Action Figure Daniel

Blog

  • “How the other half learns” by Robert Pondiscio

    • A lack of reading comprehension is often from a lack of shared experience
      • (If we know enough about what is going on, we can figure out the pieces we do not know)
    • Education standardization is good
    • Instructions should be clear and not subject to interpretation
    • Paternal discipline is different from “No excuses”
    • Ethics are critical to success
    • Focus on outputs more than inputs
    • Once children have basic skills, “reading tests” are basically background information checks
    • Test based accountability has become an end to itself
    • “Is test prep cheating?”
    • Car manufactures focused only on driver-side safety until 2016 because insurance only tested and rated the driver-side
    • Schools are where kids go to EXPERIENCE societal engagement not just to learn it

  • “Equal Partners” by Kate Mangino

    • When value do not match reality, we can
      • Change our values
      • Change our actions
      • Reframe the mismatch
    • Reframes:
      1. Economics or “bread winner”
        • Reversals tend to shift expectations from men to outsourced labor
      2. Personality
        • “She is better at doing the work than I”
      3. Different priorities
        • “He chooses to do this”
      4. “Bossy wife” decoy
        • “She wears the pants in the family” or “Don’t ask me, I just live here”
        • “nagging” is related
      5. Workplace
      6. Benevolent sexism and “himpathy”
        1. “Complimentary gender role differentiation”
    • The cognitive laborer is so overwhelmed they just want to check something off their list so they can stop thinking about it
    • Ask questions you think you already know the answer to, you might be surprised
    • Talk about role balance before the relationship get entrenched
    • Rejecting guilt is difficult and possible
    • Baby’s change everything! Even balanced households transition to more traditional role when a baby arrives
    • It is too easy for fathers to succeed and for mothers to fail
    • Make the invisible seen
      • If you are not comfortable sharing what you did then there is probably an imbalance
    • “Maternal gatekeeping” is a way females reinforce their stewardship
    • Women often need to step back
    • Be wary of people helping the routine because eventually the helpers go away and the routine must go on
    • The ideal partner is an active noticer of things needed to be done
    • Practice saying difficult things
    • Reject unearned praise, especially if it is gender based
    • Reject perfection (embracing flow is a better way)
    • We can appreciate the past while shaping our future
    • Articulation is important for developing empathy
    • We teach boys to solve problems but not to process problems
    • Correct, forgive, and move on
    • Privilege allows for mistakes
    • Men having platonic female friends mean they have either failed at conquest or are not interested in girls
    • We need boys to respect all women, not just the ones in their lives
    • Phrases to avoid
      • “Boys will be boys”
      • Comparing grown men to children
      • “[gender] are so…”

  • “Full House” by Stephen Jay Gould

    • Deference to entropy only applies to closed systems
    • Deference to entropy does not mean you cannot get more organized along the way
    • Be aware of cases where change can only happen in one direction
    • Systems optimize best when they can continue at length unchanged
    • Define “progress”
    • Do not reify things aspect of the full house
    • Life needs liquidity, not coolness
    • Morality needs intentions to be accurate

  • “Bowling Alone” by Robert D Putnam

    • In the new millennium, community organization stopped getting new members
    • Social virtue is best when there is density
    • “Bridging” activities are inclusive, looking outwards, and are good for getting ahead
    • “Bonding” are exclusive, looking inward, and are good for getting by
    • Voting is down all over the US
    • But political interest remains stable
    • Politics is a bigger business than ever, but we shifted focus from neighborhood drives to paid drives
    • All aspects of political participation have declined
    • Solo politics declined slowest
    • “We remain reasonably informed spectators”
    • There are more groups with fewer members
    • Groups have shifted from connecting members with each other to connecting them to a cause
    • Generally, membership by cohort is the same but younger generations participate less
    • For the farmer, an evening social activity might be nice but not so for the office worker
    • Yiddish: Machers are formal socializers, Schmoozers are informal
    • Bowling is the most popular sport, though not league bowling
    • Concert and museum visits are up
    • “Fundraising” is now “Friendraising”
    • Many contribute only when asked
    • Generosity tracks with of sociality, not our economy
    • “Thick trust” is when you trust because of a small community
    • Telecommunications had shifted in person visits to the phone
    • Information needs social context to be useful
    • The Internet tends to enhance existing communities
    • People nearer each other tend to email each other more
    • Homogeneous communities have lower civic involvement
    • Remote workers drive as much as office workers, just more trips to malls
    • “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who walk into a room and turn on the TV and those who walk into a room and turn the TV off.”
    • TV is the only leisure activity that blocks other leisure activities
    • Social networks help stop bad things from happening to children
    • Strong ties are more likely to know and hear the same opportunities as you do, it is the weak ties that are more likely to have something new
    • Is it better to have an open neighborhood where no one has anyone over, or to have racially segregated neighborhoods where families visit each other?

  • “The Hidden History of Monopolies” by Thom Hartmann

    • The constitution was all about fighting monopolies
    • Corporations used to die
    • High tax rates meant businesses spent a lot of their money
    • Natural monopolies are utilities and such
    • “Conservatism” is all about cheap labor
      • No national health care because we want people dependent on their employers
      • Dependent employees can be paid less
      • Minimum wages and unions raise wages over time
      • No contraceptives mean woman are a riskier hire and will settle for less
      • Protestant work ethic lets us blame people for their poverty
      • Fear and bigotry keep us from seeing commonalities
    •  Market concentration lowers wages and raised CEO compensation