A few weeks ago, I read a really interesting book about Toyota and the policies behind its reputation for excellence and dominance of the auto market. I had bought the book for a dollar on clearance at Borders, a few days after one of my first posts about how the decline of US auto manufacturing was worrisome to me.
-- 30 minute interruption because a guy randomly walks in and asks me to do a computerized drawing of a construction plan ... what the hell, i accede --
This book -- The Elegant Solution by Matthew May -- talks about how, from the start, quality was never a question at Toyota. A basic principle from the inception of the company was that good business is about maximizing quality and minimizing cost. Notice how quality is the goal, not revenue -- though the implication is that rational people will always buy high-quality stuff for a good price. Quality is sustainable and attainable, and it adds value to the world. Maximizing revenue without attention to quality, on the other hand, is evil. It´s all about cutting corners and being manipulative, and it eventually burns out and hurts everyone, just like GM and Chrysler and subprime loans have.
In the book, May invites readers to take Totoya´s philosophy into their own places of work. As a starter, he says we should think about how a job isn´t just a job, but is something that adds value to the world. If we want to take pride in our work, we should start out by reminding ourselves of its positive benefit on the world. As I read this, I stopped to think about whether this could really apply to all jobs. In the end, pretty much any job I could think of provided a worthy service to the world. Except advertising.
I remember when, in the last year of high school, my good friend Max told me he was thinking about studying advertising. To be a good advertiser, he told me, you have to be creative and sharp and you have to have a good understanding of American demographics and tastes. This is all true, I replied, and I had no doubt that some of the funniest and most creative Americans work in advertising. But, I also reminded Max, advertising is fundamentally about tricking people. It´s about fooling them to buy certain products against their independent judgment. What could be more degrading? Max agreed -- he´s doing civil engineering now.
Luana is a huge fan of this Japanese snack food company called Yoki. I think they´re the Japanese equivalent of Frito-Lay. As we were munching on surprisingly addictive ham-flavored corn shells -- enriched with 10 vitamins! -- I told her how nice it was to be able to open up a bag and see it completely full. Opening bags of junk food in the US -- rarely more a third full -- can be so depressing. But it´s exactly what you come to expect when you know that Frito-Lay is pumping its money into ads, manipulating the American consumer to crave a decidedly bad product. And if Frito cuts prices by putting less food in the same bag, we know the competitors are going to be screwed if they don´t do the same. If a competitor put more food in the same bag for a slightly higher price, Americans wouldn´t have the willpower to do the math and determine the smartest buy. (Grocery stores do a great service by calculating price-per-ounce ratios, but snack bags from vending machines and counter lines fall outside of this system).
As I told Luana about this frustrating state of affairs, she reminded me that if advertising is evil, it is a necessary evil. How else could people learn about new products? My response that word-of-mouth and impartial consumer reports are sufficient sounded characteristically naive. But then again, I wondered, doesn´t the internet make reliable and effective consumer reports laughably easy? There are already tons of smart consumers who turn to internet for product reviews. If there were just one centralized, user-friendly site dedicated entirely to consumer reports, I imagine that we´d have a stronger shield against advertisement.
Web advertisement is much simpler and much less manipulative because it just places product links in places where people are likely to find them helpful. When Google becomes the epicenter of all our media, I think we´ll all be refreshed to encouter this less intrusive kind of advertising in our lives. As in other parts of the world, manipulative advertising -- especially in politics -- will be viewed as an insult to intelligence.
No major updates from Brazil. Things are the same. I skimmed through Antonio Damasio´s Descartes´Error (much of which I read in college) last week and now I´m reading Peter Brown´s The Rise of Western Christendom. See everybody in three weeks!
Monday, 3 December 2007
Monday, 12 November 2007
november
No news. Everything´s pretty much the same. I got my tourist visa renewed last weekend, which means I´ll actaully be able to stay in Brazil legally until I go back to the states for Christmas.
I went to church last night with Luana. The husband of the other employee here at school is the pastor of the Presbyterian church. We´d agreed to go a couple weeks ago but then ditched, so it was harder to dodge the second invite.
I guess most of the things I´ve been thinking about have to do with trying to observe things without attaching words or concepts to them, so I have a tough time putting the church experience into words. But all in all, it was nice to step in to a room where everyone was loved and accepted on the basis of their mere shared humanity. It´s so important to remember that all of our instincts for physical aggression and competition via hatred are pretty useless in a safe world. It´s actually okay -- and advantageous -- to accept everyone as family, or as Peter Singer puts it, to open up our circles of ethical consideration to the world. Sorry about the terrible writing style.
I went to church last night with Luana. The husband of the other employee here at school is the pastor of the Presbyterian church. We´d agreed to go a couple weeks ago but then ditched, so it was harder to dodge the second invite.
I guess most of the things I´ve been thinking about have to do with trying to observe things without attaching words or concepts to them, so I have a tough time putting the church experience into words. But all in all, it was nice to step in to a room where everyone was loved and accepted on the basis of their mere shared humanity. It´s so important to remember that all of our instincts for physical aggression and competition via hatred are pretty useless in a safe world. It´s actually okay -- and advantageous -- to accept everyone as family, or as Peter Singer puts it, to open up our circles of ethical consideration to the world. Sorry about the terrible writing style.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
bored
i´m alone and there´s not much to do here, so i´m throwing away my reais in the internet cafes.
i´ve never been more convinced, after reading schlesinger´s essay on the topic and evaluating the current disgrace in the white house, that the office of the vice president should be abolished.
it also interesting to put the current situation in context and realize how conservative our government has been since kennedy. there actually hasn´t been a public-minded democrat since then. in the profile on justice john paul stevens in the current nyt magazine, he made the comment that every justice appointed since him (which happened in 1975) has been progressively more conservative, with the exception of ginsberg, i think.
i think the next discussion topic will be about trying to understand why this conservative period has lasted so long, appearing to break the 30-year rhythm that´s been more or less constant since the eighteenth century.
i´ve never been more convinced, after reading schlesinger´s essay on the topic and evaluating the current disgrace in the white house, that the office of the vice president should be abolished.
it also interesting to put the current situation in context and realize how conservative our government has been since kennedy. there actually hasn´t been a public-minded democrat since then. in the profile on justice john paul stevens in the current nyt magazine, he made the comment that every justice appointed since him (which happened in 1975) has been progressively more conservative, with the exception of ginsberg, i think.
i think the next discussion topic will be about trying to understand why this conservative period has lasted so long, appearing to break the 30-year rhythm that´s been more or less constant since the eighteenth century.
Sunday, 14 October 2007
to sao paulo and back
Luana went to Sao Paulo last Monday, and I left Tuesday and got back tonight. It´s about 22 hours by bus, but the time passes remarkably quickly when you´re a complete poindexter and you´re reading Arthur Schlesinger´s Cycles of American History.
I was thinking about the relationship between intellect and action on the ride to Sao Paulo. I´ve always felt san impulse to retain critical distance and skepticism -- and along with it, a deep uncertainty about everything. And uncertainty is the cause of stifling indecision. I was thinking about how curiosity leads to uncertainty which leads to indecision, and the metaphor occured to me -- being in eucalyptus farmland -- of the intellect as a tree. Damn that sounds lame.
Trees are useful, but they take a long time to grow. They´re also nice to admire and enjoy. Some trees we chop down and use to make paper and houses, and others we leave alone for their own sake. Similarly, our intellectual growth is slow, and usually pursued for pragmatic ends -- to acquire useful knowledge -- and at times as an end on its own. Making a decision based on our knowledge of a situation is like cutting down a tree. It´s acknowledging that the suspension of skepticism and the possibility of false certainty -- preventing the tree from growing -- are worth the practical benefit of avoiding permanent indecision -- the value of a tree for wood. Allowing all the trees in the intellectual forest to grow permanently, as Pragmatism reminds us, will keep us from heat and shelter.
But cutting down a tree can also be productive. When we dissect a dead tree we can better understand living ones, just as making decisions helps us revisit our understanding of ourselves and our world. There´s significant value in both cutting trees and letting a few patches grow forever and undisturbed. Similarly, it´s important to retain deep and ultimate curiosity and uncertainty, while making decisions on a daily basis that require a degree of certainty. I get afraid that part of being a responsible adult is leveling the entire forest.
I like the Buddhist conception of conventional truth versus ultimate truth, which parellels the paradox of the scientific method that produces very useful laws and models while never being able to definitively prove any of them. Thinking of personal truth as trees is a good way for me to model this. I guess the task is to keep from picking the apples from -- not to mention killing -- the oldest and most pristine trees in the deepest part of the forest.
Luana´s still in Sao Paulo so I´m alone for this week. That means a lot of quiet time and a lot of eggs.
I was thinking about the relationship between intellect and action on the ride to Sao Paulo. I´ve always felt san impulse to retain critical distance and skepticism -- and along with it, a deep uncertainty about everything. And uncertainty is the cause of stifling indecision. I was thinking about how curiosity leads to uncertainty which leads to indecision, and the metaphor occured to me -- being in eucalyptus farmland -- of the intellect as a tree. Damn that sounds lame.
Trees are useful, but they take a long time to grow. They´re also nice to admire and enjoy. Some trees we chop down and use to make paper and houses, and others we leave alone for their own sake. Similarly, our intellectual growth is slow, and usually pursued for pragmatic ends -- to acquire useful knowledge -- and at times as an end on its own. Making a decision based on our knowledge of a situation is like cutting down a tree. It´s acknowledging that the suspension of skepticism and the possibility of false certainty -- preventing the tree from growing -- are worth the practical benefit of avoiding permanent indecision -- the value of a tree for wood. Allowing all the trees in the intellectual forest to grow permanently, as Pragmatism reminds us, will keep us from heat and shelter.
But cutting down a tree can also be productive. When we dissect a dead tree we can better understand living ones, just as making decisions helps us revisit our understanding of ourselves and our world. There´s significant value in both cutting trees and letting a few patches grow forever and undisturbed. Similarly, it´s important to retain deep and ultimate curiosity and uncertainty, while making decisions on a daily basis that require a degree of certainty. I get afraid that part of being a responsible adult is leveling the entire forest.
I like the Buddhist conception of conventional truth versus ultimate truth, which parellels the paradox of the scientific method that produces very useful laws and models while never being able to definitively prove any of them. Thinking of personal truth as trees is a good way for me to model this. I guess the task is to keep from picking the apples from -- not to mention killing -- the oldest and most pristine trees in the deepest part of the forest.
Luana´s still in Sao Paulo so I´m alone for this week. That means a lot of quiet time and a lot of eggs.
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
trying to put some thoughts together
For a long time I've had the notion that the world is a thing that can -- and must -- be forcibly improved by educated humans. I was going to try to write a formal essay about why that whole notion is misguided, but I'm in an uncomfortable molting phase right now and don't really have the clarity to do that.
My major observation right now is that academic reading and writing can introduce a lot of abstractions. The good side of abstractions is that they are (1) rewarding because they're perfectly rational in a way that nothing in our non-linguistic/concrete world is and (2) helpful because they allow us to model the world so we can manipulate it. Economic and scientific models allow us to create the technology and institutions that give people more of what they want.
The bad side of abstractions is that they also create new desires that can never be fulfilled. We have words like God, heaven, spirit, consciousness, and progress that don't actually mean anything useful, but people spend their whole lives thinking and acting like they have to figure them out. And when we -- and by this, I'm thinking especially about intellectuals or educated people -- get used to abstraction, it gets really addicting. Then we start applying analyses and generalizations to things that don't merit them. This results in nonsense phrases like "making the world a better place," which presupposes the world is a single entity that fluctuates in moral status depending upon our piety. I agree that countries can become more just, that economies can provide people with more of what they want, and then health care can decrease debilitation and increase freedom (and they will continue doing so, I have no doubt), but none of these guarantees that world is heading closer to or farther from perfection. People can get better -- by obeying the Golden Rule more faithfully -- but that's it.
Steven Pinker's analysis of politics in The Blank Slate helped me a lot to understand that there is no such thing as "the world." In his brilliant dissection of modernism, he showed how recent political ideology, social theory, and art theory are anti-scientific: they are based on assumptions about how a culture or government can create and recreate human nature, when the data shows otherwise. All of the most important patterns of our behavior are already in our genes and they all have evolutionary explanations. The job of government is to administer justice, not to create utopias. And again, my best notion of justice right now is the power to give people what they want, and enforcing the Golden Rule by means of inalienable rights.
Part of my problem with Thomas Friedman -- as much as I found The Lexus and the Olive Tree to be informative and engaging -- was that he tended to conflate economic development with justice. In other words, he tended to view getting wealthy as an end itself for countries, instead of as a means to justice. Rich countries are also naturally more free and have more resources to devote to health care, so they are by rule generally more just. But there's also this big problem, which is the "hedonic treadmill" effect: rising means create rising expectations. Being richer gives people lots of choices which can increase anxiety instead of decrease it: the paradox of choice. Furthermore, when people are more anxious and less sure of themselves, being good -- obeying the Golden Rule -- gets harder. When people don't know what they want any more, then they get even more confused when it comes to other people. Thus, a country can get less just and its citizens less moral if, in the process of getting richer, the people start wanting more things that they don't have and can't buy.
The tendency to view wealth as an end in itself is the most frustrating characteristics of people who study economics and are in business. The lesson from the Cold War, as both Friedman and Pinker pointed out, is that capitalism undoubtedly beats communism. But only Pinker understood the broader lesson: science beats ideology. Ideology is absolute certainty, and science is the opposite. Capitalism is not an ideology as much as a scientific model based on generally accurate models of human interaction. But as our understanding of human interaction changes, so does capitalism. Thus, a bunch of new economic models are developed in coordination with psychological research. On the other hand, communism was based on very bad models of human interaction and human nature and that's why it couldn't last.
Anyway, the reasoning that greed is good for everyone, and furthermore, that wealth is an end in itself, is a misinterpretation of capitalism as ideology. Again, real capitalism has nothing to do with what's good and what's not. It's just a model that often -- but not always -- helps people to get what they want. So, why do people tend to view wealth as an end and take capitalism as ideology? After all, most people understand that money is just numbers and few are truly rapacious. But it's what money can buy that matters: health, security, and to a large extent, the conditions favorable for happiness. Psychology research shows, though, that this is only true to a certain extent. Once people get these basics, there's no guarantee that more money buys more happiness. My guess is that those who take capitalism as ideology and are excited about the world's economic and technological development have some kind of utopia or armageddon scenario in mind. Once all the US solves its inequality problems, and all the countries get to be like the US, something big and important will happen and our lives will get better. Human nature will evolve and everyone will live in bliss. And this is exactly the kind of thinking that Pinker so forcefully discredited in his book.
To be fair, I'm also excited about the world's economic development because there are so many people in the developing world experiencing a degree of suffering I'd never wish upon myself. But I also don't think that my own life or country will necessarily be better off for it. My own life will be better if the proportotion of things I have to things I want -- material things hopefully comprise only a small subset of this -- is higher than it is today. Today, though, it's pretty high, so I'm not expecting it to improve. The whole task of progress in life is not to get this ratio higher and higher, but to try to keep it where it is.
Summary: Economic progress is making people more free and helping governments be more just, and that's good. But there's no guarantee that this will continue forever and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could backfire. People are only good to the extent that they live by the Golden Rule. Economic cooperation and good government promotes goodness, but it certainly doesn't guarantee it. Whether people adopt the Golden Rule probably depends on how much they're exposed to it, so if we want to make other people better we must live by it. In this sense, being good and making the world better are the same thing. We can make personal progress by learning to understand ourselves and others more, so we can more accurately interpret the Golden Rule. What is understanding ourselves? It's about clarifying what we want and figuring how to get it or to abandon the desire.
You can never make the world a better place, you can only be a good person. Progress is personal.
Second Summary. Things to live by:
1. The negative golden rule -- don't do to others what you wouldn't wish upon yourself
2. The present moment is the only thing that exists
My major observation right now is that academic reading and writing can introduce a lot of abstractions. The good side of abstractions is that they are (1) rewarding because they're perfectly rational in a way that nothing in our non-linguistic/concrete world is and (2) helpful because they allow us to model the world so we can manipulate it. Economic and scientific models allow us to create the technology and institutions that give people more of what they want.
The bad side of abstractions is that they also create new desires that can never be fulfilled. We have words like God, heaven, spirit, consciousness, and progress that don't actually mean anything useful, but people spend their whole lives thinking and acting like they have to figure them out. And when we -- and by this, I'm thinking especially about intellectuals or educated people -- get used to abstraction, it gets really addicting. Then we start applying analyses and generalizations to things that don't merit them. This results in nonsense phrases like "making the world a better place," which presupposes the world is a single entity that fluctuates in moral status depending upon our piety. I agree that countries can become more just, that economies can provide people with more of what they want, and then health care can decrease debilitation and increase freedom (and they will continue doing so, I have no doubt), but none of these guarantees that world is heading closer to or farther from perfection. People can get better -- by obeying the Golden Rule more faithfully -- but that's it.
Steven Pinker's analysis of politics in The Blank Slate helped me a lot to understand that there is no such thing as "the world." In his brilliant dissection of modernism, he showed how recent political ideology, social theory, and art theory are anti-scientific: they are based on assumptions about how a culture or government can create and recreate human nature, when the data shows otherwise. All of the most important patterns of our behavior are already in our genes and they all have evolutionary explanations. The job of government is to administer justice, not to create utopias. And again, my best notion of justice right now is the power to give people what they want, and enforcing the Golden Rule by means of inalienable rights.
Part of my problem with Thomas Friedman -- as much as I found The Lexus and the Olive Tree to be informative and engaging -- was that he tended to conflate economic development with justice. In other words, he tended to view getting wealthy as an end itself for countries, instead of as a means to justice. Rich countries are also naturally more free and have more resources to devote to health care, so they are by rule generally more just. But there's also this big problem, which is the "hedonic treadmill" effect: rising means create rising expectations. Being richer gives people lots of choices which can increase anxiety instead of decrease it: the paradox of choice. Furthermore, when people are more anxious and less sure of themselves, being good -- obeying the Golden Rule -- gets harder. When people don't know what they want any more, then they get even more confused when it comes to other people. Thus, a country can get less just and its citizens less moral if, in the process of getting richer, the people start wanting more things that they don't have and can't buy.
The tendency to view wealth as an end in itself is the most frustrating characteristics of people who study economics and are in business. The lesson from the Cold War, as both Friedman and Pinker pointed out, is that capitalism undoubtedly beats communism. But only Pinker understood the broader lesson: science beats ideology. Ideology is absolute certainty, and science is the opposite. Capitalism is not an ideology as much as a scientific model based on generally accurate models of human interaction. But as our understanding of human interaction changes, so does capitalism. Thus, a bunch of new economic models are developed in coordination with psychological research. On the other hand, communism was based on very bad models of human interaction and human nature and that's why it couldn't last.
Anyway, the reasoning that greed is good for everyone, and furthermore, that wealth is an end in itself, is a misinterpretation of capitalism as ideology. Again, real capitalism has nothing to do with what's good and what's not. It's just a model that often -- but not always -- helps people to get what they want. So, why do people tend to view wealth as an end and take capitalism as ideology? After all, most people understand that money is just numbers and few are truly rapacious. But it's what money can buy that matters: health, security, and to a large extent, the conditions favorable for happiness. Psychology research shows, though, that this is only true to a certain extent. Once people get these basics, there's no guarantee that more money buys more happiness. My guess is that those who take capitalism as ideology and are excited about the world's economic and technological development have some kind of utopia or armageddon scenario in mind. Once all the US solves its inequality problems, and all the countries get to be like the US, something big and important will happen and our lives will get better. Human nature will evolve and everyone will live in bliss. And this is exactly the kind of thinking that Pinker so forcefully discredited in his book.
To be fair, I'm also excited about the world's economic development because there are so many people in the developing world experiencing a degree of suffering I'd never wish upon myself. But I also don't think that my own life or country will necessarily be better off for it. My own life will be better if the proportotion of things I have to things I want -- material things hopefully comprise only a small subset of this -- is higher than it is today. Today, though, it's pretty high, so I'm not expecting it to improve. The whole task of progress in life is not to get this ratio higher and higher, but to try to keep it where it is.
Summary: Economic progress is making people more free and helping governments be more just, and that's good. But there's no guarantee that this will continue forever and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could backfire. People are only good to the extent that they live by the Golden Rule. Economic cooperation and good government promotes goodness, but it certainly doesn't guarantee it. Whether people adopt the Golden Rule probably depends on how much they're exposed to it, so if we want to make other people better we must live by it. In this sense, being good and making the world better are the same thing. We can make personal progress by learning to understand ourselves and others more, so we can more accurately interpret the Golden Rule. What is understanding ourselves? It's about clarifying what we want and figuring how to get it or to abandon the desire.
You can never make the world a better place, you can only be a good person. Progress is personal.
Second Summary. Things to live by:
1. The negative golden rule -- don't do to others what you wouldn't wish upon yourself
2. The present moment is the only thing that exists
Saturday, 29 September 2007
my phone number and slow essay update
we got a new sim card for luana´s cell phone, and it doesn´t charge us for receiving calls, so feel free to call any time! there are really decent rates available through the third-party service NobelCom. it´s just nobelcom.com
011 (international prefix calling from the US) + 55 (brazil country code) + 73 (area code) + 91325752 (phone number) =
011-55-73-9132-5752
011 (international prefix calling from the US) + 55 (brazil country code) + 73 (area code) + 91325752 (phone number) =
011-55-73-9132-5752
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
life summary blus a brainstorm
Obviously, this is long, long, long, long overdue. In the past week, I've been getting that sinking feeling that my life will cease to be blog-worthy if I stop blogging about it. The only way to escape from that vicious cycle is to first pretend that my life is blog-worthy, then hope the prophesy fulfills itself. This verbose writing style is already annoying ...
Bloggable items:
1. Trip to Prado
2. Lifestyle -My schedule -Luana's schedule -Food -Video games -Music
3. Neighborhood kids
4. Work updates
5. Book reviews
The book reviews is what I really want to do, so I might have to give the abridged versions of the other items.
1. Trip to Prado
Luana and I went to the beach town of Prado to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the day when Luana attended to me at Ropahrara Exotic Clothing. We wanted to leave on the 6:10am bus on a Friday morning (I don't work on Fridays) but were derailed by a surprise visit from the Student Center owners. The bad news from above was that they didn't seem willing to renew the internet subscription at the school, leaving me permanently consigned to pay-as-you-go internet service. The good was that they had come down with an extra mirror, which they donated to our room.
We ended up leaving on Friday afternoon and arriving in Prado a few hours later. Since it's winter here and winter is low season, there was nobody in town and most of the bed & breakfasts were closed. We finally found a really gorgeous and not too expensive one right on the beach and enjoyed our first moqueca (local fish stew) and our first night of air conditioning since I arrived in Brazil. The next day was partially cloudy and the beach was basically deserted, but of course, that really didn't matter. We amused ourselves by trying to lure these bright red crabs out of the mud with junk food (see pictures). There was a great moment when one crab scurried across the marsh with a Frito in each of his claws, but I failed to capture it on camera.
When I went to pay for the bed & breakfast on Sunday, the credit card reader wasn't working. The owner drove me to the only bank in town to withdraw cash, and sure enough, the only ATM that reads MasterCard at the bank was also not working. This led to a truly awkward moment when I returned to the owner's car:
Me: So, are there any other banks in town by any chance?
Owner: No, just Banco do Brasil.
Me: Because none of the ATMs would read my card.
Owner: Now what?
Me: Um ... what do you think?
[long pause]
We eventually arranged for me to give him all my cash and for him to give me his bank account number so I could wire him the balance of the payment. It turned out that someone he knew was driving all the way back to where we were going, so I didn't even need to hold onto cash for the bus ride home. We went back to the bed & breakfast and settled things at the front desk, and when we were ready to go and I asked the owner about riding shotgun with his friend, the owner said that the guy had already left, which lead to another awkward moment:
Me: So, you were saying something about a guy who could give us a ride?
Owner: Oh yeah, but he just left as we were pulling in.
Me: Uh ... I know this is annoying, but I guess now I need some money back to pay for the bus.[pause as the owner gets annoyed and grumbles]
Then he gave me back 50 reais and I adjusted my debt on our handwritten receipt that included his bank account number. At about that time, Luana realized that her bank card would work at the ATM, which was a relief to everyone. The owner drove us back to the bank, with our bags, and sure enough, Luana was able to take out the balance of what we owed and we officially settled the deal. The owner took us to the bus terminal and we got in just as our bus was pulling out.
The next bus didn't leave for another five hours or something, but it was sunny so we didn't really care. We set up shop at a park nearby and relaxed, Luana practicing juggling a soccer ball and me finishing the Steven Pinker book. Even on a Sunday, the whole town was completely empty without tourists. When we stopped to eat lunch, the restaurant staff served us and then continued to do their off-season chores. So when we went to pay, there was actually nobody around except for an old blind guy who couldn't help us find the staff. I found the hostess doing something else down the street, paid her on the spot, and then we rushed to catch our bus and that was the end of the excursion.
2. Lifestyle
MY SCHEDULE
Today was a more or less typical day:
8:00 iPod alarm sounds with a playlist from a Belltower Stein Club
8:54 I reluctantly get up, get dressed, and grab a piece of bread
8:57 I leave for school
9:04 I arrive at school to find that my 9:00 student has rescheduled for Wednesday. I make an immediate 180-degree turn back home
9:20 I go back to sleep
11:00 I get up and do lazy stuff and then play Luana in PlayStation soccer. A kid from across the street wants to make some money and tells another kid to tell us that he's willing to offer his services to clean our floor and bathroom. Luana semi-seriously jokes that if we paid him, she'd no longer have anything to do.
2:00 We go out for lunch at our favorite restaurant, a pay-by-the-kilo buffet, and eat many barbequed chicken hearts
3:00 I have a beginner class with the 12-year-olds 4
:00 Intermediate class with three women professionals (an agricultural engineer, an architect, and one other job that I forget)
5:45 Beginner class with five girls who just finished or are finishing high school
7:15 Beginner class with mixed adults and adolescents, which turns out to be fruitfully diverse. They're the easiest class by far.
8:30 Advanced class with two middle-aged professional men (a lawyer and a businessman) 9:40 I pack up and buy some eggs for breakfast on the way home. Luana's in bed playing video games already.
11:48 Current moment
LUANA'S SCHEDULE
Luana's schedule is a lot more flexible because she doesn't work. She splits her time between doing random fun stuff (playing guitar and violing, drawing, playing video games), studying English, and doing chores. Washing clothes by hand is a pretty serious time-consumer, and she also cooks a few meals a week, and this is frequently done to the tune of the J-pop music she plays from her iPod. She's also kept busy by the stray kids and animals that drop by. When I asked her what else I should write about her lifestyle, she also wanted me to say that she's studying medicine and alchemy (this is while she plays her goofy alchemy-themed PlayStation RPG). Her lifestyle is undeniably domestic, but it's pretty much mutually agreeable so far.
FOOD
Despite the substantial hindrance of having no refrigerator, we manage to have most meals in our room. We go out for meals probably four or five times a week. Our diet consists of a lot of eggs, a lot of rice, some Ramen, some pasta, and a lot of meats and vegetables sauteed with garlic and onions; all in all, it's completely satisfying. Luana does more cooking than me on average, but I've learned how to chop food and make rice, and I also made one real meal, which was fried fish with rice and fresh tomato sauce. I tend to make eggs in the morning, and Luana tends to make stuff at night. She's got more experience and is a far superior chef, but we're both really learning. I got savvy about using my long guitar fingernails to cut garlic and haven't been able to get the smell off my hands for a week.
VIDEO GAMES
Needless to say, videogames are our way out -- out of our little town, out of our reality, and out of the physical and mental strains of living in a developing country. Perhaps video games seem less indulgent here because everyday life has fewer artifial layers as it is. Anyway, Luana is a master a Star Sweep -- a sophisticated variation on the Tetris theme -- and I'm pretty good at soccer. We're each training in the other's game of specialty but we both have a long way to go until Star Sweep or soccer become competitive.
We've only had the PlayStation up and running for just over a week. When we first arrived, the Student Center had donated a TV for us to use in our room, and I bought a new Playstation within four days of arriving. When we hooked it up, though, it only showed up in black and white, even thought the TV normally displayed colors. We messed around with the settings and nothing fixed the problem, so I gave up and started playing my Final Fantasy in black and white. But when I tried to save, the memory card started acting fucked up and overwrote and deleted some of my saved files. Then Luana tried to play her games, but her games are all pirated and our PlayStation hadn't yet been altered to read pirated games. Requiring the service of a serious game dealer to hack our PlayStation and sell us a new memory card, we went to a local game parlor and got the number of the guy in the nearby big city (Teixeira) who does all the video game pirating.
We eventually arranged to meet up with the guy in Teixeira, who sold us some more pirated games, a pirated controller, some memory cards, and got his buddy to hack our PlayStation. We told him about the black-and-white problem, and he told us that it was a result of our TV being really old and not having any modern video standards installed. Luckily, he dug an ancient electronics piece out of his bag that was designed to remedy the problem. Great success!
I had to stay in Teixeira to observe classes, but Luana went home. Then I missed my bus and got stranded in the bus terminal and had to catch a later bus, which was remarkable only in the presence of an ederly couple across the aisle from me, the male of whom was blasting static from his transistor radio (we were traveling across farmland and dead zones with no radio reception) for the entire ride. When I finally made it back to Itabatan, I ran into Luana in the street. Giddily indignant, she complained that once she had finally hooked up the newly-hacked system and weird electronics converters, the TV actually exploded, smoke and all.
She was on her way to buy a new TV so we could play our PlayStation once and for all. I had to go teach a class, but when I got home, the delivery guys were pulling up with a new 16-inch LG TV. The smoke from the expired TV had cleared, but the acrid smell of the cathode ray tube (or whatever) explosion was still in the air. Since the new TV was installed, our room's energy consumption has spiked, which also hasn't escaped our landlord: he stopped by on Saturday to tell us that we were going to have to pay an extra 20 reais this month to cover unexpected electricity usage.
MUSIC
There's not much live music here, which is a little disappointing since the Bahia state in Brazil is generally known as being at the heart of the African-influenced elements of Brazilian culture. We listen to a lot of different music, thanks to mp3 players and my big external hard drives, and we play our instruments from time to time. Now that I've finished two big books, my next personal task is to spend my free time writing and playing and guitar and take a hiatus from reading.
Finally, I should make it clear that my lifestyle isn't ideal at all. It's bare-bones, and I sincerely miss having a bigger bathroom and a dinner table and refrigerator, not to mention having a movie theater and parks and all the comforts of first-world life. This town is really a dry and lifeless business hub and has no culture or nature to offer, and I'd have no desire to live here for more than a year, especially compared to the many other culturally rich cities in Brazil. I can't wait to get back to the US.
3. Neighborhood kids
It's fun to have six-year-olds who are always in the neighborhood, always playing in the street, and who frequently invite themselves in to chat. Luana gets along with them better than I do, and I'm perceived as something between Mickey Mouse and ET. They're cute, and the way in which they are independent and manage to talk to adults is something I rarely see in the US, though my experience is limited.
4. Work updates
Argh. Teaching is hard and only intermittently gratifying. One problem is attendance. Having to repeat lessons destroys the sense of progress in the classroom. Another problem is the four-year myth: that to learn English, you have to study for four years. You just sign up one day, and as long as you've passed four years of English, you'll end up ready to work in the US. First of all, most adults don't have the stability to study for four consecutive years at the same English school. Also, it tends to lead to the same illusion that college students face: it's finishing and getting the degree (or at Harvard, the worthless foreign language citation) that matters, not the learning that takes place along the way. As a teacher, I'm required to pave through two pages of textbook every class -- one textbook a semester -- to give the illusion of progress. Another problem is that studying for only two hours a week is just too little time to ever build conversational skills. And finally, having 30 hours of teaching a week, with five different private students and seven different classes, means I have to juggle a lot of variables. Only gradually can I settle into a useful rhythm and dynamic with each class. I'm still in the phase of blindly trying lots of things to find what sticks and what ... licks? sucks?
It's telling about how bad the system is that even though this particular school, Student Center, has been around for fifteen years, it only has six intermediate/advanced students who manage to have conversations in English without reverting to Portuguese. And every single one of them learned conversational English somewhere outside of Student Center! Ouch!
The business model of Student Center also leaves a lot of room for creative consulting. In Itabatan, there is a lot of demand for English since there is a lot of international business via the eucalyptus industry. And Student Center and its competitor CCAA, have the market completely cornered, which means they can offer mediocre service and very little accountability without suffering loss of clients. There's a lot of incentive to get new students but very little reason to actually invest in their education, since they'll have to wait four years until they learn English, and by then, they'll all be long gone anyway. To keep new students coming in, Student Center is actually very cheap (under 50 reais a month), but then can't afford internet, and relies on vulnerable American volunteers (I make 400 reais a month) for much of the teaching responsibilities.
Any of you business people out there should make quick work of this case study. Please send suggestions. Here's my current solution.
-Right now, history determines prices and nobody's doing economics, as far as I can tell. All of the school's owners are also English teachers. If the other English school in town is also cheap and bad, then the Student Center has to either be bad and cheaper, or be demonstrably better and a little more expensive. Currently, only a small percentage of the students who enroll even learn conversational English. I wouldn't mind at all if the school raised prices, enrollment thinned out, but the remaining students were more dedicated and the school ended up being able to afford internet access. If even five students a year graduated with English proficiency, this would be a huge boost to the school's reputation and could create more demand and more people would be willing to pay for a good education.
-To solve the scheduling problems, allow students to drop in whenever they want and pay by the hour. Each one can work independently in textbooks, which is helpful for introducing grammar and vocabulary, and then everyone can come together for thirty minutes of every hour to do English-only activities -- listening to music, watching movies, and having conversations. Right now, all the students are stratified by their textbooks. Not only is textbook level a bad indicator of ability, but mixed-ability classrooms could also be mutually beneficial. This way, I could also concentrate my time into more normal nine-to-five blocks instead of having to work really long days with odd gaps in the middle and two-person classes.
5. Book reviews
I really REALLY don't know where to start with doing the book reviews, so I should do some brainstorming.
Pinker's Blank Slate
-work of genius, staggering encyclopedic knowledge and impressive coverage of intellectual landscape-this is the psychology book to end all psychology books. it's every psychologist's dream book. it's covers all the tendrils of psychology with unbelievable eloquence: politics, violence, education, personality, philosophy, child development, and art criticism
-dissects every one of the most controversial topics in social science with such tact that it doesn't seem controversial-view of human nature that is really going to change the way people see themselves
-no utopias, no God, no transcendence, no magical consciousness, no magical free will, no ghost in the machine, just knowing and enjoying our condition as complex animals in the world
-makes all top-down ideology (based on unsupported assumptions about human nature) look ridiculous, wasteful, and unnecessary: Marxism, utopianism, invisible-handism
-strong support for the idea that being moral is just about expanding our natural circle of consideration (which usually is limited to family and friends) to all people
-society's problems are caused by viral ideologies (from above) and misassumptions of human nature and by sociopaths who probably can't be saved (Stalin, Manson, etc.)
-this whole viewpoint is not just correct, it is revolutionarily different from the way almost everyone -- including intellectuals like Friedman and most academics -- sees themselves in the world. while it's right, pinker knows he can't proselytize because he'd come across as a mad scientist. he needs people to stand up and independently support this viewpoint. if they do, politics will never look the same.
My criticisms
-he has a more conservative personality, which means he strongly prefers talking about patterns and mechanisms to enjoying spontaneity. thus he spends more energy making generalizations than pointing out all the rich ways in which people deviate from the norms. there's also the danger of talking about human averages as human truths. he talks about how identical twins are usually very similar, but i'd like to know about cases when they're not at all similar. what would that show us about effects of the environment?
-i originally thought that my luana model would outdo his model, but i seriously misunderestimated the depth of his analysis. he put together the pieces in a more convincing way than I ever could have. i originally was a stronger supporter of connection, but after reading his analysis, a hybrid model makes more sense to me. i'll get into this later...
Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree
-He does a good job of capturing the tone of discussion among the big power players in globalization today, which are many of the same voices i heard at Harvard: bankers, fund managers, smart people in development organizations, and high-level beaurocrats. the problem is he comes across as incredibly arrogant as he tries to dumb down the economics to a fourth-grade level. are any fourth-graders really reading a book like this? -he also has a pretty weak appreciation of history and an insufficiently nuanced explanation of what "progress" and "rising standards of living" -- which is what the free markets are supposed to provide -- really mean. he worships the free market too much and doesn't offer any serious criticisms of when a free market can go wrong and when any hard sacrifices need to be made to restrain it. his lack of intelligent analysis is pretty apparent at the end of the book when he finally lists his first criticisms of the American economic landscape -- the well-known problems in health care, education, social security funding -- without actually acknowledging that they might be endemic to the system. he constantly bashes the Western European "welfare states" without paying any attention whatsoever to lessons that they've learned in developing so-called security nets that might be useful to the US. i'm a big fan of Germany, and i was pretty insulted that Germany was only referenced on a few scattered places, even though it's the biggest economy in europe, it's engaged in globalization, and it has solved a lot of transportation and environmental issues in ways that should embarrass the US. -
i'm in a town right now that is very much typical of an emerging economy (quick growth, international business, no culture or community) and i think i'll offer stories in the future to put a more realistic face on globalization.
Bloggable items:
1. Trip to Prado
2. Lifestyle -My schedule -Luana's schedule -Food -Video games -Music
3. Neighborhood kids
4. Work updates
5. Book reviews
The book reviews is what I really want to do, so I might have to give the abridged versions of the other items.
1. Trip to Prado
Luana and I went to the beach town of Prado to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the day when Luana attended to me at Ropahrara Exotic Clothing. We wanted to leave on the 6:10am bus on a Friday morning (I don't work on Fridays) but were derailed by a surprise visit from the Student Center owners. The bad news from above was that they didn't seem willing to renew the internet subscription at the school, leaving me permanently consigned to pay-as-you-go internet service. The good was that they had come down with an extra mirror, which they donated to our room.
We ended up leaving on Friday afternoon and arriving in Prado a few hours later. Since it's winter here and winter is low season, there was nobody in town and most of the bed & breakfasts were closed. We finally found a really gorgeous and not too expensive one right on the beach and enjoyed our first moqueca (local fish stew) and our first night of air conditioning since I arrived in Brazil. The next day was partially cloudy and the beach was basically deserted, but of course, that really didn't matter. We amused ourselves by trying to lure these bright red crabs out of the mud with junk food (see pictures). There was a great moment when one crab scurried across the marsh with a Frito in each of his claws, but I failed to capture it on camera.
When I went to pay for the bed & breakfast on Sunday, the credit card reader wasn't working. The owner drove me to the only bank in town to withdraw cash, and sure enough, the only ATM that reads MasterCard at the bank was also not working. This led to a truly awkward moment when I returned to the owner's car:
Me: So, are there any other banks in town by any chance?
Owner: No, just Banco do Brasil.
Me: Because none of the ATMs would read my card.
Owner: Now what?
Me: Um ... what do you think?
[long pause]
We eventually arranged for me to give him all my cash and for him to give me his bank account number so I could wire him the balance of the payment. It turned out that someone he knew was driving all the way back to where we were going, so I didn't even need to hold onto cash for the bus ride home. We went back to the bed & breakfast and settled things at the front desk, and when we were ready to go and I asked the owner about riding shotgun with his friend, the owner said that the guy had already left, which lead to another awkward moment:
Me: So, you were saying something about a guy who could give us a ride?
Owner: Oh yeah, but he just left as we were pulling in.
Me: Uh ... I know this is annoying, but I guess now I need some money back to pay for the bus.[pause as the owner gets annoyed and grumbles]
Then he gave me back 50 reais and I adjusted my debt on our handwritten receipt that included his bank account number. At about that time, Luana realized that her bank card would work at the ATM, which was a relief to everyone. The owner drove us back to the bank, with our bags, and sure enough, Luana was able to take out the balance of what we owed and we officially settled the deal. The owner took us to the bus terminal and we got in just as our bus was pulling out.
The next bus didn't leave for another five hours or something, but it was sunny so we didn't really care. We set up shop at a park nearby and relaxed, Luana practicing juggling a soccer ball and me finishing the Steven Pinker book. Even on a Sunday, the whole town was completely empty without tourists. When we stopped to eat lunch, the restaurant staff served us and then continued to do their off-season chores. So when we went to pay, there was actually nobody around except for an old blind guy who couldn't help us find the staff. I found the hostess doing something else down the street, paid her on the spot, and then we rushed to catch our bus and that was the end of the excursion.
2. Lifestyle
MY SCHEDULE
Today was a more or less typical day:
8:00 iPod alarm sounds with a playlist from a Belltower Stein Club
8:54 I reluctantly get up, get dressed, and grab a piece of bread
8:57 I leave for school
9:04 I arrive at school to find that my 9:00 student has rescheduled for Wednesday. I make an immediate 180-degree turn back home
9:20 I go back to sleep
11:00 I get up and do lazy stuff and then play Luana in PlayStation soccer. A kid from across the street wants to make some money and tells another kid to tell us that he's willing to offer his services to clean our floor and bathroom. Luana semi-seriously jokes that if we paid him, she'd no longer have anything to do.
2:00 We go out for lunch at our favorite restaurant, a pay-by-the-kilo buffet, and eat many barbequed chicken hearts
3:00 I have a beginner class with the 12-year-olds 4
:00 Intermediate class with three women professionals (an agricultural engineer, an architect, and one other job that I forget)
5:45 Beginner class with five girls who just finished or are finishing high school
7:15 Beginner class with mixed adults and adolescents, which turns out to be fruitfully diverse. They're the easiest class by far.
8:30 Advanced class with two middle-aged professional men (a lawyer and a businessman) 9:40 I pack up and buy some eggs for breakfast on the way home. Luana's in bed playing video games already.
11:48 Current moment
LUANA'S SCHEDULE
Luana's schedule is a lot more flexible because she doesn't work. She splits her time between doing random fun stuff (playing guitar and violing, drawing, playing video games), studying English, and doing chores. Washing clothes by hand is a pretty serious time-consumer, and she also cooks a few meals a week, and this is frequently done to the tune of the J-pop music she plays from her iPod. She's also kept busy by the stray kids and animals that drop by. When I asked her what else I should write about her lifestyle, she also wanted me to say that she's studying medicine and alchemy (this is while she plays her goofy alchemy-themed PlayStation RPG). Her lifestyle is undeniably domestic, but it's pretty much mutually agreeable so far.
FOOD
Despite the substantial hindrance of having no refrigerator, we manage to have most meals in our room. We go out for meals probably four or five times a week. Our diet consists of a lot of eggs, a lot of rice, some Ramen, some pasta, and a lot of meats and vegetables sauteed with garlic and onions; all in all, it's completely satisfying. Luana does more cooking than me on average, but I've learned how to chop food and make rice, and I also made one real meal, which was fried fish with rice and fresh tomato sauce. I tend to make eggs in the morning, and Luana tends to make stuff at night. She's got more experience and is a far superior chef, but we're both really learning. I got savvy about using my long guitar fingernails to cut garlic and haven't been able to get the smell off my hands for a week.
VIDEO GAMES
Needless to say, videogames are our way out -- out of our little town, out of our reality, and out of the physical and mental strains of living in a developing country. Perhaps video games seem less indulgent here because everyday life has fewer artifial layers as it is. Anyway, Luana is a master a Star Sweep -- a sophisticated variation on the Tetris theme -- and I'm pretty good at soccer. We're each training in the other's game of specialty but we both have a long way to go until Star Sweep or soccer become competitive.
We've only had the PlayStation up and running for just over a week. When we first arrived, the Student Center had donated a TV for us to use in our room, and I bought a new Playstation within four days of arriving. When we hooked it up, though, it only showed up in black and white, even thought the TV normally displayed colors. We messed around with the settings and nothing fixed the problem, so I gave up and started playing my Final Fantasy in black and white. But when I tried to save, the memory card started acting fucked up and overwrote and deleted some of my saved files. Then Luana tried to play her games, but her games are all pirated and our PlayStation hadn't yet been altered to read pirated games. Requiring the service of a serious game dealer to hack our PlayStation and sell us a new memory card, we went to a local game parlor and got the number of the guy in the nearby big city (Teixeira) who does all the video game pirating.
We eventually arranged to meet up with the guy in Teixeira, who sold us some more pirated games, a pirated controller, some memory cards, and got his buddy to hack our PlayStation. We told him about the black-and-white problem, and he told us that it was a result of our TV being really old and not having any modern video standards installed. Luckily, he dug an ancient electronics piece out of his bag that was designed to remedy the problem. Great success!
I had to stay in Teixeira to observe classes, but Luana went home. Then I missed my bus and got stranded in the bus terminal and had to catch a later bus, which was remarkable only in the presence of an ederly couple across the aisle from me, the male of whom was blasting static from his transistor radio (we were traveling across farmland and dead zones with no radio reception) for the entire ride. When I finally made it back to Itabatan, I ran into Luana in the street. Giddily indignant, she complained that once she had finally hooked up the newly-hacked system and weird electronics converters, the TV actually exploded, smoke and all.
She was on her way to buy a new TV so we could play our PlayStation once and for all. I had to go teach a class, but when I got home, the delivery guys were pulling up with a new 16-inch LG TV. The smoke from the expired TV had cleared, but the acrid smell of the cathode ray tube (or whatever) explosion was still in the air. Since the new TV was installed, our room's energy consumption has spiked, which also hasn't escaped our landlord: he stopped by on Saturday to tell us that we were going to have to pay an extra 20 reais this month to cover unexpected electricity usage.
MUSIC
There's not much live music here, which is a little disappointing since the Bahia state in Brazil is generally known as being at the heart of the African-influenced elements of Brazilian culture. We listen to a lot of different music, thanks to mp3 players and my big external hard drives, and we play our instruments from time to time. Now that I've finished two big books, my next personal task is to spend my free time writing and playing and guitar and take a hiatus from reading.
Finally, I should make it clear that my lifestyle isn't ideal at all. It's bare-bones, and I sincerely miss having a bigger bathroom and a dinner table and refrigerator, not to mention having a movie theater and parks and all the comforts of first-world life. This town is really a dry and lifeless business hub and has no culture or nature to offer, and I'd have no desire to live here for more than a year, especially compared to the many other culturally rich cities in Brazil. I can't wait to get back to the US.
3. Neighborhood kids
It's fun to have six-year-olds who are always in the neighborhood, always playing in the street, and who frequently invite themselves in to chat. Luana gets along with them better than I do, and I'm perceived as something between Mickey Mouse and ET. They're cute, and the way in which they are independent and manage to talk to adults is something I rarely see in the US, though my experience is limited.
4. Work updates
Argh. Teaching is hard and only intermittently gratifying. One problem is attendance. Having to repeat lessons destroys the sense of progress in the classroom. Another problem is the four-year myth: that to learn English, you have to study for four years. You just sign up one day, and as long as you've passed four years of English, you'll end up ready to work in the US. First of all, most adults don't have the stability to study for four consecutive years at the same English school. Also, it tends to lead to the same illusion that college students face: it's finishing and getting the degree (or at Harvard, the worthless foreign language citation) that matters, not the learning that takes place along the way. As a teacher, I'm required to pave through two pages of textbook every class -- one textbook a semester -- to give the illusion of progress. Another problem is that studying for only two hours a week is just too little time to ever build conversational skills. And finally, having 30 hours of teaching a week, with five different private students and seven different classes, means I have to juggle a lot of variables. Only gradually can I settle into a useful rhythm and dynamic with each class. I'm still in the phase of blindly trying lots of things to find what sticks and what ... licks? sucks?
It's telling about how bad the system is that even though this particular school, Student Center, has been around for fifteen years, it only has six intermediate/advanced students who manage to have conversations in English without reverting to Portuguese. And every single one of them learned conversational English somewhere outside of Student Center! Ouch!
The business model of Student Center also leaves a lot of room for creative consulting. In Itabatan, there is a lot of demand for English since there is a lot of international business via the eucalyptus industry. And Student Center and its competitor CCAA, have the market completely cornered, which means they can offer mediocre service and very little accountability without suffering loss of clients. There's a lot of incentive to get new students but very little reason to actually invest in their education, since they'll have to wait four years until they learn English, and by then, they'll all be long gone anyway. To keep new students coming in, Student Center is actually very cheap (under 50 reais a month), but then can't afford internet, and relies on vulnerable American volunteers (I make 400 reais a month) for much of the teaching responsibilities.
Any of you business people out there should make quick work of this case study. Please send suggestions. Here's my current solution.
-Right now, history determines prices and nobody's doing economics, as far as I can tell. All of the school's owners are also English teachers. If the other English school in town is also cheap and bad, then the Student Center has to either be bad and cheaper, or be demonstrably better and a little more expensive. Currently, only a small percentage of the students who enroll even learn conversational English. I wouldn't mind at all if the school raised prices, enrollment thinned out, but the remaining students were more dedicated and the school ended up being able to afford internet access. If even five students a year graduated with English proficiency, this would be a huge boost to the school's reputation and could create more demand and more people would be willing to pay for a good education.
-To solve the scheduling problems, allow students to drop in whenever they want and pay by the hour. Each one can work independently in textbooks, which is helpful for introducing grammar and vocabulary, and then everyone can come together for thirty minutes of every hour to do English-only activities -- listening to music, watching movies, and having conversations. Right now, all the students are stratified by their textbooks. Not only is textbook level a bad indicator of ability, but mixed-ability classrooms could also be mutually beneficial. This way, I could also concentrate my time into more normal nine-to-five blocks instead of having to work really long days with odd gaps in the middle and two-person classes.
5. Book reviews
I really REALLY don't know where to start with doing the book reviews, so I should do some brainstorming.
Pinker's Blank Slate
-work of genius, staggering encyclopedic knowledge and impressive coverage of intellectual landscape-this is the psychology book to end all psychology books. it's every psychologist's dream book. it's covers all the tendrils of psychology with unbelievable eloquence: politics, violence, education, personality, philosophy, child development, and art criticism
-dissects every one of the most controversial topics in social science with such tact that it doesn't seem controversial-view of human nature that is really going to change the way people see themselves
-no utopias, no God, no transcendence, no magical consciousness, no magical free will, no ghost in the machine, just knowing and enjoying our condition as complex animals in the world
-makes all top-down ideology (based on unsupported assumptions about human nature) look ridiculous, wasteful, and unnecessary: Marxism, utopianism, invisible-handism
-strong support for the idea that being moral is just about expanding our natural circle of consideration (which usually is limited to family and friends) to all people
-society's problems are caused by viral ideologies (from above) and misassumptions of human nature and by sociopaths who probably can't be saved (Stalin, Manson, etc.)
-this whole viewpoint is not just correct, it is revolutionarily different from the way almost everyone -- including intellectuals like Friedman and most academics -- sees themselves in the world. while it's right, pinker knows he can't proselytize because he'd come across as a mad scientist. he needs people to stand up and independently support this viewpoint. if they do, politics will never look the same.
My criticisms
-he has a more conservative personality, which means he strongly prefers talking about patterns and mechanisms to enjoying spontaneity. thus he spends more energy making generalizations than pointing out all the rich ways in which people deviate from the norms. there's also the danger of talking about human averages as human truths. he talks about how identical twins are usually very similar, but i'd like to know about cases when they're not at all similar. what would that show us about effects of the environment?
-i originally thought that my luana model would outdo his model, but i seriously misunderestimated the depth of his analysis. he put together the pieces in a more convincing way than I ever could have. i originally was a stronger supporter of connection, but after reading his analysis, a hybrid model makes more sense to me. i'll get into this later...
Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree
-He does a good job of capturing the tone of discussion among the big power players in globalization today, which are many of the same voices i heard at Harvard: bankers, fund managers, smart people in development organizations, and high-level beaurocrats. the problem is he comes across as incredibly arrogant as he tries to dumb down the economics to a fourth-grade level. are any fourth-graders really reading a book like this? -he also has a pretty weak appreciation of history and an insufficiently nuanced explanation of what "progress" and "rising standards of living" -- which is what the free markets are supposed to provide -- really mean. he worships the free market too much and doesn't offer any serious criticisms of when a free market can go wrong and when any hard sacrifices need to be made to restrain it. his lack of intelligent analysis is pretty apparent at the end of the book when he finally lists his first criticisms of the American economic landscape -- the well-known problems in health care, education, social security funding -- without actually acknowledging that they might be endemic to the system. he constantly bashes the Western European "welfare states" without paying any attention whatsoever to lessons that they've learned in developing so-called security nets that might be useful to the US. i'm a big fan of Germany, and i was pretty insulted that Germany was only referenced on a few scattered places, even though it's the biggest economy in europe, it's engaged in globalization, and it has solved a lot of transportation and environmental issues in ways that should embarrass the US. -
i'm in a town right now that is very much typical of an emerging economy (quick growth, international business, no culture or community) and i think i'll offer stories in the future to put a more realistic face on globalization.
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