Book Smart / Street Dumb

 I continually see people that I know are book smart, but they seem incredibly dumb at times.  And it seems that the times when they are dumb, it's often the simplest of practical, everyday, things that most people would know.

I know someone that was an A student in mathematics and physics, but as far as I can tell, is functionally a moron when it comes to common sense.

There was the case of a screw that came loose on his storm door.  He claimed that the screw was stripped out and that the whole storm door or at least the handle would need to be replaced.  And I knew that the handle on that storm door was less than two years old, and I also knew that storm doors are not screwed into from the handle.  The screw for the door handle goes from a plate on the inside of the door, through the door to the plate on the outside of the door.

So I checked the door.  I held the plate on the outside of the door flash against the door, and then from the inside, easily screwed into the handle and into the outer plate.  I tightened it.  The issue was resolved in two minutes or less.

This is a mechanical thing that anyone over 25 years old should already know.

There was another case where this same guy had to chain a mower to a car port post, to secure it so that no one could easily steal the mower.  the thing is, he looped the chain onto the mower and then back onto a lock.  The lock was secured to the chain and the mower, but he wasn't smart enough to also loop it all around the post.  So any thief could just grab the mower and roll it away, dragging the chain with the lock on behind.

How could any adult miss something so simple.

And then there was a young man that I knew that used to carry all of his video games, CDs, DVDs, DVD player and game console(s) in the back seat of his car.  I told him that thieves would see that stuff in his backseat and break into the car and steal it.  He didn't believe me at first.  He asked "how will they know I have this stuff?"
I had to answer, "all they have to do is walk by the car in a parking lot, or while it is parked at the curb, and look in the back seat.

He still didn't believe me.  He said, "Why would they do that?"

I said, "Because that's what thieves do.  They look for things to steal and opportunities to do it.  And you are putting that stuff on display."

So the next time I saw him, he explained that he solved the problem.  I looked in the back seat, and he had shopping bags and a box full of stuff.  You couldn't tell what was in them, but you could tell that they were packaged with something.

I had to then explain to him that he'd have been better off just leaving the stuff out in view, because now he's made it easier for the thieves to carry his stuff off; because now it's all in bags and a box.

He didn't seem to understand the problem.

"The thief walks by ten cars in the parking lot, and looks in each one for something to steal", I said.

"If nine cars have nothing visible, but he comes by your car, he might not know what it is you have, but he knows you have something that might possibly be worth something.", I said, "and he's looking for something that he can sell for a quick buck."

I kept telling him that it was okay to have that stuff package up like he had it, but that he needed to put it away in his trunk where it couldn't been seen, and to not put it there in front of witnesses (his friends' neighbors).  I told him to pack up at his home, and then when he returns, take that stuff back into his house.

Well, I followed my advise for a while, but got lazy and just left it in the back seat.  

He was robbed soon after that.  He lost everything, but it costed him several hundred dollars to replace the window that the thieves broke to get into his car.

I didn't say "I told you so."  I just shook my head in disbelief that I even had to explain this stuff to him over and over and he still didn't get it.

 And then there's another guy that I know that has an advanced degree, and is a teacher.  When the Covid-19 pandemic first hit, businesses were shutting down.  I knew a lot of people that were losing their jobs and trying to figure out how to survive.  I knew business owners that were losing their customers (because their customers were out of work), and they were trying to figure out how to keep their businesses open.

So my first concern was my friend, so I asked him if he knew what he was going to do.  His response floored me.

"I don't have to worry about it, because I have my own business."  He said, "I'm not like everyone working in the corporate world."

I asked him, "what do your customers do for a living?"

He was stunned and didn't answer me.  It had finally hit him that the pandemic was going to affect him, just like it was affecting everyone else.  I was just amazed that someone with an advanced education couldn't figure this out on his own.

I could go on with other people that I know that have advanced education, including one person with a Ph.D, that had views that didn't match with reality at all.

In the end, I just said, "Book Smart, Street Dumb".  Someone might come up with a better way to paraphrase it, but that's what I see.  There are a lot of people that we typically think of as smart individuals, but when it comes to real life situations, they are complete morons. 

Data Centers

 I have always felt that having a data center built was a good thing for the local economy.  It would mean jobs.  There would be advantages in having them.  Plus, in the global AI race, it would be good to be on top, rather than fall behind enemy countries like China, who are not developing AI to benefit the rest of the world.

Regardless of what you think of AI, or the AI race, data centers bring jobs to the area.

But, so many people are against them.  Every time there is a hint of a data center being built somewhere, the locals come out in droves to protest it, and urge their representatives to prohibit them from being built.

Part of this is just hysteria.  There are people that know nothing about what data centers are, and they are afraid of what they don't know.

There is the legitimate concern for their water usage.  According to what I've read, some of these data centers use a tremendous amount of water each day for cooling.  This water usage would definitely impact what usage for people and businesses in the area.

Then there's the power concerns.  The data centers use a huge amount of electricity to operate, and this puts a definite strain on the local power grid.

But there are data centers that do not have these impacts on water and power.  There are data centers being built right now that use different cooling technology, and use much less water, or no water at all, for cooling.  And on top of that, they generate their own power.  So a data center of this type has benefits to the local community, with few, if any, drawbacks.

I'm hoping that the newer ways of building and operating data centers will take hold, and lessen the local resistance to change. 

Bullies

 Every time there's a school shooting, or to some extent, shootings in similar settings, I think about bullies.  In the school shootings, there has almost always been the element bullying that went too far and the bullied kids finally fight back.  As those bullied kids are just kids, they are not adults, and not equipped to adequately deal with those feelings, or having to deal with being bullied.

In one mass shooting, the shooter was a person that felt humiliated, isolated, and unfairly treated in the work place.  As an adult, he should've been able to deal with this, but that's not always the case.  I suspect that there are a lot more cases of people being mistreated at work, than most of us realize.  We assume they are isolated cases, but from my own experience (and observation), I feel that it goes on a lot more and in most companies.

I don't feel that the schools adequately protect kids from bullying.  They pay lip service to the subject, and have "anti-bullying" campaigns, but the truth is, the teachers and school administrators hold bullying out at arms length and avoid it when it's real and not just words; not just a campaign; not just a slogan.

I remember my own step son was bullied when he was school.  Despite the fact that he was bigger than most of the other kids, they learned that he was mild mannered and would avoid confrontation.  He would back down, and in some cases, run to get away from them.  This just emboldened the bullies and he became one of their favorite targets at the school.  And despite his pleas to teachers and the school principal, they did nothing about it.  They claimed they couldn't do anything unless they caught them in the act.  So they wouldn't address it.

In one case, my wife and I bought him a new coat, because it was winter and he needed a new coat.  Within a day or two of him having the coat, the bullies had taken his coat, and drenched it in a toilet.

Again, the teachers did nothing.  The principal did nothing.

As I was a new step dad, and trying to let my wife handle this, as it was her son, it became clear to me that the female perspective wasn't working.  She had been telling him that violence doesn't solve conflict.

I sat down with him and told him that in most cases, if you have a conflict with someone at school. violence is not the first answer.  You try to resolve conflict in other ways.  But I told him that the world was full of bullies, even in the adult world, and bullies don't stop with just words.  They keep victimizing because they are cowards, and so to make themselves feel powerful, they need a victim.  and they search for a victim, until they find one that wont fight back.  This makes them feel powerful, and it makes them feel safe because the victim wont fight back.

So I told him to get a stick or something, and the next time they bully him, to use the stick as a weapon.  I told him that he wasn't to just go crazy on them, but that once he hurt them, and they back off, that should be enough.

The next day, he did just as I said, and we got a call from the school.  They were going to punish our son and suspend him for hurting the bullies.  I stood up for him in front of the principal.  I confronted him for not doing anything when he was the victim, but now all the sudden he's ready to suspend our son for defending himself.

I said, now all the sudden you're ready to take their word for it, that our son hurt them, but you weren't willing to take his word for it on repeated occasions when he was the victim.

I said that if they suspended our son, I would sue the school, the city, and each of the teachers and the principal individually.

Needless to say, he wasn't suspended after all.  But also, he wasn't bullied by those kids anymore either.

It just gets me that this stuff goes on, and the kids get no help from the adults, but once the victim strikes back, all the sudden the teachers want to step in.  It just doesn't sit right with me, but I saw it first hand when I was in school.

 I remember when I was in high school, racial tension was a thing.  I tried to stay out of all that stuff.  I treated everyone the same, and although I wasn't a popular kid, I managed to treat everyone right and equal, as best I could.  So I was taken aback when at one point between classes, I was on the 3rd or forth floor of my school building (I don't remember which floor), and close to when the bell would ring and we were all supposed to get to our next class, I was attacked by two black kids.  Both were smaller guys like myself, and just wanted to feel big by attacking someone that was small and they figured couldn't fight back.  They tried to push me down the stairs at some point, but I was strong enough and was able to fight back.  I think I was tougher than they expected.

In the end, the two ran when the bell rang, and I was gathering my books and trying to fix my shirt that had been torn in the altercation.  Despite the yelling and noise that went on during the fight, no teacher came out to help.  However, while I was picking up books and papers, suddenly, three teachers opened their classroom doors and walked out in the hall and acted like they had no idea what had just happened.

What a joke.  Those cowards waited until the noise was over and they knew it was safe.  That's the truth of the matter.  I saw how it was then, and I see how it is now, years later.  And I'm reminded of this every time there's a school shooting, and the teachers say when being interviewed "I had no idea that bullying was going on in our school".

Jeez.  What do you mean you didn't know bullying was going on in your school?  What school did you go to when you were growing up?  Because everyone that I know that went to a public school, knew that bullying was going on.  There's no way that these adults escaped that experience.  Even if they weren't personally bullied themselves when they were kids, they had to have witnessed it.  They had to know someone that was bullied.  No one escapes it completely.

My personal feeling is that when educators are in college working on a degree in education, there should be some attention paid to conflict resolution.  There needs to at least be an attempt to educate them on how to minimize this behavior.  I know that not all bullying will be stopped, but it would help reduce it, and certainly help reduce the worst cases of it.

I'm saddened sometimes, when I hear of bullying, but I'm also frustrated at hearing some of the pat answers for it, such as "violence doesn't solve disagreements".  I beg to differ.  In the case of a bully that has low self esteem and needs a victim to feel powerful, violence does help.  In fact, it's often the only thing that will get the bully (a coward) to stop.

I think I could go on further on this subject, as I went through a lot of bullying over the years.  I was a small kid in comparison to others my age.  I only started growing to be a little shorter than average, when I was in high school.  So it had reduced due to my size.  The bullies, in most cases, wanted someone a little smaller than me, for their own safety.

One thing that got me is that when I was in college, I thought the bullying would stop.  It didn't.  I was able to stop the physical bullying with violence.  The bullies just didn't want to risk further injuries after what I did to them the first time.  But other bullies were a little more sophisticated and used words and rumor and social outcasting as a form of bullying.  And I saw that kind of bullying the rest of my life. 

 

I've Had a Blessed Life, but Not a Charmed Life

 As I get older, I have become more reflective, and this includes various episodes of my life; my experiences.  I am thankful for my blessings, and I have many.  I have blessings that I take for granted and don't even notice on a day to day basis.  It's only when I search my past with reflection and introspection, that I notice these things.

I have not led a charmed life.  I never was the most popular kid, or even a member of a popular group of people.  If anything, my friends seems to be the outcasts.  I certainly did not lead the charmed life, and even into adulthood, I have been aware that I have to earn everything I have, including respect, and even when "earning" whatever it is, that doesn't always mean that I will get it.  Life is not fair.

I remember things that I had hidden away in the back of my mind, because although trivial in the grand view of life, they were hurtful episodes.  Lately, I have thought of a time not long after I married my wife.  We had gotten a phonecall about a group of friends that were getting together for lunch and would we like to join them.  We live 25 minutes south of Tulsa, but we got ready quickly and made it to the restaurant in less than an hour.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the bulk of the group of friends had already eaten, and in fact, and settled their bill and were leaving.  We had just gotten there and hadn't even had a chance to order a meal.  It felt like no one (of my friends) were going to stay there and talk to my wife and I.  They were busy and were leaving.

Why did they invite us?  They could've just had their lunch together and not included us, and that would've been better than this insult.

I remember how it always was with on of my friends and his wife.  For the bulk of the time I knew him, any time we were going anywhere, we always had to wait on his wife.  She was notoriously late, and she was slow to get ready.  And yet, the group of us always waited.  That's just the way it was.

But now I saw that these same friends would not give my wife the same patience that the other guy's wife had received over the years.  It became another reminder to me that I was never like other people.  Other people had friends, and I had mostly acquaintenaces that I thought of as friends.  I believed that because it was necessary not to see it for what it was.  I was never as good as everyone else; no matter how hard I tried.

This wasn't an isolated incident.  It was just another in a long history of how things were for me growing up, and although you put these things away and move on, from time to time, life gives you another reason to remember that you're just not as good as everyone else.

Some might look at this and feel that it's a lack of forgiveness on my part, that I still hold on to these things.  Part of that might even be true.  The I feel like a lot of it is just a part of what has formed me into the person that I am today.  I feel like I need to be the best person I can be; to be the best friend that I can be, but also know that the world is not fair; and that people will probably never treat me as well as I treat them.  It's just how things are, and I have learned to live with it.

Most of the time, I just put these things in the back of my mind and look forward to good things in the future.  But every now and then, I am reminded. 

HR Isn't the Employee's Friend

 Over the years of working in corporate settings, I have experienced enough turmoil as management changed and organizations evolved.  Although when I first started out, I really viewed HR (Human Resources) as the employee's friend (advocate).  But I soon learned that this is not true, and I notice over and over young workers that also have the perception of HR as a friend.  HR is not your friend.

HR is there for the purpose of protecting the company (not you) from lawsuits and bad PR.  It is true that in some cases, they can help with disputes over company policy and how it might affect an employee, or how lower management might violate policy.  But higher in the management change, it is clear that company policy applies less and less.  Employees are not protected.

You need to know that in most cases, if you have a dispute with management over their treatment of you, the truth is that you are on your own.

I have seen cases where employees would have some sort of agreement signed when they were first hired by the company, on the job responsibilities and mission that they were being hired for.  But as time goes by, they were clearly being put in situations that the agreement never applied to.  And the truth is, that "agreement" is not a legally binding contract.  If the employee doesn't like it, they can voice their concerns (professionally and politely), but if their concerns fall on deaf ears, there is little they can do, and there is nothing that HR is going to do to help them.  At that point, they either need to adapt to the new environment, or look for another job.

And sometimes, getting another jobs just means that the clock is ticking at the new job, where they will be put into the same or similar conditions that are unacceptable to the employee.

The bottom line is that the corporate organization does not care about the employee.  HR does not care about the employee.  You are on your own.  Adapt or move on.

 

Should Transgender Women Be Allowed To Compete In Women's Sports?

 The topic of transgender issues, especially in sports, has been a common subject recently.  I've been reluctant to chime in just because I know some transgender women, and feel sensitive to their feelings on the matter.  However, I feel I finally do need to say something, just to add some perspective.

First of all, I feel sensitive to these people.  Anyone (teenage or older) with what is known as gender dysphoria, have a tough time getting through life.  People don't understand them.  Even their own families don't understand them.  I can see this being a very, very lonely existence.  And I've seen that even in the case where they are in a community of LGBTQ groups, often times they are even rejected there when it comes to dating or even having more than a casual relationship.  So the loneliness doesn't go away.

And I make a distinction between transgender women, who are men who have had surgery and transitioned to be women; and then there are a broader group of men who "identify" as being a women, although have not had the surgery, and may never have the surgery.

Where this applies to women's sports is where I feel the line needs some attention.  Generally speaking, males have more testosterone than females.  This gives a young male an advantage on growing and building muscles as he grows up.  And after training for years and eventually transitioning to female, this advantage doesn't go away.  This person has an unfair advantage over the women who have trained their whole lives without the higher levels of testosterone, and so their muscles and athletic performance suffers in comparison.

Women who would otherwise make the team, suddenly are edged out, because someone who benefitted from testosterone during those formative years, has edged them out.  It isn't fair.

Consider that currently, no sanctioning organization allowed for females to take testosterone injections to enhance their abilities through the years.  So they don't even get a chance for enhancement, whereas the person that transitions from male to female, does get the enhancement.  It's not fair.

The whole point of women's sports, is so that girls and women would be able to compete just like the boys and men do.  It is not fair for them to be elite athletes in their field, only to be edged out by someone who was born male.  And in many cases, the transgender women, as a male, if competing against men, wouldn't even be able to make the men's team.

And if you think it is fair, consider that we don't see females transitioning to male, and then wanting to compete in men's sports.  It wouldn't make sense.

Testosterone is an advantage.

Like I said before, I sympathize with the life of a person that doesn't feel at ease in their own bodies.  But in my opinion, transitioned or just identifying as a female, I think if they have XY chromosomes, they should be competing against other athletes with that same set of chromosomes.  That is the more fair approach. 

The American System Aint Perfect, But It's the Best Thing We've Ever Had

 It feels like lately, it appears that more and more people are attracted to socialism (or even communism).  It's like they have contempt for the American system, despite the fact that socialism (and communism) has never worked in the history of the human race (not long term).  Everywhere that those systems have been tried, it has pushed the majority of the people into poverty, and power to a select corrupt few.

The American system has brought more people out of poverty (not just in the United States, but elsewhere in the world) than any other system in history.  And although it is true that power seems to fall into the hands of a select corrupt few, that does not discount the fact that more people have been elevated in lifestyle with this system (led by the corrupt, or not).

Unlike the totalitarian systems of socialism and communism, at least the American system has a built in system to expose and remove the corrupt.  From time to time, corrupt politicians go to jail.  From time to time, even the rich end up going too far, get caught, and end up in jail.  It happens.  It doesn't happen in those other systems.

The critics of the American system, complain that the system doesn't work for the people on the bottom.  This criticism ignores the fact that even the people on the bottom live a better lifestyle than the poor in any other country in the world (in history).  The poor in the United States have assistance programs that provide meals, shelter.  and although they don't have healthcare directly, they all have some form of healthcare in emergency rooms at hospitals all over the country.

The critics assume that all the things that we have in this country are just here and have always been here.  They ignore the sacrifices and the work and the struggles that people before us went through to give us these things.  The paved roads we have, didn't just happen.  People made them happen. Businesses made those things available to us, and there were people that sacrificed so that they could create those businesses, create those products, so that we'd have these things.  People gained jobs because of those businesses.

Prior to this age where almost everyone works for someone else, or some company.  Before the economy as it is now, most people were self employed.  They had to have some skill(s) that they could use to create value in the form of a product or service that other people would pay for.  There was no safety net for people who had few or no marketable skills.

As average people sacrificed and saved, and came up with innovations, they used their savings, created companies and employed people.  Some of these companies and products failed.  But a few succeeded, and slowly our economy evolved where the average worker had a 40 hour week, and a paycheck every two weeks.  And we have a social safety net now for the people at the bottom with little or no skill; including people that have bad habits and can't keep a job.  The system even provides for them in a limited way.

None of that just happened.  People made it happen.  Our system allowed people the freedom and incentive to try new things until they found things (products) that worked.  That has benefited the majority of the people in ways that the old system never did.  Under the old system, almost everyone was poor.  A whole middle class evolved out of the innovations that the American system provided for.  Everyone has benefited in some way.  Everyone is better off than the average worker was a hundred and fifty years earlier.

Every time I hear about the corruption that is out there, I am sometimes encouraged that they get caught, exposed, humiliated, and occasionally jailed.  And I keep coming back to the fact that none of the people that complain about this system, would be better off with the system we had a hundred and fifty years ago, and they wouldn't be better off with socialism or communism; and this is proven when looking at those as they are practiced in places like Venezuala.

Some of the detractors will point to certain countries and claim those are shining examples of socialism, but then if you look at those countries, they are not really practicing full socialism (yet), but every one of them is failing economically.  Their economy cannot support those systems long term, and many have had to scale back some of the social programs they initially had that made people support them.

Regardless of those countries though, the fact is still that the American system (with all of its faults), has still brought more people out of poverty, than any other system in the history of the human race.  This is an undisputed fact.