The Underhill Journal

I was having a discussion yesterday with my partner about the state of Education in this country (although really this applies to any Institutional Education anywhere) and we were trying to pinpoint why it has become so rotten.
Jean Baudrillard wrote about this topic in Simulation and Simulacra, and I think his views are worth pointing out. He believed that Universities had become factories for providing certificates and were no longer places of real learning. Simply put, (and these are my words not his) the focus of education has shifted from the acquisition of knowledge to the acquisition of a chit of paper meant to represent that knowledge.
What does this mean for education though, because surely the chit of paper is supposed to be the same as the knowledge?
Well, the fact of the matter is that it is not. Educators everywhere teach their students only those techniques and facts that will guarantee them success in their exams, thus narrowing the field of knowledge that they are delivering to their students. Natural curiosity and self driven study is snuffed out, because it represents a threat to the curriculum of the exam, and students are instead encouraged to learn to regurgitate only what they need to know for to acquire their all important chit of paper. There is no longer any room for individuality.
So exam performance increases year on year, university uptake increases year on year, and yet employers and University professors continue to bemoan the lack of quality that they are receiving from this supposed boom in educational standards. Graduates are also finding life increasingly difficult as their degrees are now worth only marginally more than the qualifications that took them into university and it is experience that Employers want more than anything else.
But let's go back a step and take a look at the state of schools in this country (and those of England and Wales). We are being told that teachers are having growing problems with school discipline, that children are increasingly out of control both in and out of the classroom and that boys are grossly under performing compared to girls. What I find most irritating about these kinds of problems is that the establishment seems to be trying to bend itself over backwards to lay the blame on poverty and parenting, while introducing ridiculous and gimicky solutions into the classroom, in the form of lessons in "respect" and things like cheque writing. If I recall my time in school correctly (and my memories are backed up by the numerous teenagers that I know through work and Martial Arts) teaching these kinds of things in school is doomed to failure because children just don't want to listen to this stuff.
All the while parents are being forced to spend less and less time with their children in order to pay the outrageous bills that our modern society puts on us. The family unit is falling apart under the strain of society, separation rates are increasing, youth crime rates are apparently increasing and so is the gap between the rich and poor in society. All the while schools take kudos from the parents that do take the time to help their children educationally, and try to avoid giving out the kind of support work that educationally deprived children need to help them succeed because of the expense. Underachieving schools in poor areas are being forced into PPP projects and City Academy status to deal with their standards, rather than receiving the extra funding they need to help their students.
Parents are not to blame and neither is poverty and gimmicks are simply exacerbating the problem. The fault can be laid squarely at the education system.
Think about it - would you really, truly say that a modern school reflects accurately the kind of world it's supposed to prepare it's pupils for? As far as I can see, a modern school exists in a little bubble of it's own, with it's own rules and hierarchy and very little room for those who are genuinely inquisitive or need extra help to bridge the gap between their own experience and academia. Children leave school lacking horribly in real life experience, and this can't be sorted inside the bubble. It's about time the entire system was broken right open and children were moved out into the real world to learn.

This was an interesting article I read in the Guardian, focusing on whether or not the Super Rich, like J.K. Rowling and on up, are really earning way too much money.

Our economic alchemy

JK Rowling's billion-dollar success is certainly awe inspiring, but has she earned too much money?
Khaled Diab

With 325m copies of the Harry Potter books already sold before the release of the latest (which sold 11m copies in the first 24 hours of publication) and the movies coming in as the third-highest grossing film series ever, it can only have been through some mysterious protective spell that I have remained immune to the magic of the young sorcerer.

I must admit that I'm generally not interested in children's literature and having grown up on a diet of JRR Tolkien, from The Hobbit right through to The Silmarillion, I suspected I would only be disappointed by the quality of Potter's imaginary world when compared with the wonders of Middle Earth.

Although I'm not interested in Harry, I have grown somewhat fascinated in JK Rowling and her own philosopher's stone. It is not the elixir of life referred to in her book, but that other magic property medieval alchemists attributed to this substance: its ability to turn lead and other base metals into gold.

The paragraph in this article I thought was most interesting was this one though.....

Together, the world's 946 billionaires are worth a staggering $3.5 trillion - which sits between the annual GDP of Japan and Germany - with converted philanthropist Bill Gates still top of the heap with $56bn. Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú saw his net worth skyrocket by a dizzying $19bn this year (equivalent to the GDP of Yemen). Over the last 12 months, he earned as much as over 26.5 million people - of the estimated 3 billion - people subsisting on $2 a day or less.

Bear in mind that Japan and Germany are both extremely successful economies and think about their populations. These figures (although I am generally not a big fan of the trustworthiness of statistics) represent a gross inequality that is beyond any rational justification. Simply put, nobody needs to be that rich!
What on earth can you do with that kind of money? What is the point in accumulating so much of it? What kind of rainy day are these people saving for?
Each and every one of us only have one life to live. Each and every one of us is only as good as our actions towards our fellow men. Those who sit amongst such vast wealth while other fellow human beings starve and and live lives of unnecessary suffering and do no more than donate titbits of their fortunes to salve their consciousnesses and cut their tax bills show by their actions that they are self-interested human beings. Their huge piles of cash do not stave off the fact that their lives must come to an end at some point, just like the life of any other human being. What use is their money to them then? What is the point of such acquisitiveness once they are no longer alive?
It seems to me to be a kind of madness to continue to accumulate wealth beyond your needs. A malicious kind of madness that takes from others, because these fortunes are built on the exploitation of others. The West feeds itself on the resources of the Developing World, and gives nothing but debts back, the Billionaires feed off of the financial resources of the West and give nothing back except scraps, in the mean time the Planet that we all have to share gets sucked dry and choked on our fumes and waste. Any fool can see that while the Status Quo remains, it's all going to end rather messily.
I don't particularly feel like I'm making much sense, but I guess you can all gather that I am not to fond of Greed and rampant capitalism. Feel free to pick apart my arguments as you see fit!

A damning indictment of the Bush Administration and their conduct over the Iraq War by our old friend Keith Olbermann. He just doesn't seem to get any happier.

I've always been fascinated by shows of intelligence by other species on this planet. Apes (particuarly chimps and their cousins bonobos) are constantly surprising scientists with the quality of their cognitive thinking and now birds are joining in on the act. Here's a fascinating story about a shop lifting seagull from Aberdeen.


Seagull becomes crisp shoplifter


The seagull has been nicknamed Sam by locals

Shoplifting seagull
A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps.

The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos.

The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for his crisps.

You can read the rest of the story here.
And here is some footage of "Sam" at work!


Later on today I'll dig out some other clips of birds doing really, genuinely, clever stuff and post them here.

If you've heard of any problem solving non-humans or have videos of them showing us up with their intelligence, then feel free to share them here!

Here's an excerpt from today's Guardian.

Virtually half the Brown cabinet have now declared that they once smoked dope but didn't like it. What on earth is wrong with these people? Normal folk use drugs and enjoy them.

All this talk of re-criminalising millions of cannabis users is predicated on untruth. That is, politicians and medical professionals are peddling dodgy data which purport to show that currently available strains of so-called "skunk weed" are 10 or more times stronger than anything the new home secretary may have toked while she was at Oxford in the early 1980s.

It's simply untrue, and repeating a lie ad nauseam does not make it true. Let me say that again: repeating a lie often enough does not make it true.

Much of the article echoes what I have previously said about Ecstacy and drugs in general. You can read the rest here.

I could apologise in advance for this as it could be offensive to some Christians, but I'm not going to. You can't complain about Muslims being offended by cartoons of the prophet and claim offence at this, especially seeing as their God is the same God as yours!

Hit Journalists – There is a powerful brand of journalism in the Solar System called Hit Journalism. These journalists are careful Character Assassins who, for a fee, will use their media clout to assassinate the character of anyone in the public eye. They have become adept not only at digging dirt on even the cleanest seeming “celebrity”, they are also excellent at putting a devastating slant on the truth – no matter how innocuous an event or action might seem.

Sakuro Hachi – The older brother of Saphora. He is a reclusive genius, with several degrees, including a medical degree and an engineering degree. His mind is partly cracked, but his sister and his mother are both able to deal with this and help him when he needs it.

Lee Chen – A member of Eagle Empires Top Elite division, and one who is particularly popular with “the people” because of his predilection for heroics. This puts him at odds with General Deuce, the ranking officer of the Top Elite, who is ferociously loyal to the Corporation and their ideals. After his time spent training Saphora, he begins to flirt with the idea of rebellion, although it does not become serious for some time, because of the Kill Chip installed in his brain by Eagle Empires.
He is a consummate Martial Artist and a brilliant pilot, but he is hot-headed and impetuous, something which Saphora tempers in him, but only when they are together.

Shogun Nakata - The Shogun of all Japan. He is ruthlessly ambitious and will stop at nothing to reach his goals, even doing things that are considered dishonourable and against the strict Bushido Code of the Samurai. The Japanese have long been on the “losing” side of the China-Japan war, with the odds stacked heavily against them, but they have always managed to struggle on. Nakata wants to turn that into the conquest of China, and so he signs a secret treaty with Eagle Empires, promising to serve their interests in return for military aid in the war.