Birds & Bees for Reluctant Bachelors

I applaud and sometimes envy the proud bachelors who have decided they don't need to contribute further to humanity's gene pool, and this post is not for them. This post is for you single males who don't want to be single. You are the nice guys who want to settle down. You find Leykis 101 to be both offensive and inappropriate for what you want. You have experienced the reality behind the platitude "nice guys finish last."

But note you have also had some uncomfortable experiences where females expressed interest in you. Most likely they were attractive enough for someone, but not attractive to you personally. Yet you wish the right gal would come along and express interest in you, so this awkward phase of your life could be over.

From a scientific perspective, what you are doing is unsustainable.  In order for a man to impregnate a woman under normal circumstances, he MUST be attracted to her. A woman does NOT have to be attracted to a man to be impregnated by him. This means that a man has to initiate the first steps in the relationship, because only he knows who he is and is not attracted to. A woman then has to choose her best option from her list of suitors. Reread this paragraph slowly and deeply ponder the implications.

You think you are nice because you play your cards close to your chest and don't constantly harass women with what you think of them. In fact you are just leaving them to drown with the Leykis 101 sharks, giving them less options because you are afraid of rejection.

Here's what you should do instead:

1. Be calculated. Yes you must be attracted to a woman, but make sure you are attracted to her for her personality qualities as well as her physical qualities. Is she smart enough for you? Thrifty enough for you? Don't get too picky, but know exactly why you like her, and make sure she will fit with what you want in life.
2. Proximity: Once you have identified a suitable woman, test the waters with casual friendship. Does she hold up to the test of being fun to hang out with? Relationships happen because people spend time with each other. If you hang out with her long enough, a relationship is likely to form.
3. Get aggressive. Tell her you like her, make a move. Make more moves. If she makes it clear she's not interested, check with her later to see she's changed her mind, "follow up." Before you give up, be perfectly straight with her: "I really like you, and I think a long term relationship could really work between us. I like you because [insert reasons from 1 and 2 above here.]" If a romantic relationship doesn't form after a few months, network (see if she has friends you try 1 and 2 above with,) and move on to someone else, starting with 1 above. If she objects to you networking with her friends or otherwise moving on, give her another chance: "I have started to see you as only a friend, because you aren't interested in me. It seems you are uncomfortable with me dating other people, are you sure you don't have feelings for me?"
4. Stay aggressive. You have to keep letting her know you value her in your life, or the relationship will deteriorate and disappear. You can't let your feminine feelings of needing to be wanted ruin your life or hers, and most long term relationships require much more aggression on the part of the man than the woman. Also, part of being aggressive is if it doesn't work out with one female (if a relationship ends, or if you are rejected before a real relationship forms,) you move on to someone else. Take notes of why you were rejected, and if there is anything you want to change about yourself, change as you move on.

If you can't get aggressive, the "why" you can't get aggressive is an important warning sign. For example if you are afraid to make a move because her husband might shoot you, well you shouldn't be going after married women in the first place. If you are scared because her biker son just got out of prison, then you need to be second guessing your math in step number 1 above anyways. Making moves on employees at work is a universally bad idea.

Don't second guess her taste in men. She knows what she wants, you don't. The way she experiences romantic love is different from how you do, largely because of the differences mentioned above. Never assume a woman is "out of your league," let her make that decision for herself.

"Friend" is not a bad word. You could have a virtually unlimited pool of "just friends" females if you wanted to, but that is not what you want. Give absolutely no heed to the notion that you might "ruin a valued friendship" by being aggressive. Do the world a favor and take indecent advantage of that friendship to pursue 1-4 above.

You are not a princess, so do not wish upon a star for a knight in shining armor to come save you. Rejection will hurt, but you will suck it up, because you are a man, and you will go on to the next one. Society, your future children and your future romance depends on this.

Khan Academy + English = Humanity's Birthright

The solution to all the world's problems, with today's technology, is simple:

1. Teach them English.
2. Have them do Khan Academy in English.

This is THE long-term solution to the never ending crisis in the Middle East. This brings permanent peace to Africa. This ends hunger in East Asia. This fixes everything:

http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/p/english-as-technology-eat.html

Divided We Fall

You can see from other posts on this blog that racism is very real to me, and that I take it very seriously. We all, especially whites, but everyone, need to keep their own racism in check and strive to be less racist, and stand up for others who are being racially discriminated against. We need to vote for politicians who take racism seriously. I have no doubt of this.

Most of us agree that one of the most serious problems with racism in our culture is stereotypes perpetuated by the media. But who owns the media, and who wants us divided along racial lines? Why would they want us divided?

In my mid 20's in the very late 90's, I went to live in the Pittsburgh area for a few years. I discovered in Alliquippa PA very segregated neighborhoods and a lot of racial tension. It turned out that the steel mill that used to be that town's main source of income had the town divided along racial lines, and that up to that point in 1998 it was still considered "unsafe" or "inappropriate" for whites go into he black neighborhoods (a norm I ignored and violated frequently.)

Later when I was studying the labor movement in college, I found that the captains of industry had divided their worker population along racial lines. At times this prevented white union organizers from visiting fellow black workers in their housing, because the housing was owned by the employers and whites were not allowed into the black housing areas. Race was literally used to keep the workforce from organizing.

Who owns the media, and why would they want us divided? What do they want us to not organize against? What do we all have in common that is so precious?

What they are controlling is our vote. What they are distracting us from is campaign finance reform. Why they are distracting us from campaign finance reform is government regulations have been put into place to literally make fantastically wealthy people richer to the detriment of everyone else (even most of the "1%.") Watch this:



But what can we do? What can just one vote do? It's not that simple, you can be extremely influential, don't believe that your donation or your vote does not matter, that is the lie they need you to believe. Here's an example of what you can contribute to besides simply voting, to make a difference:



We still have freedom of speech in the USA. Be loud about this, make sure every voter knows this is THE issue at hand. We get this taken care of, and solutions to climate change, immigration, public education, insane incarceration rates, cost of college, police brutality, health care, living wages etc. will be forth coming. Otherwise our own democracy will continue to be used against us.

Reflective Practice & Blogging

In grad school the one thing they pounded into our heads more than anything else was "Reflective Practice," or paying attention to what you are doing so you can reflect and improve as you continue in what you do. If you have something interesting you are working on to share with the rest of us, I say it is a good Reflective Practice to write a blog about it. I have two examples I would like to point out here.

The first example is Jane, who discovered she was bipolar while taking psychology (a subject she has in interested in outside of school) courses at college. What she has said so far on her blog shows deep reflection and progression of thought, and in my opinion is a good example of reflective practice:
http://ourbipolarviews.blogspot.com/
As she continues her studies, I expect to see this blog to go in very exiting directions.

The second example is the blog of "Lord Rybec." He goes from ranting against stimulus in 2009 to in 2014 summarizing research that supports "basic income" as the solution to well, most of the problems in the USA, even from his conservative perspective. He has a lot of other insightful evolution of thought on subjects ranging from education to various health issues:
http://lordrybec.blogspot.com/
No doubt this blog will continue to entertain in the future.

If these two are Jedi of reflective practice blogging, I know a Sith. I met Sub Genius veteran Lance Miller in grad school, who decided to take his one-year graduate certificate and leave before completing the full master's program. The Center for Creative Change of Antioch University (or "C3") has a "Whole Systems Design" (or "WSD") degree that is basically technophobic/Luddite, but which attracts software professionals, creating a vast army of bitter drop outs and disgruntled alumni, but Lance was not content to just be another statistic:
http://progressive-positive.blogspot.com/
In 2007 he was bent on basically preaching heresy by the WSD faculty's standards, with blog posts like "Happy vs. Right" declaring simple contentment in one's own views was insufficient for survival, and generally supporting the status quo view that the WSD faculty despised using C3's own terminology and framing.

However by 2012 he had taken the same concepts he had differences with the Whole Systems Design C3 program over (namely that he thinks technology is good for humanity,) and pushed those ideas into more and more constructive directions, even synthesizing those beliefs with the religious views of others. At the height of this blog he published his manifesto as a very enjoyable and insightful book, "Athena Techne."

My final thought here is that technology more so than anything else has improved our ability to engage in "reflective practice." If any Luddites out there doubt this, try demonstrating your concerns without the internet, phones, radios, telegraphs, electronics, printing presses, pen and paper, mirrors, smoke signals, cave walls and blood, or serene puddles of water and see how effectively you reflect on your own or with others without technology.

Foundations of Success

I have seen people come of age and try to join society as adults for over two decades now, I have experience working with this population in our incarceration system, and I have an undergraduate degree in Human Services. In my opinion, the vast majority of the time when an individual is not able to make the transition into adulthood effectively, it is because they are deficient in one of the following three areas, listed here in order of importance:

1. First and most importantly is mental health. Crazy people usually don't grasp just how crazy they actually are. If you think you might be even slightly nuts, you need to go seek professional help immediately. Proceeding with a broken mind is guaranteed misery and failure in life. I had a friend with borderline personality seek help and literally be cured after less than a dozen counseling sessions with a good therapist. I had another friend with schizophrenia who had to take his meds every day or the walls would start yelling at him, but otherwise was a model employee. I had another friend who needed help for depression, didn't get it, and once every few months would physically threaten other employees, so that in spite of otherwise being an ideal employee, he couldn't hold a job for a year at a time. If you have had a hard time getting into school or holding down a part time job, there's a very good chance you need to see a shrink.
2. Second is physical health. There is no success in life that will compensate for being addicted to alcohol, tobacco, or other substances. Mental illness can lead to becoming addicted far more easily than others. Nearly everyone needs to be in the habit of regular physical exercise and a reasonably healthy diet, but mental illness can make it difficult to commit to any such habits long term. Meanwhile studies have shown that having a clean healthy lifestyle will help you tremendously in school, and is otherwise very good for your brain's health.
3. Once you have your mental health and physical health in order, you are ready for school. As hard as college might be, it's not as hard as trying to support yourself with the type of work you are likely to do without a college degree. In today's world you are likely to have several career changes, and the right education can help you be taken seriously and be a significant contribution to each new place of employment. To this end, it is important that your formal education have 3 qualities: A) It should be something you enjoy or are very interested in - something you would be into even if your college was destroyed in a tornado over the weekend. B) It should be relatively easy for you compared to other subjects - this is a good indicator that you bring talent to this area of expertise. Also A + B makes it much more likely you will stay in school and graduate. C) It should be affordable. The two factors to consider with affordability is first it's employability: how likely is the degree to quickly pay for itself after you graduate? A nursing degree for example is likely to land you a job at $30 per hour with no experience - those kind of wages will pay off a sizable student loan quickly. Secondly consider simply the price of tuition itself, go to the least expensive school that will still give you the education you are looking for. Expensive education is over rated, and the weight of debt on your happiness is under rated.

In summary the foundation for success in life is to first get into reasonably good mental and physical health, and then get an affordable education in something you are interested in and good at.

MandatoryTX

While studying Human Services at Western Washington University, I did an internship through Americorps with the Education program at the King County Jail on 5th Ave. in downtown Seattle. I got a taste at how effective our criminal justice system is at rehabilitating our criminals, and how good of a financial investment it is for our society.

Let's say you are a prosecuting attorney and need to get your conviction rates up. Stall a few cases who's defendants are too poor to post bail for a few months, while their careers and family life fall apart on the outside. Now offer them a plea bargain: plead guilty and all you have to do is "time served" (the few months they already served.) Because responsible people have people they need to take care of outside of jail, a lot of innocent and good people get criminal convictions on their records because of these kind of nasty tricks.

A full one percent of the USA's population is incarcerated. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world - worse than any dictatorship or socialist dystopia on the planet. Besides the large number of innocent people in jail, jail must also be considered a social service - what other way is better to keep someone from committing domestic violence, for example? I have actually met people who like it in jail, and like to live there at the tax payer's expense. I have heard of homeless people intentionally getting into jail so they could get out of the cold and see a doctor. As good of a resource jail is for these people, we simply cannot afford to provide this kind of high-end social service for some 1% of the population.

I have an alternative I started writing about while studying Human Services, called "Mandatory Treatment." If you catch someone with cocaine on them, don't offer them 3 hots and a cot for a few years, instead make them go into a 3 month in-patient drug rehabilitation program. First, it is going to be LESS pleasant than a longer term in jail, it is a harsher punishment. Second, unlike jail, it might really get them thinking about their life and their mistakes - they might actually change their behavior. Third, it will be much less expensive.

But Mandatory Treatment can work with non-narcotics programs. Driving while under the influence for example - long jail sentences hardly suffice for treating alchohol-related behavior problems, while Mandatory Treatment would have much better odds. Another example is domestic violence: jail is not going to give an abuser sufficient counseling and introspection to change behavior. From vandalism to shoplifting, Mandatory Treatment would work far better than what we have now, for a lot less money.

Brown Rice Recipe

One way you can instantly add a lot of nutrition to your diet is to convert from any white rice to any whole grain rice, collectively called "brown rice". There are many types of brown rice, and a the commonly found ones I have ran into in Seattle include: black cargo rice, red cargo rice, brown short grain rice (sometimes found in sushi), brown long grain rice. Your normal approach to cooking rice is likely to end up making nearly inedible garbage, but many people have found innovative ways of cooking it that make it just as good if not considerably tastier than white rice.

I have a universal way of cooking all types of brown rice that is easy and works every time:

1. Put your dry rice out of the package into a pot.
2. Put water in the pot until the rice is covered by at least 5 times as much volume as the rice itself takes up. So if the rice fills the pot to 10%, make sure the water level is up to at least 60% of the pot.
3. Bring the rice to a boil stirring occasionally. Cover the pot, and reduce to a simmer.
4. After 30 minutes, check rice for consistency. If it's ready, move on to step 5, if it is not, repeat this step every 5 minutes until the rice has the texture you want.
5. Use a pasta strainer to drain the water off of the rice.
6. Very briefly douse the rice in the strainer with water, and let the rice sit a few minutes in the strainer to let the water drain off the rice.
7. The rice is now ready to eat or use in some other recipe (fried rice, Spanish rice, etc.)

In a nutshell, to cook perfect brown rice, cook it like you would pasta: boil it until it has the consistency you want, then briefly rinse it off and drain off all the excess water. It's even easier than it sounds.