Sunday, January 3, 2016

4 Things I Call Bullshit

1. The story that some hero / heroine is going to save the world from destruction. I know, it's fun to watch all Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Men in Black - you name it.

I'm pretty sure that the world is not going to be saved like that. It's going to be millions of people like Doctors Without Borders , teachers who take the time to help students after school and parents/ grandparents who sit down at lunch with children and talk to them.

2. Rich people paying taxes are being penalized for success. Most of the richest people in America - the Waltons, Kochs, Mars, Cargill, etc. INHERITED their money. That's right, the only success they had was at the fertilized egg level.  I pay a lot of taxes and it goes to things like roads, schools, life guards at the beach, the public library, social security, all of which benefit me and the country.

3. Martial arts instructors with fake credentials don't hurt anyone. This is bullshit on so many fronts. Anyone who wants to be a serious athlete only has a limited window to achieve success and holding them back for a year or two until they wise up to the fraud can prevent them from ever reaching their goals. Besides, lying is wrong. I shouldn't have to explain this to you.

4. That anyone is ever 100% responsible for their own success, or related, that the world is equal. I can lay claim to that more than most people - I worked full-time to pay my bills in college and graduate school, started a business after my husband died. Still, I received scholarships from high school all the way through my Ph.D. One of my hugest advantages was being born in a time and place when women had equal opportunity to get an education and have a career. Along the way, everyone from my mom to Frank Fullerton to my doctoral dissertation advisor helped me get to where I am.


There are actually more things but I have to get back to work.
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This is what I do for a job, make computer games that teach stuff. Click here to buy one for under ten bucks!




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I also wrote a book on matwork. If you like to pin, choke and arm bar people, it is totally your thing.

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Ground-Training-Techniques-Fighters-ebook/dp/B00BBZX5CS

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I 100% agree with number 3! There is too many fake martial arts schools hanging around. I seen a video of some guy with a fake BJJ black belt get called out at his own school! Can't take it!

David said...

As for your #1 thing you call bullshit, well, I say it`s there to make sure a part of us don't die. This part is usually very fertile in children's mind (Eva is on the picture you put on this blog's page btw). You probably guessed it is imagination.

Sometimes, very often, you talk to adult, that may be young or older and they don't have it no more.

They cannot get to a solution that would be different than what most people would give. Give something original, something outside the box.

Yes, this ‘outside the box’ expression that doesn't translate into French (my first language is French). It translates into these movies though. They are drastically different, they are from the imagination of somebody who once said 'what if in a galaxy far far away...'

Children are more prone to be in worlds that they create than adults, and movies are, according to me, are a way to put adults back in a creation process that they were familiar with years ago.

So if adults, parents, grand-parents with more imagination would sit at lunch to talk to their children, wouldn't more solutions to eventual problems could be found? Probably so.

You never know when an idea from a book or a movie will be picked up by a teacher or a doctor without borders to accelerate a process to get to a better solution.

'What if...'
'Let's think outside the box here...'

If these 2 sentences were always in the back of people's mind, there would less bullshit, more possibilities.

Anonymous said...

What????

Unknown said...

I thoroughly enjoy reading your blog! Please keep writing, so I can keep reading. Thanks!

Enosis said...

#2 is a very strange one. The income derived from inherited wealth is not the type of income generally referred to when people like me claim our tax system punishes success. Unearned income such as interest and dividends can easily be structured in a way to pay minimal taxes. Earned income and the progressive tax system that enshrouds it is where the issue lies. For example, if a factory worker wants to save money to buy house and works two jobs for a year to make $140K instead of 70K. A much larger percentage of the second 70K will have to be paid in taxes than the first 70K....not fair in my view. I have had to explain this to clients in the past and they are always pissed off when they finally understand it.
Several years ago when Sen. John Kerry was supporting income tax hikes, his wife (T Heinze of the famous ketchup Heinze) claimed she didn't have any issue with raising the income tax. When tax professionals like me heard this we all laughed since we all knew changes to Federal income tax would not affect her since the majority of her taxes are paid on unearned income...she can invest in financial instruments that are exempt from Federal taxes.

Anonymous said...

#3 Edmond is a damn fraud. HE is exposed now not Ronda HE is.