Wacky Dads!

Surprising how often "good involved dads" in movies and TV also happen to be "wacky misunderstood inventors"... hmmmm.

The internet is NOT REAL LIFE! said the troll back in 2001.

I found this text clipping I saved from Tuesday, November 20, 2001 at 2:00 AM in my old files today.

Person trying to justify vile behavior online back in 2001:

“People flame because of the way people act.  This is the Internet, not real life.  Some people just cant fathom the idea that the 2 are different.”  

What I wrote in response:

"Um, HOW is the Internet different that RL? The Internet is just a form of communication.... nothing more, nothing magical; it’s not an alternate reality.

Its just a jazzed up walkie talkie.

So by your logic, if some one called your house and spewed vulgar insults then that would be ok because the phone is "not real"? 

The statement that the Internet is "not RL" sounds allot like primitive superstition to me.  Much like a remote tribe of people 40 years ago that thought photography would seal your soul! lol...

Wake up! Acting anti-social is just that. Doing it on the internet in the future will be seen as no different than doing it by mail. 

So get a head start now and act like a human being in ALL communications with other human beings. The anonymity of the Internet is an illusion. Everyday that passes you are more and more a citizen here just as you are walking down the street, bound by the rules of society.

Peace,

Doc."

I wonder if that person feels the same these days? Please take note of how even back in 2001 I rarely hid my identity online. I stood behind my words. If I published something, I meant it! I wish other people had set the same standard for themselves. we might be living in a different world now.

Dad Notes #2. iPad apps for clever 6-8 year olds.

I get asked now and then, what kid apps are good for iPad? It's a tough question! There is so much crud on the App Store! But also, there are so many really great apps... The problem is that it is time consuming and confusing to separate the junk from the gems... Since I spent a lot of time doing just that, I thought I would post a list of some favorites in hopes of saving others a little time. This is in no way the complete list, I will likely need to do a part two.

Physics apps
BridgeBrasher
Simple Physics
Simple Rockets*
Simple Planes
Monster Physics*

Build Machine/circuit apps
The Everything Machine by Tinybop
Principia

Science apps
Beaker by THIX*
Space by THIX
Chemist by THIX
The Elements*
The Elements in action
Bobo explores light
Universal Zoom*
The Human Body by Tinybop
Color Vacuum
Elevation Earth
The Earth Tinybop
Earth Primer

Programming apps
Robot School. Programming for Kids
Lightbot
Scratch Jr.

Geography apps
Barefoot World Atlas
Earth 3D Amazing Atlas*
Earth Primer
The Earth by Tinybop
Straight Ahead*

Interesting Logic Puzzle Apps
Magic Egg*
ThinkerToy
Liquid sketch*
Pettson's Inventions
Linxicon

History
American Presidents for iPad*

Visually Inspiring apps
Pollock's Theater*
Starry Night interactive animation*
Monument Valley*

Math
Slice Fractions*
Twelve*

Music
Fingerlab Musyc

Classic kids
Aesop's Wheel of Fables*
Whitman's Mother Goose

Mostly for fun
Little Things Forever
Petting Zoo
Bad Piggies
Trick Shot
Dream Machine
Leonardo's Cat
Odd Bot Out
Dinorama*

Why I'm Angry At Us...

(I wrote this in the weeks after the election and never posted it…Maybe I thought it was too inflammatory or that I was being unfair. in review I don’t see much wrong with it. it was how I felt.)

People have turned the country I love into a joke and in many cases, it was because of a single issue that people had blown out of proportion in their minds to the point that it frightened them into acting irresponsibly. I understand wanting to tear down the establishment, I have wanted real change for longer than most, but I strongly feel that people who voted for this administration used a very inappropriate tool. Like using a rusty crowbar to remove a few bad teeth in an otherwise healthy mouth.

I understand the disenfranchised people who saw a continuation of the status quo as unacceptable. I sympathize, but I can not believe that he is the person to fix it.

I understand the people who feel the democrats cheated and robbed Sanders of the nomination. Again, I did not care for that one bit. My support for Sanders is a matter of public record. Even at a time when I was avoiding discussing politics, I broke my silence and shared my joy of having a candidate that spoke of many of the same things I had wanted for so long (often feeling very alone back in the days when no one else even considered such things aloud). So yes losing him was bad for me. But how is it worth putting our trust in a blatant liar and con man? A man whose own words should have disqualified him hundreds of times from consideration.

The “tone” of Trump, (currently president-elect) over the length of the campaign has unquestionably emboldened people with hate in their hearts, and they are out there now, doing real damage to the security and peace we have built. How is it that I'M the one that's now supposed to be calm!? People are suggesting people like me should be quiet and let the process happen, I agree to a point. I will try not to engage in pointless obstruction like I have seen people do with our last president, I will try not to spread misinformation like I have seen people willfully do with our last president. I will, however, engage in honest and well-considered efforts to prevent his administration from changing my America into something unrecognizable and I will fight the idea that his demeanor and way of dealing with problems sets a standard for us as a nation.

I have always done my best to respect the office of the president, (even George W.) but now because of hot button issues and selfish interests, I am now be expected to swallow my pride and show respect to such an openly self-absorbed, insensitive, and outright villainous person? No... I’m sorry, resistance is the only patriotic path acceptable. 

Disinformation Wants To Be Free! Or... "I don't know shit for sure, and that's the way I like it!"

Hopeful open minded skepticism:

The understanding that we can't actually know anything for certain because we are
deeply aware that all information we receive apart from what we directly experience is filtered through other people's perceptions before it gets to us, and that, to some degree, it is unintentionally skewed or purposefully manipulated by noble or nefarious motivations or self-interest.

When I was a young man I came to the realization that the only source of information that I could trust completely was my own experiences.  All other information had to be consumed with the understanding that I could never absolutely know if it was factual. I could only rank the information, compare it to other sources and come to an opinion that I would need to keep flexible in case competing information challenged the rank I had previously given it. I started training my brain on this concept making it a deeply ingrained part of my belief system. The goal was not to become paranoid or untrusting but understand The flow of information, the motivations of the people presenting it and to avoid being misled or manipulated.

Of course, that was before the Internet. 

Perhaps because of this mindset, I made modest attempts to warn people at the onset of online self-publishing that we were entering a dangerous new age and that we needed to develop systems for vetting information. I tried to urge caution as I foresaw a world with astounding and frightening opportunities for those who would like to "shape" the thinking of people who were not as disciplined as I had made myself. I'm afraid that my warnings went mostly unheard, my audience was much too small to have any effect. Outside of the few half-interested friends, postings on message boards, comment sections of blogs and news sites that mostly no longer exist, I doubt I had any impact whatsoever. People who raised alarms like I did were very few and far between and quite unpopular. The much larger voices of the time were all about how wonderful and different the technology was and how the free flow of information was the most important thing. The idea of limiting information in any way was seen as sacrilegious. They used to say "information wants to be free!" I did not see the Internet as fundamentally "different", just a much more efficient way to do the same things we have always done, including misbehave. Unfortunately, disinformation also enjoys that same freedom.

I don't think most people are inherently bad, I think many times they are tragically misinformed. Because they have not developed or been taught the tools to be open-minded, empathetic, and skeptical, they are incapable of navigating the increasingly complex and confounding information landscape we all are now forced to live in. They retreat into simple and nonchallenging world views because the alternative is asking WAY to much of them.

I am seen by some as a clever person, but I find it very taxing to try to sort and categorize the information I am presented each day. It would be MUCH simpler to just join a group or listen to a single loud voice that "mostly" aligns with the way I feel about things and switch off the part of me that has to consider each point as a separate issue. This gives the handful of people who really want to push an agenda a powerful tool. 

I don't see things getting better very soon, sources that fact check content of the Internet are under attack themselves, this is not really surprising as the people who wish to distort facts can't abide by such institutions. But my question is why are there so FEW of them? Why are we not heavily invested in the business of sorting fact from fiction? Furthermore, who is continuing to do the fact finding that these sites use? Newspapers?! Increasing investigative reporting is getting downsized at news organizations. I have been watching a tv show that presents surprising facts about commonly held misconceptions in a humorous and entertaining way, but they often site 60 minutes as the source of the information... think about that for a second. Large numbers  of people are all watching the funny show... that presents facts... that were uncovered by real investigative reporters... from a show that very few people watch anymore. So what happens when I news sources like 60 minutes are gone for good?

We need more critical thinking. It needs to be taught.

We need more empathy. We need to encourage it in our young people.

We need to give people real tools to help them sort information on the web.

We should seek ways to bring people out of their information bubbles, we should all stop thinking we absolutely know what is true.


***Update November 9, 2016 at 6:40 PM***

Disinformation Wants To Be Free. How to we fix the "repository of all human knowledge" before it destroys us? I don't know the answer... I am just very mad tonight because I have been asking the question for two decades while people told me I was overreacting and it would "all work out", and that "truth will rise to the top". Now I find myself and my loved ones living in a cracked world brought on in part by people seeming to be more interested in the flashy gleam of a new toy than they were concerned by how it could harm what we had built. It would seem that nearly half of us believe a whole bunch of untrue garbage supported by self motivated cranks on the internet, and the other half believe a different set of untrue garbage ASLO supported by self motivated cranks on the internet. Who is to say which set of garbage is less untrue? You can't "prove" anything. People can find competing "facts" for every point and piece of evidence you provide. Sources? News media is a joke because they sold out journalistic standards long ago. Fact Checking is a dirty word. Techno-hippies and their damed belief that the internet would self regulate... yup it has settled into a perfect balance of truth and lies! The trouble is average people are give no way to tell the difference. Do I think it can be fixed? Yes... but people need to want to do it, they have to demand it, and they have to start NOW.

***Update November 10, 2016 at 7:38 AM***

Maybe we are in a transitional phase. People used to say "they couldn't print it if it weren't true" sometimes sarcastically, but often in earnest. Perhaps there's a large population of people who still believe that its literally true and believe to some extent that information found on the Internet must carry some weight. Maybe young kids born into a world saturated with tech will not have that same bias and will understand instinctively that most of what they find on the Internet needs to be met with a great deal of skepticism. At least a higher percentage of them will develop some immunity, but this still doesn't solve the problem of vulnerable people who because of medically related decline in cognitive ability, or just a natural lower intelligence have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction. Something that is becoming more time consuming to even the sharpest of us.


***Update November 11, 2016 at 12:38 PM***

A couple of weeks back I posted this blog entry discussing my dismay over people becoming overwhelmed by misinformation and not being given useful tools to break free of their information bubbles that they find much more comforting than trying to sort the purposely confusing sea of facts and lies floating about these days. 

Well today, while doing research on the ACLU I discovered this interesting site. http://www.procon.org Now the fact that I had never heard of it or seen anyone ever link to it somewhat proves my point, and it falls far short of the sort of in-line real time truthfulness ranking tool I imagine and hope could be ubiquitous someday. But in the mean time, I found it very helpful in understanding two sides of a complex issue.

I would like people to use it and spread the word about it. Perhaps it will not get the bad rap that fact-checking sites have recently since it presents both sides of an argument and lets the user decide

Delayed understanding.

It's taken me 40 years to fully realize the brilliance of Aqualung.

I have always thought that Jethro Tull's Aqualung was a fantastic piece of music, but as I was trying to explain lyrics to my son, I had an epiphany. I was telling him how it was story the of an old man who I believed was homeless and how people saw him is being scary and strange but actually that there was more to him than that. When I was young man listening to the song, I recall thinking that the song was about the duality in his personality and that he was both things, a gentle old man and dangerous antisocial wild man to be feared. That he was cruel to strangers because the world was cruel to him, but still had the capacity to connect when shown kindness. Not a bad analysis for a teenager. 

 It is amazing how powerful saying something out loud is because when I explained the song to my son it triggered whole new connections. I guess I had never really questioned my interpretation for all these years, but now I'm pretty sure the song is all about our perception of the homeless and how WE treat them. Whether we see The homeless automatically as dangerous, dirty, creatures to be feared... or as people in need of of help. this more nuanced meaning presented itself to me very clearly, and now its hard for me to hear it as anything other than a social commentary on us and how we treat people who find themselves in this bad situation any assumptions we make about them. The juxtaposition of the song going back and forth from the hard rock and the gentle acoustic treatments represents the two extremes, fear and repulsion, and empathy.

I have to say, has someone who was not always sure after secure financial future, and could easily imagine myself in that situation, this new revelation about the song and its meaning had quite an emotional impact on me. I hope that if given the chance to time travel I would keep my mouth shut and allow my younger self to enjoy his interpretation of the song. After all, there's only one or two people in the world, who really know what the intentions of those lyrics are, and to be honest, if they are anything like me, they may have forgotten by now. But that's the wonderful thing about music, it's means what It means to the person listening to it at the time. I have to try to remember that. So even those people who clearly have never listen to the lyrics of any song in their life, are still getting emotional connection from the music, Even if I feel like they are missing a beautiful treasure. Who knows? Maybe they will discover new meaning in that song 40 years later.

Meme Repair

Took a moment to fix this meme that I saw as being flawed today... mostly because I was curious. I didn't really see it as upsetting or anything. It is a bit funny to see such a clear example of how subtle changes in lighting and facial expression can change your perception of a person in an image. The mustache is still a bit creepy however... heh.