Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Imran Khan: India's Last Hope For Lasting Peace



Imran Khan becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan is like if Muhammad Ali had become President Of The United States. Imran Khan has been the most well known Pakistani in India for much of his adult life. That has not changed. Not only well known, but popular, loved. Give the game of cricket some credit. The game seems to do what politicians can't.

Imran Khan means well. The US would like to see democracy in Iraq, perhaps in Iran. It should start in Pakistan. Pakistan is still a democracy being built. Instead of giving tens of billions to the Pakistan Army, the US should fund the work of democracy.

Imran wants lasting peace. I don't understand why Modi could have talked to Nawaj Sharif but will not talk to Imran.

Imran is a well-educated, well-traveled man. He is East meets West. He has children who are growing up in London. He can talk as articulately about Islam as he can about democracy and economic growth, health and education.

Islam is much misunderstood. It serves the world to give Imran Khan more stages on which to speak.

I want Imran Khan to do for Pakistan what Nitish Kumar did for Bihar after he started in 2005. Bihar was a big mess in 2005 when Nitish Kumar became Chief Minister. Pakistan is a big mess today. I think Imran can get it done. He can put Pakistan on a path to double-digit growth rates. He has what it takes. Permanent peace between India and Pakistan is key to that equation.



Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Rethinking Education, Health And Entrepreneurship

Hillary Clinton taking the White House, the Senate and the House and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren beating the drums in the US Senate creates a perfect environment for a progressive agenda like has not been possible since the time of FDR. This is not about making the right noise, this is not about reckless tax and spend your way to utter powerlessness, this is not about whiny liberalism when you would rather be in opposition so you can sneer at power and take delight and get nothing done. This is about creating a new American majority and being the natural party of power for a generation.

I am for tax increases and tax cuts and closing the loopholes of corporate welfare. The most immediate thing America could do for global warming is stop subsidizing dirty energy.

A 65% death tax is of utmost importance. Everyone with a net worth of $5 million and above should take one look at Donald Trump and conclude "I don't want my children to end up like that" and eagerly agree to a 65% death tax. Love one another was never meant to stop with your family.

Health has to start with wellness. Industrialization is not the only thing America has messed up and brought the planet to the brink. The American antibiotics industry and the industrial scale agriculture industry and the media have colluded to kill half the gut bacteria of Americans. That is the number one reason Americans are so fat. Eating right is half of wellness. More fruits and vegetables is so important somebody named Michelle Obama could become president just on that agenda.

America should import as many yoga gurus from India as it has imported software engineers.

If Americans simply learned to walk more and talk more, that would go a long way. When someone is lonely they are more likely to overeat. Gluttony is sin. Because you are abusing a body that God created in His own image.

Americans were fat enough in 1980 but if Americans were to slim down to the obesity levels of 1980, America saves over a trillion dollars in health care. That is how you save Social Security and Medicare, by everybody slimming down.

By the time you turn 35, you should eat half of what you were eating before. By 45, it should be 50%.

But once you fall sick, you fall sick. Adding the public option was liberal fantasy when Obamacare was enacted, now it has become a national emergency. And expand Medicaid and Medicare. Enlarge the network of free health clinics. Fund them better. You want to get the best of Canada and America. The blend is the best.

Mental health has to be elevated to the same status as physical health. That is the right way to fight the war on drugs. But America is such a fundamentally racist country the resultant stress among African Americans alone gives rise to mental health issues. America has to cure racism like it has to cure obesity. The cure now exists.

Every father and mother on earth is but a foster father and foster mother. It takes a planet to raise a child. All children were created by God. No child should have to go hungry. Pre-K education has to be universal. Only strong families and strong communities can sustain strong schools, but strong schools can help foster strong families and strong communities. Faith is the glue that brings it all together. African Americans should learn gratitude and forgiveness more than anyone else if they want to get ahead of everyone else. The best prayers are prayers of gratitude.

Digital technologies have not been used enough in education to bring the costs dramatically down. Every textbook at school and college should be available online for free in PDF format. There should be online communities of students. All lectures should also be available in video format online for free.

Prices on education should be falling like prices on computers have fallen over the decades.  

And America should legalize the 16 million who are already here. You save a trillion dollars immediately if you do not round them up and deport them. Also, the American economy would quite literally collapse if you do somehow manage to deport them. America wanting to deport the 16 million is like a semi truck moving at 70 miles per hour saying, I am flying now, get rid of some of those wheels.

And bring in one to two million  new people every year. You don't want to create all sorts of high paying jobs and have no one to take them. Immigration is the only reason America is the number one economy. Immigration is the only available way to shore up Social Security and Medicare. Besides all world will become one country long before 2050.

America has a mission. That is a total spread of democracy. Instead of invading countries it should give immigrants voting rights. Irish immigrants used to vote in Boston as green card holders. America is not a white country of white immigrants. America is a country of immigrants, period.

Sin is sin. If you are poor and sinful, you are sinful. If you are rich and sinful, you are sinful. Donald Trump is an unrepentant sinner, a messenger of hate, a Pied Piper to what he calls "the poorly educated." And he is in good mood because he is going to milk that crowd all he can after November. He is going to build a TV network. Trump University was a fiscal scam. Trump TV is going to be a moral scam. The dude envisions peddling hate all the way to making a billion dollars, or so he thinks.

The Democrats should not give up on that crowd. The message should be, repent, let go of the hate, come to love. Love all your fellow human beings. Racism is sin. Sexism is sin.

This crowd most stands to benefit when the Universal Basic Income is enacted.

Women and minority populations could gradually break the corporate glass ceilings, but the faster way is to simply blow it all up through entrepreneurship. It is for the progressives in power to fight monopoly situations, and to bring forth the education and health paradigms of a knowledge economy, and to expand access to credit so more people can go into entrepreneurship.

2017 should be a great start to a great progressive year.  

America should consider spending 10% of its defense budget to connect every human being to the Internet. You can not bring everyone to America but you can take America to everyone.

Getting global warming right is super important. Global warming is proof humanity has not handled industrialization well. Only a humanity that can do right by climate change could truly harvest the technologies of the future. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, biotechnology, all these are much deeper digs into nature than old industrialization. They could be much bigger disasters than global warming, but they don't have to be. They will not be if Universal Spiritual Centeredness is achieved. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, biotechnology are all limited to the first four dimensions. God is the Ultimate Intelligence, the 10th dimension, the final dimension.

Barack Obama experienced racism from racist Republican Senators. Hillary Clinton should be prepared for some sexism on the global stage, to be blunted with the might of the most powerful political office on the planet. You should hear some of the things Duerte and Zhirinovsky are saying. Ordinary women around the world are watching with much hope. It is about them. 160 million women in America should wake up on behalf of the three and a half billion women out there.

Pro life is caring about every child on the planet at concrete policy levels. Microfinance is the magic bullet with which to touch two billion women. Did I say entrepreneurship? Put 10% of America's defense budget into microfinance.

Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Education, Health: The Costs Are Supposed To Go Down, Dramatically

The costs for education and health are supposed to go down, dramatically, like the prices on computers have gone down over the years.

All educational materials can be digital and free. The education framework that America uses not even Henry Ford could recognize. There is a need for a fundamental update.

Lifelong education means you should be able to plug in any time, anywhere.

Universal high school education means putting the material out there and letting all seven billion people access it.

That also applies to community college and vocational training and college itself. All the way to cutting edge research.

These are not arguments against teachers and learning communities. We need many many more teachers. But these are teachers who fully embrace digital. They are in person but they can also be online.

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence will mean creativity and people skills are now more important than ever before.

There is a need for a fundamental rethink on how education gets served. Broadband and education are the new infrastructure. Pouring 500 billion dollars into concrete and steel because some white guys decided to buy into racist venom is going backwards in time. But 50 additional billions into education would be nice.

You could put 10 billion into a basic Universal Basic Income program. That would be cheaper than 500 billion into concrete and steel.

Infrastructure has to be built. But for infrastructure reasons. Not as a job creation program. Not jobs of yesterday. The same folks could be absorbed into jobs in solar power. That would be legitimate infrastructure.

Health has to start with wellness. Then the free basics. And that would be the way to keep the costs down in an otherwise exploding sector.

But instead of wellness you have capitalism run amok. Nutrition is in poor shape. There is much unhealthy eating. Exercise, yoga and meditation are in short supply. America should import as many Indian yoga instructors as it has software engineers.

Access to credit has to reach the lowest income brackets. Right now the barriers are largely racial and irrational.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Education And Health: The Costs Are Supposed To Go Down

If you own a smartphone today you look a millionaire to people from the ancient era of 1969-1989. Your smartphone has a ton of free stuff all of which used to cost a ton of money, if the services were even available, that is.

The entire world is to enter a knowledge economy. Lifelong education has to become true for all human beings.

When you say that some people start doing their back of the envelope math and start seeing a bill for tens of trillions, money that they claim does not exist.

They are thinking in terms of a million dollars worth of services. They are not thinking in terms of a smartphone.

Costs are supposed to go down dramatically, for both education and health. The Internet is the new classroom. All textbooks and lectures are to be digital and mostly free.

There has to be education in every language. Artificial Intelligence will make everything available in every other language. There will not be a total emphasis on literacy. Where literacy does not cover the ground, oral will do.

With a tablet and internet access you should be able to get a high school anywhere.

Teachers don't go away. People are not meant to go away. Human interactions are a big part of the education process.

There is a need for a fundamental rethink. Human capital is the very center of hypercapitalism.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

भारत की HRD Minister संस्कृत बोलती

भारत की HRD Minister संस्कृत में बोलती हैं। "मैं अपने वाणी को विश्राम देती हुँ।" ये तो हिन्दी नहीं है। ये तो संस्कृत है। 




Monday, May 11, 2015

School Lunches Are An Excellent Idea

Modi's Blind Spot: Smriti Irani?

School lunches are an excellent idea. And it should be universal. All government schools should implement this all the way through high school. दिन में कमसेकम एक बार स्कुल अटेंड करने वाले प्रत्येक बच्चे को संतुलित आहार मिल जाए --- balanced diet. नहीं तो मोदी demography, demography करते रहते है, अगर बच्चे बड़ी संख्या में malnutrition का शिकार होते रहें तो कोइ demographic dividend नहीं मिलने वाला।

स्कुल लंच के बहाने भी बच्चे स्कुल आएंगे, कि चलो पढाई कम मटरगश्ती ज्यादा करेंगे लेकिन लंच तो खाएंगे।

लेकिन खाना अच्छा होना चाहिए ------ balanced diet. दाल और सब्जी पर ध्यान दो तो ज्यादा खर्चा भी नहीं बैठता।

In America they don't do it right. बच्चो को कोका कोला पिलाते हैं। ये भी कोइ तरिका है? बच्चे मोटे (obese) हो जाते हैं।

एक स्कुल लंच और दुसरा प्रत्येक स्कुल तक ब्रॉडबैंड पहुँचा दो फिर देखो कमाल।


Sunday, September 12, 2010

Four Interactions

Indian state of Madhya PradeshImage via Wikipedia110 Knocks (2)
110 Knocks

1

In search for the first door on my first map, I walked the wrong way yesterday, and ended up in this small park. I said hello to some people. I really got into a conversation with this woman. She was a senior, retired. She said she came over from Greece. "We are not from here." I asked a few questions and mostly listened to her talk. She had some very strong feelings about senior issues. These conversations are so important. Otherwise if your only knowledge on the issues comes from policy papers, they become abstract. You end up with a slight disconnect. She said she had sat on all sorts of committees while she was still working. She was friends with many local labor leaders who she pledged she will talk to on behalf of Reshma. Oh, her? I saw her on TV, she said about Reshma. She was referring to Reshma's NY1 appearance. I got her to promise she will get 10 people to vote for Reshma.

2

A young man answered the door. The name was Anglo, the face looked Indian, but I did not ask. After a brief talk, I said okay then. I walked down the steps. The father opened the door. That was my son, he said. As in, you talked to my son, you did not talk to me. This family was from Madhya Pradesh in India. The guy started talking in Hindi. He was brimming with pride in Reshma's candidacy. I said, call all your friends all over America. Those who can't vote can donate.

3

This was a housing project building. So I was trying to punch the numbers hoping someone will open the door. This kid half my size, obviously less than 10 years old, walked over and just stared at me like, duh. The door is open, he said and gently pushed it. See this tape? The door does not lock. I knew I was talking to the wise guy of the building. I went in, knocked on a few doors on a few different levels. On my way out I just assumed the door is open, so I pulled. It was not open. That kid appeared mysteriously to my side again. He had that duh look again. You press this button, he said, and pressed the button.

4

When I felt like I was half way done, I decided on a soda break, and went to sit in this small park. There were these two women sitting on a bench. I said hello. Ends up they were special ed teachers at the elementary school we could see from the park, this tall building. They were not planning to vote on Tuesday. They got talking about education. They felt passionately about small classroom sizes, additional funding, and arts and music for kids. They reminded me of the senior in that other park, only these were teachers talking about teacher issues. They promised to vote for Reshma and get about 10 others to do the same as well.

I knocked on 110 doors yesterday. I did not meet one person who told me they were voting for Maloney. I came across maybe four Schneiderman for Attorney General flyers - black and white, not color and glossy like the Reshma 2010 ones - but other than that I did not come across any political literature from any candidate for any office.

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