Sun 25 Feb 24 20:59

I read a chapter in my neglected book on botany. It was on seed plants, which brough memories of Sister John Ann and Doctor William Reynolds. One made biology harder, the other too easy. I suppose I could consider they canceled each other, but most importantly what I should do to handle the subject. I’m projecting seven weeks in advance.

Tue 27 Feb 24 20:33

On Sunday, I remembered the two times certain stories played in my head in 1971 and 1967. I realized that the original story in the summer of 1977 came from previous contemplations. The story of being trapped in a cave in 1989 reflected what I had originally conceived in 1971. So, I’m thinking about reifying the story from 1967.

Fri 19 Apr 24 13:04

Math Sourcer says that work hard to grow, especially math. Advanced for lower grades but have fewer classes to concentrate better on what one’s taking – Fall 1976! Sometimes don’t get the results – Spring 1977!

 There’s Dr AhMath on You Tube who just made me realize that the dot product multiplication takes each vector and multiplies it in each dimension is a scalar to the vector that serves as a multiplicand to a multiplier for the product vector.

I was looking at the video scene from “Homecoming” from where Ironman takes Spiderman’s suit. I noticed that the sun had Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in the shade while Robert Downey Junior’s Tony Stark faced the sun. The symbolism struck me as subtile for Spiderman faced a sunset, but would recover. It also brought back the thought of how I lacked such a figure that I never learned to manage. It proved to be a factor in my lack of success! I tiptoed that issue today when a Mensan asked us for our perception of the MBA!

 I have been going through the guide books I used to read in middle school. I wonder what had happened to that curiosity in weather. Further, the primer on geology was giving me flashbacks of earth/space sciene plus wheat I’ve learned since 1972. What ever happened to that potential? It isn’t just the lack of income, but of productivity.

I seem to be running the thoughts of the fall of 1977 rather than the agony of the fall of 1984. 1977 radically changed my direction, only because I approached the academics of chemistry the wrong way. The pressure of finding employment, which still eludes me nearly a half century later. I just signed up for a speech on communication style, which signaled to me some of what I’ve been aware. I was around too many women, especially nuns, and the fear of hurting others.

 I almost forgot this anniversary from 1980! It is nothing like 1967, mainly because it didn’t initiate a permanent change. Instead it was an interlude. Only now am I even getting a taste of what I’d experienced the following year. There’s another difference. I had no control over 1967, but I had an opportunity I exploited in 1980. Since 1980, I’ve been unable to exploit another such opportunity.

I  had a revelation why memorization worked in the early years –it was what was on the test. I didn’t extract that idea as a freshman at Penn State. In fact, I didn’t understand it during either sophomore year. Changing to metric didn’t manifest any other changes such as practicing the problems.

I was working on how much it would take to master languages when I applied it to other subjects. What was missing is practice be it language or math or just about anything else. I traced it to eighth grade.

I was in the bathtub when I realized how I never really practiced emotional intelligence. Ashley and the nuns dominated how I handled it later. It couples with the tribulations of work. No practice, no chance, and no advance just mutually enforce each other.

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0Mu Prime has moved through abstract algebra during the past two years. It reminded me of R Bray back in 1976 who mentioned abstract algebra, but I have never explored it. The idea should be to plan, execute, and move on.

Nothing much else has happened with HM since I sent him a praise through LinkedIn. I wonder whether he’d read my article.

Today I put on “Terry” to watch it on the big screen for the first time. It occurred to me that there is a resemblance between Terry Fox and Peter Parker. It involves making the best of a situation. Each of us gets thrown into life and uncontrolled situations, and I’m reminded of the adage that we can control how we react to our situations.

We can related to how we’d react had we lost a leg to osteosarcoma, endured chemotherapy, thought we had beaten cancer, and seen children die from the disease. We may find our purpose in life to push research to save others.

Despite its fictional character, we can also relate had we accidentally gained superpowers and used them to be vigilantes. Tom Holland summed it in “Civil War” when his character told Tony Stark why he became Spiderman. “When you can do the things I can, and you don’t, then the bad things happen, it’s because of you.” We become inspired to find our higher purpose in life to overcome tragedies, obstacles, and disappointments. Terry kept going, running his best, until he could do no more. He still lost his life to cancer, but his foundation continues to win. Tom’s Spiderman lost his identity as Peter Parker, but he won by saving his universe. May each of us confront our existential choices with such courage and commitment that we did our best.

Over a decade ago, I encountered Ed Strachar’s “Into the Genius Zone” in which he asked to imagine ourselves in any time and place and describe it. I was running about thirty meters behind Terry Fox as he ran in Toronto on my birthday in 1980. I could feel the hot breeze on my skin in 30º weather, hear the dull roar of the crowd, and feel the pavement on my feet. I would now meet the three Spidermans on the roof of the school, hug Tom Holland’s grieving Spiderman, and feel the empathy. I just need a reason to be there.

I came across a fact I should have figured around 1972. Besides the Harvest Moon, there is the opposite phenomenon in March during the Worm Moon. In that case, the moon rises twenty minutes more than fifityfive minutes later. Why I never thought of that possibility would be a mystery. Perhaps the lack of such a thought should have been a clue that I wasn’t doing everything correctly by memorizing everything.

 

 

Why Forgiving Direct Student Loans Is Inadequate

While there seems to be a corporate outrage that the United States may forgive part of direct student loans, the very fact is that the solution is only a relief and not getting to the root of the problem. It will continue to plague us unless we root out the problem.

What the situation was a half century ago

I can personally vouch for this situation. Thanks to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the idea was to boost more people into the middle class, which at that time was about half the population. The idea was to invest in its citizens and get back more taxes as more payers would be earning more money and able to contribute more taxes. Ironically, as then it was merely a war on poverty, now we’re in a global economy and need a larger middle class to compete. Then we imported only tea, coffee, and bananas, only because they don’t grow here. So, many were able to go through college with no debts with basic educational opportunity grants, now Pell, paying for the tuition.

At the time, I was under survival benefits from the Social Security system, which enabled me to go virtually free with the benefits running until I was 22. I experimented for eleven years at Penn State, always trying to get a major which would make me employable.

Now, what is the difference between a Pell grant and forgiving student loans? Actually, forgiving student loans often means that the student had graduated, not a given for a Pell grant. There is a dropoff rate, which would render those grants wasted. I know of some who never graduated during my undergraduate days. I won’t even mention other useless grants like corporate welfare, which has grown considerably over the past half century.

How it deteriorated

Even during my time at Penn State, the state kept cutting its support of the state colleges. There was a hostility toward higher education, even in the late 1970’s. Consequently, tuition soared. When I started at Penn State Wilkes-Barré, tuition was around a thousand a year. Since then, prices have risen six times, but today it costs over eighteen thousand a year at Penn State. The states don’t seem to mind paying for “prison industries” instead of investment in their residents.

After correcting for abuse of bankruptcy, a reform allowed bankruptcy of student loans only if the former student could show hardship, and even then only Chapter 13 (which requires an income). The plaintiff had to wait five years without any sent payments to file for Chapter 7 (which then discharges the loans and takes whatever assets to pay for it). Instead, in violation of equal protection, Congress made it almost impossible to file for bankruptcy. Repealing this last law and reverting to the earlier compromise would ease the situation.

Over the past half century, corporations have shipped jobs overseas, and the folly of it has reduced the middle class and the ability to pay back those same loans. The recent shortage due to the supply chain only further exposed the folly of making goods overseas and making us vulnerable to shortages. The same goes for importing labor over American labor. I’ve seen many foreigners making loads of money who come to me to do their taxes. I once thought that Americans were too lazy to become educated and skilled for those jobs paying over one hundred thousand a year, but now I think importing foreigners for cheaper labor as part of the mix.

Conclusion

It’s obvious that forgiving some student loans doesn’t solve the problem. This country cannot compete in a global economy with a shrinking middle class and worsening inequality. States don’t invest in their higher education, more must take out student loans, corporations make the jobs as “not what you know, rather who knows you”, and finally not allowing the poorest of the students to declare bankruptcy. Then the predators charge usury because the debtors cannot shop around for better rates nor cancel the debt. Another aspect is employers’ refusing to hire those “overqualified” for their jobs, even when there’s a labor shortage.

My parents instilled in me that working harder brings rewards to get ahead in life. Should employers fear educated workers, then it discourages these very workers to find suitable employment or to be stuck in severe underemployment, and then slide into what I call the Alopexian Paradox. I still believe that everyone has talents and should be encouraged to develop them for our benefit. Unfortunately, the attitude today seems to be: I have mine, I deserve it because…., and you don’t.