Swish - a story of faith

Kobe Bryant is undoubtedly one of the best basketball players ever to play in the NBA.  He practices longer, plays harder, and extends himself more than most to win when the situation calls for it.  He is in the same company with Jordan, Johnson, Bird, Russell, and all the other greats who have played the game.

It was not just a really bad day today for Kobe as the Lakers hosted New Orleans; it was his worst day ever.  It had been since 2004 that he had gone a whole first half without scoring - this from a player that has led or has been close to leading the whole league in scoring over the last 13 years.  And it wasn't for lack of shooting that Kobe was scoreless.  He had tried two-footers and thirty-two-footers, but nothing had fallen.  The third quarter was not any better.  Finally, by the time the last two minutes of the game came around, Kobe had scored 2 baskets making him something like 2 for 20 attempts.

What a horrible, no-good day for Kobe.  But, that will not be how this game will be remembered.  This game will go down in the books as Kobe winning the game for the Lakers in the fading seconds of the game - like Jordan, Bird and all the greats did for their teams.  With 20 seconds to go in the game, and for the lead in the game, Kobe had the ball thrown to him with the possession clock winding down to 0.  He shot with great concentration as he had done on days when he was the game's leading scorer.  No hesitation and no doubting even though to this point he was having the worst shooting day of his NBA career.  The ball swished down the cords of the net - 3 points and the lead.  New Orleans had two subsequent shots to try to win, but failed.

There is no telling how many shots over the course of all his practices and all his games Kobe has taken.  But, even on his worst day, he felt comfortable in his shooting skin.   All the shots he had taken to that point paid off.  Without hesitation he took the jumper.  The mechanics of 30,000 shots kicked in.  It was automatic and perfect.  There was no strain, no adjustment, just comfortable, confident mechanics.  The game went in the books as Kobe winning the game with a last-second basket.

The last two years plus a little have been to me much like Kobe's game today.  They have had something huge missing from them.  I don't think time has run out yet for this period in my life.  I hope not, anyway.  I still go through the motions of shooting, that is, going to work and performing other duties as needed.  I reread a blog today that I had read a few months ago.  It ended with the word Faith.  That's certainly what I have, what I hold on to.  And it will be the empowering force behind the shot that puts life and happiness back into my soul before time expires.

A picture for my heart

Today I stood in the back yard.  It was late in the evening, just about dusk.  The scene was picturesque with the two rose bushes by the back stone fence showing their beauty of red velvet blooms.  The freshly budded trees around the yard and in the neighbors' yards showed a bare breeze, their leaves flickering ever so slightly.  It was quiet, serene, and reflective.  The grass was verdant green from the more than average rainfall that it has received.

That was also the picture in my heart.  I was in need of some warm thoughts.  So I brought to mind the scenes that gave me the effect of the sweet aroma filling my sense of smell from the roses, of the pleasing sight of the green leaves moving spirited by the breeze, of the grass sprigs thickening with the rising heat of spring.  Those scenes calmed me because of the refreshment they brought.  They planted anew the sounds of laughter and cheer, a glimpse once again of a smiling, welcome face, and the essence of the most life-giving spirit I have ever met.

I reentered the house after those moments in the back yard, but the scene, both the physical and the remembered, lasted on into the evening and night.

Showing proper regard

At least two languages in the world sport a female and male version of the language.  One of the languages is in northwestern South America, the other on a Polynesian island.  The male and female versions of these languages share some of the function words such as prepositions, articles, and semantic organization, but they have different content words carried by nouns and verbs.

We don't really have that in the United States, but there are some analogs.  Some words in English are spoken primarily by women.  Rarely would a male say, "wonderful, sweet, marvelous, cute, (although men less than 50 are more prone to say this word than men over 50), and lavender." In this latter case, men seem to stick to mainstream colors and shy from colors such as magenta and peaches and cream.  Women, on the other hand, steer clear of words like "slugged, smashed, pus, snuffed, and fecal" in favor of ameliorated terms.

Growing up male, then, or female partially determines which set of words are learned to be used and which are learned merely to understand.  Cross-gender conversations happen more often in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, more than likely, just because of the values held in our culture.  As a result, frustration from cross-gender conversations abound.  Men and women have distinct, negative impressions of the other gender's speech.  A number of factors contribute to this idea, but having "male" and "female" words is certainly one contributor.  Savvy women and men know this and make adjustments in their speech when carrying on a cross-gender conversation.  At least they appear to "understand" rather than "condescend" to the way ideas are expressed.  They are usually richly rewarded for doing so.

Noticing underground activity

The Earth, like every living organism has all kinds of systems built into it that keep it changing.  The Earth's surface may look like it doesn't change much, but it is constantly changing, just at a speed that is slower than the life span of humans.  In fact, it would take about 30,000 years of humans to see quite a good number of the changes Earth undergoes.  No one saw the Mid-Atlantic Ridge form, and it's likely our species will be extinguished before we see it disappear.  But, the ridge is there now for us to see in all of its glory.  We can imagine what will happen and what has happened by watching the Ethiopian rift and Greenland rift on the surface.
 
We know from Tsunamis that plates on the Earth's surface on the ocean floor drop a foot or two.  We know from  caving what the forces of water and heat cause under the Earth.  We know from volcanic explosions of the pressurized plumes beneath the surface blasting molten rock over calderas.  We can see layers of rock jutting above ground to investigate what happened before it came to the surface.  We can see fern leaves and crocodile bones inside the Arctic Circle and understand that at some point that piece of land used to be located elsewhere.

National Geographic put together a documentary called Journey to the Center of the Earth in which its photographers and script writers logged what occurs between the surface and the core.  The documentary ended with the words, "It's what happens underground that ultimately causes what happens on the surface."  I think the Journey to the Center of the Earth is also the Journey to the Center of Human Beings.  What a great metaphor for the forces that are at work inside each of us.  And, it is so true that what happens at our core and other invisible points under our skin, like our mind, ultimately affects the emotions we have, the words we speak, and the actions we take.

So I watch for people's tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic explosions (or even minor seismic activity) to know how to react to it.  It helps in staying alive a lot of times.

Escaping the big quid pro quo

When I was in managerial positions, I used to hear "I owe you," frequently.  Most of the time people were asking for help that didn't take long or that fell within the purview of some talent someone had that (s)he didn't mind performing.  Those were petty (but meaningful to others) tasks for the most part.

But, I knew instantly when someone meant, because they rarely voiced it, that I would owe them something rather magnanimous if I continued with a request for their help.  The quid pro quo was more than usual.  I would rather do it myself incompletely than to get into those kinds of tit for tats.  And even though I have been able to avoid those kinds of exchanges, I continue to see the more than usual tradeoffs exchanged.  It ranges from finding and giving information that is not known (and shouldn't be known) to sexual favors for fulfillment of ambition.

I don't know why betrayal ranks as number 1 for me on the unforgivable sin list, but it does.  Unusual quid pro quos, that is, the ones that go beyond gladly getting somebody out of a small fix or gladly giving up time to help with a task, bother me severely because they are a form of betrayal.  I find myself actually despising the ones who get caught up in them, thinking that I need to be a part of exposing them and causing them to move on or at least lose their grip on those who have succumbed to such exploitation.  When someone lies in a situation that causes harm, I like to bring any forensic ability I have to bear on exposing and causing equivalent harm on them.  But, quid pro quos are different.  I see them, but am most of the time left without any means to cause a change or to expose.  I am left to loathe. 

I will work on turning the energy I give to loathing those who continue their quid pro quos for exploitation into more productive actions... not easy for me, but I will work on it.  I need to take myself from the arena where it happens and focus on what I can productively do.

Time to add

One of my favorite movies of all time is Contact.  That's because I am fascinated with receiving communication from a world other than Earth.  It actually happens in the movie.  Tonight I am watching a Science channel documentary on what would happen if scientists at the SETI Institute received messages from "out there."  It is very interesting to see the reactions of people to the idea that we have been communicated with.  I hope the follow-up episode will be about the actual communication.  In the meantime it doesn't hurt to speculate.

When it does happen, I can't wait to add a new language to my repertoire.

Comfort, calm

I have been in a few storms that blow through strongly, toss things around, then bluster their way into the distance.  I have been through some rain events as well, rain that settles in and stays for a couple of days.

But, the rain tonight is wave-like and has lasted 6 solid hours already with at least 5 more hours on the way according to radar.  It's not a blustery storm, not a stalled front, and not one of those dreaded electric storms with streak lightning filling the sky.  Along with the steady rain, the lightning has also been steadily illuminating the clouds that rumble in the wake of  quickly disappearing lightning.  Not the streak lightning, but the nightlight flashes that cast light across sky behind the clouds.  This is the kind of rain I remember well from my adolescent years.

This kind of a rain event is so comforting.  It makes me feel as if all is well with the world.  I guess the interaction of heaven and earth in this way makes me feel that the wold is as it should be.  I know otherwise.  I have a very good friend that is living through rough times at the moment.  I, myself, am waiting on dawn to began to break up the darkness.  I have another friend suffering from the cancer that is taking a toll on her entire body.  Even another friend is living across the ocean right now in the middle of feuding tribes trying to sort out whether Islam or Christianity should be the religion of the country.

But for this small moment in time, surrounded by such a duration of comforting, familiar splashes on the window pane, iterations of gentle rumbling in the sky, and flashes of quilted light brilliantly showing the ground below, I am comforted and given additional energy to make it through till dawn.  And for my very good friend, and other friends who face their own black enemies, I wish the same momentary comfort in the middle of their dark fights and the energy to make it till those storms subside and calm is restored.

A lament

The joke goes:
Two people were engaged in conversation.  They were exchanging information about each other: where each had gone to school, who the family members were, etc.  To end the conversation, one asked the other "Where are you from."  The second person snidely remarked, "I'm from a place where they don't end sentences with a preposition."

Well, who's wrong here?  You could say that a Latinate rule exists in English not to end a sentence in a preposition.  But that was Latin.  The grass roots of English syntax are from Anglo-Saxon.  Rules are a little different in that source.  Or you could say that historical linguistics doesn't matter.  The acceptable threshold of English usage of ending a sentence with a preposition is very clearly over 75% (closer to 98%).  What dictates a rule - history or usage?  Obviously usage.  So, the first person could have ended the conversation with "Sorry, you  must be speaking of that non-standard, Latin-based, 2% dialect called 'proper' English. Would you like to learn American English?"

Yesterday I was around a person who decided to join a religious denomination which required a covenant to be taken to be a member of that church in addition to the normal Christian creed so that he could be held accountable.  I don't even have words for such a surrender of personal freedom because he doesn't have the discipline to trust himself to be a good person.

What I wouldn't give to be around a creative, efficient, giving, cheerful, free-spirited, consistent, tender-hearted, strong, smart, and open soul...  instead of those who keep this rule and that rule and a hundred thousand other rules...  who stifle others from thinking on their own...  who joylessly move through life robotically, emotionlessly...  who wear ankle-length skirts with tennis shoes...  What I wouldn't give.

Waiting on dawn

Every day ends in darkness.  Every night ends in light.  In life they are not exactly as equally measured  as units of time are.  But the cycle actually gives hope.  Good times are marked because we know they don't last forever.  On the other hand, horrors are somewhat mitigated because we know they will end.

I want to remind myself of this since tonight it is midnight, no matter what the time on the clock reads.  I will certainly be ready for the first rays of light signaling the end of this particular night and the hope that lies ahead.

A very young heart

I saw a billboard today advertising heart care.  It showed a man with a gray beard smiling and enjoying himself with his adult children.  Across the middle of the sign in very large letters was the question, "How old is your heart?"  I suppose your heart could age more quickly or less quickly than other parts of your body or your body as a whole.  If it pumps harder for a longer period of time, such as the heart of a high blood pressure patient or one of a person on the way to having a stroke, then it is older.  If it pumps with no back pressure built up in it, then it would be a younger heart.  I get the sign.

But there may be a second way the heart ages.  Life is long for those who are alone or for those who don't experience the sheer enjoyment of meeting the love of their lifetime.  People sometimes opt for going the journey through life alone.  A few are quite adjusted to life alone and seem to manage life with joy and aplomb, but many more don't adjust and wither away joylessly.  For those who decide to choose a companion, life can still age them because they pick companions for all kinds of reasons.  One of the reasons is because (s)he has met his/her one true love.  But, there are many reasons, some for convenience, some for money, some for mere companionship or out of arrangement, some for partial compatibility.  There is probably a continuum for these reasons to fall across, but the one that keeps the heart the youngest has to be the one in which the heart enjoys the pure moments of just being with one who makes her/him happy, just because of who the companion is.

That means, then, that there are several different answers to the question on the billboard, "How old is your heart?"  One answer would be to measure blood pressure or cholesterol levels frequently.  Another is to see if you're living life alone or with someone who only gives a partial amount of enjoyment.  But for someone whose heart has been with the one who gives sheer enjoyment of life, the answer is that her/his heart is young.

After I passed the sign, I smiled, knowing my heart would last a long, long time because it was so very young.

Heart rain

Tonight the weather forecast predicted that there would be 100% coverage of rain on Thursday evening.  That's rare.  A person usually sees the percentage of the area that could be hit by rain storms at less than 100 because rain is spotty.  Some pockets of air are less dense than others even along a front.

Life's events are weather events.   Attitudes, mores, cultural values, educational levels, religious views, and a sundry amount of other influences make any one prediction of how people will act less than 100%.  It's rare to get people's actions to be 100% behind any one belief or event.

But, I do know that when one's heart has been touched by someone, coverage of refreshing thoughts and enraptured moments is 100%.  They are rain full of vitality, happening every day.

Don't jump in until/unless

I was watching a young scholar over the last 2 weeks.  He decided to enter an arena that he clearly didn't have much of an idea what was being discussed.  He didn't have the breadth of knowledge he needed in order to understand the argument.  As a result, he said some things that he couldn't substantiate and that he couldn't seem to get a handle on.  The people in the discussion were nice at first to him, but then ended up ignoring him altogether since he had nothing to contribute, even continuing to respond.  At one point, he could have easily acceded to someone's comments who gave him the perfect out.  But, he was too foolish to even take that generous gesture.

The saying, "You have to pay to play" came into full effect in the conversation.  If you have paid your dues, it shows, usually in the level of argument you bring to the discussion.  If you haven't paid your dues, you usually find an unkind audience.  This guy hopefully learned the pay to play principle and will wait until he has a something substantive to offer before entering another discussion.

I've been a couple of times in this man's place, but I learned my lesson.  It gave me the caution I needed to speak when I have something to say and not to speak in places where my knowledge is limited.  Seeing this man's faux pas only makes my awareness of this kind of ambush that much keener.

Oh Xanadu!

I watched a film from a few years back today - Sanctum.  The characters of the story were all avid spelunkers and were discovering new veins to a cave only partially explored.  Although they were all fairly rugged characters all but one of them died in the cave.  Near the end of the movie, the last two characters were facing their darkest moments in the cave.  Viewers didn't know whether or not the two would make it out alive.  As they moved along the cave wall in the dark, they quoted the poem Xanadu by Coleridge to give them comfort.  The poem speaks of a paradise, of a place of unparalleled beauty.

The phone I had before the smart phones came out allowed pictures to be placed as a background or beside phone numbers.  I placed one of the most marvelous underwater pictures I have ever seen in my phone and called it Xanadu.  It was my paradise.  I had the phone for one year.  I am two phones removed from that one now, and the picture was not available to me on my new phones.  But under X in my phone directory I still have Xanadu listed because I forever cherish the one year I got to see paradise daily.

Tonight is dedicated to the most amazing, most beautiful place I could humanly imagine.  It has no parallel.  I can identify with the last two lines because for one year I delighted in the taste of honey dew and drank in the milk of paradise.

Xanadu
Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.





  So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.





But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!




The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

  A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Sharing a dark sky

I looked out at the sky tonight.  It was black and shared a darkness.  So, I visited a place within the recesses of my mind, a special, blended place, and saw again breath of life, faith, and hope.  I wanted the darkness of this night to see that it can shroud a certain part of my life, but it cannot extinguish this most sacred place.  Someone who gives me life lives there.

Landscapes tell their history

The Grand Canyon is a beautiful place today.  But it has a history that goes way back to the time when the Earth had only one land mass.  Of course, everything has a history.  The land that was the canyon was underwater at one time.  The Pacific Ocean used to cover the land that is now the canyon area.  Shells give that away.  As Pangea broke apart the tectonic activity was prolific.  The ocean receded, and the grinding of the Pacific plate against the North American plate caused huge mountains, taller than the Himalayans today.  But time and nature's forces wore down the mountains.  Ice ages  took their toll as well.  So did earthquakes because there was a huge lake bigger than any of the great lakes located close by in lower Utah and Nevada that had one side of it lowered by an earthquake.  The water emptied out of the lake and poured down through the canyon to carve it out deeper.  After that huge lake dried up, temperatures increased so much that a desert ensued.  Now, we see it as it is.  The history ahead of the canyon will be about like it has been in the past.

The beauty of the lives around us have their histories all right.  I had a text from a friend earlier this evening.  This person lives in pain but refuses to let the pain get in the way of ambitions to be realized.  This person's history is littered with events that cause different landscapes to appear.  But for the moment life is beautiful.  I have another friend whose story reads like a book written as a result of many interruptions.  Each interruption produced a different landscape until what shows today is a beautiful place to look at.  Another friend of mine has had a number of upheavals with children, the desert of experience with his late wife, the pinnacle experience in education between wives, and tremendous climate change with a second wife.  But, to talk to him is to talk to someone beautiful.  I need their experiences.  It helps me to put my own life in perspective, and not to be discouraged, for it has its own share of changing landscapes.

The unenlightened herd

The Barnett Shale is a geological formation that is currently producing a great amount of oil and gas in the north Texas area.  A number of large oil companies are sinking a lot of money into the area because the return is very good.  One of the features of the formation that yields the oil is that it is dense, that is, it doesn't have much porosity.  So, the companies have to fracture the formation.

For  the last 5 years, coinciding with the advent of the drilling of the Barnett Shale play, several earthquakes have happened in the area where earthquakes had not happened on any regular basis before.  Of course, the people correlate the drilling with the earthquakes. 

The University of Texas just released a scientific study on whether the affects of drilling and fracturing the Barnett Shale caused the earthquakes.  The cause-effect study was very clear.  There was not a correlation between facturing and the local earthquakes.  The people of the area decided that the study was not accurate since it didn't uphold their opinions.  They could have accepted the study and kept looking for a cause.  Knowing the cause of the earthquakes may save them from the big one one of these days.  But, no.  The herd didn't want to look elsewhere, and thus find a true explanation that would help them in their progress.

That's the way of it.  It applies in every area of life.  Long-held beliefs underpinning the herd mentality, even in light of evidence to the contrary, rule the day and allow great injustices to continue and not be curtailed.  It is so indicative of the mistrust of the average person toward scientific studies.  For all the so-called education Americans receive, one could hope that a trust for things educated, such as scientific studies, would help lead the people forward and become more advanced.  Alas.  The herd would rather follow the adage, "If the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch."  Too bad.  Society could be a whole lot farther down the road.  But, that's just the way of the herd.

Language - precise? Ha!

Cuneiform was a language used long ago.  The language was like English, it was used across a great extent of the commercial world, called a lingua franca.  It was the first written script that the modern world knows about.  It was spoken for a really long time in this commercial center of the world, probably around 2000 years.  People knew of it or knew it well enough to trade with it apparently because people from both east and west came to the fertile crescent area of the Earth.

That old script of runes was used to record business transactions at first, but as time passed, it was used for everything writing is used for, such as laws and stories.  Very few people can read this script, so we have to take the word of these erudite individuals as to what the signs mean, but there has been little controversy, for the most part, over the translations of tablets using these symbols.  As with any ancient tongue, some controversy does arise, however, because some words seem to have a plethora of meanings and context determines what is being said. That's a little problematic, though, because sometimes contexts are figurative, so they support more than one meaning of a word.  These are called interpretations, of course.

There's  a very interesting word from cuneiform that has the potential to change the way we think about our origins.  The idea is not new, but it is gaining more and more support.  It was perpetuated in the 1980s by a movie about Mars.  At the end of the movie, Earth travelers found a disguised edifice on Mars that housed the account of the destruction of Mars and the migration of its inhabitants to the Earth.  Stargate the movie and series capitalized also on the idea that humans were started as a result of efforts of ETs from another galaxy.  The story in cuneiform echoes this theme because it has to do with the origins of humanity on Earth and uses the term anunaki. Mostly the translators have assigned the word's meaning as a group of gods.  So, all the council of the gods like Ea and Enlil are considered the Anunaki.  But, there is a part of the story that doesn't fit this assignment of meaning.  The Anunaki said they came from another galaxy to be here.  Now if this is true, then we need to evaluate again the creation myths that come from this time period.  For one, there's not really a creation.   For two, there's not really a council of deities, but a people from another planet.  The Hopi Native American stories support the same hypothesis.

A word like Anunaki makes one aware of the pitfalls of reducing any language into some precise set of rules for spelling (for there are 3 spellings of annunnaki), syntax or meanings.  But, it's ok.  Those who consider themselves a part of the established gatekeepers of the English language are about to meet their demise.  Of course, they will depart with their usual venting of spleens, and vocally at that.  Language has its moments when it is exact, but it sure has its moments that cause discomfort for those who want it to always be exact.  Language was rich in its cuneiform form.  It's rich now.  It will be rich when its current written form goes by the wayside in favor of holographic transmission of complete environments.  Whatever form language takes, it will have a precise side, but it will mainly deal in interpretations into perpetuity.  Can't wait to see the holographic form of Anunaki!  Maybe the movies E.T. and Paul have merit.  What cute Anunaki if that's true.

No, not a dictate from the genes

The formation of sounds in English by infants is predictable and developmental.  So, it was of particular note to me that someone told me that learning sounds was genetic.  I am not certain what the person meant exactly since I was told by a third party bearing news of someone who was told first-hand, but I took it to mean that people are controlled by their genes as to whether they can form the sounds of all the available sounds in the language they are born into.  This flies in the face of current observation and theory.

An infant learns sounds naturally, no matter what language,  The human speaking apparatus of tongue, palate, mouth cavity, nasal passage, lips, pharynx, and larynx have been toyed with for many, many thousand years.  It's no mystery on how sounds are made, how many sounds have been made, which sounds are easiest to make, which are hardest, and which come in early in an infant's development, which are later.  So imagine my astonishment when I was told that a child had to be taken speech therapy at age 4 for defective sounds and that it was genetic because there was not a hearing or vision problem that impeded the sounds, no malformation of any of the speaking apparatus parts, no environmental intrusion causing sound to be warped, and normal parents who had no history of phonetic malformation when young.

The child had particular problems pronouncing the so-called hidden sounds because they cannot be readily seen like the gutteral sounds at the back of the mouth cavity at the top of the throat.  But an anomaly occurred.  Nasals, such as m and n, were not malformed whereas l and r were.  This for sure discounts the genetic theory.  All of these sounds have a constant flow of air and voice, like vowels do, but the air stream is redirected inside the mouth where no one can see how exactly they are redirected with the exception of m which one can see (the lips are closed in order to direct the air flow through the nose rather than through the mouth).

I think the culprit for the young boy's trouble is not in the genes, but in missing the stage from about 3-9 months of age when the infant studies the faces of the caregivers to produce just the right sounds of the language they have been born into.  Not being in a position to see and study would delay or allow one to miss altogether how to form the needed sounds to develop and later compete with others in acceptable communication.

It's a little bit like Freud's theory of missing the crawling stage and having problems with socialization in teen and young adult years.  The young boy is 6, so he still has another couple of years to work on seeing and hearing how the formation of sounds happens, but it will increasingly be an issue for him since his need to communicate with others his age begins to help him establish his role and place in his world.  A smart language therapist will give him some dialect substitute sounds to compensate for the stage he missed.  It's quite acceptable to hear people pronounce here as heah. No one makes a big deal about that.  Or the acceptable Boston brogue which drops r's at the ends of words or near the ends of words as in pahk for park, and caw for  car.  Dropping the l altogether in all but the initial position in a word is quite acceptable as well.  No doubt the young man will learn the compensations and become a full-fledged, successful member of society.  But if this development is genetic, then the therapist who made the statement ought to make a full-blown case study of this encounter and publish it because it would be rare, to say the least.

No comprende, senor

Build Social Value

Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.

 Zuckerberg defines social value here as more open and connected.  Good for him.  In his letter, he speaks of wanting to affect government in this way.  Kudos, because then the idea of democracy by the people would be more realized than the republican form of representation we have now.  I look forward to that day.  He also wants to the corporate world more connected and open so that they can take that quantum leap into advancing the same cause faster than it would normally advance by being more open and connected.  This would be nice.  It is logical that this could happen, and I hope it does because I am all for advancement of society.

But when it comes to the system that wants to control what our children think these days, there is a total nonsequitur between Zuckerberg's statement and the way the system is run.  First, the system is a basic quid pro quo system.  The people who run the system will give in return for all kinds of favors.  Thus, they can't afford for it to be too open and certainly not connected or they would be found out.  Promotion comes mainly from within the system in order to perpetuate the quid pro quo aspect it is built upon.  Those within the system have to conform at some point or they will be worked out of the system even if they have the talent to offer many new directions to it.  The youth see this model for 12 of their formative years in life.  Guess what model most of them will perpetuate!

Second, the system is built around so-called success for students.  It's an artificial success because the grading system is unbelievably faulty.  Parents think grades are based on a 100 point system when it is really a 50 point system.  The Bell curve is a mathematical reality for the students who attend, but the grading system alters the Bell curve so that students will look good for the community.  On a 50 point system (the upper 50 points from 50-100) the middle grade for which half of the students fall below and half above is a sham.  Administrators make extreme efforts to create the aritificial idea that 90% of the students should be in the upper half of the curve rather than 49%.  That means that almost half of students passing or graduating really ought not to be passing or graduating.  

Third, the system educating our youth has rhetorically given lip service to the integration of content areas.  But, the rhetoric is empty.  For upwards of 30 years, they have talked about integration of the subject areas.  Curriculum has even been made with this integration in mind.  But, nearly all children still take English, Math, Social Studies, and Science as separate subjects.  Connectedness is not a trademark of the antiquated configuration for children to learn in this system.  Real world value of the content areas doesn't exist in these compartmental instructional pods.

So, when Zuckerberg asks his employees to FOCUS on real world values, the children of the system in place now can't even think along the same lines as he does.  Real world means artificial, canned answers rather than real, flexible, sovlable problems that arise in a working environment.

I admire Zuckerberg for being able to take his company to the next level from the world in which he began his efforts and for having a vision to take his company to even higher levels with his aspirations for his workers.  And, he does have those kind of employees.  I just don't know where he found them.  He is speaking an obscure language like Pame (Mayan) to us English speakers.  Our children are basically outsiders to one of the best American companies ever formed.

It's the Zuckerbergs, however, that will lead the way into the next phase of civilization.  I wish he had one of the largest pools to draw from for his employee selections.  It's not true, however.  Most of them can click on Like and write a few words for their status.  But work for him, they could not do. They haven't seen "open and connected" in any experience in their 12 years of mind control from the model the system runs by to the curriculum they study.

More is actually more, not less

Almost 2500 years ago a phenomenon in the world happened in Athens, Greece.  The people of Athens decided that they wanted all the men in the town to participate in their own governance.   It was called, in English, a democracy, or a government by its populace.  It didn't last long in historical terms.  Rome decimated it a couple of hundred years later.  It would be 2000 years before that idea would resurface in the United States.  Attempts were made along the way like the government formed by the two tribes of the Angles and Saxons in England when they stopped feuding, and in 1215 when the Magna Carta was signed.  Whenever attempts were made in the world, people after that were better off.

Two popular books in 20th century America have chronicled what a nation is like when information is suppressed.  In both Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, books with the world's knowledge are no longer wanted or needed and have been burned.  Oppression of many people in these two books is apparent.  The point of the books is that whenever information is not freely available to people, they suffer at the hands of someone who is not a benefactor.

The Spanish Inquisition is a time in Medieval Europe noted for its extreme persecution of knowledge/information.  It is not a pretty period in history.  China, too, devolved into chaos at two times in their history between two strong empires in which knowledge had flourished.  So, the idea that information needs to be accessible to as many people as possible should be something the people of the world understand very well.  A great principle from history is that people's judgment is only as good as their information.

So, why is it still an anomaly when Zuckerberg declares that he wants his employees to have access to as much information as possible?  Below is Zuckerberg's guideline for his employees and new investors.  It's an anomaly.  

Be Open  

We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.

A question is begged here.  Why is it, then, since history points out that good happens with information and bad happens in its absence, that oppression of information is still the order of the day?  All one has to do is to look to the system in place that keeps the nation's children from ages 6-18.  That system says to its children, "Here is what you need to know this year, and next year, and next, etc... This is how you do what you need to know.  Don't step out of established territory.  Sit down, shut up, look busy, turn in work, and we'll reward you for it."  It's the greatest straight-jacket approach around. No graduate school in the country is run this way.  And why not?  Because they know that a person has to try out information in experiments or in the field, gathering facts and coming to reasonable conclusions.  Heaven forbid that that method should be for graduate students only.  Kids 6 years old understand the beauty of the scientific method.  They know that this method is how knowledge is gathered. They would love to experiment and do field work to see how to distill and apply principles in all their subjects.  And how much would children learn if they knew how to discover and apply school content, then apply the principles to the interests they love so much?  Go Zuckerberg!  Access to information would lead to so much more in your industry and everywhere else you look just like your letter states. However, children also know that the current system doesn't really want them to discover and apply, performing at a level above mediocrity.  It is a system that encourages average (even their grading system uses this method) and following the path of least resistance.

  

The kids today are the children of the information age.  Denying access to information is to kill them, disadvantage them, force them onto an uneven playing field.  How many computers are in a classroom today? One for every ten kids?  And what happens if a student brings her/his own computer to class?  Can (s)he use it?  Of course not.  It would put the other children at a disadvantage  EXACTLY! So, conventional wisdom is to handicap all instead of applauding someone who might get a quantum leap ahead and perform well.  That person might think for herself/himself.  NO, No, no what a stir that would cause.  The current method of keeping a whole lot of people from flourishing is to deny them knowledge/information.  It's really the Spanish Inquisition with a palatable name so as not to make its taste too bitter.

Mark Zuckerberg, where are you finding people to work in your company?  They have to be few and far between!