The year was 1984, and I went to 4th grade at McEbright Elementary School in Akron Ohio, the failed Rubber Capital of the world. It was a lovely old, inner city school around the corner from the Summit county jail. This was the third inner city grade school I had attended, so I felt fine
Category: Confusion
My Theory on the Electoral College
People think the electoral college failed in the 2016, so now they want to get rid of it. Correlation, is not the same thing as causation. What if it was something else that failed? If we saw a car crash, and the airbag failed to save someone’s life, would we argue to get rid of
How Do You Define Rich & Poor?
Like any symbol, rich and poor is very hard to define because it has a lot to do with our own perceptions. To me, it appears that we have two delineated groups of people who have shared understandings of what it means to be rich: The Bottom 80% consider the top 20% rich The top
Let Me Explain Poverty
Growing up: Your dad goes to jail on your birthday Vietnam veterans smoke pot and party with your dad Your dad hits your mom You hit your dad with a bag of diapers Your mom points a gun at your dad’s face Your parents divorce You move in with your grandmother and uncle You remember
Hardware, Firmware, and Software – Biology, Culture, and Behavior
This article is part of larger context I have been documenting about my study of Anthropology and Computer Science, and how it changes the way you think. I often think of a person’s actions and personality in the context of three main layers – Biology/Hardware, Culture/Firmware, and Behavior/Software. For example….
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Computer Science & Anthropology
Anthropology and Computer Science don’t typically seem like they would have a lot of overlap, but they do. Each focuses on how discrete units change temporally and spacially. One focuses on human evolution, the other on engineering – one on statistics, the other on digital logic. In Anthropology, at least in the US, we study
Explaining Race Conditions to Non Programmers
A few weeks ago, I was down in Columbus at a coffee shop. This place happened to have a bathroom which needed a key to use. I went to the counter to ask for the key because mother nature called, but the key was nowhere to be found. Somebody was already in the bathroom and
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The Willpower it Takes to Be Homeless
Often, I think we are desensitized to how difficult it is to be homeless – to have very little control over our day to day life. We take for granted that we get to pick what shirt to wear, when to take a shower, when to have our first cup of coffee. Recently, this became
Netflix – Technology Wizards or Good Content?
I love the content they produce like Orange is the New Black, Narcos, Stranger Things, and House of Cards. But, remember back to before Netflix produced this content? They were struggling with subscribers, under attack from cable companies, and their future looked very, very uncertain. So, how did they turn the ship around? They started
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Wisdom in Primates – The Four Branches
Have you ever looked over at someone and seen them doing some fairly impressive physical or mental feat? You might say to yourself, wow, I don’t know if I can do that? The other day, I was taking a yoga class, and I noticed a new student next to me bending all the way down