Chapman Kids Blog

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

Everything I thought I knew about the left brain/right brain thing is wrong

By

On Tuesday, June 14, 2016

In culture, Science

It appears the idea that right-brain people are more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective while left-brain people are more logical, analytical and objective is just wrong. It is a complete myth that came out of work performed by Robert Sperry, a Nobel prize winning neuropsycologist who got his undergraduate degree in English and his PhD in Zoology. I think Sperry probably did some pretty good work in his day, but we also got saddled with this left-brain/right-brain meme and a gazillion pop psychology books that are based on a premise that is almost completely misplaced. It seems like Neuropsychology might be a lot like Evolutionary Psychology and much of what passes for Neuroscience (see here and here) where it is OK to just make stuff up. At any rate, here is a great article on the subject from the Wall Street Journal. The following is an excerpt from another article titled Left Brain vs. Right Brain, Understanding the Myth of Left Brain and Right Brain Dominance:

In psychology, the theory is based on the lateralization of brain function. The brain contains two hemispheres that each performs a number of different roles. The two sides of the brain communicate with one another via corpus callosum.

The left hemisphere controls the muscles on the right side of the body while the right hemisphere controls those on the left. This is why damage to the left side of the brain, for example, might have an effect on the left side of the body.

So does one side of the brain control specific functions? Are people either left-brained or right-brained? Like many popular psychology myths, this one grew out of observations of the human brain that were then dramatically distorted and exaggerated.

Machine learning

By

On Monday, June 13, 2016

In Software, Work

Professionally, I have to make a (semi) dramatic change in direction to learn some new stuff so I can do my job. I have to drop my work on my EKG project and GaugeCam for the next few months because I need to learn more about machine learning. I have done a little of it with R, Weka and OpenCV, but I have a need to delve into it more deeply to build a product that is commercially viable now so I am going to chose between learning more about R or learn about scikit-learn with Python. I am leaning toward scikit-learn because they say it is easier to learn for someone who is used to procedural languages like C/C++/Python/etc. I am actually kind of excited. I actually have real data with which I can get started and real problems I can try to solve that might be a help both commercially and altruistically. I will try to put some of my results up here as I go along.

Time to be optimistic again

By

On Saturday, June 11, 2016

In General

I know, as a Christian, there is not a whole lot of value in being pessimistic, but we all liven in a fallen world and have sinful natures, so it can be a challenge to be positive. I have to admit I have been in a little bit of a funk lately, what with the nature of the political and cultural landscape in America and around the world along with the instability of our own situation. Several events, though, came together to remind me that, in the end, life is good, true believers in Jesus have everything going for them and even though everything might not be hunky-dory right now, they will be in, what is a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of things, not only great, but literally perfect.

There is no reason not to have joy. The reality is that I lead a wildly privileged life in terms of all temporal measures. And from there, things are looking up. Everything might all fall apart later this afternoon (I am not expecting anything like that, just sayin’), but even if they do, I need that not to rob me of my joy.

Dating a skilled tradesman is dating down?

By

On Friday, June 10, 2016

In culture, Education, Work

Mike Rowe writes a great post on an article in the New York Post titled The Solution to NYC’s Man Drought? Date Down.  Rowe does a brilliant job of describing exactly why this is such a bigoted and abjectly ignorant article after first setting out the premise behind the article like this:

Apparently, Manhattan has 38% more young, college-educated women than it does similar men. This “academic inequality” has lead to something called a “man drought,” and now, thousands of college educated women are struggling to find a “suitable mate.” The solution? According to the headline, more women should consider “dating down,” a process whereby college educated women explore romantic possibilities with men from a “lower educational or social class.” The article itself includes several profiles of happy couples, each consisting of a man who didn’t graduate from college and a woman who did, and concludes that certain men who didn’t get a college degree just might be a viable option for white-collared women who did.

You really need to read Mike Rowe’s article, but I had a few additional thoughts on the subject that might add a little more nuance to what he said. It is arguable that it takes a good chunk more knowledge, skill and training to complete a plumbing or electrical apprenticeship than it does to get a Bachelors or even a Masters degree in Sociology, Psychology, English or (help us) Women’s Studies. I would probably even put most law degrees in that same category. My immediate thought when I saw this was to wonder why skilled trades people, often businessmen in their own right, would lower their sights and standards enough to consider dating women who might be more credentialed1 but who are almost certainly less educated (as opposed to schooled) and make less money than themselves. Thank you Mr. Rowe for more great observations on the state of our society and how work is valued by the pseudo-elites.

1This might even be arguable. People who have the credentials required to work in skilled trades in New York City do not have to apologize to anyone about the rigor of the training they receive to earn their licenses.

Mike Rowe: Don’t follow your passion

By

On Thursday, June 9, 2016

In Christianity, culture, Education, Work

I love the video below. It fits into many of the categories about which I regularly write: education, debt, work, business and even Christianity. It talks about one of the major themes of the Chapman household both when I was a kid and when Kelly and Christian were kids. I think it even applies to graduate degrees. It is nice to do what you love, but you have to put beans on the table first. One of the best pieces of advice I got from Grandpa Milo was to love what you do (your work) whether you love it or not–it does not do any good to hate it because you have to do it anyway. That was right up there with one of my other favorites–you are going to eat what we give you and you are going to like it whether you like it or not.

I am not sure Mike Rowe would approve, but I think this dictum applies to higher education, too. I agree with Mr. Rowe that way too many people go to college, not so much because going to college is a bad thing or they are not able to handle it, but because the educational product they purchase neither leads to a job nor really teaches them anything of value–quite to the contrary actually. I write regularly about why I think it is important, if one goes to college, to study something hard that leads to a job. That generally means a STEM degree. STEM degrees are rarely fun and require a lot of hard work, but because industry needs people who get math, they are worth doing. Liberal Arts degrees generally are not. I have written about this a lot (just enter “STEM” into the search box and you will see) and there is actually scholarship by guys like Charles Murray to back this up.

So, now our kids, after earning STEM degrees, are getting PhD’s at good universities. Are they worth it? We are not sure yet. Neither of the kids even really know what they want to do with their lives, but neither of them have any debt and they both have undergraduate degrees that are in high demand and they are both getting paid to get their PhD’s. They are paid well enough to have small apartments, eat, travel (a little), keep up a car, etc. In addition, they are both provided tuition, fees and health insurance. Are they miserable a lot of the time due to the fact that what they are doing is very hard, very time consuming, requires them to work while many of their same-age friends go skiing, surfing, partying, hiking and traveling? Yes. Would they say what they are doing is in any way fun or even something about which they had a lot of passion before they started? No. Do they have passion about what they are doing, a sense of accomplishment for what they have done and a growing love and interest in their academic areas? Yes.

The big question though is whether they will be able to put beans on the table with the tools they got from the path they have taken? They are doing that already and it should only get better. On second thought, I think Mike Rowe might approve. Check out his foundation here. It has links to interesting articles and videos on a choices, lifestyles and values that would help both individuals and the entire country if more people embraced them.

Too much STEM?

By

On Wednesday, June 8, 2016

In Education

This is just a short beef on a truly clueless article titled Stemming the STEM Obsession. One of the absurd quotes in the article captures the flavor of the whole thing:

Cutting [humanities] to produce math and sciences wizzes would be a mistake because subjects like literature, philosophy, and ethics teach more than technical skills—they teach students how, when and why to use these skills. What’s more, evidence suggests that learning these subjects actually improves STEM performance!

The reality is that math and science majors are required to take a whole lot more humanities classes than humanities majors are required to take math and science classes. I know of no STEM major who believes humanities classes, when well taught, do not improve their academic experience. The “when well taught” part is the rub and the “why” part of the above quote is especially troubling in a society and culture that rejects the reality of objective truth.  There is NO reason to use any of your skills for any other reason than personal preference when good and bad are just opinions. If the humanities students were required to take something more rigorous than the typical, watered-down math and science classes required for their majors they might not write such ridiculous articles.

James Tour on Abiogenesis

By

On Tuesday, June 7, 2016

In Science

I just finished a totally fascinating series of linked posts by and about a scholar from Rice University here in Texas on how difficult, impossible really, it is to make claims about abiogenesis based on the current state of human knowledge. Abiogenesis and the mind/brain problem are two of the greatest mysteries of our age. Honest people know that we do not know enough about either of them to even know how to to study them. I have written about the mind/brain problem on this blog in the past because it fascinates me. Here is one of my posts with links to articles that describe the mind/brain problem.

I have not really written that much about abiogenesis because it so far out of my areas of expertise. I have had a passing interest in the topic, but not enough skill or knowledge to talk about it coherently. Today, though, I ran into an article titled On Prebiotic Chemistry, Synthetic Chemist James Tour Urges an Admission of Ignorance that lead me to several other articles that provide what appears to be a pretty good overview of our current state of knowledge on the topic written on a level most laymen could understand. For giggles, you can see some of the cat fight that occurs when claims are made about this type of topic. I might note that Tour, who is about as good as it gets in describing difficult material to a lay audience,  is not completely innocent of staying in his own domain–he makes a a statement about whether Intelligent Design falls within the realm of science, a question that could probably be best answered by someone who works in information theory and philosophy of science, which are well outside Tour’s area(s) of professional and scholarly expertise.  That is a very minor quibble as the articles were fabulously interesting and informative. I list them below in the order I read them:

Cultural malaise–is a comeback in the works?

By

On Monday, June 6, 2016

In General

This weekend was an odd weekend for me. I planned to work through the whole weekend, but got sick and ended up not doing much other than read a few articles on the Internet, talk to the kids and hang out with Lorena when I was not sleeping. Some of the articles on a fairly disjointed set of topics seemed to form a very interesting theme. The theme, you can decide for yourself whether I am imagining things, is that there are huge chunks of society who are tired of the direction of culture and are starting to push back. I talked to Kelly about it and it seems like there is an undercurrent of rebellion against:

There were more articles, but the ones linked above give you the idea. It is probably too little, too late. I have been reading about Josiah in II Chronicales lately. He was one of the great, good kings of Judah. Still, Judah had been so evil for so long, God told Josiah, through the prophetess Huldah in II Chronicles 34:24-38 he would have peace because he humbled himself, but Judah would be judged harshly after Josiah was gone. Maybe that is where we are headed–it is pretty much been promised that judgment is on its way.

Kelly and I talked about all this last night. She was the one who pointed me to the article on the rebellion of the alt-right. It reminded me of what it was like to come of age in the seventies, surrounded by amoral and immoral hippies and nihilists. A lot of conservative Christians felt pretty lonely on the college campuses of America in those days, but their rebellion against the “feel good” generation led to the Reagan Revolution. Kelly mentioned Ecclesiastes commands to “serve God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man…” and enjoy the good things God has given us. Even though, in one sense, all is vain because we all die, God has good things planned for those who love him that should be enjoyed in this life and the next.

Best article I have read in… forever

By

On Saturday, June 4, 2016

In Christianity, Education, Homeschool

That might not be exactly true, but this article hit me right where I live on a topic about which I have been in a mighty struggle. Without further her is the article titled How to Live a Life of Privilege, Embrace the responsibility that comes with it. The title and subtitle of the article do not do it justice. The idea for the article came from a talk the author, David French, gave to a small group of Christian homeschoolers. He starts out by really nailing the truth about high school and college graduations–they are not really something about which we should do a lot of celebrating, at least not in the way they are currently celebrated as the accomplishment of something that required great personal sacrifice. That is only the start, it just gets better and better.

I think maybe the reason I love this article at this time and place is that Lorena and I are recent empty-nesters. The kids are gone, we have seen the world as an increasingly difficult, we struggle to figure out what to do next and we seem to have forgotten the fact that we are recipients of unwarranted privilege. I want to make sure people do not confuse the brand of privilege perpetuated by Social Justice Warrior culture. I am talking about the privilege everyone in America and most of the Western world experiences because of others willingness to suffer deprivation and even die to allow us to grow up in a country where almost everyone is privileged. French is careful to not suggest there is equal privilege for everyone, because there is not. He does rightly say that those that who are less privileged in this country still have great privilege.

Even that, though was not the best part of the article. This article was a reminder of what it is really important and amazingly what leads to a happy life. Please read the article. It is an important one.

H.T. Erick Erickson at the Resurgent.

A blast from the past to start the weekend

By

On Friday, June 3, 2016

In Art, culture, Education, Music

For some reason this video came to mind today. I forgot how excellent it really was and thought I would put it up again because it is so fun. From the date of the video, this must have occurred right after he turned sixteen during his Junior year at NCSU.

The dark humor of Flannery O’Connor

By

On Friday, June 3, 2016

In culture

Kelly sent me a link yesterday to a brilliant list titled How to Tell If You’re In a Flannery O’Connor Story was posted on a web site called The Toast. Some of my favorites from virtually all the great items on the list are:

  • You are being horrible to a blood relative. They drop dead.
  • You suspect a Baptist is lying to you.
  • You are lying about where your Bible is.
  • Someone’s hatlessness merits explicit reference.

The funny deal is the web site had come onto my radar earlier in the day due to an interesting article I read about one of the co-founders of the site. I looked at it and it really was not my cup of tea, so I was quite pleased with the O’Connor that came from Kelly in the afternoon. That all lead me on to a story about the amazing writing career and short, interesting life of Flannery O’Connor at New Georgia Encyclopedia. It is also, well worth the read.

A side projects makes the news

By

On Thursday, June 2, 2016

In General

I have participated pretty heavily in the OBoard project. It made the news. Check it out here.

Mexican food in Texas?

By

On Thursday, June 2, 2016

In Cooking

We always try as hard as we can to find nice things to say about the place where we are. Really, it is easy to find nice things to say about our part of the Metroplex here in the Dallas area, but I have to say that we have struggled when it comes to authentic Mexican food in our neighborhood. Friends, acquaintances, food reviewers and total strangers on the street , bless their hearts, have universally pointed us to Tex-Mex which, in our humble, but sincerely held religious conviction, is , at its very best, and I am trying to be gracious when I say this, Americanized Mexican food. Some people actually like Americanized Mexican food.

With that said, we have new hope. Our good friend John S. has invited us to meet him at a little place outside of the rarefied air where we live–thirty minutes away (almost the same as across the street in Texas-speak)–called Cuquita’s Restaurant advertising Comida Mexicana. It got rave reviews in the Texas press. We shall see what we shall see and taste what we shall taste sometime this weekend. We have hope that it will not be Tex-Mex.

Computer eye fatigue

By

On Wednesday, June 1, 2016

In Health

clarkkentOne of the hazards of typing for a living at a computer screen for most of the day, every day is computer eye fatigue. Kelly, Christian and I all spend most of our days at a computer and we are familiar with the phenomenon. Yesterday, Christian went to the optometrist for an eye test and was told his eyesight was perfect. That is good, but I do not think that is the whole story. I looked around a little and found some stuff that makes me think I might want to get a special pair of glasses to use at the office for all the time I spend at a computer screen. Here is a link to a page that describes some of the problems. I might also note that Christian kind of has that Clark Kent thing going for him–a reason onto itself for wearing glasses.

Blog update 2016

By

On Tuesday, May 31, 2016

In Blogging

It has been quite awhile since I did an update on this blog itself. First, I would like to say I am glad I have been able to keep writing on a regular (sometime only semi-regular) basis and I plan to keep going indefinitely. Here are a few statistics, milestones and comments:

  • I started the blog on April 6, 2004, so the blog is a little over 12 years old.
  • This is the 2978th blog post, so we should hit 3000 pretty soon. I, myself, have only written 2810, so I probably will not hit the 3000 post mark until 2017 if I can keep going.
  • We average around two comments per post, but that has slowed down since I write less now about Homeschool since the kids are gone to college.
  • I started tracking my Bible reading on the blog on February 9, 2006, so I have continued with that for over 10 years and have to say it has helped my reading consistency a lot. My plan when I started was to systematically read through the Old Testament three times and the New Testament nine times. I am on track to complete that within the next year or two. After that, I will probably set another goal and maybe switch versions to the ESV or maybe even the Reina Valera. What is most amazing and cool about this little program is that the amount I read every day has been on a steady increase over the last year or so.
  • I do not keep many blog statistics, but have a tool that shows the last month. On average I get a little over 100 unique visitors per day and between 300-400 page hits per day (not including spiders and bots). I know how to make those numbers go up, but I do not really enjoy doing the type of writing required to increase traffic all the time (I sometimes go on a binge) and that has never been the point of this blog.

Something that has interested me lately is that the use of the most popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (and probably even SnapChat) appears to have fallen off a cliff in terms of daily usage by the great unwashed masses at the same time these sites are increasingly dominated by commercial clutter. Meanwhile, the humble blog has maintained its attraction for people who have a message, like to keep a journal, want a place to put baby pictures for posterity or distant relatives or a million other personal, non-commercial reasons.

So my blog goals are modest. I plan to keep writing about twenty posts per month. I hope to find some things that are compelling to read for anyone else but me. I have found that to be a little bit difficult since the kids are no longer in homeschool, but I have hope with a couple of pretty big things that are happening with life and work. The include a business, a new house and, who knows, maybe someday we will have grandkids and I will get to participate in homeschool again.

Kelly gets her kitchen knives

By

On Sunday, May 29, 2016

In Cooking

We bought Christian a really nice set of kitchen knives for his birthday last year. This year, Kelly flew out to see us in Texas for her birthday and we did not do much else. She is working on her qualification exams, finals and research so hard she does not have time for much anything else than to do that cook, exercise and go to meeting. So we decided to send her something that might help her with her cooking. There are no better tools for the kitchen than like a good set of cooking knives. She really is a very good cook and beside the staple things she does, she loves to experiment. We got Kelly the exact same set we got for Christian before. This just made Lorena and I realize how much we cannot wait to get back into a house so Lorena can start cooking with gas again!

Avocation and life skills as part of homeschool

By

On Friday, May 27, 2016

In Art, Cooking, Exercise, Health, Music

Christian and I talked last night about avocation. There were lots of things we tried when the kids were growing up as part of our homeschool and just as part of life. We focused hard on specific academic paths that gave the kids as many options as possible when it came to career choices. The reality is we did not do so bad at that part–the kids are now in a place they can go virtually any direction they want career-wise. At the other end of the spectrum were things that would be characterized as life skills and or avocations. We had varying degrees of success with things that were not the central focus of our homeschool academics, but at which we invested time, effort and a fairly large amount of our resources. I thought I might make a list of some of that stuff. I say only some of it because there was so much that I know I will miss a bunch of it. So what am I talking about:

  • Music–Lorena and I are actually very limited in our musical ability. The kids are a lot better than us, but not exceptional. Kelly can play the piano and sing very well. Christian is much better at classical guitar than he thinks he is. All in all, we did not do so bad. Both the kids got ten years of music/instrument lessons and both still love to play. I would put this in the joyful avocation category.
  • Art–We did well in art. Of course there is the drawing (e.g. here and here) and all the crafts we did, but the thing that surprises me most is that we all like to go to Art Museums when we are together. We know some artists we like and enjoy art appreciation as much or more as we enjoy making art.
  • Cooking–Lorena is amazing and deserves a post all by itself. She has followed a pretty incredible culinary path that is wildly eclectic. Kelly is going down that same path, but with here own twist that is heavily influenced, I think, by the fact that she lives in the amazing food culture of the Pacific Northwest. Christian is more utilitarian, but goes on a baking or cooking binge that pushes the envelope on a semi-regular basis. As for me, I make an OK omelet which is also the entire cooking legacy I leave to my children. Well that and how to cook a turkey.
  • Sports and exercise–This deserves a post all by itself because we made a decision very early on to assure that exercise become a normal part of life, but sports, especially football, basketball, soccer and baseball were given very, very low priorities on the list we wanted the kids to do or watch. Part of that is because I had seen this so up close and personal, but part of it was because those sports are a time and resource drain that have negative value as either life skills, avocations or activities that engendered positive values. We tended more toward swimming, running and a little bit of hiking. Both the kids are active as weight lifters and runners these days.

The thing that was great about all that stuff is we got into all of it and got excited about it at the same time we did not over emphasize it. We wanted this all to be something for which the kids could have lifelong enjoyment without it consuming their lives. We will have to wait awhile longer to see if we had any level of success at that goal.

Oblivious to evil (moral subjectivism, Sacket Hall and Ted Bundy)

By

On Wednesday, May 25, 2016

In Christianity

SacketHallI was a minor participant in a discussion where Ted Bundy the notorious serial killer was brought up as an example of someone who subscribed to the view that morality is subjective. The conversation itself was very interesting and a great illustration of the evil and ignorance of that sort of world view. Particularly interesting was the link one of the commenters made to something Ted Bundy said in a discussion with one of his victims about that very subject. You can find that here. It was his premise, and a true one I think, that if moral subjectivism is true, then no values are right or wrong. In what is characterized a paraphrase, he captures the true nature of moral subjectivism when he says:

…Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong.”

That “learning” was the seminal event that allowed him to throw off the shackles of morality and pursue his own personal pleasure without having to worry about whether he was encroaching on “the rights of others.” I had forgotten about my own personal physical and temporal proximity to one of Bundy’s horrific crimes. In May of 1974, it was the end of my freshman year in college and I lived across the street from Sacket Hall on the campus of Oregon State University. My mother had lived in Sackett Hall when she was a freshman in Pharmacy back in 1948. That was the last location Roberta Kathleen Parks was seen before Ted Bundy kidnapped and murdered her. It is believed he picked her up on the street between where she lived and where I lived at the time. They found some of her remains on Taylor Mountain in Washington State in 1975.

Life is good–maybe boring for others, but not for me

By

On Wednesday, May 25, 2016

In General, Work

I think I have seen what is happening to me as sixty year old guy happen to other people who were working schlubs their whole lives. Over time, one tends to pick up knowledge. If somebody works at one thing, no matter what it is, they accumulate a lot of knowledge over the years, no matter what the field. Then, when they get toward the end of their career and are thinking about retirement, opportunities start coming out of the woodwork. It is not about intelligence, it is about experience. The older I get, the less irritating it is to hear about the importance of experience.

So now I have three active projects beside my day job that have to do with what I did in my career. I need to quit two of them and work on just one of them or I will do a bad job at all three. So, over the next few weeks, I am going to try to decide where it would be best to focus my efforts. This seems to be a very good thing partially because I love what I do, but also because it gives more to do now that the kids are gone. It makes me look back and wonder what life would be like if I had more focus on my career before I was forty. Maybe it would not have been much different and it does not pay to think about it, but it does make me thankful that we helped the kids remain focused on something that would last past their youth both in terms of work and spirituality.

I realize that what I do for a living must be supremely boring to everyone looking on and I have to remind myself that most people do not really care how I do what I do so I have to work hard not to talk about it too much. Still, there are people just like me and even more so. I have the good fortune of working on one of the projects with a guy who is ten years older than and with deeper skills than I. We talk the same language and really enjoy even the most trivial minutiae of our chosen field. I just hope I can get to that point in my relationship with God before I die.

Doing stuff for fun rather than money

By

On Tuesday, May 24, 2016

In Education, Homeschool, Work

One of the great ironies in my life is that when I do something to help someone out with something, supposedly out of the goodness of my heart, it often turns in money either directly or because I learned a new salable skill. How does that happen? When I started the GaugeCam project to help out a friend in Raleigh I was almost exclusively a Windows programmer. We decided to write the code as cross-platform code on Linux and Windows using Boost, OpenCV and the Qt libraries. In my current job, I use the Qt libraries, OpenCV and Boost. I would not have had the skills to do this job if I had not first given away what I now get paid to do.

It is also true that the things I enjoy the most started out as a way to help out, but turned into avocations. Homeschool gave me drawing skills (Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad, forensic drawing skills), people skills (Tactics, How to Win Friends), blogging (I started this blog to record our family’s homeschool journey) and a gazillion other thing. Now that I have been doing this for awhile, I am always on the lookout for new opportunities, but there too many interesting, helpful things to do, too little time and too few resources so I have to pick and choose a little these days.

So, it has started again. The EKG project started out as a learning thing with the idea that, in the unlikely event that I stuck with it longer than just as a learning opportunity, I would open source the code to give back to the community and go on to the next thing. That might still happen, but it looks like there might also be a commercial opportunity that would help me push this along and still release at least part of the code as free (as in beer), open source code for the hobby community. How cool would that be.

Page 60 of 209

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén