Dr. Atul Gawande get coached

I keep my eye open for writing by Atul Gawande.  He has three books and many articles.  The most recent one I saw was in the New Yorker.  Dr. Gawande is an excellent writer and focuses on worthwhile themes.  This September one is on coaching, that is, having a coach for whatever you do and want to do better.  Gawande is also a professor of medicine but most importantly, he is a surgeon.  Surgeons seem to be the physical powerhouses of medicine, those who can concentrate and perform delicate, complex operations that may stretch over many hours.

His New Yorker article is not only of interest because of who wrote it and what it is about but because it relates to teaching.  The main steps in getting certified as an approved teacher in the K-12 schools are taking courses and student teaching.  In the latter, the student is somewhat of an apprentice in the classroom of an experienced teacher.  In many teaching positions, observers may watch one's teaching and note items they think could be improved.  So, having a professional coach is part of both beginning and some advanced teaching.  

Gawande explains in quite clear terms the difficulties of including a coach in something like a surgical operation where there has typically been none.  Actors and singers often make use of coaches but a coach for a surgeon is a new thing.  He reports his patient did not seem especially comforted to hear that her surgeon has a coach standing by.  We have life coaches and sports coaches.  We don't expect that even professionals will be beyond benefiting from having a coach.  It may be the coming thing and indeed lead to better performances and less burnout.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

George's sore throat

George had a sore throat .  He was sixty-seven at the time.  He was a pivotal figure in our country, being our first president.  He had already participated in many important historical events and the infection was not to be allowed to hurt the man.  His physicians knew that blood-letting was a fundamental treatment for nearly all diseases.  Washington asked to be bled heavily and he was, 1.7 liters of blood.  That is about 30% of his blood.  He died shortly after.

In the late 1800's and early 1900's, much better more effective approaches to treating infections were developed and blood-letting was stopped, even though it has been practiced for more than 2000 years in many parts of the world.  

Fast forward to this week's Time magazine.  It includes an article on the growing dissatisfaction with the federal law called No Child Left Behind.  I figured national unhappiness with the law would grow, in part because of the law's requirement that all children in all grades be at "grade level" by 2014.  I suspect that without murdering or deporting many children, such an achievement is impossible. Besides if we did achieve that situation, we might well come to conclude sometime, that we did more harm than good.

Most of the educators I know have been frustrated and annoyed by the law.  They feel it is too simplistic and too heavy-handed.  Which brings up the age-old split between the toughies and the softies.  The toughies generally feel that life is tough and we must all be tough to live life.  Chin up!  Shoulder to the wheel! No fear!  No weakness!  The softies generally feel that there is strength and ability in everyone but it is best nurtured by gentleness and love.  More caring!  More pleasantry!  Way more compliments and emphasis on strengths!

In today's world, it is easy to see that education, knowledge and skills are extremely valuable.  Americans tend to go up and down with emphasis on schooling, since we keep hearing that we aren't doing well but that we must if we want to live well.  I predict that by the year 3012, we will be clearer about how to educate well for both national and individual prosperity and happiness.  Maybe it won't happen until 4012, but it probably will someday.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

web site blackout day

Today is web-blackout day as part of an effort to highlight the SOPA/PIPA bill in Congress. I urge you  to note the situation and decide what you think about it.  I am not a scholar on the subjects of intellectual property or the Bill of Rights.  I think copyright rights are basic and should be protected and at the same time, I believe in widespread freedom of speech.

You may want to take a look at www.google.com today.  Here is what seems to me to be a good piece on the problem, rationally written in a balanced way.
http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/digital-content/232500002

We will see what develops.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Sitting is the new smoking

The AARP Bulletin has a headline for this article that says "Sitting is the New Smoking".  It says that evidence is accumulating that sitting too much is bad for your health, even if you exercise regularly.  

It is difficult to avoid too much sitting.  We habitually sit to eat, to drive, to converse.  My dean noticed the problem years ago and stood at her computer.  My office is such that I can put my laptop on a bookshelf and my mouse and keyboard on inverted banker's boxes.  It works out quite nicely.  I have found that my painful back does not come to visit if I don't sit too much.  Too much for me = more than 20 or 25 minutes at a time.  Even when I read aloud, I set a timer to get up and move.  I don't do that for tv watching and I find myself sitting too long.  The nasty thing about is that I only find out that it was too long the next morning when I start to get out of bed.  

I suspect that long bouts of standing more or less still will prove to be less than helpful, too.  For some, a "treadmill desk" may be helpful.  See this web site: http://www.treadmill-desk.com/

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Writing from me to me

I have been interested in parts of my mind that I don't know.  I read Vedantam's book, tried Herbert's, have settled into Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves.  I read erratically here and there and keep only a few notes and highlights in my Kindle or in Google Docs.  I have had the idea that I have a purpose and a goal but it is just now becoming clear to me that Wilson's Strangers and his more recent Re-direct form the beginning of a clearer picture of my unconscious.  Wilson cites research that shows the value of private writing to oneself with the aim of mentioning honestly what one thinks about matters of concern.

Wilson cites research and evidence that serious mental trauma has been found to be overcome better with four nightly sessions of private writing on one's own than intensive 3 or 4 hour sessions with expert debriefing psychologists. In fact, the effective writing approach to quieting the upset mind using private writing helped quite effectively while the intensive interviews were found to increase the trauma. The intensive interviews, part of a process called Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, were held as soon after the disturbing event as possible and are part of the standard procedure for many police and fire departments.  The writing sessions are only advised if, after a few weeks, the incident is, in fact, haunting the mind of the person who experienced it.  

Meanwhile, in other sources, the subject of writing to oneself has plenty of respect.  The book Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner emphasizes the fun and value of private writing.

This kind of writing is easy. There's no one standing over your shoulder judging your grammar or punctuation or determining if anything you've said makes a lick of sense. But make no mistake, the practice of pouring your soul onto paper is profound, and, in the way of all things, profound, it can—and will—change your life.

Conner, Janet (2011-03-01). Writing Down Your Soul (p. 8). Conari Press. Kindle Edition.

The book Instant Self-hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair ($1.75 in Kindle format, immediately readable on your computer, Kindle or smart phone) says:

In a literate society, we often overlook the impact that writing down our thoughts, desires, and aspirations has on us. Writing is very powerful because it requires attention to our own words and ideas. It forces us to focus on what it is that we need to express. When we read, we are usually expressing someone else's ideas and thoughts even if they are congruent with our own. When we write, however, the source is always coming from inside us and our individual motivations. And because we see what we're writing as we write it, a boomerang-like effect takes place. It reflects thoughts back into our minds and further imbeds ideas or suggestions contained in the writing. It also forces us to organize our thoughts to a greater or lesser extent.

Blair, Forbes Robbins (2004-03-01). Instant Self-Hypnosis: How to Hypnotize Yourself with Your Eyes Open (p. 144). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.



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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Waking up

With no evidence other than my experience, I divide people into those who awaken gradually and those who do so abruptly.  I suspect that people may get along better if they can at least sometimes use the same awakening style as each other.  

All my life, I have felt strongly that full, deep sleep is important.  As a 5th grade teacher, I felt that having a good sleep was the single best preparation for the day that a student could have.  I realize that not everyone can manage good sleeping conditions but they do matter.  So, when possible, I like to let everyone, including me, wake up naturally, on their own, without an alarm clock.  I used an alarm for years so I would be on time and I have nothing against them.  But, to me, it is better if I wake up on my own five or ten minutes before it is set to go off.  

That means that if someone is sleeping late, I like to be so quiet that I am not the cause of their wake-up.  I doubt if is ever possible to be completely certain what sounds might lead the ears to signal the brain to come out of it but I like to try being very quiet.  Very quietly putting my foot down and then slowly and gently putting my weight on that foot.  My biggest difficulties are the sound of flushing toilets and running water.  Our coffee-maker is quiet to use but the smell of coffee can awaken sleepers, too. For some sleepers, light itself can awaken, even though the eyes are closed.

Technology has helped.  I like to turn my modem off at night but I have it plugged into a remote control switch that allows me to turn it on from the other end of the house. Similarly, we have a lamp that can be turned on when one of us is awake to signal that noise is ok.  It too can be turned on remotely.

I have read that for most of the time there have been people, they tended to sleep in a mass.  I picture a litter of puppies asleep in a box in various states of body overlap.  A friend introduced me to the interesting book The Head Trip by Jeff Warren, about all the various ways we can be conscious.  That book elicited pictures of people living before candles or electric light bulbs.  Most of time, adult humans can't sleep as much as the hours of darkness there are each day.  Thus, people typically awoke in the midst of their sleep, became quite awake, and worked on small tasks or simply stared for a while, before resuming sleep. That pattern meant more than one waking up each night.


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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Trio: poop, work, text messages

Poop

There is a lot to say about poop.  Yes, human excrement.  The best book I know on the subject from a social point of view is The Big Necessity by Rose George.  The title refers to a toilet, which will have more respect from you after you look at the book.

The Tao of Poop by Vivian Glyck is about the more challenging aspects of raising a baby.  An acquaintance of mine wondered about her ability to face a dirty diaper when she was younger.  Now, many dirties later, she is fully acquainted and unafraid of a little poop.

If we lose control of our bowels, we will probably feel embarrassed and like we are babies again.  Control of our elimination of body waste is one of the primary signs that we are grown-ups and civilized, as opposed to being animals.  

Work

The application of computers, communication and digitization has changed and continues to change many aspects of our lives.  I saw a talk on the web the other day that said we are now in a time when we have flying computers (modern airliners, drones), computers who operate surgically on people, computers that send out movies in streams.

When Napster came along and people exchanged files of their sound tracks, that had a big effect on the music recording business.  When the digital camera came along, it has had a big effect on photography and firms such as Eastman Kodak.  (Kodak just filed for bankruptcy.)

Just as albums can be separated into sound tracks, many jobs can be separated into sub-parts.  Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a web site that allows small jobs to be assigned to those willing to accept them and earn money for completing them.  The article by PC magazine lists 20 sites on the web they feel are good ones for seeking a job.  I read several years ago about a man living in Latvia or one of the Baltic republics who earned a good living, not from the local economy but from Elance (like 'freelance", catch-as-catch-can job acceptance).

Text messages

People can get email on smartphones and they can get text messages.  What's the difference?  In some ways, not much.  Because of the small keyboards and modified keys that stand for multiple symbols on some phones, there is a strong tradition of communicating any way one can.  Similarly, text messages carry no voice quality, only symbols and are cheaper.  Indeed, free in some parts of the world.  Thus, "u" instead of "you" and things like "how r u?" for How are you?  

I keep advocating that people try Google Voice, which does both voice and text but I have had little success.  I have never used the free service for voice but I do all my texting through it.  It gives me access to texting on my computer keyboard, allows my inexpensive Tracfone to signal me that I have received a text and allows me to forward such messages to Lynn or others.

I am impressed by friends who are nearly instantaneous at responding to a text message sent to their phone but rarely pay attention to their email.  Teen-agers are especially like to be more responsive to texts, which are short and to the point.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Being in the cloud these days

Our friend got a new computer.  She found that she was not clear about what a USB connection was but when her friend wanted to share some pictures via a USB thumb drive, her old computer had not USB slot on it.  The friend said that the computer must be quite old.  So, she got a new one.

There was a time when PERSONAL computing meant something along the lines of writing (word-processing), math and accounting (spreadsheet) and filing (simple databases).  My wife bought me the package called "Appleworks" in 1984.  I wanted it very much because I had seen an article about those three activities and I wanted to be able to do them.  Notice that version of computing does not involve other people, email, connections between computers or anything called "the internet".  

These days, if a computer isn't connected to the internet, it feels more or less useless.  It can do the three activities of writing, math and accounts and filing in stand-alone mode with the right programs (often called "applications") on it but there is no Google, no blogging, no news or weather, no checking your own bank funds, no Facebook.  Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google are three companies with plenty of reputation, staff, ideas, energy and money.  One of the attractions these companies face is more interaction and more business flowing to, and through, them, by greater use of their own computers.  They can achieve that increase if they offer some of the capacity of their zillions of computers (and specialized computers called "servers") for storage of people's files.

A common term for "somewhere on the internet" or "somewhere in company X's computer capacity" these days is "in the cloud".  I am composing this post on a (word-processing) form supplied free by the Google company in its Google Docs section (docs.google.com).  I advocate using Google Docs since it is free and ubiquitous.  I can get back to this composition from any computer that is hooked to the internet.  The web page form that makes what looks like a page is build to save my typing frequently.  I don't know where it saves the little electronic blips that make up my message and I don't care, so long as I can get it back when I want it.  That's cloud computing and it is rather nice.

Because so many capabiliites are available on the internet, it has been increasingly attractive to make a specialized computer that does nothing much but connected to the internet.  Some tablets are more or less that way.  An alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office "suite" of programs is OpenOffice.  For my money, it is still worth having Microsoft Word and Excel on my computer for when I want them and I want them every day.  Both are terrific tools but there are many free alternatives these days.  They might not be quite as good in some ways but they are very handy to try and to know about.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Event, duration, dose

Human attention is fundamental to living.  What we notice, deliberately or automatically, is most of our experience.  In fact, our bodies are built to bring to our notice things we should probably pay attention to.  Big bills, aches and pains, lovable people, arresting sights - all come to our attention without effort.  Taking a moment to be grateful for the good things, nearly always far more numerous than we have time to count, is not so automatic but still important and feasible. As with our breathing, attention can be directed purposely but also without conscious intention by our wiring.

When planning our day, our routine, we may have certain commitments and intentions.  Many of those will involve events, tasks to be done, things that can be checked off once accomplished.  For such events, we don't have much of a measure.  We either went to the bank or we didn't.  But some events do have a duration or dose connected to them.  How much money should we deposit?  How long should we walk?  Still, later, we can either check off that we withdrew $67.19 or we did not.  We either walked for 30 minutes or we didn't.

The difference between checking off that we walked and recording how far or how long is the difference between event recording and measurement recording.  Events are probabilistic and discontinuous, either happened or not.  Measures are continuous, smoothly flowing and answer "How much?"

One of my sources of inspiration and insight has been Dr. W.E. Deming.  This colorful man took ideas associated with the theory and logic of manufacturing, many invented by Walter Shewhart and related to work by Joseph Juran and carried them forward in imaginative and exciting ways. He was creative but possessed solid common sense.  I learned from him to be quite suspicious of numbers, especially in rules and directives.  A very large portion of the time, any number in a rule or directive is not necessarily the best one.  Often, little or no research has been done on the number and it may be out of date, too high, too low or just plain wrong.

My sturdy friend has warned me that in some cases, even a short time or a small amount can upset metabolism or plans disproportionately.  I am fascinated by the effect of a much smaller dose or shorter duration of many things in my life.  I use the rule of thumb to lift a weight 8 to 15 times.  But, I know that lifting 1 to 3 times will have an effect, too.  It may take longer to achieve a strength goal but I will improve.  

I believe many people make false assumptions about serving size.  They tend to say that if three bites of excellent steak are good, 9 bites would be better.  I believe that we frequently underestimate the value to ourselves of the event's occurrence and overestimate the pleasure associated with a given "dosage" of steak, meditation, exercise, reading something difficult.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Big hit from mystery author

Dalya Alberge writes in Britain's The Guardian:

(Here is a link to the whole article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/08/hawthorn-tree-zhang-yimou-ai-mi)

A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director. Some publishers even bought it before reading a translation. Yet none of the publishers, translators or editors knows the author's identity.

Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong's last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a "politically questionable family" who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised.

In a publishing world where an author's identity is often more important than their talent, it is striking that publishers as far afield as Italy, Norway, Brazil and Israel have responded to the writing alone. Lennie Goodings of Virago bought it without knowing a word of Chinese – and was relieved to discover that it lived up to her expectations when she commissioned an English translation. She said: "It's a beautiful love story, almost like a Romeo and Juliet. It has that real simplicity about people trying to love each other across class. [Set] against the Cultural Revolution, it shows the startlingly intimate reach of politics in that period [which] even affects – and infects – their love."

Goodings asked someone from Shanghai who works in Virago's accounts department to read it: "Her face fell and she said, 'I'm not interested in the Cultural Revolution. It's my parents' generation.' The next day she was at my shoulder, eyes brimming, saying 'it's so wonderful and I cried'. On the basis of that, I bought it blind." Although the original blog was serialised on a website that was blocked by the Chinese authorities, an admirer had passed it to one of China's state-affiliated publishers, which has been overwhelmed by its sales.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Danica McKellar ("Winnie" in "The Wonder Years")

I like to find a tv series that I enjoy.  It is even better if the episodes are 30 minutes, which often means that after the series has aged, the episodes are about 24 minutes without the ads.  So, streaming "The Wonder Years" from Amazon just fits the bill.  If a man over 70 can enjoy a show about the trials of being a 7th grade boy, it has to be well-written.  It is well-written.

Kevin is in the 7th grade in 1968.  I remember my own 7th grade in fits and starts.  But I certainly remember feeling as Kevin does about girls.  My thoughts were more carnal that Kevin's are depicted but when we come in the story to the subject of Winnie, I am quite in tune with the show, made in the 1988-1993 period.

The other day, I came across a tv interview of the actress who plays Winnie on the show.  She is Danica McKellar, now married with two children of her own.

Winnie reminds me of a real 7th grader that I knew from the 6th grade, which in the US, is quite different.  Grade 6 was the highest grade in a school that ran from kindergarten and grade 1 through the 6th.  After 6th grade, the trip to school was longer and the school was much grander.  In the 6th grade, you are the oldest kids in the school, the top of the heap.  In the 7th grade, you were the youngest, the newbies.

McKellar, (a.k.a. Mrs. Mike Verta), is an interesting example of the world today.  When I see her playing the quiet girl on The Wonder Years, I would not expect that girl to grow up to be something of a pin-up queen.  But take a look.  Then, when I realize she is a vibrant beauty, I wouldn't expect her to be one of three mathematicians after whom a mathematical theorem is named.  It is shocking to my stereotypes that such a quiet 7th grade sort of beauty grew up to be a sex kitten, a vibrant young mother and a high-level mathematician.  But then, I find that she is the author of three New York Times Bestsellers urging girls to shine in math!

How can that be?  How can one woman be all those things and more?  Time, talent and new thinking in my little mind.  There are always twists and surprises in life.  One that gives me a kick is that Danica's professor, the one with whom she and another woman developed the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem, owned no tv and was not a viewer.  So, he had no idea who "Winnie" was and probably didn't care.  

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Dr. Kelly Mcgonigal and increased willpower

I learned about Dr. Kelly Mcgonigal quite by accident.  I like to listen to something in my car, an audiobook or a Great Course.  I've had several on the shelf for a year or more and have been slowly going through them.  I still have quite a few, plus several in my iPod. It is fun and stimulating.  By the way (texters write 'BTW'), just as many libraries are loaning books electronically onto computers and e-readers, they are also loaning audiobooks onto the same tools.

Anyhow, it is when I finish a book or a course, that I have to start working: searching, browsing, exploring and re-examining what we already have.  It is not only a matter of what I have a taste for but also of what subjects are on my mind.  You know, which-way-is-the-universe-guiding-me sort of thing.  I don't want to threaten my well-being by searching my iPod while driving and when I get to my destination, I don't think of remaining in the car to search through what I have on it.  So, one thing and another, I am in limbo for a while, searching and deciding.  

Lynn emphasizes the value of Wisconsin Public Radio and listens often.  It is just one of the amazing resources available to people these days.  We often catch Dr. Zorba Paster, a physician and Dr. Patricia McConnell, a veterinarian and dog specialist, even when far away if we can pick up the signal.  Just as Lynn says, the many planners and hosts, as well as the regulars, are expert at finding excellent topics and people who know about them.  When I do listen to books and courses while driving, I often wonder what I am missing on the radio.  I restrain myself from switching to check, but as men with tv remotes demonstrate, it isn't easy.

I had not heard of The Peoples Pharmacy show but that was playing when I tuned in.  Dr. Kelly Mcgonical was the guest talking about how to increase willpower.  Like quite a few others, I was just deciding on trying, for the nth time, to lose some weight.  She gave some good hints and mentioned a class she teaches for her local community on willpower and what science has to say about it.  She and others I have read recently say that evidence exists that our willpower can get fatigued, so that after resisting several temptations, we are more likely to give in to something.

One tip was to give myself mental points each time I resisted something I am trying to avoid.  Show myself that I am putting 'money in my account', so to speak.  That has definitely been helpful.

She mentioned the same two pillars of health and happy living I have found repeatedly in many different fields and with many different thinkers: exercise and meditation.  Anybody who pays attention to those two areas gets some of my attention right off.  Eventually, I will get my fill of them but not yet.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

It's nice to have ape relatives to watch

It's nice to have the ape relatives because their behavior in the wild gives us a bit of a baseline against which to compare ourselves.  As we move into an age of machines and symbols, some of our difficulties stem from still being ape-ish in this different world.  Here, we want to remember, decode, be self-aware and have self-insight and be aware of others and their ways, too.  There are similarities and differences between our goals and the goals we were built to accomplish.  With patience and imagination, we can probably do just fine in this connected, computerized world but it is indeed a bit different from searching for food in the wild.

Even the last 50 to 20 thousand years were spent as hunter-gatherers, not as lab technicians, help desk workers or web page coders.  The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is reported by the BBC to have enrolled in a class on coding for web pages.  The BBC has a related article, "Coding: The New Latin".  These highly symbolic activities are not the hunting, eating, mating and sleeping that we animals were built for.  True, we have found a way to live longer and with more ease.  But when we have troubles with our motivation, our tempers, our interpersonal and intrapersonal relations, it could be our basic wiring that is part of the problem.

The modern geneticists say that the similarity of our genetic information and that of the chimpanzees is very great.  We don't need to worry.  Language, writing, commerce and modern plumbing and electricity are ours and we aren't going to lose them.  Still, it is thought-provoking to see how much is identical.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Right enough today but maybe not tomorrow

I had the following note to myself relating to my graduate school experience of studying psychology:

Our determination to avoid falling into error was itself the cause of our falling into error: the behaviorists as an example of scrupulous effort of be scientific and not fall into mere language and myth that leads us astray.

When I was growing up, I almost never heard the word 'liberal', especially not related to US politics.  Even when I was eleven years old, I was primed to hear the word because my church minister, Dr. Waldemar Argow, had written a book called "What do religious liberals believe?" I knew the book and gave a short presentation to my Unitarian Sunday school on it.  

Then, maybe 20 or 30 years later, "liberal" became a word snarled by some politicians who wanted support from those who yearned for order and dependability in life.  The word sometimes had a dirty or despised aura among some people.  I had had training and experience with rigorously-held belief systems and knew that sometimes people cling to beliefs and want to stay away for those with different beliefs and from those who question.  Even as a youngster, I felt that the question mark was my "shield and buckler ", my motto, my charm, my talisman.  Being male, I understood competition, even though I rarely won anything, but I was used to be on the other side.  I didn't balk at the role but I noted that "liberal" was even more on the outs among some.

In graduate psychology classes, we usually heard that we were among "experimental psychologists".  I wondered why the adjective.  I found that another label of "clinical psychologists" was applied to those I had heard of, those who sit with someone with a mental or emotional problem and try to help them.  But this latter group was the one I was interested in as a teacher and education doctoral student.

Over time and with meditation experience and aging, I have more respect and sympathy with those who adhere tightly (or think they do) to a plan or a scheme or a set of principles.  Still, it is clear that we humans pay a price for a strict plan.  Statisticians often say that most things are linear in the short run.  They mean that a straight line - a nice simple model - is often a good model of a complex curve that wiggles this way and that IF a short enough segment of the curve is modeled.  Just a different way of saying that most things get more complex or go haywire eventually.

So, now behaviorism (very strict adherence to the dictum that we don't try to understand anything much about people other than what we can observe them DO) is seen as limited and not so valuable an approach.  

Teachers try to understand people but that is not the main goal.  The goal is to have students learn, mature, develop, flourish.  Teachers will use all sorts of approaches to make those things happen.



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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

More fluid knowledge these days

Sometimes, people who have had plenty of education and have read many books, tend to think that life is about explanation. I have been like that most of my life.  When I was six or so, I got my first library card in the large and impressive Enoch Pratt Free Library main branch in downtown Baltimore.  Much of typical schooling involves knowing about books and written, documented explanations.  While students are in college, they tend to get the idea that the way to learn is to take a course.  

College students training to be teachers naturally have their minds on teaching activities that will increase understanding of ideas and principles that are part of necessary adult knowledge.  So, when I ask them how many credits the President has in president-ship, it sometimes takes them a second to realize the answer is "None."  

Whether it is getting elected to public office, landing a good job, having a good marriage, it is much easier to remember what happened along the way that to explain how one succeeded or failed, what the "errors" or the reasons one did all right.  Much is written these days about changes in handling knowledge, the first one being the Google search engine and related changes in knowledge construction and handling.  We used to learn that this one or that one was a great leader or thinker while those others weren't very good.  We used to learn things that we were supposed to know.  

We still do, of course, but there are changes.  It is more likely now that the first thing we do when considering Grover Cleveland or the Aztec civilization, is to look for CURRENT thinking on the subject.  New information gets uncovered, new ways of analyzing old information, new syntheses of this view and those facts emerge quickly and sometimes stand old views on their head.  

The book "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger has such a powerful and radical message that, as often happens, with totally new ideas, it is a little difficult at first to grasp what he is saying.  Still, he shows that the habit many of us learned in school when thinking and searching is often obsolete now.  Interested in Grover Cleveland?  Let's see - he was a president so look in the president section.

Nowadays, we have a search window that can look everywhere very quickly and bring back results from all the sections.  We have found that no matter how we organize our knowledge, there are other ways we could have done it.  Modern methods often enable us not only to find all mentions of Grover and his colleagues, enemies, hobbies, etc. but we get very speedy access to all the sources without moving from the keyboard.  No hauling, no elevators up and down.  We can copy relevant sections or construct a link to them on the spot. 

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Kindle, schmindle

(For those who have no current interest in Kindle or related matters -

If you are looking for something of interest, try my blog page itself since it is fed the latest posts from a variety of interesting blogs on diverse subjects: http://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/.  Alternatively, there are dozens of other profitable ways to spend your time.)

There is more about the Kindle that didn't get mentioned.
Reading is usually thought of as a solitary activity and of course, it is.  Still, somebody wrote what you read and somebody contributed to getting to you so that is two other people already.  If you aren't in the mood to be with others, you can read by yourself.  To increase your pleasure, note powerful sentences.  Highlighting them and sharing the set from a book with others, either by yourself or more publicly can increase your grasp of the book, your own thinking, and that of others.

The Kindle sound abilities.  It can read text aloud in a computer-generated voice (that isn't too bad, as such things go these days.)  It can contain and play music and audio books.  

Much of the time, Kindle books are cheaper than paper.  However, this is changing.  With the proper equipment, the eformat is handier than paper.  So, more people want it, raising the demand.  You know what's next.  The price rises.  It is easy to find instances now of the price for eformat being higher than paper.

A related topic is that of sharing an account.  If I buy a book, I can read it my Kindle but my wife can read it on hers.  Either of us can read the book on either of our computers.  One copy open in four places at once.

No Kindle?  No problem.  You can install free Kindle software on your computer, buy Kindle books at often-better prices than paper, get them on your computer instantly and read them there.  If you get a Kindle later, you can see all the purchased books there.  If you have access to a computer connected to the internet but no permission or ability to install software there, you can open the Amazon Cloud reader in a free browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and read your books there.

If you really want to pay 99 cents a month for this blog of mine, you can have it delivered daily to your Kindle instead of getting it free on the internet.  I actually pay that fee so a bedridden friend with no interest or ability or equipment to use a computer can get the blog daily.  He sometimes actually reads it.  Many blogs, newspapers and magazines are available on the Kindle.  I get The Atlantic, which I started for the experience of a periodical on the Kindle but now look forward to getting it.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety