Reunions

For the first time, out of four missed opportunities, I went back to high school by attending my 20 year reunion.  In fact, this whole year has been a trip back to the days when I was young and stupid.  Now, I’m just older.  There’s a reason for all that, but that is not part of this story.  Let’s just say, I’ve been reborn in a manner of speaking.

But yeah, the past year has been rife with nostalgia and old feelings, some good, some bad.  Friendships rekindled.  Odds renewed.   And, in the end, the universe comes back to remind you of your place in the social cosmos of the high school hierarchy.    20 years later, you still can’t crash the cool kids party and get away without being pounded with the reminder that you are still the same guy you were back then, just older and a little bigger than you were.

Now, I didn’t mind high school.  In fact, it was probably some of the greatest times I had.  Then again, it’s possible I blocked out a lot of the bad stuff.  The awkwardness gets pushed back into the recesses of the mind while the heyday of riding around in cars with no particular place to go, being irresponsible, and being young and giddy over the feelings that inhabit your still fresh heart and mind.  You’ve got the whole world ahead of you and tomorrow is so far off in the distance.

Then, 20 years go by.  Suddenly, the panic sets into your soul.   It’s been two decades and you have not accomplished one goal you set down on paper in that biography from the back of your yearbook.  You’re going to face down the ghosts of your past and they will see the failure in your life and they will suck the last remaining ounces of hope out of you.  

So, I kind of set another goal for this milestone.  Try to get back some of those 20 years, so I can walk tall into that reunion.   I’ve spent the last 10 months working on losing weight, getting back into some shape other than round, and rediscovering that piece of me that I lost a long, long time ago.  And, I did that.  Now, I will be the first to throw myself under the bus when it comes to looks or physical stature.  However, compared to what I looked like this past October, I say, with all seriousness that, “I looked damn good.” 

But, the universe will not let you change your stars and no matter how good I looked, I knew that I was just going to be “That funny guy whose kid is hilarious on Facebook.”  The great guy with a heart of gold.   The one every parent loved but no daughter would ever consider.   I was me.    All that build up.  The prep.  The thinking that, “This time, it’s different” meant nothing, because as soon as I walked in that door, I was back in high school.  Awkward.  Backwards.  I was me.

I ended up leaving early, rather than just hang about in the back, being an observer. And, from what I gathered from the pictures that actually made it onto Facebook, the party only got better after I left.  Not saying because…  Just saying it did.  The whole night was a disaster for me.  My brand new suit was like a heater and even after changing into shorts and a t-shirt to be more comfortable, I could never get comfortable.  I wanted to leave.

Why?  Because, what I failed to remember, from 20 years ago, was that I did everything I could to get away from that place.  Yeah, I hung around a few times, post graduation, because I still had friends there, but that school, that town, that life was not what I wanted.  I left for college and went as far as I could.  I landed in Myrtle Beach, some 600 miles away, and even though I transferred back to Pitt, a mere six months later, I stayed away as much as possible.   After college, I moved closer to Pittsburgh, adding to the distance.  But, after all that time, the draw of certain elements in that town made me think what I wanted was to be back in that world.  I was wrong.

My only fun came from an impromptu dance with one of the older ladies of the wait staff and joking with the bartender.  That’s who I am.  I go to a reunion to see people I graduated with 20 years prior and I have more fun with people I barely know and just met.  

Which reminds me.  Last Saturday was a reunion of another sort.  It was a reunion between two people who haven’t been together in close to 60 years.   Early on, while making various attempts to flee to the parking lot to gain some composure, I noticed this older couple walking through the halls.  I smiled at them holding hands but paid them little mind.   When I came back, the dinner was over and the DJ was trying to ramp up the energy and get people moving.     Out of boredom, I went and moved the car closer to the building in order to hasten my escape.  When I came back this second time, there was a burst of energy coming from the ballroom.   What the hell was going on in there?

When I walked in, I noticed everyone on the dance floor sort of circling around, clapping and whooping it up.  As I got a better look, I recognized that older couple I noticed in the hallway absolutely tearing up the dance floor.   I couldn’t believe it.  We had been crashed by a couple from another party.  It was amazing.   They danced with each other and the guy shamelessly chased around women more than half his age and they ate it up.  One of my classmates was dressed in a leopard print outfit and this older gentleman looked like he was on safari, ready to bag big game.

I was speechless.   This guy.  This beautiful human being, unabashedly and successfully stole all the thunder from everyone.  I loved him for it.  I admired him for it.  He did what I so wanted to do and he was ten times better at it then I ever could have been.  I had to know what was up.

During a marathon dance session I spied his date, having a rest, and I took the opportunity to find out what their story was.   Because, you know, that’s what I do.  I ignore all the people I graduated with and seek out a complete stranger to engage.    Also, I love a good story and this one had to be a good one, right?  Turns out, they were at his class reunion from 1951.  I guess as you get older, you tend to forgo the “every five years” convention.  The gentleman was a retired urologist who, even at his age, still had the mojo.  But that wasn't even the best part of the story.  His date filled me in with the rest.

“We dated our freshman year of college.  Then we stopped.  He went off to war.  I stayed in school.”

“What happened?”  I asked. “Why did you guys split up?”

“I don’t know.  We were young.  Who knows?  The timing wasn’t right.”  

“But you’re together now?”

“Oh, yes, and it’s been wonderful.    But during the years we were apart, I lost two husbands and last year, he  lost his wife.   But somehow, someway, we found each other, again.”

I was in tears at this point.  “That is way beyond awesome.”
Then she asked me, “Why aren’t you out there?”

“Me?  Oh hell, no.”

“You can’t dance?”

“I wouldn’t say that.  It’s a long story.  I just don’t have that spark.  Not like your guy out there.”

“You know he’s 87 years old and he just loves doing stuff like this.  He loves being out there with those young girls.”

“I can tell. ”

“You should get out there, too."

“No.  Thanks.  Just no.”

Then she laid the wisdom on me.  “Do you know how to make it work?   You gotta have fun.  You gotta be able to get out there and just have fun.   And, you gotta whisper sweet nothings in her ear, all the time.  BELIEVE ME, IT WORKS!”

Waterworks in full effect. 

“Thanks.  I will remember that.”

A few more dances and they decided to go.   Even though they were on a date, they had separate rooms at the hotel.   Somehow, I think one was going to go unused.   

I finally got a chance to talk to the man of the hour and he and I had this special connection, somehow.  It was like I was staring into the future and I saw me.    And he kind of reassured me that, at 87, it doesn’t matter.  All the crap I went through to get to this point doesn’t matter.  That’s what tomorrow can be like.   He was my hero.    And then we shared that moment.  That look.  We both knew what his night had in store.  So, I told him,  “Pace yourself.  It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

He laughed with his entire being and said, “You got that right.   And I’ve finished every lap.”

Then, they were gone.  And so was I.  Bolted for the door before 11:30.  Spent the last two hours of my night watching the events unfold over Facebook.

It was a bittersweet moment.  I gained so much wisdom from those two beautiful souls.  I just hope he survived the night. 

I did.

 Party Crashers Saved My Soul

Carma

This past weekend, I finally got up the outside Christmas lights. I also cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom. Now, that may not seem like a lot of activity, but apparently, it was enough to tweak my back a bit. By Tuesday morning, I was finding it extremely difficult to move or bend.

I must have also pissed off the gods of nature because I was delivered a car-mic blow coming to work. I have about a 35 mile commute which can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic. Now, I leave in the dark and get to work in the dark, so noticing any potential problems with the car when I leave is somewhat hard. As it was, I didn’t notice anything while driving for about 25 to 30 minutes.

In fact, it wasn’t until I entered the Squirrel Hill tunnels that I noticed something wrong. As I was exiting, the car felt and sounded weird. My first thought was a tie rod went. So, I pulled off to the side of the road and looked. The back passenger tire was flat and smoking. Apparently, I’d been riding the rim pretty good for awhile. Yet, somehow, I never noticed it until then. Realizing I had no room or light to change the tire on the side of 376 West, I limped into Oakland and stopped at a Sunoco. I was hoping to just fill the tire with air. Hopefully, it would be enough to get me to the office and I could deal with it when it was light out.

As I hooked up the air, I could hear it hissing out from somewhere else on the tire. This was not going to be enough of a patch. So, I dug out the donut and jack. Now, over the course of 10 years, I have changed a few tires, using the supplied jack. It’s a pain in the ass, but in a pinch, it gets the job done. However, the jack on my ’05 Malibu Wagon was not one I had ever seen and harder to get disassembled. Realizing I was probably fighting a losing battle, I called my dad (A.K.A. my insurance agent) to ask him if my insurance covered towing back to my place or the local garage I use..

“No.”

So, I sucked it up and fought some more with the jack until I thought I had broke it. Then, if there was any more proof needed that there are still good people out there, I was saved by a random stranger. He was there getting gas and saw me struggling with the jack. He came over and managed to figure it out and we began changing the tire. Unfortunately, the iron they supply to remove the lugs wasn’t exactly great and a few of my lugs felt like they were rounded off, slipping as we tried to turn the handle, probably from over tightening at the garage I usually get tires put on at. My savior apologized because he had to leave and go pick up his wife. He did say that he would swing back around and if I was still there, he’d continue to help.

I struggled with the last two lugs, resorting to smacking the end of the iron with the bottom of the jack to get a snug fit. Stepping on the handle and applying the equivalent of my full body weight in torque nearly dropped me to my knees when the iron slipped off the lug. Random stranger returned and we both worked on the last two lugs, getting them off and pulling the tire. The inside of the tire looked as if Edward Scissorhands had put it on in the first place. The inside was completely shredded and smelled of burnt rubber. We laughed at the sight and I told him that if he wanted a real laugh, know that my last name was ironic. He said something to the effect of “If I was a girl, I’d have a whole pit crew out here changing this thing.” Unfortunately, it was hard for me to get any torque or even bend over to work on the car. My back was making it hard to breathe. The stranger did most of the work, which made me feel like an invalid, but I was thankful.

During the whole ordeal, I offered to buy him and his wife coffee for their trouble. He declined the offer. I then realized I had a $100 bill in my pocket. Our department meeting was going to be at the Casino later and afterwards, I was going to do a little gambling. Hard to fathom, I had been gambling with my life on this tire.

After the donut was on, I thanked the stranger, named Matt, repeatedly and made a last ditch effort to compensate him for his time. I tried to give him my $100 bill, but he declined, again. I tried hard, but he wouldn’t take it.  He was a decent person, selflessly helping a stranger in need. Gave me a good feeling. I hope to pay it forward, as long as someone doesn’t need tire changing help.

As a side note, I drove to work, on the donut, with the hazards on, going around 40 mph. Even with my four ways on, I still had plenty of people honking and flashing me with their high beams. Turns out, the same side as the blown tire had a blown turn signal bulb. So… I looked like that one jackass, driving 40 on the highway with his blinker on for 10 miles. During my lunch, I went to a local shop up the street and got two brand new winter tires. They were probably both due, anyway. Merry Christmas… again. After all, I wasn’t about to drive downtown, to the casino, on the donut and I wasn’t going to just ride with someone else and come back to a donut at six o’clock in the evening, still needing to change out the donut. Then, today, I stood out in the cold and fixed the bulb. Did wonders for my aching back, standing there without a coat.

Hey, Mayor, Leave Those Cokes Alone

Have we gone off the rails as a society?   Probably.  Do we really need THAT much government watching out for us at all times?  Probably not.  Should the Mayor of New York City be allowed to ban the sale of sweetened drinks in theaters, street carts, and fast food chains?  HELL NO!

Now, ask me how I feel about sin tax on cigarettes?  Don’t really care.  Why?  It’s stupid.  Smoking is stupid, drinking that much soda is stupid, taxing more on things that are a detriment to our health is stupid.   But, guess what?  It’s our right to be stupid.  You  don’t see them taxing more on fracking, do ya?  Industry polluting the air?  Noooo.

OK, soap box away.  Here’s why I think Bloomberg is a little off base with this soda thing.    One, he wants to ban Super Sizing Sweetened teas.  OK. Go ahead.  You know what’s free to us as consumers?  Sweetener.  Yeah, go into a fast food place or a movie theater and they have sugar in little packets.   We could fry our pancreas all we want with complimentary packs of sugar.

Two, as far as say a fast food restaurant is concerned, have you noticed the trend on free refills for fountain sodas?   Well, in the great state of PA, or more to the point, SWPA,  most fast food places have the soda fountain located where the napkins and ketchup are.   So… buy a small Moutain Dew and refill it 20 times.  SHOW THE MAN WHO HE’S MESSING WITH, NOW!

And for those stores that do now have the fountain on the customer side of the business, Wendy’s and Long John Silver’s mostly allow free refills if you are dining inside and bring your cup back.

Actually, the plan would be to limit sugary drinks to a 16 oz cup that could be refilled at will. It still does not solve the problem.

What’s next, limits on how many cases you can buy in the grocery store?  Easily beaten, though a pain in the ass.

So… what exactly is Bloomberg doing?  Wasting tax payer money on something that is easily subverted.

What should he be doing?  What does it matter?  With cigarettes and other vices, you will never be able to stop things from happening.   The industries are way too big and as a society, we are just way too hooked.   Denis Leary said it best.  (Very NSFW)

Listen, we know we do bad things.  We know that cigarettes, sugar, HFCS, drugs, and other shit are bad for us.  We just don’t care!   Remember Prohibition?  How well did that go for you?  Well, 13 years was a long time, but I don’t think the whole nation was dry and sober all 13 years.  Banning legal things only makes them illegal.  You can still get them if you want.

Don’t Touch Other People’s Stuff

It’s something you try and teach your children at an early age. It’s something I am continually trying to teach my child. She’s in preschool, now, and there is a germ factor to deal with along with an ownership issue. First of all, kids aren’t the cleanest of beings as they touch everything without regard to what they can’t see on surfaces and objects. They will proceed to touch themselves or you and transfer who knows what in the process. In addition, if it doesn’t belong to them and they have not received explicit permission to handle it, they shouldn’t be touching it. This is what I’m trying to tech and it includes all remote and game controllers, purses, keys, knick knacks, and anything else not built out of an industrial strength alloy or space age polymer in my house.

But when an adult exercises such a lack in judgment you can’t help but become shocked by their inability to remember those childhood lessons. What the hell goes through some people’s heads? This post spawned after a quick shopping trip to my local Giant Eagle grocery store in Harrison City, PA. I needed to pick up a few things and relied on the Self-Checkout lanes for quicker service. Usually, my wife is with me and she bags while I scan, but being on my way home from work, at the time, I needed to multi-task.

I grabbed what I needed and headed to the front of the store. Swiped all my items and sent them down the belt. Paid for purchases and went to the other end of the belt to bag and place in my cart and that’s when it happened. Some dick touched my stuff.

As a rule, especially in this economy, every little bit helps. My wife will clip some coupons here or there and on occasion, we will get coupons at the checkout lane from using our Advantage Card. The Advantage Card is like other grocery store cards, I’m sure. You swipe it and receive discounts on certain items. Also, for every $50 we spend, we get $0.10 a gallon for gas. In turn, for every 10 gallons of gas you pump, you can earn 1% off of your grocery bill up to 20%. It also prints out coupons at the register which can be used for future purchases as well as the occasional advertisement which is thrown away at the register nine times out of ten. Regardless of how we acquire coupons, we appreciate them when we get them. Now, I don’t know if there is some unwritten rule out there about grocery stores but if we have a coupon for something we don’t use or will not purchase before the expiration date, we usually leave it on the shelf with the product. I see them left by other people a lot and sometimes they come in handy. Also, when we get printout coupons at the register, I tend to leave the ones I don’t use on top of the Self-Checkout register for others to use.

On more than one occasion and in multiple stores, I’ve seen employees walk by the Self-Checkout registers and throw away coupons left by shoppers for other shoppers. I understand why they do it. After all, a coupon is a loss to revenue. If it’s there, it’s considered trash and should be thrown away to help maintain the appearance of the store. However, there is a similar perk in convenience stores and gas stations called the penny tray. Have a penny, leave a penny. Need a penny, take a penny. So, I don’t see this as anything different. Have a coupon, leave a coupon and so forth. It’s a bit petty and “corporate” like to just walk by and throw away these coupons when the intention was for helping out your fellow consumer. I have a point here, bear with me.

So, as I’m bagging up my groceries last Friday, this guy comes by, grabs the coupons I had received from the register, crumbles them up and throws them away. I’m still in the line, mind you, watching all this happen. I was so shocked at the balls this guy had that I was just stunned speechless. Now, he wasn’t dressed in typical store uniform so I cannot guarantee that he was an employee. He was pushing a cart that had empty cardboard boxes in it so he may have been a vendor who was stocking specialty items from the manufacturer. Still, it was rather brazen that he just walked up and did what he did. Of course, two can play at that game. I have already proven that I can be a dick with the best of them.

So, it should shock no one that I took the time to go back to the front of the checkout lane to retrieve the coupons that dickhole threw away and placed them back on top of the register. Dickery turned to outright rage when I realized that he not only threw away any coupons that were laying there, but my receipt as well. MY EFFING RECEIPT. He yanked it from the printer, crumbled it up and tossed it in the garbage can underneath the counter. I use a credit card for grocery shopping and while not all of my numbers are on the receipt, still, who would throw a receipt away in plain sight inviting the possibility that someone could use it against you.

I wanted to find the guy. I wanted to wander all over the store, bags in tow, looking for the guy to just give him a “Don’t touch other people’s stuff, Eff-tard!” prepared statement. He even looked like one. Think of the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 3. He looked like him, complete with the gray brushtache. Yes, I said brushtache because it looked like a brush hanging off his face.

Well, I didn’t find Brustache the Eff-tard which is my World of Warcraft name… kidding. But I did get the satisfaction of going back and wasting energy by digging through the garbage for two advertisements and a coupon for Activia. I don’t care. You don’t touch other people’s stuff. Obviously, I wasn’t finished yet because my receipt was still there. And two. YOU DON’T TOUCH OTHER PEOPLE’S STUFF! Oh, to be a fly on the inside of the windshield on the way home from the store. You know those moments you have where you talk out loud to nobody about what you would say or do to the person who pissed you off at that moment. You even start to verbally take it out on other drivers who aren’t even involved. “What, you wanted to turn at that stop sign, but I went first, causing you to lurch forward and slam on your brakes? Too bad, dick, you didn’t have your turn signal on at the time and you probably touch other people’s stuff, too. Eff off!”

I know there were other ways to handle the situation, the least of all, blogging about it. But, hey, if someone has a problem with that, come talk to me about it. I’m up for debate about the finer points of being a dick. Just ask my wife.

Where Should We Be

The final part to the series, Good vs. Evil: The Internet.

I had a real tough time trying to come up with this last post. My focus has been scattered and my brain can't process information over a few sentences long. So, you can see how writing an entire blog post about where we should be in terms of the Internet evolution can be a daunting task. In fact, my first stop on the web today was to read an article entitled, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Oddly enough, the writer complains that we, as a society, have neither the discipline nor mental capacity to absorb information if it isn't in little blurbs, yet his article is rather lengthy. Much like my blog posts.

In this case, I totally agree with the author. We are becoming dumber. Actually, let me rephrase that, we're becoming more dependent on the Internet to do everything for us. Google has positioned itself to be the 'perfect' search engine. Its ultimate goal is to predict exactly what you want when you search for something and return that result to the top of the page. That's a lofty goal. In fact, if it ever does succeed 100% of time I think we need to worry. The desire to turn Google into an artificial intelligence is exactly the thing that science fiction has predicted will cause our demise. Look at the Terminator, The Matrix, or I, Robot, movies. The back-story to those films are rooted in the desire for man to give up control of everyday banalities to machines who in turn see us a threat to them or to each other. Machines don't hate or discriminate, but they can calculate probability and foresee possible reactions. In short, they take emotion out of the equation and what's left is the logical ideal that man will decidedly destroy itself. For that, machines will calculate that a person can not logically operate a vehicle without guarantee of bodily harm and therefore, should not drive at all. You are now one step from saying that humanity can not logically exist without harming itself and therefore should not exist at all. Every little computation a computer does it a part of its sum. You can not program logic to deny itself. Sure, you can program random occurrences of illogical actions, but you are still accounting for and inserting that into the programming. Perhaps this is what we refer to as a soul. A computer will never have one and it shouldn't lest it have control over our lives.

I always follow this rule of thumb when dealing with the ideas behind science fiction, if you want ensure conflict of man vs. machine, make the humans blindly look to machines to do the most menial of labor. That's a jumping off point for disaster. It's the equivalent of cutting your nose off to spite your face. Computers are not smarter than humans. That's a little egotistical, I'll admit. However, a human built a computer. A human gave a computer the ability to do calculations. A human told a computer how to do those calculations. In other words, lest a computer be built by God or a supreme being, it's still man made and therefore subject to be no more intelligent than the smartest person. Is it quicker, more efficient, and less likely to make a mistake? Yes, but it is not smarter than a human's potential for intelligence. Yet, as we devise new ways to allow computers to do calculations for us, freeing us for other thoughts, we lose the ability to be the smarter of the two. With the Internet now controlling a lot of our calculations and processes, we have severely crimped our capacity for analytical thought.

The Internet delivers so much information, so quickly, and without interference that we have to become faster at absorbing. Long prose gets scuttled for quick sound bites. Our brain is literally being rewired to accept these changes in thought and viewing, stripping our thought process to the bare minimum. In aviation terms, its been pared down to a flying gas can. We use the internet on a daily basis for information gathering and then we forget it. We don't need to remember what the information is, we know where to look for it. The brain, like a muscle, simply does not get used the way it did and atrophies like the legs of a spinal cord injury patient dependent on a wheel chair for mobility. So, I asked the question, "Where Should We Be?" The answer is "Where We Were." Instead of giving control over to computers with an Internet connection, let's use the Internet to give us better control over our lives and our world.

The Internet and I guess computers in general need to be an improvement on a process, not just do the work for you. Phrases like, "Reinventing the wheel" and "Building a better mousetrap" are terms that state that in order to make something better, you need to identify what is wrong with a process and fix it, leaving what works. In art you get Michelangelo's thought process for David, "It’s simple. I just remove everything that doesn’t look like David.” "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." The same applies here. If the Internet and computers just does the work for us, we are always dependent on them for that process every time. But, if the Internet or computers simply assist us in doing that work, we still have the control and do not lose ourselves. My father-in-law is a retired technician who worked for over 30 years at Westinghouse. 10 years later, he's gone back to work doing the same kind of technical work he did before. The only difference is everything he does involves email. Something he's okay with at home on the computer, but his job uses a different program and he doesn't get it as easily. While, I sometimes tell him that it's not that hard and that it's essential to learn this system, he reminds me that, for 30 years, he did his job without it and the work was finished on time and of quality. There's a human element needed sometimes.

Web design should be clean and simple removing everything that isn't needed. However, where does that 'everything' fit into the Internet? Google. Everything you can think of adding to or piling onto a search engine is done or in the works. When I first looked at the Internet in terms of being good or evil I said, "What would make Google better? Instead of giving me little gadgets and stuff, actually take a concept and improve it." For instance, traffic patterns. Every time I figure out directions for some trip, I always laugh at the estimated time for travel, because I know for a fact that there is construction on a particular road. But guess what? Google has live traffic information on its maps. So, that being said, I really can't think of anything that could make the Internet better.

I can, however, think of several things that the Internet can do to make humanity better. For starters, let's slow it down. I don't mean speed of search or speed of connection. I mean speed of discovery. I can think of several other worthwhile things for the brain trust of this world to be working on instead of making the Internet better. We haven't fixed major issues in this world outside the realm of computers for years. What's the last disease we cured, Polio? Our best and brightest are so busy making televisions larger and computers smaller that they forget that hey people need to use them and can't if they're dead from disease. Maybe, there is a way to take what advancements we've made in communication and electronic design and apply them to realm brick and mortar problems.

Here's my proposal. The top propeller heads at Google work to make it a better search engine. How about use their abilities to make the world a better place. I'm sorry but the Internet is not going to win a Nobel Prize. But the concepts and ideas that help shape the Internet can be applied to engineering in civil settings. We spend so much energy trying to make computers free up time for us yet we are working longer hours and commuting farther in order to do so. Design city infrastructure based on concepts that make the Internet work. We have a device on our "pipeline" that shapes the traffic on our Internet connection, giving importance to business critical functions and leaves poor schmucks like me looking for the sports score to watch an hourglass. Why not figure out a way to plan roads better. Hell, we've got a sandbox right now in the Middle East to test and design theories. I may be speaking in terms of apples and oranges but there has to be a way to look as the Internet and computers as a model for making offline life more efficient. Instead of doing everything we can to use the Internet to waste time, find ways to have the Internet enhance our time.

Classroom texts can be outdated and have no value beyond a second edition or third edition. I still keep a couple of books for reference material but an Internet repository for information and knowledge about school subjects allow educators and students to keep abreast of the most current of ideas and in essence, remove paper from the system. It's Lean and Green. Perhaps government should fund a pilot program where small schools are made paperless. In other words, each student is issued a laptop or Kindle device that accesses a central repository of information in a curriculum. Lessons are assigned through the computers to the students who then complete them and workflow is established to ensure accountability and punctuality. The devices have no internet capabilities outside the classroom without VPN into the closed network of the school and each student is provided a flash card authentication to ensure no tampering. This frees up classroom time for discussion, theorizing, brainstorming. The teacher uses a smart board to put up concepts, teach the lessons, and the smart board then zaps it into the repository for student consumption. Discussion threads spark creativity among classmates and educators and we weed out a lot of minutiae. Students are actively participating as a grade requirement and their tasks assigned by the application keep track of their work towards that goal. You could even branch out globally and connect classrooms from all over the world to learn from each other. There is your beginnings of a global community. I still think that children should learn technical skills alongside analytical skills. Yes, there are people still needed to fix cars and air conditioners but at least give them the training to do both. Let's correct the mistake that our parents paid for when the factories closed down and they had to learn all new skills in computers to gain employment.

Of course, I'm probably way behind on the times and this is already in practice at some school and the world is once again, passing me by like I'm just getting the punch line to a joke from a half an hour ago. But these are just two ideas that hit me while I was in an 'executive meeting' today..... Sooner or later expect there be desktop furniture in the bathroom for people to work on their laptop while they do their business. Why not? We take the Internet wherever we go. Why not take it to the bathroom and enjoy my bullshit along with your own. Just remember to wash your hands...and your keyboard.