Month: October 2015

School Girl Roughed Up, Blame Her

News broke last week of an high schooler being thrown out of our seat in class by a law enforcement officer. Let’s get some of the facts out of the way. Her is a link to the story on NPR with an embedded YouTube video.

The high school girl is black. The officer in question is a white sheriff. Now let’s look at the few other facts. The girl was being disruptive and rude. She was on her cell phone and was asked repeatedly by several school officials before the sheriff showed up.

There are a number of heated discussion about this issue. Some say that had this been a white teenager, she would never have been tossed from her chair. That might be true, I might even go so far as to say, that is probably 80% likely to had a different outcome had it been a white student.

However, that is not all to be consider.

Let start at why this event even occurred. Had that student listened and not be disrupted to being with, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Sure, we all make mistakes, but we have to accept when we push that boundary too far. She might have had some legitimate reason for being upset and being on our phone. But we don’t get to be rude and disrupted because we have some personal problem. We have to also consider others around us. That student was being unfair to the other students and not only was she selfish, since she wasn’t even considering what is good for her.

I make no excuse for how she was handled. The sheriff should have not allowed his emotion, be it anger or irritation or anything else, to get in the way of treating someone with respect.

If I could, I would put that kid on some kind of punishment. Something severe, but not expulsion, to make a point that disrupted behavior will not be tolerated. She shouldn’t be expelled because that becomes someone else’s problem. We can’t shuffle kids around.

Economics Policies And Their Effect

I have been reading a book recently that I have to recommend to anyone who would listen. I have even gone so far as buying a few copies for family members. The book is called ‘Economix: How Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t Work), in Words and Pictures‘.

A few words should be emphasized in the title, works, doesn’t, words, and pictures. You see, this book is an adult graphic novel. In that it is like a comic book, hence the name ‘Economix’, a play on comic book. And what this book aims to do, quite successfully in my opinion, is illustrate the birth of economics and how economics policies over the years have direct effect on your life.

It shows how different economic ideas, can either push the country’s or increasingly the world’s economy forward to great things or backward. That is how it works or doesn’t work part of the book. But that is not the whole story, being that is a graphic novel, it presents these very serious ideas or otherwise difficult concepts in easy to understand pictures and words.

I live economics, not love it to take classes or even buy an economics book. But this book is really not a boring treatise of economics, it tries to be unbiased in how it present the past 400 hundred years of economics from around the world. But most of the focus will be on the United States of America. Even so, this book really is for everyone, regardless of where you live.

If you are remotely curious about how government and businesses spend money, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. If you live near me, I won’t mind lending you mind. Because I know once you read it, you will want a copy for yourself. At about $13 for the paperback copy, it should be on bookshelf.

Mind Blown – Alien Communciation

I was watching some top ten list video on YouTube recently. I don’t remember exactly what the name of the video is, but it was about planets we have discovered. They mentioned on planet that had an Earth Index of 0.88. Earth Index is a way of categorizing a planet’s likeness to Earth. So a planet that is exactly like Earth would have an Earth Index of 1.0.

The other interesting tidbit from the video was that we had sent a message in the direction of that planet. This is not the first time I have heard that we have sent message out into space or place them on spacecrafts like Voyager I and II. You can learn more about Voyager I and II here.

That was pretty cool in itself that we have found a planet that is out there, very far to be sure, but still with such likeness to Earth. But how to you send a message you know an intelligent alien life form would understand? So this question was at the back of my mind and you can see the messages we have included on Voyager I and II at the site above.

A few days later, after watching this video, I was at a customer site and saw that engineers at one company was playing the game ‘Hang Man’ with engineers at another company. There were two building separated by a parking lot, and each building were for different companies. Up on the third or forth floor, the engineer were playing this game on the glass of the buildings side facing each other. We can reasonable assume that those engineers have never met, didn’t just meet somewhere and planned playing this game, but yet they were.

So it is obvious, without knowing the specifics in this case, that communication or some for of it, can be established between intelligent beings. I was discussing this idea with a friend on how you can establish this communication. Assuming that instead of a parking lot separating the two buildings, the distance as much longer, like a mile apart. Engineers in each building, would have a mirror to reflect the Sun or a light they can use to shine to each other. Could the two group still communicate and establish some language that allows for the exchange of complex concepts. I think it is possible.

My buddy later sent this video that I found really exciting, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDrBIKOR01c.