As 2019 approaches, it's time for a new start. An African-American panelist discussing race relations in America observed the Civil Rights Movement offered a more promising starting point from which to consider future race relations than the era of slavery. Nelson Mandela emerged from apartheid and 28 years in prison in South Africa with the same idea. Basically, he asked, what is gained by doing the same thing to whites as they did to blacks, when blacks are in power?
When blacks gained power in neighboring Zimbabwe, the government ignored Mandela's advice, seized white farms, plunged the country's economy into a rapid decline, and left the population dependent on food aid to avoid starvation.
The point is, at the beginning of 2019, we are free to choose where we want to begin. There are some great starting points: the 10 Commandments, the U.S. Declaration of Independence's declaration that all men are created equal, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Beginning 2019 with this 70-year-old declaration in mind, countries could avoid pre-World War II conditions: genocide, refugee migrations, Middle East conflict, abortion, proliferation of weapons, human trafficking, squandering natural resources, and polluting the environment.
Happy New Year!
Friday, December 28, 2018
Friday, December 21, 2018
Let 'em Sleep, Let 'em Sleep, Let 'em Sleep
If a baby and an adolescent are home for the holidays, adults will find one gets up too early and the other too late.
Studies continue to show a teen's biological clock ticks sleeping and waking times very differently for older adults and younger children. When a teen is on vacation, see if he or she prefers to stay up closer to midnight and to sleep in later each morning. This finding caused the American Academy of Pediatrics to call on school districts to move start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.
In the U.S., the National Center for Education Statistics found only 17% of public middle and high schools now reflect this natural pattern of teen sleeping schedules even though later start times reduce tardiness and absences. Teachers report students are less groggy and are more likely to engage in active discussions and make fewer mistakes in lab sciences, consistent with negative findings that sleep deprivation undermines learning and retention of new information. In one study, students who began school with a later start time received final grades that were slightly higher than those who began their school days earlier.
Changing the start times of middle and high schools does create problems. Administrations have to reschedule extracurricular activities and bus routes for lower and upper grades. Families also need to adjust to adults and students leaving at different times. And students who work after school or take care of younger siblings also are affected.
The earlier post, "Sleep Deprived Test Scores," suggested moving standardized tests to later times could improve scores and would have less impact on everyday school schedules. The post, "Big Projects Combat Climate Change," claims classes may need to shift to night time to avoid the heat of the day.
Studies continue to show a teen's biological clock ticks sleeping and waking times very differently for older adults and younger children. When a teen is on vacation, see if he or she prefers to stay up closer to midnight and to sleep in later each morning. This finding caused the American Academy of Pediatrics to call on school districts to move start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.
In the U.S., the National Center for Education Statistics found only 17% of public middle and high schools now reflect this natural pattern of teen sleeping schedules even though later start times reduce tardiness and absences. Teachers report students are less groggy and are more likely to engage in active discussions and make fewer mistakes in lab sciences, consistent with negative findings that sleep deprivation undermines learning and retention of new information. In one study, students who began school with a later start time received final grades that were slightly higher than those who began their school days earlier.
Changing the start times of middle and high schools does create problems. Administrations have to reschedule extracurricular activities and bus routes for lower and upper grades. Families also need to adjust to adults and students leaving at different times. And students who work after school or take care of younger siblings also are affected.
The earlier post, "Sleep Deprived Test Scores," suggested moving standardized tests to later times could improve scores and would have less impact on everyday school schedules. The post, "Big Projects Combat Climate Change," claims classes may need to shift to night time to avoid the heat of the day.
Monday, December 17, 2018
The Congo Needs A Dec. 23 Miracle
Instead of a miracle, a suspicious fire destroyed voting materials and moved the December 23 election of a new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to December 30. Provisional results of the delayed election showed the surprise victory by Felix Tshisekedi, son of a deceased opposition leader popular in Kinshasa. Nonetheless, controversy surrounds his victory over Martin Fayulu, who was seen as a greater threat to former president Joseph Kabila's history of corruption and disregard for the rule of law. An NGO that fielded 40,000 election observers said their results showed former oil executive, Fayulu, had won, just as a pre-election survey also predicted.
Russia quickly recognized Tshisekedi as the Congo's new president while Martin Fayulu rejected the final election results as a deal engineered between Tshisekedi and Kabila. Many feared protests and violent repression would frustrate the hoped for calm transition.
The former Belgian Congo, nearly three times the size of Nigeria, has almost one million fewer people. On the surface, the 105,000 electronic voting tablets ordered from South Korea for 84,000 polling places created the appearance of a modern election process for the country's 40 million eligible voters. Concern that the tablets could be hacked prevented them from being hooked up for fast transmission of election results. Also, there was concern that the population, especially spread out beyond the Kinshasa capital, had little experience with technology, and unpaved roads and remote areas, only accessible by boats, motorbikes, or helicopters, prevented easy access to voting places.
Voters also have to contend with 100 rebel groups that terrorize the country. From Beni south to Butembo on the eastern border with Uganda, for example, the machete wielding Allied Democratic Forces and Mai Mai militia, who prevent health workers from vaccinating people threatened by the spreading Ebola virus, are not likely to facilitate passage for voters. At the polls, voting also may be prevented by the lack of electricity and charged batteries needed to power voting tablets.
Nothing about the Congo's history suggests a new president offers King Leopold II's former private colony relief from nearly 150 years of suffering that began with harvesting rubber under slavery conditions. Only a year into independence, its first president, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961. Next, General Joseph Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and used the Congo's uranium to become a Cold War player who amassed a private fortune with funds from East and West.
With the flight of Tutsis escaping genocide by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, fighting began spilling over into Zaire in 1994. Mobutu's opponent, General Laurent Kabila, seized the opportunity to recruit Tutsis and to lead rebels west toward Kinshasa. Mobutu fled into exile in 1997. Kabila seized control of the country, again named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ruled as a dictator until a bodyguard assassinated him in 2001.
Kabila's son, Joseph, took over the troubled country. In 2006, a new constitution limited a president's time in office to two, 5-year terms, and the UN oversaw a presidential election. In a runoff, Joseph Kabila, head of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), defeated a former Congolese vice president and rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. Benba was arrested for war crimes committed by his troops during fighting after the election. Kabila failed to step down as president when his term ended in 2016.
When the December 23, 2018 date finally was set for a new presidential election, Kabila's PPRD selected as its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister and the party's permanent secretary. Shadary, who has no powerful military or other political base of his own, was viewed as Kabila's puppet. In June, 2018, Bemba's war crimes conviction was overturned. He returned to a hero's welcome in August only to be barred from running for president due to a second charge. Another potential presidential challenger, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga's southern cobalt and copper mining province, was sentenced for property fraud and also barred from running for election and from returning to the Congo from Belgium.
Joseph Kabila is adept at eliminating his opposition. When the Catholic Church, which counts at least 40% of the Congo's population as members, began holding parades in support of December's election, police killed 18 marchers. Gaining popularity for any reason is a danger. After the Congo's Dr. Denis Mukwege won a Nobel peace prize in 2018, he narrowly escaped assassination.
Observers, both inside and outside the Congo, suspected Kabila was counting on votes split among the weak slate of presidential candidates, the potential for polling machine irregularities, and protests by Bemba, Katumbi, and others to cause violence that would invalidate the election and leave him as president. The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserve a better Christmas present: a president devoted to bringing them lasting peace and prosperity.
Russia quickly recognized Tshisekedi as the Congo's new president while Martin Fayulu rejected the final election results as a deal engineered between Tshisekedi and Kabila. Many feared protests and violent repression would frustrate the hoped for calm transition.
The former Belgian Congo, nearly three times the size of Nigeria, has almost one million fewer people. On the surface, the 105,000 electronic voting tablets ordered from South Korea for 84,000 polling places created the appearance of a modern election process for the country's 40 million eligible voters. Concern that the tablets could be hacked prevented them from being hooked up for fast transmission of election results. Also, there was concern that the population, especially spread out beyond the Kinshasa capital, had little experience with technology, and unpaved roads and remote areas, only accessible by boats, motorbikes, or helicopters, prevented easy access to voting places.
Voters also have to contend with 100 rebel groups that terrorize the country. From Beni south to Butembo on the eastern border with Uganda, for example, the machete wielding Allied Democratic Forces and Mai Mai militia, who prevent health workers from vaccinating people threatened by the spreading Ebola virus, are not likely to facilitate passage for voters. At the polls, voting also may be prevented by the lack of electricity and charged batteries needed to power voting tablets.
Nothing about the Congo's history suggests a new president offers King Leopold II's former private colony relief from nearly 150 years of suffering that began with harvesting rubber under slavery conditions. Only a year into independence, its first president, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961. Next, General Joseph Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and used the Congo's uranium to become a Cold War player who amassed a private fortune with funds from East and West.
With the flight of Tutsis escaping genocide by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, fighting began spilling over into Zaire in 1994. Mobutu's opponent, General Laurent Kabila, seized the opportunity to recruit Tutsis and to lead rebels west toward Kinshasa. Mobutu fled into exile in 1997. Kabila seized control of the country, again named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ruled as a dictator until a bodyguard assassinated him in 2001.
Kabila's son, Joseph, took over the troubled country. In 2006, a new constitution limited a president's time in office to two, 5-year terms, and the UN oversaw a presidential election. In a runoff, Joseph Kabila, head of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), defeated a former Congolese vice president and rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. Benba was arrested for war crimes committed by his troops during fighting after the election. Kabila failed to step down as president when his term ended in 2016.
When the December 23, 2018 date finally was set for a new presidential election, Kabila's PPRD selected as its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister and the party's permanent secretary. Shadary, who has no powerful military or other political base of his own, was viewed as Kabila's puppet. In June, 2018, Bemba's war crimes conviction was overturned. He returned to a hero's welcome in August only to be barred from running for president due to a second charge. Another potential presidential challenger, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga's southern cobalt and copper mining province, was sentenced for property fraud and also barred from running for election and from returning to the Congo from Belgium.
Joseph Kabila is adept at eliminating his opposition. When the Catholic Church, which counts at least 40% of the Congo's population as members, began holding parades in support of December's election, police killed 18 marchers. Gaining popularity for any reason is a danger. After the Congo's Dr. Denis Mukwege won a Nobel peace prize in 2018, he narrowly escaped assassination.
Observers, both inside and outside the Congo, suspected Kabila was counting on votes split among the weak slate of presidential candidates, the potential for polling machine irregularities, and protests by Bemba, Katumbi, and others to cause violence that would invalidate the election and leave him as president. The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserve a better Christmas present: a president devoted to bringing them lasting peace and prosperity.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Make Holiday Season the Best Time of the Year
It's important to make sure everyone enjoys the holiday season, since studies show it can be a very sad time for some folks.
Excited kids and adults who need to chill in what also can be a hectic season need to work on projects together. Making holiday cookies can be as easy as slicing and baking readymade sugar cookie dough from the grocery store or as complicated as mixing, rolling out dough, cutting shapes with cookie cutters, and frosting them.
Making a garland paper chain to trim a tree has become easier through the years. You still cut out red and green strips of construction paper, but connecting the loops of paper together has gone from using some kind of paste that slops all over to staples to a neat little 3M dispenser that rolls out glue on two sides.
One year my young daughter and I made scented pomanders by stuffing oranges full of whole cloves. We tried it unsuccessfully another year with limes that went bad and mushy before we finished, however.
Then, there are the potato prints you can use to make gift tags and wrapping paper. Cut a really large baking potato in half and use a star cookie cutter to press the shape into the smooth side of each potato half. Then, carefully cut away the part outside the star shape to make the star stand out. Pour poster paint: red, green, yellow, blue, or whatever colors you want to use, on two different saucers. Dip the potato star into the paint and stamp the design on heavy card stock to make gift tags (Cut the holiday cards you receive this year into usable pieces to use for gift tags next year.) or stamp the star shape all over plain tissue to make wrapping paper.
Germany is credited with originating the custom of having a live, decorated Christmas tree at home and in the public square. St. Francis of Assisi added the custom of including a Nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ child. St. Francis, who is associated with his love of animals, would be happy to see how sheep, cows, oxen, camels, and other animals often complete the manger scene.
Singing carols is a tradition in homes, churches, schools, and even in concerts where the audience sings along. Entertainers make holiday records and CDs and host seasonal music specials on TV.
St. Nicholas and Father Christmas make sure there are gifts and gift drives that bring joy to the naughty and nice alike. Presents might be placed under trees, in shoes, in hanging stockings (thanks to a custom from Holland), and in bins for the less fortunate at community centers, churches, libraries, and stores.
Presents come earlier in some countries and later in others. St. Nicholas can arrive December 6. Sweden celebrates St. Lucy Day on December 13. When days are about to become lighter, young daughters, dressed in white, wear a wreath of greens and lighted candles on their heads and carry trays of coffee and buns to family members. Elsewhere, shoes are filled with gifts from the Three Kings (Magi) on January 6.
Excited kids and adults who need to chill in what also can be a hectic season need to work on projects together. Making holiday cookies can be as easy as slicing and baking readymade sugar cookie dough from the grocery store or as complicated as mixing, rolling out dough, cutting shapes with cookie cutters, and frosting them.
Making a garland paper chain to trim a tree has become easier through the years. You still cut out red and green strips of construction paper, but connecting the loops of paper together has gone from using some kind of paste that slops all over to staples to a neat little 3M dispenser that rolls out glue on two sides.
One year my young daughter and I made scented pomanders by stuffing oranges full of whole cloves. We tried it unsuccessfully another year with limes that went bad and mushy before we finished, however.
Then, there are the potato prints you can use to make gift tags and wrapping paper. Cut a really large baking potato in half and use a star cookie cutter to press the shape into the smooth side of each potato half. Then, carefully cut away the part outside the star shape to make the star stand out. Pour poster paint: red, green, yellow, blue, or whatever colors you want to use, on two different saucers. Dip the potato star into the paint and stamp the design on heavy card stock to make gift tags (Cut the holiday cards you receive this year into usable pieces to use for gift tags next year.) or stamp the star shape all over plain tissue to make wrapping paper.
Germany is credited with originating the custom of having a live, decorated Christmas tree at home and in the public square. St. Francis of Assisi added the custom of including a Nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ child. St. Francis, who is associated with his love of animals, would be happy to see how sheep, cows, oxen, camels, and other animals often complete the manger scene.
Singing carols is a tradition in homes, churches, schools, and even in concerts where the audience sings along. Entertainers make holiday records and CDs and host seasonal music specials on TV.
St. Nicholas and Father Christmas make sure there are gifts and gift drives that bring joy to the naughty and nice alike. Presents might be placed under trees, in shoes, in hanging stockings (thanks to a custom from Holland), and in bins for the less fortunate at community centers, churches, libraries, and stores.
Presents come earlier in some countries and later in others. St. Nicholas can arrive December 6. Sweden celebrates St. Lucy Day on December 13. When days are about to become lighter, young daughters, dressed in white, wear a wreath of greens and lighted candles on their heads and carry trays of coffee and buns to family members. Elsewhere, shoes are filled with gifts from the Three Kings (Magi) on January 6.
What is the holiday season's best gift? Good will toward each other, of course.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
If You See Something, Say Something
Voters in the United States are learning more about the contacts between President Trump's administration and Russia. In Ben Macintyre's 2018 book, The Spy and the Traitor, they can learn what a country is capable of doing to its enemies:
- Gather and analyze information about enemies
- Recruit informants, agents, and double agents who are: lonely; hurt by fate or nature (they might be ugly or short); have inferiority complexes; crave power, influence, a promotion; need money; can be compromised/blackmailed
- Aid a spy's career by helping him or her rise to positions that provide greater access to information and to influence on polity decisions
- Infiltrate anti-government movements
- Deploy "illegals" who live as ordinary citizens in foreign countries, are more difficult to detect by counterintelligence investigation than spies under diplomatic or consular cover, and can be mobilized for any purpose
- Employ methods to avoid surveillance
- Create escape/exfiltration routes for a spy who is compromised
- Provide secret communication and copying equipment for spies
- Establish sites where secret information about where to meet or when can be signaled to spies in plain sight, such as by chalk marks on mailboxes or orange peels under park benches
- Establish secret dead drop sites for hiding messages or money without personal contact with spies
- Transfer information to spies during an undetected quick brush pass by another person
- Manipulate media to influence public opinion, create fake news, cultivate officials and opinion makers sympathetic to a cause
- Provide disinformation; create false evidence about foreign dangers, such as packages of arms labeled "Made in China"; provide inflammatory posters
- Forge documents and foreign currency
- Implement sabotage, supply arms
- Bug homes and offices
- Kidnap, drug, torture, kill
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Holiday Gift List for Modern Kids
Toy companies offer today's children a roster of robots almost from birth. Kids aged five and up can command Botley the Coding Robot to go around objects and to master an obstacle course. The MindWare company (mindware.com) provides easy-to-follow instructions that enable eight-year-olds to assemble and program robots operated by batteries, solar, hydraulic, or chemical power. Some robots from MindWare use artificial intelligence and infrared sensors. One climbs smooth surfaces using a suction system.
Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.
A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.
In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.
Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.
Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.
Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.
Rapidly advancing technology makes learning to read more important than ever. The best books to give young children are the ones adults enjoy reading to them over and over again. When my granddaughter was young, my favorite was Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. Keith Bellows does more than provide motivation to read about the world. In 100 Places That Can Change Your Child's Live, he describes tantalizing destinations, lists places to eat and stay, and even suggests the most worthwhile souvenirs to bring home.
A globe is the perfect gift companion to help children locate where they live and to plot a trip around the world. Globes also give kids a sense of distance and a sense of the correct size of continents. From home, would it take longer to get to the Arctic or to Africa? At the equator, land masses on two-dimensional maps appear accurate in size, but distortion increases away from the North and South poles. Greenland begins to look as large as Africa even though it is thirteen times smaller.
In a "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy once broke into a conversation the other kids were having about what gifts they wanted to say she wanted real estate. While a deed to several acres of real estate may be out of the question, giving children government bonds would give them a stake in their countries' futures. If an older child requests a smartphone, couple it with an index card listing three stocks and their trading prices on a day in December. Show him or her a smartphone can be used to keep track of stock prices not only to engage in social chatter.
Food commercials tempt kids to put down their smartphones and come to the table when there is something good to eat. Why not involve children in baking and cooking their own good eats? Gift them with recipes, pans, pots, and oven mitts to make their favorite cookies or pasta dishes. In the same vein, crafty adults might gift wrap lumber, a tool, and directions for making a picture frame or yarn, knitting needles, and directions for making a scarf.
Some organizations have found ways to involve children in their causes by matching contributions with rewards. For example, a portion of the price of every gift purchased from the UNICEF Market (unicefmarket.org/catalog) goes to deliver food, vaccines, mosquito nets, and other lifesaving supplies to children around the world. Presents of UNICEF games, puzzles and art materials not only are fun, but they also are a way for children to aid kids suffering in crisis areas. In the World Wildlife Foundation's catalog (wwfcatalog.org), potential donors find a wide variety of gift ideas for kids. One of the most popular World Wildlife programs, symbolic animal adoptions, couples a donation with a child's gift of a soft plush version of an adopted animal, ranging from a familiar elephant to an exotic blue-footed booby.
Finally, a $25 gift card from kiva.org introduces children to a form of venture capitalism. Using their card, they can choose the country, man or woman, and project they want to support. Computer updates inform them every time part of their loan is repaid. Holiday gifts can show modern kids it is both blessed to receive and to give.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
What Would Xi Do?
Today in China, President Xi Jinping expects his Thoughts to replace those of Confucius, Mao Zedong, Mohammed, and Jesus. But what are his Thoughts?
At last year's 19th Communist Party Congress, President Xi announced China entered a new era of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." Since then, many have tried to attach actionable meaning to President Xi's vague dictum. University professors lecture on the Chinese characteristics of socialism; party cells attempt to study a 355-page book on the subject; major companies, libraries, and community centers set aside space for Thought study.
Much to President Xi's annoyance, since Deng Xiaoping's 1978 emphasis on full tilt economic and scientific progress creeps into discussions, some claim "socialism with Chinese characteristics" really is "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." Maybe President Xi is a little jealous of Deng, who is glorified for beginning China's 40-year economic transformation, while he is left to stifle constitutional, democratic, and religious rumblings from Hong Kong to Tibet. Just to add to the confusion, one of Deng's sons, Deng Pufang, who was paralyzed when Maoist radicals threw him off a building during the Cultural Revolution, disagrees with the aggressive foreign policy and "world class" army Xi's Thought seems to espouse.
Judging from what is rewarded at China's universities, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects are consistent with the Thoughts of Xi. Students receive financial rewards for STEM papers published in the Scopius catalog of abstracts. Some oppose the tendency of students to play it safe with incremental research rather than aiming for breakthrough innovations, especially with meaningful engineering discoveries that advance modernization or with new social science theories about human behavior. In his new book, Blueprint, genetics psychologist, Robert Plomin, also exposes some of the defects in papers published in scientific journals. He observed researchers are tempted to report only the most novel results, the best story, even though their experiments did not gain the same results every time. In other words, results could not be replicated.
The Chinese Party definitely agrees with what Xi's Thought prohibits: 1) belief in universal values, such as human rights and freedom of speech and assembly, even though China's constitution allows these rights, 2) an independent judiciary free of government interference and open to public scrutiny, and 3) criticism of past Communist Party mistakes.
Recently, Western ambassadors, however, have not been reluctant to criticize the mass detentions and surveillance of Muslim Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang province. According to an article in the Financial Times, China uses facial recognition technology to track at least 2.5 million people in the province. Foreign reporters who recently visited the camps were shown those in detention happily singing in English. They also found Beijing's re-education strategy seemed to have reduced the Uighur Muslims' religious devotion.
At last year's 19th Communist Party Congress, President Xi announced China entered a new era of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." Since then, many have tried to attach actionable meaning to President Xi's vague dictum. University professors lecture on the Chinese characteristics of socialism; party cells attempt to study a 355-page book on the subject; major companies, libraries, and community centers set aside space for Thought study.
Much to President Xi's annoyance, since Deng Xiaoping's 1978 emphasis on full tilt economic and scientific progress creeps into discussions, some claim "socialism with Chinese characteristics" really is "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." Maybe President Xi is a little jealous of Deng, who is glorified for beginning China's 40-year economic transformation, while he is left to stifle constitutional, democratic, and religious rumblings from Hong Kong to Tibet. Just to add to the confusion, one of Deng's sons, Deng Pufang, who was paralyzed when Maoist radicals threw him off a building during the Cultural Revolution, disagrees with the aggressive foreign policy and "world class" army Xi's Thought seems to espouse.
Judging from what is rewarded at China's universities, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects are consistent with the Thoughts of Xi. Students receive financial rewards for STEM papers published in the Scopius catalog of abstracts. Some oppose the tendency of students to play it safe with incremental research rather than aiming for breakthrough innovations, especially with meaningful engineering discoveries that advance modernization or with new social science theories about human behavior. In his new book, Blueprint, genetics psychologist, Robert Plomin, also exposes some of the defects in papers published in scientific journals. He observed researchers are tempted to report only the most novel results, the best story, even though their experiments did not gain the same results every time. In other words, results could not be replicated.
The Chinese Party definitely agrees with what Xi's Thought prohibits: 1) belief in universal values, such as human rights and freedom of speech and assembly, even though China's constitution allows these rights, 2) an independent judiciary free of government interference and open to public scrutiny, and 3) criticism of past Communist Party mistakes.
Recently, Western ambassadors, however, have not been reluctant to criticize the mass detentions and surveillance of Muslim Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang province. According to an article in the Financial Times, China uses facial recognition technology to track at least 2.5 million people in the province. Foreign reporters who recently visited the camps were shown those in detention happily singing in English. They also found Beijing's re-education strategy seemed to have reduced the Uighur Muslims' religious devotion.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Examples of the Devil in the Details
In Indonesia, the Boeing 737 MAX's tragic loss of 189 lives illustrates how computerized directions prevented a pilot from executing the right decision. Pilots, unlike astronauts with access to mission control, apparently lack hotlines to aircraft manufacturers that could tell them to flip two switches when they experience the problem Indonesia's plane had. Already, suggestions note the missing detail of highlighting important information about new aircraft systems, such as the Boeing MAX has. These changes need to be written in the language most easily read by pilots, not always in English, and illustrated in a brochure or on a card separate from the aircraft's basic manual.
Bill Gates observed the detail that new medicines and vaccines invented in the lab do nothing to eliminate human suffering, if they lack a distribution system. I was reminded of the way I walked two blocks to a schoolyard where I received a drop of the polio vaccine on a sugar cube, a distribution system replaced by doctor's offices today. In Africa, where providing patients with medication that requires refrigeration was a problem, drones had to be enlisted to carry them to clinics in remote villages.
If there is no use for recycled plastic bottles and containers, why bother with the details of collecting them? A TV segment showed what looked like bales of "dirty" plastic stacked ten feet high at a recycling center. Could dirty plastic items be melted for use in 3D printers to make insulation and furniture for the homes 3D printers now construct from concrete?
China, once a customer for dirty plastic, now only buys pristine plastic with no labels or other irregularities such as moisture. Those requirements certainly leave out the plastic debris long boom arms collect from the ocean in what's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or "the blob" between California and Hawaii that forms the mass of warm water that seems to nourish the warm, dry winters that dehydrate forests along the northwest coast of North America.
Then, there are the new members of the U.S. Congress who want to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. First, they need to master the details of passing legislation..
Bill Gates observed the detail that new medicines and vaccines invented in the lab do nothing to eliminate human suffering, if they lack a distribution system. I was reminded of the way I walked two blocks to a schoolyard where I received a drop of the polio vaccine on a sugar cube, a distribution system replaced by doctor's offices today. In Africa, where providing patients with medication that requires refrigeration was a problem, drones had to be enlisted to carry them to clinics in remote villages.
If there is no use for recycled plastic bottles and containers, why bother with the details of collecting them? A TV segment showed what looked like bales of "dirty" plastic stacked ten feet high at a recycling center. Could dirty plastic items be melted for use in 3D printers to make insulation and furniture for the homes 3D printers now construct from concrete?
China, once a customer for dirty plastic, now only buys pristine plastic with no labels or other irregularities such as moisture. Those requirements certainly leave out the plastic debris long boom arms collect from the ocean in what's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or "the blob" between California and Hawaii that forms the mass of warm water that seems to nourish the warm, dry winters that dehydrate forests along the northwest coast of North America.
Then, there are the new members of the U.S. Congress who want to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. First, they need to master the details of passing legislation..
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Want to Reach Global Citizens?
Watch and reference what global citizens watch. Nielsen's research found 57% of adults aged 18 to 34 spend 11 hours a day on interactive social media. Trendwatching.com noted the Lisboeta hotel in Macau, China, and pop-up stores in New York City and Hollywood were using characters from a Japanese app in their decors. Emojis and other social media and app icons now join Disney characters as multi-format global presenters, especially in venues that attract tourists from around the world.
Since potential customers already are watching something on their smartphones, they are a captive audience for anything, such as merchandise, food, films, and concerts, associated with what they are seeing right in their hands.
The AFLAC insurance company has combined the traditional advertising art of creating recognizable characters, like Tony the Tiger, to connect customers to their brands with emojis from apps and social media. Working with the medical tech firm, Sproutel, AFLAC turned its recognizable duck into a companion for hospitalized children. Kids receiving chemotherapy can hook up their free ducks to IVs that demonstrate how that process works. In addition, when kids tap their ducks' chests with emoji discs, ducks act out feelings to show the medical staff and visitors if they are sad, happy, or about to cry or throw up.
Since potential customers already are watching something on their smartphones, they are a captive audience for anything, such as merchandise, food, films, and concerts, associated with what they are seeing right in their hands.
The AFLAC insurance company has combined the traditional advertising art of creating recognizable characters, like Tony the Tiger, to connect customers to their brands with emojis from apps and social media. Working with the medical tech firm, Sproutel, AFLAC turned its recognizable duck into a companion for hospitalized children. Kids receiving chemotherapy can hook up their free ducks to IVs that demonstrate how that process works. In addition, when kids tap their ducks' chests with emoji discs, ducks act out feelings to show the medical staff and visitors if they are sad, happy, or about to cry or throw up.
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Launch A Creative Career Search
I've been noticing job opportunities while reading magazines (and a book) in a variety of fields.
In November's Vogue magazine, editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, wrote about the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and awards to new American design talent. If you are a young designer in need of money, mentoring, and magic, look into the qualifications for the fund's competition.
Actually, all career hunters should get to know the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) now found at cfda.gov. This is a government listing of all the federal programs, services, and activities that assist the U.S. public.
Vogue's November issue also had an item about non-profit, New Story (newstorycharity.org/careers), founded by Alexandria Lafoi in San Francisco. This is the organization involved in using 3D printers to build low cost concrete homes in places, such as Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia.
The small print at the end of an article in The Economist (Nov. 17, 2018) invited promising and would-be journalists to apply for a three to six month internship in The Economist's New York bureau. To apply, send a cover letter and 500-word article on economics, business, or finance to:
deaneinternny@economist.com by December 14, 2018.
Large print in The Economist advertised for an "intellectually curious adventurer" with foreign language skills and a desire to live and work for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency abroad.
Isthmus, our free local paper in Madison, Wisconsin, runs ads for those interested in teaching English in China. Just use "teaching in China" as a keyword, and you will find a full array of information on that opportunity.
In the book I just read, Storming the Heavens, the author, Gerald Horne, wrote more than a description of the early aviation history of African Americans. His account inspires blacks and young people of all colors to follow the pioneering pilots who found career opportunities when they ventured to Africa. Those motivated to accept a similar challenge should get to know and benefit from the advice offered at facebook.com/smallstarter.
For positions back home in the U.S., check out promotion and sales positions in Advertising Age.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Are Kind Kids Cool?
Social media showed a young motor scooter rider risking his life to stop the traffic behind him in order to let an elderly woman with a cane cross a busy street.
Coty-owned cosmetic company, Rimmel, found a partner to help the one in four women aged 16 to 25 in ten countries who experienced cyberbullying and the nearly half of those who began harming themselves. While not a perfect solution, Rimmel began directing customers to the Cybersmile Foundation's website, which, according to trendwatching.com, guides users to local resources and organizations that offer help to those attacked by cyberbullies.
National Geographic's website claims helping others satisfies a basic human desire to feel good about oneself. At nationalgeographic.com/family/help-your-kid-make-world-better/, there are ideas for what children can do when they see others being bullied.
Japan, a country with one of the highest densities of robots in the world, 303 to 10,000 industrial employees according to The Economist magazine (Nov. 10, 2018), found robots do not satisfy customers in department stores, beauty salons, hotels, and restaurants.
Studies show robots could replace half of Japan's workers in 20 years. But will the driverless vehicles Japan plans to employ during the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics stop to help a lost tourist or a man with a walker who has fallen in the street? Social media reported bus drivers, without any prompting or promise of reward, performed both services in the last couple of weeks.
Are kids cool if they seek out and sit with lonely kids in school lunchrooms? (See the earlier post, "Overcome Lunch Table Loneliness.") They are to everyone in the world who ever has needed a little help and received it from a friend or stranger.
Coty-owned cosmetic company, Rimmel, found a partner to help the one in four women aged 16 to 25 in ten countries who experienced cyberbullying and the nearly half of those who began harming themselves. While not a perfect solution, Rimmel began directing customers to the Cybersmile Foundation's website, which, according to trendwatching.com, guides users to local resources and organizations that offer help to those attacked by cyberbullies.
National Geographic's website claims helping others satisfies a basic human desire to feel good about oneself. At nationalgeographic.com/family/help-your-kid-make-world-better/, there are ideas for what children can do when they see others being bullied.
Japan, a country with one of the highest densities of robots in the world, 303 to 10,000 industrial employees according to The Economist magazine (Nov. 10, 2018), found robots do not satisfy customers in department stores, beauty salons, hotels, and restaurants.
Studies show robots could replace half of Japan's workers in 20 years. But will the driverless vehicles Japan plans to employ during the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics stop to help a lost tourist or a man with a walker who has fallen in the street? Social media reported bus drivers, without any prompting or promise of reward, performed both services in the last couple of weeks.
Are kids cool if they seek out and sit with lonely kids in school lunchrooms? (See the earlier post, "Overcome Lunch Table Loneliness.") They are to everyone in the world who ever has needed a little help and received it from a friend or stranger.
Saturday, November 10, 2018
How Can Bananas Be 29 Cents a Pound?
You may have noticed Chiquita prints labels on bananas from Honduras over pink ribbons supporting breast cancer research. Possibly the company has seen research by Kantar Consulting in the UK. Kantar's Purpose 2020 study found "almost two-thirds of millennials and centennials...express a preference for brands that have a point of view and stand for something." Consultants went on to conclude consumers expect brands to use their social power for positive change.
Nowadays, the world has a wide variety of models that affect positive change. Religious missionaries and JFK's Peace Corps show how to bring education and skill training to impoverished areas. Experienced nongovernmental organizations rush water, food, and medical quick-fix support when earthquakes and other natural disasters strike, while international banks grant low-cost loans to finance the projects and equipment for long-term solutions. Foundations, universities, and major stockholders pressured South Africa to end apartheid by withdrawing investments from South African companies. Supermarket shoppers lent their economic power to Cesar Chavez's campaign to better conditions for lettuce pickers.
The mothers, children, and other relatives walking, riding, and floating north to escape violence and poverty in Central America crave positive social change. According to ethicalconsumer.org, United Fruit, now Chiquita, and Standard Fruit, now Dole, came to Central America in the 1890s, because fertile land and government corruption provided excellent conditions for their banana businesses. In time, grocery chains habitually began to use bananas as loss leaders, offering them at low prices to attract shoppers who would buy other items, such as greeting cards that can be $3 or more, at profitable prices. These shoppers now are in a position to pressure supermarkets to buy from suppliers who treat workers fairly. Customers, who work for a living themselves, understand employees are entitled to fair compensation for their work. Those who climb trees to harvest bananas in Guatemala cannot be expected to subsidize grocers by accepting low wages, poor education and housing, and medical problems from unsafe working conditions.
Today's greater access to worldwide information prompts both consumer concern for the exploitation of labor in foreign countries and exposure to the consequences of government corruption. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission in Kenya recognizes foreign companies involved in corrupt practices "ruin our country." At the same time, what company wants to risk prosecution for bribing government officials for a construction contract in Brazil or to pay off officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if the same commodities are available in Australia?
Migrant refugees don't want to walk miles to seek asylum from violence and poverty. Consumers and businesses have the power to change the conditions that can help them stay home.
Nowadays, the world has a wide variety of models that affect positive change. Religious missionaries and JFK's Peace Corps show how to bring education and skill training to impoverished areas. Experienced nongovernmental organizations rush water, food, and medical quick-fix support when earthquakes and other natural disasters strike, while international banks grant low-cost loans to finance the projects and equipment for long-term solutions. Foundations, universities, and major stockholders pressured South Africa to end apartheid by withdrawing investments from South African companies. Supermarket shoppers lent their economic power to Cesar Chavez's campaign to better conditions for lettuce pickers.
The mothers, children, and other relatives walking, riding, and floating north to escape violence and poverty in Central America crave positive social change. According to ethicalconsumer.org, United Fruit, now Chiquita, and Standard Fruit, now Dole, came to Central America in the 1890s, because fertile land and government corruption provided excellent conditions for their banana businesses. In time, grocery chains habitually began to use bananas as loss leaders, offering them at low prices to attract shoppers who would buy other items, such as greeting cards that can be $3 or more, at profitable prices. These shoppers now are in a position to pressure supermarkets to buy from suppliers who treat workers fairly. Customers, who work for a living themselves, understand employees are entitled to fair compensation for their work. Those who climb trees to harvest bananas in Guatemala cannot be expected to subsidize grocers by accepting low wages, poor education and housing, and medical problems from unsafe working conditions.
Today's greater access to worldwide information prompts both consumer concern for the exploitation of labor in foreign countries and exposure to the consequences of government corruption. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission in Kenya recognizes foreign companies involved in corrupt practices "ruin our country." At the same time, what company wants to risk prosecution for bribing government officials for a construction contract in Brazil or to pay off officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if the same commodities are available in Australia?
Migrant refugees don't want to walk miles to seek asylum from violence and poverty. Consumers and businesses have the power to change the conditions that can help them stay home.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Communication Today
Yesterday, I entered an elevator with a man who continued talking on his Smartphone in a foreign language. After I pushed the button for my floor, I looked toward him and was about to ask, "Where to?" He had seen the button I pushed while he was listening to someone on his phone, and he just shook his head indicating he was going to the same floor as I was.
I have been in elevators when friends who had been speaking together in a foreign language instantly switched to English to ask the floor button they should push for me. I also have been in vans taking hotel passengers to an airport, when the Spanish-speaking driver could switch to English to ask which terminals we needed.
One of my globe-trotting, English-speaking friends developed a technique for asking directions in a foreign country. She looks for a young woman who she assumes, usually correctly, studied English.
Of course, studying a foreign language before visiting a foreign country works, too.
Research outcomes based on studies at the University of Pennsylvania provide some useful advice to help adults learn a foreign language and to help parents and teachers enable children to enjoy knowing a new language. I read that babies first put together the word a parent says with the object the parent shows them. A baby's eyes have to go to the object when the baby hears the word for the object. This process reminded me of the German teacher who held up a turkey statue and asked us what is was before she told us the German word for turkey. We tried our best and said something like, "grosse Vogel" to imply it was a big bird.
The point is, language research found we progress from learning nouns to verbs and finally ideas. We have to build up a vocabulary to be able to infer more meanings. Parents, teachers, and children can begin together to learn a foreign language. Find a foreign language book or dictionary and make a list of the foreign words for objects in the home or classroom, foods, toys, and the like. Practice using these nouns with each other as you go about the day. Then, try to describe these items without each other seeing them. Use gestures and any other means you can think of to help you decide what other words you need to learn for colors, shapes, describing how objects are used or how big they are.
Exceptions to language "rules" are a special challenge. Some verbs, for example, don't end in "ed" the way traveled and dined do. Counting introduces the need to memorize exceptions. Studies show once an English-speaking child can count to 73, he or she can continue counting indefinitely. I don't know where the so called "tipping point" for infinite counting is in other languages, but a fiend tells me it's sooner in Spanish.
Studies indicate a child who knows how to count is on the way to mastering basic arithmetic skills. In any language, once a child knows one plus one is two he or she can buy or sell and won't be cheated out of a dime because a nickel is larger. Alexander Hamilton knew how to put the financial system of the new United States in order, because he handled shipping costs and revenue on the docks of Puerto Rico at an early age.
As we begin to make a list of resolutions for 2019, we might think about adding learning, and helping children learn, bits and pieces of another language.
I have been in elevators when friends who had been speaking together in a foreign language instantly switched to English to ask the floor button they should push for me. I also have been in vans taking hotel passengers to an airport, when the Spanish-speaking driver could switch to English to ask which terminals we needed.
One of my globe-trotting, English-speaking friends developed a technique for asking directions in a foreign country. She looks for a young woman who she assumes, usually correctly, studied English.
Of course, studying a foreign language before visiting a foreign country works, too.
Research outcomes based on studies at the University of Pennsylvania provide some useful advice to help adults learn a foreign language and to help parents and teachers enable children to enjoy knowing a new language. I read that babies first put together the word a parent says with the object the parent shows them. A baby's eyes have to go to the object when the baby hears the word for the object. This process reminded me of the German teacher who held up a turkey statue and asked us what is was before she told us the German word for turkey. We tried our best and said something like, "grosse Vogel" to imply it was a big bird.
The point is, language research found we progress from learning nouns to verbs and finally ideas. We have to build up a vocabulary to be able to infer more meanings. Parents, teachers, and children can begin together to learn a foreign language. Find a foreign language book or dictionary and make a list of the foreign words for objects in the home or classroom, foods, toys, and the like. Practice using these nouns with each other as you go about the day. Then, try to describe these items without each other seeing them. Use gestures and any other means you can think of to help you decide what other words you need to learn for colors, shapes, describing how objects are used or how big they are.
Exceptions to language "rules" are a special challenge. Some verbs, for example, don't end in "ed" the way traveled and dined do. Counting introduces the need to memorize exceptions. Studies show once an English-speaking child can count to 73, he or she can continue counting indefinitely. I don't know where the so called "tipping point" for infinite counting is in other languages, but a fiend tells me it's sooner in Spanish.
Studies indicate a child who knows how to count is on the way to mastering basic arithmetic skills. In any language, once a child knows one plus one is two he or she can buy or sell and won't be cheated out of a dime because a nickel is larger. Alexander Hamilton knew how to put the financial system of the new United States in order, because he handled shipping costs and revenue on the docks of Puerto Rico at an early age.
As we begin to make a list of resolutions for 2019, we might think about adding learning, and helping children learn, bits and pieces of another language.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Disabilities Need Not Define Anyone
Nobel prizes do not begin to recognize all the scientific advances overcoming human frailties. Actually, scientists and others have a lot to work with: the capabilities of the human body, including its immune system, and brains.
From a wheelchair-accessible igloo built by a Dad to robotic legs that enabled a veteran to walk for the first time in 30 years, people are not giving up on those with infirmities. A performer with no feet can be "Dancing with the Stars" on TV, a young lady with Downs Syndrome has modeled a gown on a designer's catwalk, a sightless artist's paintings hang in a gallery, a former spy recovered from being poisoned by foreign agents. Google's 2019 Super Bowl commercial showed how video game controllers can be adapted for those with disabilities. Users can open packaging for games with their teeth, if necessary.
Around the world, people are figuring out how to provide the little boost some need to keep connected with society. That's always been done. Ben Franklin realized older people needed bifocals when their eyes' focus changed. Someone came up with white canes to help sighted people look out for the blind. FDR could become President with the help of leg braces, a wheelchair, and a car's driver. And Dr. Salk created a cure for polio so victims of the disease no longer needed these assists.
At abledata.com, check out "assistive technology information" about the wide range of products available to overcome walking, sitting, personal care, communication, hearing, and other limitations.Also see usicd.org (the U.S. International Council on Disabilities), the authors at disabilityinkidlit.com, and read The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 2 Fuzzy, 2 Furious by Shannon and Dean Hale. A teen character wears a hearing aid.
Several special projects deserve mention. In Washington, D.C., deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing employees run a Starbucks using American Sign Language. In Brazil, trendwatching.com tells how a foundation for the blind and a beer institute teamed up to teach blind students to employ their enhanced smell and taste in service to the sensory analysis of beer. The first of "The 50 Best Inventions of 2018" featured by TIME magazine this year (Nov.28/Dec.3, 2018 issue) is a robotic arm that updated the artificial arm, shown on PBS's "Antique Roadshow," that was invented for injured soldiers in the American Civil War.
While helping an 80-year-old friend navigate a luncheon outing, I saw how easily she converted her walker to a wheelchair, locked a brake, and hung her purse on the handle. If she wanted to take any of what she didn't eat home, she had a bag hanging ready on the other handle. To fit in my car, the unlocked walker/chair easily collapsed. In his final years, a therapy dog helped former President George H. W. Bush the way animals, including a horse, assist and comfort ill, blind, and other disabled people.
According to TIME magazine's section on 2018's innovations (Nov. 26/Dec. 3, 2018), three million Americans need to get around in wheelchairs. Whill's new $4,000 electric Model C1 wheelchair, available in different colors, can travel 10 miles indoors and out, climb 2-inch obstacles, maneuver in cramped spaces, and disassemble for transport in minutes.
Elsewhere, scientists work to discover what can help us and what can hurt us. Glyphosate was hailed as a way to rid fields of weeds but it also was discovered to be a possible cancer-causing agent for humans. The same gene editing that promises to rid the world of malaria-carrying mosquitoes can inject dangerous mutations into generations of humans. Controversy continues to fuel debate over how cellphone radiation might contribute to memory loss, brain cancer and sperm damage. The manufacturer of Truvada tries to warn those who use the pill that reduces the risk of contracting HIV through sex that additional safe sex practices are still needed to prevent pregnancy, syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections. Besides, for Truvada or its generic equivalents to work, those who need it have to come forward.
The good news is: young people always will have an opportunity to create ways to overcome human limitations, and all of us humans know there are folks thinking up ways to make our lives better.
From a wheelchair-accessible igloo built by a Dad to robotic legs that enabled a veteran to walk for the first time in 30 years, people are not giving up on those with infirmities. A performer with no feet can be "Dancing with the Stars" on TV, a young lady with Downs Syndrome has modeled a gown on a designer's catwalk, a sightless artist's paintings hang in a gallery, a former spy recovered from being poisoned by foreign agents. Google's 2019 Super Bowl commercial showed how video game controllers can be adapted for those with disabilities. Users can open packaging for games with their teeth, if necessary.
Around the world, people are figuring out how to provide the little boost some need to keep connected with society. That's always been done. Ben Franklin realized older people needed bifocals when their eyes' focus changed. Someone came up with white canes to help sighted people look out for the blind. FDR could become President with the help of leg braces, a wheelchair, and a car's driver. And Dr. Salk created a cure for polio so victims of the disease no longer needed these assists.
At abledata.com, check out "assistive technology information" about the wide range of products available to overcome walking, sitting, personal care, communication, hearing, and other limitations.Also see usicd.org (the U.S. International Council on Disabilities), the authors at disabilityinkidlit.com, and read The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 2 Fuzzy, 2 Furious by Shannon and Dean Hale. A teen character wears a hearing aid.
Several special projects deserve mention. In Washington, D.C., deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing employees run a Starbucks using American Sign Language. In Brazil, trendwatching.com tells how a foundation for the blind and a beer institute teamed up to teach blind students to employ their enhanced smell and taste in service to the sensory analysis of beer. The first of "The 50 Best Inventions of 2018" featured by TIME magazine this year (Nov.28/Dec.3, 2018 issue) is a robotic arm that updated the artificial arm, shown on PBS's "Antique Roadshow," that was invented for injured soldiers in the American Civil War.
While helping an 80-year-old friend navigate a luncheon outing, I saw how easily she converted her walker to a wheelchair, locked a brake, and hung her purse on the handle. If she wanted to take any of what she didn't eat home, she had a bag hanging ready on the other handle. To fit in my car, the unlocked walker/chair easily collapsed. In his final years, a therapy dog helped former President George H. W. Bush the way animals, including a horse, assist and comfort ill, blind, and other disabled people.
According to TIME magazine's section on 2018's innovations (Nov. 26/Dec. 3, 2018), three million Americans need to get around in wheelchairs. Whill's new $4,000 electric Model C1 wheelchair, available in different colors, can travel 10 miles indoors and out, climb 2-inch obstacles, maneuver in cramped spaces, and disassemble for transport in minutes.
Elsewhere, scientists work to discover what can help us and what can hurt us. Glyphosate was hailed as a way to rid fields of weeds but it also was discovered to be a possible cancer-causing agent for humans. The same gene editing that promises to rid the world of malaria-carrying mosquitoes can inject dangerous mutations into generations of humans. Controversy continues to fuel debate over how cellphone radiation might contribute to memory loss, brain cancer and sperm damage. The manufacturer of Truvada tries to warn those who use the pill that reduces the risk of contracting HIV through sex that additional safe sex practices are still needed to prevent pregnancy, syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections. Besides, for Truvada or its generic equivalents to work, those who need it have to come forward.
The good news is: young people always will have an opportunity to create ways to overcome human limitations, and all of us humans know there are folks thinking up ways to make our lives better.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
2018-2019 Struggle for Human Rights
No struggle for human rights around the world is ever complete. The record that I began in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future," needs to be updated with some positive and negative developments.
Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military death squad in 1980 because he spoke out for unions and poor peasant groups against the grip of prosperous coffee growers and capitalism in El Salvador, was declared a saint of the Catholic Church in 2018.
Vietnam released and exiled "Mother Mushroom," Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who had been jailed for writing about the country's corruption and pollution.
Boko Haram continues to kill and kidnap innocent victims in Nigeria and the Cameroon.
North Korea has re-education camps for thousands, and China also holds Muslim Uighurs in camps because their religion is said to undermine peace and security. In March, 2019, Kazakhstan would demonstrate an effort to maintain good relations with its Chinese neighbor by arresting Serikzhan Bilash for supporting Uighurs detained in Xinjiang's camps.
Russia tried unsuccessfully to poison a spy in the UK in 2018, and it continues to hold political prisoners, such as Oleg Sentsov and Oleg and Alexei Navalny. In February, 2019, Russia would arrest Michael Calvey, a U.S financier, which is reminiscent of the expulsion of Browder, whose tax expert, sometimes called his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison.
For criticizing the regime of King Salman and his son, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Arabian journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October, 2018, but in the same month, a Turkish court released a US pastor, Andrew Brunson, who had been in prison there on false terrorism charges for two years.
Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military death squad in 1980 because he spoke out for unions and poor peasant groups against the grip of prosperous coffee growers and capitalism in El Salvador, was declared a saint of the Catholic Church in 2018.
Vietnam released and exiled "Mother Mushroom," Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who had been jailed for writing about the country's corruption and pollution.
Boko Haram continues to kill and kidnap innocent victims in Nigeria and the Cameroon.
North Korea has re-education camps for thousands, and China also holds Muslim Uighurs in camps because their religion is said to undermine peace and security. In March, 2019, Kazakhstan would demonstrate an effort to maintain good relations with its Chinese neighbor by arresting Serikzhan Bilash for supporting Uighurs detained in Xinjiang's camps.
Russia tried unsuccessfully to poison a spy in the UK in 2018, and it continues to hold political prisoners, such as Oleg Sentsov and Oleg and Alexei Navalny. In February, 2019, Russia would arrest Michael Calvey, a U.S financier, which is reminiscent of the expulsion of Browder, whose tax expert, sometimes called his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison.
For criticizing the regime of King Salman and his son, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Arabian journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October, 2018, but in the same month, a Turkish court released a US pastor, Andrew Brunson, who had been in prison there on false terrorism charges for two years.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Heaven Help Immigration Attorneys
Nuns in religious communities help immigrants find housing, education, and employment. But nuns also have law degrees. They serve as immigration attorneys who work to prevent undocumented minors and adults from being returned to countries where they could be killed. Advocating for Central Americas seeking asylum is an especially difficult challenge, since threats which justified asylum in the past, such as gang violence, no longer do.
In San Diego, California, every unaccompanied, detained child has received free legal representation by the Casa Cornelia Law Center, a nonprofit organization founded by two nuns from the Society of the Holy Child congregation. In 2017, Casa Cornelia served a total of 2,441 adults and children.
Nuns with law degrees also put their teaching backgrounds to work delivering presentations to help groups overcome their fear of immigrants and to understand complex laws affecting immigration: visas, removal defense, amnesty, asylum, temporary status designations, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Sister Attracta Kelley sees similarities between current attitudes toward immigrants and the attitudes toward racial integration she experienced when she was principal of a Catholic school in Montgomery, Alabama, in the early 1970s.
Sister Kelley points out she can take risks advocating for unpopular positions, because she knows she won't be fired. Sister Bernadine Karge, an attorney in the Dominican Order of Sinsinawa in Wisconsin, bravely speaks out as someone "in the crazy girls category of life." As Nobel Prize-winning physiologist, Rita Levi-Montalcini said before she died at age 103 in 2012, "The last period of my life, perhaps is the best."
In San Diego, California, every unaccompanied, detained child has received free legal representation by the Casa Cornelia Law Center, a nonprofit organization founded by two nuns from the Society of the Holy Child congregation. In 2017, Casa Cornelia served a total of 2,441 adults and children.
Nuns with law degrees also put their teaching backgrounds to work delivering presentations to help groups overcome their fear of immigrants and to understand complex laws affecting immigration: visas, removal defense, amnesty, asylum, temporary status designations, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Sister Attracta Kelley sees similarities between current attitudes toward immigrants and the attitudes toward racial integration she experienced when she was principal of a Catholic school in Montgomery, Alabama, in the early 1970s.
Sister Kelley points out she can take risks advocating for unpopular positions, because she knows she won't be fired. Sister Bernadine Karge, an attorney in the Dominican Order of Sinsinawa in Wisconsin, bravely speaks out as someone "in the crazy girls category of life." As Nobel Prize-winning physiologist, Rita Levi-Montalcini said before she died at age 103 in 2012, "The last period of my life, perhaps is the best."
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Add Pizzazz to Service Projects
Sure a scout troop, school band, or church youth group can organize a car wash, run a bake sale, or collect funds for every mile walked. The trick is to come up with a new project to attract media attention.
Water Aid, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), needed a project to gain support for Goal 6 of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development objective, water and toilets for all. This wasn't a naturally attention-getting topic, like saving children or baby animals. And the place where Water Aid wanted to attract attention was New York City, center of high-priced public relations firms that make the big bucks by promoting any and every thing, such as rock stars and best sellers.
What Water Aid did was invite individuals and organizations to join a two-mile, "water walk" from 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue to the United Nations building at 45th Street and First Avenue. Two miles just happened to be the distance the average girl or woman in many developing countries walks every day to procure the family's water...time she could spend getting an education or earning an income.
On their walks through NYC, females and males of all ages and various nationalities and professions offered the media a visual photo opportunity by carrying buckets in their hands or on their heads. The buckets also collected funds from passersby.
All the walkers could explain how a lack of water and sanitation caused diarrhea, other diseases, and death; every two minutes one child under five dies from dirty drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene. Water Aid considers the right to water a human right and opposes selling water, since privatization enables cities and corporations to limit water access to manufacturers and people who can afford it.
The two-mile "water walk" idea invites groups to put greater effort into coming up with original fundraisers. I just saw an article that mentioned managers made Google great by demanding employees to think bigger and bigger. And Water Aid collected funds in buckets that were relevant to its cause. I've seen firemen and women collecting money in their big boots. A middle school collected money at a fundraising dinner in oatmeal boxes band members decorated to look like drums in the middle of every table.
Once a group has a visual event and related fund-collection containers, write a news release describing the event and the purpose of the event. Make a list of producers, addresses, and telephone numbers at local TV news programs and editors at newspapers. Send out your news releases, designate someone to call stations and papers a couple of days before the event, and get ready to welcome the attention. The world has many needs that merit your best efforts.
Water Aid, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), needed a project to gain support for Goal 6 of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development objective, water and toilets for all. This wasn't a naturally attention-getting topic, like saving children or baby animals. And the place where Water Aid wanted to attract attention was New York City, center of high-priced public relations firms that make the big bucks by promoting any and every thing, such as rock stars and best sellers.
What Water Aid did was invite individuals and organizations to join a two-mile, "water walk" from 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue to the United Nations building at 45th Street and First Avenue. Two miles just happened to be the distance the average girl or woman in many developing countries walks every day to procure the family's water...time she could spend getting an education or earning an income.
On their walks through NYC, females and males of all ages and various nationalities and professions offered the media a visual photo opportunity by carrying buckets in their hands or on their heads. The buckets also collected funds from passersby.
All the walkers could explain how a lack of water and sanitation caused diarrhea, other diseases, and death; every two minutes one child under five dies from dirty drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene. Water Aid considers the right to water a human right and opposes selling water, since privatization enables cities and corporations to limit water access to manufacturers and people who can afford it.
The two-mile "water walk" idea invites groups to put greater effort into coming up with original fundraisers. I just saw an article that mentioned managers made Google great by demanding employees to think bigger and bigger. And Water Aid collected funds in buckets that were relevant to its cause. I've seen firemen and women collecting money in their big boots. A middle school collected money at a fundraising dinner in oatmeal boxes band members decorated to look like drums in the middle of every table.
Once a group has a visual event and related fund-collection containers, write a news release describing the event and the purpose of the event. Make a list of producers, addresses, and telephone numbers at local TV news programs and editors at newspapers. Send out your news releases, designate someone to call stations and papers a couple of days before the event, and get ready to welcome the attention. The world has many needs that merit your best efforts.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Overcome Lunch Table Loneliness
The Mean Girls movie provides just one example of the rigid social structure that decides which students enjoy companionship at lunch time and which don't. Since loneliness sometimes causes students to take out their resentment with violent measures or to turn inward with mental health problems, suggestions for improving social interactions at school lunch times merit attention.
I recall a TV segment that featured a student who took it upon himself to seek out those he saw eating by themselves during high school lunch periods. He sat with them, got to know them, and invited them to interact with him at any time in the halls and classrooms, not just at lunch. Soon, he had inspired other students to join him in being on the lookout for lunch time loners.
One of the best aspects of globalization is the opportunity it provides to spot innovations in one country that could be adopted in others. According to trendwatching.com, the Costa Coffee cafe chain in the UK places signs on tables to indicate reserved seating for customers who want to chat. Could schools do the same, and, maybe, often change signs to suggest conversation topics of the day that also could inspire discussions at other tables? Making table signs (with cartoons on them?) might be a great service project for a school club.
When I was in graduate school, a professor urged MBA students to avoid sitting by themselves or with the same people at lunch every day after they entered the business world. He especially urged marketing students to use lunches to get to know employees in finance, accounting, and other departments who will need to support new products that have no track record.
Also, it's always a good idea to get out of the building at lunch time, take a walk, and see what's happening in the neighborhood. Getting out is a reminder that there is more to life than school or a career.
I recall a TV segment that featured a student who took it upon himself to seek out those he saw eating by themselves during high school lunch periods. He sat with them, got to know them, and invited them to interact with him at any time in the halls and classrooms, not just at lunch. Soon, he had inspired other students to join him in being on the lookout for lunch time loners.
One of the best aspects of globalization is the opportunity it provides to spot innovations in one country that could be adopted in others. According to trendwatching.com, the Costa Coffee cafe chain in the UK places signs on tables to indicate reserved seating for customers who want to chat. Could schools do the same, and, maybe, often change signs to suggest conversation topics of the day that also could inspire discussions at other tables? Making table signs (with cartoons on them?) might be a great service project for a school club.
When I was in graduate school, a professor urged MBA students to avoid sitting by themselves or with the same people at lunch every day after they entered the business world. He especially urged marketing students to use lunches to get to know employees in finance, accounting, and other departments who will need to support new products that have no track record.
Also, it's always a good idea to get out of the building at lunch time, take a walk, and see what's happening in the neighborhood. Getting out is a reminder that there is more to life than school or a career.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Children, Write History
Think of what we know because of the Diary of Anne Frank and Laura Ingalis Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books. Future generations will be indebted to the children of all ages everywhere in the world who write about their lives in the 21st century. Future generations also will be indebted to the parents, grandparents, teachers, and guardians who preserve these accounts and carefully tuck them away.
A country's history molds the way citizens think about what is important to them and what they hope never happens again. History also uncovers myths. What will finding a song a 10-year-old girl writes in Saudi Arabia today reveal about her life in 2018?
Recently, myths were dispelled, when more than 350,000 of King George III's private and public papers, stored in the Round Tower at Windsor Castle since his 1820 death, were opened to scholars. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Rick Atkinson, King George's good handwriting was easy to read. It revealed the mental illness that affected him later in life had no bearing on his thoughts and actions during the American Revolution.
Unlike his German-born grandfather and father, George III was born in England, spoke English, understood he was a monarch who shared power with Parliament, and did not assume the divine right of kings, as France's monarch did. He loved and was faithful to his wife and the mother of his 15 children, two of whom, William IV and George IV, he took a personal interest in grooming to become future kings.
King George considered the loss of what would become the United States the beginning of the end of the British empire in Canada, Ireland, India, and the West Indies. He read intelligence English agents gained by opening correspondence from the "New World." After he learned General Washington's rag tag troops not only launched a surprise crossing of the Delaware River that killed or captured over 900 German mercenary Hessians on Christmas Eve, but also went on to take Trenton and defeat three British regiments in Princeton, he knew General William Howe was right about a costly war lasting beyond 1777. And he would have to ask Parliament for more money. The celebration ending the Seven Years War was over.
A country's history molds the way citizens think about what is important to them and what they hope never happens again. History also uncovers myths. What will finding a song a 10-year-old girl writes in Saudi Arabia today reveal about her life in 2018?
Recently, myths were dispelled, when more than 350,000 of King George III's private and public papers, stored in the Round Tower at Windsor Castle since his 1820 death, were opened to scholars. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Rick Atkinson, King George's good handwriting was easy to read. It revealed the mental illness that affected him later in life had no bearing on his thoughts and actions during the American Revolution.
Unlike his German-born grandfather and father, George III was born in England, spoke English, understood he was a monarch who shared power with Parliament, and did not assume the divine right of kings, as France's monarch did. He loved and was faithful to his wife and the mother of his 15 children, two of whom, William IV and George IV, he took a personal interest in grooming to become future kings.
King George considered the loss of what would become the United States the beginning of the end of the British empire in Canada, Ireland, India, and the West Indies. He read intelligence English agents gained by opening correspondence from the "New World." After he learned General Washington's rag tag troops not only launched a surprise crossing of the Delaware River that killed or captured over 900 German mercenary Hessians on Christmas Eve, but also went on to take Trenton and defeat three British regiments in Princeton, he knew General William Howe was right about a costly war lasting beyond 1777. And he would have to ask Parliament for more money. The celebration ending the Seven Years War was over.
Saturday, October 6, 2018
World Goes to the Polls in Brazil
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a reporter went up into the hills to interview young boys flying kites. A translator conveyed the false notion that people living in the crowded makeshift homes above Rio preferred their friendly communities to the lonely confines of the modern homes in the city below. Those flying the kites told a different story. They saw the kites as a symbol of their dreams to escape.
By a margin of 55% to 45%, Jair Bolsonaro was elected Brazil's new President on October 28, 2018. His concern for money laundering, financing of terrorist groups, and other suspicious transactions in Brazil led to granting more power to the country's Financial Activities Control Council (COAF). Promoted as a way to speed investigations and integrate the functions of various government agencies, others view this bureaucratic reorganization as a threat to traditional guarantees of bank and financial secrecy.
Brazil's most popular politician was not running in the first round of voting for president on Sunday, October 7, 2018. An independent judiciary found Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president from 2003 to 2010, guilty of corruption and sentenced him to prison. Like others in Brazil's political elite, Lula, as he is known, was charged with taking bribes from construction companies looking for contracts from Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras oil company. Since the Odebrecht construction company was not satisfied only to bribe itself into Brazil's political process, the world has an opportunity to prosecute its corrupt tentacles in at least ten Latin American countries, the United States, and Switzerland. (See the latest news about Odebrecht's bribery case in Colombia in the post, "Cut Off the Head and the Colombia Snake Dies?") In the United States, Petrobras itself, which trades in the US market, was fined $853 million for corruption under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Fernando Haddad, the former Sao Paulo mayor with degrees in economics, law, and philosophy, represented Lula's Workers Party (PT) in the first round voting of the presidential election. The PT, which once brought prosperity to Brazil under Lula from 2003 ti 2011, gave way to the mismanaged economy, recession, and bribery of his successors: Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached for hiding the country's budget deficit, and Michel Temer, who fought a charge of corruption . Haddad is tainted with his association to PT's past sins and a suspected willingness to end an investigation into corruption.
The Brazilian rainforest, considered the world's lungs for its ability to absorb carbon dioxide and combat rising temperatures, drought, and fires, is endangered by Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who belonged to nine different political parties during his 28-year congressional career. As expected, Bolsonaro and Haddad met again in the second round of voting. In the first round, Bolsonaro nearly won half the vote needed to avoid a runoff
Bolsonaro is the hero of Brazil's soybean farmers and cattle ranchers, because he would withdraw Brazil from the Paris Climate Accord and open the way to finance unlimited deforestation of the rainforest. With his running mate, General Hamilton Mourao, he shares an authoritarian approach to reversing the effects of Brazil's lingering 2014 recession: unemployment, reduced personal income, and a lack of education, health, and other government services. It also should be noted, Brazil's National Museum of historic treasures, housed in a once beautiful Portuguese palace, burned down on September 2, 2018, despite warnings about a lack of maintenance. Mourao claims the army has the ability to solve Brazil's problems, including drug-related violence, the way Brazil's military dictatorship did from 1964 to 1985.
Bolsonaro's supporters like his outspoken attacks on indigenous rainforest communities, women, blacks, and homosexuals. During the first round of voting, Bolsonaro was in the hospital while recovering from being stabbed in the stomach at a campaign event. He claims to be Brazil's President Trump, when one is more than enough for the world.
Brazil, once one of the promising emerging markets known collectively as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), has fallen on hard times, but the country is too important for the world to ignore. There will be as many as 30 different political parties in Brazil's new congress. The Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) that dominates congressional coalitions has to deal with members used to receiving pay-offs in jobs, funds for pet projects, and graft in return for passing necessary reforms.
The world's multinational corporations are in a position to exploit Brazil's political, economic, and social woes or to dream up win-win solutions for their stockholders and the country's kite flyers.
Local farmers complain that the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) that developed maize, soybeans, eucalyptus trees, and zebu cattle to thrive in the tropical heat and acidic soils on the savanna that covers 5% of Brazil's farmland no longer helps them. Biotechnology, now in the hands of Bayer, which just acquired Monsanto, and Syngenta, a Swiss pesticide producer, serves their agribusiness interests. Meanwhile, Munduruku tribe members, who formed the COOPAVAM cooperative, watch farms press toward the patch of forest where they harvest the wild Brazil nuts they press into oil for eco-friendly Natura cosmetics and school lunch food. At the very least, multinationals could abide by government regulations requiring only 20% of forest areas should be cleared for farming.
Boeing is in a position to honor or undercut the interests of Brazil's Embraer aircraft company employees and its metalworkers union. Young engineers are used to moving from projects on commercial aircraft to executive jets to defense projects. Since Boeing is only interested in acquiring the company's short-range, 70- to 130-seat commercial jet business in order to compete with Canada's Bombardier, Inc. and Airbus, excess employees rightly fear they would lose their jobs. Couldn't Boeing's worldwide operations offer them employment elsewhere?
All in all, Brazil's presidential election is a world, not just a national, event worth watching.
By a margin of 55% to 45%, Jair Bolsonaro was elected Brazil's new President on October 28, 2018. His concern for money laundering, financing of terrorist groups, and other suspicious transactions in Brazil led to granting more power to the country's Financial Activities Control Council (COAF). Promoted as a way to speed investigations and integrate the functions of various government agencies, others view this bureaucratic reorganization as a threat to traditional guarantees of bank and financial secrecy.
Fernando Haddad, the former Sao Paulo mayor with degrees in economics, law, and philosophy, represented Lula's Workers Party (PT) in the first round voting of the presidential election. The PT, which once brought prosperity to Brazil under Lula from 2003 ti 2011, gave way to the mismanaged economy, recession, and bribery of his successors: Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached for hiding the country's budget deficit, and Michel Temer, who fought a charge of corruption . Haddad is tainted with his association to PT's past sins and a suspected willingness to end an investigation into corruption.
The Brazilian rainforest, considered the world's lungs for its ability to absorb carbon dioxide and combat rising temperatures, drought, and fires, is endangered by Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who belonged to nine different political parties during his 28-year congressional career. As expected, Bolsonaro and Haddad met again in the second round of voting. In the first round, Bolsonaro nearly won half the vote needed to avoid a runoff
Bolsonaro is the hero of Brazil's soybean farmers and cattle ranchers, because he would withdraw Brazil from the Paris Climate Accord and open the way to finance unlimited deforestation of the rainforest. With his running mate, General Hamilton Mourao, he shares an authoritarian approach to reversing the effects of Brazil's lingering 2014 recession: unemployment, reduced personal income, and a lack of education, health, and other government services. It also should be noted, Brazil's National Museum of historic treasures, housed in a once beautiful Portuguese palace, burned down on September 2, 2018, despite warnings about a lack of maintenance. Mourao claims the army has the ability to solve Brazil's problems, including drug-related violence, the way Brazil's military dictatorship did from 1964 to 1985.
Bolsonaro's supporters like his outspoken attacks on indigenous rainforest communities, women, blacks, and homosexuals. During the first round of voting, Bolsonaro was in the hospital while recovering from being stabbed in the stomach at a campaign event. He claims to be Brazil's President Trump, when one is more than enough for the world.
Brazil, once one of the promising emerging markets known collectively as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), has fallen on hard times, but the country is too important for the world to ignore. There will be as many as 30 different political parties in Brazil's new congress. The Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) that dominates congressional coalitions has to deal with members used to receiving pay-offs in jobs, funds for pet projects, and graft in return for passing necessary reforms.
The world's multinational corporations are in a position to exploit Brazil's political, economic, and social woes or to dream up win-win solutions for their stockholders and the country's kite flyers.
Local farmers complain that the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) that developed maize, soybeans, eucalyptus trees, and zebu cattle to thrive in the tropical heat and acidic soils on the savanna that covers 5% of Brazil's farmland no longer helps them. Biotechnology, now in the hands of Bayer, which just acquired Monsanto, and Syngenta, a Swiss pesticide producer, serves their agribusiness interests. Meanwhile, Munduruku tribe members, who formed the COOPAVAM cooperative, watch farms press toward the patch of forest where they harvest the wild Brazil nuts they press into oil for eco-friendly Natura cosmetics and school lunch food. At the very least, multinationals could abide by government regulations requiring only 20% of forest areas should be cleared for farming.
Boeing is in a position to honor or undercut the interests of Brazil's Embraer aircraft company employees and its metalworkers union. Young engineers are used to moving from projects on commercial aircraft to executive jets to defense projects. Since Boeing is only interested in acquiring the company's short-range, 70- to 130-seat commercial jet business in order to compete with Canada's Bombardier, Inc. and Airbus, excess employees rightly fear they would lose their jobs. Couldn't Boeing's worldwide operations offer them employment elsewhere?
All in all, Brazil's presidential election is a world, not just a national, event worth watching.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Looking for a Position as a Top Analyst or a Young Voter?
In response to a question about how to reach college and other young voters, one strategist suggested getting involved with their interest in music. Getting involved with their interests in gaming and robot competitions could work also.
International scouts for top analysts already visit video games' competitions. Wonder how many were hired playing eSports at the Asian Games in Indonesia. Robot battles also might serve as prime recruiting venues.
Gamers report having a controller in their hands improves their emotional well-being. Gaming stadiums, like South Korea's League of Legends (LOL) park, Russia's Spodek, and those in Canada and Chongqing, China, are taking advantage of the gaming phenomena that is becoming a $150 billion dollar industry. Knowing gamers dislike crumbs in their controllers, trendwatching.com reports Doritos now offers the snack in Towel Bags that provide a way to wipe off residue from the tasty treat.
With or without Towel Bags, spectators can watch the action on gaming stations while eating the usual fare sold at sports arenas. The LOL park, developed by Riot Games, will have a cafe open 24 hours a day and a hall of fame selling jerseys and 3D printed miniatures of LOL pros. Mastercard has a three year deal to sponsor League of Legends World Champiionships. And Coutts, bankers to the Queen of England, is courting esports' millionaires. Tyler Blevins, known as "Ninja", published a graphic novel for his millions of gamer fans.
International scouts for top analysts already visit video games' competitions. Wonder how many were hired playing eSports at the Asian Games in Indonesia. Robot battles also might serve as prime recruiting venues.
Gamers report having a controller in their hands improves their emotional well-being. Gaming stadiums, like South Korea's League of Legends (LOL) park, Russia's Spodek, and those in Canada and Chongqing, China, are taking advantage of the gaming phenomena that is becoming a $150 billion dollar industry. Knowing gamers dislike crumbs in their controllers, trendwatching.com reports Doritos now offers the snack in Towel Bags that provide a way to wipe off residue from the tasty treat.
With or without Towel Bags, spectators can watch the action on gaming stations while eating the usual fare sold at sports arenas. The LOL park, developed by Riot Games, will have a cafe open 24 hours a day and a hall of fame selling jerseys and 3D printed miniatures of LOL pros. Mastercard has a three year deal to sponsor League of Legends World Champiionships. And Coutts, bankers to the Queen of England, is courting esports' millionaires. Tyler Blevins, known as "Ninja", published a graphic novel for his millions of gamer fans.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Big Projects Combat Climate Change
"Oddly, few modern educational systems spend much time teaching systematically about the future," David Christian writes in his book, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything. A teach-in, modeled on the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, did inspire the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. What those students learned in the past half century is: environmental converts relapse. Efforts to promote fossil fuel alternatives, recycling, foregoing plastic, and organic farming have produced only marginal results.
While enlightened solutions to environmental mischief need to continue, ideas for major projects required to combat the effects of unchanged behavior on global warming also need to begin. Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry expects temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit to be five times more likely by 2050 than they were when extreme temperatures spiked in 2000. In 2016 and 2017, Kuwait and Iran began competing to break the highest reliably recorded temperature.
While enlightened solutions to environmental mischief need to continue, ideas for major projects required to combat the effects of unchanged behavior on global warming also need to begin. Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry expects temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit to be five times more likely by 2050 than they were when extreme temperatures spiked in 2000. In 2016 and 2017, Kuwait and Iran began competing to break the highest reliably recorded temperature.
Do work and education have to take place in the heat of the day? For religious reasons, business already is conducted at night in Muslim countries during Ramadan. Research shows teens need more sleep than they get when their bodies want to stay up until 11 pm or later and schools expect them to arrive at 7:30 am or 8. In Las Vegas, I understand some students already attend classes at night. While living in Jamaica, Noel Coward wrote a song based on his observations.
At twelve noon the natives swoon
and no further work is done.
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Working and learning during hotter climate changing days will require more and more air conditioning to keep people from dying from the heat and rats and insects from devouring and contaminating harvested food. To reduce the greenhouse gases and ozone pollution that air conditioning generates requires the difficult tasks of developing less toxic refrigerants and reducing the need for electricity. It would be much easier and faster to move the time for work and study to a cooler time of the day.
Trees are recognized as climate change saviors. They produce shade, reduce pollution, and sop up greenhouse gases. China is planting a tree wall to protect Beijing from sand/dust storms from the Gobi Desert. To produce these benefits, trees (as well as crops) need a system for channeling excess monsoon water their way.
Try asking kids who are building with blocks or computers to design a system to carry too much water from hurricanes and monsoons to drought areas. Why not locate pieces of aluminum pipe in various parts of the world that governments can fit together like LEGOs to make temporary pipes that channel overflowing lakes and rivers to forests and crop land suffering from drought? In Origin Story, Christian writes about moments in history when "Goldilocks conditions" are just right, like Baby Bear's porridge, for transitions in evolutionary change. Often these moments are "aha" insights when someone combines things that already exist in a new way.
In an earlier post, "Gone Fishin'," I reported on the long floating plastic boom designed to collect plastic and other debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as "the blob" between California and Hawaii that forms the warm water that seems to nourish the warm, dry winters dehydrating forests along the northwest coast of North America. Could this plastic garbage be melted for use in 3D printers? Maybe it could provide insulation and furniture for the 3D houses printed for the world's 68.5 million refugees now living in makeshift camps. (See more about "building" 3D houses at the earlier post, "Necessity: Introduce Students to New Technologies.")
Invite kids who are not bound by what is and what always has been to think about ways to solve the new challenges climate change does and will continue to present. How can solar and wind energy be stored and distributed? What can be done to reduce the amount of stuff ending up in methane-generating dumps? Students who love science fiction also might look into the solar geoengineering ideas that involve improving the ability of clouds to block or reflect sun rays. Insect control without dangerous chemicals, endangered animals, shipping and public transportation, drought-resistant crops and farming methods, all need big new plans for the best future.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
In Praise of Print
Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce.com, made his billions creating a software company in the cloud's digital age. Why did he and his wife, Lynne, just plunk down $190 million to purchase Time, a print magazine founded in 1923? They say they want to find solutions to some of the most complex problems in today's society.
Do complex problems in today's society lend themselves to hashtag solutions, slogans on posters in marches, presidential "debates," and election campaign ads on TV? Consider: racism, gun violence, immigration, cancer, gene editing, an income gap between the Benioffs and nearly everyone else in the world, corruption, censorship by the government in China and Facebook in the US, robots replacing human workers, marriage, privacy versus national security, climate change, lopsided trade balances.
TV headlines and 3-minute interviews, apps, and a limited number of Twitter characters have not solved today's problems, and they never will. The Federalist Papers argued before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. An extra Bill of Rights was needed. The print media backed further Amendments needed to clean up initial mistakes about the election of the President and Vice President, slavery, women's suffrage, and alcohol.
Print carries revolutionary ideas everywhere in the world. Why do authoritarian governments always shut down the press? Writing at Iowa's Storm Lake Times, with a circulation of only 3,000, Art Cullen won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for showing transparency's importance as a guard against bribes affecting government decisions. He wondered who was enabling the local Board of Supervisors in Buena Vista County, population 10,000, to help fund a million dollar defense against the Des Moines Water Works. His editorial disclosed the corn and soybean agribusiness farms that were contaminating drinking water with nitrates from their fertilizer.
Open a discussion about tariffs at the dinner table or on social media. You'll see a difference of opinion on the purpose of tariffs, if they can accomplish these purposes, even if these purposes need to be achieved. Does anyone mention what they have read about what government representatives, experts on economics, seniors, Walmart shoppers, or farmers have said about tariffs?
Informed judgments require the extended, detailed information print provides. Read the"Letters to the Editor," too. I'm often inspired by the readers who take time to compose the thoughtful opinions published. A grandmother's letter told why she insisted her two teen-aged grandchildren, she called them "screen zombies," put down their "tiny rectangles" to take in the spectacular sight of crossing the four-and-a-half-mile bridge over Chesapeake Bay.
A digital marketer like Marc Benioff deserves gratitude for funding the printed link between society's complex problems and those who depend on the extensive body of information needed to solve them.
Do complex problems in today's society lend themselves to hashtag solutions, slogans on posters in marches, presidential "debates," and election campaign ads on TV? Consider: racism, gun violence, immigration, cancer, gene editing, an income gap between the Benioffs and nearly everyone else in the world, corruption, censorship by the government in China and Facebook in the US, robots replacing human workers, marriage, privacy versus national security, climate change, lopsided trade balances.
TV headlines and 3-minute interviews, apps, and a limited number of Twitter characters have not solved today's problems, and they never will. The Federalist Papers argued before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. An extra Bill of Rights was needed. The print media backed further Amendments needed to clean up initial mistakes about the election of the President and Vice President, slavery, women's suffrage, and alcohol.
Print carries revolutionary ideas everywhere in the world. Why do authoritarian governments always shut down the press? Writing at Iowa's Storm Lake Times, with a circulation of only 3,000, Art Cullen won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for showing transparency's importance as a guard against bribes affecting government decisions. He wondered who was enabling the local Board of Supervisors in Buena Vista County, population 10,000, to help fund a million dollar defense against the Des Moines Water Works. His editorial disclosed the corn and soybean agribusiness farms that were contaminating drinking water with nitrates from their fertilizer.
Open a discussion about tariffs at the dinner table or on social media. You'll see a difference of opinion on the purpose of tariffs, if they can accomplish these purposes, even if these purposes need to be achieved. Does anyone mention what they have read about what government representatives, experts on economics, seniors, Walmart shoppers, or farmers have said about tariffs?
Informed judgments require the extended, detailed information print provides. Read the"Letters to the Editor," too. I'm often inspired by the readers who take time to compose the thoughtful opinions published. A grandmother's letter told why she insisted her two teen-aged grandchildren, she called them "screen zombies," put down their "tiny rectangles" to take in the spectacular sight of crossing the four-and-a-half-mile bridge over Chesapeake Bay.
A digital marketer like Marc Benioff deserves gratitude for funding the printed link between society's complex problems and those who depend on the extensive body of information needed to solve them.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
China Feels Winds of Change
Not only has the US President tired of China's theft of intellectual property and lopsided trade balance, but Malaysia's new 93-year-old prime minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, is fed up with loans for Beijing's worldwide Belt and Road Initiative. Labeling China's project "new colonialism," Dr. Mohamad traveled to Beijing to cancel the previous Malaysian government's agreement to finance a rail line and two pipelines for an inflated $20 billion (China may, however, have a way to regain these contracts, if Beijing turns over Jho Low, who was the mastermind of a financial scam in Malaysia). Sierra Leone's new president, Julius Maada Bio, also told China it canceled the previous administration's contract to build a new airport, since the existing one is underutilized.
Despite heavy Chinese spending in support of Abdulla Yameen in the Maldives, the atolls that occupy a key position to monitor trade in the Indian Ocean, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won a surprise victory in that country's September, 2018 presidential election.
Chinese citizens also were none too happy in September, 2018, when they learned President Xi Jinping, at a meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, committed another $60 billion to 53 African countries after committing $60 billion in 2015. Censors quickly removed social media criticism that claimed loans would not be repaid and aid was needed for domestic projects.
China's unabashed interest in Africa's mineral commodities and growing market is arousing dormant European competition. Following his trip to China to inquire about funding for infrastructure projects, President Buhari of Nigeria received visits by French President, Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and British prime minister, Theresa May. It was Mrs. May's first trip to former British colonies in five years.
At home, Tiananmen Square did not end demonstrations in China in 1989. Labeled "picking quarrels and causing trouble," "public-order disturbances," strikes by workers in factories and service industries, or just plain incidents, the Communist Party still tries to tamp out what it considers threats to peace and security by arresting demonstrators and those who post social media information about the protests. Despite these government crack downs, protests continue. In 2016, for example, parents of dead children, whose only children were born during the era of China's one-child policy, took to the streets in Beijing. This year, parents protested a local government's decision to transfer children from nearby schools to distant ones. Whether land is seized by local officials, soldiers demand higher pensions, or a minority wants to practice religion, state controls continue to spark tensions.
China fears large movements, such as members with loyalties to international trade union organizations or religions (Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, or Christian). The government is wary of any large gathering. Security keeps visitors out of Hongya, the Dalai Lama's birthplace in March, when in 1959, a demonstration against Chinese rule in Tibet led to the Dalai Lama's exile and the dissolution of his government there. During the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, police canceled the Norlha Basketball Invitational tournament in China's Tibetan region. The Public Security Bureau feared the large crowd of spectators the tournament would attract in the Dalai Lama's former domain. (Also see the later posts, "Challenging Chinese New Year" and "Playgrounds Welcome March Basketball.")
Despite heavy Chinese spending in support of Abdulla Yameen in the Maldives, the atolls that occupy a key position to monitor trade in the Indian Ocean, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won a surprise victory in that country's September, 2018 presidential election.
Chinese citizens also were none too happy in September, 2018, when they learned President Xi Jinping, at a meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, committed another $60 billion to 53 African countries after committing $60 billion in 2015. Censors quickly removed social media criticism that claimed loans would not be repaid and aid was needed for domestic projects.
China's unabashed interest in Africa's mineral commodities and growing market is arousing dormant European competition. Following his trip to China to inquire about funding for infrastructure projects, President Buhari of Nigeria received visits by French President, Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and British prime minister, Theresa May. It was Mrs. May's first trip to former British colonies in five years.
At home, Tiananmen Square did not end demonstrations in China in 1989. Labeled "picking quarrels and causing trouble," "public-order disturbances," strikes by workers in factories and service industries, or just plain incidents, the Communist Party still tries to tamp out what it considers threats to peace and security by arresting demonstrators and those who post social media information about the protests. Despite these government crack downs, protests continue. In 2016, for example, parents of dead children, whose only children were born during the era of China's one-child policy, took to the streets in Beijing. This year, parents protested a local government's decision to transfer children from nearby schools to distant ones. Whether land is seized by local officials, soldiers demand higher pensions, or a minority wants to practice religion, state controls continue to spark tensions.
China fears large movements, such as members with loyalties to international trade union organizations or religions (Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, or Christian). The government is wary of any large gathering. Security keeps visitors out of Hongya, the Dalai Lama's birthplace in March, when in 1959, a demonstration against Chinese rule in Tibet led to the Dalai Lama's exile and the dissolution of his government there. During the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, police canceled the Norlha Basketball Invitational tournament in China's Tibetan region. The Public Security Bureau feared the large crowd of spectators the tournament would attract in the Dalai Lama's former domain. (Also see the later posts, "Challenging Chinese New Year" and "Playgrounds Welcome March Basketball.")
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Globalization's Impact on Fashion
Hard to believe in times past fashion confined itself to separate French, Italian, and US markets rather than to today's cross-cultural global industry. Even when Vogue magazine has separate international editions in Arabic and for Latin America, Poland, and the Czech Republic, Vogue's original edition features a global array of designers and models, such as Somali-American Halima Aden, the Tanzanian-Norwegian twins Martine and Gunnhild Chioko, and Grace Bol from South Sudan.
Although global e-commerce, references to no borders or boundaries, diversity, and presentations in exotic locations seem to be the mode, a former culture minister in Italy observed, "a globalized world puts greater value on the distinctions and sense of identity...." Brands with strong national identities, like Chanel and Burberry, do not shy away from projecting their heritage and point-of-view in the global marketplace. At Chanel, Hamburg's Karl Lagerfeld insured the future of the Lesage embroidery house. Japanese designer, Jun Takahashi, admits his inspiration from the British punk rock youth culture.
Fashion will always search for what is new and different. Flappers cast off their constrictive undergarments to Charleston in short shifts that could move. Dior fashioned voluminous skirts to signal the end of fabric rationing in World War II. The man who put on a Lumumba University
T-shirt to work out in CIA's gym wanted the attention he received.
Today, creating an individual identity is easy. Simply incorporate a touch of another country's culture. I treasure an African "gold" necklace of straw and wax a friend brought me from Mali. On my coffee table, guests can pick up and examine the carved wooden sling shot I found at a bazaar sponsored by West African missionaries. Add stuffed dates and rice wrapped in grape leaves to your dinner menu. And when you browse through mail order magazines from a museum (store.metmuseum.org) or a nonprofit (unicefmarket.org/catalog), look for foreign items for yourself and for holiday gifts that might introduce children and older friends to a new culture and distinctive identity.
Although global e-commerce, references to no borders or boundaries, diversity, and presentations in exotic locations seem to be the mode, a former culture minister in Italy observed, "a globalized world puts greater value on the distinctions and sense of identity...." Brands with strong national identities, like Chanel and Burberry, do not shy away from projecting their heritage and point-of-view in the global marketplace. At Chanel, Hamburg's Karl Lagerfeld insured the future of the Lesage embroidery house. Japanese designer, Jun Takahashi, admits his inspiration from the British punk rock youth culture.
Fashion will always search for what is new and different. Flappers cast off their constrictive undergarments to Charleston in short shifts that could move. Dior fashioned voluminous skirts to signal the end of fabric rationing in World War II. The man who put on a Lumumba University
T-shirt to work out in CIA's gym wanted the attention he received.
Today, creating an individual identity is easy. Simply incorporate a touch of another country's culture. I treasure an African "gold" necklace of straw and wax a friend brought me from Mali. On my coffee table, guests can pick up and examine the carved wooden sling shot I found at a bazaar sponsored by West African missionaries. Add stuffed dates and rice wrapped in grape leaves to your dinner menu. And when you browse through mail order magazines from a museum (store.metmuseum.org) or a nonprofit (unicefmarket.org/catalog), look for foreign items for yourself and for holiday gifts that might introduce children and older friends to a new culture and distinctive identity.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Refugees at Work
Not all 68.5 million migrants identified by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) live in camps. In the US, for example, asylum seekers can receive work permits, if their cases are not resolved in 180 days. In July, 2018, one asylum seeker from Sudan was given a court date in 2021.
What do refugees do while they are in limbo? Some drive cabs or work in nursing homes. But refugees who fled a civil war in Ethiopia mobilized family members to bring their home town food-associated hospitality to a restaurant they opened in Washington, DC. Creative employers, such as the Palestinian and Yemen business partners, Nas Jab and Jabber Nasser al Bihani, look for asylum seekers who have skills they can employ. That way, they found chefs for their Komeeda restaurants in New York, NY; Austin, Texas; and Washington, DC.
The UNHCR adopted an idea from a French catering company, Les Cuistots Migrateurs, that organized a festival to attract immigrant chefs for restaurants in Paris, Lyon, Madrid, and Rome. UNHCR-sponsored festivals have led to numerous international dining experiences.
What do refugees do while they are in limbo? Some drive cabs or work in nursing homes. But refugees who fled a civil war in Ethiopia mobilized family members to bring their home town food-associated hospitality to a restaurant they opened in Washington, DC. Creative employers, such as the Palestinian and Yemen business partners, Nas Jab and Jabber Nasser al Bihani, look for asylum seekers who have skills they can employ. That way, they found chefs for their Komeeda restaurants in New York, NY; Austin, Texas; and Washington, DC.
The UNHCR adopted an idea from a French catering company, Les Cuistots Migrateurs, that organized a festival to attract immigrant chefs for restaurants in Paris, Lyon, Madrid, and Rome. UNHCR-sponsored festivals have led to numerous international dining experiences.
- Women cook native dishes at Mazi Mas in London.
- Home cooking from Syria is on the menu at the New Arrival Super Club in Los Angeles.
- Detroit is opening Baobab Fare, a Burundian restaurant and market.
- The Sushioki chain in Durhan, North Carolina, advertises the cooking of refugee chefs.
Friday, September 14, 2018
Real Imaginary Friends
Have you heard about digital personalities? Your teens and students already may know a new kind of avatar named Miquela Sousa. By 2020, trendwatching.com reports AI, facial recognition, emotional sensing, and other new technologies will create 5 billion virtual assistants and virtual companions or computer-generated influencers (CGI).
Marketers are able to tailor a perfect CGI for every marketing segment's sex, age, size, and passions. That's what Trevor McFearies and Sara De Cou are doing at Brud, an LA-based tech startup. Vogue's September, 2018 issue describes Miquela Sousa, the 19-year-old model and musician Brud based on current tastes and culture cues. Stylist Lucinda Chambers outfits Lil Miquela, as she is known since 2016 by her Instagram followers, in Alexander McQueen for a Vogue photo shoot. Miquela's interests are said to be: recording music, the politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, relapsing into tomboy clothes and activities, makeup tutorials on YouTube, and new Drake albums. She has blunt-cut bangs, straight dark hair past her shoulders, rather thick eyebrows over her brown eyes, full pouty lips, a slim but not skinny body, a pretty face speckled with freckles lightly covered with foundation a tad darker than medium.
What does a marketer want a susceptible young person to do after interacting with Miquela Sousa? Imitate her look, fashions, activities, and causes. The latter, in her case, are liberal.
It is easy to slip out of reality and get caught up imitating what a made-up CGI looks like, wears, does, and says. Too easy.
Marketers are able to tailor a perfect CGI for every marketing segment's sex, age, size, and passions. That's what Trevor McFearies and Sara De Cou are doing at Brud, an LA-based tech startup. Vogue's September, 2018 issue describes Miquela Sousa, the 19-year-old model and musician Brud based on current tastes and culture cues. Stylist Lucinda Chambers outfits Lil Miquela, as she is known since 2016 by her Instagram followers, in Alexander McQueen for a Vogue photo shoot. Miquela's interests are said to be: recording music, the politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, relapsing into tomboy clothes and activities, makeup tutorials on YouTube, and new Drake albums. She has blunt-cut bangs, straight dark hair past her shoulders, rather thick eyebrows over her brown eyes, full pouty lips, a slim but not skinny body, a pretty face speckled with freckles lightly covered with foundation a tad darker than medium.
What does a marketer want a susceptible young person to do after interacting with Miquela Sousa? Imitate her look, fashions, activities, and causes. The latter, in her case, are liberal.
It is easy to slip out of reality and get caught up imitating what a made-up CGI looks like, wears, does, and says. Too easy.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Virtual Reality Goes to School
To prepare students for future success, they need early exposure to new technologies the way Bill Gates learned computer science in his teens.
California-based, Facebook-owned Oculus recognized the importance of getting kids up to speed on virtual reality (VR) and donated its VR headsets to schools, libraries, and museums in Japan, China, and the United States. According to an "Innovation of the Day" post on trendwatching.com, Oculus also is helping the public school system in Seattle, Washington, develop a course intended to teach how to create VR and helping teachers learn how to make the most educational use out of VR technology.
Virtual reality is already a hit in the gaming world of China's Tencent company's "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" and "MonsterHunter: World." Competitors played Tencent's "Honour of Kings" at the 2018 Asian Games' eSports demonstration event in Indonesia. The eSports' event will be an official part of the 2020 Asian Games but not a part of the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Although the games include such sports as boxing and shooting, the International Olympic Committee said electronic sports promoted violence and contradicted Olympia values.
It should be noted: VR is not just for kids. Elderly folks, physically unable to enjoy the foreign travel of their younger days, readily put on VR headsets to travel on new adventures.
California-based, Facebook-owned Oculus recognized the importance of getting kids up to speed on virtual reality (VR) and donated its VR headsets to schools, libraries, and museums in Japan, China, and the United States. According to an "Innovation of the Day" post on trendwatching.com, Oculus also is helping the public school system in Seattle, Washington, develop a course intended to teach how to create VR and helping teachers learn how to make the most educational use out of VR technology.
Virtual reality is already a hit in the gaming world of China's Tencent company's "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" and "MonsterHunter: World." Competitors played Tencent's "Honour of Kings" at the 2018 Asian Games' eSports demonstration event in Indonesia. The eSports' event will be an official part of the 2020 Asian Games but not a part of the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Although the games include such sports as boxing and shooting, the International Olympic Committee said electronic sports promoted violence and contradicted Olympia values.
It should be noted: VR is not just for kids. Elderly folks, physically unable to enjoy the foreign travel of their younger days, readily put on VR headsets to travel on new adventures.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
How Students Can Get the Education They Need
Singapore, with an entire population of six million, and the Success Academy charter school network of 17,000 students in 47 New York schools, produce outstanding academic achievement. In the latest results from the triennial test of 15-year-olds from around the world, Singapore scored top marks in math, reading, science, and a new collaborative test, according to the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Students from Success charter schools score the highest marks on New York's standardized state tests, despite the fact 76% come from low income households and 93% are not white.
Before deciding, "Sure, small populations achieve academic excellence, but our country or State has millions of students to educate," consider the fact that these millions can be and are separated into classrooms. Some schools also group students into "houses," where teachers get to know their pupils while teaching them the same subject for two years A bigger drawback is the assessment of teachers in large school districts, where they are unknown to those charged with evaluating them. A study at Peking University raises another question about the impact of pollution on testing days. Results on heavily polluted days reduced scores on verbal word recognition but not math tests, and toxic air seemed to have a greater impact on the scores of men rather than women. Yet, something can be learned from the testing and academic approaches in Singapore's and New York's Success charter schools.
Ideas from Singapore
Before deciding, "Sure, small populations achieve academic excellence, but our country or State has millions of students to educate," consider the fact that these millions can be and are separated into classrooms. Some schools also group students into "houses," where teachers get to know their pupils while teaching them the same subject for two years A bigger drawback is the assessment of teachers in large school districts, where they are unknown to those charged with evaluating them. A study at Peking University raises another question about the impact of pollution on testing days. Results on heavily polluted days reduced scores on verbal word recognition but not math tests, and toxic air seemed to have a greater impact on the scores of men rather than women. Yet, something can be learned from the testing and academic approaches in Singapore's and New York's Success charter schools.
Ideas from Singapore
- Students wear uniforms.
- Traditionally, teachers led classes and did not rely on students to learn for themselves, but now group work and teacher-pupil discussions also are used.
- Entire classes still progress through the same narrow and deep math curriculum. Struggling students receive compulsory extra sessions to help them keep up.
- After classes end at around 2 pm, students can go to a "Maker Space" to learn how to use modern technologies, such as 3D printing, stop-motion film production, or programming robots.'
- Students who said they did not play video games showed a better ability to effectively divide tasks and communicate well to resolve disagreements while solving unfamiliar problems in a teamwork test of ability to collaborate.
- By 2023, without giving exams, career guidance officials will help teachers prepare students for work with programs in computing, robotics, electronics, broadcast journalism, drama, sports, and other "real world" options.
- Reforms are guided by educational research and tested before deciding how to handle full-scale implementation.
- Programs will acquaint parents with career objectives that, in the future, may matter more than exam results.
- An exam still stresses students and parents who know high and low achievers are separated into different schools by age 12.
- There are no teacher unions.
- Classes with as many as 36 students and an excellent teacher are considered better than small classes with mediocre teachers.
- To develop and maintain excellent teachers, 100 hours of training in the latest teaching techniques are provided for teachers each year.
- Master teachers are designated to train their peers.
- Teachers receive rigorous annual performance assessments by supervisors who know them by name and evaluate them in relation to the social development and academic performance of their students.
- Teacher salaries are based on those earned by professionals in the private sector.
ePals.com to find a connection.
Ideas from New York's Success charter schools:
Ideas from New York's Success charter schools:
- Students are called "scholars."
- Scholars dress in orange and blue solid and plaid uniforms.
- Halls are immaculate with scholar artwork displayed on the walls.
- A "golden plunger" award provides incentive to keep bathrooms clean.
- Multicolored carpets in elementary school classrooms are divided into rows of squares with a circle in each indicating where each child is to sit with hands still and eyes following whoever is speaking.
- Classrooms have white smartboards and bins of specially selected books.
- In timed segments, teachers provide instruction at the beginning of class. Students then work individually or in pairs (building something or working math problems, for example) and finish by sharing ideas with class.
- Laboratory science is required five days a week.
- Schools also teach sports, chess, and the arts.
- Common courtesy, saying "please" and "thank you" and respecting peers and adults is required.
- A free curricula model is online.
- Parents are required to read to their children at home, supervise homework, keep reading logs, and respond to school communications in 24 hours.
- The schools are less successful in accommodating children who perform poorly or chronically misbehave, as well as those with disabilities and special learning needs.
- No transfer students are accepted to fill vacancies after fourth grade, when they are likely to be too far behind their classmates.
- Teachers receive constant observation and advice for improvement.
- Teachers are expected to know each child's reading, math, English language arts, and science level, goal, need for help and how it will be provided.
- Some teachers, designated as exemplars, receive extra pay and serve as models for others.
- Some teachers leave because of long hours and high stress to perform well.
- There are no teacher unions, bit teachers receive generous pay, benefits, and teacher training.
- Budget is funded by a combination of public and private philanthropic money.
- Director knows how to employ political advocacy.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Vietnam and U.S. Demonstrate the Value of Short Memories
Chances are, looking back on your life, you remember having an enemy who later became your friend. Kids also go through those off and on enemy-friend relationships, as do countries. Turning Germany into a friend after World War II proved far better than trying to condemn the country forever following World War I.
In the U.S. we learned at Senator John McCain's funeral service on September 1, 2018 last Saturday, even though he was captured and tortured for over five years in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese now recognize him as someone who helped bring about the reconciliation of the United States and Vietnam.
Haiphong harbor, once mined by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, now is valued as an import/export hub needed to handle U.S. trade pulling out of China. In February, 2019, President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un chose Vietnam for their meeting to discuss demilitarization of the Korean peninsula and lifting the crippling economic sanctions that keep North Korea from enjoying the prosperity South Korea and Vietnam now enjoy.
Today, both the United States and Vietnam continue to contest China's claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands and their adjacent waters in the South China Sea. After declaring in 2015 no intention of militarizing its artificial islands there, China now has radar installations, reinforced concrete bunkers, and missiles on three Spratly Islands west of the Philippines, a compliant challenger dependent on Chinese investment. China also has landed bombers in the Parcel Islands disputed with Vietnam.
Vietnam, nonetheless, with its powerful military force, successfully prevented China from locating an oil exploration rig in its waters. At home, Vietnam has experienced anti-Chinese protests. Meanwhile, in its ongoing challenge to excessive maritime claims by all countries violating the international Law of the Sea Convention, a U.S. destroyer's Freedom of Navigation Operation sailed within 12 miles of one of China's seven artificial islands in May, 2018. Then, the US canceled an invitation to China to participate in annual naval drills off Hawaii and invited Vietnam instead.
Vietnam also has challenged China's claims in the South China Sea by building two of its own artificial islands on the Nanhua Reef in the Spratly Island chain. According to China, the reef where Vietnam built is only above water at low tide, and typhoon "Jasmine" washed away much of the reclaimed land dredged up from the ocean floor. China also was proud to add Vietnam used a technique inferior to the way China sucks up sand for its taller islands.
Both low tech and high tech industries benefit from Vietnam's and the US's short memories. Check clothes labels, and you probably will see a number of items were made in Vietnam. At the same time, the oncology treatment IBM's Watson chose at Phu Tho General Hospital enabled a patient to move and eliminate the need for painkilling medication. Google Brain and technology experts also applaud Vietnamese Dr. Le Viet Quoc's effort to make deep learning a reality and to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into advertising research.
At "Age of AI and Vietnamese Enterprises," a Hanoi summit on July 25, 2018, more than 400 AI, economists, and financial experts and delegates from Vietnam's leading firms heard Harvard's James Furman urge private-government cooperation on AI research and applications. Vietnam's own Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment told the summit's older generation to eliminate obstacles preventing companies from making full use of younger employees with math skills and an interest in new technology.
Modeled on Silicon Valley, California, Vingroup JSC, a Vietnamese conglomerate worth about $3 billion, intends to consolidate its diversified businesses in VinTech City, where the focus will be technology development (including development of new generation materials), applications, manufacturing, and services. A sub-unit will house the Big Data Institution and Vin Hi-Tech Institution.Vietnam finds the key to using Big Data effectively is creating teams that include Big Data technology experts and those with a full understanding of the industry using the data. Working together, technology and industry partners are best able to incorporate unstructured data about customer activities, such as internet use and applications, with structured and semi-structured industry data in order to develop new digital products and services. Just like in the United States, Vietnam knows data found to have great long-term value for a company, needs to be protected from nearby and distant competitors, even if they are friends.
In the U.S. we learned at Senator John McCain's funeral service on September 1, 2018 last Saturday, even though he was captured and tortured for over five years in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese now recognize him as someone who helped bring about the reconciliation of the United States and Vietnam.
Haiphong harbor, once mined by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, now is valued as an import/export hub needed to handle U.S. trade pulling out of China. In February, 2019, President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un chose Vietnam for their meeting to discuss demilitarization of the Korean peninsula and lifting the crippling economic sanctions that keep North Korea from enjoying the prosperity South Korea and Vietnam now enjoy.
Today, both the United States and Vietnam continue to contest China's claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands and their adjacent waters in the South China Sea. After declaring in 2015 no intention of militarizing its artificial islands there, China now has radar installations, reinforced concrete bunkers, and missiles on three Spratly Islands west of the Philippines, a compliant challenger dependent on Chinese investment. China also has landed bombers in the Parcel Islands disputed with Vietnam.
Vietnam, nonetheless, with its powerful military force, successfully prevented China from locating an oil exploration rig in its waters. At home, Vietnam has experienced anti-Chinese protests. Meanwhile, in its ongoing challenge to excessive maritime claims by all countries violating the international Law of the Sea Convention, a U.S. destroyer's Freedom of Navigation Operation sailed within 12 miles of one of China's seven artificial islands in May, 2018. Then, the US canceled an invitation to China to participate in annual naval drills off Hawaii and invited Vietnam instead.
Vietnam also has challenged China's claims in the South China Sea by building two of its own artificial islands on the Nanhua Reef in the Spratly Island chain. According to China, the reef where Vietnam built is only above water at low tide, and typhoon "Jasmine" washed away much of the reclaimed land dredged up from the ocean floor. China also was proud to add Vietnam used a technique inferior to the way China sucks up sand for its taller islands.
Both low tech and high tech industries benefit from Vietnam's and the US's short memories. Check clothes labels, and you probably will see a number of items were made in Vietnam. At the same time, the oncology treatment IBM's Watson chose at Phu Tho General Hospital enabled a patient to move and eliminate the need for painkilling medication. Google Brain and technology experts also applaud Vietnamese Dr. Le Viet Quoc's effort to make deep learning a reality and to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into advertising research.
At "Age of AI and Vietnamese Enterprises," a Hanoi summit on July 25, 2018, more than 400 AI, economists, and financial experts and delegates from Vietnam's leading firms heard Harvard's James Furman urge private-government cooperation on AI research and applications. Vietnam's own Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment told the summit's older generation to eliminate obstacles preventing companies from making full use of younger employees with math skills and an interest in new technology.
Modeled on Silicon Valley, California, Vingroup JSC, a Vietnamese conglomerate worth about $3 billion, intends to consolidate its diversified businesses in VinTech City, where the focus will be technology development (including development of new generation materials), applications, manufacturing, and services. A sub-unit will house the Big Data Institution and Vin Hi-Tech Institution.Vietnam finds the key to using Big Data effectively is creating teams that include Big Data technology experts and those with a full understanding of the industry using the data. Working together, technology and industry partners are best able to incorporate unstructured data about customer activities, such as internet use and applications, with structured and semi-structured industry data in order to develop new digital products and services. Just like in the United States, Vietnam knows data found to have great long-term value for a company, needs to be protected from nearby and distant competitors, even if they are friends.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Santa Opens Arctic Ocean for Business
Reindeer have new competition. Between now and next March, ice thickens in the Arctic Ocean, but, because of climate change, gradual melting after March opens a shipping channel in August. Ships with stronger hulls and expensive icebreaker escorts even can use the route for up to three months.
Up until about five years ago, the dark cold South Pole was home to penguins, and the far north only housed Eskimos and Russian prisoners in Siberia. Oleg Sentson, the Ukrainian film director on a hunger strike, is still there in a penal colony serving a 20-year sentence for protesting Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Russia's President Putin also now hikes on vacations in Siberia, and Russian ships travel from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg on a Northern Sea Route Putin calls "a matter of national pride."
Why are countries scrambling for claims to sea routes through the Arctic Ocean and not around Antarctica? Examine the North and South Poles on a globe or map. How many degrees latitude does it take from both poles before you find at least five countries? What potential problems do you see when passing between Russia and Alaska?
Arctic shipping routes, according to a paper prepared by the engineering faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, are most dangerous in the East Siberian Sea. In the shallowest area of the Arctic Ocean, ice builds up earlier and faster after summer, and uncharted waters are more likely to cause ships to run aground. Even during summer, half of the East Siberian Sea can remain ice covered.
Go North, Young Men
Despite the harsh environment and high insurance rates, activity is expected to increase in the far north due to a variety of factors. Arctic routes shorten navigation time, and they are free of pirates. Oil and gas reserves in the area already have attracted exploration. (See the earlier posts: "Troubled Northwest Passage Found" and "North Pole Flag.")
Accidents, seldom now, can be expected to increase as shipping traffic increases, however. Ship captains who ply the Arctic Ocean cannot help but feel a little like captains of potential Titanics. Ice can trap ships, and they still can hit icebergs, as well as icebreaker escorts and other ships. Captains need constant weather station updates about the changing wave heights, wind speeds, and temperatures that affect icing in each section along their routes, information they also need in order to know how long crew members should stay out on deck. They want protocols about plans for emergency assistance and oil spill clean ups from members of the Arctic Council (Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).
Tourists Who Have Been Everywhere
Possible perils failed to deter 900 passengers from paying anywhere from $20,000 to one million dollars per person to book passage on the Crystal Serenity's first cruise through the Arctic Ocean in 2016. The ship sailed from Seward to Nome, Alaska, where it docked to unload solar panels ordered by the city's population of 3800. In groups, cruise passengers took turns sailing to shore in transport boats to photograph wild musk oxen; eat $5 slices of blueberry pie; watch Eskimo dancers; and purchase locally made seal gloves and wallets. From Nome, a month long voyage passed by Greenland and ended in New York.
The trip required a crew of 600, a special navigation satellite system, and chartering cargo planes to deliver perishable food for pickups at communities along northern Canada. The Crystal Serenity made another, and its final, passenger voyage in 2017.
Faster Cargo Shipments
After the Crystal Serenity tested the Arctic route for passenger cruises, the Danish-based Maersk line, the world's largest shipping company, launched the Russian Venta Maersk's container ship north from Vladivostok, west across the Arctic Ocean, and south around Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Carrying 3600 containers of Russian frozen fish and electronics from South Korea, the ship cut off about two weeks from the usual time it takes to use the southern route from Asia and enter Europe using the Suez Canal. While time was saved, profit was lost, because container ships are used to dropping off and picking up a thousand containers at a dozen or more ports along the way. No such transshipment points exist on the Arctic route. Following the test trip, Maersk announced no immediate plans to substitute the Northern Sea Route for its usual schedule.
Russian cargo ships already do service domestic ports on an irregular basis. Now Moscow is building roads, a railroad, and facilities to establish regular ports of call along its Northern Sea Route. China also has made overtures to Iceland and Greenland to establish outposts on what Beijing calls its "Polar Silk Road." (See the earlier posts, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder" and "China Stakes New Claim to Arctic.")
After China's President Xi Jinping determined to reduce pollution by switching from coal to natural gas, a serious shortage left Chinese homes without heat and shut down factories. To prevent future natural gas shortages, China's state-owned COSCO shipping company and Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines formed a 50-50 partnership to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) east on the Arctic Ocean and south to Asia from Russia's Novartek producer on the Yamal Peninsula. While a tanker can make this trip in 15 days in summer, compared to 35 days by going west and south through the Suez Canal, ice is too thick in the winter. Yet, there is pressure to increase China's shipments through the most dangerous East Siberian Sea.
Up until about five years ago, the dark cold South Pole was home to penguins, and the far north only housed Eskimos and Russian prisoners in Siberia. Oleg Sentson, the Ukrainian film director on a hunger strike, is still there in a penal colony serving a 20-year sentence for protesting Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Russia's President Putin also now hikes on vacations in Siberia, and Russian ships travel from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg on a Northern Sea Route Putin calls "a matter of national pride."
Why are countries scrambling for claims to sea routes through the Arctic Ocean and not around Antarctica? Examine the North and South Poles on a globe or map. How many degrees latitude does it take from both poles before you find at least five countries? What potential problems do you see when passing between Russia and Alaska?
Arctic shipping routes, according to a paper prepared by the engineering faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, are most dangerous in the East Siberian Sea. In the shallowest area of the Arctic Ocean, ice builds up earlier and faster after summer, and uncharted waters are more likely to cause ships to run aground. Even during summer, half of the East Siberian Sea can remain ice covered.
Go North, Young Men
Despite the harsh environment and high insurance rates, activity is expected to increase in the far north due to a variety of factors. Arctic routes shorten navigation time, and they are free of pirates. Oil and gas reserves in the area already have attracted exploration. (See the earlier posts: "Troubled Northwest Passage Found" and "North Pole Flag.")
Accidents, seldom now, can be expected to increase as shipping traffic increases, however. Ship captains who ply the Arctic Ocean cannot help but feel a little like captains of potential Titanics. Ice can trap ships, and they still can hit icebergs, as well as icebreaker escorts and other ships. Captains need constant weather station updates about the changing wave heights, wind speeds, and temperatures that affect icing in each section along their routes, information they also need in order to know how long crew members should stay out on deck. They want protocols about plans for emergency assistance and oil spill clean ups from members of the Arctic Council (Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).
Tourists Who Have Been Everywhere
Possible perils failed to deter 900 passengers from paying anywhere from $20,000 to one million dollars per person to book passage on the Crystal Serenity's first cruise through the Arctic Ocean in 2016. The ship sailed from Seward to Nome, Alaska, where it docked to unload solar panels ordered by the city's population of 3800. In groups, cruise passengers took turns sailing to shore in transport boats to photograph wild musk oxen; eat $5 slices of blueberry pie; watch Eskimo dancers; and purchase locally made seal gloves and wallets. From Nome, a month long voyage passed by Greenland and ended in New York.
The trip required a crew of 600, a special navigation satellite system, and chartering cargo planes to deliver perishable food for pickups at communities along northern Canada. The Crystal Serenity made another, and its final, passenger voyage in 2017.
Faster Cargo Shipments
After the Crystal Serenity tested the Arctic route for passenger cruises, the Danish-based Maersk line, the world's largest shipping company, launched the Russian Venta Maersk's container ship north from Vladivostok, west across the Arctic Ocean, and south around Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Carrying 3600 containers of Russian frozen fish and electronics from South Korea, the ship cut off about two weeks from the usual time it takes to use the southern route from Asia and enter Europe using the Suez Canal. While time was saved, profit was lost, because container ships are used to dropping off and picking up a thousand containers at a dozen or more ports along the way. No such transshipment points exist on the Arctic route. Following the test trip, Maersk announced no immediate plans to substitute the Northern Sea Route for its usual schedule.
Russian cargo ships already do service domestic ports on an irregular basis. Now Moscow is building roads, a railroad, and facilities to establish regular ports of call along its Northern Sea Route. China also has made overtures to Iceland and Greenland to establish outposts on what Beijing calls its "Polar Silk Road." (See the earlier posts, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder" and "China Stakes New Claim to Arctic.")
After China's President Xi Jinping determined to reduce pollution by switching from coal to natural gas, a serious shortage left Chinese homes without heat and shut down factories. To prevent future natural gas shortages, China's state-owned COSCO shipping company and Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines formed a 50-50 partnership to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) east on the Arctic Ocean and south to Asia from Russia's Novartek producer on the Yamal Peninsula. While a tanker can make this trip in 15 days in summer, compared to 35 days by going west and south through the Suez Canal, ice is too thick in the winter. Yet, there is pressure to increase China's shipments through the most dangerous East Siberian Sea.
Friday, August 24, 2018
Cryptocurrency for Kids (and adults)
Strip away its digital aspect, and cryptocurrency transactions are monetized barter exchanges between two people. Or, you can think of cryptocurrency exchanges as one person deciding how much of a new kind of money he or she has and is willing to pay for an item or service. No paperwork is involved in what is essentially a secret transaction between two people.
In a regular barter trade, a young person might try to find a student willing to trade a Pikachu card for one or more Pokemon cards. But in a cryptocurrency-like system, a young person offers to buy the Pikachu card with, let's say, some Monopoly money (or money students themselves design and distribute). A student is willing to sell the Pikachu card for a certain amount of Monopoly money, because she or he needs that amount of Monopoly money to buy a bag of chips from a student willing to accept that amount of Monopoly money. A student could, for example, use created currency to make a major trade, or a number of smaller trades, to receive items that could be sold, maybe at a yard sale, for a lot of real, government-issued money.
Unless all Monopoly money is going to disappear from all Monopoly games, families, students, and classrooms need to begin designing their own currency and agreeing how much each person receives in his and her accounts. It can be lots of fun to begin listing the items that can be sold: candy and cookies; unusual pens and pencils; socks; hair accessories; little stuffed animals; friendship bracelets and key chains. Services also can be exchanged for new currencies. Students can be paid to teach others to make different types of paper airplanes, braid hair in a certain way, throw a football or Frisbee, solve a math problem, or fold an Origami crane. Around the home, parents and children might sell services for new currencies to buy privileges. Of course, it is unlikely that services, purchased with created currency, could be resold for real money.
A do-it-yourself cryptocurrency system exposes some of the problems associated with cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, in the real world. You have to find another person who has what you want; who is willing to accept your particular kind of cryptocurrency (There is more than Bitcoin); who is willing to create no paper trail of the transaction; who will accept no changes, such as merchandise returns; and who wants to keep the transaction secret. Basing a subscription service on cryptocurrency is unlikely. Who would be wiling to hand over currency to receive a cupcake every moth or a weekly classroom newspaper, if they received no receipt showing they were entitled to the cupcakes or newspapers? Then, there is the problem of someone stealing your currency. In real life, cryptocurrency systems based on digital transactions currency has been known to disappear with the click of a key before a transaction is confirmed. Unlike savings held in a bank and protected by a government agency, cryptocurrency funds enjoy no such guarantee.
Bitcoin cryptocurrency uses the SHA256 algorithm to confirm each transaction as part of a blockchain, to notify all participants in its network of each transaction, and to enable participants to keep track of the balances in each other's accounts. But, before a transaction is confirmed, it can be altered.
In a regular barter trade, a young person might try to find a student willing to trade a Pikachu card for one or more Pokemon cards. But in a cryptocurrency-like system, a young person offers to buy the Pikachu card with, let's say, some Monopoly money (or money students themselves design and distribute). A student is willing to sell the Pikachu card for a certain amount of Monopoly money, because she or he needs that amount of Monopoly money to buy a bag of chips from a student willing to accept that amount of Monopoly money. A student could, for example, use created currency to make a major trade, or a number of smaller trades, to receive items that could be sold, maybe at a yard sale, for a lot of real, government-issued money.
Unless all Monopoly money is going to disappear from all Monopoly games, families, students, and classrooms need to begin designing their own currency and agreeing how much each person receives in his and her accounts. It can be lots of fun to begin listing the items that can be sold: candy and cookies; unusual pens and pencils; socks; hair accessories; little stuffed animals; friendship bracelets and key chains. Services also can be exchanged for new currencies. Students can be paid to teach others to make different types of paper airplanes, braid hair in a certain way, throw a football or Frisbee, solve a math problem, or fold an Origami crane. Around the home, parents and children might sell services for new currencies to buy privileges. Of course, it is unlikely that services, purchased with created currency, could be resold for real money.
A do-it-yourself cryptocurrency system exposes some of the problems associated with cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, in the real world. You have to find another person who has what you want; who is willing to accept your particular kind of cryptocurrency (There is more than Bitcoin); who is willing to create no paper trail of the transaction; who will accept no changes, such as merchandise returns; and who wants to keep the transaction secret. Basing a subscription service on cryptocurrency is unlikely. Who would be wiling to hand over currency to receive a cupcake every moth or a weekly classroom newspaper, if they received no receipt showing they were entitled to the cupcakes or newspapers? Then, there is the problem of someone stealing your currency. In real life, cryptocurrency systems based on digital transactions currency has been known to disappear with the click of a key before a transaction is confirmed. Unlike savings held in a bank and protected by a government agency, cryptocurrency funds enjoy no such guarantee.
Bitcoin cryptocurrency uses the SHA256 algorithm to confirm each transaction as part of a blockchain, to notify all participants in its network of each transaction, and to enable participants to keep track of the balances in each other's accounts. But, before a transaction is confirmed, it can be altered.
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