John Medina meet Ali Carr-Chellman
May 25, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
For the most part, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed John Medina’s book Brain Rules. It does a good job of explaining the brain, the learning process, and offering some actionable things we can do to improve both the educational system and the way we run businesses.
However, there is also a creeping sense throughout the book that Medina is pandering to women (“sweet talk” and “puffing up” are fairly common). That’s fine. And normal. And it’s explainable by reference to the generation in which Medina grew up. I can understand and tolerate that.
I was sorely disappointed, though, when I got to Medina’s chapter on gender and sex differences in the brain. Not just because the reverse-sexism continued, but ultimately because the chapter utterly failed to address the single greatest issue in today’s educational system (watch the video below to understand the issue)
The fact is that in his attempt to overcompensate for cultural sexism against women, Medina misses the fact that our modern education system is failing little boys. As a recent article written by Jennifer L. W. Fink in Parents Magazine states, “Today’s classrooms are geared towards girls, and it’s easy for boys to get discouraged at an early age.”
Boys learn better by doing. They need to be fidgety. They need to be active. They need to explore. They need to engage their 3D environment. They do not need to be sitting still and learning verbally all day (a distinct advantage that Medina acknowledges girls have due to developmental differences).
Instead of focusing on the no longer existent gender gap in math and science, Medina could have contributed to understanding the epidemic of an overall gender gap in education that begins in preschool and extends to higher education where over 58% of all undergraduate and Master’s degrees are earned by women. And by all accounts, the gender gap continues to grow (so that 58% may soon hit 60% or even 70% and that’s not a small matter).
Personally, I respect John Medina’s overall approach and would like to see him tackle this issue head on because I think he has a lot to offer. For once I’d like a respected, popular scholar to ignore political correctness and simply get down to the hard work of figuring out how to give boys and girls the best education possible (even if that means separating them and catering to their unique, biologically-based needs) and offering real solutions before we have an entire population of men who were left poorly nurtured and educated as boys.
Locating the mental
May 19, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I haven’t done philosophy of mind in a long time, but I still think the most interesting class of philosophical problems has to do with making sense of mental phenomena (directedness, “feeling”, mental causation, etc.) within the physical model that we’ve inherited of a blind, purposeless set of basic laws and particles/fields/strings.
To The Mother Of My Children
May 8, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
You are doing an amazing job as a mom. And when I say that I don’t say it lightly. The easy part about being a mom are the feelings. The feelings of care, anxiety, protection, etc. All moms feels these to a certain degree.
What separates you from so many moms is that you’re effective at letting your boys thrive. You don’t suffocate them or manipulate them or inject their hearts with guilt. You enable them. And the boundaries you set for them (e.g. TV watching) seem perfectly nuanced. You take the time to give Eliot new opportunities for creative play every day. You let them take risks, even at this young age. You let them explore. You let them build and destroy. You involve them in your activities (watering the garden, etc.) and let them help out even if it slows you down. You’ve given them a love of books and learning. You care about what you feed them and you feed them well. You make sure they have the chance to play with other kids and get opportunities at socialization.
There are a million things I probably don’t even notice. But I do notice how joyful they are. And not in a spoiled brat kind of way. They are wide-eyed. They are imaginative. They are curious. They are bold. They are brave. They are playful. They are respectful. And they are loving.
Just the way little boys should be.
Compromise & Absurdity
May 4, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I am a realistic idealist.
To me the world appears in many forms of absurd contradictions. And one of the major tasks of life is to come to peace with these contradictions without losing sight of joy and the higher ideals.
Tornadoes are destructive marvels. From a distance they evoke wonder and awe. In their wake, they cause terror and devastation. They widen eyes, and they ruin lives.
One of my maxims is that you can’t have it all. That you have to make compromises in this world to get on in this world.
Many people encounter moments in their lives when they experience hurt and devastation because their vision of how things should be end up requiring compromise and re-formulation. And often times, rather than re-formulating, the knee-jerk reaction is to throw out the baby with the bathwater. So the compromised Joy that was still available, gets tossed out, replaced with pure cynicism, fatalism and even nihlism. Black.
The realistic idealist always chooses hope in the face of a world full of absurdity and compromise.
Saved by Solar
April 29, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
We were without power for about two days after the severe storms that swept the south. We got nailed with golf ball sized hail and what seemed like hurricane force winds at times, not to mention about 5 inches of rain and insane flooding. Two big trees fell down on our dead-end road, knocking down two powerlines in the process and cutting out the electricity.
Last May my brother and I installed a 9 panel, ~2000 Kw solar array and 1300 amp hour batter array (the panels charge the batteries). Up until now we really haven’t had to depend on it much.
But it sure was nice to have for the last two days. We hardly noticed that we didn’t have utility electric. The only thing we had to conserve (and really, i could have fixed even this by restarting the outdoor wood furnace) was hot water.
We ran our deep freezer and WiFi and upstairs refrigerator and computers and everything else off solar for about two days.
It felt really, really good.
Now of course, we got lucky that the post-storm weather turned out to be mild and sunny. So there was no need for cooling and the batteries were able to keep fully charged from the sun.
Dear God, How Did You Get Invented?
April 26, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I had to repost this. It’s just brilliant.
A six-year-old girl sent letters to the heads of various faith groups asking how God got invented. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams sent the following response:
Dear Lulu,
Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It’s a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –
‘Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected. Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – specially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I’m really like. But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!’
And then he’d send you lots of love and sign off. I know he doesn’t usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf. Lots of love from me too.
+Archbishop Rowan
A Recipe for Adult Human Happiness
April 22, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I’m toying around with this list. Would love some feedback to help flesh it out. Eventually I’ll add commentary to each point.
1. Development of skill
2. Build things/Make things/Be creative
3. Time with friends
4. Frequent sex
5. Play
6. Time outdoors / Exposure to sunlight
7. Movement (as in, not being a primarily sedentary being)
8. Mental challenges
9. Festive ritual
10. Laughter
Any additions? Thoughts?
Does society teach men to chase women?
April 16, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Every once in a blue moon I get a reader submitted question to this blog. Since I write a lot about health, exercise, food, diet, the human mating ritual, love, sex and all the stuff that’s at the core of human happiness, most of the questions relate to these topics.
A few days ago I received the following question via the comments on another post: Do you think that society teaches men to chase women?
The short answer is an emphatic NO!
The long answer is a little more complicated. I subscribe to the theory that the human mating ritual has developed around a very simple, fundamental biological law: namely that the female is a much more valuable reproductive resource than the male. You can think about this in a few different ways. First off, there are quite simply far more sperm than there are eggs. So the scarcity of eggs when compared to sperm makes the egg a more valuable commodity in the reproductive game. Second, if you think about things at a very commonsense level, it would only take one male to make 1000 women pregnant at the same time. But to produce those 1000 kids, all 1000 women are necessary.
So what are the implications of this? The human mating ritual has evolved to take this fundamental fact about reproduction into account: women are the gatekeepers of reproduction precisely because they are the more valuable reproductive resource.
Because of this fact, on average, women are naturally more selective about who they mate with (or even who they pre-mate with – i.e. romance/dating).
Men chase women because women are naturally more picky than men. It’s that simple. And it’s biologically hard wired.
So where does society come in? To me it seems that a society influences the human mating ritual in determining what’s appropriate. Many people have observed that in the modern West, society has taught men to feel shame about making advances towards women (letting women know they are attractive). Women often take offense and feel objectified. This simply causes the chasing to go underground and become more subtle. It also often causes confusion among men about exactly what women want (not to be inundated with gifts or obsessive calling/texting/emailing). In many other cultures, men feel emboldened to communicate their attraction to complete strangers. And in these cultures, the women normally perceive the attention in a flattering, complimentary way, even if the attraction is not shared.
So I think more than anything a society teaches men how to feel about chasing. But in and of itself, chasing is perfectly natural.
10 Different Ways People Perceive Sex
April 13, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Sex is a glorious thing. One of the most wonderful things in all the Universe. Just like wine and grass, it is something that our hearts should be thankful for. A gift from God.
Sex can also be terrible. Not only does it cause heartbreak but it’s been known to result in revenge murders, destroyed careers, diseases, addiction, abuse, etc.
Sex is interesting because it has so many angles. And everyone sees it in a slightly different way. It can also come with significant consequences (physical and mental).
In this article I’m going to explore ten different ways that people think about sex (I’m sure there are more). The one obvious point I’ll leave out, because it’s common to them all, is the idea of sex as pleasure.
Lazy Magic versus Deep Magic
April 10, 2011 | Filed Under Micah, Small Talk | Leave a Comment
There are two types of magic. One is limiting, and can be harmful. The other is formational, and brings joy.
The first type of magic, I will call lazy magic (one might just as well call it Disney magic). It is the magic of our fantasies. It is the magic that expects the universe to conform to the perfect scripts we lay out in our own minds. It is the magic of the princess who gets swept away into a perpetual heavenly existence by the perfect prince. It is the expectation that the campfire will light itself.
Common forms of this sort of magic in today’s society include: the American Dream Myth (follow the corporate script, and you’ll be happy), the Soul Mate Myth (find the right person, and love will sustain itself), the Youth is Everything Myth (you can’t be fit, learn, grow, thrive and be deeply in love beyond your twenties), the Love Is A Feeling Myth (once the dopamine high is gone, love is gone), the Pill For Everything Myth (pill popping to solve all of our problems).
Lazy Magic fails to take reality seriously, and inevitably fosters disappointment.
The second type of magic, I will call Deep Magic. It is the magic of reality. It is the magic of a chicken emerging from an egg. The magic of a tree producing fruit. The magic of grass turning into beef. The magic of lovers making love. The magic of a man building his own home. Or of a woman knitting her own clothes. The magic of a father teaching his son how to fish.
Deep Magic is the magic that pervades reality. It is the magic whereby one perceives reality in all it’s glory and mystery. It is the magic that science describes, yet cannot explain. It is the magic that G.K. Chesterton alludes to in the Ethics of Elfland.
The choice between lazy magic and deep magic is a choice between which world one wants to live in: the finite world of one’s own mind, or the infinitely glorious universe* that one actually inhabits.
*if you need reminding of the magic in this universe, go read a fairy tale. That’s what they’re there for.
