Why education is the foundation of fairness

Two things have led me to write this entry. A few weeks ago I was viewing world demographic data for my economics and the environment class. I was appalled that the best rate of 8th grade "mathematical proficiency" in any of the United States was about 50%. Fifty percent. Half of the students in 8th grade in this "great nation," which provides and requires education of all children, are not proficient in math.

The second thing was my indoor triathlon today. Most of you know I am a cyclist. On a bike, you pedal at the highest cadence (RPM) you can comfortably manage in the highest gear you can comfortably manage it. This translates to power(watts), which translates to moving you a distance per unit time. So if I pedal 100rpm in 6th gear, I work harder (generate more power) and I go farther in 1 hr than if I pedal 100rpm in 5th gear. Apparently this is not the case on a stationary bike. For purposes of calculating distance on a stationary bike 100rpm in 5th gear= 100rpm in 6th gear=100rpm in nth gear. Unfortunately I didn't know this until 10 mins into the 20 minute bike segment. I had spent the first half of the segment maximizing my wattage, when I should have been maximizing my rpms. I burned myself out doing 200 watts at 100 rpm, when everyone else was doing 100 watts at 140 rpms -- hence "going farther" than me.

So this has led me to reflect on the importance of understanding the rules and context in which you operate, and how not knowing them places you at a disadvantage relative to those who are in the know. This disadvantage translates to power inequities that allow the educated powerful to run roughshod over the uneducated. It allows multinational corporations to get Costa Ricans to rape their tropical rainforests to create banana plantations, because they'll get a few more dollars for working in a pesticide riddled landscape than they would nurturing their forest. It makes suicide bombers think that sacrificing their lives is the only way they can make an impact on the world. It lets leaders bully the masses and the masses in other countries cheer for wars to put down the bullies, when war only degrades us all.

Are we afraid that if we make education available to all, those who recieve it will realize how long they have been put down and seek revenge. It seems that those in power are reticent to relinquish the tiniest iota of it, but aren't those the very people we want to avoid having in power. Only by educating everyone will we be able to develop world leadership that is fair and uncorrupted.

The American Way, a poem

Crap+crap+marketing=
"Something you didn't know you needed"
Ka-ching!
Fuck the suckers.

A review of the movie Appaloosa

I love Ed Harris and appreciate a classic western, but this one didn't quite do it for me. It has great style, and in general a decent plot, but the dialogue was unconvincing and distracting. I didn't buy the idea that there would be a choosing-of-curtain-fabric discussion, or any other of the many relationship-type discussions that went on among the characters... it seemed very anachronistic. I also disliked Cole's quirk of asking "What word am I thinking of?" as at other times he was able to pull off quite elegant word choices. So overall, I enjoyed the acting by Harris and Mortensen, though Zellweger was even a little too tedious for the tedious character she played and found the dialog to be not-quirky-enough to be regarded as clever.

Cheers,
Audrey

Imitation is the sincerest form of crap

It seems like the past 10 or 20 or maybe even all of my life has been the period of taking perfectly good stuff and making it "better" (lower calorie, cheaper, easier to deal with) by making an imitation form of it.

I like to be annoyed

This is the conclusion I've reached after 40 years of being annoyed. It can't be that I randomly encounter an even level of crappiness throughout my day-to-day existence. Yet I always find that something is annoying. Today it is annoying that I have recently written things on Facebook, only to inadvertently delete them by navigating away from the page before saving or publishing. Or else that I spend colossal amounts of time on Facebook. Or the way that schools don't teach you how to learn, just how to squeak by, or the fact that we're going to run out of oil and kill off 90% of life on earth and no one gives a shit enough to stop going through the drive through at McDonalds and buying crap food in disposable dishes and cups because it's too "hard" to ride their bike to the store and buy some beans and mushrooms and asparagus or whatever happens to be in season and go home and fucking cook themselves a healthy meal.

So, I think I must get some endorphin fix out of being cranky, or else I'm justifiably cranky because know what's wrong most everything, and no one will listen to me.

Time to practice guitar and have a Frambozen.

Cheers,
Audrey