The Male Brain

I read a great book called "The Male Brain" over New Year's, which details the changes that occur in male brains over different stages of life. According to the book, boyhood is characterized by an insatiable drive to run, to climb, to fight and wrestle, and to compete with other boys at every possible chance. This competitiveness to see who can run the fastest, or swim the farthest, or what have you, serves to establish a clear pecking order in a social group, and it can occur with remarkable speed. The consequence of this is that, to a young boy, winning is everything.

I got a clear demonstration of that earlier today, when my five-year-old cousin in law was beat at chess by his grandfather, a sweet, even-tempered man. Alan remarked to himself "Wow, that's strange, I don't usually win." To an older male, this would not be a big slight; to my cousin, it was seen as bragging, highly 'unsportsmanlike' behavior, and he ran off to his room crying, not to emerge for nearly an hour despite his grandfather's sincere apology. My first reaction was to label the kid as a crybaby, but when I considered my own reactions to losing a game at that age, I retracted my judgement. Even today, I'm extremely competitive with everything from grades in school to throwing darts and playing chess. I hate to lose, but when I do, I shrug it off.

After my cousin's tantrum, I sat down and played a game of chess with the grandfather. We were evenly matched in skill and experience, and - for the first time in my life - it ended in a draw. We smiled at each other, shook hands, and said "good game."

The five-year-old in me still wanted to win, though.

What I Learned In Boating School Is...

Another year has come and gone, and I have not written in this blog as often as it deserves. Maybe I've been so happy with Iva that I no longer ruminate like I used to. Maybe I just forgot why I kept this blog in the first place. One of the big reasons, I suspect, is that I was disappointed by the fact that I haven't become a famous blogger by now. Whatever the case, I realized that this blog is conducive to my learning and remembering things, whether or not anyone reads it. Give this, I have one New Year's resolution; to write every day, about what I've learned and experienced, so that I can remember more of it come exam-time, or whenever I might need that information down the road.

The classes I am taking are interesting enough that you, my readers, ought to be entertained. I will give each post the time and effort required to make the material understandable to the layman. For the record, those classes are Chemistry 2, Principles of Biology 2. Writing in Community, and Treating Child & Adolescent Psychopathology.

So, to begin, I learned today WHY the fiscal cliff has not yet been voted on by the house and the senate;  by voting on the issue in 2013, when tax hikes and spending cuts go into effect, legislators can report to their constituents "I voted for lower taxes for the middle class." Source: Ari Fleischer, my stepfather's brother.

Effects of the fiscal cliff:

- End of last year's payroll tax cuts, making employees pay 2% more in taxes.
- end of the 2001-2003 Bush tax cuts
- Beginning of taxes related to president Obama's health care law.
- According to Barron's, over 1,000 government programs, including the defense budget and Medicare, are in line for "Deep, Automatic Cuts"

This has the potential to lead no another recession, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If people learn to make do with less money, and are forced to save their money,  the individual wins, financially, in the long run at the expense of retail companies. A measure of chaos is good for a society every now and then, as it leads to elimination of all but the essentials. It IS uncomfortable, but I'd rather be uncomfortable at this age than when I'm older, so that I can greater appreciate luxuries EARNED.

The Office

I work at a driving school with a staff of four people, including yours truly. We get all kinds of clients, some of them are rich, most of them aren't, and the sheer number of ethnicities are mind-boggling. We get russians, polish, indians, arabs, asians, french, british, african-americans and latin-americans; you wouldn't believe how many scheduling errors we've made because two clients had a name like "Abhishek" or "Oleg." If you want to impress your customers, you have to get to know each and every one of them, by name, and keep tabs on their lives. If you do that, then your company can be assured that it is improving, and not interfering with, your customers' lives.

Most of our clients are perfectly normal people, and are a pleasure to work with. A small minority of our clients are neither normal, nor sane; that comes with the territory. For those kinds of people, we have rules; if you do not show up for a lesson, and you did not give us sufficient warning, you're going to be charged for that lesson. If you make the instructor's lives hell by making us pick you up near penn station or grand central, we will cut that time from your lesson. This is a driving school, not a limousine company. If you want to take the pre-licensing class, you will do so in a full class of eight or nine people; you will NOT get a one-on-one class with the instructor just because you're some VIP who expects preferential treatment.

Oh, and if you're trying to route everything through your secretary? Don't expect it to end well, because if there's TWO people (your secretary and me, the secretary for the driving school) handling the scheduling for the client and the instructor, one of us is going to mess up, guaranteed. "My people will call your people" does not work when you're trying to get a driver's license.

There are certain aspects of the process of getting one's license here in NYC that cause collective insanity. One is the scheduling of road tests; after taking the pre-licensing class, you (or I) will schedule the road test on a weekday between the hours of 9am and 4pm. Road tests never happen on weekends; the DMV is closed, and you can't bribe them enough to make them work weekends. You will need to take a half-day off from work for this road test, and whether or not your boss is cool with it, we can't make the process any shorter. And if, G*d forbid, you should fail your road test, do not expect any freebies. Our instructors have day jobs, and if they don't get paid, they're not going to work; same as you and me. I know it's expensive to take lessons in the city, but everything is expensive in the city; we have to pay rent for the office, we have car payments to make, gas to buy, and mouths to feed. If we could afford to lower prices, we would; lower prices mean more customers, so it's a win-win situation. That's why we offer some of the lowest rates in Manhattan as it is.

More to come later; I've got a client going into labor in the middle of her lesson.







 

Much Change

I no longer want to be a businessman: I want to be a brain surgeon.

I speak English and French, but now I also speak Croatian. I'm visiting Croatia in January with  my girlfriend.

I'm not taking any more social studies classes: only the sciences; Biology, Chemistry, Statistics and Child Psychopathology.

I stopped writing for a long time. It may be that I was so happy being with my girlfriend that I no longer felt a compulsion to write. It may be that I no longer saw the benefit in writing. I think it's because I got lazy.

Laziness is the worst thing that can happen to a person, especially if one has the energy to do more than sit on their ass and just 'get by' in their schoolwork, in their jobs, and in their relationships.

That all changes now. I'm done being lazy.

Because this is my chance to shine, and it may be the only chance that I get.

Digitizing the Brain

        I read an interesting article this morning about scientists from Tel Aviv University who created an artificial rat cerebellum. This part of the brain that controls many aspects of body movement, like timing and coordination. Researchers implanted a computer chip into an anesthetized rat whose cerebellum had been knocked out, and taught the rat how to blink in response to a specific tone. This is classical conditioning, to be sure, but it's a big step forward for both medicine and neuroscience research. Devices such as prosthetic limbs and cochlear implants are one-way communicators with the brain; either sending information to the brain or interpreting commands from it. This electronic cerebellum, however, is a two-way

        In the immediate future, a similar implant could be used on patients with damaged cerebellums (such as those with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc.) to correct movement impairments. In later years, this could lead to implants for stroke patients & people with genetic mental illnesses; schizophrenia, dementia, depression & ADHD. Circuitry supplementing neural tissue when necessary, or in healthy people, augmenting the memory span and cognitive capabilities of the brain.

      Cyborg humans? Bet your ass i'm signing up for that research study! In all seriousness, this is the kind of research that I'm going to be doing in the future, and it bears keeping track of. Mental problems, regardless of what caused them, are as bad as physical disabilities. I believe that funding for the cognitive sciences, especially neurobiology and neurochemistry, should be increased both from private and public institutions. The brain, not space, is the final frontier, and we've only just begun to map it.

Dear Mr. Mayor

Mr. Bloomberg,

         I know that public health has been one of your biggest pet causes throughout your political career, and that you firmly believe in the power of government to solve issues like heart disease, lung cancer, and diabetes. To that end, you have banned public smoking in bars and restaurants in New York City, and later extended that ban to public parks, plazas and walkways. You also introduced a ban on trans fats in restaurants, to help keep peoples' arteries clean. Most recently, you have introduced a law, without due process in city government, that bans the sale of sodas bigger than 16 ounces in bars, restaurants, street vendor carts and sports stadiums, and you claim that this is not an infringement on anyone's rights. After all, one can still buy 20-ounce sodas in the supermarket under this bill.

        Perhaps you and I have different points of view when it comes to infringement on someone's rights. I subscribe to the J.S. Mill school of philosophy, which says that one is free - or ought to be free - to do whatever he or she pleases so long as it does not harm others. To that end, I can see your justification for banning smoking in restaurants - secondhand smoke is harmful. To some extent, this also explains your ban on trans fats and your current battle against soda. Trans fats pose a significant health risk, as does the over-consumption of sugar. However, whereas Mill gives freedom the benefit of the doubt, you seem more than willing to squelch freedom whenever it doesn't fit your worldview. This is why you continually raise taxes on cigarettes and impose restriction upon restriction on the sale of alcohol; you believe that the citizens of New York City are incapable of taking care of themselves. That they are so unintelligent that you have to act as their mother and father.

     Freedom includes the ability to make decisions about what one will put into their bodies, be it food, drink, or drugs like alcohol and cigarettes. When you take that freedom away, however slightly or gradually, you are setting foot on the road to tyranny, as you have done. By not putting this bill through the proper legal process, you have declared "I don't care what the rest of the city thinks; my word is law." This tells me that the power you have enjoyed for so long has gotten to your head, and that because you have stopped responding to the will of the people, you are no longer fit to lead.

      Mr. Mayor, I urge you to think about this matter further, and to hold a town hall meeting about it if it matters so much to you. Even if this bill receives popular approval, you at least ought to fine-tune it such that it is neither too light nor overbearing.

Your fellow citizen,

Cameron Beaudreault

      

Brilliant cut

And so it comes.
That moment when you find
your dreams quite different from what you expected.
pure bliss interposed with struggle,
grief and loneliness,
and you end up resenting them.
In truth, the object of your desire is a diamond in the rough;
tougher than steel, and, although uncut, it is perfect in its own way
as each element in the cosmos is a piece of perfection.
Use this diamond as needed, but never take it for granted,
or it shall leave you -
lost in the sands of our vast world.
Should you lose it, you will spend years
if not decades
searching for a replacement
before you realize it is irreplaceable.
What's gone is gone,
and this is why you must take care of your diamond;
it is the greatest possession you own.