"Micro Habits" for Language Learning

Forget “learning a language.” Focus on forming the habit.

[...]

What is a Habit?

Habits are the key to behavior change.

When you form a habit, you won’t have to get “motivated” to do something. You won’t have to use willpower or “force” yourself and get it done.

Think about how it feels to go to bed without brushing your teeth. It feels wrong. You feel like your day isn’t complete — and you’ll even drag yourself out of bed to do it, despite being tired.

Why?

Because brushing is so deeply ingrained into your daily routine that it actually requires more willpower to NOT brush than just to brush! It’s a deeply formed habit — and you rarely miss a day.

How much more progress would you make if you could retrain your brain to treat language learning the same way? How much faster could you master the basics and move on to fluency if you practiced your new language 365 days in a row without missing a day?

You’d be unstoppable. And you’d definitely be able to hold a casual conversation without grabbing the dictionary every other word.

It all starts with changing your behavior and forming new habits.

This idea of making language study a habit in my life was on my mind a lot back in Florence when I was learning Italian.

And so I’ve spent the last two years rigorously researching behavior change and figuring out how to make goals like language learning, working out or waking up earlier a natural part of my day, rather than an eternal struggle. Since then I developed Pavlok — a wearable technology to help you build new habits (and break bad ones). Pavlok currently commits you to fitness, waking up on time, and being more productive — but we are currently working on integrating Duolingo and other language learning tools so it can commit you to forming the habit of learning a language.

In this article, I’m going to distill all of our best research and teach you the step-by-step process for reprogramming your brain and making language learning so efficient that it becomes part of your everyday life, automatically.

If you’ve ever felt like learning a new language was a chore, and that you weren’t making the progress you’d like, this article is for you.

Keep reading! [...]

The rest of the article is about Demystifying the Habit Formation Process, and intentionally forming good habits that work for you. Here it is applied to language learning, but it could be adapted to many other areas also. Read the whole thing, for embedded links and more.

     

Writing computer code: not for everyone?

Not only not for everyone, but not for most people:

Coding Academies Are Nonsense

[...] I see coding shrinking as a widespread profession. Not because software is going away, but because the way we build software will fundamentally change. Technology for software creation without code is already edging toward mainstream use. Visual content creation tools such as Scratch, DWNLD and Telerik will continue to improve until all functionality required to build apps is available to consumers — without having to write a line of code.

Who needs to code when you can use visual building blocks or even plain English to describe intent? Advances in natural-language processing and conceptual modeling will remove the need for traditional coding from app development. Software development tools will soon understand what you mean versus what you say. Even small advances in disambiguating intent will pay huge dividends. The seeds are already planted, from the OpenCog project to NLTK natural-language processing to MIT’s proof that you can order around a computer in your human language instead of code.

Academies had better gather those revenues while they can, because ultimately they are the product of short-term thinking. Coding skills will continue to be in high demand until technology for software creation without code disrupts the entire party, crowding out programming as a viable profession. [...]

Kinda what I suspected. The technology is changing quickly, and whats valid today is obsolete tomorrow. I think eventually there will be software that can create code. There were also some interesting comments about people who try to learn computer coding, and why they give it up. If you need more convincing, read the whole thing for further arguments, embedded links and more.

     

Oregon is for Losers?

This is an unpleasant statistic:



Report: Oregon has worst graduation rate in the U.S.

A comprehensive U.S. report showed that Oregon not only has the worst graduation rates in the nation, but it's holding the country back from achieving its graduation rate goals.

The 2015 Building a Grad Nation report analyzed 2013 graduation rate data from every state in the nation. While the national average reached a record high of 81.4 percent, the four-year graduation rate in Oregon was only 69 percent.

Furthermore, Oregon hadn't improved from the year before, showing stagnation as the last remaining state with graduation rates lower than 70 percent.

"Oregon did not experience significant improvements and became the state with the lowest graduation rate in the nation and the last remaining state with an ACGR [Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate] in the 60s," the report said.

The Grad Nation report shows that overall, much of the country is on track to graduate upwards of 90 percent of seniors by 2020, and many states are already graduating more than 80 percent of students, including neighboring California. Washington State had a 76.4 percent graduation rate. [...]

Even California is doing better. What gives?
     

How it all works, and where it's taking us

I'm talking about the evolution of economics; how it started, where we were, and where it's all going. I found this article to be intelligent, stimulating and exciting:

Welcome to the Failure Age!

[...] An age of constant invention naturally begets one of constant failure. The life span of an innovation, in fact, has never been shorter. An African hand ax from 285,000 years ago, for instance, was essentially identical to those made some 250,000 years later. The Sumerians believed that the hoe was invented by a godlike figure named Enlil a few thousand years before Jesus, but a similar tool was being used a thousand years after his death. During the Middle Ages, amid major advances in agriculture, warfare and building technology, the failure loop closed to less than a century. During the Enlightenment and early Industrial Revolution, it was reduced to about a lifetime. By the 20th century, it could be measured in decades. Today, it is best measured in years and, for some products, even less. (Schuetz receives tons of smartphones that are only a season or two old.)

The closure of the failure loop has sent uncomfortable ripples through the economy. When a product or company is no longer valued in the marketplace, there are typically thousands of workers whose own market value diminishes, too. Our breakneck pace of innovation can be seen in stock-market volatility and other boardroom metrics, but it can also be measured in unemployment checks, in divorces and involuntary moves and in promising careers turned stagnant. Every derelict product that makes its way into Weird Stuff exists as part of a massive ecosystem of human lives — of engineers and manufacturers; sales people and marketing departments; logistics planners and truck drivers — that has shared in this process of failure.

Innovation is, after all, terrifying. Right now we’re going through changes that rip away the core logic of our economy. Will there be enough jobs to go around? Will they pay a living wage? Terror, however, can also be helpful. The only way to harness this new age of failure is to learn how to bounce back from disaster and create the societal institutions that help us do so. The real question is whether we’re up for the challenge.

[...]

The original age of innovation may have ushered in an era of unforeseen productivity, but it was, for millions of people, absolutely terrifying. Over a generation or two, however, our society responded by developing a new set of institutions to lessen the pain of this new volatility, including unions, Social Security and the single greatest risk-mitigating institution ever: the corporation. During the late 19th century, a series of experiments in organizational structure culminated, in the 1920s, with the birth of General Motors, the first modern corporation. Its basic characteristics soon became ubiquitous. Ownership, which was once a job passed from father to son, was now divided among countless shareholders. Management, too, was divided, among a large group of professionals who directed units, or “subdivisions,” within it. The corporation, in essence, acted as a giant risk-sharing machine, amassing millions of investors’ capital and spreading it among a large number of projects, then sharing the returns broadly too. The corporation managed the risk so well, in fact, that it created an innovation known as the steady job. For the first time in history, the risks of innovation were not borne by the poorest. This resulted in what economists call the Great Compression, when the gap between the income of the rich and poor rapidly fell to its lowest margin.

[...]

For American workers, the greatest challenge would come from computers. By the 1970s, the impact of computers was greatest in lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs. Factory workers competed with computer-run machines; secretaries and bookkeepers saw their jobs eliminated by desktop software. Over the last two decades, the destabilizing forces of computers and the Internet has spread to even the highest-paid professions. Corporations “were created to coordinate and organize communication among lots of different people,” says Chris Dixon, a partner at the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. “A lot of those organizations are being replaced by computer networks.” Dixon says that start-ups like Uber and Kickstarter are harbingers of a much larger shift, in which loose groupings of individuals will perform functions that were once the domain of larger corporations. “If you had to know one thing that will explain the next 20 years, that’s the key idea: We are moving toward a period of decentralization,” Dixon says.

Were we simply enduring a one-time shift into an age of computers, the adjustment might just require us to retrain and move onward. Instead, in a time of constant change, it’s hard for us to predict the skills that we will need in the future. Whereas the corporate era created a virtuous cycle of growing companies, better-paid workers and richer consumers, we’re now suffering through a cycle of destabilization, whereby each new technology makes it ever easier and faster to create the next one, which, of course, leads to more and more failure. [...]

It's difficult to choose excerpts, because the whole thing is so good, and makes more sense read as a whole. Unlike the comments from the Davos forum, this goes into a lot more depth and demonstrates a greater understanding of the larger picture, the entire process. It's great to see that some people actually are paying attention. This is brilliant, a must read!

Hat Tip for the link above, from: You have to fail to move forward
     

Language learning, before and after puberty

One can learn a 2nd language, before or after, but the way the brain accomplishes that may change:

Why Can't I Speak Spanish?: The Critical Period Hypothesis of Language Acquisition

"Ahhhhh!" I yell in frustration. "I've been studying Spanish for seven years, and I still can't speak it fluently."

"Well, honey, it's not your fault. You didn't start young enough," my mom says, trying to comfort me.

Although she doesn't know it, she is basing her statement on the Critical Period Hypothesis. The Critical Period Hypothesis proposes that the human brain is only malleable, in terms of language, for a limited time. This can be compared to the critical period referred to in to the imprinting seen in some species, such as geese. During a short period of time after a gosling hatches, it begins to follow the first moving object that it sees. This is its critical period for imprinting. (1) The theory of a critical period of language acquisition is influenced by this phenomenon.

This hypothetical period is thought to last from birth to puberty. During this time, the brain is receptive to language, learning rules of grammar quickly through a relatively small number of examples. After puberty, language learning becomes more difficult. The Critical Period Hypothesis attributes this difficulty to a drastic change in the way that the brain processes language after puberty. This makes reaching fluency during adulthood much more difficult than it is in childhood.

[...]

Noam Chomksy suggests that the human brain also contains a language acquisition device (LAD) that is preprogrammed to process language. He was influential in extending the science of language learning to the languages themselves. (4) (5) Chomsky noticed that children learn the rules of grammar without being explicitly told what they are. They learn these rules through examples that they hear and amazingly the brain pieces these samples together to form the rules of the grammar of the language they are learning. This all happens very quickly, much more quickly than seems logical. Chomsky's LAD contains a preexisting set of rules, perfected by evolution and passed down through genes. This system, which contains the boundaries of natural human language and gives a language learner a way to approach language before being formally taught, is known as universal grammar.

The common grammatical units of languages around the world support the existence of universal grammar: nouns, verbs, and adjectives all exist in languages that have never interacted. Chomsky would attribute this to the universal grammar. The numerous languages and infinite number of word combinations are all governed by a finite number of rules. (6) Charles Henry suggests that the material nature of the brain lends itself to universal grammar. Language, as a function of a limited structure, should also be limited. (7) Universal grammar is the brain's method for limiting and processing language.

A possible explanation for the critical period is that as the brain matures, access to the universal grammar is restricted. And the brain must use different mechanisms to process language. Some suggest that the LAD needs daily use to prevent the degenerative effects of aging. Others say that the brain filters input differently during childhood, giving the LAD a different type of input than it receives in adulthood. (8) Current research has challenged the critical period altogether. In a recent study, adults learning a second language were able to process it (as shown through event related potentials) in the same way that another group of adults processed their first language. (9)

So where does this leave me? Is my mom right, or has she been misinformed? The observation that children learn languages (especially their first) at a remarkable rate cannot be denied. But the lack of uniformity in the success rate of second language learning leads me to believe that the Critical Period Hypothesis id too rigid. The difficulty in learning a new language as an adult is likely a combination of a less accessible LAD, a brain out of practice at accessing it, a complex set of input, and the self consciousness that comes with adulthood. This final reason is very important. We interact with language differently as children, because we are not as afraid of making mistakes and others have different expectations of us, resulting in a different type of linguistic interaction. [...]

I enjoyed this, because I'm attempting to learn Spanish, and I've been reading a lot about the differences in the ways children learn a 2nd language, compared to the ways adults learn. Both can be successful, but it's important to find the right approach, particularly for adults, I think. Read the whole thing, for the many embedded footnotes and reference links.

And if you think you are too old to learn a 2nd language, you should read these links too:

Why adults are better learners than kids (So NO, you’re not too old)

The linguistic genius of adults: Research confirms we’re better learners than kids!

Breaking Down the Language Barriers

     

How to educate Americans for jobs

How to educate Americans for jobs? Ask the Germans, employers urge

INDIANAPOLIS — Two years. That’s how long it takes William Lankin’s fast-growing electrical contracting company to teach new hires with four-year university degrees the tricks of the trade.

These college grads “have learned the book stuff, but they don’t have real-world experience,” said Lankin, vice president of Industrial Electric. “They don’t know how to work with other people, or subcontractors — how to actually do business.”

Bringing them up to speed while paying them a salary is time-consuming and expensive, and even then there’s no guarantee that they’ll be good enough to keep. Which only complicates the original predicament: In spite of the still-soft job market, companies like Lankin’s can’t find enough qualified workers.

Now some hiring managers, a few policymakers, and a handful of community colleges are accepting help to solve this problem from an unexpected source: Germany

Through an initiative being quietly promoted by the German Embassy, U.S. colleges, which consider themselves part of the greatest higher-education system in the world, are importing the German model of career and technical education to keep up with a demand they can’t fill for skilled American workers.

“We said, ‘What is the best model?’” said Sue Smith, vice president for technology and applied sciences at Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College, which has teamed up with Lankin’s company to create a program for prospective employees based on what the Germans do.

“And, quite honestly, the German model is the best model.”

It consists of a so-called dual system of education and training that combines a few days a week of classroom instruction at vocational schools with on-the-job apprenticeships that are designed to lead to full-time jobs for which graduates are ready straight out of school. The German students also receive a form of credential called a certification qualification.

This simple setup keeps German industry humming, and youth unemployment down to about 8 percent — less than half of what it is in the United States — according to the German Embassy.

By comparison, routes to similar careers in the United States are convoluted and confusing, even as the need for workers to fill them escalates, a study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development found. [...]

Read the whole thing for embedded links, video and more. There are some interesting comments in the comments section.

This website has a seven minute video:

Skills Initiative: Enhancing German-American Cooperation on Workforce Training

The German Embassy in Washington, DC presents the Skills Initiative as one of the cornerstones of its work.

Through the Skills Initiative, the German Embassy is bringing together German and American businesses and local education/training providers with the aim of developing training programs best suited to businesses’ needs. The Embassy launched the Skills Initiative to identify and spread best practices in sustainable workforce development in the USA.

Now the Embassy, through Skills Initiative, is seeking cooperation with federal states, locally convening groups of German companies and bringing them together with training providers so that they can work on the best fit for training programs in their area. [...]

The video has some interesting comments by American students who are participating and learning career skills, about why it is such an attractive alternative to college.
     

OSU: Languages and Small Farming

I was looking at on-line language learning classes, and discovered that Oregon State University has one of the best on-line language learning programs in the country: OSU Online Foreign Language Courses

I was also surprised to learn that they have a course about growing your own small farm or ranch:



Growing Farms: Hybrid Course for Beginning Farmers

[...] Growing Farms: Hybrid Course for Beginning Farmers teaches those new to farming how to plan and manage a farm, while giving them tools to produce and market farmed and raised goods. The course also encourages interaction and community building among participants, helping build a professional network among small farmers and ranchers.

While developing a whole-farm plan, participants will learn about sustainable practices and land stewardship. The course encourages farmers to see how small farms and ranches fit into our community’s economic and environmental success.

It's called a Hybrid course because it's partly on-line, and partly on-site. But the online portion is also available by itself.

Participants can enroll in the full course, which includes six learning modules and onsite sessions, or the modules-only option.

Online modules

The modules are interactive and feature audio and video. Participants will test their comprehension with short, ungraded quizzes throughout each module and create their own farm plan.

1.) Dream It – Planning
2.) Do It – Farming Operations and Equipment
3.) Sell It – Marketing
4.) Manage It – Finance, Administration and Personnel
5.) Grow It – Ecological Agricultural Production
6.) Keep It – Liability and Risk

Onsite sessions with cohort:

The total number of sessions, times, dates and locations have yet to be determined.

In addition to the online modules and onsite sessions, a social networking website will be developed for participants in both course options.

     

Is Google Plus the next Borg? IMO, it's TMSTDW

It sure looks like they are angling to be! I found this video kinda funny, kinda creepy:



It was kinda informative too. It certainly nailed Facebook's faults. But I'm not ready to jump onto Google+ either. And if the video is right, I won't have to, because it will be inevitable...

I remember the early days of PCs and the internet. I would get tired of it and take a break from them for days at a time, sometimes even a week or more. My life did not revolve around the internet or the computer.

Now, I go on-line at least once a day, for the weather report, if nothing else. I usually glance at the news headlines on Google as well, just to get a glimpse of what's happening in the world. It's faster than watching TV, listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. It saves time!

Convenience. Speed and convenience. A quick way to get the information you seek. And there is much education and entertainment content too. A nice place to visit, but I still wouldn't want to live there almost 24/7. The internet's a good thing, but even so, too much of a good thing isn't necessarily a good thing.

What made me even look at this was, an online class I was interested in. The teacher wanted the students to sign up with Google+, because that was her primary mode of communicating with them (using something called "Hangouts"). So I tried to find out more about Google+. And my opinion of it so far is: TMSTDW (Too Much Sh*t To Deal With). But of course, if it's inevitable, I won't have to learn it, I can just wait until it assimilates me. ;-)
     

Esperanto as a bridge for language learners

In a previous post about Esperanto, the video below, a talk at TEDx, was referenced. I recently got around to watching it:

Published on Apr 13, 2012

Tim Morely thinks that every student should learn Esperanto. In this unexpected and persuasive talk, he makes the case that this supposedly archaic tongue can set up a kid for a lifetime of learning languages.

Previously a computer programmer, Tim Morley is now a teacher of English and French. He is pioneering an innovative programme for introducing young children to foreign language awareness using the constructed language of Esperanto. [...]

He has a lot of interesting ideas. He uses a musical analogy at one point. He says if you want to teach a child music, you wouldn't give them a Bassoon, because it's a difficult instrument to learn, and not suitable for a child just learning music.

Children learning music are given an easier instrument to learn: the recorder. It's simple, easy to handle, easy to learn, and the child can make progress quickly, which keeps their interest and builds their confidence. If the child enjoys it, THEN you can introduce them to something more complicated, more challenging, because you have already established their interest and built their confidence to the point where they want to and are inspired to keep learning.

Morely claims Esperanto can be used in the same way to teach children languages. I've also read that it can work the same for adults learning a second language for the first time, too.

I can see why. I've been looking at Esperanto at en.lernu.net. It's very logical and easy, in many of the ways that Morely describes in the video. He sites examples of studies that show language learners that start with Esperanto, do better than other students when they tackle other languages later.

Some people claim you can become fluent in Esperanto in a matter of weeks. How many languages can that be said about?

In the video below, Benny Lewis the polyglot teaches his girlfriend Esperanto in six weeks, with just an hour a day:



The whole video series is on Youtube here.
     

Esperanto, a created, living language

I thought it was a kind of dead language, like Klingon. But apparently, it's not:



The creator of Esperanto, L.L. Zamenhoff, was a very interesting fellow:

[...] Zamenhof was born on 15 December (3 December OS) 1859 in the town of Białystok in the Russian Partition (north-eastern Poland) in the age of national insurrections. His parents were of Lithuanian Jewish descent, and his wife was born in Kaunas, in one of the biggest Jewish centres of the time. He appears to have been natively bilingual in Yiddish and Russian,[3] presumably the Belorussian "dialect" of his home town, though it may have been only his father who spoke Russian with him at home. From his father, a teacher of German and French, he learned those languages and Hebrew as well. He also spoke Polish, one of the major languages of Bialystok alongside Yiddish, (Belo)Russian, and German, and it was Polish that was to become the native language of his children. In school he studied the classical languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. He later learned some English, though in his own words not very well, had an interest in Lithuanian and Italian, and learned Volapük when it came out in 1880, though by that point his international language project was already well developed.[4][5]

In addition to the Yiddish-speaking Jewish majority, the population of Białystok was made up of Poles and Belarusians, with smaller groups of Russians, Germans, Lipka Tatars and others. Zamenhof was saddened and frustrated by the many quarrels among these groups. He supposed that the main reason for the hate and prejudice lay in the mutual misunderstanding caused by the lack of one common language. If such a language existed, Zamenhof postulated, it could play the role of a neutral communication tool between people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

As a student at secondary school in Warsaw, Zamenhof made attempts to create some kind of international language with a grammar that was very rich, but also very complex. When he later studied English, he decided that the international language must have a simpler grammar. Apart from his parents' native languages Russian and Yiddish and his adopted language Polish, his linguistics attempts were also aided by his mastering of German, a good passive understanding of Latin, Hebrew and French, and a basic knowledge of Greek, English and Italian.[6]

By 1878, his project Lingwe uniwersala was almost finished. However, Zamenhof was too young then to publish his work. Soon after graduation from school he began to study medicine, first in Moscow, and later in Warsaw. In 1885, Zamenhof graduated from a university and began his practice as a doctor in Veisiejai and after 1886 as an ophthalmologist in Płock and Vienna. While healing people there he continued to work on his project of an international language.

For two years he tried to raise funds to publish a booklet describing the language until he received the financial help from his future wife's father. In 1887, the book titled Международный язык. Предисловие и полный учебник (International language: Introduction and complete textbook) was published in Russian[7] under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto" (Doctor Hopeful). Zamenhof initially called his language "Lingvo internacia" (international language), but those who learned it began to call it Esperanto after his pseudonym, and this soon became the official name for the language. For Zamenhof this language, far from being merely a communication tool, was a way of promoting the peaceful coexistence of different people and cultures.[2] [...]

What a fascinating man. Read the whole thing for embedded links and more.

I've been reading about Esperanto lately, because I've been reading a book about language learning, Fluent in 3 Months. The author, Benny Lewis, recommends learning Esperanto as your first second language, because it's easy to learn, you make progress quickly, and many studies have shown that people who learn Esperanto as their first second language, have a much easier time learning other languages successfully. Benny talks about this on his website:

http://www.fluentin3months.com/esperanto/

[...] I always encourage people to spend just two weeks learning Esperanto, for the purely pragmatic reason of it giving them a boost in their main focus language. There was a great recent TEDx talk specifically about this idea of using Esperanto as a springboard to learning other languages. But moving on from that, those you can use Esperanto with make it all the more worthwhile to learn.

At Esperanto events, I’ve made some fantastic open minded friends, and sang, laughed, argued, flirted (and more…), played, explored and eaten with them there. And while travelling, I’ve met up with other speakers who I know will share the philosophies of the community of open mindedness and friendliness, while being modern and forward thinking.

One way you can meet Esperanto speakers in many cities is via Pasporta Servo, which is kind of like Couchsurfing, only it started many decades before. I also simply use Couchsurfing itself and search for speakers of the language and Google info about the local city’s community. It turns out every city in China has an active Esperanto community, and I’ve met up with several speakers in this trip already!

Of course many of them are into language learning and travel, but we tend to talk about whatever else comes up. In many situations, the structure of the language actually lets you be more expressive than non-constructed languages. [...]

Read the whole page for embedded links, videos, and much MUCH more.
     

The perennial philosophy in philosophy

Aldous Huxley wrote about The Perennial Philosophy that runs through all theologies. It's made me think recently, about the commonalities that run through many philosophies.

Recently, I've posted about Buddhism as a philosophy. More recently still, I've been reading about Epicureans and Stoics, and have been struck by the similarities they share with each other, and with Buddhist philosophy.

I'm not the only one who has noticed:

Buddhism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism

[...] Stoics aimed not at getting rid of emotions (despite the popular caricature of Stoics as Spock-like figures), but rather to channel them in a more productive direction. This was achieved through a combination of logic, concentration and reflection, and eventually evolved into various contemporary forms of cognitive behavioral therapy. (In this sense, both Buddhism — with its various meditative techniques — and Stoicism have entered the realm of modern practices, which can be pursued essentially independently of the philosophies that gave origin to them.) The ultimate goal of the Stoic was apatheia, or peace of mind, which I think is akin to both the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia and the Buddhist goal of nirvana (again, with due consideration given to the significant differences in the background conditions and specific articulation of the three philosophies). And of course Stoics too had a ready-made recipe for their philosophy, in the form of a short list of virtues to practice (nothing compared to the above mentioned panoply of Buddhist lists though!). These were: courage, justice, temperance and wisdom.

I am sure one could continue with this conceptual cross-mapping for a while, and of course scholars within each of the three traditions would object to or modify my suggestions. What I am interested in here, however, is pursuing the further questions of what the common limitations of the philosophies of Buddhism, Epicureanism and Stoicism are, as well as what positive contributions they have made to humanity's thinking about (and dealing with!) the universe.

I am inclined to reject both Buddhism’s and Stoicism’s metaphysics, being significantly more happy with the Epicurean view of the world. I don’t think there is any reason to think that concepts like logos or karma have any philosophical substance, nor do they do any work in actually explaining why things are the way they are. The Epicurean embracing of a materialist metaphysics, instead, is in synch with the development of natural philosophy and eventually of modern science. [...]

Read the whole thing, for a thoughtful comparison of the three philosophies. And for the embedded links, and some interesting comments afterward.

While reading about the Stoics, I came across this informative timeline on the Stoics' wikipedia page:




Since I don't have a lot of leisure time to study philosophy, I decided to cut to the chase and read Marcus Aurelius, who seems to be the culmination of the stoic philosophers. I had read a little bit of his writing in the past, and was favorably impressed, so I've ordered a book of his meditations.

Even though Marcus was a Stoic, he had studied Epicurus. I wondered if one could mix Marcus Aurelius and Epicurianism as practical wisdom for a good life? It seems I am not the first one to ask that question:

Can one mix Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius to create a great recipe for a good life?

It is time to present two of my all-time favorites among humanistic thinkers of the past. Number one on my list is early Greek philosopher Epicurus. He did create a comprehensive and wholly rational recipe on how to attain a maximal state of peace of mind.
My second choice is the Roman emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. He did teach how to use self-restraint for achieving tranquility of mind.

These two great men had much in common. Marcus Aurelius was well aware of the teachings of the much earlier Epicurus, even if he belonged to a competing school of philosophy. Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic and Stoicism did compete for followers with Epicureanism in the time of Marcus Aurelius.

Stoics did, in fact, at times pour scorn over Epicurus. However, the fact remains that their philosophy contains very many elements that were taken quite straight out of Epicureanism. Many ideas that were presented by Marcus Aurelius could have as well been uttered by Epicurus or his followers as well. [...]

Marcus Aurelius

I think we are blessed to have so many great minds from the past that we can still learn from. Wisdom we can build on.  I'm very much enjoying all this!


Also see:

"Never let the future disturb you" or Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus on foundations for a good life

   

Could you make the grade in 1912?

This was kinda depressing:

1912 eighth grade exam: Could you make it to high school in 1912?

A 1912 eighth-grade exam was donated to a museum in Bullitt County, Ky.

The Bullitt County Genealogical Society put a scanned copy of the 1912 eighth-grade exam on its website today.

This exam was called the "Common Exam" in 1912 and was "apparently a big deal," according to the Society's description of the scanned document. Students in Bullitt County would come to the county courthouse once or twice a year to take the exam.

For passing the exam, students could be given scholarships to attend high school ("which was also a big deal back then," the site says).

The exam consists of 56 questions, a 40-word spelling test, and mentions a separate reading and writing test.

The test quizzed students on mathematics, grammar, geography, physiology, civil government, and history.

Try your hand at some of the questions. Would you have made it into high school in 1912? [...]

Try the questions out... and weep. I gave up pretty quick. I'm sure I actually learned some of this stuff back in the day, but it ain't available on instant recall. All I can say now is, "Where's my calculator?"

     

Who wants a Classical Liberal Education?

I did, but never got it. So I've been getting one for myself, in bits and pieces, over the years. Here is one of my latest discoveries:

Classical Rhetoric 101: An Introduction

As many of you know, I read a lot of biographies on the lives of great men from history. The part of a man’s life I enjoy learning about the most is their education. What books did they read as young men that influenced them later on in life? Where did they travel? What classes did they take while at university? I’ll take notes on these things and try to incorporate their favorite books into my reading list or pick-up an audio course at the library that correlates to a subject they studied.

One thing I’ve noticed about my manly heroes is they all took courses in rhetoric at some point during their education. Intrigued by this commonality, I decided to look into why this was so. The answer was simple: rhetoric was an essential part of a liberal education from the days of Aristotle all the way up to the early 20th century. A well-educated man was expected to write and speak effectively and persuasively and students devoted several years to studying how to do so.

But in the early part of the 20th century, a shift in education occurred. Degrees which prepared students for specific careers replaced a classical, liberal arts education. Today’s college students get just a semester of rhetoric training in their Freshman English Composition classes, and these courses often barely skim the subject.

Which is quite unfortunate.

Our economy and society in the West in general are becoming increasingly knowledge and information based; the ability to communicate effectively and persuasively is more essential to success than ever before. Yet we’re spending less and less time teaching our young people the very subject that will help them navigate this new world.

If you’re like many men today, you didn’t spend much time learning about the art of rhetoric growing up. So today we’re beginning a series called Classical Rhetoric 101. Designed to offer the essential basics on the subject, the series will help you bone up on this manly art. We will begin by laying out an argument for why you should be interested in studying rhetoric in the first place. [...]

It goes on to talk about what rhetoric actually is, and the ways you can benefit from studying it. I especially liked "Protects you from intellectual despotism".

This just part of a series, there are links at the bottom of the article to the other parts of the series. Goody! Lots to look forward to.

     

Lifelong Learning: Free Resources

I'd posted previously from this link about How and Why to Become a Lifelong Learner, and it's certainly worth reading the whole article. But I'm posting the link again, because at the end of the article is a list of resources, that I'll certainly be checking out. And I wanted to put an excerpt of the links here for quick reference:

[...]

As I mentioned above, there are countless free sources available online. Here are a few of the best:

Coursera. Coursera works with top universities from around the world to offer classes online for free. You can take classes from a variety of disciplines including computer sciences, psychology, and Spanish.

OpenStudy. OpenStudy is a social learning network that allows you to connect with individuals with the same learning goals as you.

Khan Academy. I freaking love Khan Academy. You’ll find over 4,000 videos covering topics ranging from algebra to finance to history. My favorite part of Khan Academy, though, is math exercises. You start with basic math and work your way up to calculus in an adaptive, game-like environment. I’ve been slowly going through the exercises to freshen up on my math.

Duolingo. Free website to learn foreign languages. It’s a pretty cool set up. As you progress through the lessons, you’re simultaneously helping translate websites and other documents.

Code Academy. Learn to code for free with interactive exercises. I wish Code Academy was around when I was learning how to build AoM. It would have helped a lot.

edX. Harvard University and MIT partnered together to create interactive, free online courses. The same world-renowned professors that teach at Harvard and MIT have created the courses on edX. You can find courses for just about any subject. I’ve signed up for a class called The Ancient Greek Hero. Class started last week, but you can still sign up. Join me!

Udacity. Udacity is similar to edX and Coursera. College level classes taught online for free.

CreativeLive. I discovered CreativeLive a few weeks ago. It’s an interesting concept. You can watch the live stream of the course being taught for free, but if you want to view the course later and at your own pace you have to pay for it. The courses focus on more creative and business subjects like videography and online marketing. I’ve sat in on a few of the free courses and was impressed with the curriculum.

TED. TED compiles speeches and lectures not only by professors but interesting people from many different walks of life. TED talks are lighter than academic lectures, often quite funny, and concentrate on interesting ideas and concepts. And most are 20 minutes or less, so they’re great for those with a short attention span.

iTunes U. Download thousands of free podcast lectures taught by the best professors from around the world and learn while in your car.

YouTube EDU. Instead of watching a bunch of auto-tuned cats, enrich your mind by browsing through YouTube EDU. They have thousands of videos that cover a variety of topics.

For more ideas on free learning resources, check out this post: How to Become a Renaissance Man Without Spending a Dime.

[...]

Also see:

No Excuse List
"The best place on the web to learn anything, free." It has many links to a wide variety of topics.

   

How to Get a College Degree without the massive, crushing debt inflicted on us by the “Student Loan Industrial Complex.”

Testing Out: How to “Moneyball” Your Way to a Debt-Free College Degree

I don’t know about you, but I’m fed up with the ancient “college savings tips” so-called experts keep force-feeding us:

“Fill out the FAFSA before senior year to maximize aid eligibility!”
“Buy used textbooks, you’ll save hundreds!”
“Apply for scholarships. Try FastWeb.com!”

If you follow this advice, you will be thoroughly and totally prepared for college…in 1995. (You know, just in case that year ever comes back.) But in 2013, these strategies will get you slaughtered by the “Student Loan Industrial Complex.”

[...]

Why You Should Look at College Like an Investment

If this post makes it sound like you’re “Frankensteining” your education, cobbling various exams and credit sources together to form a degree…you’re right. That’s exactly what I’m advocating.

This might seem strange at first, but I encourage you to look at it differently.

Why do we see college as this magical guarantee of financial success? It’s because of these oft-cited studies on how much more graduates earn over their lifetimes than non-grads. We hear sweeping statements (“people with bachelor’s degrees earn $1 million more!”) and assume that it MUST be a great investment, no matter what it costs.

Actually, we don’t just assume it — we’re explicitly told that it’s true:

“Over a lifetime, the gap in earning potential between a high-school diploma and a bachelor of arts is more than $800,000. In other words, whatever sacrifices you and your child make for [a] college education in the short term are more than repaid in the long term.”

That’s from CollegeBoard, the organization that makes the SATs. They’re basically telling you to just pay whatever a degree costs.

It’s horrible advice.

You don’t make huge financial decisions with simplistic rules like “whatever sacrifices you make are worth it in the long-term.” How is that any different than telling you to shoot first and ask questions later? No — you make huge financial decisions is by running the numbers.

Which brings us back to these studies on college graduate earnings. They aren’t “wrong,” but they are misleading.

Here’s why: earning a higher income doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting ahead. You can earn $20,000/year before college, get a $60,000/year job afterwards, and still be no better off. If you spend $100,000 for a degree (and take four years off of work to do it) you have incurred a huge financial and opportunity cost.

You took out a loan against your future earnings which must now be repaid over five, ten, maybe even fifteen or twenty years. Even then, once all the loans are repaid and you’ve earned back all the income you lost by not working, guess what? All you have done is break even!

You’re back at square one. Finally, after years of repaying loans and interest, you can start actually benefiting from the higher income you earned your degree for. Most college students don’t realize that this is what they’ve agreed to until after they graduate. They just see college as a magical guarantee of financial success. Yet whether they realize it or not, their student loans often chain them to a life of indentured servitude.

The return on an investment is inversely proportional to the time and money invested. In plain English: the longer it takes you to graduate, and the more you pay, the less valuable your degree ultimately is. [...]

This is a fascinating article, not only for pointing out the pitfalls of going into debt for an education, but also for the heaps of practical advice for avoiding that debt and still getting your degree.

The comments after the article are just as interesting. The author is criticized for his advice, and he answers his critics. A very lively, informative discussion.

And this isn't theoretical; people are actually doing it:

The DIY Degree: Using Self-Education to Earn a Bachelor’s Degree in 1 Year

“What’s the point of learning, if you don’t get a degree after?”

This has been the biggest criticism of my MIT Challenge, and honestly, it’s not an easy one to avoid. Even if weirdos like me are willing to learn a degree outside of school, the truth is the world still values that piece of paper. Unfortunately, until recently I’ve had little answer to this complaint–it seems if you want the degree, you have to suffer through an often slow and expensive process.

That was before I met Jay Cross. Jay in many ways did a project similar to mine–he completed a bachelor’s degree in less time, mostly through self-study. The only difference? Jay got a real degree for his efforts.

I asked Jay to write a guest post to share his method with you. Not only does it work, but it gets results in the real world as well. Jay has already had career opportunities that would be the envy of a lot of college grads, having staff writing positions for major publications and entrepreneurial ventures. Jay demonstrates that not only can self-education work, it can be a true alternative for many students hesitant about college.

The DIY Degree, by Jay Cross

Today, I’m going to show you a totally new twist on self-education.

We’ve long been told that learning is an “either/or” decision. You can either spend four years in college and earn a degree…OR study on your own with no degree to show for it. But what if you could have the best of both: the credential employers crave, with the speed, personalization and low cost of self-study?

You can.

Using the “degree-by-examination” approach, you can earn a bachelor’s degree by taking tests instead of classes. It works no matter where you live, lets you graduate in one year instead of four, and costs roughly 1/20th the price of a regular degree…with the exact same legitimacy and earning power.

The problem: society DOES still value degrees

Some jobs require degrees no matter how smart you are. Even in more flexible professions (like programming) there’s always one or two “By-The-Book Bob” types who reject non-grads on principle.

This concerned me, even with all I had accomplished already. If there was any way to graduate for minimal time and cost—and eliminate this potential obstacle—it seemed worthwhile to try. Of all the different approaches I researched and read about, degree-by-examination was the college shortcut that actually worked.

Before I explain, allow me to share the struggles that led me to this discovery in the first place. [...]

See how he did it. This is must reading for anyone who is considering going into deep debt for a college education. There ARE alternatives. I wish I had known this back in the day, when I dropped out of college because it was so enormously expensive. These are alternatives that can really work.


Also see:

Graduate faster and spend less money with DIY Degree’s “Cost-Per-Credit” Calculator
     

Train Your Brain, with Lasting Results

Brain training helped older adults stay sharp for years -study

CHICAGO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - A brief course of brain
exercises helped older adults hold on to improvements in
reasoning skills and processing speed for 10 years after the
course ended, according to results from the largest study ever
done on cognitive training.

Older adults who underwent a brief course of brain exercises
saw improvements in reasoning skills and processing speed that
could be detected as long as 10 years after the course ended,
according to results from the largest study ever on cognitive
training.

[...]

People in the study had an average age of 74 when they
started the training, which involved 10 to 12 sessions lasting
60 to 75 minutes each. After five years, researchers found,
those with the training performed better than their untrained
counterparts in all three measures.

Although gains in memory seen at the study's five-year mark
appeared to drop off over the next five years, gains in
reasoning ability and processing speed persisted 10 years after
the training.

"What we found was pretty astounding. Ten years after the
training, there was evidence the effects were durable for the
reasoning and the speed training," said George Rebok, an expert
on aging and a professor at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, who led the study.

Participants in all three training groups also reported that
they had an easier time with daily activities such as managing
their medications, cooking meals or handling their finances than
did participants who did not get the training. But standard
tests of these activities showed no differences between the
groups.

"The speed-of-processing results are very encouraging," said
study co-author Jonathan King, program director for cognitive
aging in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the
National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National
Institutes of Health, which helped fund the research.

King said the self-reported improvements in daily function
were interesting, but added, "We do not yet know whether they
would truly allow older people to live independently longer."

[...]

The training course was designed to bolster specific
cognitive abilities that begin to slip as people age. It does
not aim to prevent dementia caused by underlying disease such as Alzheimer's.

At the start of the study, all 2,832 participants were
cognitively normal. The study included four groups: three
training groups plus a control group of volunteers who came in
for regular testing to see how they were faring with age.

People were trained in small groups over a period of several
weeks and then were tested immediately after the training and
again one, two, three, five and 10 years later.

About 60 percent of the volunteers who underwent training
also got booster training sessions, which enhanced the initial benefits.

At the end of the trial, all groups showed declines compared
with their initial baseline tests in memory, reasoning and
processing speed, but those who got training in reasoning and
processing speed experienced less decline.

[...]

The programs, developed by the researchers, were focused
largely on teaching strategies to improve cognitive performance.
For example, the memory training taught people how to remember
word lists, sequences and main ideas, while the reasoning
training focused on things like recognizing number patterns.

In the processing speed training, people were asked to focus
on the main object in a computer screen while also trying to
quickly recognize and identify objects on the periphery of the
screen. Such training can help older drivers with things like
recognizing road signs while driving.

A version of the speed training program developed for this
trial is now commercially available through the brain fitness
company Posit Science, but the researchers are working on makingother types of training available as well.

Rebok's team just got a grant from the National Institute on
Aging to make a computerized version of the memory test, with
the hope that repeated training can improve the results.

The study was not designed to explain why cognitive training
can have such a lasting effect. Rebok said it may be that people
take the strategies they learn and practice them over time. As
they age, trained individuals can rely on these strategies to
compensate for their declines. [...]

I find it interesting that 10 to 12 hours of training could have such long lasting effects. They must have learned techniques that they incorporated into their daily lives, that made a difference in the long run. An education about how to use their brains, or more effectively use their thinking and reasoning faculties. Why not teach these things in schools to people who are young? Such habits might benefit them throughout their entire lives.

     

Lifelong Learning, and Resiliency

Two topics I've been interested in, and two articles about them on one of my favorite websites:



How and Why to Become a Lifelong Learner

For the first twenty-two years or so of our lives, our main “job” is learning. The bulk of our time is spent in classrooms acquiring new knowledge. And then, once we graduate, we feel like the education phase of our lives is done and now it’s time to go out into the world. Have you ever thought about how odd that idea is? That only a quarter of our lives should be devoted to learning, and then we should simply rest on our laurels for the remaining three-quarters of it?

It’s an erroneous idea – but one many have absorbed, at least subconsciously. But school need not be your exclusive provider of learning. Just because you’ve finished your formal education, doesn’t mean that your education is over!

Many, perhaps most, of history’s greatest men were autodidacts – those who devote themselves to self-education, either in addition to or as a substitute to formal schooling. [...]

It goes on to give examples, and more. Lots of good links, I thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the links was this:

Building Your Resiliency: Part V – Recognizing and Utilizing Your Signature Strengths

This is the fifth part in a series designed to help you boost your resiliency. For the previous entries, see Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

When we first introduced the topic of resiliency, we discussed how it is both a reactive and an active quality, a skill that helps you bounce back and reach out.

Today’s discussion will center on the active aspect of resiliency and the path to gaining the confidence to take risks and embrace change.

Anchoring Your Resiliency in Your Authentic Self

When your self-esteem and sense of self-worth is tied to other people, your job, or any other external factors, your confidence is subject to every wind of change and lacks real stability. Any time these external factors change, your happiness and confidence go with it. Your emotional fortitude goes up and down like a roller coaster.

Tying your self-concept to external factors also keeps you from embracing adventure and approaching the world like a courageous explorer. If you base your self-concept on external things, any changes in those things will throw you for a loop, create anxiety, and compel you to cling as tightly as you can to the status quo. You become desperate to keep your life just the way it is and can’t handle change. You avoid traveling, moving, changing jobs, and getting into relationships because these steps alter the environment on which you’ve based your self-concept, leaving you feeling lost and out of control

The key to active resiliency is to build your self-concept not on a constructed self, but on an authentic self, not on external things, but on the inner, personal strengths that make you unique as a man. Your unique strengths are your special tools that will allow you to build a happy and fulfilling life. Understanding what tools you possess can give you the confidence that you’ll be able to face any challenge that comes your way. While we can’t predict the future, we can have confidence in our ability to deal with whatever happens. [...]

Again, it's full of interesting links. And this article is part of a series, so I can look forward to reading them all.
     

Who was Mario Pei?

From Wikipedia: Mario Pei

[...] Pei was born in Rome, Italy, and emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1908. By the time he was out of high school he knew not only English and his native Italian but also Latin, Greek, and French. Over the years he became fluent in several other languages (including Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and German) capable of speaking some 30 others, and acquainted with the structure of at least 100 of the world's languages.

In 1923, he began his career teaching languages at City College of New York, and in 1928 he published his translation of Vittorio Ermete de Fiori's Mussolini: The Man of Destiny. Pei received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1937, focusing on Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic, and Old French.

In 1937, he joined the Department of Romance Languages at Columbia University, becoming a full professor in 1952. In 1941, he published his first language book, The Italian Language. His facility with languages was in demand in World War II, and Pei served as a language consultant with two agencies of the Department of War. In this role, he wrote language textbooks, developed language courses and wrote language guidebooks.

While working as a professor of Romance Philology at Columbia University, Pei wrote over 50 books, including the best-sellers The Story of Language (1949) and The Story of English (1952). His other books included Languages for War and Peace (1943), A Dictionary of Linguistics (written with Frank Gaynor, 1954), All About Language (1954), Invitation to Linguistics: A Basic Introduction to the Science of Language (1965), and Weasel Words: Saying What You Don't Mean (1978).

Pei penned The America We Lost: The Concerns of a Conservative (1968), a book advocating individualism and constitutional literalism. In the book, Pei denounces the income tax, as well as communism and other forms of collectivism.

Mario Pei was also an internationalist who advocated the introduction of Esperanto into school curricula across the world to supplement local languages. [...]

I remember reading some of his books from the library when I was a teen, and interested in languages. He seemed very well informed. Many of his books are still available (used), on Amazon.com. I suspect that his political views are not popular with the Brave New World crowd. See the original Wiki page for embedded links.

   

My Brilliant Career, part II

Previously, I explored Tax Preparer as an additional source of income. This time, I'm going to look at Pharmacy Technician.

It's a better option than Chickenblogging, and it seems that for the foreseeable future, healthcare is where the most jobs are.

I've been taking some accounting courses from Ed2go.com, and I was perusing some of the other non-college credit courses, and this looked interesting:

Explore a Career as a Pharmacy Technician

Health care is a booming field these days, and pharmacy technicians are in high demand. In this course, you’ll take a look at the many job settings and career paths open to you if you become a pharmacy technician. In addition, you’ll master the skills you need to get an entry-level position as a pharmacy tech or clerk.

You’ll start by learning basic terms for medical conditions and anatomy, gaining the skills you’ll need to read prescriptions and patient records easily. In addition, you’ll find out how common classes of drugs are made and how they work.

Next, you’ll master the simple math that every pharmacy tech needs to know. You’ll learn how to calculate dosages accurately, practice using simple formulas and math tools, and find out how to translate metric measurements into familiar household measures like teaspoons and tablespoons. Turning to the business side, you’ll look at sales and find out how prescription pricing works.

In addition, you’ll learn about the important laws and regulations that govern pharmacies. You’ll also hone your communication skills, learning how to handle customers courteously and efficiently. And finally, you’ll explore the steps you can take to enhance your career prospects becoming a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT). By the time you’re done, you’ll be prepared to start your career in this popular and rapidly-growing field.

Note: This course is designed to give you an introduction to the profession of pharmacy technician. It will not supply enough information to sit for the national exam. If your goal is to become a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT), then upon completion of this introductory course, enrollment into the advanced course is recommended. The advanced course is located in the online Career Training section of the ed2go catalog: http://www.gatlineducation.com/pharmacytechnician.html.

The Advanced Course is 330 hours, and prepares you to take the State Exam. Both courses are on-line (which allows great flexibility), and offer demos so you can see how they work. The introductory course offer's an entire lesson and quiz free. I think I may take the introductory course, just to see if I have what it takes, and if I can see myself doing it. No point in taking an advanced course till I know that.
   

Good reasons not to write too fancy

Why Clarence Thomas Uses Simple Words in His Opinions

[...] What I tell my law clerks is that we write these so that they are accessible to regular people. That doesn't mean that there's no law in it. But there are simple ways to put important things in language that's accessible. As I say to them, the beauty, the genius is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It's to put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence.

That's beauty. That's editing. That's writing.

The editing we do is for clarity and simplicity without losing meaning, and without adding things. You don't see a lot of double entendres, you don't see word play and cuteness. We're not there to win a literary award. We're there to write opinions that some busy person or somebody at their kitchen table can read and say, "I don't agree with a word he said, but I understand what he said." [...]

Read the whole thing. Sensible editing for effective communication.