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Blog Entry 20 of 135 The Jail Bird

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Contributed by: William Kus on 5/3/2007

I just edited some new stuff to my last blog. Once I get typing it gets hard to stop.

My mind doesn't like to stay on one subject for too long. I think it's a waste of time personally to dwell on anything.

Dwelling on things is what causes a lot of bad things to happen. If we could learn to forgive and forget, people would be able to get along a lot easier.

Remember where you came from is something completely different. You should be living for today. Not thinking "Man I blame so and so for this and that." Go out and do something.

If you're talking about it, it means you're not doing it. So talking about it is almost the antithesis to doing it. Just do it.

I'm going hiking in a bit myself. But I have some stories I need to write too. One about this last weekends comic convention. Something great to do once a month.

So thanks to Thomas Sowell for giving my Attention Deficit Disorder something easy to read. Similar to the Quotable Quotes section in the Reader's Digest.

Not that I don't read hiscolumns in their normal format, I found the change to be refreshing.

I think the Daily News has a great opinions section, and I like how a different writer is featured every day. Is that how all newspaper's do it? I should find out.

But anyhoo... as I try and figure out how to use the word "retort" without sounding like a buffoon, I would like to add that students need to learn the fundamentals of learning.

Much like Jordan's mastery of the fundamentals,such asfootwork, free throws, teamwork and knowledge of the game, he was then able to use his unique abilities to their fullest, like his slam dunks from the top of the free throw line to his unblockable turn around fade away jump shot to his signature tongue hanging out during a drive to the hoop.

But the slam dunks and fade aways wouldn't be anything if he didn't understand the fundamentals of the game. So he wouldn't make all those basic mental errors that everybody makes nowadays.

Jordon was also remarkably unselfish. He only scored when he had to. I bet he could have scored a lot more if he wanted to.

Kobe, stop trying to prove something. Be a nice guy. It's not all about winning. It's conducting yourself with diginity when socializing with your teammates and the opposing team.

If you want to win so much, go take steroids or something. But that ruins the "integrity" of the game. But so does all this selfish behavior on t he court.

Integrity is a great word. Everyone needs to work on their integrity. Kobe was trying to work on it a little, by trying to play pick up ball on some tough street courts.

It's not necesarily about that. Kobe would get more respect if he built day care centers in poor neighborhoods, instead of trying to show everyone how he deserves street "cred".

I think Kobe may be a little out of touch with the American-African community, being that he grew up in Italy and now lives in a mansion probably.

Not to say that a person should be all about their ethnicity, but you should be aware of it. And proud of it. He should who he is and what shaped his father and mother and the older generations that had to survive to make Kobe who he is today. If just one of those people had failed over the thousand generations, Kobe wouldn't be here now.

Onething I have seen my my grandmother do for her whole life, is that she'll take the first bit of a new pot of rice and give it to her deceased relatives in a small prayer in front of a shrine in her room.

She does this every day. So every day, before she eats, she makes sure to remember the people that came before her and for them to share in her dinner.

It seems weird at first, but very similar to other religions when you think about it. The rituals are different but the intent is the same. To be good people, to honor the good in everything.

We should all be Americans first. We need a unifying theme to raise us above racial stereotypes. So that eventually we are all just people. Not "that crazy Asian guy", or "that conservative Black guy".

I don't believe in catagorzing people by color or ethnicity. But I just did andunfortunately it's a fact of life.

I think Kobe needs humilty. It's not all about winning. Not if you have to win by being a bad person. Not worth your soul.

Phil needs to work on character building, team building activities.. You guys know how to play basketball, you don't know how to be good teammates all the time, or even good citizens.

I bet if the Lakers had to volunteer as a team, every single one of them, no exceptions Kobe, it's not just the rookies job. I thinkthey would start to gel as a team a little better.

Maybe if the Lakers built their own Habitat or Humanity, or just went places where basketball means nothing, like a hospital where people are sick. But they have to do these things together, as a team, with the coaching staff and support staff in the Lakers organization.

I remember when the Lakers were a family and less of a business. When Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul Jabaar where here, men beyond their years.

I like basketball, but I think Phil has to approach it from a John Wooden angle. Same with the school kids. I think his approach was that if you make good citizens out of your people, it will just naturally carry over to whatever they do. Eventually they realize they may have more important things to do in life than basketball. Although for some basketball is their gift, but then they aren't using it to help people enough.

If the kid has been prepped with all the right fundamentals for learning, he will be a superstar in the class. But most parents just throwyou into a classroom and expectyou to know what discipline is or how to pay attention. Or even why learning is important at all.

Just like Kobe wouldn't be able to play in the NBA if he didn't know all his fundamentals. Then he was able to pick up the triangle offense and play with his peers.

We need to teach kids better fundamentals of learning. The fundamentals of learning are the fundamentals of life. Life is learning. School is too rigid.

The world is the real classroom.

I could care less what the capital of North Dakota is. Trying to make me learn the names of our fifty state capitalsoff of a map is not my idea of learning. If I actually visited each state capital and learned about each one, I betI would never forget.

That's real world experience. And what the HECK does knowing the capital city of every state teach you anyway? Except that you may be able to win a trivia game show one day.

I would learn so much more actually going to the city. I couldn't even begin to touch on it.

True it's not realistic to have a field trip to every place described in your text books, but you get the point I think. It would be great if it were like that. Kids would love school.

Going to school fo rsome kids is a huge waste of their early life. They could instead be learning a valuable trade skill from their friends or family.

The kid fixing cars all day in his backyard is probably going to make just as much money as most of the kids who went to school all day. Then eventually go to school to become a mechanic.

I mean, once you get out into the world, you do not sit in a classroom listening to a teacher lecture to you all day.

How much school do you need to be a garbage man? They probably make more than a teacher who went to school for twelve years. The garbage man probably gets about two weeks to six months of training and they're making $30 an hour.

Much of the world requires you to take a lot of initiative. It requires you to be very competitive. You need to battle thousands of other people for the exact same things you want. There'sfive spots but a thousand people applying who all might have better skills and qualifications than you.

In school everybody wins. In the real world, only a few people win. Maybe some schools do good to promote competitiveness.

I think in general, America's edge is gone. Replaced by the hunger and desire of other countries who lack the same opportunities.

I think prisons need to be overhauled to give prisoners a reason to want to change, instead of just the threat of more violence or incarceration. Seems like we are telling them violence is wrong, and we will teach this by being violent ourselves when apprehending them or incarcerating them. It's ok to break the law as long as you're breaking the law to catch other lawbreakers?

We will not go into the moral ambiguity of police work at this point. But seeing how police officers often act with less self control than a normal person on the street, who are the actual criminals?

Even in ancient law, stealing is not stealing if you are starving.

Who is the real crook, the person who steals food for their family, or the person who grows all the food and hoards it because they worked hard and it's theirs. They're gonna sell it at really high prices torich peopleso they can grow more next year and buy a bigger house.

As people, it is all our problem when people starve. It's not enough to say that it's not your problem. Besides it only hurts the country as a whole to not proactively seek out people at the economic fringes and get them on their feet. That person is there and they are a drain until they learn to take care of themselves.

It's sad when our economic system is set up so that powerful people can legally steal things. To increase their profits at the expense of people living below the poverty line. To take advantage of their situation to stay on top with relative ease.

That is not capitalism. There is a hidden corporate dictatorship that has been running this country for a long time.

Capitalism is about competition. We have a false sense of freedom and capitalism in this country. But it's because we all live in that lower 96% percentile, give or takea few percentage points.

But I digress...

Some kids have more serious things to worry about like getting home safely without getting jumped. Or not having abusive parents, and sometimes it isn't obvious abuse, it could just be your parent ignores you. Or kids worrying more about where their next meal comes from as opposed to trying to do some stupid school assignment.

School should be secondary to their life. Instead we force a broken system on a bunch of kids and churn out broken students.

I guess I'll reply to Mr. Sowell in a separate blog. But Kudos to him for getting me to type some more.

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