Dealing with Frustration

Something I learned late in life is how to get angry without losing my temper.  This is something we have to do daily, with the onslaught of foolishness that Donald Trump unleashes on the —now far from unsuspecting— public.  I need not list the matters that are in the news du jour— kneeling for the National Anthem, hurling invective at Korea, responding to foolish behavior from children and in-laws, being befuddled with the continual attempts of the majority in Congress and Senate to repeal the ACA (Obamacare), repatriate children of immigrants, and destroy protections for National Parks and wilderness refuges.  (Well, I listed them anyway.)

Of course, like most Americans, I sneak a peek at faceBook every day, and since most of my friends are either die hard liberals or moderate conservatives, there is a lot of hateful posts ridiculing the president and his gang.  If one of my friends cannot invent a vicious meme him- or herself, he/she finds one on the Internet and links to that.

I don't think our hate really has any good effect.  All it does is incite us to steadily worse behavior, while the president (who does not read the posts on my wall) simply ignores it.  My conservative friends ignore them.  Only my liberal friends read all this poison, and it gives them a bellyache.  We hurt no one but ourselves with all this vitriol.

Of course we can't help being angry.  But how can one actually hate someone with a cognitive disability?  In addition to cognitive disability in the White House, there is poor behavior, loose morals, lack of empathy, ignorance of history, obliviousness to the best examples of Presidents of the past, lack of being able to interpret the words of others, and so on.  We needed a leader with intelligence, tact and subtlety, and a sense of fairness, and we got . . . that.  But hating . . . him . . . is totally useless.  It's like hating a mosquito.  We certainly do, but it doesn't do the mosquito much harm.

Arch

Repost: Education, Values, and Bringing Up Children

I often re-read my own posts.  Actually, I don't, but I saw the file that goes with this post from 2013 that I could not remember having written, and I read it.  Forgive me for being shocked and impressed with my own writing, but I simply must post this again.  [Warning: there is absolutely no relevance to the present disasters we are facing.]

The America that we know is so diverse that almost any generalization anyone makes is likely to be largely untrue.  This is particularly so with statements about Education, and about bringing up children.  There are thousands of people out there who have what I think is the right attitude towards Education, either because it worked for them, or because they brought it here from The Old Country: Education is good.  But for many, their belief is that Education will make me rich, maybe, and that's all they care about. 

Modern America is based on two principles: Simplification, and Generalization. These principles have worked well for such a long time that when they stop working we’re not really able to recognize the fact. Precisely because they do work in so many instances, applying the generalization principle, we go on the assumption that they work in all instances. Yet it is only human to try and simplify one’s dealings with a variety of things, be they situations, people, or produce: we sort them into broad categories, and use rules of thumb.  This is called stereotyping, when people want to denigrate it, but who can do without it?

So when I say that people today do a very poor job of bringing up their kids, I’m making a big generalization, and I’m sure practically every parent will claim that he or she is an exception.

When I say that education today is (somewhat of) a failure, that too is a broad generalization that is likely to have just as many exceptions, but people are likely to agree with that sentiment, simply because it is human nature to point the finger at another culprit rather than to take some of the responsibility ourselves!  But, in my opinion, the failure of education is partly a result of our failure in child-rearing.

Why have things come to this pass?  It all began in the early part of the twentieth century, with the introduction of the assembly-line, mass-production, and the economies of scale.  Standardization is a good thing in many ways —consider that we can use any compact disc in any stereo— but, again, the weaknesses of generalization rears its ugly head. Using industrial methods to mass-produce educated citizens has negative consequences.

What do we expect out of education? Clearly the expectations vary wildly from person to person. The most common expectation is that education will result in a well-paying job. That may be true, but actually, it is the converse that holds: if you have a well-paid job, you’ve probably had a good education. (Or your dad might own the business.)  A moderately good education certainly increases the chances of a young person being suited to a more responsible position, which in turn might bring a higher salary. Another expectation of education is that it fits a person for a productive role in society. Unfortunately, this doesn’t resonate with (parents who are) rugged individualists. They don’t want their kids fitting into anything; they’re not happy with society, and they don’t want a bunch of commies making their kids just like every other kid in the country. But some of us realize that the world is a complex place, and whether one likes it or not, a person’s interaction with society is complex, and cannot be reduced to a simplistic equation of dollars and cents.  Which means that building a better citizen is likely to require the effort of a team, as Hillary Clinton got laughed at for saying some years ago.

As far as I’m concerned, education is also about values; all parents want their children to learn certain values. And they want those values taught in school: don’t have unprotected sex, learn how to drive safely, learn how to eat sensibly. Be respectful to people that matter, and don’t get tossed around by hoodlums. As you can see, all these expectations are very relative, and in extreme cases, rather crass. These values are better taught at home. There are other more important values that must be taught by both parents and teachers in concert: how to work well with teams and groups; how to lead where needed, and how to graciously take instructions from competent peers.

The job of a school, and of teachers, has evolved greatly over time. As society’s expectations of schools changed, their methods changed, to process a larger number of mediocre students quickly and efficiently. This has not been all bad. From a high-school drop-out rate of around 70% in the decade of the 1950s, we now have a drop-out rate of practically less than 10%, depending on how you count it. But we have given up a great deal to achieve this: for instance the needs of both exceptional students, and particularly difficult students, tend to be neglected in favor of the needs of students of average ability. But, of course, every parent insists that his or her child must be taken care of first, and this demand is backed up by administrators, and so a teacher’s job is very difficult. To top everything, teachers are usually poorly paid.

Let’s turn now to the question of values and bringing up children. We don't anymore consider sex to be a mere means of conceiving children; rather, there are those who regard children as a somewhat regrettable by-product of unplanned sex. No matter what our conscious opinions are, we’re hardwired to take pleasure in children, both our own, and those of others. In recent times, it has become fashionable to consider children a sort of property, and therefore to consider other people’s children absolutely none of our business.  People such as teachers, therefore, find themselves living a sort of contradiction: the children in their classroom are, on the one hand, none of their business, and on the other hand, entirely their business.  As far as I’m concerned, all children are everybody’s business, but obviously I’m not going to waltz into someone else’s home and tell them what to do.  I’m doing it here, instead.

The five day week was a tremendous victory; one would have expected that with the progress of society and more efficient means of production, we would have come to a four day week sometime in the twentieth century. It didn’t happen. In fact, people are working harder than ever, working overtime, and working second jobs. Many of the necessities of life have become so costly that we need to step up our rate of earning more than the increase in the cost of living would explain. (One reason for this is that it is better business sense for a company to hire a few people, and work them hard, than to hire a large number of people to work shorter hours, even if they’re paid less. Another reason is that Business and Industry has decided that there must be a small leisure class —wealthy stockholders— and the working population must work very much harder to support them.)

The consequence of this is that we do not know how to bring up our kids, most of all because we haven’t had the time to figure it out. Bringing up children is not entirely an instinctive skill. It has to be learned. In fact, it has to be taught. But it is too important an enterprise to be left to the tender mercies of school teachers, wonderful though they might be. We must regard our own children as future parents from the word go. Every interaction must be something that that child can draw on in the future, when interacting with his or her own children.

The most important things a parent can convey to a child are: (1) Be willing to take on unpleasant things, for the sake of the good it might bring. (2) Be considerate. (3) Set a good example to the younger people in your circle. (4) Value education, even if the benefits of particular aspects of it are not immediately obvious. (5) Be respectful of your teacher, even if your friends regard her as an idiot. She’s working under almost impossible conditions, because she believes in what she’s teaching. (6) Stay away from anything that will endanger your long-term health.

(Additional values, such as being involved in the betterment of your community, must come from example.)

As you can see, a lot of what has to be conveyed is what anyone knows, but it is also precisely the sort of stuff that we have been conditioned not to talk about, so in this very article I’m violating a whole lot of conventions!

It used to be the province of the local priest or minister to lay this sort of thing on the people. Once religion got seriously discredited, people jettisoned the priests and ministers, but had nowhere to go to be reminded of the commonsense axioms that they had to fall back on in the heat of the daily battle. Parents began to insist that teachers should do this. This means that education experts would have to come up with a new subject, like Sex Education, which might be called something like Not Being an Idiot. It is not the business of teachers to impart family values! A teacher who is a preacher as well loses a lot of credibility with the kids. Teachers do it, even if they get little thanks for it. But it is the responsibility of parents, regardless of how overworked they are. If you are a parent, remember you’re teaching for two: these lessons are needed for your kids. But they’re also needed for your grandchildren. They’re both content, and methods, in Education jargon.

Some extremists believe that Education should start at home, and end there as well.  I don't believe that.  Education is a social endeavor, and that is its glory.  But some things are best taught at home, not least among them being how to bring up children.  A child is never too young to learn the art of conveying values, by example, and with delicacy and imagination.

Afterword: I got so carried away I almost forgot to emphasize one of my main points: one thing that must be taught at home is to value and respect school, and teachers.  A child must not be taught that a teacher must earn his or her respect.  The respect must come first, both from the child and the parent, whether or not the teacher has demonstrated that he or she "deserves respect."  One must start with respect, and only proceed to loss of respect under desperate circumstances.  A teacher simply cannot function if he or she is faced with an array of skeptical faces.

Arch

Another Winter of Our Discontent (Actually, it's Fall)

This material might not float your boat; don't let this post sour you on our Blog :)

I have been observing what college kids do.

It used to be the case that college was where most young Americans began to relate to those who were not all white and middle-class.  You met blacks, and then Europeans, and then Latinos, and kids from working-class families, and for the most part, you learned that they were not as different as you may have imagined: just regular folks.  A very few kids, usually from somewhat more sheltered backgrounds, stuck to certain cliques, and that was how they survived: by creating for themselves what we nowadays call a bubble.  They paid a price; if their future occupations needed them to be comfortable with minorities, immigrants and people of a poorer stratum of society, they had to work hard to acquire that comfort, or they had to pretend a comfort they did not feel.

These days, I'm noticing that kids seek out their bubbles very quickly.  It could be a fraternity or a sorority, which only admitted a few selected upper-class people.  It isn't just viciousness; it is seeking a level of comfort.  Colleges are admitting increasing numbers of foreign students, and some kids just can't handle that, especially if they come from the suburbs and their parents never allowed them to mix with poor kids while in school.  This was, to some extent, always the case.  But it is getting more extreme.

A lot of people notice other things happening.  For instance, you might go to a favorite store, and look for your favorite store clerk, and she or he is gone, and there is some foreign person working in their place.  This could make some people unhappy and uncomfortable.

It has to do with middle-class Americans gradually fading from view; the people with whom the middle-class is comfortable are either leaving jobs, such as sales or service jobs in the cities or suburbs, or going back to school, or moving to other areas where the cost of living is cheaper.  Businesses are cutting down on workers and worker hours.  They usually claim that it is higher taxes, but it is probably higher rents in the malls (because store landlords just can't tolerate reduced incomes, or even the same income!), and they cut down overtime, and pretty soon you have an immigrant taking the place of someone you've known all your life, because typically an immigrant or minority is happy with smaller wages.  (This is why we build cars in Mexico, so that the car manufacturer can make a bigger profit.)  It appears that this is precisely what prompts some conservatives to deplore what has been called the browning of America.

Let's look at what people say is the cause of all this.  Conservatives will immediately say that it is higher taxes (and more expensive benefits; it so happens that I agree about the benefits being a needless burden on employers).  But, according to my reasoning, higher taxes get paid to somewhere: either Federal or State employees, or construction companies, or poor people on Social Welfare, or whatever.  In turn, that money gets spent again, and it can get sucked in by various businesses hungry for profits.  If nobody has money to buy anything, of course businesses will feel it.

In contrast, if taxes are lowered, each person sits on his income, especially the most wealthy.  It stays in the bank, a great comfort to the individual, but of course it is no help to other businesses who would like this wealthy individual to come shopping.  But the wealthy notoriously never go shopping.  If they ever do, you can trace where the money goes: usually to another super wealthy individual, or abroad.

Lowering taxes keeps money out of circulation.  Fiscal conservatives will contest this statement, based on tradition and ignorance.  But there is no doubt that raising taxes puts money back in circulation.

Pretty soon I'm going to expand on a plan whereby you could lower taxes, but a lot of people won't like it.  I'll give you an example: you notice that highways get crapped-up every winter.  Well, there are these enormous trucks that barrel along them, and there just so much trucking traffic--and traffic, generally--that weak spots on a highway can take, before it starts needing attention.  But we all use stuff brought to town by trucks; someone has to pay for it,right?  But why should a poor person who subsists on a diet of baked beans for every meal have to pay the same taxes to support highways as a commercial farm, that is constantly sending out products by truck, getting farm machinery by truck, buying fertilizer by the truck-full, and so on?  Shouldn't the supplier, who gets a profit from the can of baked beans pay more than the poor consumer?  (No, the consumer usually pays; it's a tradition.)  If we think about it, we should be able to make only those who benefit from the highways pay for their upkeep.  Similarly, we can convert community swimming-pools into paid-admission swimming pools: $15 a day, to pay for the equipment, the wages, the materials, and maintenance.  (Or $14, if you can manage on that income level.)

Think about it.  The citizens with higher incomes will love this idea, since they probably have their own pools anyway, and can certain afford $15.  But can we all support this sort of idea?  Of course it won't work for hospitals, because a sick person is hardly likely to bring his piggy bank to the Emergency Room.  I believe in subsidized health care for all, but then you probably think I'm a communist.

Arch

All-Or-Nothing Rhetoric, and Why I Dislike It

PC enthusiasts are a danger to society.  Let me explain.

As we have all seen, Homosexuals and Bisexuals fought long and hard to earn a few important rights for decades, and won those rights, which we call LGB rights.

Soon, the media and minority rights proponents insisted that those same rights should be extended to Transsexuals, Queers, and other members of the alphabet soup, and today, LGB has been replaced by LGBTQI....  This tendency to piggyback these issues on top of issues that were decided favorably is something I deplore.  This is not the time to examine the cases for extending whatever rights were given to LGB individuals to Transsexuals; I personally feel that the jury is yet out on those questions.  But there's no doubt that there is a tendency to go from zero to 100% in these matters, which unscrupulous politicians and lobbyists exploit, to their detriment. 

Consider the current uproar over the lack of condemnation of NAZIs from the White House.  What I'm hearing in the media seems to carry the subtext that the NAZIs are guilty whatever they're accused of.  Those of us who are reasonable know that this is not the case.  But the rhetoric certainly seems to suggest that.

What do we mean when we call someone a NAZI?  Obviously, if they call themselves NAZIs, we're allowed to do the same.  To be definite, they may want to eradicate all non-whites from a particular geographic region.  They may want to destroy all non-whites from a region.  They may want to deport all non-whites from a region.  They may want to incarcerate all non-whites.  They may want to reduce all non-whites to a second-class citizen status.

Unfortunately we seem to have given over all our important thinking to a few uneducated morons, who will conveniently lump all those groups into one.  "You know what?  Anyone who wants to reduce non-whites to second-class status is a Nazi!"  Clearly, though, while certain sectors of the population, such as the KKK and other bloodthirsty murderers may want to purify the nation by any means necessary, others merely deplore the erosion of the privileges they enjoyed when whites were the absolute majority, and all others were here on sufferance.  I mean, there are those who even resent women being permitted the vote.  It is misleading to call these people NAZIS.  It is propaganda.

Painting everyone by the same brush, though convenient, is wrong.  Just as we should not grant all privileges to everyone thoughtlessly, so must we not condemn everyone who does not want illegal immigrants to have all rights that citizens have.  This is why there is so much resentment against liberals among the members of the population whom the Alt-Right seeks to provide leadership for: Liberals have for decades run headlong into sociological china shops.

Someday, I am sure, all this LGBTQIJZ nonsense will become irrelevant, just as genetically modified corn will be accepted.  But that day is not today; there are issues that need to be ironed out.  Similarly, it is by no means obvious that illegal immigrants deserve all rights that citizens deserve--anyone who asserts this is not thinking clearly, and may not actually mean what they say--but we can agree on some aspects of that extreme position: for instance, we could agree that immigrant children, have many more rights than adult immigrants.  The case of immigrants is strengthened by the fact that American industries enjoy the lower wages paid in Mexico, which is what drives Mexicans across the border in the first place.  We can't have it both ways.  We cannot exploit the depressed economy of Mexico, and at the same time morally impose draconian measures against illegal immigrants.

Having said all that, I suspect that Trump may have set out to appease die-hard white chauvinists with a few anti-immigrant sops.  He has quickly found out that being president is not as easy as declaring a casino bankrupt.  He probably doesn't quite understand the seriousness of his position, but he certainly knows that it is humiliating.  Unfortunately, the humiliation initiative is overshadowing serious steps that need to be taken to halt the chaos that is slowly overtaking the nation.  Liberals and Democrats are too easily satisfied with ridiculing the president.  Ridiculing Trump is no great achievement.

Let me finish with a plea for (1) careful use of language, (2) careful adherence to law and logic, and (3) a focused, responsible, patient approach to politics and leadership.  The Democratic party was on autopilot this last election, and now it's time for actual thinking.

Arch

Words: Another Argument for a Real Education

We were talking about Education for several years, and I was limping along, trying to explain why some things I was doing were not working, and why both teachers and students are frustrated by the process of education, with the education system we have.  And then Trump happened.

You see, one of the most enormous problems we have in explaining things to each other is words.  A lot of the time, if we're talking about recipes for Strawberry Pie, or something relatively simple like that, there is no difficulty.  What you mean when you say Strawberry is probably pretty close to what I mean by that word, and what I mean when I say pie is pretty much what you probably mean.  (Even here, there's some room for confusion, especially if you've never really made or eaten a Strawberry Pie, but more on that later.  Much later!)

Many of those who have gone to college are likely to suspect that the reasons why being President so confuses Donald Trump is probably education.  But wait; he has had a college education: a Master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, if we're to believe the news reports.  What has gone wrong?

Why did such a large number of people jump on board the Trump Wagon?  Again, the culprit might seem to be education.  But are we sure?

A significant skill one learns in a quality education is to use words with precise meanings.  What does education mean to you?  The obvious answer is that in college one learns a lot of things, and so it depends on which of those things we're focusing on.  We have to have a major, and we could have a minor, and any number of general education courses, and we could take all sorts of electives, which are neither for your major or your minor, but just for the heck of it; and we could play varsity athletics, and so on, and so forth.  Which of these does one mean when one talks about someone being educated, and someone else not being educated?

The skill that the Trump Administration and all its beleaguered members seem to trip over, is that of using the right word in the right place.
They read the Constitution, and they don't understand the words.  Of course the Founding Fathers meant different things than we do when they said "The right to bear arms," or when they use the words "All men are created equal", or similar expressions that must be understood in context.  Even experts in constitutional law disagree in how these terms should be applied: whether we must take them as they would have been understood in the 18^th Century, or whether we should use them in some sense that has been translated to the 20^th or the 21^st century, where Arms could mean anything from a Flintlock to a Bazooka.  But there appears to be confusion in understanding the meaning of even quite unambiguous language.
Then, they look at an understanding that does not have the force of law directly, but does so indirectly, such as the proscription against retaining control of a business that can profit because of the owner being President; it does not seem illegal.  This is a different kind of blindness.

Almost more important are the words that are needed to exactly explain what the administration is thinking.  Trump thinks of speaking as merely spewing advertising copy.  He is accustomed to addressing an audience that has, up to now, been perfectly satisfied to take at face value his words that "It's going to be great.  It's going to be the best you ever saw."  But at least a few of his followers are now ready for two things: One: How exactly is it going to be great?  and two:  Can we have some input into it?  The hallmark of a great administration is its ability to explain to the public what they're planning to do, and why.  And How.

A third sort of skill, and unfortunately many college graduates never quite get this, is that a good education should make it easier for a young person to understand and deal with ever increasing levels of complexity.  Every year, the kids are able to tolerate less and less complexity, until colleges are driven to stick simply to the syllabus of high schools.  Unfortunately, the area of Business Management is notorious for being one in which there is no real penalty for those who want to oversimplify things.  This is especially true if one has a lot of money to throw around, because one can always buy one's way out of trouble.  Trump's numerous bankruptcies send up a red flag to those who know: Trump has not taken into account where things could go wrong.  Things could go wrong when trying to set up a casino.  How much more can things go wrong when trying to set up health care for a nation of 350 million people?

There is very little that stands in the way of Medical Insurance Companies raising their premiums as high as they like.  This is America; businesses are allowed to make profits, and Health Insurance companies are businesses.  But yes, there are a few regulations (far too many, in the view of the Insurance Industry) that hold back the rates to levels that just barely make it possible to afford them.  Big businesses must find ways of paying the ridiculous premium rates that the Insurance Industry demands, to allow them to take home the profits to which they have become accustomed, and now everyone must pay the premiums, under "Obamacare", not just the chronically sick folk.  Then there is the pre-existing condition problem, Medicare and Medicaid, and prescription drugs, and the Death Committees, and so on.  And of course, Family Planning.  It is complex.  But to someone who has merely a business degree, almost any complexity is too much complexity.

What about the complexity of International Relations?  Once a bunch of politicians (whose only claim to fame is that they have wealthy friends) take control of any government, they get into a spiral of systematic oversimplification that leads to (1) reduction of services, (2) escalating racism and xenophobia, and maniacal nationalism, all in the name of (3) reducing taxes, all of which is supposed to (4) give business a shot in the arm, but which instead leads to cultural chaos and civic unrest and general alienation.

Almost any time Trump says something to a foreign leader, it seems to cause unhappiness somewhere else, not least right here in the good old US.  What is this, he's probably thinking, I can't hardly say anything without bothering somebody!  Nobody seems to be happy with his banning Islamic visitors wholesale.  Nobody seems to be happy with his choice of Secretary of State.  Nobody seems to be happy with how he deals with Russia, and those jokers seem to want to fool around with US elections, something that seems never to have happened before.  And though the fooling around was in favor of Trump, the president is not happy with all that.  Every time he pokes the balloon on one side, it pops up on another.  Welcome to international diplomacy.

What exactly is alienation? It is a condition where a person does not understand the motivations of another person.  A lack of empathy of frightening proportions.  Back in the early fifties, when McCarthyism was in high gear, half the people empathized with the socialists, including those who viewed Franklin Roosevelt's social and economic reforms as lifesaving, while the other half considered any sort of social welfare as driven by communist influences.  Over a decade, half the population was determined to go into Vietnam and do some serious communist butt-kicking, while the other half was aghast at the prospect of having to go into a foreign country and kill people who seem to have a perfectly good right to choose a communist government if they wanted to.  What we ended up with was acute alienation, where personal values were so different from person to person that young people simply could not subscribe to the values of their parents.  Today, too, the Democrats are preoccupied with Trump and his offspring meeting with Russians.  These meetings, in my view, are really insignificant.  The important things are the new Health Care bills.  They cannot be any better than the existing ACA a.k.a. Obamacare, which does not prevent the Insurance Industry from ripping off the people anyway.  But I can hardly conceive the GOP being any tougher with the Insurance Industry than Obama was.  We cannot have decent affordable health care until Insurance Companies are all shut down, and obviously replacing their services with a government-run agency simply means Medicare for all, which nobody minds, except that the GOP would view that as total defeat.  However, though many of us have difficulty subscribing to the values of Trump supporters, we do not elevate this phenomenon to the point of calling it alienation.

There are other things that education provides apart from an appreciation of language, and a degree of comfort with complexity, but sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, as a great man once said.

Arch, exhausted.

Computer Education for Everyone, Part 0: History

When I first went to college, I had four interests: physics, mathematics, computer science, and music.  These are still my interests, but I want to focus on two of them.

Mathematics has been around for millennia; I mean, the Egyptians (whoever they were; they might or might not have been the ancestors of those hanging out in the UAR today) used it, and so did the Arabs, for instance to cross the desert.  We know that the ancient Greeks knew a lot of mathematics, and we also know how they taught it.  The art of teaching mathematics is also several thousand years old, so there are new fashions in how to teach mathematics, but they have a tough job competing against ancient methods.  In contrast,

Computer Science only arrived in our midst about a century ago, but since then, the techniques of programming, and teaching computer science have changed furiously, so it is incredibly difficult to keep up.  Back when I first started working, I taught the first several courses in computer science using methods and tools that seemed very simple to me.  But in 1995, everything changed.  When Windows was created, and shortly afterwards, the Windows_95 operating system that was native to the newer PCs, the programming game had to change.  This is, in retrospect, not hard to explain, though I was never happy with these changes.

The elements of Programming
The computer is a clever device that has two aspects to it.  Firstly, it has storage, which is a huge number of places on the computer chip that can remember numbers.  Secondly --and this is the clever part--it has a unit that can obey instructions.  This is the part that boggles the mind of non-computer people: how can a computer obey instructions?

(By the way, the storage (or the memory locations) are numbered from 1 to 1,048,576 (or something like that; it depends).  It's an enormous block of apartments, each of which holds a number.)

Back to instructions.  Essentially, the basic computer chip obeys instructions such as: "Go put this number in location 3."  More interesting instructions are like: "Check the number in location 7; if it is 0, go to step 8,  otherwise, continue with the next instruction."  The wonderful thing is that, with a little work, several hundreds of this sort of instruction can play a Netflix movie for you, or solve an equation, or put an astronaut on the moon.

Back when I was teaching computer science (we were already past the punched cards stage), the only way to get any instruction into the computer, at the level at which we were teaching, was through the keyboard.  The only things you could get out of the computer, was on the screen.  This made things simple.

Still, many fun things could be done with these simple tools.  By packaging large sets of instructions together, we could make our own super-instructions.  For example, we could set it up so that the computer could sort a list of numbers in increasing order!  But if we got tired of having it do that, we could have it sort 25 lists of numbers, and sort each one.  Okay, that's pretty tame, but the interesting thing here is that once you solve a basic problem, like sorting, you could package that solution into what is called generically a module, and use that module in a more complex program.  You could call your module sort, and use it as if sort was an instruction, just like Put this number in location 3 was.  You could add to the language.

Objects.  In addition to these super-instruction modules, we could invent various gadgets.  For instance, using numbers, we could make gadgets called characters!  Remember, the basic things a computer uses is numbers.  But making characters is easy; we basically say something like 65 stands for A, 66 stands for B, and so on.  So, as long as the computer knows that you're interested in characters, when you say 69, it knows you want E.

A second ago, we were talking about lists of numbers.  Well, we can really do nice lists of numbers; it only takes a bit of careful organizing (which, mercifully, the programmer does not need to do; the programming language easily takes care of it); it only needs to know how big your list is.  We can do better.  For instance, I could invent a gadget called a student record, which has a mixture of different sort of simpler gadgets: A name, a homework score, four test scores, a final score, and an average.  Now, you have seen things very much like this: this looks like a row in a spreadsheet, if you've used one of those.  Well, a spreadsheet is pretty much a huge rectangle of multi-purpose gadgets, set up so that each place can be one of several sorts of gadgets.

When Windows came along, the gadgets aspect of programming completely took over.  The new generation of gadgets were far more complex than just a name, or a score, or a list.  For instance, Microsoft programmers invented a thing called a Window that had various parts: the title bar, the width, the height, the position on the screen, any boxes in the window into which you might want to type things, how you move the window, what color the background is, and so on and so forth.  Further, Microsoft provided the gadgets it wanted you to use: it was called the Windows API,  which is short for application programming interface.  At that point, students were taught to use built-in gadgets (objects), and learn how to solve various problems with the objects that were available.  They could advance to creating their own gadgets, and fairly soon.  But now the gadget tail, or the objects, were wagging the programming dog, which was a little difficult to adapt to.  Many computer science teachers have made the transition with ease (and I, too, have taught a few courses using the new object-oriented paradigm for special purposes), but the added layer of Windows seems, to me, to obscure the transparency of the programming process.

I must be one of a small minority that rues the progress of the computer science environment.  The proportion of people going into programming has fallen off, it seems to me; most people are satisfied to just use computers, and not program them.  So millions of people are able to use word processors, such as Word or WordPerfect.  (There are others, and for free, too: Open Office Write, for instance.)  Or browsers, or spreadsheets, or PowerPoint.  I'm not even sure what the generic word for software such as PowerPoint is; something like slide show, no doubt.)

Peripherals.  The programming setup of Windows changed other things as well.  The output was still the screen, but instead of being set up to show just letters of the alphabet, it could now show pictures.  Pretty soon, it could play music, and send out messages along the lines: email.  All this could have been handled with basic object-oriented programming, but once the fully-object-oriented paradigm came to dominate the programming environment, and the accompanying languages, C, C++ and Java became the only games in town, you had to come to terms with the vagaries and peccadilloes of those languages.  Among other things, this encouraged bad programming habits among weaker programmers, because there were short cuts that they began to take en masse, which made it difficult to repair broken programs, and upgrade programs to keep up with user and hardware demands.

Operating systems did not impinge on the attention of the average citizen until a few decades ago.  These were initially supervisor programs that allowed a number of users to use the same mega-computer.  You "logged in", and used the same computer as several dozen others around you.  The operating system ran programs for you on request, such as an email program, or an editor, or a browser, or whatever.  Nobody paid much attention to what it was called.  Then, the innovators at Bell Labs designed a highly flexible operating system called UNIX, which was practically a program language on its own; you could chain together UNIX commands to make it do more interesting things.  For the record, as per Wikipedia, it was designed and implemented by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna, and intended to be a sandbox in which they played at Bell Labs.  But somehow, UNIX began to spread throughout the computer science university community, becoming something of cultural artifact; nobody could call himself a computer scientist back in the later decades of the last century and still be ignorant of UNIX.  Teaching UNIX to sophomores was important, because it could be used to illustrate problems with file management, security systems and passwords, and so on.  For some reason, almost all operating systems began to look like UNIX, for example the DOS operating systems of Microsoft, and later, the Apple operating systems.  It was always considered open source; in other words, anyone was permitted to port it to their computers, within limits.

Today, of course, we are familiar with Android, the operating system developed by Google, which is a descendant of UNIX, via Linux, which is an adaptation of UNIX to the PC architecture.  (In fact, UNIX has been adapted to most computers available today.)

The task that computer educators face today is to find a balance between (*) teaching the cultural environment of programming versus programming, (*) general principles of programming problem-solving versus specific solutions, (*) applications in a peripheral-rich environment versus those in an environment of a simple set of outputs and inputs, (*) choosing between a programming environment specifically designed for beginners, and a trivial application for real-world hardware, such as a smart phone.

It used to be that, at my school, we taught basic programming to even nursing students.  The board that accredited nursing degrees required that every graduate nurse had to have a certain minimum of exposure to computers, since they could not anticipate in which direction medical technology would advance over the next few years.  Today, of course, nurses would never consider learning programming, but would settle for experience with hospital software of various kinds.  Regrettably, programming is evolving into a game for specialists only, and I am rooting for this process to be slowed, halted, or reversed.

Finally, women in computer science are increasingly alarmed at the drop off in the proportion of women going into the math and computer science area.  It has been found that women make excellent programmers.  In fact, some of the earliest applied mathematicians and computer scientists were women, at a time when we would not have expected women to go into any technical field at all.  (In fact, Hedy Lamarr, a well known Hollywood actress, invented a method for disguising the control signal of torpedoes in WW2.  Aspects of her work is said to be used in wireless security technology, but I might have misunderstood this piece of information.)

Into this environment comes the Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer you can buy for around $35, which was intended to encourage British kids to get interested in computer programming.  The very fact that it was an absolutely stripped-down piece of circuitry made it completely flexible.  It was to hardware what Linux was to software.  Now, four years after the first model was introduced, the third generation has even Bluetooth built in.  So much for basics!  On the plus side, more people are likely to get into it (already 8,000,000 Raspberry Pi devices have been sold, worldwide), which means that interest in programming could rise.

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Klass: Grata and Non-Grata Personae in the New Order

In the chaotic world of the current calendar year, some patterns are emerging.

President Trump's hallmark is apparently inconsistency.  At one time I sincerely believed that it was a signature characteristic that was carefully engineered, but it appears that it emerges naturally; in the Brownian Motion of Trump's responses to media reports, the randomness of the editorial angle on the news of the day is amplified by Trump's irrational understanding of those angles.  But another characteristic property is also emerging: prejudice.

There are blocks of the population that Trump likes, and those he does not like, and he is not shy about being found out.  We know he prefers what he views as Traditional Americans : White, Anglo-Saxon citizens (in contrast to immigrants and blacks).  He prefers men around him in the White House, except for departments that he thinks of as being inessential, such as Education.  In fact, he prefers people who stick to any prejudices similar to his own, and if they do not care to defend those prejudices, so much the better!

But, on second glance, there are a good many Hispanics and other ethnicities not considered traditionally WASP in his circle.  What has qualified these people to work for him?  They're affluent.  So you can be a member of a minority, as long as you're rich.  In a recent statement he said that he preferred to put people with money in charge of social services because they're accustomed to handling money.  Unfortunately, his phrasing of this criterion was somewhat tactless.  It boiled down to: do you want to have someone who's never handled a lot of money being in charge of these things?  Of course you don't!

How can we simplify this sorting of people into two groups: those allowed to take government responsibility, and everybody else?  It appears to be based on his assessment of some kind of class. We all have our own idea of what constitutes class in the sense of "That guy has class."  Of course we're talking about president Trump here, so many of us use the word differently than he does.  He has the class of an oil sheikh making a cash offer for your wife.  "How much?  How about $1000? No?  $10,000?  OK, $100,000, and I'll throw in a Mercedes."  So, if you have money, you automatically have class.  Let's spell it Klass, to distinguish it from the usual kind.

People who need Medicaid, evidently, are of the No Klass kind.  In fact, if you don't have a job, you're Low Klass.  If you had to actually apply for a job, you're probably Lower Klass than if you got one from your dad.

Politicians of the last several decades have tried very hard not to appear to be influenced by class politics (except of course economic class politics, which is impossible to avoid; Reagan and Romney had to dog-whistle-ize economic class politics).  When prejudice becomes an open issue in any campaign, the tone of the campaign goes right through the floor, and we've seen that happen.  Even many of president Trump's supporters are not happy with race politics, which gives me hope.

This is all very confusing to me, because I was brought up Methodist (though I am not one now), and according to our trade union rules, gambling was a sin.  This makes it very hard for me to take any sort of Casino King seriously.  Every time I see Trump in the news, I immediately see a slot machine. But I'm trying; this is serious stuff.

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