Month: January 2012

How iBooks Author is a Game Changer Apple Didn’t Plan

Apple wants  iBooks Author to revolutionize textbooks publishing.   Let’s be disruptive and give iBook Author a different purpose.  Look at this video and read my plan.  Which goal is a more revolutionary?

iBooks Author can revolutionize education but not for textbook publishers.  iBooks Author looks so easy to use that kids could use it.  Apple got the purpose of iBooks Author back-asswards.  It’s not for creating textbooks for kids – it’s a program for kids to create textbooks.

Learn by teaching – that’s where it’s at.  Instead of requiring school kids to read textbooks, we should require school children to write their own textbooks.  And with some extra support this could be a totally new educational paradigm.

If we gave kids stock portfolios of photos, videos, illustrations, graphs and told them their assignment for the year in each subject was to create their own textbook, using their words and provided multimedia, would they learn more by doing instead of reading?  Teach them to take content from wherever as long as they rewrite it in their own words.  Teach them the same rules non-fiction writers follow to be professional, legal and ethical.   Homework is writing the textbook, not reading it.  The content is out there to find in libraries, books, magazines, on the net, or by interviews.  They just need to shape what they learn in a persuasive way, and develop their own lesson plans, activities and end of chapter questions.

Let’s say we have a class of 8th graders studying American History. Not only will they learn history, but writing, research,  grammar, punctuation, publishing, graphic design, rhetoric, lesson plans, and so on. Wouldn’t they learn more than just reading a text book on American history? Wouldn’t it be more fun?

There are problems.  We have to make sure students don’t just cut and paste from the Internet. And we have to teach them about intellectual property rights. The Internet is full of multimedia they could steal, but that’s not the message we want to teach. We should teach them the problems faced by editors and writers, like dealing with plagiarism, libel, fact checking, writing level, target audience, and more.  All they need is access to portfolios of legal stock multimedia.

Students studying literature could use Project Guttenberg to create their own anthologies and write introductions, study guides and annotations.  Wouldn’t math be more fun if you could write your own textbook that used real world examples you care about, like The Mathematics of Interplanetary Flight.  Imagine being in school and one of your assignments is to develop a textbook called Nine Decades of Popular American Music?  I always had a hard time remembering the rules of grammar – would I have done better if I had to write them into a textbook with my own favorite examples?

Try and imagine the world of 2025 where the high school graduation requirement is the authorship of 24 textbooks.  Imagine starting college having written 24 textbooks!

JWH – 1/21/12

God, An Imaginary Friend For Adults

“There are no atheists in foxholes” is an assumption by the faithful who feel in times of stress all people will turn to God.  When I’m sick I want to talk to God too.  The older I get the stronger my atheism gets, the more I feel like I’m just talking.  I don’t expect a reply.  When we’re alone, fearful or in pain, we realize how powerless we are.  So it’s quite natural to think, “God, get me out of this!”

Who are we talking to?  Ourselves, of course.  But we’d like to think that someone is listening.  That’s why people believe in a personal God – to have a listener, to not be alone.  Lonely kids make up imaginary friends, well adults make up God.   We don’t like to be alone in the universe.  Nor do we like to be helpless.  The desire for an all-powerful, caring, father figure is completely understandable.  Even if he’s going to let us suffer and die, we want someone to talk to.

On the other hand, are we really alone in our heads?  We tend to think of our thoughts as ourselves, but if you observe closely, they aren’t.  Descartes, “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” is another illusion.  Pay close attention to your thoughts and you’ll realize the quality you feel as Me is actually listening to your thoughts.  The Me observer is so close to the thoughts that it thinks its doing the thinking.  Stare at something and not think, and then watch when a thought arises.  There is a separation.  In other words, you aren’t alone.  It’s you and your thoughts.  The observer and thinker.

Animals are observers like us, but without thoughts, or a thinker.

Now here’s the kicker.  It’s the thinker that needs to talk. It’s the thinker that needs to communicate with God.  If you just BE and turn off your thoughts you’re just an observer, there is no God, or even desire.  It’s the thinker that wants, that desires, that creates God, and all the other stuff, like mathematics, history, philosophy, justice, love, etc.  It’s the observer who is aware, who is conscious, and who dies.

So, why does the thinker want to create God?  Why does the thinker need this imaginary friend?  Before awareness in animals there was no observers of reality.  Hydrogen became stars without notice.  Animals perceive reality through an infinity of senses.  Animals can feel the warmth of the sun without knowing what it is, because they don’t have language to think.

Then we came along and started thinking.  Thoughts see things that don’t exist in reality.  Thoughts see other thoughts.

Why? 

Our thinking minds are quite creative.  It’s my thinking mind writing this now.  And my Me-ness observes that.

Children create imaginary beings to have someone to talk to.  We create God to have someone to talk to. 

What we really want is another thinker to talk to.

thoughts

JWH – 1/21/12

Questions About Spinal Stenosis

Back in 2008 I was having a lot of hip, back and leg pains and I had a MRI.  I thought I was going to need a hip replacement but the hip doctor said no, and sent me to another back specialist, one who specialized in pain management.  He told me I had arthritis in my L5 vertebra and physical therapy exercises would help.  They did.  I had to stop walking for exercise because it flared up my back and made my legs numb, but if I did my PT I could keep the pain under control.  In 2010 I went back to the doctor to ask if there was anything I could do to fix me so I could go back to walking for exercise.  He said no.  He then told me I had spinal stenosis and I should be prepared for a slow decline.  He said when things got very bad he could do nerve block shots, but I should put off thinking about surgery as long as possible.

Having the label “spinal stenosis” gave me something to research on the Internet, and generally I found the same recommendations to hold on off surgery for as long as possible – but with reasons why.  Many people ended up worse after surgery.  I even watched videos of surgical techniques for spinal stenosis.  Mucking around so close to the spine scares me.  By the way, how do surgeons know what they seeing, body parts aren’t color coded like in books and the old Illustrated Man model.

I decided to bide my time and see if new surgical techniques would be developed.  A few months ago I started seeing sites on the Internet advertising laparoscopic surgery that promised miracles for spinal stenosis sufferers, so I set up another appoint with my doctor.  I was hoping he’d have good news.  He said microsurgery was still surgery and warned me that a lot of places made a business off of selling procedures and they might not work for me.

The time I can spend standing and walking has greatly diminished.  I’m now down to 15-30 minutes.  My doctor said before I thought about surgery I needed to try a nerve block shot, but also said I was controlling my pain so well with PT that I could still put that off too.  I asked him if I could go back to walking after a shot, and he seemed iffy.  He thought a shot would extend my standing and walking time but it would wear off in months.  I asked him how they worked, and he said they reduced the inflammation in the nerves near the stenosis sites.

My doctor and internet sites warned not to do surgery until I was facing a quality of life issue.  That’s sort of vague.  I can go to work, but I can’t walk between buildings.  I can’t do much shopping.  I don’t want to go on vacations.  However, I’m a bookworm and TV watcher, so I’m reasonably comfortable for that.  I’m surviving without pain by walking a razor’s edge with physical therapy and not aggravating my back by standing or walking too long.  I could risk the surgery, but what if it causes permanent pain of another type?  Right now my feet and legs go numb and I have other weird sensations, and sometimes my back tightens, but I’m not suffering real pain.  I’ve been there, so I know.

If I had surgery how many holes, passages and paths would have to be widen?  And how long will it be before they fill in again?  I’m really fighting arthritis.  Are there ways to fight arthritis in general?

I also got to thinking about inflammation.  If steroids shots would reduce inflammation why wouldn’t other things do the same thing?

My doctor did tell me something that I totally wasn’t expecting but I should have.   He said arthritis was now affecting my L4 and L1 vertebras too.  So things were getting worse.  I didn’t ask, but did that mean I’d need multiple surgeries?

That’s the thing about this condition.  I have a hard time picturing it.  I haven’t seen the MRI or X-rays.  I have seen photos on the net but they aren’t me and they aren’t specific.  I would like to visualize how arthritis degenerates the spine.  I did find this at AAOS.org.  The caption said, “When we are young, disks have a high water content (left). As disks age and dry out, they may lose height or collapse (right). This puts pressure on the facet joints and may result in arthritis.”

This explanation doesn’t explain why steroid nerve blocks would help, but it makes me wonder if inversion tables would?  It also makes me wonder if there are diets to help stop the degeneration, or foods that make it worse.  I am overweight, so I also wonder if losing weight would help, I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t, but two doctors have said it wouldn’t.  The trouble is I’ve been trying to lose weight for half my life and haven’t succeeded.

I also wondered if chiropractic techniques would help.  Physical therapy exercises have saved me from years of pain.  I can limit the pain to almost nothing with daily exercises, and that might be the same as what a chiropractor could do.  The trouble is the arthritis is also building up deposits that squeeze the spine, and squeezes the nerves branching from the spine to my legs, which I don’t think would be reduced by manipulation or exercise, unless exercise reduces inflammation, or causes the nerves to rub against the arthritic growths and kept it from expanding.  But that’s just me wondering, I have no evidence of that.

But I do have a lot of questions, especially for people who have this condition.  I’d like to hear from people who have had surgery, of any type, and people who used chiropractors or other alternative medical techniques.  Do inversion tables help?  Got any diet tips?

I know I need to lose some weight to see if that can help.  I wish I could be as disciplined with my weight loss as I’ve been with my PT exercises.  I need a diet that is non-inflammatory in general, causes weight loss, and is anti-arthritic.  I bought a Bow-Flex to see if more exercise and stronger exercises would help.  All my life I ran or walked for exercise and I can do neither now.  I should swim, but that ain’t in the cards.

I’ve known since I was a kid that getting old means breaking down physically, but I always pictured it happening fast.  I never pictured not being able to walk – I always pictured dying of a heart attack.  When I was at the Campbell Clinic I saw lots of people that looked much worse than me, some were in wheel chairs.  In recent years I’ve noticed old people having trouble walking, the ones with canes, or wheelchairs, or those little scooters.  I’ve seen a lot of people struggle just to go out to eat or or see a movie.  I suppose there are even more that stay at home.  There are millions of people worse off than me, and the thing is I need to pay attention to them, because they are my role models and trail blazers.

Unless I find a miracle cure, and I will try, I’m starting to see my future much differently than I ever imagined it.

JWH – 1/18/12

I’ve Been Living Under a Rock–So Who are the Kardashians?

I’ve been living under a rock, or so it would seem, because until today when I looked up Kardashians on Wikipedia I really didn’t know who they were.  For weeks I’ve been hearing the word Kardashians and wondered if they were a band. 

Friday at work, I overheard three students arguing about the K named people.   When two left, I asked the remaining young woman, and she smiled and kindly explained they were people who were paid to be famous.  “Umm…  They do that now?” I wasn’t so clueless that I hadn’t notice tabloids exclaiming gossipy stories about K named women at the checkout.  Something about an expensive wedding and a marriage gone bad in 72 days.

Today I looked up the name Kardashian on Wikipedia and found out about their television show.  Even when I had cable I never watched E!.  I really don’t need to know any more about the Kardashians than I do now, and would not recognize one if I saw one.

This amuses me and I chuckle at my own cluelessness.  To the young, knowledge of the famous is a sanity check.  Not knowing the glitterati often gets me a sneer or sarcasm, that tells me I’m out of touch with reality and implying I’m over that famous hill.  I turned 60 last year, and I can’t name the young people who are currently famous as movie stars, TV stars, sport stars, and I would stay rock stars, but is rock is even famous anymore?  I’m just now memorizing Kate Winslet’s name and I saw Titanic twice at the theaters – for the shipwreck.

My pop culture education grades took a nose dive when I gave up cable TV and quit reading TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly.  I do read The Rolling Stone on my iPad, so I know a few new groups, but I had to buy two Arcade Fire albums before I could remember their damn name, and I still can’t remember any of their dang song titles.  Starting in my late 40s, and all through my 50s, I’ve been losing the ability to remember nouns – so maybe that’s why I lost interest in pop culture.  Following the famous requires noun memorization.

I know who Kay Francis and Robert Montgomery were, and I doubt millions of young people do – so there!  Who is clueless now?

Luckily, forgetting doesn’t hurt.  Oh, it’s annoying when I struggle to recall a name I used to know, but it doesn’t hurt.  And it’s not even embarrassing at work when young people make fun of me for not knowing the people they worship.  I remember being 13 and baffled by parents, aunts, uncles and teachers that reveal their low IQ by not knowing The Byrds and Robert Heinlein.

The 21st century is so passé, the 19th century is where it’s at.  My new idols are Anthony Trollope, Louise May Alcott, John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, Charles Darwin, … so back under my rock.

JWH – 1/16/12

Science Fiction’s New Future

Back in the 1950s and 1960s classic science fiction promised a future of space travel, with Star Trek epitomizing our hopes. That future has been revised constantly for us Baby Boomers so what does contemporary science fiction promise the youth of today? Will it be The Windup Girl, The Hunger Games or Ready Player One? Is the Final Frontier off the table? The fact that the United States continues to ignore global warming does not bode well for science fictional speculation. Since we refused to solve our problems we must live with the results.

In Ready Player One people are happy to live in a virtual reality that lets them escape the bleak actual reality.  The United States at mid-21st century is still in today’s recession.  In The Hunger Games, the 22nd century U.S. has collapsed and a new government has formed that’s nothing like what we have today.  In The Windup Girl corporations are even more powerful and the negative effects of technology even more pervasive.  If you combined the speculation in The Windup Girl with Ready Player One they have probably foreseen a future closer to what will happen than what Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov imagined.

There’s little reason to picture the super-science futures of modern space opera happening at all, and at least not any time soon.  By soon, I mean before the year 3000.  And what about what Robert J. Sawyer imagined for us in his WWW Trilogy?  How close is IBM’s Watson to Webmind?

I grew up believing the future would be what Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov showed us.  How do teens see the future today?  A generation ago kids imprinted on Star Wars, but is their faith still firm in that galactic empire fantasy?  Not if they are paying attention to reality.  Ignoring global warming offers plenty of addictive delusions, but really, what science fiction do today’s teens read to see their future in 50 years?  That would be a great topic for a SF Signal Mind Meld.  Is it dark or bright?

Fifty years ago I was ten and all excited about the Mercury program, waiting for Gemini and Apollo.  My early teen years were filled with science fiction books and The Jetsons, Lost in Space and Star Trek on TV.  The future was so bright we had to wear mirrored shades.  As a high school kid I was absolutely positive I’d be watching men and women walking on Mars by 1980 – instead I got MTV and an Atari 400.

Do today’s kids see the future through rose colored glasses?  Do they realize the 1% has already stolen their future by refusing to allow America to work on the problem of global warming, guaranteeing a life like The Windup Girl?  The effects of global warming won’t end our world, but it will but the kibosh on Star Trek and Star Wars space age dreams.

JWH – 1/15/12