James D. Watson: The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
Gary Marcus: Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind
Bhante H. Gunaratana: Mindfulness in Plain English, Updated and Expanded Edition
Andrew Robinson: The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris
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I'm planning my next international trip and am leaning towards Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm is on the Swedish archipelago, a cluster over about 30,000 islands. Here's a cool video of the islands taken from a helicopter. Any advice regarding this trip is most welcome.
Update: Apparently Sweden is the first country to open an embassy in Second Life. Their forward-thinking attitude is one of the reasons I'm attracted to the country.
I just finished reading The Assault on Reason and have a few thoughts to share. Although I think that Al Gore is right that the current pathetic state of "news" on TV is partly to blame for the current woes of America, I think that there is a far bigger cause: the erosion of the Constitution.
Here's why:
The founding fathers understood very well that no matter how good or well-intentioned a particular president or political party may seem, basic human weaknesses like greed, jealousy, close-mindedness or short-sightedness can lead a country to ruin. So they decided to run the US with "a government of laws, not men", which meant that the country had to uniformly abide by its laws regardless of which particular group of people were in power. They wrote the US constitution hoping that its initial set of laws would protect the country from some of the worst excesses the founders had seen in other governments.
Unfortunately, their plan has gone wrong and we are currently experiencing some of the results.
In my opinion, the single most devastating misinterpretation of the constitution is regarding Article 1, Section 8, which says:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
When the founding fathers wrote this paragraph, the phrase "general welfare of the United States" meant that the federal goverment would assist individual states in a time of natural disaster or domestic violence. It did not mean providing welfare for the average citizen.
If you don't believe me, read this article, which not only supplies a dictionary definition of the phrase for the time the constitution was written, but also includes a copy of a letter by James Madison, the President of the United States, vetoing a bill to spend federal money on road systems because it would violate the US constitution.
The effect of misintepreting this single phrase has led to a huge expansion of the federal government, which continues to grow and consume more tax dollars as it finds more ways to "provide for general welfare". The government then uses this tax money to buy votes through campaign promises, channel money into special interests, and force its ideology onto states via the threat of withholding federal funds.
The main point here is that the founding fathers knew the problems associated with unchecked federal government growth, and specifically protected the country against it by limiting the power of the federal government in Article 1, section 8. Unfortunately, the DNA of the country has been badly damaged and now the founding fathers worst fears are coming true.
I don't know if it's possible to repair such profound damage to the nation's DNA. It would be great if someone like Ron Paul was elected to become president, because he's the one candidate that stands out as truly understanding and respecting the original constitution.
For fans of Ron Paul, here a couple of interesting statistics:
Ron Paul has a vibrant and growing following on the Internet; I sincerely hope that the major networks take note and allow him to grow his TV audience. The concern of course is that most "news" shows are run by puppets that dance on strings for their masters; that's why well-informed people these days tend to use the Internet find out what's really going on.
In a previous lifetime I taught Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. One of the classes that I taught a lot was UNIX. Towards the end of my university career I lamented that when I stopped teaching UNIX, all of my experience in that subject would effectively be lost. To prevent this, I decided to capture my knowledge as a book, which was eventually published by Prentice Hall. However, writing that book was a mammoth project that consumed most of my free time for over a year; I doubt whether I would attempt something like again.
These days, there are much better ways for a teacher to capture their experience that don't require nearly as much time and energy. For example, a teacher can upload a presentation, video, experiment, quiz or project that focuses on just a single topic in a subject. They can also upload a learning sequence that they find to be effective.
In my own case, this capability would have allowed me to upload, say, a sequence that I found was most effective to teach UNIX, a few good projects, and some of my best presentations. Each would be tagged with information about the particular aspect of UNIX that it explained. This material could then be used by other teachers and "mashed up" to form the basis of alternative UNIX classes.
As the technology for uploading and organizing educational materials improves, I think we'll see a lot more teachers contributing small, bite-sized chunks of knowledge that can be reused to form larger, coherent learning pathways. Some teachers will contribute pictures, videos and snippets of text. Other teachers will sequence these pieces into lessons and units. Other teachers will sequence lessons and units into courses. This way, each person spends a relatively small amount of time on his/her speciality, but the net result is quite sophisticated.
One of the most common questions I'm asked is: why would anyone want to contribute to such a system? My own response is from personal experience; I got into education because I love to teach and share my knowledge with others. I didn't write my book for the money, I wrote it because I hated to see my accumulated knowlege of UNIX go to waste. I bet there a bunch of other teachers who feel the same way. It will only take a tiny fraction of teachers to contribute the best of their knowledge to create a free community education system that eclipses anything that's currently available.
I just got back from the opening night of the Police Tour in Vancouver; it was awesome! All members of the band were in fine form and they seemed to really enjoy being back on the road together.
If you're interested, here's the playlist:
Imagine you just joined a booming new company as a director. The company is led by a superb CEO, a person of vision, intelligence and integrity. The company is growing fast and admired by the community, even its competitors. You're proud to be a part of such a forward-thinking and pace-setting organization.
As the years go by, some changes start to happen. First, a VP is replaced. Then another. Then the CEO resigns and another person takes the role. The new CEO's initial speeches are very charismatic and forceful, but over time you notice that they are more rhetoric than substance. At the same time, you hear rumors that people are being promoted to VP status based more on their allegiance to the CEO than on their credentials. This deeply troubles you, but the CEO paints a rosy picture in company meetings and you try to brush away any doubts you had.
Another year passes and there is no question; the company is not doing as well as it used to. The CEO assures everyone that there is nothing to fear and that it's just the result of short-term market forces. But the words coming out of the mouths of the VPs do nothing to bolster your spirits; they seem empty, devoid of sincerity and truth, full of bluster and support for the CEO.
You eventually build up the courage to discuss the situation with your boss, who was recently promoted from under you by a friend of the CEO. When you mention that the company is off course and heading for trouble, your boss bristles at the suggestion and recommends that you quit unless you "get with the program". You have many financial obligations so you decide that it's best to keep quiet and ride out the storm.
During this time, you have many conversations with other junior and senior employees. You notice a curious trend. The rank and file tend to keep their heads down and try to ignore the situation. They're living from paycheck to paycheck and assume that things will eventually get better. Indeed, for their own sanity it's hard for them to imagine otherwise.
The senior staff, however, are more mobile and could find another job if they chose to. However, many of them have significant stock and are being offered financial incentives in the form of promotions and bonuses to stay with the company. They figure that it's better to milk the company for all it's worth before it inevitably falls into a steep decline as a result of its leadership and poor execution.
The above scenario happens all the time in industry; a once-great company starts to fall into decline and upper management stays around to suck the company dry before it implodes. I sincerely hope that the same scenario is not taking place in the USA, but the ongoing concentration of wealth suggests otherwise.
I recently saw Al Gore introduce his latest book The Assault on Reason, which attempts to explain why America seems to have lost its ability to make reasonable decisions about important matters. One of the points he makes very strongly is that the blame rests on the entire population, not just on a particular person or political party.
I think that one factor is a weakening of the average person's mental tools for making reasonable decisions. In the same way that vaccinations are used to protect people against a particular disease, I think that mental vaccinations can be used to protect people against irrational thought.
A mental vaccination could be introduced by adding the following kinds of topics into schools as a separate subject called something like "How to make good decisions":
There are some people who would benefit from having a more rational population, and others who would be harmed by it. It will be interesting to see which way the pendulum swings.
If you want to watch something truly awe-inspiring, check out this animation of the James Webb Telescope. This is the kind of thing that shows how great humans can be when we actually use our brains.
For fun; here's a recent picture of me and my green friend at NASA:
Destiny is my science fiction movie about the future of humanity. It's an epic, similar in breadth and scope to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
To see the 18 minute video, click on the graphic below.
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