The Wisdom of Bill Watterson

I was going through some of my old Calvin and Hobbes comic books, and I was amazed that as I have developed with more and deeper ways of looking at things, I was able to see more and more genius in the work of Bill Watterson. Today, I would like to focus on one strip I recently read. While I cannot find an image, nor scan it, I hope a simple transcript will suffice.

Hobbes: I can't believe there's a magazine for gum chewers.
Calvin: Heck, there must be a dozen such magazines.
Calvin: Each appeals to a different faction. "Chewing" is a high-gloss, literate and sophisticated. "Gum Action" goes for the gonzo chewers. "Chewers Illustrated" aim at vintage gum collectors, and so on!
Calvin: Each one encourages you to think that you belong to an elite clique, so advertisers can appeal to your ego and get you to cultivate an image that sets you apart from the crowd. It's the divide and conquer trick.
Hobbes: I wonder whatever happened to the melting pot.
Calvin: There's no money in it.

There isn't much I can say about Watterson' genius in this strip, let alone his entire works. Everything works in this dialogue. He has the reference to another "magazine" as an intro. He has Calvin give an excellent description of how marketing and sales works in America in regards to his magazine. He then even makes a connection to an overarching idea of how America has, one could say, deteriorated ethically.So, I guess you can say ol' Bill has done all of my work for me.

What I do want to do is expand on some of the crucial questions that were brought up in the cartoon. Has financial incentives become the driving force of the American market? Or, perhaps more appropriately, hasn't it always been? While it may seem rudimentary to point out that marketing  is founded upon sales, but it seems to me that American's tend to  ignore or pass over the brute fact that marketing is a strategic game, in which the players will use any means necessary to win.

A need for iZoning Committees?

I was scanning headlines on the BBC's website when I came across this article. I am rather interested in the education system, and after being around the lab school on our excellent field trip to Chicago, I couldn't help but read the article. The article summarizes, for those of you too lazy to open a link, a new broad concept for adapting schools, in this instance New York's, for both advancing technology and also individual needs in school. With a French teacher in a public school for a mother, I have a good idea of how difficult a class can be without adequate time in the library or with computers, or if their is a special needs kid in the class. All of these factors people want to be addressed, and this new iZone idea is some sort of solution for these problems in New York public schools. But really, it would be best if you just read the article. Go on. Open the link. Good job.

Now that that's settled, I wanted to focus on one of the issues the plan is supposed to solve, that of individual needs. Brooke Jackson, a NYC lab school principle and promoter of the iZone, talked about the varying needs of different students.
 "We have students who are ready for graduate level work now - and we have students who will not make progress unless they're in a three to one staff situation."
It is this type of grouping, one based on learning styles, that will really help students.  But it is more than that. Arthur Vanderdeen, former head of innovation for New York's Department of Educcation, put it best by saying,
 "It's a wholesale rethinking of a school and its cultural mindset."
A rethinking designed to maximize student potential, without pushing them to far or providing openings for underachievement.

Of course, as with every new concept plan, there are some flaws in forms of practical implementation on a city scale. Standing out first, as always, is cost. It is pretty common knowledge that the more teachers a school has to hire, the more financial strain is put on that community. On an inner-city family, that strain might be too much, especially when Jackson calls a possible need for a 3-to-1 student teacher ratio. Also, the iZone concept calls for much more attention to technology use, which is one of the most expensive ways to put material into a student's hands. With maintenance, program purchases, etc., this would most definitely add up in cost.

In all,  I think the ideas brought to the table by the iZone idea are really neat and useful, but so far, it seems to me a practical and efficient method of using these  ideas has been developed yet. What do you think? Are these concepts good ones? Should the iZone concept be carried out?

Oakland: the next Wild, WIld West?

The Occupy Wall Street movement was the first to reach media publicity, and after that other 'Occupy' protests and marches followed.

For us in the Chicagoland area know the of the Occupy Chicago protest, one which held the same basic values of the Occupy Wall Street, and kept the same non-violence as its predecessor. Up until now, I have no problem with this kind of act. It is for the most part legal, people voicing their oppinion, and while I personally think that their demands and intentions are very hazy and poorly operated, I must still respect their actions. However, recent Occupy Oakland events have me startle. As I read in this BBC Article , what started as a fairly peaceful 'Occupy' initiative turned into what I would consider a full on riot.

As the article reports, "Protests on Wednesday were largely peaceful until around midnight local time, when some of the protesters reportedly set a barricade on fire."

However, the protesters did not stop there, BBC quoted reports  the police saying they gave the order to fire tear gas and bean bags "following repeated orders for the crowd to disperse" and in the face of "continued assaults by rocks, lit flares, roman candles and bottles" While no formal number was provided, the primary damage estimates were valued to be around one million. Also, human damages were also listed-around five protesters were hospitalized-including an Iraq War veteran.

While many public officials were upset with the protest-turned-riot in Oakland, other members of the 99% movement said they, too, were disapointed. Comments like, "I think it will allow detractors to criticise the movement," and, "It's messing with our movement," are not far from earshot.

I'm all for freedom to assemble and right to free speech, but when people take and abuse these priviledges and use them to incite harm and violence, no matter what they are saying, I'm not sure if I could ever support something like this incident. What do you think? Is there any justification for these actions? Did they take it too far?

UFC: Ethical? Part Two

The last post I made introduced the concept of why violent activities, in this case the  TV show UFC, become so popular throughout history, and in the United States. For those of you who have not read it, the main point I tried to make was that in a state that has a history of violence, that violence will be portrayed in recreational and media events. That being established, I wanted to dig deeper into this idea of commercialized, publicized fighting, and whether one can consider it ethical or not.

One of the first thoughts I had was to compare it to dog fighting, an extremely controversial activity, one that, for reasons I won't bother discussing now, I had already decided was unethical. Because of this, I began to draw conclusions that UFC would have to be immoral if dog fighting is, as they are both activities in which people watch things fight. Makes sense, right? However, as I  was looking at the similarities between the two, I couldn't help but regard the differences that I had not seen originally.
For one, UFC is more regulated. I'm no expert, but I do understand that the objective is not to kill your opponent, and there are many regulations to make sure that doesn't happen; the skill at which the combatants fight in UFC also work as a check, as both fighters will know what could possibly be lethal. Secondly, and mores strikingly, the fact that UFC is voluntary, and dog fighting is not (for the dogs, that is), had more of an impact on my judgement than anything else. A sense that volunteering justifies some actions is not isolated to this example.This idea can be seen in the military, as any outcry against military action is usually directed against drafting, while volunteers are typically considered heroes, serving their country.
The ethicality in volunteering for dangerous things, like the UFC, can easily be compared to another major part of American society:  football.
 With injury rates so high in proffesional football among other sports, it is almmost a garuantee that someone playing professionally will get hurt in his career. However, there is no opposition to football, and most regard the sport as completely moral. With this in mind, my comparison to dog fighting began to crumble. I realized that all of my remaining reasoned points indicated that despite some people's aggression towards the open violence that is Mixed Martial Arts, perhaps the history of violence that the United States possesses, if nothing else, justifies the common ethical views of the practice.

UFC: Ethical?

I'm not a fan of professional wrestling or fighting, but recently I was in a conversation with some friends where the subject was brought up. I have nothing against people who genuinely enjoy watching shows such as these, but I do wonder about the ethicalness of shows like UFC, and why they become popular.

I'll start with popularity, as it is the easiest of the two to explain. Watching people fight is something that has appeared in nearly every stage of human development. Perhaps the roman gladiators is the most frequently acknowledged example of this, and as such, I shall start there.

Roman Gladiators were more than just slaves forced to fight, they were athletes; they trained, conditioned, and sometimes offered themselves willingly for the life of a gladiator. The ones who were successful were often rewarded very well, and those who were not, well, let's just say they went out of commission for some time. But why was watching the fights so popular? The simple answer is that people were bored, and would do anything for entertainment, but I think it goes farther. I believe that because war was so common at the time, fighting, and learning about fighting, was embedded into the life all the populace, whether they had fighting experience themselves or not. This would mean that in a society in which war is a frequency, recreational fighting will occur as well. So why is UFC so popular in the US, we are a peace loving democratic society? Right? Not quite. When you think about it, the country was created and formed upon a war, and there have been very few times in which the United States have not been in some sort of conflict. With the warring history of the United States in mind, it makes sense that that same passion or enthusiasm for fighting would appear in the  country's populace.

Chemical Castration?

I recently heard that Russia's parliament has a new bill in proposal, one that allows for chemical castration. reaching for more information, I found this article, that will provide a little bit more clarity to the bill's purpose and extent. http://rt.com/news/pedophilia-russia-chemical-castration-059/. Criminal Punishment is a subject that has many subcategories, none of which I will ever be capable of completely addressing; but what I am willing to do is share some thoughts on this particular bill.

The logic behind the bill is simple, if a sexual offender is known, then removing the, shall we say, chemical natures of desire, then the recidivism rates must drop significantly. The only problem is deciding if the ends justify the means. It would appear that Russia is in favor of the bill, but how would it hold up in America?

My belief is that senate and congress would not be able to pass such a law. I don't know about Russia, but the United States has an amendment  that deals directly with this sort of problem, and it has a very clear answer. No. Furthermore, media would be all over this with coverage, and organizations would come out in protest in such mass, using the constitution as their foundation, that congress and senate would in know way be able to cleanly pass such a bill.

What do you think about this bill? Would it pass? Should it pass?

Moonwalking with Einstein

During the summer, I read the most fascinating book I have ever laid eyes upon. Joshua Foer, having been assigned an article on the US Memory Championships began taking a personal interest in the subject upon meeting a pair of European World Memory Champions. Long story short, Foer took apprenticeship to these to Grand Masters and ended up winning the US Memory Championship in 2006. This is non-fiction. While the book is incredibly interesting, and I must show nothing less than utter encouragement for whoever might be reading this to buy and enjoy the book, I would like to take this time and talk about Memory's place in society today. If you read the book, or see me tell you right know, the tricks for improving your memory are nothing more than that, tricks. Little more than a few techniques are needed to put yourself at a national level as far as memory goes. However, as simple as these tricks actually are, I had never even heard of them prior to reading Foer's book, and I am certain that you never have either. This is especially true for the younger generations, as older generations tended to have some form of education for memory, so I've been told. So why is it that, if these techniques are so simple, they aren't being implemented and stressed in school. I can speak from experience that in the little time since I've read the book and from the little effort I've put into improving my memory, studying vocabulary for french or biomes for Biology has never been easier. A large portion of institutionalized education is just memorization, making sure we know the facts that have been necessary to learn, and simple improvements to the way in which students study could make a huge difference on the way the American educations system performs. While I know little in the way in which the American educations committees and boards work, I can tell you that improvement is not too far away.

misdirection in haze

On the anniversary of the tragic 9/11attacks, we think about just that, the attacks. However, we often fail to acknowledge the aftermath and impact of the events. Since the fateful attack, the U.S. has openly and aggressively started occupation in both Iraq and Afghanistan. What has to be said for this is somewhere near one million deaths in Iraq since the first invasion, at most, and a threefold increase in Taliban foot soldiers in Afghanistan. Moreover, as of 2008, the U.S. has suffered more than 72,000 battlefield casualties since 2001. On the other hand, we have also dethroned Saddam Hussein, preventing yet another million deaths of his own civilians in addition to his tyrannical rule, Provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan have opened schools, hospitals and even helped with farming projects. And even those these things are still going on, on the ten year anniversary of 9/11 people practically turn their shoulders these matters, and focus on the opening of the ground zero memorial. What does this actually say about how Americans are viewing the transcending effects of the attack? To me, I see people turning toward the gaping hole, literally, that was the terrorist attack on the trade towers.

 I hate to be the one to talk negatively about what has been done, I really do, but I feel that the way in which American people transformed our memory of the tragic event into physical form is non-favorable, to say the least. The memorial, as seen to the right, while aesthetically decent, think about the larger message is holds. It is, to be blunt, a hole in the ground where one of the world's tallest building stood. As I said earlier, wouldn't it be better to move more productively on wards  and not leave a permanent reminder of the damage the attacks inflicted. If you look at other memorials such as the ones in D.C., there aren't any that  visually display a permanent wound in The United Sates. Take, for example, the

WW2 monument  to the left. it consist off a multitude of pillars and towers in a circle, a very unifying shape, raised on a small hill. None of the structural evidence shows any sort of real damage and hindrance to the American people. Yet, for the 9/11 memorial, we show no signs of rebuilding or moving on, just the permanent  damage from a significantly smaller, not unimportant, but smaller event.

People choose, and the media tells us to, remember the sorrow the attacks brought, and it is because of this that we won't be able to move on. If people really wanted to 'show them' how strong of a nation we are, it is about time we choose more productive ways of remembrance, rebuild the towers even taller, show real compassion for what has been done because of the attacks, and whether we agree on the righteousness of the post-9/11 measures, we must acknowledge their presence as the real effect of 9/11. Why do we as a people remember things in a particular way, and interpret their importance in a certain light? While I do not have all the answers, I invite you to ponder the points that were made during our misdirection in haze.

Deceptions in Haste

Speed is a good thing, in many ways. But sometimes, it can corrupt our otherwise worthwhile judgement. Human beings have, in the modern world, evolved to process information thrust in front of us without due process. While this tendency for speediness can be, in many ways, a good thing, lets first look at a great example of our hastiness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg This fascinating video expertly shows how in or attempts to come to a conclusion, in this case, good directions and continuing on with our lives, we fail to see even some of the most blaring truths change in front of our eyes. A quick overview of the video would say that people are not aware of their surroundings, this only furthers my claim, as there is certainly more that we can obtain from the video. Why I think the people in the video hardly noticed the swap is because people tend to be objective driven, or, to put it  another way, care most only for arriving to a conclusion. In watching it again, or if you saw it the first time, I hope that you would have acknowledged that, after being asked for directions, the people looked almost instantly down at the map or away in the direction of Darren Brown's "destination". To me, this lack of eye contact and the immediate commencement of the direction finding show hard determination. To not try to find out who is asking for directions, but instead try to find the directions as quick as possible, illustrates the objective based mindset that practically every person asked for help had. The fact that the average person could actually be so mindless shows us of a very unnerving  vulnerability that neither you or I are ever fully aware of.