Categories
odds and ends

What did I actually learn in school? Pt.4 after the degree

I graduated from Ithaca College in 1994 with a BFA in Film, Photography, and Visual Arts. At the time I was totally burned out on academics and swore that I’d never go back to school. For a while that held, I got a job in Newport News and then later moved up to Northern Virginia. I continued my reading habit but drifted mostly into non-fiction works. In addition to my copy of Copi’s into to logic textbook, I also started to read things like The Blue Cliff Record, The Flower Ornament Sutra, Godel, Escher and Bach, Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere, Various histories of mathematics, and Mathematic, it’s Form, content and Meaning.

Those last two were instrumental in my later studies. Studying symbolic logic had gotten rid of a lot of the intimidation I felt towards mathematics. I finally actually understood things like the commutative, associative, and distributive laws in Algebra. The history of mathematics books piqued my interest in numbers and when I read the Form, Content and Meaning, I understood (conceptually) all the math I tried to learn in high school. Shortly after, I enrolled in a pre-calculus class in a community college. I aced it, going over the same tired ground of high school but understanding what it was about this time.

That class was mostly about seeing if I could do it, a theme I would return to later. At the time I didn’t think I’d do much with it. Well, my 30th birthday rolled around and I hated where I had gone professionally and decided to go back to school. Looking around at what was out there as a better career, I decided that architecture would be something that I would love to do and could potentially make a good living out of it. Trouble was, a BFA ill prepared me for that degree. I needed a lot more math and I could never draw… Back to school it was!

I re-enrolled in some classes in community college. Most of these were pretty directed towards my goal, but I managed to work in at least one fun class, creative writing. That was both good and terrible at the some time. I liked flexing my writing muscles, even if I was horrified at the prospect of spending the first part of the class on writing poetry. The bad part was that this was community college. There were a fair number of people that were really pushing themselves in community college. For me, it was a stepping stone. I turned in a 20 page short story for the class to read. One of my classmates told me, “I’m sure it’s a good story, but dude, I’m never going to read anything that long…”

My first semester back to school I took Calc 1, creative writing, and intro to drawing. The thought of doing calculus always intimidated me, I imagined that it was a black art. I was disappointed/relieved to find out that it was mostly algebra. I aced the class. I also had one of my “Doh!” moments in that class. The professor (can’t remember his name) finished explaining what an integral was. He stepped back from the diagram of rectangles under a curve and said, “If you ever want to know what genius looks like, that’s it.” It was the first time I got such a complicated concept boiled down into a diagram. The thought that someone had come up with that blew my mind…

The intro to drawing class was really the one that intimidated me the most. I have never been able to draw, I joke that the reason I went into photography was because I couldn’t draw. I read “Drawing on the Right side of the Brain” before the class started and it helped quite a bit. The teacher cajoled me and I sweated bullets. She eventually convinced me to relax a little and little by little I realized that I could indeed draw with enough practice. I was able to tap into the way of seeing I developed in my photography and really concentrate on putting it down on paper. I never did get a handle on shading though…

Anyway, I realized that with enough time I could learn to draw well. Casual sketching was still beyond me. That, and realizing that a carear in architecture would take 10+ years to get off the ground convinced me to change my direction. Looking in the papers, it looked like a public policy degree could take me places, so I went into that.

That was fortuitous. I never did do anything in the policy realm, but to get ready for that I needed to take some economics courses. Intro to macro economics was incredibly dull, it was truly just a class to get through. The micro class had a bit of a spark for me, but it too was painfully dull. It wasn’t until I took some intermediate (undergrad) economics courses at George Mason that my world turned upside down…

The macro class was interesting, but bewildering. There were all sorts of theories and none of them made a lot of sense. We covered the so-called classical economics and Keynesian economics views of the macro economy. It was all pretty abstract stuff. The micro class blew my mind. Larry Ianaconne is a brilliant man. Micro economics, unlike its macro cousin, made all sorts of sense. It fed into the logical framework that I had developed over the years and it all seemed to fit together nicely. What really made me take notice was Larry’s studies on the economics of religion. Not the dollars and cents part, but the decision making that went into people following religions. It opened my eyes to the possibilities that economics offers. I decided to switch my emphasis to economics.

Of course, that meant I would need far more mathematics. I took two more semesters of calculus, a semester of stats, a semester of econometrics (an applied stats class) and a semester of linear algebra just so I could apply to the doctoral program of economics. I also got a research assistant position with professor Ianaconne. That, along with a good recommendation from him got me into the program. I was a grad student! I was looking forward to a good job and 4 or 5 years of studying interesting things. How’d that turn out? I’ll see you in the next section…

Categories
freedom politics

In defense of third party candidates

Back in 2008, I wrote about my difficulty with the presidential candidates. I lamented that i couldn’t see much difference between the coke and Pepsi parties or who was running for president. I caught some flack for that but I think that history has borne me out. Spending is way up, that was expected, but Gitmo is still open, we’ve doubled down in Afghanistan, not only is habeas corpus still being denied in the “War on Terror” but now the administration is targeting US citizens for assassinations, drone attacks continue farther and farther away from combat areas, etc. We’re on the brink of the Fed ramping up the printing presses and the specter of awful inflation leading to a possible zombified economy kind of like Japan’s has been for this past decade. I would have fully expected all this from a republican administration too.

 

So if Democrats are going to act very similarly to republicans, what is the option? Most people simply held their noses and voted for the candidate that bothered them the least. Our current political climate is a direct consequence of that type of voting. Bush was so bad that he destroyed his party’s “brand” even among many that usually voted republican. Obama got many, many votes simply because he wasn’t Bush. The trouble is that those folks voted for a party that they didn’t agree with on a lot of things. The democrats took their convincing victories as backing their agenda instead of understanding that a big chunk of folks were voting against people moreso than voting for them. So the dems took advantage of their control and passed stuff that a big percentage of people that voted for them didn’t like. Outrage, anger, etc. have followed.

Here’s a startling idea, instead of voting against someone, why not vote for someone? That was my decision last election and it really freed me from guilt about my vote and angst over the two party system. My alternative was not to vote, and i didn’t like that idea. Instead, I found a party that is anti-war, pro gay rights, anti-war on drugs, and believes in well understood paths to prosperity. It also makes you promise that you will never use coercion to further  political aims. You can read the full platform here. Stumping for my particular favorite party isn’t why I’m writing this. My main goal is to get people thinking about what they are actually voting for. It turns out that there are other parties that may more closely match your views of the world. If your views don’t match the big two parties, you do a great disservice in not making those views known. If you persist in voting for the big two, you will only embolden them to keep doing what they have done. The best way to voice your displeasure is to vote for someone that shares your view on the world. Peruse the list here and see if there’s a party out there that more closely matches your views and go out and vote!

 

Categories
odds and ends

Weird dreams…

Man, woke up this morning from a dream where my mother had taken me shoe shopping. We were discussing various ergonomic shoe topics and looking at some odd looking shoes (but they were mighty comfy). Granted, I do need new shoes, but what a strange thing to dream about.

I also had a strange dream where I went out to dinner and managed to wrack up a $570 bill just for myself. It was a feast, and it was great food. I knew that I was splurging on the meal, but I almost fell out of my chair when I got the bill. I remember being offended at the $170 in tax (natch) and the several hundred dollars worth of music and Dr. Who shows I got with the meal. Then I realized I still had to add the tip…

 

It wasn’t that couldn’t pay, but I was really pissed that I had blown my money like that. I woke up, and that disappointment stayed with me for the next half hour or so it took me to wake up. I was going through my Christmas shopping lists and trying to figure out what i could do instead of what I planned. Relief flooded over me when I finally came around and realized I hadn’t been so stupid. Maybe I shouldn’t go to bed hungry…