Fifty Years Ago Donald Hebb Proposed a Rule

The Hebb Rule says that if an initially weak synapse repeatedly fires at the same time that the postsynaptic neuron fires, the synapse will become strengthened. After several firings, the synapse becomes strong enough to fire by itself. LEARNING HAS OCCURRED.

Hebb was unable to determine if this was right or wrong. Can you imagine the suspense?

Learning is happening all over the place right now, in fact. Five chapters left plus twelve cranial nerves (and their functions). My dysfunctional dalliance in biopsychology officially ends tomorrow at 3pm. I can be drunk by 4, removing most residual knowledge with the destruction of a few million brain cells. Hey, math major: with 16 upper division credits, how much tuition is lost from the consumption of one twelve-dollar bottle of rum?

The economics of that plan aren't looking good...

Global Cooling

Did you know, there are places in the world where the winters are commonly harsh? This may seem obvious, but think about it. When we get a bad week or so of very cold temperatures, it's pretty unusual. It only lasts for a few days. We complain for a while, turn up the heat, and except for a higher electric bill, nothing really bad seems to come from it.

As I walked to my French final last night breathing air that, at 4 degrees farenheit, froze whatever mucous could be found in my nose, I thought about people in the places where this kind of weather was normal. There are places where it is not unusual for people to live in apartments with little heat, who do not own clothes that are warm enough. There is a lot of suffering.



People die all the time from the cold, but we never really think about it. The other night, I thought about it.

Our forecast will warm up in a couple of days. We have enough money to pay the electric bill, and there is a large stack of firewood outside to keep the woodstove going. I have a pile of wool yarn that I can make into socks and scarves, but in the mean time we have a closet full of clothes to wear.

I think it's time to be grateful for what we have, and to share what we can. Spread the love, be nice to one another, because life can be tough.

Economics Solves Crimes

I remember hearing about the case of Kitty Genovese, but I didn't know the story behind the story.

I read Freakonomics and found reading about the application of statistical analysis to everyday conundrums more interesting than you might think. For example, have you ever wondered why, if drug dealers make so much money, why do they still live with their mothers? The answer is, it's not all that different than Amway.

Halloween

Four hours before dark, this is what lay on my dining room table.



A cape in colors excitedly chosen by a little girl in a fabric store in an enthusiastic bout of 'we've got so much time!' kind of shopping trip one month prior, her mother confident in her ability and time frame to sew a simple cape. Now, H-Day, it sat waiting to be completed as the minutes ticked by.

Four hours before trick or treating commenced.

Four hours to determine whether a child would be disappointed or elated with their halloween costume. Would this child learn to depend on her mother to provide, as promised, or were mommy's promises nothing but hot air?

As it turned out, the Vampiress was happy.












Happy Halloween, All Saint's Day, Marine Corps Birthday, Veteran's Day, My Birthday, and Thanksgiving.

Sing it Like You Mean it

Good Morning!

I started my day by bathing my 15-year old long-haired cat's behind that was covered in diarrhea. And then, I trimmed the long hair around his behind.

How was your morning???

Every Other Word Is Capitalized, But I'm Not Screaming

I keep meaning to learn how to knit socks. I think that learning requires a class for me, because I can't learn from a book. I need to be shown.

Earlier this year I was busy with school, then it was summer and who wants to knit with wool in the summer? Now it's fall and I'm busy with school again. What a broken record. Then I found this on the internet, which is a VIDEO that SHOWS you HOW to KNIT socks.

WOW.

Murphy Forgot To Include This One

The law of When You're In a Hurry says that when one is trying to check something online quickly before rushing out the door in order to be somewhere, that will be the exact moment your computer decides it needs to perform an update and restart itself.

Be Patient With Your Cell Phone Signal

It has to go to and then return from space! Maybe give it a minute before you start complaining. Remember the rotary phone? Yeah. How about the guy with two zeroes in his number, how much did you hate calling that person?

Louis CK talks to Conan about the miracle of technology, making some great points.

From me to you. Or actually, from my French class friend, Emily, who sent me the link, to you. Enjoy.

It Was Awesome

Giving my child a classical education while she attends public school means we do a lot of work at home. School homework and home homework. Poor girl.

We began with the moon, learning the difference between orbit and rotate. We've moved on to the planets, the study of which will culminate in an artistic rendering of a 2-D model of the solar system.

All of this to say that today we found a really cool website that shows the solar system in motion.

TeeVee

I love Glee. Can't get enough. Singin' and dancin' and the microcosmic hell of the high school social strata, all in one.

This Book Will Not Stimulate an Action Potential

I can hear the questions even though the room is silent. Since I haven't mentioned it in the past 30 seconds, am I reading anything at all? Have I given up on novels forever, or just until school relents its endless cycle of reading, writing, and 'rithmatic?

I do occasionally put down the textbook in order to escape the world of dendrites and axons, ecological imperialism, and irregular verbs that end in -re.

I'm reading a new book that combines knitting with murder. I know! Awesome.

It is awesomely bad. A woman who owns an alpaca farm is murdered, and the main character is her friend who discovers the body. When this woman then talks to her (other, alive) friends in the knit shop the next day, they are not rattled or sad. The meet, talk about knitting, and contacting the dead woman's grown daughter, among other topics. This main character is the crack amateur who will solve the murder. It is ridiculous and great because it is easy reading that I don't have to retain and be tested on later. Try Needled to Death and tell me you don't feel the same way.

It's a good escape from learning the difference between ligand-gated channels and voltage-gated channels.

Not that I don't love them both.

Gratitude Platitude

You know what's really great?

When you go to empty the bathroom garbage and the bag kind of sticks on the upturned can and then releases suddenly so that half of the garbage spills across the floor so that you have to pick it up with your hands.

Yeah, that is awesome! I love it. It's almost, but not quite, as fun as cleaning up after a geriatric cat with diarrhea, which is almost as fun as cleaning up your kid's vomit or diarrhea. THAT is the worst (especially seeing your child suffer), and so, I am grateful that I only had to deal with the first thing today.

You Know You're Getting Older When...

...ordering cleaning supplies makes you happy.

This Makes Total Sense

This is the kind of thing that will be on my test today.

Did I mention, I'm a social science major, history minor???

Misery Loves Company. And Sympathy.

Now I know the misery that is Strep Throat. My throat feels like it is stuffed with sandpaper, and every swallow means that sandpaper grinds delicate throat tissue. And it isn't a fine, 220-grit paper. Oh no, we're talking course, 40-grit paper doing its thing ALL DAY LONG.

Do not rest easy, pustules, I've begun taking antibiotics. Your days are numbered.

Redemption

I have kept at The Human Stain because, despite the author's insistence on using stream-of-consciousness writing to express his character's inner thoughts at times even though the third person narrative had adequately performed this task. It's a good story and I want to see how it ends.

The main character in the book is a college professor of the classics. That means everything Roman and Greek, including the language. I came across a passage and it shot straight to the highest part of my soul that loves learning while at the same time the part that laments the state of education in this great country of ours.

Before I reveal that, let me tell you what happened in my own town. Our school superintendent was asked by a parent, why raise the bar? In fact, you can read the story, and her response, here.

I thought, why raise the bar, are you NUTS? That is not even a relevant question. The only question we should be asking as parents and as a community is, how do we get every student to the very highest level of academic achievement? Okay, maybe there are more questions, such as, how do we challenge the students who are already at a high level, and how do we raise everyone else to that level, and beyond? What's important is that every single student perform at their absolute best, no exceptions! Seriously. Anything less is PATHETIC. LAZY. UNACCEPTABLE. I'm amazed that a question like that came from a parent. Another question might be, how do we get parents to get off their lazy behinds and demand more from their kids: hard work, accountability, and better manners while we're at it?!?

So, I've got this idealistic vision for education that involves a community of teachers and parents working together to make sure that every student is performing at their very highest. I also know that it's all about as realistic as fairies and elves doing a little dance across my keyboard right now. That's where I am as I read The Human Stain, when all of a sudden, WHAM-O. I read this:

"In my parents' day and well into yours and mine, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it's the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it's the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can't learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria...only opinions." -----The Human Stain, Philip Roth

Hot damn and hallelujah, as my grandmother used to say. Eureka, as the forty-niners (and the Greeks but it looked more like Εὕρηκα) used to say. That's very true, don't you think? I'm not trying to take you down the primrose path where everything was better back in the old days. But there is something to that paragraph. Things have changed to where the pressure is off of the student to work hard and instead, easily accept defeat when faced with challenging material.

That's not to say that teaching methods and materials haven't experienced a declined or serious defects. The great progressive educational experiment, among others, has done more than its fair share of damage to American children since the early 20th century. Eschewing phonics for whole-word methods of teaching reading, for example, left perfectly capable and bright schoolchildren in the darkness of incomprehension. What I think is telling here is that the student used to be accountable, and now, they are not. To whom does this failure point? We are talking about children here. Children who learn very well what they are shown. Parents! The answer is, parents, and they should know better.

Some parents (like whoever asked that question) don't want to be bothered with their child's education. Some might say, that's what teachers are for. If that's your argument then you must also believe that all learning is confined to the classroom. Then, taking that further, homework shouldn't matter. That MUST be why a percentage of children don't do their homework on a regular basis, and why the parents do not help with homework nor discipline their kids to do it, or even talk about the importance of it in the home. Declining grades, test scores, and now Iran has the nuclear bomb! (Maybe. But most likely.) Who can say that it is no wonder that America is in decline when it comes to education when we dumb down material and test out ridiculous theories at the expense of real children who do not appreciate being treated as test subject guinea pigs.

And then there is the social aspect which lets people off with their feelings, not to mention parents who would rather be friends with their kids than do any actual parenting. It makes me want to insert hot pokers into sensitive areas in order to wake those people up. Hello! Did you not realize it was going to be hard to be a parent? Sorry to tell you, but it is. Too bad, now deal with it.

I know a mom who spends hours each night helping her child do homework. She goes above and beyond because she cares. Sure, she could watch tv instead, or do ANYTHING else, because who wants to spend so much time on homework? But she cares, and I respect the hell out of her for it. There are many parents who care and who foster a sense of responsibility in their children when it comes to school and instill values. I'm talking about those who don't, and they suck.

They suck because it teaches kids a lesson in the worst way, that school doesn't matter. It teaches kids that they don't have to listen to authority - their teachers - and that sets a bad example for the future. And heck, it sets up a pretty bad scenario for themselves, if they think their kid is going to grow up and not realize they don't have to listen to them, either. After all, kids learn what they have been taught. To look at it a different way, it's not even realistic, because homework is supposed to reinforce what was learned during the day. The higher the number of times the brain is exposed to something, the more likely it will be to recall the information at a later time.

Of course not every teacher is fantastic, but they are also not magicians. They need our help to instill the lessons taught at school. Our kids need us to be strong and teach them valuable lessons that will endure throughout their life: hard work and accountability will always serve them better than laziness at a difficult subject.

So, buck up! Do the right thing. Encourage your kids to work harder, dammit. Don't accept anything less. Be the example you wish to see, and all of that.

Focal shuas. (Word up, in Irish.)

Wordy

I am having a hard time getting through The Human Stain for one glaring reason: verbosity.

Stream-of-consciousness paragraph (after paragraph after paragraph) bore readers. Enough! There is something to be said for great ideas in brief. To wit: E.B. White, Wallace Stegner, Ann Packer.

The story is a good one. Philip Roth is a prize-winning author of fiction, and this book had potential but for lack of good editing. Or, maybe I just don't get it.

Sometimes the Internet is Not Your Friend

Got an email this morning which I thought read "training pants" before I realized it said "training plans", and referred to something about exercise and not geriatric underwear inserts.

Criminey, I know I'm not 20 anymore, but I didn't think I was ready for THAT kind of sales promotion!

Budgetary Whoas

There's nothing like working harder for less money and absolutely no glamour or thanks. Our income recently took a hit, with the bread-winning spouse working endless hours to find jobs and then do the jobs, take care of the administrative duties, look at the profit margin....wait, where's the profit margin?

Anyway. Times are tough all over. We're grateful to have a paycheck.

And now it is midway through the month and the grocery budget is down to $18.

Last night's dinner was economical: chili. I had all of the ingredients on hand. Pasture-fed beef from in-laws (bragging), dried beans, the last jar of tomatoes I canned two (or was it three?) years ago, dried oregano from the back yard, and spices from Morton's and Lawry's. To make a little bit bigger batch, I peeled and diced the oversized pieces of zucchini that will only taste good if pureed and baked into bread or cooked into a pot of something else, like chili. OC made the cornbread. AMAZING cornbread! I love having a child who can cook.

It's a good thing there were leftovers. It's not like we're going to starve or anything, I just like leftovers.

It's in the 80's this week and sunny, so I'm still hanging clothes out to dry on my 1945 Sears and Roebuck laundry line. Saving electricity and great-smelling clothes, can it be true? Look out, Donna Reed.


And yes, I meant to spell the word in the title that way. It's a pun!

This is also Donna Reed:



Donna Reed's image as the perfect housewife (nor as hot swimsuit chick) is in no danger of being overtaken by the likes of me. I think we are both fine with that.