What Would You Do?

I was reading about the Parkland school strike when I also started reading about the recent debate of whether or not to ban fighting in the NHL. The debate about fighting in the NHL is kind of silly considering how much of an issue violence is in other aspects of life. This ended up in me wondering about a scenario in dealing with violence in the far future...

Imagine yourself in the future with a nice family, your own home, all that good stuff. You are happily married and a great job. One day you arrive home early from work and wait for the kids to come home from school. When your child finishes the big task of a schoolday in grade 5 and steps through the door you are horrified. Your child is crying and bloodied up. A bully has clearly beaten up your child. As far as you know, your child is pretty much average. Likes the typical kids movies, does well in classes except English, and plays regularily on the soccer team...

What would you do? Should your child fight back? Would you talk to the principal? Talk to the parents of the bully? What would you say in your talk?

And how do other factors such as gender play into this? I tried to keep it relatively gender neutralin this. Or at what point in school? What of their status in the hierchy of school?

I'm not exactly sure what I would do. I lean toward telling my kid to stand up for themselves. But I'm not sure how far, whether it be to tell them off, or to physically fight back. At what point would you get school authority figures involved? How long can you wait? How would you deal with the violence that happens like this?

"No Child Left Behind, No Child Leaps Forward"

Not really sure where this blog is going to go, but here it is...

Has anyone ever heard of the "No Child Left Behind Act"? It is an American act involving its public school system. The above link is from the U.S. Department of Education. Here is a wikipedia link. From what I've been able to gather, it seems like an act with the right intentions, using the right words, but in practice is stifling those it affects.

It basically states that it wants every child to reach a certain proficiency in their classes once they graduate. This is determined through standardized state testing that the students must go through. The goal is to have every student proficient (in core subjects? all? not too sure) by the year 2012 or something like that. This includes minority groups, low income, and disabled children. This is actually a noble idea however, in the end it reminds me of affirmative action. Its true that minorities etc.. get the shaft, but these programs seem to have difficulty taking action where it needs to be but ease at places where it may be a hindrance. Now schools must make sure that they have kids passing, and may even make the tests easier so as not to garner the attention of the higher ups. I've already read that they have increased the science and math portion, while cutting back on other things such as phys. ed.

Regarding testing, I found an interesting link on the U.S. Department of Education site. It lists at the bottom testing myths. After reading this I just had to go, huh?! The answers to those myths seem to be mislabelled "reality", as it is more in line with "in theory". They also didn't really give solid answers, but just seem to say "thats not true!" and moved on.

This leads me to the other big test, the I.Q. test. A long time ago, a psychologist wanted to be able to identify schoolchildren who may be developmentally challenged so resources could be directed to help them as early as possible. It wasn't about finding the smartest or the best, it was about finding who needs help. The problem is, once you found out who needed help, you then labelled them. Those who did really well must be smart, so obviously those who did poor must be the opposite, stupid. And once a label sticks to you, sometimes people go out to try and help you, or the label provides them other information so they can "deal" with you.

Another that I've seen is to hold teachers accountable. What a concept! For all the great, wonderful teachers, there are also some that should be fired but won't be unless there is gross misconduct. The flaw is that this is based on how their classes do on the exams. Clearly this may be unfair when for example they may teach classes with kids in a lower academic stream.

Now there are plenty of other critiques, but I won't put them here. I'll just say that at least the core of this act is to say, "right now our school systems need to get better" and I think that is a good step. But its not like there is a great need for American math scores to beat Japanese math scores at the grade 5 level. Hopefully they can keep tinkering with the act to get it right...

Thats all for now... oh yeah, if you're bored try this "I.Q." test from CBC. Although, it is clearly broken since I got a 111 while Maggie got 126... =P

Pie Charts Are Fun!

My introductory finance class has got me interested in, well finances. Currently, we have a that project involves examining a couple's cashflow. This then inspired me to take a look at my spending habits. In order to do this, I decided to take a look back at my bank statement. This goes back to near the end of October, to the end of January.

This method is quite flawed because I completely do not remember what I did with any cash that I didn't get through my bank account. Nevertheless, lets call those amounts bonus money or whatever. It wasn't really a lot (I hope), and I guess some were really just withdrawals. Another note is that my clothing expenses are happily subsized by the government of mom and dad. Also, note that eating expenses are lessened because there are packed lunches meals that are made with groceries. Groceries is not a part of my spending.

This following chart looks at spending and how it was allocated. I tried to minimize the number of categories for easy viewing. Now, food covers all of fast food, restaurants, and snacks. Interestingly, I thought I would have spent quite a bit at places like KFC, but it was more of a high frequency transaction then it was a high expense. Electronics refers to DVD's, CD's, and video games. This is after getting a new MP3 player.

Withdrawals are that, although I think a large portion of that went to food. Thats the most likely scenario. Sports spending refers to equipment and sporting goods/wear. I don't know what some of them were exactly, but its likely to be things like an Oilers hat or winter gloves. The rest of the categories are self explanatory.

So clearly, and its probably the same with most people, essentials like textbooks and bus pass take up the most. Its probably a good thing when these are the types of items that take up most of the spending.

This next one is the same, but without the category textbooks included.

I could have taken out bus pass, but I didn't think it was necessary. Now here, food shoots up as a high expense if you combine that with the likelihood that withdrawals mostly ended up as food. Food is probably still underrepresented because I can't account for a lot of other transactions.

Some conclusions: It would be very beneficial to set up a food budget. Its about trying to eliminte those impulses, but acknowledge that you want to eat out and allow for a reasonable amount. I thought the "recreational" expenses such as reading, electronics, sporting are fairly low. They add up to 35% which I don't think is too bad. This is a spending chart, so there is no comparison to how much was put away and saved on here.

While looking at these, I imagined comparing these to the expenses of someone living on their own. Obviously this chart doesn't compare, it really has no monthly bills whatsoever to speak of. Basically, the spending is still that of a carefree student. It is a privilege to live the way I do, and I should start shouldering more of the load as well as taking advantage of the fact that the costs of life haven't caught up to me yet. It is something I already know, but looking at these really brought it to my attention...

Its The Eye of the Tiger

Sometimes its amazing how people will take that shot at "something great" in their life, for something they love. Sometimes its their first shot, or it could be their very last. The physical, mental, or emotional risks can certainly be tremendous. In this post I will be using an extreme example. Although I'm certain everyone we know faces these kinds of chances I'll talk about something that recently happened that really stands out.

At age 43, Randy Couture exited retirement for one last shot. It was a decision that made people cringe, as he was reentering the sport of mixed martial arts (or "ultimate fighting"). His opponent? A 6 foot 8 inch, 265 pound 30 year old named Tim Sylvia that was the current heavyweight champion. Needless to say, the favorite was Sylvia. Despite being physically outmatched, Couture was able to defeat Sylvia without ever taking a serious punch. He proved all the naysayers completely wrong and gave everyone an unbelievable memory. Despite his age, his desire to compete allowed him to come back and shoot straight back to the top.

These things do not always work out. You do not always hear the stories where taking the chance backfired in the worst way. There is a realistic chance of being in over your head. Or maybe a higher chance of a freak occurrence. Again, using MMA as an example, Justin Eilers was a heavyweight who lucked into getting a title shot against Andre "The Pitbull" Arlovski. The result? Eilers suffered extensive injuries in this match, breaking both hands, his jaw, and tearing his ACL.

Eilers would subsequently leave the big leagues and fight in minor shows. His career at the top level is pretty much over. However, it could be argued that he can always say he stepped into the ring against someone few wanted to take on. Maybe all those injuries were worth the choice instead of possibly looking back years later and wondering, "what if?" It is a once in a lifetime opportunity and who knows, maybe he did understand fully that his career could end or significantly change from taking on a top fighter.

I just wanted to blog something about Randy Couture because this feat is absolutely amazing. No one expected him to come out and dominate. A few years ago, at age 39 he came in to defeat a top fighter in a lower weight class and everyone was amazed. When he did it again recently, well, he is certainly living up to his moniker "Captain America." Someone check and see if he is injected with the secret serum...

Music Explored

By the way, youtube is so awesome. Here is my youtube music link of the week! Its the Foo Fighters concert at Hyde Park in front of 85, 000 people. There is supposed to be a DVD of this but I haven't been able to find it at any stores here.

I read Dev's blog about music and thought I would post something. Music is interesting because of so many different things. Its amazing just how many different genres and sub genres are. Would it be possible to be listen to every single type of music out there?

Something I found interesting and that I remember reading is that it is the melody of the song that really hooks people in. Dev was even saying that the lyrics broken down without the melody have no meaning. This is what I think made bands like the Beatles endure. It wasn't really their lyrics or instrument playing early on, although these would improve immensely. They were able to come up with tons and tons of pop melodies. I think that is how during their "invasion" they managed to live up to their ridiculus hype, with their songs sounding different although admittedly saying the same thing. Maybe its me but it seems that now with bands their songs say the same thing and sound too similar melodically.

Music is also interesting because there is a lot of structure behind it. When I was looking up the lyrics to the Beatles song Eleanor Rigby (just listen to the song) I found this site which gives a bit of analysis on the song. When you click the link for further analysis, it really just stops making sense. It is kind of funny how art such as literature and music can be created so naturally by few and yet the best the rest can do is try to dissect it to some level of understanding.

As well, Dev mentioned how influential music is. Although nowadays its a full package. Its the music video, ideals of the artist, and what their supposed genre is supposed to be. When Guns 'n Roses (song is Civil War) exploded, hair metal was everywhere! And of course you cannot forget the riots associated with their concerts. So I guess when the songs you like are from gangster rap to drug addled rock stars you need to seperate the song from the artists.

Well, I guess thats it for this post. I managed to quickly talk about melody and thats really all I wanted to do. Last music link is going to relate back to the first link. Its yes, Everlong at Hyde Park for those that aren't going to look at the top link. Just imagine being in that place, 85, 000 strong. I could only imagine the atmosphere...