Mark Twain's truth

I was reminded of the wisdom of Mark Twain when running across the following quote. It's simple truth seems all to relevant in today's circumstance.

"There are three kinds of lies... Lies, damn lies and statistics."

The oligarchy of our society has unfortunately used this truth to their advantage and to the detriment of majority. Not only have I experienced this first hand in the school system I taught in for 13 years but the scope of these "Statistics" has been brilliantly exposed through the HBO series the Wire. Below is and excerpt from an interview of the creator of the Wire David Simon by Bill Moyers on the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS earlier this year that is an all to familiar occurrence throughout our society.

"DAVID SIMON: Well, and facts-- one of the themes of THE WIRE really was that statistics will always lie. That I mean statistics can be made to say anything.

BILL MOYERS: Yes, one of my favorite scenes, in Season Four, we get to see the struggling public school system in Baltimore, through the eyes of a former cop who's become a schoolteacher. In this telling scene, he realizes that state testing in the schools is little more than a trick he learned on the police force. It's called "juking the stats." Take a look.

[...]

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL: So for the time being, all teachers will devote class time to teaching language arts sample questions. Now if you turn to page eleven, please, I have some things I want to go over with you.

ROLAND "PREZ" PRYZBYLEWSKI: I don't get it, all this so we score higher on the state tests? If we're teaching the kids the test questions, what is it assessing in them?

TEACHER: Nothing, it assesses us. The test scores go up, they can say the schools are improving. The scores stay down, they can't.

PREZ: Juking the stats.

TEACHER: Excuse me?

PREZ: Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and major become colonels. I've been here before.

TEACHER: Wherever you go, there you are."

Greed and power are the catalysts that create these "Statistics" created by professionals eager to improve their position and status in their profession. The above example focuses on the law enforcement and education but "Statistics" can and are used for any number of "Improvements" needed to provide proof of job well done to the voting public.

Statistics are often used as smoke and mirrors to hide the real truth. For instance. Educators have known for as long as there have been teachers that the most affective way to improve education is to lower the student teacher ratio. Educators know that the optimum size for most elementary school classes would be 1 teacher for every 15 students or less. But with the creative use of "Statistics" those educators can readily prove through "proper" testing that we are indeed educating our youth. But are we?

Teaching students how to take and pass tests does have some merit to a point but it does fall short in the long term. It just teaches students how to retain the facts that we choose long enough to regurgitate them back. Good education is teaching students not tests.

It seems that we have in all our sophistication forgotten the real purpose of education. The most fundamental purpose of education is to teach children how to learn. Even one of the greatest teachers of all time was a proponent of this philosophy if I am not mistaken. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life". Learning how to learn is the foremost purpose of education. As a bonus it would be nice to instill a passion for learning as well.

All a teacher can hope for is to send the student out the door with those two virtues. A passion for learning and the skills how to. Teaching for tests is really only for the teachers and administrators to give them an opportunity to pat themselves on the back and give them a false sense of security that they have educated our children.

American Politics or WTF

I can't take it anymore!

The crap I keep hearing from the political right in the good 'ol USA is unbelievable, and its now time for me to voice my opinion and state some actual truths about some of the absolute lies and propaganda spewing forth from the political right and the left as well but mainly from the right. Before I get deep in to my diatribe let me share with you who I am and where I am coming from in hopes to ad some credibility to my thoughts.

I am an American Citizen by birth and my family tree sees our family taking root in America, Stamford Connecticut to be exact, in 1630. But now for most of my 55 years I have been living in Canada since 1967. Living outside the USA and the propaganda machine that exists affords one a clearer picture of the truth. So I think that is where I will start. The Propaganda machine of the USA.

Americans residing in the physical USA really have no idea that there is a propaganda machine and that they are actually affected by it. I would like to think that this machine is not some evil plot by some secret government agency trying to control the world but who knows for sure. What is far more likely and in the spirit of free enterprise this "machine" is available to anyone with deep enough pockets willing to support their cause Via the media and special interest lobby groups. It used to be when I was growing up that the media meant advertising but now it actually means the news broadcasters themselves. The dribble that claims to be news on channels like FOX and CNN and others is actually just harmless entertainment at the best and down right lies and propaganda at the worst.

Americans are drowning in this crap and really have no choice except to turn of the TV. News papers which housed and supported honest journalism in the past are being extinguished because the internet has created news for free and the internet cannot pay honest journalists. So as time goes on and the internet evolves finding the truth as an American becomes harder and harder. But I digress.

It took me around twenty years of residing outside the USA to actually become aware of how strongly this propaganda machine had affected me. Even to this day, 42 years later, I still get teary eyed when I hear the Star Spangled Banner on July the 4th. But with so much time having past my brain can actually sort why these tears still come. It's because that every school day morning for 9 years I was made to recited the pledge of allegiance. As a teacher now I understand how this works psychologically. I know that I will never be rid of these tears but I am aware enough now to know how it works.

Now Americans listen to this very carefully! This same basic principle is being used on you every day as you watch the news or read the paper or surf the net for information. The daily repetition of lies and propaganda can be made out to be the truth. Our politicians, special interest lobbyists, and governments all know the power of this repetition. It is so powerful in fact that you cannot be affected even if you are aware of it given enough exposure. These repeated lies at the very least create a sense of doubt. You can't help but let the tears come. Let me give you a real example.

My mother-in-law sent my daughter an article describing Canadian health care supposedly written by a Canadian. Grandma was asking her if she felt this was an honest description of the Canadian system. The article was so obviously written by a member of the AMA, Pharmaceutical, HMO and or Insurance lobbyist group to put fear and concern into the public I about puked. It was this biggest line of bullshit twisting the truth into fear I wanted to scream.

Ok, How come I am qualified to know the truth. Good question. And I would have to answer that I am qualified to answer this from first hand experience of both systems.

To make a long story short my experience with the American health care system led my family to loose everything they had (houses, property, savings) and had them start
over because they were trying to save their only son (me). Now on the other hand in Canada our family went through births, 3 different cancer treatments, a hysterectomy and countless other doctor visits and small surgeries without once being refused treatment because we were poor or had no insurance. We can choose our own doctors, get second opinions etc. All this without having to worry how to pay for the service. Our taxes are a bit more but not by that much and it is a far better trade off then the fear that a good portion of Americans are living with day to day.

Don't believe one word that those against a national health care are saying about the Canadian system. The Canadian system works. The American system is broken. Of course the HMO's, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and the AMA are going to try there very best to protect their cash cow by what ever means. But please, do your selves a favor and support a national health care system in the USA.

True Americans will have to eventually stand up to these powers and take their country back. Why you allow the Rush Limbaugh's of the world to have political clout is a huge mystery to the rest of the world. To the rest of the world Rush Limbaugh sounds as credible as the Supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Anyway more to come on why Nationalism is the biggest danger in the world today.

Announcing Weed Music Ltd.

Well as you can see I have been busy with the Christmas season and eBay stuff, but come the end of January and with the new changes announced by eBay, which I will not go into detail at this time, I decided it would be to our best interest to create another venue for the products that we sell on eBay. So over the past 6 weeks I created a new website for our retail and now web store call Weed Music Ltd. .

Not only does it information about our music lessons but it contains a shopping cart with a great shipping calculator module for Canadian eSellers that uses Canada Post's web services to calculate shipping and it all hooks up to PayPal for payment. It also has a back end desktop administration application that hooks up the Blackthorne database to the website database and takes care of inventory updates as well as processing orders from the website.

I will be offering the shopping cart and shipping calculator modules and custom programing for any who want or need my services through my Konbrio Software website

Now I am off to do some more blogs and lenses etc in an attempt to get more traffic.

It's been a while - lots going on

Well where do I start to get caught up on all the things that have been going on lately?
May be I should make a list.

1. Weed Music is back at it with lessons etc, so I have my daily duties with that

2. My eBay sales have been steadily increasing as I have been working hard at it. Sending off packages answering questions etc. That reminds me I need to order more stuff to sell.

3.I have created a new site to help boost traffic to my eBay store and help folks find the right guitar part. It's called giitarparts.com. It has a nifty little part finder data base where customers can search for part numbers by part size to find the best match for their guitar.

4. I have created or actually revamped my wifes Website, LauraWeed.com. Laura is a very talented composer and arranger and was not getting to it as often as she should have as she was hesitant to ask me to do the updates.
So I totally revamped the look but the main thing I have done is to automate the update process so Laura can do it all herself without having to ask me to add songs or make changes. What I did was to add and update the SQL 2000 database tables and stored procedures. I then created a desk top application that links to the data base for Laura so she can update, upload, edit all the songs, Titles, Midi and PDF files, the prices and right from her computer she composes on and the code sets the e commerce presentation automatically with the correct songs, categories and prices and does all the stuff a shopping cart should. It also has all the code to interface with Paypal. Once the items have been paid for and the site receives notice from PayPal it automatically sends out the songs to the buyer in PDF format attached in an Email. Works really well. Anyway its the best thing I have done and Laura is hardly to be seen as she feels in total control of her composing. It will be interesting to see how productive she can become.

5. I have totally redone the original Music Teacher's Office and have renamed it to Private Music Teacher's Office. It is really MTOPro with the music school features removed. Features like multiple teachers and studios, Group lessons and payroll. Doing this makes it much easier to maintain code. I also added an advertising component to the lesson pages where I might just start to generate some revenue. I am really excited about this upgrade and hope lots of folks take advantage of this offer as it is free.

6. Janelle's birthday is tomorrow but we are not going to celebrate until the 3rd of November. Mainly because we are off this weekend to Bigfork to celebrate Flo & Joe Nelsons 70th yes thats right 70th wedding anniversary. They were really great friends with my parents and if I did not show up my mother would haunt me. Besides it will be great fun. Janelle has agreed to baby sit Annie for us and she will be able to have a big party at our big house so it will all work out fine.

7. And finally I think, the hard drive on our till computer blew up yesterday & I had to replace the thing what a hassle. Anyway thats it for now

10 Action packed days

Well it's been an action packet ten days.

Jerry Sprunger called to let me know that his father Elmer Sprunger died last Monday Aug. 27nd. Elmer died on Wed. Aug. 22 2007. He was a famous wild life artist, cartoonist and naturalist who lived his life in Bigfork Montana. The funeral was on Thursday so we left here on Wed. and came back on Friday in time to see Janelle present her graduate thesis to an international conference.

Elmer grew up with my Dad and I grew up with Jerry so its more like family than friends. So even though it was sad Elmer lived life on his terms and all one could really say is: Elmer, Well Done!

Then over weekend I put the part finder data base together on the Weedsellit4u.com website. Other finders search by make and model but that is very hard to maintain, so I took the approach to search by size. I will eventually add the search by model but that will take sometime. I also added some informational pages from the graphtech site that helps buyers measure and install guitar nuts and saddles. I hope it is of help to buyers.

Then Tuesday was a busyday as it was the first day back to teaching for Weed Music so we are back at it.

Sunday Morning Update

After two cups of coffee while taking care of eBay correspondence and reading the news this fine Sunday morning I thought it time to make another post. But what to post about. Well I guess just about some of the events over the past five days.

I spent some time with Laura helping her set up her first blog about her composing, arranging and music stuff. She is starting to see the benefits of blogging for her website as it adds links to it and hopefully more traffic to her site. She titles her blog creatingmusic4u. She is a most talented musician with an awesome ear, she is blessed with perfect pitch. She has a Bachelor of Music from the University of Montana and has her ARCT from the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music. Anyway more teachers should be making use of her compositions and arrangements for their students. She has taught piano for ever and knows what works with students and not.

I have been working on a part finder database that I will implement in the WeedSellit4U website. One of the most time consuming things about selling parts on eBay is answering all the questions from buyers asking will this part fit my brand "X" guitar. It is really frustrating as it is really almost impossible to give them the answer the want and need. Since there are literally thousands of guitar makes and even more models of each make it is really impossible for use to know which part will go with every guitar as we don't have the specifications of every guitar on earth. Another factor is that back in the day many guitar nuts and saddles were custom made by the guitar tech, and even now when a tech fits a part they have to modify the "tailor" made parts anyway. So with that I am attempting to create a tool that will help get folks to a part that is close.

Now Graphtech has a search function on their site but risking insulting them it is lacking. You can search by Brand and model but I believe it would be really impossible to come up with a database of all makes and models even the most popular, never mind trying to maintain such a database. Having said that I will include a Make and model search but I will be including a search by size. You will be able to find parts that come close to the size you have entered. If you need an acoustic nut that is X inches in length, width and height the search will find all the nuts that are greater or equal to the measurments you enter. This way it will not matter what brand you have so much but can you make it work for you guitar. Hopefully this will be a service to all customers.

The good news this week is that the Seattle Seahawks beat up Minnesota last night. The 'Hawks were in much better form last night. Lets see if they can keep it up.

'Till next time
Gehres.

Starting to have a plan

Well over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of research and snooping around websites thanks to stumbleupon.com. I have been finding lots of cool sites that will be beneficial to my goals.

The main things I am seeing to attract more traffic to my sites and therefore more sales is proper links between blogs and my various sites for one, another is having great content and third is to be active in my blogs and discussion boards and sites like squidoo.com.

Another thing that is important is that I have had to create more blogs to accommodate my many endeavors or this blog will become unfocused and a pain in the neck. It will also generate more links etc.

My endeavors are:
1. Weedsellit4u.com / eBay sales - this is my money maker for now & I need to eat and pay the rent. I also am going to create a separate blog for this. This will involve work on squidoo.com com as well. Not to mention the efforts I have made to add more traffic via marketing etc.
2. Music Teacher's Office - This project has taken years to develop and I would really like to see some monetary results from this project.
3. Konbrio Software and Bigfork - This project has also taken years and is an excellent eBay tool that should somehow pay more.
4. Laura Weed.com - My wifes website of all her great arrangements and original compositions. I need her to start a blog on this and set up a squidoo site to help get more traffic.

So it looks like I will work on four blogs, Gehres Weed, Music Teacher's Office, Konbrio/Bigfork and weedsellit4u to help build traffic to our sites.

I have also have some ideas on getting more revenue out of Squidoo.com as well.

Closing now as I have many other things to blog & do.
Gehres