Part of the challenge of lifelong learning is to understand that the goal is not to add to your collection of “well what do you know’s”, but to assimilate your new knowledge with the creation of, revisiting, modification of, or withdrawing (shedding) from your current set of principles. It does one no good to regard new information as just “interesting,” one needs to test that new learning against the structure, the principles, of one’s information system.
Tag: behavior
New Reflections on the Evolution in France
The biggest change is the ubiquitous police and military presence. Teams of militarized police and policified military patrol every tourist site and every public function, plus numerous random locations. It wasn’t just Paris; even small cities like Bayeaux were on guard. I’ve never seen anything like this in the United States, even on September 12, 2001.
Economics Helps You Deal with Difficult People
You wake up to the realization that you have an important meeting in 30 minutes. You leap out of bed, throw some clothes on, grab your keys, and rush out the door. You’re halfway to your car when you see it.
It’s not a moment of zen, but of economics.
Somebody has slashed your tires.
How Mass Schooling Perpetuates Inequality
For kids like Matt, schooling can bring out the worst behaviors. Like a trapped tiger–angry and afraid–they rebel. Unable to conform properly to mass schooling’s mores, they get a label: troubled, slow learner, poor, at-risk. They will carry these scarlet letters with them throughout their 15,000 hours of mandatory mass schooling, emerging not with real skills and limitless opportunity, but further entrenched in their born disadvantage.
Telling Pricks and Criminals to Stop is Only Half the Battle
I’d like to think that I have a cure for prickish behaviors like racism and bigotry. Does my cure do anything to the pricks in question? Not at all. Rather, my cure is for the victims: responsibility.
Markets
A trip to a local food market will tell you more about a geographic spot than I could possibly relate in a blog entry. I love supermarkets, new and used book stalls, flea markets, art galleries, sidewalk vendors, newsstands, tradesperson workplaces, restaurants, fairs, craft shows, auctions, theaters (movie, stage, concert, and opera).
While I’m Far More Inclined to be a Prick Online, I’m Definitely Not a Bigot
Granted my exposure to black people and homosexuals and the transgendered has been quite limited, in every case as far as those particular groups are concerned, I’ve never been a prick.
@YesYoureRacist Crowdsources Social Preferencing
The main objection to @YesYoureRacist doesn’t cut much ice with me. The project is not an “invasion of privacy” or a “violation of rights.” The Charlottesville marchers engaged in public action with the explicit purpose of attracting attention. Mission accomplished. They got noticed.
What’s In Your Bag?
When I buy baked goods or produce at Wegmans, the cashiers don’t even bother to look in the brown paper sack. They simply ask me, “What’s in your bag?” – and ring up whatever I declare. How can profit-maximizing businesses treat me so well?
Suicide Isn’t Selfish or Cowardly
Suicide is purposeful action. Therefore, to understand why people commit suicide we must understand what felt uneasiness they have decided is too much to continue tolerating. It may be many things, but this much is true as it concerns suicide: life itself has become intolerable, and the knowledge needed to make it tolerable is not currently known.