Thoughts on “The Underground History of American Education”

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In my previous post, I linked to John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education. I did note that I hadn’t actually gotten around to reading it, though.

So, I decided, now’s as good a time as any to start reading it. And, I thought I’d remark on what I was reading. I’m going to jump around a lot, though.

This is going to be a long wall of text, just like my last post. So, everything’s after the break. Continue reading “Thoughts on “The Underground History of American Education””

Interesting video on education, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it

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So, I noticed that Jeri Ellsworth tweeted a link to a video from Dr. Tae, a “skateboarder, videographer, scientist, and teacher,” with his point of view on education, what’s wrong with it, and what can be done to fix it.


http://vimeo.com/5513063

I was going to use Twitter to mention my thoughts about this video, but then I thought, I’ve got a whole lot more thoughts than would fit in 140 characters, and this would be more appropriate for a blog entry. Because this is such a long post, I’ll continue after the jump. Continue reading “Interesting video on education, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it”

A simple hypothesis about society, and why there’s so many problems nowadays

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I’ll just come right out with my hypothesis: As the number of people involved in a system increases, the odds of that system failing increase.

Why, though?

Here’s what I’ve seen that leads up to that hypothesis.

The first thing to look at is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is when small, competing systems form within a larger system, and those competing systems get in the way of each other, when they should be working together towards a common goal. Bureaucratic systems evolve due to specialization – which is usually a good thing – one person can’t control everything in a large system, so other people have to specialize in it. The problem is, get enough people, and then you’re split into different teams that don’t work closely together. At that point, they’re actively competing against each other, and they’re having to cover their asses against one another – the spirit of working to further a cause goes away, and instead self-preservation is the name of the game.

This happens in companies, non-profit organizations, and governments. Continue reading “A simple hypothesis about society, and why there’s so many problems nowadays”

Why Apple is evil: FTC investigating both iAd and app approval practices

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When it rains, it pours.

I’ve already covered that the US Department of Justice is investigating Apple for their practices in the online music and video sales markets, and that the Federal Trade Commission and the DoJ are deciding who gets to investigate Apple for their practices with iAd.

But now, it seems that the FTC is investigating Apple both for their iAd practices, and for their restrictions on how applications are written.

Source: Ars Technica

Why Apple is evil: Political cartoons aren’t allowed, they might offend someone

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Never mind that you can get to this sort of thing on Safari… apparently political cartoons aren’t allowed on the iPhone.

Ridiculing public figures being defamatory? What ever happened to parody? Also, being public figures, IIRC, the level for whether the speech is defamatory is higher.

Now, one thing I’ll say… this would be a non-issue, of Apple deciding they don’t want to distribute it, if Apple allowed external software. But, Apple has control over what runs on the iPhone completely.

Yes, they are reversing their decision on this app, but only because of the public backlash. This is actually a good sign – public backlash against their actions, such as this series of blog entries, makes them respond. But, they’re obviously willing to do something if they think they can get away with it.

Source: Slashdot

Big Media wants to put spyware on your computer. Do something about it.

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The RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations want to install spyware to monitor your files, and use federal law enforcement agencies (PDF) to protect their revenue stream.

They don’t add value, they add cost, to benefit themselves, at the detriment of the artists that make the music, movies, and TV shows that you like. Problem is, people are beginning to realize this, and they don’t want to give up their dying business model – it works quite well for them. So, they’re buying laws to force people to keep paying them.

Sure, these laws won’t pass, they’re insane, but a watered down version, that looks sane in comparison, but is still quite insane, will likely be voted on, and passed. The politicians are in Big Media’s pockets.

So, what to do?

The answer is to take Big Media down.

Most people aren’t aware of what Big Media is doing, and I believe that if they were enlightened, they would at least reduce their content consumption, if not directly fight Big Media altogether.

The best way to make them aware? Get right out in front of them. Sure, the news media won’t pay attention, they’re part of Big Media as well. But, that’s not what will get people’s attention, anyway.

Big Media can’t stop people from picketing concerts and movie releases, as long as a place to do it without being on the concert venue or the movie theater’s property is available. So, picket. Organized protests around the nation. Get a group of people together, get a protest permit if it’s needed (PLEASE look up your local laws before doing this,) and picket, whenever a major concert occurs, or whenever there’s a movie release. Come up with catchy slogans that get the point across that Big Media wants to keep things locked up forever, they want to scan what’s on your computer to make sure that it’s all paid for (multiple times, in some cases,) they want to destroy fair use, and they want to sue you. Come up with a website with a short, easy to remember URL, to point people to.

Promote independent media – in fact, an interesting idea for a protest would be to have local independent performers perform at the protest, as an alternative concert. Pay them well, though. Entertain the people you’re trying to get this message out to, and they might just be more receptive.

If you think this is a good idea, reply to this. If you think this is a bad idea, reply to this. If you want to get started, definitely reply to this.

Why there’s so much backlash against healthcare reform in the US

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I don’t often blog about politics here, but I’ve noticed a lot of people from outside the US not understanding why there’s so much popular opposition to the healthcare reform bill that has been passed, citing that they have universal healthcare in their country, and it’s great, and it’s about time we entered the modern era, and sometimes socialism is good. So, I decided to post my views on it.

IMO, there’s legitimate reasons for not wanting this.

The first thing I have to say is, this isn’t socialism. Socialism is when the government provides the funding for healthcare for everyone. What this is, is government-mandated use of (commercial) health insurance.

We’re still paying the same people, and they’ll now be forced to provide coverage, but it’s still the same system as we’ve had before, essentially. Same corruption, same fighting people every step of the way on service, same systemic flaws that are designed to siphon money out of everyone in the system for insurance companies to profit on treatments instead of cures, or even unnecessary treatments. Almost every complaint that applies to our current system applies to the new system.

Now, there’s legitimate reasons for us to oppose real socialized medicine, too.

Our government has a very long history of failing miserably at its attempts at socialized medicine, Medicare (for the elderly) and Medicaid (for low income patients.) They’re running into massive deficits, with no signs of recovery, and the quality of service isn’t very good (partially due to that.) Of course, Medicaid is being expanded as part of this, with no signs of further income sources for it.

Myself, I’m undecided on it. Socialized medicine has worked for quite a few other countries, and corporate medicine is really quite terrible, but on the flipside, the US’s experiments in socialized medicine have been very, very miserable failures.

That’s all, I just thought I’d write something up to explain that.

Idea for promoting fossil fuel conservation…

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I’ve posted this on a few different forums for quite a while now, but I’m blogging it here now.

Various schemes have been proposed, some of which have been implemented. These include taxing gasoline to the sky, taxing cars for fuel use, and similar ideas. These schemes all have issues, though.

My idea is a bit more creative. Directly taxing the fuel has the most impact, but also the most opposition. So, my idea is a variation on that theory.

With my idea, a $1/gal (note: that number is just an example, like all numbers in this entry. Plug your own numbers in) petroleum tax would be applied to all petroleum-based fuels. Simple gas tax, right?

Wrong.

At the same time, I would provide a tax break to counter this tax. I’d set a fuel consumption target that the average citizen would have to meet – let’s say, 15,000 miles at 30 MPG, or 500 gallons – to get the tax completely countered. And, how would this work? Across the board $500 tax refund for all taxpayers.

Here’s the advantage of this system over the other systems. For someone who meets that target, they will ultimately pay $0 more. However, for someone who beats that target – let’s say they drive 10,000 miles getting 40 MPG, or 250 gallons… they’ll MAKE $250. And, for someone who doesn’t use petroleum-based fuels at all? $500 in that person’s pocket.

So, this system promotes alternatives to driving, or driving less, or driving more fuel efficient cars, very flexibly (unlike a scheme like CAFE,) while not excessively penalizing for normal consumption. I think it’s the best of all worlds.

What do you say?