(This my daughters present public school teachers are amazing… this obviously isn’t reflective of the whole US or even the whole Bay Area… but at the time when I felt this, it did feel like being surrounded by a gang of public school teachers eager to get on their Harley’s to burn some rubber on the ECL…)

I’ve been nursing ego wounds from a week of trying to speak with my daughter’s summer camp teachers. These are public school teachers are called upon to teach summer camp in an unnamed Palo Altan school in an unnamed summer camp.

The head teacher has these two or three carpools to take her to her after school tutoring in Los Altos. So she has her carpool mates come in on the spot at fifteen minutes after class concludes and loudly scream in to the room “EXCUSE ME, BUT SHE HAS TO LEAVE, WE HAVE A CARPOOL WAITING” and some times remarks like “oh my God, mornings and afternoons?!!” Or “God! It’s summer, she can’t be having any fun doing camp work!” The teacher to whom I was speaking to kept on talking and smiling but never once looks up to stop her friends from loudly and rudely interrupting my speech.

It is well rehearsed and well practiced. On all occasions it was in front of my daughter. As her primary mentor I wish I could have taken these opportunities to show her how to deal with boisterous, possibly racist or sexist, bullies at school. However, to these white female teachers, I could not stand up. We rush out of there as fast as humanly possible to avoid one of them taking the shouting up a notch. We do not want to be first in a teacher shooting students and parents incident.

I mean did they care that I was also there at 3pm in the afternoon? Did they care that I had a serious question for the teacher responsible for the class? On some days, I was picking up material so I can help my daughter with work that her teacher couldn’t teach her. Has the teacher no shame in her failure? Public school teachers really really suck here. I mean what kind of jerk behavior is this for teacher, to rush from one job to another and just half-assing each class. What kind of people set up these ass-hole friends to rudely prevent any very polite but important questions about their students!? (That is to say, there is and an Indian parent they interrupt as well, it’s definitely not just against my Chinese family)

I was politely warned that the class has a lot of foreigners. I suppose I should have gotten the message and left the class ? Services won’t be that good for minorities…

Now, the other side of the coin is the problem that her head teacher at camp is actually with her all day. Certainly, I am proud that I didn’t become angry to respond aggressively to the rude and inappropriately irresponsible behavior. I suppose if I complained, my daughter may be targeted further by these other people, I guess they are also teachers at camp and may be present during the day. I never, in my child’s life, for a moment thought I’d fear one of the schools faculty giving my daughter a talk down during the day, until I feared it this week.

What is a parent to do?

I grew up in America in the 90’s in a public school. (Recall movies from this era include the likes of Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds, when they made movies about dedication and innovations in California public schools) It actually got a Blue Ribbon from then President Clinton the year I graduated. Some of the teachers were boisterous for sure (and some quiet, some jocks, some queers, some queens, I dare say the same human spectrum as we have in California today) but definitely very considerate and for all I can see gives their whole life to the job. The population there were very distinct–you can very easily tell a teacher of German ancestry from a French one and from an English one, and I was obvious a recent Chinese immigrant–there were not many mixed or Latin American heritage, but nobody really let any of that burden themselves. They saw talent where it grew and nurtured it. They stay late after class and after school on demand. Sometimes they spend their own money for school supplies. Even the least famous teacher at school paid full attention to their students when they asked questions. They make almost no money, but teaches great classes that inspires us to work hard to learn. The good old days when teachers were actually interested in a successful teaching/learning experience where knowledge is imparted. The teachers were actually interested in the stuff they taught. You can sense their excitement to teach each new topic. You can hear their happiness when you learned as a student. You can feel their pain and sadness at each and everyone of your failures. What a great life I’ve had if only to have known that kind of people once. I feel so sorry for my kids’ generation…

None of this gives me an idea for an aggressive response, a response in kind, or an effective response. But at least my head is in the right gear now, no longer aloft in my memories of how things were in an ancient time.

…

P.s. okay, wise-asses, I hear you mumble, why don’t you work harder yourself to be a rich and powerful corporate leader, and then surely your problems will melt away. That’s not the point. The problem is that I lose faith in the public school system that I help to fund. These teachers are teaching people that my children will have to live and work with when they grow up. They teach the people who will pay for my social security. They teach the people who will drive my Uber… It is irresponsible for me to see this situation and to not take note of it. It is irresponsible to not consider how to fix it.

.

.

…

While writing this, I heard a pro Union speaker on NPR, Jane McLevy, something about “…there are people out there who are organic-only vegitarian, electric car driving, opponents.of teacher unions…” And also, “Silicon Valley is just as evil and bad for society as Wall Street…”

So, that’s really loaded comments. I’m organic vegitarian and electric car driver for over a decade, and I’m presently complaining about teachers of public schools. My complaint is that union teachers and public schools aren’t really doing a good job. It is not that unions are bad, it’s just the quality of the profession needs to rise to the demands of a 21st century world. Union can help that cause.

For example, wouldn’t it be nice if our law require that any time there is a union, there be at least two unions? The unions will compete with each other to help teachers work more effectively. When all the teachers are in the same union, there is no incentive for it to work efficiently and effectively.

Assuming, that is, the people who think and speak about this matter, really want something “good for society” and not just “more pay for less work”

But they are right, Silicon Valley is certainly very evil in many ways. But think about it this way, wouldn’t you want two devil’s competing instead of one devil? They interfere with each other and hopefully produce something better. Right? We want something better right?

P is population under governance.

L is the available policies or laws that can be put into practice and enforcement.

Let there be a utility function for each individual ‘s benefit under political system . Furthermore let the function be polymorphic and accepts where

Let the government have the sole objective of optimization of some utility of its people, then Utilitarian says the desired governance chooses

And furthermore, they define that

The rowlsian would stipulate that selection should be

It imposes this procedural restrictions on the family of allowable to mean those that satisfy “equality of opportunity.”

This rendering largely based on Michael Snadel’s Justice class on edX.

Ehem, excuse my simplicity and incompleteness and some lazy abridgement.

Once upon a time, on a far-far-away farm, there lived a little red hen.

One days, she had a craving for a Tres Leches. But the farm on which she lived just ran out of flour and milk.

“Would any one like to help me make a Tres Leches?” Clucked the little red hen.

“Not I !” quacked the duck

“Not I !” Honked the goose

“Not I !” Meow the cat

“Not I !” Barked the dog

“Not I !” Oinked the pig

“Not I !” Bleeted the sheep

“Not I !” Neighed the horse

Uhoh, this is turning into the toxic antisocial non-collaborative farm like way back when little red hen was truly little and wanted bread. She had therapy, physical and otherwise, from the fallout of one stinking loaf of bread for years…

But more importantly, little red hen knows the value of collaboration. She knows that she faces competition for the farm lands and the mill and even the oven. She knows that she doesn’t make any of the multitude of milks needed by the cake, although the egg in the recipe is bespoke.

She musters every ounce of her Hen Power and flies up to the cow. (Yes she flew, she’s unclipped.)

“Cow, I’m going to make you an offer you cannot refuse” clucked the little red hen, “all the milk I need for options to eat half a basis point of my Tres Leches, and that’s my final offer.” The cow, one of the most obese and lonely animal on the farm flutters her eyelids and says yes with gladness, “I’d love to be part of your team, little red hen” for she knew she cannot afford to let this chance pass her by. And plus little red hen already had a successful entrepreneurship experience, she can make bread, “all by herself”, and cow really wished she had part of that bread. And the equity was good. Half basispoint was unheard-of for an off-phylum contributor like cow in this market. It was indeed an offer she cannot refuse.

Now, more loudly, little red hen clucked “would anyone like to help me till the land, sow the seeds, water, debug and harvest the wheat? We also have to ground the wheat into flour and then whip the cream, evaporate and condense the milk and assemble and bake the cake”

“Not I !” quacked the duck

“Not I !” Honked the goose

“Not I !” Meow the cat

“Not I !” Barked the dog

“Not I !” Oinked the pig

“Not I !” Bleeted the sheep

“Not I !” Neighed the horse

“Then we will do it ourselve,” they mooed and clucked in unison, as a team should vocalize, and that’s what they did. The averagely lean and mean team of little red hen and cow set to work hard, and hard work it was.

The chick stood high chaired and oversaw the project management, QA(aka debugging) and egg production. The cow quietly enjoyed tilling, planting, watering, harvesting, milling, milking and kneading. While the labor was consuming, it was a learning and growing experience for her. Their wonderful diversity of biology and culture was the key to the successful collaboration: their whole being, mind and body, fit their role so perfectly that one can’t help but think that they were brought together on this piece of earth just for that reason! This whole thing seem to have design and meaning before and behind it.

The team iterated frequently and tested their code and product thoroughly while making it. And so when it came out of the oven “for the first time,” it is already perfect.

“Will anyone like to eat this cake? Clucked the little red hen.

“I will !” quacked the duck

“I will !” Honked the goose

“I will !” Meow the cat

“I will !” Barked the dog

“I will !” Oinked the pig

“I will !” Bleeted the sheep

“I will !” Neighed the horse

And before they came running, both hen and cow bursted out laughing, heartily, at long last.

“Not by the air in our chimney shim jim will you have any part of our cake.” The two continued as market sentiment rose for the Tres Leches, and demand flew through the roof…, or, as it were, their chiminey. They ate their cake and laughed merrily.

And they lived happily ever after.

These are the worst days of a time which one particularly painful aspect of life hangs overhead.

On a day like this, the highlight of the morning is the availability of a corner spot at Pete’s coffee. So welcoming, waiting for me with open arms, so soft and moist, it just feels so right… I quickly lay my shoddy claim to it, shedding my wintry coat over it to cover my corner seat at the corner table as if that will secure it for myself in perpetuity and in clandestiny. The dreary dank pop pumped into my head like buckshots through a shotgun, but doesn’t bother me. This is as they say, as good as it gets.

Now recalling an interesting declaration of endeavor in Machine Teaching in an earlier blog entry. One component of the vision is the creation of useful, verifiable, efficient and generalized knowledge communication. Let’s, for the purpose of this fam-blog-based communication, call this Knowledge Science and Technology(KST, and MT-KST) representing a subset of all that is required conscience Machine Teaching. (In particular separating epistemological considerations from pedagogical considerations. Secondarily, it separates Scientific and Technological concerns from Political ones: policies, laws, monitoring and enforcement. Lastly, while MT-KST cannot be developed for computers completely independent of its KR, it is still separate from internal representations that are more geared towards internal reasoning and operations)

One puzzling question is the definition of knowledge, what is knowledge?

One stab in the dark, in the framework of MT-KST, it would seem logical to dictate that knowledge is transmittable information. Untranslatable and undescribable knowledge, while possibly worth while for the host system to organize and remember, is not worth anything to others and therefore not knowledge.

A related problem is the ROI of the effort to form such knowledge. AFAIK, nobody reads this blog as I write it. Is it worth it for me to create it? If I can derive the Fermat’s last theorem in 1ms, is it worth remembering it? If the work to create knowledge can be embedded within my own thinking and doing process, then it needn’t be externalized into knowledge as communication. For another example, it would appear to me that opening my mouth is a procedure that needs no teaching. The effort to fully teach it via information transfer is not efficient or effective. Even though it is context for eating, it is something babies do before they were born.

This far we have gathered two types of information that is surely not required in MT-KST:

• The knowledge that is not describable. A pathological example of this are statements that change meaning once interpreted: this sentence is untrue.
• The knowledge that is pre-built in the communicating systems.(Redundant idempotent communication)
• The knowledge that is trivially knowable through routine reasoning. (Performing cost-benefit analysis trading off communication costs with operating thinking costs)

What else? Can we describe knowledge further for MT-KST?

There’s a blog post of google principals for ethical AI technology. One thing that catches ones eyes is this passage

Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

Which leads me to remember some old posts of my own blog regarding the matter. Humanisitic orientation to establish anchors in an ethics proclaimation is certainly very good. The one problem it does make unclear is the nature of human beings.

For example, is technology able o ecretly drive a nail into my tire while my car is parked outside of swimming gymnasium “injury to people”? From text, it would seem that nail in the tire is not damaging to my human person. But it does damage my social-economic person. Without a functioning car, I cannot do a lot of things to be part of the society and economy, but my person, for now, is still whole.

In particular, when it comes to google, the questions will be “is my email account part of my person?” Is my house “part of my person?” A tank with high powered cannon on the turret, is not primarily designed to damage my person, but it certainly is a weapon of fairly sizable destruction relative to my house.

While I’m griping, USA always lead the world in humanist ideals and also in technology (but maybe not together) to lean on international standards is an error on both sides

Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

It lowers USA corporation to the standards of companies from countries like PR. Of China and Republic of India. While we hold every country in high esteem, they’re all functioning countries keeping their massive population alive and happy, we’re not sure how they do it is how we should do it. We don’t want to sink as low as them.

Some recent example, BitTorrent, and virtual currencies, are all things whose purpose can be construed as to contravene principals or laws of most country. So on this side of the error, the policy inhibits technological advancements.

Its hard to think, discuss and write these things when Google employs half of your friends and aquaintences. But it is worth discussing further imho.

There seems to be a fault with democracy. Those who argue that

• You can exercise a fair amount of political power by voting
• You can choose to depart a democratic system by leaving it.
• You can choose participate further by becoming politician and influencing the votes of others.

There is a matter of efficiency. Yes, in theory, an immortal participating in a democracy will get his way if he rightfully deserves it, according to the rules he agreed to. But most people are not immortal. The system, imho, is not efficient enough for most practical purposes, for us to exercise our inalienable liberties fully, or at all.

And forcing us to perform political acts, such as persuasion, can be compared to forcing us to perform physically offensive acts, on other people. Some find it unacceptably invasive and offending. Forcing us to spend time and money on politics is like depriving us of body parts or money. It seems unjustifiable.

As an example of police brutality… Recently, there was a video of a girl being beaten by police. After internet uproar, the police department posts body-cam of the same video. While the police man was short tempered, he was… By some standards, being asulted by the women under arrest. She definitely was resisting arrest.

21st century technology has not developed to the point where we can

• Measure the burtality if the arresting officer. Perhaps by means of force sensors on his gloves and clothing. It would help to estimate the exersion made by him as well as the location and power of attack on him.
• Assessing the public’s judgement of the event democratically. Perhaps by counting twitter sentiment?
• Measure the degree of resistance exercised by the girl. Perhaps by force sensors on her clothing.
• Measure the danger that the police officer and bystanders were under.

Is anybody working on the improvement of our democracy?

Do we want this type of improvements? This exercise while seemingly too restrictive for human policeperson(they cannot calibrate their motors to limit force of a punch), it is precisely the kind of system we would want to deploy when policebots are on patrol.

Since robots and other computerized systems can quickly adapt to new situations, and since they may even create new solutions to problems, as a transitional step, we should implement much more efficient democracy to assess each situation case by case.

Tesla should, for example, open up its data gathered during major accident for scrutiny by the public as well as regulatory agencies. The low-latency high-fidelity availability of data should be part of our great country’s auto-pilot licensing process.

It is our right to know and to weigh-in on these issues in a timely and effective manner.

Ps, what about privacy? Idk, but honestly, between running into a highway divide at 60mph not knowing why looking down from heaven and my wife knowing where I am driving to… I’d rather the latter than the prior, for the moment. I already changed my mind, several times, while typing that, but still, the momentary instinct is that people want to and deserve to know more.

It’s the season for reflections on familial holiday traditions. I wonder about practices ingrained in social and cultural norms. It is quite possible that some of the practices may have been designed with malicious intents, in some perspectives.

Now all you corporate or cult monitors and governmental secret police relax. I am not specifically talking about your most respectable high-functioning cultures. Although the same comment may apply, I am mainly thinking of larger and older cultures, human cultures.

I once read, news or fake news I do not recall, that the act of circumcision is a degenerate form of castration, to reduce the sexual competitiveness of the son against his father. I hope that’s fake science… But… It kind of makes sense, if you think about it… I mean, there are a lot of older men making babies with really young chicks that I observe often. So… Oh I see, you thought dad didn’t want you to compete for mom…. He was more likely thinking about his neighbors daughters, … If you think about it…

So… We should examine some other things… Like, did your mama ever tell you don’t choose the choicest material, but instead select a less pretty and less young and less demanding wife? Do you ever wonder if it was to make sure you still had energy left to take care of her? (Sustainance-wise, you sick idiot)

What about daughters, did your dad teach you to hate sex? Not even allowed to think about it until 18, and even then the scrutiny on your possible mates make it impossible. Does this life-long endoctrination that sex is bad (in almost all cultures) serve a selfish reason that he might have a chance of having you around home longer? Maybe you’ll be like countless unmarried women-child who stayed home and fed her mom and dad to their deathbed?

The question here is not necessarily the existence of these cultural practices, but more that, well, more that we have not systematically examined them critically in Scientific and rational ways. Most of what you do, the stuff that you feel you belong to, the culture and the people and the practices, when they were originally formed, the intent was not innocent.

Recall this example I think of often. For Millenniums the Chinese people bound the feet of young girls. Some say it is to relief them of the freedom to choose husband(but why would parents do this?) Some say it is beautiful, that an unbound women will not be selected for marriage due to ugliness of the feet. (Oh, and non-virgins are not marriageaterial either)

The truth of the matter is, Millenniums of men had to suffer the grotesque deformity caused by foot binding. The women cannot do chores as freely (oh, maybe that’s why the first mom and dad’s did it?) And the wrinkles and cravses it creates is home to many bacteria and foul odor. The men suffered from the establishment of this cultural stable. And yet they keep on telling their daughters: come, let’s do the damn thing, it’s good for you!

And while we’re banging on Chinese people (it is 2010’s after all) think about the population control they imported. Men had to suffer vasectomies and women abortions to keep the nation smaller and weaker. And still many enormous number of people stand tall and proud to be a party to the Party that brought population control to China.

And of course your dutiful Chinese-American will be quick to remind us that the Chinese exclusion act of the 19th century was introduced to the congress by a Californian Republican and then passed both senate and the house to be signed into law by a Republican president. Today, even in Trumpverse, there are a whole lot of Chinese-American Republicans, or those who lean right.

Can politics (and parties) be an ancient ritual that can have nonproductive implementations? Can the Republic be an antiquated construct that is begging for modern upgrade?

I conclude this brief consideration with a scene from season two of The Good Fight (Day 457) Lucca is coming home with her new born, baby-daddy by her side. All she cpuld think of is her mother’s advise, that she wants to smile at the sight of her (women) friends’ car. That the sight of her husband, the thought of abandoning her career to support his being a senator on capital hill, puts the biggest frown on her face… These scenes, are very powerful to me. I feel uneasy. I would not want my daughter to feel the way Lucca does. Her bond with her co-workers is stronger than with the man that she has sex, baby and can gain power all together! Her Mother’s advise: what do you feel when you see his car in the garage. I am unhappy that the main character of this show feels more for friends and co-workers than for her traditional-style family…. components (since Lucca and Collin are not marrying) I cannot, accept that kind of family, three adult women… Like it just wouldn’t work.

My scientific rational examination says, no, that’s not the right way to do it. My instinct says, if all looks so good, and healthy boy, a good women would be able to put the man in his rightful place in the family.–by what ever human womanly ways she may have. Otherwise, perhaps the choice of sex and partner was indeed a mistake and that all human traditions actually make sense and feet binding served an important historical purpose.

caveat emptor: I am of human kind, the kind with built in cultures.

I’ve been seeing in the news of Chinese scientists being targeted for national security investigations, arrests and prosecution in United States in the 2010’s. (Xiaoxing Xi and Sherry Chen in case bis history is conveniently foegoten) Also, recently saw the kind of charade the New York law enforcement put up when they marched the executives of Abacus bank to court in a chain gang.

I think the law enforcement are totally entitled to public arrests and demonstration of force to intimidate Chinese Americans into abiding by the law. I also think if the chain gang was illegal in any way, Abacus would have saught it out as a counter suit.

While I don’t think this is necessarily fair to Chinese Americans, I do think it is progress. Better public accusation, ostensibly by-the-book, than one million stings of disparagement and sabotage against the Chinese Americans in their daily lives and work.

It’s okay! It’s all okay, I would personally do the same to Chinese people if I had your information and cultural fear. And by cultural fear, I don’t necessarily mean the fear felt by the surviving paranoid, but the fear felt by the dominant race in the country. If I had centuries and centuries of massively successful domination, or, if I were a recently powerful race, would definitely worry about keeping it. I mean, I practically do the same thing in my domainion, right? Everyone does it, it is in the nature of our evolution. It is the basest, deepest and most unconscious bias you can theorize about. The Chinese people do the same thing in their own country, so they all are used to this. That is to say, even though this happens instinctively, it is also practiced with contemplation and rigor every where in the world.

I would do the same thing. Seriously, not that I’m running for the head of FBI, but I am fearful of Chinese people in America. Especially younger Chinese immigrants who are often ruthless cunning bastards! And I say that with great admiration to their abilities, stamina and determination, because I find it very difficult to survive among them, much less have a prospering life style of silicone valley.

There! I did it! I freely admit my animus in public. They have at times made my life excruciatingly miserable and I am unafraid to admit it. Their actions causes me pain and I dislike them for it. I am very good at misspelling Chinese names when I want to. I can find very quickly a Japanese word for a Chinese(or Asian for that matter) expression because some times I feel really guilty about my tax money is paying for retirement of some soldiers who killed Japanese in the atomic bombing, or secret policeman who captured Japanese suspects for the mass interment camps.

I share these feeling s that you feel. I am comfortable publicizing this because I think my hatred and inaction is that of a good person, superior to those of you who harbor the same and insists on participating in hidden racial manipulation agendas at work and at play. Stop all your finsglings in your little fifdoms. You should stop clandestine activities to that end and talk about this publicly. Look at Trump for an example of public, controlled and legally contestable actions!

Politically, their upbringing gives them nature pride in their home nation which is a prosperous and growing world power. Their country now has human rights and religious freedom written in their constitution, they have balance of power, I write this even as Xi gains the ability to keep the top chair for life… In this respect, their silence on their pride is worrisome as well. Come, let’s have a Chinese Pride Parade. Let there be no secrets about this, there is no need to hide it. They know already, I mean, com’on, give the people and the secret police of America some credit okay? Even though the courts rule against them, it doesn’t mean their actions were not based on very very credible information. And plus all this shows that American practices of: innocence untill proven guilty and due process of trial by peers …

Oh.. they spelled the Appellent’s name wrong in the initial rulings(CH-0752-17-0028-I-1) for the appelent. At the top it says “Xiafen Chen, appellent” in the ruling it reads “appellent Xiafen Chang”

I wouldn’t have caught the mistake myself but for my last name is Chang and I remember her to have a different family name.

I guess …

The courts can make mistakes…

too?
……….

Did they rule on the right person? Is this a case of mistake identity? Or is it a million stings of… What the fuck’s? Continuing? Another straight faced question is whether we should worry about the aptitude of the courts to accurately communicate their decision in a multicultural society; or should we be concerned about checks and balance of power of the government when secret police hacks the court’s computer to introduce this typo as a form of intimidation? Do you have any way to prove it’s not intimidation by the secret police? These seem equally likely to the typo being intentionally misspelled by a court appointed clerk.

But, alas, good effort guys! We’ll get it right next time! We will get there. This will be a great nation for all, some day.

It’s okay…

It’s okay…

It’s okay…

You know, all you hackers and crackers, and breakers, whether you work for the government, a corporation, my parents, my wife or my kids. I will always win this one in my mind that you are crap of humanity when you take my personal information and reveal it to other people. You are all scum of the earth when you take what I intend to keep private to myself and present it to other people with or without my knowledge and consent. You can hack my bank account and all my brokerage accounts and all my social network accounts and maybe even my kids and other families online accounts. But you know you will always be wrong and evil and the worst humanity ever produced in my mind. I don’t care if all your people does it this way. Were it not wrong for me to do so, I would hate you with the fervor of religious zealots hating blasphemers, homosexuals and competing religions or believes. You should suffer the consequences of having categorically immoral behavior.

But hopefully you will choose to do otherwise in the future.