Free Learner

A graveyard of paper currencies

Check out this post, which has a photo gallery of currencies which collapsed-- i.e. money which died.  The first example is a 10 Billion Dinar note.  When a government is printing currency with "10 Billion" on it you know things are not good.  I'm reminded of a guy in Zimbabwe who held up a sign: "Starving Billionaire".

One thing to notice is that it's a pretty long list, and it's by no means complete.  There were two instances of French hyperinflation, but only French note is in the list.  The Continental (currency of the American colonies) is not there, nor is the Confederate currency.  Poland isn't in the photo list, but they have experienced hyperinflation.  A few early Chinese paper failures are not there; I believe the Chinese invented the concept of totally unbacked currency, and were no doubt the first to experience a fiat currency collapse.

Among currencies that are not backed by anything, meaning that governments may freely create as much of the stuff as they like, a sudden loss of confidence in that currency is a common historical event, and an inevitable one.  People argue about the life expectancy of an unbacked currency, but I've not seen estimates above 40 years, and the US dollar has been unbacked for 40 years next month.  The paper dollar is past its life expectancy.

Maybe worrying about hyperinflation seems like doomer or survivalist thinking to some, but hyperinflation is neither a rare nor a surprising event from a historical perspective.  Just look at those photos.

 

Mass psychosis

This is a horrifying but interesting article on the use of anti-psychotic medications in the US.  It begins:

Has America become a nation of psychotics?

Apparently, in 2008, anti-psychotics surpassed every other category of drug -- even cholesterol-lowering statin drugs -- to become the number one most prescribed type of medication in the US.

Some other shocking statistics from the article:

• In a recent study, 1 in 5 children who saw a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an anti-psychotic drug.
• Because bipolar disorder can be treated with the newer (still patented) anti-psychotics, diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children rose by 40 times between 1994 and 2003.
• 18 of the 20 psychiatrists who wrote the current clinical treatment guidelines for depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia had ties to drug companies.
• The number of Americans now classified as disabled by mental illness, enough to qualify for Social Security benefits, has more than doubled between 1987 and 2007, from 1 in 184 to 1 in 76.  This casts doubt on the efficacy of all new (expensive, patented) psychiatric drugs in general.

Anti-psychotics are inadequately studied in children, and may cause obesity and diabetes.  As with many psychiatric drugs there is also a risk that in a small minority of people they may cause violence and/or suicide.

Yep, there's a mass psychosis going on here, but it's not the sort the shrinks are seeing in their patients.

Juice recipes

I have to confess that I really hate saying that I'm "juicing".  It seems like such a yuppie / granola thing to be doing, and I didn't grow up in that kind of community.  That said, my advice is "don't knock it till you try it."

For one thing, I seem to have solved my lack of appetite issue.  Drink about 16oz of fruit and veggie juice and less than an hour later, I'm starving for eggs, chicken, bread, and rice.  (I doubt this is typical though, or I don't see how anyone could possibly do a 10-day juice fast.)  I'm all for Weston A Price and steak and eggs for breakfast, but personally I seem better off starting with juice, and moving on to the heavier foods later.

Secondly, while I write this I'm sipping some juice that is actually really good.  I made it from two green apples, three carrots (peeled), a pickling cucumber, a small lemon (peeled), and a hunk of watermelon (without the hardest part of the rind).  It's pretty tart, but it's very tasty.

Third, it's making me want more fresh food.  I've made salsa twice in as many days, which is a good way to get raw garlic and onion (and in my case, oodles of cilantro, also a particularly healthy plant).

The mean green stuff (featured in the documentary I've mentioned) is okay, but my advice is to start with only 4 kale leaves the first time you make it, and to be generous with the ginger and double the lemon or use a couple of small limes in place of the lemon.  [UPDATE: I think that kale was already getting old, some of the leaves were starting to yellow.  I used fresh, very dark green kale in another juice and it did not have the same bitterness.]  I also liked it better when I added a pinch of salt.  It didn't make it taste salty, but apparently salt is a flavor enhancer even when you're not aware of it (thus its presence in some fruit salad recipes).  I've made it twice so far (second time was a double batch) and I'll keep tweaking it.  Kale seems to be in most juicing recipes, I think not only because of the high mineral content but because of the protein.  But if you're not fasting, you can get the protein elsewhere and you could use spinach or other less bitter greens instead.

There are more recipes here, here, and here.

And yes, I actually do feel more energetic after drinking some raw juice.  If it's the placebo effect, well... hurrah for the placebo effect!

Surprising sources of protein

So, I was over at the  "Reboot" website that's associated with Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (see yesterday's post).  I was looking at recipes when I came across one containing kale, watermelon, and blueberries (egad-- sounds terrible).  But what caught my eye was that it had 6 grams of protein in it.

Wait a minute, I thought.  Protein from where?  I mean yes, I knew veggies contained small amounts of protein, but they're really small amounts, right?  And mostly that's in the root vegetables, surely?  Where do you get 6 grams out of protein out of a couple cups of watermelon, a cup of blueberries, and a half dozen kale leaves?

I decided to look up some veggies and fruits at the USDA website.  It turns out that a cup of chopped raw kale has 2.2g protein.  That may not sound like much, but consider that it only has 34 calories.  A large orange has 1.7g protein and 86 calories.  A cup of spinach has less than a gram of protein (0.86g) but it only has 7 calories (!).  A cup of raw carrots is over a gram of protein (1.2g) and 52 calories.

A cup of blueberries, raspberries, or cherries each has over a gram of protein and less than 100 calories, while a cup of blackberries is 2g protein for only 62 calories.  A cup of chopped green pepper has 1.3g protein and only 30 calories.

An adult needs something like 40-60g protein per day (a number which is still in dispute).  If you were eating a variety of fruits and vegetables and aiming for even 1,500 calories per day, I've no doubt you'd get enough protein.  The question is whether it's reasonable to attempt to consume that many calories from raw produce-- sheesh!  Juicing would appear to be the only way you could consume and digest that much plant material, but I'm not at all sure that 6 16-oz juices per day (as recommended in the "Reboot" program) is going to be enough calories.  Ten days of very reduced calorie intake might make your body go into famine mode, causing it to lower your metabolism and reduce energy expenditures.

On the other hand, maybe it's not all about calories, maybe it's about nutrient intake.  If you're getting protein and oodles of micronutrients then maybe your body won't freak out (although I would certainly eat some olives and avocadoes because you can't go without fat). 

One interpretation of obesity is that it's a disease of malnutrition.  People's bodies want them to eat more and more because they're not getting the nutrition they need.  The trouble is that you can eat as much McDonald's as you'd like and you'll never get the nutrients you need.  Perhaps if you're getting flooded with vitamins, enzymes, and phytonutrients your body will be less sensitive to the gross number of calories, and will be more than satisfied on half a dozen large, raw juices.  Surprisingly, the protein content may not be far off from the recommended amounts.

"Fat, sick, and nearly dead"

That's the name of a documentary I somehow happened upon on Netflix instant play.  It starts out a little slow, but the second half features an extraordinary story of a seriously obese truck driver who turns his health (and his life) around completely.

Yes, the documentary is based around a "fad" diet of 100% raw juices, but they don't suggest people do this forever.  They suggest that people do a "re-boot" of several days, or longer if so desired.  Both the guys in the documentary did this with medical supervision for 60+ days, and had no adverse reactions.  All the results were extremely positive.

The food options for most Americans are overwhelmingly unhealthy.  Even the "not from concentrate" OJ my kids like, seemingly a pretty healthy item, is still pasteurized and therefore many of the plant nutrients are destroyed.  Most baked products use white flour, most sugars are ultra-refined white sugars, the beef is from "cows" that eat grain (thus making them almost a different animal), and so on.  The truck driver is an extreme example-- a guy whose job largely prevents exercise or anything remotely resembling healthy eating-- but it's only a moderate exaggeration of what people in midwestern towns are up against.  Nowhere to walk, nowhere to get a really good salad, nowhere to get fresh, organic produce of the kinds humans evolved on (although farmer's markets are changing that)... but lots of greasy spoons where $6 gets you about four meals' worth of hash browns fried in Crisco, eggs, and white toast.

Despite all the above pessimism, which is how I normally feel about American food, the movie is really inspiring.  We do still have choices!  And boy, do they make a difference.

"You are the bad guys..."

I found a great rant in the form of a letter to Obama, titled Killing Old People Is Fiscally Responsible:

Let's face it: any bargain seems to look good to you, as long as it kills people. That makes you tough, I guess. You have a list of Americans to assassinate. You have six wars going, and more in the pipeline. You've made clear that Israel murdering unarmed aid workers trying to reach Gaza would be A-OK with you. And "pain" is just the price that other people will have to pay to do without healthcare, food, a roof, a coat, or -- for that matter -- hope. Of all your slogans, we seem to be left with Audacity alone, standing by itself among the ruins.

And the next couple paragraphs are even better... give it a read.

21st century learning

Quite a few months ago, a friend of ours got an iPad.  My kids picked it up and started playing games on it without any visible learning curve at all; they just knew how to do it.  Tristan learned how to play chess from it in less than an hour, since it would highlight all the possible spaces into which each piece could move, and it didn't let him accidentally break any rules.  There were educational games involving words and physics, and I admit I was sort of wishing we had an iPad, but I wasn't even considering spending that much money on such a thing.  Another friend has one and reported good things as well: the iPad easily taught her son to tell time, no frustration involved.  He just played the game and worked it out.

So, yesterday my husband came home at lunch with a new iPad, unexpectedly.  I set myself loose at the App Store (although "Store" is a little misleading since almost everything I downloaded was free).  Now we're awash in math games, time games, geography games, physics games, and word games.

My kids like looking at maps, and they really like our map of the world jigsaw puzzle.  But the iPad geography games are, hands down, the easiest way to learn where the countries are, what the capitals are, etc.  You can learn the countries of South America and their capitals in about 15 minutes of playing these games.  Even plain old multiplication drills are more fun on the iPad.

I've been thinking about Alfie Kohn's book "No Contest," which says the research is pretty clear regarding competition in the classroom: it's a bad thing.  It inhibits learning, creates anxiety, and (contrary to popular belief) lowers performance.  But yet, when you're competing against your own previous high score or against a timer, or trying to get a certain percentage correct so you can get another token of some sort, that challenge seems very helpful.  You feel motivated to remember which one is Guyana, or to be a little quicker hitting "72" when 6 x 12 flashes up.  The kids are picking up countries and their capitals, landmarks, and state mottos incredibly quickly.  I suppose Kohn would also object to the extrinsic motivation that's inherent in all these games, as that's not supposed to be good for learning either.  But I mean, if you've learned where Uruguay is then you've learned it, at least you have that.  One doesn't need to go on memorizing countries for the rest of one's life.

The intelligent games on the iPad, which is many or most of them, will repeat material to reinforce it, but without getting tedious.  They'll gradually increase the difficulty level, or lower the difficulty if you get several wrong.  They'll provide hints on a schedule that keeps the game from getting frustrating.  One of the geography games seems designed so that you can often guess correctly from the four possible answers by process of elimination or reasoning.

I like sitting on the floor with my kids, opening up books, and just looking at them and chatting.  We do a lot of learning that way, and they have done plenty of math worksheets, and with Tristan I used reading flashcards (many of which I made myself).  But I have to say the iPad apps are pretty amazing learning tools.  Last night I was looking at a star chart app, and when I turned, the stars on the screen moved.  It knows which way you're facing and it shows you what should be in the sky in that direction.  A different app lets you move around the solar system, zooming in close enough to see the city lights on Earth (and the major satellites in their current positions), or zooming all the way out until the Milky Way is a spiral of dust and stars.  And it has animations explaining the relative sizes of celestial objects, the phases of the moon, the seasons, etc.  Maybe I'm an idiot but I didn't realize that the moon rises and sets at the same time as the sun at the new moon, but opposite to the sun at the full moon.  When you see the video it's obvious why that is, but I just hadn't thought about it before.

The Khan Academy website is another excellent use of technology.  It's exploded from a small collection of videos into a site with exercises, videos, and a connected "coach" (or parent) account that lets you look at what your kids were doing or watching on the site, how many minutes they spent, what % of questions they got right, etc.  The guy who does the videos is a natural teacher with a really friendly style and great explanations.  And all of this is free.  We had been using the Aleks online math system (not even close to free) but the Khan thing is superior.

An iPad is a luxury, I realize.  The iPad and the internet are not necessary for learning.  But I know families who don't let their kids use any kind of screens at all or even toys with batteries in them, and I wonder if they really know what they're missing?  Perhaps they should try watching The Secret Life of Birds at a friend's house, or let their kids play Map Quiz or with the solar system app once or twice.  Or maybe they have, and they aren't interested... I'd be interested to know what the argument is against using this new technology.  Myself, I think it's fantastic.