Chapman Kids Blog

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Month: October 2015

Being part of the club

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On Monday, October 26, 2015

In Business, culture

An article titled How Big Government and Big Business Stick It to U.S. Small Businesses along with a conversation I had with my sister, Julia about our high school years. The article stands on its on. I believe what it says is true, but this article is about a peripheral phenomenon that has to do with society at large and being on the inside or on the outside. Julia and I agreed that just about everyone in our high school felt like they were outsiders. Everyone felt like the sports kids, the band kids, the academic kids and even the church kids were part of some ill-defined, but cohesive group some set of common knowledge and connection that made them part of “the club.” The reality was that no one really felt very much connected to anything at all. Everyone was desperate to figure out how to gain membership to the club were inadequate to the task. The other reality is that there was no club.

I think the article about big business and big government is really just about adults playing that same high school game. The difference is that there actually is a club at this level. Many people have the connections, knowledge, mentorship and motivation to get into the club. It is not formal, but it exists. You can see it particularly clearly in politics. The small business man or community member goes to congress and becomes a monster. It transcends party lines. It is true in business, too. That is not to say all people in big business and/or big government sell out in that way, just a lot of them do. The funny deal is that it is no different from high school in that it is all about people who are in the club versus those who are not and who gets to chose which is which.

The sad part is this phenomena exists not only in business and education, but in the church, the military, sports (which is, arguably, just big business and big government) and just about everywhere else in society where people organize themselves to do good things.

Betty Blonde #414 – 02/6/2010
Betty Blonde #414
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Waiting

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On Tuesday, October 20, 2015

In Family, House and home, Milo and Sarah

Lorena and I enjoy our lives as apartment dwellers. We started our marriage in a small one-bedroom apartment in Boynton Beach, Florida and enjoyed that, too. We keep thinking we will move into a house soon, but we are not sure when things will stabilize with Grandpa Milo (Alzheimer’s) and Grandma Sarah. So, we continue to enjoy the ability to walk across the parking lot to Fred Meyer or (more often) across the street to Albertsons. We actually drove very little until this week when the Oregon drizzle finally hit. We are a one car family, so Lorena drove me to work in the morning. I walked a mile and a half each morning to have lunch with her at Wendy’s (cup of chili) or Subway (6″ turkey sandwich), then two miles home at night.

Lorena takes two classes at the community college so she has either homework or class every night. I work on three projects (GaugeCam and two others) beside my day job, so I have too much stuff to do, too. The reality, though, is that we are just working and waiting. Life is waiting, but usually the waiting, in our case, has been a function of our desire to accomplish something and the waiting involved work. Now though, the waiting does not have much to do with us, but the folks. We are getting stuff done, but the length of the stay in our current situation has little to do with anything over which we have much control. And still, it is nice. Since there is nothing really we can do other than be where we are and do what we are doing, we have less about which to worry than in previous circumstances. We plan to enjoy it while it lasts.

Betty Blonde #413 – 02/15/2010
Betty Blonde #413
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The Reproducibility Project: Psychology

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On Tuesday, October 13, 2015

In Education

There is a great article in the Weekly Standard titled Making It All Up, the Behavioral Sciences Scandal about how over 60 percent of published results in the field of Psychology are not reproducible. Here and here are articles from the journal Nature on the same subject along with another one from the journal Science. I sent my daughter, Kelly a link to the articles. She is working on a PhD in Marketing at University of Washington and takes research methodology classes from both the Sociology department and the Psychology department. Replicability is a big topic in those classes. Kelly made the argument that research done in marketing does not suffer from the same problem as in the social sciences or even the hard sciences because the measure of the quality of the research is whether more stuff gets sold. That is the point–selling stuff. So if the research does not lead to new insights into how to sell stuff, the funding dies. I think I might buy that idea. But then again, it was a Marketing researcher who told me that.

Betty Blonde #412 – 02/12/2010
Betty Blonde #412
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A day at the beach with Christian

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On Tuesday, October 13, 2015

In General

Christian flew up from Arizona to help us celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary. We wanted to run up to Washington yesterday, but I had work commitments and we ended up going over to Depoe Bay for lunch. The Oregon Coast is an amazingly beautiful place, the leaves were in their fall colors and the sun was shining. We could not have had a better time. It was great to get caught up with Christian and his research which is now well beyond my ability to understand. I would love to take the time to dive into it, but seems to be getting more complex by the minute–the time commitment to learn it is probably now greater than the time and brain-cells I have left in my entire life.
Lorena and Christian at Lincoln City Oct. 12, 2015

Betty Blonde #411 – 02/11/2010
Betty Blonde #411
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23 Years

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On Monday, October 12, 2015

In Family

Lorena and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary on Saturday. The picture below is of Lorena getting a “Mani-Pedi” with our dear friend Gladys on Friday night before the festivities started. It was pretty awesome. Christian came home from Arizona State to help us celebrate. We are headed to the coast for the day today!
Lorena and Gladys mani-pedi before 23rd wedding anniversary

Betty Blonde #410 – 02/10/2010
Betty Blonde #410
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Justifying government school for all the wrong reasons

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On Tuesday, October 6, 2015

In Education, Homeschool, Socialization

Here is an article by a woman who tries to justify her decision not to homeschool her kids. All of us homeschoolers have had to put up with the demands of ignorant meddlers who want to know how we can justify not putting our kids into traditional school. It is kind of nice that a few people are starting to get that it is traditional (and especially government) school that needs justification. Still this woman really demonstrated she has not given homeschool a fair shake nor even any depth of thought when she said:

What we’re doing here is hard. Most conservative parents want to raise kids who can live in the world without being fully assimilated to it. This is a daunting project, and there are many ways to go wrong. You can overprotect your kids. You can underprotect your kids. Some parents blight their children’s futures by monitoring them too closely, never allowing them to develop the emotional maturity needed to cope with disappointment and failure. Other parents will look back in 20 years and wonder, “Why didn’t I intervene before that problem became serious?”

Homeschooling is becoming more popular because it gives parents more control over the various stages of their children’s development. That’s readily understandable, but homeschooling can’t be a magic bullet, because kids do eventually need to learn how to navigate an unsympathetic world where most people do not love them. This is the grain of truth in the often-lazy “socialization” argument against homeschooling, and parents who reply “I wish to socialize my children myself” are missing the point. Your kids cannot spend their whole lives in the bosom of their natal family.

The socialization, overprotection, “need to learn hot to navigate an unsympathetic world” memes display profound ignorance of how most homeschools actually work. No thoughtful homeschool program leaves kids to “spend their whole lives in the bosom of their natal family,” nor is that an aim of any homeschool parents of my acquaintance. Actually, it is the traditional school students who wallow in the bosom of teachers inculcated with hard left political correctness by the mind numbing deweyite teacher education programs that are the order of the day.

So, while we are quite pleased that you feel the need to justify the dumping of your kids into these cesspools of progressivism, your justification and arguments are not well served by holding up straw men.

Betty Blonde #409 – 02/09/2010
Betty Blonde #409
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Christian passes his PhD quals

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On Monday, October 5, 2015

In Education

Studying Singapore Math in Albany
The kids and I spent many, many hours laying on the floor or sitting at the kitchen table or on the sofa correcting homework, reading, drawing, etc., etc., etc. On Friday, Christian hit a new milestone by passing his PhD qualifying examination. He has not finished his schooling yet, but has moved from PhD student status to PhD candidate status. He has anywhere between two and a half and four years before he has a chance of finishing, but that he passed his PhD qualifying examination on Friday was a very big deal. Many of the people with whom I have spoken on the topic say that is often the most difficult single part of the PhD process. Lorena and I looked at a bunch of old pictures while we celebrated and got a little nostalgic. Mostly we reminisced about how fast it all went. All-in-all, because we sent the kids to government school for three years (counting kindergarten), we homeschooled them only a total of seven years and one of Christian’s years was really preschool. We would not trade those years for anything.

Betty Blonde #408 – 02/08/2010
Betty Blonde #408
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Christian has oral PhD quals today

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On Friday, October 2, 2015

In Education

Christian PhD Quals imageWikipedia says that PhD Preliminary exams (Prelims) and PhD Qualifying exams (Quals) are the same thing:

The use of the term Prelim (short for preliminary examination) varies and is synonymous with qualifying exam, but it generally refers to an examination (usually one from a sequence) that qualifies a student to continue studies at a higher level, and/or allow the student to comprehend his/her studies and see how prepared they are for the looming examinations. It is almost a gauge on how knowledgeable one is within the chosen subject. These exams are also referred to as Quals at some institutions.

He has been preparing for the quals for over a year and will present the research he has performed since he arrived at Arizona State and be questioned by his committee on both the research and his classes. It is a big deal to have this behind him. Everything has been on hold while he prepared for the last couple of months and he is chomping at the bit to move on. Many say this is the hardest part of the PhD, even harder than the doctoral dissertation and thesis defense at the end. It starts at 2:30 PM today and we are excited to see how he does.

Betty Blonde #407 – 02/05/2010
Betty Blonde #407
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