equal. But I guess I was wrong (if anyone knows a way to portray in text that I am over-enunciating each word to make them longer for dramatic effect, please tell me).

I imagine this was the reaction of someone after these numbers came out:

"Sure, the University of Central Florida has 53,537 students enrolled in the fall of 2009. But how many of those students are African American? Oh okay... let me see... 8.81%. That's nowhere near the national ratio of blacks to general population! Less than ONE PERCENT are Native American! And you can't be serious that we have a higher percentage of Asian Americans and European Americans enrolled than the state averages!? We can't allow this to go on! Stop the presses... Hey you, over there in the corner! Why are you still typing?? I said STOP the presses! We have to figure this thing out!"

Why are demographics even an issue anymore? For all of its good intentions after the Civil Rights Act and the subsequent issues that came up because of that, affirmative action is an outdated method of controlling who gets something at the expense of someone else. I agree, affirmative action (or something like it), was needed at a time when certain people were getting shafted on job, college, housing applications. But now, this system giving special treatment or denying it to others based on physiological differences, even in the name of helping minorities, is creating the same problem it was meant to destroy.

Perhaps I went a little overboard regarding the student profile of UCF. There was nothing in the entry that actually suggested affirmative action needed to right the wrongs of disproportion at UCF. But it owes to a much bigger problem in our society: the issue of race.

A quick background of myself if I can. I graduated from this fine university with a bachelor of science in anthropology. Anthropology means "the study of humans." That can mean from a cultural standpoint, through biological, historical, or even linguistic study. In my biological courses, one of the main points that is hammered down repeatedly is that the races, as we have come to know them, do not exist. Sure, there are physiological tendencies, and original biological anthropologists divided these characteristics into three groups, Caucasoids, Mongoloids, and Negroids, which we have come to refer to as Caucasian, Asian, and African, respectively.

But even so, these features that are used to categorize humans come from the bone structures, and the differences are minor if there at all. Any outward appearance has little or nothing to do with the internal bone structure of a human, the most noticeable being the size and shape of the nasal bones and mandible. Other than the facial differences--which have everything to do with dietary and climatological differences and nothing to do with proximity to lower beasts--all human beings contain the same number of bones, the same internal organs, the same number of teeth, the same anatomy through and through.

The problem is fear. Fear that one group will be oppressed in order for another group to be lifted up. Fear that we will revert to the misinformed days of lore, when people were killed simply for the way they looked. I hope that we will never go back to the old ways of oppression, but not as much hope that we won't enter some new version, where people are oppressed just for ideas they hold, regardless of action.

There was a time when great injustices were done, but I've believed we have moved past that. That's not to say society is completely blind and fair now, as a rare event in Louisiana pointed out. But those occurrences are fewer and far between, and the norm now seems to be swinging in favor of curtailing any kind of dissension. It seems a person's first thought after not getting a job is whether or not racism had something to do with it. The same can be said for the concepts of sexual orientation and sexism (although the latter is a subject for another day.)

It's no longer about righting past wrongs. It's about having power and keeping power. Therein lies the second, and more telling problem.

We no longer live in a society where the best and brightest are chosen, because that would mean someone else could not be chosen. For the same reason that it has become a common practice for every kid to receive a trophy, regardless of how shitty s/he or their team did, the playing field must now be leveled so that everyone is on equal terms. But unfortunately that doesn't mean everyone else raising their game; today's society coddles those who can't even play.

We need to stop playing "the race card" and start getting people to make the most of themselves. The idea of racism is more like a crutch for people who are too afraid to fail, let alone to even try. Rather than work from within to become better, they would rather use the system to work for them and punish those who rejected them. Instead of showing that moxie and inner strength truly define a person, we would rather quit and rely on an outdated principle of discrimination to fight our battles for us.

Why the Internet is Funny (And Drives Me Up a Wall at the Same Time)

Depending on how in to the Internet you are, you may have heard of Godwin's Law. Chances are you have most certainly come into contact with it. Godwin's Law was theorized in the early days of the Internet by Mike Godwin, who stated "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." Usenet was one of the early bulletin board systems.

Now we are much more fortunate because we have Facebook, YouTube, and millions of websites all with the ability to let people post on message boards. What we would be doing now if we couldn't watch a baby laughing and have the ability to instantly comment about it? I don't know about you but I'd probably be wasting my time enjoying nature or expanding my mind or something equally stupid.

So anyways, we have this huge collection of websites, where people gather to discuss a video, article, story, picture, or who knows what else, and for some reason unbeknownst to people with all their screws tightened, a comment gets that is insulting. And I'm not talking about a simple disagreement of opinion; that's a very common occurrence, and we don't need the Internet to facilitate people arguing. No I mean a comment with seemingly no purpose, like, "THAT WAS SO GAY!" No reason is given, no evidence to back up the opinion. And this is only the start of a negative spiral that leads to out-of-nowhere references to racism, sexism, or any other discriminatory -ism, which then conjure up the (inaccurate and overused) labels of fascist, communist, and eventually Nazi.

All this happens because people gathered, and everyone knows that when people get involved, things get stupid.

I mean correct me if I'm wrong... my history of the earth is a bit rusty, but I'm pretty sure that on the 5th day, before humans were invented, the animals weren't all congregating and discussing the state of the garden when all of a sudden the tiger stood up and shouted "This is gay!" and was suddenly branded a hate-monger because he wasn't happy with utopia. No, it took dumbass humans to bring that into the equation.

My problem is I don't know whether to laugh at the absurdity that I see on the Internet or cry because it's so telling of how dumb, naive, ignorant so many people are. I guess the one thing I can be grateful for is that the Internet gives people a place to vent some of their stupid so that office meetings like this don't happen in real life.

$20 Million DHS Projects to Check Your Sweat Levels

The Department of Homeland Security is currently funding a research project called Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), with the hopes of it being implemented in airport screenings. The supporters of this project claim that it gives an added insight to a person's metaphysical levels, which could indicate intent on their upcoming flight. Opponents of the project range from saying there is no statistical basis for this whatsoever to claiming it infringes on an individual's rights to privacy (most likely the 5th Amendment version of self-incrimination). I tend to fall in between the two versions of the opponents' arguments. You can read the story for yourself here.

Sure, we all want to get through the airport faster. And taking off our shoes or having to dump a water bottle we JUST BOUGHT always sucks, but would this alternative be any better? For starters, the devices aim to measure a person's heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature, and even fidgeting. According to the program's proponents, this is just an advanced way of doing things that are naturally evident.

Oh, I guess I missed the science class where my teachers told us normal humans can gauge each others' body temperatures and heart rates by looking at them. Not to mention, there are any number of reasons a person can have an elevated or lowered measurement of each of these factors. Perhaps they're nervous about flying. Or maybe they are going to confront their cheating partner. Or maybe they really have to piss, but they want to get through security first. Well, fortunately for us, they have a solution to that. If a person seems sketchy according to their tests, they run them through a secondary system of questions. And what exactly are these ingenious questions. There must be some subtle way for them to tell if you are a terrorist or not: "Is this the month of September?" and "Do you plan to detonate an explosive?"

ARE YOU F***** SERIOUS!?!? Well if it's that easy, why haven't we been asking these questions the whole time???
"Oh, excuse me. Are you planning on hijacking flight 93 and fly it into a national landmark? Oh you are. Please come with us sir." I mean just look at how easy that is! And it's only taken us a $20,000,000 project, which came about because of a 4,000+ casualty terrorist attack and $1 trillion+ war to come up with these questions?! Gotta love those bureaucrats.

What are some of the devices they use for this project? According to the article, the "researchers took a Wii balance board... and altered it to show how someone's weight shifts." So now they are using children's toys in multi-million dollar research projects. It's bad for our kids to have access to video games because it makes them anti-social, overweight, and possibly violent, but when those same video games are used to stop terrorism... well now, we might be on to something.

The biggest problem with this entire project isn't even mentioned in the article. It's common knowledge that anytime technology is introduced into some human activity, it not only makes the job easier, but also makes the operator lazier. Just look at a grocery cashier. If their computer system shut down and they had to manually add up a person's items, then multiply by 6% tax, half of the people working wouldn't even be able to. And the people working security at the airport are already doing a half-assed job as it is. They give you a once over while looking at your picture ID, and then really enforce the removal of shoes, but barely pay attention to the x-ray machine as they talk about what they're doing after work, or how their kid got in trouble at school again. And somehow more technology is the answer?!

The best sentence in the entire article is attributed to Stephen Fienberg, professor of statistics and social studies at Carnegie Mellon University (aka the school that is known for doing research and reporting statistics.) "Fienberg, who participated in a government study critical of the use of polygraphs, said he worries that a lot of money is being spent on a program that in the end will show 'the emperor has no clothes.'" That pretty much sums up every piece of research currently being conducted on a government contract.

If President, My Budget Ideas

I don't attempt to classify anyone who reads this, but have you noticed that many of the people who are upset, pissed off really, about the Patriot Act, and are quick to invoke the most literal reading of the 4th Amendment to oppose it (ala Franken), are the same people that want to take a very liberal approach to Article 1 of that same Constitution?

Suddenly "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States..." reads as allowing government to provide a public healthcare option. The original "general welfare" most likely referred to "health, happiness, and good fortune" or well-being. Oh wow, the same inalienable rights the Declaration of the Independence says all humans are endowed with. Funny that the writer's of both would include something in the Constitution stating that the government will work to ensure no one's inalienable rights are impeded.

And it's also funny how "...to pay the debts...of the United States" is often forgotten by those in favor of bigger government. Where are we getting the money for these new programs being proposed, let alone the old programs that are already running? Oh sure, we could raise taxes on the rich. They've got loads of money. No matter what your opinion is of trickle-down economics, taxing the rich at best provides a short-spanned IV to the degenerating economy. Even if you don't think any rich person's money will come down the line to me or you, if you've taken a high school economics class you should know that the only way to make money is with money (it's called capital... hence "capitalism). So if the rich suddenly have less money to do business with (due to taxes), then they are going to make far less money.

"Well, we could just inflate the dollar. It worked for Japan in the 80s." Yeah until they hit a worse recession in the 90s. Inflating the dollar also only works for domestic debt, and does nothing to help us with the debt we have accumulating in China right now. Our best option is to start the budget from scratch. Piss off a lot of old people, pro-military people, environmentalists, students, and unions and find out what we need, what's bleeding us dry, and what can be cut.

We need defenses, but the costs can be scaled back with more realistic estimates and better contract bids.
We need to conserve our resources on this planet, but we also need to realize that humans aren't going to give up what they already have; therefore, let's give government subsidies to companies that have shown they can produce a worthwhile energy, and no more of this let's pay you for your idea bullcrap. I'm sick of seeing that we're paying some guy who says he can make fuel out of pig feces, when we know we can produce energy from nuclear reactions.
Education is important, but let's face it, not everyone deserves to be in college. We've all seen the kid that's failed the same class four times and is still pursuing the same major. It's a surreal feeling to find out you're not cut out for something, but it's also not helping our country to provide government grants to every single person who graduates from high school.
The unions were formed with good intentions, like just about everything in this world. But when did a gathering of people hoping to improve work standards suddenly turn into its own entity? The unions no longer work for the workers, they work for themselves. Everything is just a front so that they can line their own pockets off government subsidies, and therefore they need to be greatly scaled back or cut off completely.
And finally, we come to the old people. This is a difficult one, as we all know someone older who most likely uses Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. But these three programs account for a vast plurality of the budget, and as the baby boomer generation enters retirement, these programs are projected to either skyrocket are debt to even greater levels or bust completely in a way far worse than the housing bubble of 2008. Therefore it is necessary to completely dissolve all three programs, freeing up massive amount of budget space, and in turn allow some of the larger corporations (like Walmart) to enter the pharmaceutical market in an attempt to drive drug costs down. If these three programs ceased to exist, it would be more money in the pockets of all employees, and more capital on the books for the businesses.

So, sorry about the tirade for something that started out criticizing Al Franken for being a constitutional hypocrite (see above). Sometimes I just gotta let these things out.