What’s in a name? A rose with no name will smell just as sweet - William Shakespeare
There is this awesome basketball player called Shamequa Holslaw. My girlfriend an I decided we like that name and when we and a daughter, we would name her Shamequa. More than 10 years later, I was having a conversation with my sister who was complaining that he son is entertaining these ghetto girls in her absence. I asked he, “how do you know the girls were ghetto? Have you ever met them?” Her reply was, ‘No, but they all have these ghetto girls names like Shenqua, la Shawn and Shakeria.” I always thought that this was a very narrow and bigoted statement made by my sister and decided at the time not to mention the name that I have been saving for 10 years to name my daughter in waiting. Imagine my surprise when I read this chapter on the names correlation.
I have long since goggled my own name and found out that is meaning was small or little…..needless to say I was not particularly enthused by this discovery. It did say strong at the very end, but I could not shake the other two categorization. I also found out that my name was in the top five English and German names and, if you consider Pablo to be a translation of Paul then sure enough I am ranked in the top five in Spanish also. I do know that right now, if you forgive the political incorrectness, you do not want to be named Adolf, Saddam or Bin Laden. Ironically, the name Adolf was the fastest rising one in the mid 1930 in Germany and represents a large portion of males name between 1929 to 1942. Hummm, wonder what happened to all those mothers who found out that their beloved Adolf did not indeed represent the fuhrer, but instead the murdered.
When I was a boy, we had a German shepherd named Bingo. He was a fun dog to play with as kids until he grew up and became inconsistent in his behavior. At the height of his lunacy, he randomly attacked two of my friends who have been visiting me since the 3 grade. He literally tore away the flesh from both one of their ankles; it was traumatic to all of us. We tied him up in a mixture of shame and confusion for a few weeks until eventually we released his to a farmer. Well, 5 years passed and the legend of “Bingo” played itself out until one day my dad brought another puppy home for us kids. Needles to say, after little debate, we decided to call him, well, Bingo. Bingo redoux was just as fun and interesting and we had loads of fun with him and the neighborhood kids. At the time, my mom was doing daycare services for a toddler. Apparently, one fine afternoon, when the toddler was playing with Bingo, as he had done for months in the past, the dog attacked him. Needless to say, the toddle was hospitalized and we were all stunned and traumatized, again. And you say names did not mean anything? I would never name another dog Bingo again, for fear of a reincarnation of same in the future. What would you do if you child decided to name his next puppy Bingo?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Chapter 5 – Parents do not matter?
This chapter really struck a nerve to parents. I mean, are you saying that we are no relevant? That is does not matter what we do? What about all those baby Einstein tapes I bought? Those mean nothing?
I especially feel that the author was really not forthcoming in his resolution of the books in the house debate. I mean, scientifically, why are the books in the house better off ? I was not convinced on his methods so I looked at a theory of my own. With books in the house, we pick them when we are bored. When I was growing up, my parents have three different volumes of encyclopedia. There were always there, even before I could read. I used to look at the pictures and be able to recognize al the types of dogs, dinosaurs, types of beards and the shape of a heart. After many years, I developed a different technique to study biology especially. I would read the functions of the heart form my school text and then from each of the three volumes. The all basically said the same thing, but approached it so differently that that it seemed a new experience every time. Needless to say, unbeknownst to me, I was practicing the encoding technique perfected by Robert Gagne (1970) in his nine events of instruction where presenting the learner with multiple perspectives of the same content is essential. I submit that this is one way that books around the house improve individual performance in school.
Yet, I am troubled by this theory since my brother never seemed interested in the encyclopedias, except to cut out pictures of animals that is required for class projects. So I am not sure how the extra book works statistically, but I do know it worked for me. I am also challenged by the notion that trips to the museum are nice but has no impact on the child’s overall intelligence. This is both disappointing and downright anti aristocrat. I mean, everyone knows that after a trip to the museum, we are all at least 5% smarter and more highly exposed as to out world and its beauty and complexity. I am pretty sure that many parents cringed as they read that chapter, as I was very clear that they have spent several agonizing hours dragging junior across endless walls of Leonard da Vinci masterpieces. This is clearly a follow-up attack on the museum industry than was initiated by Dan brown and his mysterious “code” to reducing the institute of museum attendance to merely an exercise in futility. These authors need be careful that they be banned from the Louvre and the NY Museum of natural History; see how smart they will be after that cultural depravation.
I especially feel that the author was really not forthcoming in his resolution of the books in the house debate. I mean, scientifically, why are the books in the house better off ? I was not convinced on his methods so I looked at a theory of my own. With books in the house, we pick them when we are bored. When I was growing up, my parents have three different volumes of encyclopedia. There were always there, even before I could read. I used to look at the pictures and be able to recognize al the types of dogs, dinosaurs, types of beards and the shape of a heart. After many years, I developed a different technique to study biology especially. I would read the functions of the heart form my school text and then from each of the three volumes. The all basically said the same thing, but approached it so differently that that it seemed a new experience every time. Needless to say, unbeknownst to me, I was practicing the encoding technique perfected by Robert Gagne (1970) in his nine events of instruction where presenting the learner with multiple perspectives of the same content is essential. I submit that this is one way that books around the house improve individual performance in school.
Yet, I am troubled by this theory since my brother never seemed interested in the encyclopedias, except to cut out pictures of animals that is required for class projects. So I am not sure how the extra book works statistically, but I do know it worked for me. I am also challenged by the notion that trips to the museum are nice but has no impact on the child’s overall intelligence. This is both disappointing and downright anti aristocrat. I mean, everyone knows that after a trip to the museum, we are all at least 5% smarter and more highly exposed as to out world and its beauty and complexity. I am pretty sure that many parents cringed as they read that chapter, as I was very clear that they have spent several agonizing hours dragging junior across endless walls of Leonard da Vinci masterpieces. This is clearly a follow-up attack on the museum industry than was initiated by Dan brown and his mysterious “code” to reducing the institute of museum attendance to merely an exercise in futility. These authors need be careful that they be banned from the Louvre and the NY Museum of natural History; see how smart they will be after that cultural depravation.
Chapter 4 – Abortion and Crime
Chapter 4 – Abortion and Crime
I have to admit I had much trouble making the abortion crime connection. Maybe it is my ultra conservative Chastain background, or my raw cynicism for written work that I agenda free, but I just have trouble with this. As a researcher, I am well aware of mediating variables, regression to the mean, the maturity effect and all these influences that makes it improbable, if not impossible to make the bold cause and effect relationship between abortion and crime rate.
I do agree that unwanted children end up in the streets and eventually fall to the criminal culture that consumes their environment. However, it has been proven that getting a second and third abortion is very high risk of occurrence amount teenaged mothers. So are we saying that as a society we have a make a moral decision between high crime and abortion restrictions? On one hand we seem to be saying that if abortion is well regulated, has simple applications and is universally available, we would be eradiating a large proportion of the future criminals that would terrorize our homes. According to the study, this direct cause effect relationship could easily be the new crime prevention plan of the future; can anyone say Robocop (Stalone) or the Minority report (Cruse) ?
I what I am saying is that even if this is true, the application are just too frightening for it to do any large social good. It just reeks of ethnic cleansing, racial segregation and class consciousness to me. I guess it would be kind of like Bosnia, Darfur, and Nuremburg. I mean, if the correlation showed that it was the extra police that curbed the crime, can u imagine how hard it would be to find a place to pee in public without running into a cop?
The interesting thing about statistics is that it proved that it was actually the corruption campaign against dirty cops that cleaned up New York, and not locking up all the prostitutes and leaning on the gangsters. Interesting finding, do you think the resulting effect will be a full scale investigation of all police precincts and leaving a strong monitoring system in place to suppress this kind of situations? Oh, wait, weren’t bunch of cops recently arrested and charge in NYC fot this same kind of behavior?? And what about Rodney King? Was that different because it was race and no corruption? Is that a different matrix? Imagine a society who knows what the problem is but can address it because of the potential damage to citizen’s trust in the law enforcement system? Is this not a foundation for cover-ups and larger corruption? Well, trust me when I say that no one will get elected and stay in office by attacking the boys in blue all across America. I guess that means our easier option is clearly abortion……too bad for the Republicans.
I have to admit I had much trouble making the abortion crime connection. Maybe it is my ultra conservative Chastain background, or my raw cynicism for written work that I agenda free, but I just have trouble with this. As a researcher, I am well aware of mediating variables, regression to the mean, the maturity effect and all these influences that makes it improbable, if not impossible to make the bold cause and effect relationship between abortion and crime rate.
I do agree that unwanted children end up in the streets and eventually fall to the criminal culture that consumes their environment. However, it has been proven that getting a second and third abortion is very high risk of occurrence amount teenaged mothers. So are we saying that as a society we have a make a moral decision between high crime and abortion restrictions? On one hand we seem to be saying that if abortion is well regulated, has simple applications and is universally available, we would be eradiating a large proportion of the future criminals that would terrorize our homes. According to the study, this direct cause effect relationship could easily be the new crime prevention plan of the future; can anyone say Robocop (Stalone) or the Minority report (Cruse) ?
I what I am saying is that even if this is true, the application are just too frightening for it to do any large social good. It just reeks of ethnic cleansing, racial segregation and class consciousness to me. I guess it would be kind of like Bosnia, Darfur, and Nuremburg. I mean, if the correlation showed that it was the extra police that curbed the crime, can u imagine how hard it would be to find a place to pee in public without running into a cop?
The interesting thing about statistics is that it proved that it was actually the corruption campaign against dirty cops that cleaned up New York, and not locking up all the prostitutes and leaning on the gangsters. Interesting finding, do you think the resulting effect will be a full scale investigation of all police precincts and leaving a strong monitoring system in place to suppress this kind of situations? Oh, wait, weren’t bunch of cops recently arrested and charge in NYC fot this same kind of behavior?? And what about Rodney King? Was that different because it was race and no corruption? Is that a different matrix? Imagine a society who knows what the problem is but can address it because of the potential damage to citizen’s trust in the law enforcement system? Is this not a foundation for cover-ups and larger corruption? Well, trust me when I say that no one will get elected and stay in office by attacking the boys in blue all across America. I guess that means our easier option is clearly abortion……too bad for the Republicans.
Chapter 3 – Poor Drug Barons
The ethnographic study on the life of drug dealers was especially fascinating to me. I saw the movie, New Jack City, and the one with Al Pacino, Traffic I believe, and was sold on the notion that drug dealing was very dangerous but very profitable. To find out that it was just another top down economic system make me both glad I never invested any time and definitely makes me way less envious of my high rollers friends from my youth.
The truth is that drug dealing is extremely violent with very few benefits and apparently, very little reward. Yet, it is powerful to think that this is indeed no different from the staggering statistical odds facing every student athlete, yet they works had to make it big in sports. To crunch a little numbers of my own, there are 119 Division 1A schools, for ease of mathematics; lets call it an even hundred. Each team is in a conference of which there are about 12 conferences; lets call it 10 for easy math. Each conference has a all conference team made up of 5 players for a total of 50 all conference athletes. The NBA drafts two rounds of about 56 players each year. In theory, there are only 9 spots available to jump into if you are not one of the top five players in your conference. These 9 spots are pursued by 100 times 12 players for a pool of some 1144 players on all the DI teams. Thus your chance is 1/1144 or a 0.7 percent chance of making it in the NBA draft. Now, remember that this is just division 1A, while there are players in division1AA, Division II, Junior colleges, and overseas players. All things taken into consideration, the total pie of 56 draft positions are being pursued by over 20,000 eligible student athletes each year, pushing the odds of making it to the NBA a 0.28 percent. And by the way, less than 60 percent of players drafted make it to the team’s opening day rooster….just so you know.
Yet, every morning, millions of dads and kids with aspirations hit the hardwood or neighborhood pavement with hoop dreams alive and visions of the big life in the NBA their primary engine. Who is to say that this their hoop efforts they are ridiculous?. I mean, it is no comparison to standing on a dangerous New York street corner for hours in the snow, while dodging the police, rivals and crack heads, but it is a horrendous commitment that typically lasts more than te years and ends in colossal shame and failure more than 99.72% of the time. Still, the young drug dealers and hoops dreamers like their odds. Go figure.
The truth is that drug dealing is extremely violent with very few benefits and apparently, very little reward. Yet, it is powerful to think that this is indeed no different from the staggering statistical odds facing every student athlete, yet they works had to make it big in sports. To crunch a little numbers of my own, there are 119 Division 1A schools, for ease of mathematics; lets call it an even hundred. Each team is in a conference of which there are about 12 conferences; lets call it 10 for easy math. Each conference has a all conference team made up of 5 players for a total of 50 all conference athletes. The NBA drafts two rounds of about 56 players each year. In theory, there are only 9 spots available to jump into if you are not one of the top five players in your conference. These 9 spots are pursued by 100 times 12 players for a pool of some 1144 players on all the DI teams. Thus your chance is 1/1144 or a 0.7 percent chance of making it in the NBA draft. Now, remember that this is just division 1A, while there are players in division1AA, Division II, Junior colleges, and overseas players. All things taken into consideration, the total pie of 56 draft positions are being pursued by over 20,000 eligible student athletes each year, pushing the odds of making it to the NBA a 0.28 percent. And by the way, less than 60 percent of players drafted make it to the team’s opening day rooster….just so you know.
Yet, every morning, millions of dads and kids with aspirations hit the hardwood or neighborhood pavement with hoop dreams alive and visions of the big life in the NBA their primary engine. Who is to say that this their hoop efforts they are ridiculous?. I mean, it is no comparison to standing on a dangerous New York street corner for hours in the snow, while dodging the police, rivals and crack heads, but it is a horrendous commitment that typically lasts more than te years and ends in colossal shame and failure more than 99.72% of the time. Still, the young drug dealers and hoops dreamers like their odds. Go figure.
Chapter 2 – The Smell of fear
I was especially attuned to this second chapter, being I am of African decent, but is considered Caribbean. I have always been aware of the KKK and the horror stories that they exude over the south. I was especially amazed at the powerful American figures that supported this organization over its history. The numbers that discussed the KKK’s lynching and violence activities over the years was equally surprising. The truth is that the threat of violence is just as stressful as the act itself, and with these horror stories kept real through word of mouth and sensationalized through Hollywood, the fear continues to be real. The KKK is not the only organization that has ruled successfully through fear. In the mid 80’s, the crips and bloods gangs struck the same fear in their own people in their never ending turf wars over market share for crack cocaine sales.
The gang wars spilled into the streets of Belize and marked an end to a nostalgic nice era of innocence and freedom. When I started high school we could walk 30 blocks to a house party and return on foot after the event, evaluating our escapades for the entire return trip. Soon the freedom to roam ended as fear gripped the different street blocks across the country. Some guys cannot go in some neighborhoods because of who their brother was or what high school they attended. Many parties ended in violence because of this whole idea of personas non gratis. It was the sad end to an era of free movement and partying, but we were reminded of how things have changed every Monday when the injured and beaten missed a few days of school for straying. This fear infiltrated the parents, school official, police and relatives who all chose to like and behave differently as an adjustment to this new danger. In the end, it ushered in the era of harder and more wayward kids who had to literally brave the dangers of the streets to pursue their teenage, hormones driven adventures. Fear can be sniffed by animals and cripples the biggest men. The nuclear era of the cold way ahs demonstrated the level of escalation that the threat of aggression alone can create.
A similar system of fear was promoted under Nazism in the mid 1930. Fear of further economic decline and an unnatural ambition for purity by a charismatic leader created such a circle of fear among Germans in that era that to date they still do not discuss this. The fear caused them to not speak up when their Jewish neighbors disappeared and eventually opened the door for a catastrophe now known as the Holocaust. The Nazi’s use of fear propaganda created a culture where an individual’s worth was repurposed to the equivalence of dogs, and lower animals. There is likely no connection, but just think, drawing lessons from history, how the fear machinery called the KKK could have significantly altered the human rights history of America, were it not for Stetson Kennedy.
The gang wars spilled into the streets of Belize and marked an end to a nostalgic nice era of innocence and freedom. When I started high school we could walk 30 blocks to a house party and return on foot after the event, evaluating our escapades for the entire return trip. Soon the freedom to roam ended as fear gripped the different street blocks across the country. Some guys cannot go in some neighborhoods because of who their brother was or what high school they attended. Many parties ended in violence because of this whole idea of personas non gratis. It was the sad end to an era of free movement and partying, but we were reminded of how things have changed every Monday when the injured and beaten missed a few days of school for straying. This fear infiltrated the parents, school official, police and relatives who all chose to like and behave differently as an adjustment to this new danger. In the end, it ushered in the era of harder and more wayward kids who had to literally brave the dangers of the streets to pursue their teenage, hormones driven adventures. Fear can be sniffed by animals and cripples the biggest men. The nuclear era of the cold way ahs demonstrated the level of escalation that the threat of aggression alone can create.
A similar system of fear was promoted under Nazism in the mid 1930. Fear of further economic decline and an unnatural ambition for purity by a charismatic leader created such a circle of fear among Germans in that era that to date they still do not discuss this. The fear caused them to not speak up when their Jewish neighbors disappeared and eventually opened the door for a catastrophe now known as the Holocaust. The Nazi’s use of fear propaganda created a culture where an individual’s worth was repurposed to the equivalence of dogs, and lower animals. There is likely no connection, but just think, drawing lessons from history, how the fear machinery called the KKK could have significantly altered the human rights history of America, were it not for Stetson Kennedy.
Chapter one – Cheating
In reading this piece on cheating, it made me reflect on a lot of issues that have surfaced in our ethics class. Cheating seems to have changed over the years with degrees of separation being the deciding factor on behavior. Yester day me and my brothers were at The Sports Authority where, on our way out, I saw a nice pen on the floor. I picked it up and pocketed it, thinking, “Cool, I found a nice pen”. My brother muttered the word “thief” under his breath and we all laughed and left the store. Now, technically, I stole the pen because it is not mine and yet I took it; what is your take?
Now consider that 30 minutes later, my posse of some 6 Caribbean brothers and nephews went to Best Buy where we purchased iPods and accessories that qualified for an 20% instant certificate. My nephew decided to apply the certificate to a car transmitter that cost 20 dollars. He couldn’t find the one he had abandoned at the counter so he returned to the shelves. It turned out that we found, independent of the cashier knowledge, that he had placed the 23 dollar item in our bag without out charging for it. We had younger nephews around and thus had an excellent teachable moment; we returned to item to the cahier and explained the discrepancy. The cashier was stunned at our “honesty”, and almost seem to suggest that we should have not declared it since it was already ours.
This interesting contrast on honesty is a microcosm of what happens in the greater society. Motivation is a major factor in most behaviors and thus, individuals would always cheat if there is enough at stake and they feel they can proceed without detection. I believe that human beings toe the line. I mean, consider what you do when you are alone and you know that one is watching. It is different from you regular behavior most of the time. The power of privacy and the horror of exposure has always been the equalizer when it comes to honesty. We are all honest, to a limit and dependant on what is at stake. I reference former American president Bill Clinton on this one….need I say more.
Now consider that 30 minutes later, my posse of some 6 Caribbean brothers and nephews went to Best Buy where we purchased iPods and accessories that qualified for an 20% instant certificate. My nephew decided to apply the certificate to a car transmitter that cost 20 dollars. He couldn’t find the one he had abandoned at the counter so he returned to the shelves. It turned out that we found, independent of the cashier knowledge, that he had placed the 23 dollar item in our bag without out charging for it. We had younger nephews around and thus had an excellent teachable moment; we returned to item to the cahier and explained the discrepancy. The cashier was stunned at our “honesty”, and almost seem to suggest that we should have not declared it since it was already ours.
This interesting contrast on honesty is a microcosm of what happens in the greater society. Motivation is a major factor in most behaviors and thus, individuals would always cheat if there is enough at stake and they feel they can proceed without detection. I believe that human beings toe the line. I mean, consider what you do when you are alone and you know that one is watching. It is different from you regular behavior most of the time. The power of privacy and the horror of exposure has always been the equalizer when it comes to honesty. We are all honest, to a limit and dependant on what is at stake. I reference former American president Bill Clinton on this one….need I say more.
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