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Do Good Grades Predict Success? – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog

This is something I would also like to know. I’ve always loved my teachers but I’ve always hated the school system. Science is not about memorization. School should be about the joy of learning. As I see how my younger cousins are educated in school, or even younger people  about 3-6 years younger than I. It is becoming ever more apparent that what we have is a system that would like to propagate society as it is. and for all the beauty and the joy that the society I am in has brought to me, I cannot but hope that society progresses and for it to progress we must learn to subvert the things that try to propagate this system I have come both to love and hate.
They say crazy is doing something again ang again ang expecting different results. So I say that we are crazy to believe that the world is not changing, and because the world is changing it is crazy to expect that the way that society progressed what starting 150 years ago up to the present is the way for us to progress even more. We need a modern system of educating people. We have sold the arts short by not teaching it well. We have sold science and math short by not showing people how beautiful it is.
I hope that by the time I have a child, I wouldn’t have to put up a herculean effort just to give my child a proper education.!

What interests me is whether the present system actually produces more success or heavily limits it.
Would a different system with less emphasis on conformity produce more of our best and brightest? Or does the annealing effect of being crushed by the system help to produce those best and brightest?
If you look at those who have commonly advanced our thinking, our abilities, our technologies, and our economy (through business sense), many did poorly in schools, yet they persisted. The persistence may have been the critical element, and it would have perhaps been lost had they been encouraged more.
So does this mean we need more of those mediocre middle school and high school teachers acting as the forge to both create the worker bees we need, as well as the best [and most successful] by trying to destroy them?
Thoughts?
Do Good Grades Predict Success? – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.

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Be afraid. Be very afraid. – The Bing Blog

Hope the rational parts of the Republican party can at least overcome these idealogues.

I just read a comment from a House Republican who helped to defeat the bailout. It said that passing the bailout would represent “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.” In one statement, this guy made it clear what his camp’s priorities represent – ideology over the welfare of the public.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. – The Bing Blog.

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Alchemy in Arendal at Paulo Coelho’s Blog

This is nice to hear, I know I’ve been transformed by reading the alchemist.
Thanks to my sister. I think I know what I’ll be giving people at the fast approaching holiday season.

In 2003 the city of Arendal was going through a rough time financially, and the motivation among the employees sank dramatically. The city council ordered 3.000 copies of The Alchemist and hoped for a miracle.The unorthodox plan turned out to be a success.
“After reading The Alchemist we all became aware of the importance of our visions, and that it is possible to make them happen.” Kjell Sjursen, leader of the city council
Alchemy in Arendal at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

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Seth's Blog: Get to vs. have to

I’ve excerpted half of this great post so do read it! As years pass I get to see people I know find success in their different endeavors , This is so very true.

How much of your day is spent doing things you have to do (as opposed to the things you get to do.)
In my experience, as people become successful and happier (the subset that are both) I find that the percentage shifts. These folks end up spending more and more time on the get to tasks.
Seth’s Blog: Get to vs. have to.

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Stevey's Blog Rants: The Bellic School of Management Training

I’ve seen this in some upscale places I’ve eaten in, but not in mid to mass class establishments.
Which begs the question why they don’t do this considering that this directly affects employees pay?
Either they don’t know, or they don’t care, Here’s to hoping they do not know and would gladly implement the extra management overhead that such a scheme would entail if given the chance.

To illustrate why it’s popular, I’ll use an analogy from the restaurant industry. Have you ever noticed that at restaurants, your waiter doesn’t bring your food? Other waiters always bring out your food, during which time your waiter is nowhere to be seen. This is so that if you become infuriated because you specifically ordered tartar sauce on the side, and after a 45-minute wait the chef seems to have emptied the entire bottle of tartar sauce on your fish sandwich in some sort of twisted artistico-culinary attempt to make it look like he threw up on it, then you don’t blame your waiter. Instead, you unwittingly direct your anger at the person who brought your food, who makes sympathetic noises (“Gosh, I’m so sorry – I can’t believe they messed that up!”) and runs away, never to be seen again. After it’s eventually resolved (by still other people bringing replacements out), your waiter finally rematerializes and apologizes for the kitchen screwup.
Stevey’s Blog Rants: The Bellic School of Management Training.

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-Brave Mr Newman-An Appraisal – An Actor Whose Baby Blues Came in Shades of Gray – An Appraisal – NYTimes.com

Bravo Mr Paul Newman! A life well lived!

The movies are not kind to older actors and yet Mr. Newman walked away from this merciless business seemingly unscathed. During his second and third acts, he kept his dignity partly by playing men who seemed to have relinquished theirs through vanity or foolishness. Some of them were holding on to decency in an indecent world; others had nearly let it slip through their fingers.
Decency seems to have come easily to Mr. Newman himself, as evidenced by his philanthropic and political endeavors, which never devolved into self-promotion. It was easy to take his intelligence for granted as well as his talent, which survived even the occasional misstep. At the end of “The Drowning Pool,” a woman wistfully tells Mr. Newman, I wish you’d stay a while. I know how she feels.
An Appraisal – An Actor Whose Baby Blues Came in Shades of Gray – An Appraisal – NYTimes.com.

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Creativity Killing Schools

Talents are often buried quite deep. and it doesn’t emerge until the conditions are right!
Sir Ken Robinson
from a rihz khan interview! thanks to presentation zen here, and chuck for the pointer.

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Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » Why Alternative Energy Isn’t

Need to FAST TRACK our research on this! I think this maybe something I maybe involved in for a couple of years!

The pressing question, then, remains: What’s going to replace oil?
Let’s draw up a specification for the ideal replacement. We’d like a fuel with the energy density of oil, or better. We’d like the only per-unit cost to be sunlight, because that’s the only thing that’s 100% renewable and (unlike tidal, hydropower, and geothermal) available everywhere. Ideally, we’d like the stuff to not require a huge, expensive conversion job on our energy infrastructure.
Happily, I think this spec can be filled. There are demonstration plants making synthetic oil from algae at a per-unit cost not far above that of oil, and plenty of venture capital looking to fund more. As this technology scales up, algal-synfuel costs will drop below that of oil. At that point, the free market will have solved the problem.
Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » Why Alternative Energy Isn’t.

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So Thats Why Doctors Dont Use E-Mail – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog

Tell me about it. It seems that pareto principle is present in the number or time my parent spends on each patient.  80% of the patients take up only 20% of their time , whilst 20% of the patients consumes 80% of the time.

September 26, 2008, 1:50 pm
So That’s Why Doctors Don’t Use E-Mail
By Stephen J. Dubner
I’ve known several doctors who refused to read e-mail from patients. They said it was simply a bad use of their time.
I also used to have a doctor who hated it whenever you came in and asked questions about some article you’d read in The Times about Lyme disease or some such. He’d get a pained look on his face — here we go again; patients pretending to be doctors — and then ignore the question.
So Thats Why Doctors Dont Use E-Mail – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.