HOW NOT TO STUDY!

I was listening to the radio the other day, and the subject was the dislocation recently experienced by a lot of students due to the COVID pandemic.  Many had obviously experienced a lot of stress over their educational endeavors, especially in regard to the taking of tests and exams.  That got me to thinking about my own checkered academic career and how “improbable” it all was.  I had NO BUSINESS being in college, much less in law school but, somehow, I wound up with a doctorate in law and practiced law for 38 years!  That is so absurd, it almost cracks me up to say that!  I was a terrible student and spent way more time and effort agonizing over how to get OUT of those chores than just going ahead and doing them.  I was also really focused by the distractions of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll!

All I ever WANTED to be was an automobile mechanic.  I was car-crazy when I was in high school and, even though I was pretty savvy about math and science, I wanted NOTHING to do with languages, English or history!  Ugh!  Getting my drivers license right after my 16th birthday was about the greatest thing that ever happened to me!  Party on, Garth!

Along the way I muddled through college, not even having a “C” average UNTIL my senior year!  Ironically, I had spent the summer of 1967 in Germany and Austria studying third-year-level German literature!  I managed to become fairly fluent in German that summer and had earned two semester “A”s for my efforts, so that pulled my overall average finally above the “C” level!  I could sight-translate German, so I took fourth-year-level German that next year and breezed through it!  And I was somebody who had otherwise hated “foreign” languages!

After a year of teaching math and science in a private elementary school, I went to law school, but my academic habits had not improved.  I fell out of favor and flunked out (literally) at the end of my first year.  I had no clue what to do.  But, again ironically, the only black student in my class had also flunked out, as well as the president of our class!  So, to keep the school “integrated,” they offered the black student a wonderful deal and, of course, had to extend the same to the other two of us who surely did not deserve it: we could repeat our first year, AT NO CHARGE, and then the two years’ grades would be averaged, and on the basis of that outcome, they would decide whether or not to re-admit us to the school!

So, I managed to matriculate after that,, graduated AND passed the bar exam on my first try, but I always have to admit that it took me four years to complete what most accomplish in three years.  I was “special-ed” in law school!  This spoiled, elitist, utterly undeserving white boy is, truly, the beneficiary of race-based “Affirmative Action”!  It doesn’t get more ironic than that!

Toward the end of law school, I began to get a glimmer of what I had been doing wrong in my study practices, but I still wasn’t paying much attention.  It came home more strongly after graduation in 1973 when I was in an intense two-week “cram” course just prior to the bar exam.  We met in two four-hour periods every day (except Sundays) for 12 days, then took the exam right after.  I was determined to do the best I could do so that I would not have to re-take that fearsome exam!  I really WANTED to pass!  Thankfully, the exam was pretty “cold”; the cram course had done a good job of spotting the likely questions.  But, I had taken a LOT of notes—over two notebooks-full, on both sides of the page, and though I hadn’t really thought about it, I had taken notes  that were my own contemplative SUMMARY of what the lecturer had said, rather than trying to write down everything he said, verbatim.  So when I studied my notes the Sunday prior to the exam, I was reading my own understanding of the material rather than the lecturer’s understanding of the material.  It worked.  I became a lawyer, unleashed upon the unsuspecting world!

I started practicing law in a rural town but still thought about car mechanics.  I acquired a couple of older cars, fixed them up, and enjoyed driving them around.  I would do a lot of my own work, but I realized I really did not know diddly-squat about car mechanics.  So, at age 56 in 2003, I decided to take a couple of auto-mechanics courses at the nearby community college!  I did pretty good—I got an “A” and a “B,” so I decided to take a couple more courses, and I got “A”s in both!  But what was interesting is that I had decided to sit up front, right under the instructor’s nose (for a change), pay attention to his lectures, ask a lot of pesky questions, frequently argue with the instructor and, when he paused to catch a breath, I would write down in my notebook my OWN impressions of what he’d said!  In prior academic endeavors, I had often sat in the back of the classroom and daydreamed.  It was a costly mistake.  This time it was different and, thankfully, I was totally aware of the difference.

  

It began to pay off, so I took more courses over the next couple of years and EVENTUALLY formally matriculated as a student in the program.  I had chosen to follow a “certificate” program instead of the associate degree program.  It required fewer general academic courses (which I didn’t care about) and was more focused.  At age 59 I completed the program and was awarded my certificate in auto mechanics, summa cum laude!  I had a straight-A average but for that one damned “B” my first year, having missed the “A” by just one question on that course’s final exam!  The “honors” designation was almost ludicrous, but I really had earned it.  I wasn’t the best mechanic in the program by far; many of the younger guys were far more facile than I, but I knew what I was doing.

I had also figured out how to take those “standardized” tests that are often horribly misused to evaluate the intellectual fitness of individuals, rather than evaluating the overall status of the group being tested.  Too many people are fixated on how INDIVIDUALS perform on those tests, and that is flat WRONG!  Those tests don’t tell us diddly about particular individuals.  We all have different abilities and aptitudes!

Even though we students had been told (1) answer as many questions as possible, and (2) “wrong” answers don’t count, the “educational” establishment seemed to enjoy keeping the real secrets of those tests from us students, so many of us wandered in the SAT wilderness, never really mastering the fairly straightforward tricks needed to beat those tests, because nobody simply EXPLAINED them to us!  

I managed to go from a middling 87th Percentile on my SAT’s up to the 98th or  99th Percentile (the highest possible) on other tests I later took over the years by simply employing the main strategy that I finally figured out on my own: do NOT spend more than 15 seconds on any one question!  If you can’t answer the question IMMEDIATELY, mark it and move on to the next question!  WHY?  Because, there are also easy questions at the end, and since one’s score depends on the TOTAL number of “correct” answers, one may as well get to those easy answers further on down the road!  It is THAT simple!  If one gets bogged down struggling to conquer a particular question (as I used to do), the clock is ticking, and “TIME” may be called before one can even get to the end the first time!

Besides, an “easy” question addressed later may give a particular insight on how to answer an earlier question that was blocked!  One should just keep rolling over and over the test, from beginning to end, answering as many questions as possible.  SPEED is the key!  No one will care about your earnest, futile struggle along the way!

Anyway, I have been both a teacher (real estate law) in the community-college system and also a student.  (Additionally, I had taken a course in computer machine-code programming some years ago.)  I am sorry I wasted so many years (and student space) in college and law school, undeserving of those opportunities, but I am glad that I FINALLY came to realize that the key (for me, anyway) to learning well is as follows:

FIRST—FORGET the damned grades!  One is in school to LEARN, not to rack up points.  If one LEARNS the material, the grades WILL take care of themselves.  If you don’t care about learning, get the Hell out of the way!  NOW!

SECOND—Sit up front and PAY ATTENTION!   The back of the classroom is the zone of pathetic failure!  One needs to hear EVERY WORD distinctly.  Besides, you may wish to take issue on some point with the instructor/teacher, and you can’t do that while daydreaming and looking out the window.

THIRD—Don’t take notes while the instructor/teacher is talking!  Just sit there and listen!  Pay attention!  And just think about what you are hearing!  Wait until (s)he stops to catch a breath or a thought, then scribble down YOUR OWN THOUGHTS about what you’ve just heard.  You will appreciate that later.

FOURTH—Ask LOTS of questions.  If you don’t understand something, you can’t learn it!  Asking questions also forces one to mentally frame the material in relevant fashion, and that is part of the learning process.  And, don’t give a damn about what the others think of your “stupid” brown-nosing questions.  They won’t be taking the exam for you nor suffering the bad grades you’ll EARN for not bothering to understand the material!

FIFTH—It may be necessary to actually MEMORIZE certain things.  A lot of criticism has been understandably leveled at rote memorization in the public schools, but sometimes memorization is simply necessary.  I was flunking the course in Automatic Transmissions and I knew it, simply because I did not understand the complexities.  The automatic transmission is the single most complicated device on a car.  I was fascinated by them and always wanted to learn how they worked.  But, I was flunking.

Somehow I had realized I had to memorize the operational “logic table” for the planetary gearset, the 400+ year-old core component of most automatic transmissions.  That gearset has three basic elements: (1) the “sun” gear; (2) the ring gear; and (3) the 3 or 4 “planetaries” nestled inbetween with their connecting “carrier.”  Automatic transmissions variously grab, hold and release (via high-pressure hydraulic valves) those individual components to achieve their amazing function.  There is just no other way to understand it but to memorize it.  I did so and got my “A” in the course.

SIXTH—Read the book!  Not because it’s inerrant, but precisely because it may well be WRONG about something, and your developing superior knowledge of the material may allow you to see that error and point it out, to the shock and envy of the whole class, including the teacher/instructor!  If one reads the book, it can also form the foundation for what will likely be heard in the classroom, and the “context” may become clearer.

FINALLY—“All-nighters” may become a thing of the past.  One may actually get some much-needed sleep before the final exams, since a glance through one’s pre-digested notes (see THIRD) only once may be all that is necessary to become re-acquainted with the thoughts one should have ALREADY had about the material at the time it was presented!  That is why one should sit up front in class, pay attention, just listen to the lectures and engage in dialogue with the instructor/teacher, leaving note-taking for later to summarize one’s OWN thoughts about the material.  That should enable learning the material the first time, rather than trying to cram utterly inscrutable stuff into one’s head the night before the exam!

Take it from this academically “challenged” yokel: you may be pleasantly surprised at the results!

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BACKGROUND CHECKS?

Many of those clamoring for “government to just do something” have added their voices to the chorus of those demanding expanded “background checks” for sales of arms and ammo.  They obviously must struggle each election time with the choice of voting for the incumbent(s) (as most seem to do) vs. punishing them for NOT instituting “background checks.”  

The few advocates thereof with whom I have spoken do not, however, have any SPECIFIC suggestions, though some have argued that the federal “no-fly” list should just be incorporated for the sales of arms and ammo.  A very serious problem with the federal “no-fly” list is that one does not learn of being on the list until prohibited at the gate from boarding a plane, LONG AFTER having purchased the ticket!  And, there is absolutely no “due process” honored that allows one to challenge such a listing for arguably wrongful inclusion! 

The “gun control liberals,” nevertheless, don’t care much for such “due process”  concerns.  Their airy dismissals are basically an invocation of the “tough shit” rule.  Most seem quite aggressive in invoking “due process” for disadvantaged ethnic minorities, but if “due process” interferes with their own “bright ideas,” they are vehemently against it.  There is also very little concern expressed for those who might be unfairly inconvenienced by such rules.  Their fearsome belief is that the “saving of just one life” more than offsets any such “minor” misapplications of law.

There have been many innocent people—including too many children, and cops—slaughtered in the past 20 years by deranged malcontents wielding high-capacity firearms.  The call for more “gun control” is really a call for more control of those deranged malcontents who somehow manage to get their hands on those firearms and plenty of ammo.  There seems to be a belief among many that the cosmetic resemblance of certain firearms to military weapons (so-called “assault weapons”) promotes the deranged behaviors that end in tragedy, though there is no empirical evidence to that effect.  

Gun-rights advocates frequently invoke their “Second Amendment rights” whenever further regulation of gun commerce (buying or selling guns) is aired.  However, my interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it only protects the possession (“keeping”) and carrying (“bearing”) of arms already owned.   Historically, to join a “well regulated militia,” one had to already own a firearm since militias did not furnish them.  Congress does have the specific and unlimited constitutional power to regulate all interstate commerce under Article I, Section 8, which I think includes commerce in arms, and there is no exception suggested in the Second Amendment!  That provision says nothing about a “right” to buy or sell arms free of government control.  I think both sides in the debate have ignored that distinction and wind up talking past each other.  I believe that Congress may lawfully regulate or even ban any and all arms sales.  Whether or not a specific proposal makes sense is another matter, but I doubt that can be resolved by constitutional examination.

Most privately-owned guns are “semi-automatic,” which require a separate trigger pull for each round of ammo shot.  Federal law (18 USC §922(b)(4)) already bans the sale and possession of fully automatic “machine guns” without special permits.  However, it was recently reported that a former police chief was apprehended selling machine guns INTENDED only for police use in black-market sales to individuals.

Under federal law, it is already illegal for ANY person to sell OR DISPOSE OF firearms to any felon, to anyone under indictment, to any fugitive, to anyone adjudicated a “mental defective” or having been committed to a mental institution, to anyone addicted to a controlled substance, or even a user,  to any “unlawful” aliens, to anyone subjected to a dishonorable discharge, to anyone who has renounced a US citizenship, to anyone under a court order to refrain from bothering any child or “intimate partner,” to anyone convicted of “domestic abuse,” and it’s unlawful for any of the foregoing to RECEIVE such arms.  It is unlawful to  possess, transmit or receive any arms that are (re)configured to elude security detection.  Federally licensed dealers must also ascertain the bona fides of gun purchasers, too.  In other words, there is ALREADY a lot of “gun control” provided by federal law that has failed to prevent the horrible murders that have occurred.  What can more federal law do?

In addition, there are state and local “red-flag” laws that allow police to intervene and confiscate weapons whenever someone is behaving in such a way as to raise serious safety questions.  Recently, however, the fellow who shot up a FedEx warehouse where he used to work was not thus interdicted, despite family pleas, so he was able to acquire the weapons used in that murderous horror. 

President Biden recently proposed some measures that may accomplish something: (1) he wants to restrict or ban the modification of pistols with rifle stocks; (2) he wants to prevent the trade in so-called “ghost” weapons that are assembled from kits and have no serial numbers; and (3) he is promoting the expansion (under state law) of petitions by family members and law enforcement to remove weapons from the reach of those who are shown liable to hurt themselves or others, the so-called “red flag” laws referenced above.  “Assault weapons” are, however, another matter.

How, exactly, can “assault weapons” be defined with statutory precision?  That would be necessary if one was to be criminally prosecuted for a violation, but many “gun control” types don’t seem to care.  Many want them specifically banned as such because no reasonable person could possibly “need” such a firearm, and “everybody already knows” what they look like.  I agree that what I think of as an “assault weapon” does look “bad,” but what is an “assault weapon” LEGALLY?  Most seem to look like military guns, but relying on what “everybody already knows” is not going to suffice for criminal prosecution.  Personally, I don’t think “assault weapon” can be precisely described for statutory purposes, because its description relies on subjective cosmetics.

I think, instead, the advocates of “gun control” should approach the problems analytically and not emotionally.  I think the issues should be addressed incrementally instead of trying to write some sort of “comprehensive” law that will surely attract opponents from many different angles.  I would start with a federal requirement that limits gun purchases to one gun per month.  I think that is politically possible and certainly reasonable.

Next, I would consider outlawing the sale or purchase of any large-capacity ammo magazine or clip.  HOWEVER, that would surely drive a lot of commerce to a most profitable “black market” which is, by its very definition, UNREGULATED.  So, in order to offset the likelihood of black-market commerce in large-capacity magazines and clips I would, AT THE SAME TIME, activate a VERY generous nationwide “bounty” or buy-back on such large-capacity magazines and clips in order to purchase and destroy same and get them out of circulation.  To be sure, such a bounty would not succeed in removing all such magazines and clips from private hands, but it would likely get many of them IF the money is big enough.  But the prohibition would not work without the bounty, nor vice-versa.  It might even work better if a SMALL-capacity magazine were also offered in trade with the bounty!

In Virginia, one may be declared a “Habitual Offender” for violating three of the major highway offenses, like drunk driving, reckless driving, hit-and-run, or ten lesser offenses in ten years, and such a driver’s license is then revoked for at least five years (or more).  If that person is caught driving during such revocation, that is considered a FELONY under Virginia law.  Many people have been convicted of possession of marijuana or other drugs or distribution of small amounts thereof as FELONIES.  WHY should any of them be prohibited from purchasing any weapon, but one who has been convicted of misdemeanor animal abuse is not so prohibited?  

Why should someone sent to a mental hospital for nonviolent but persistent alcohol intoxication be banned from possessing firearms?  As the former Special Justice for Orange County, I sent a lot of habitual drunks to Western State Hospital because that was the only place to send them!  Yet, almost none of them would have been considered a “community threat.”  They were just a threat to their own well-being.  What about banning single men 25 or older who have never had sex?  (Try getting THAT law passed!)  The laws being vehemently proposed or already on the books seem to have little or nothing to do with addressing the root causes of the deplorable murders of innocent people!  It seems they are aimed at just making the proponents “feel better.”

In my view, “feeling better” doesn’t cut it.  Real “gun control” needs to make sense.  There needs to be an understanding of the difference between “causation” and “coincidence.”  Advocates of gun control need to show a clear causal nexus between the horrors that have happened and what is being proposed.  Whenever I hear about such incidents on NPR, no one ever seems to ask or learn what type of weapon(s) is/are involved, which I think is highly relevant.  I understand that most of the “perps” of those horrible incidents of gun violence had no prior criminal record, so nothing may show up in a “background check.”  They were not using fully automatic weapons, so what they were using was readily available.  Many did use large-capacity magazines and had bought several weapons in close sequence.  All of the weapons used in those horrible incidents were apparently acquired legally.

Yet the meaningless proposals and violence will continue.

UTTERLY “ARTIFICIAL” INTELLIGENCE

 Back when I was in law school in the early 1970’s, I spent a lot of time “expanding my consciousness” by smoking great local weed and listening to the “Firesign Theatre” (FT), a satirical comedy group out of San Francisco (two of the four now dead) whose material fit in perfectly with one’s thus-altered mental state. One of FT’s albums entitled “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus” purports to follow a bus-load of Bozo clowns into the future while they are honking their “Clarabelle” bulb horns in response to whatever.  (That happens to be a jarring mixed “metaphor” of sorts, but it does not matter.)  Anyway, they manage to get an audience with the President of the United States, who/which has “evolved” to be a computer with a voice that sounds strangely like Richard Nixon!  To show just how smart he/it is, the “computer President” insists on being asked ANY question which he will, of course, answer, so the protagonist in question, “Clem,” steps up and asks the President if he knows “Why does the porridge bird lay its egg in the air?”

Now, I realize that question makes absolutely no sense at all, but it was perfectly appropriate at the time!  We howled with laughter at such absurdities.  (It helped that we were stoned out of our gourds!)  Then, an unexpected thing happens: the “President” has a meltdown!  One of those present at the audience with the “President” is angrily yelling in the background that “You broke the President, man!”  The Nixonian presidential voice is dragging slower and lower and more garbled, while a voiced-over computerized error message makes it clear that something seriously wrong has happened within the “President.”  My classmate, with whom I have gotten VERY stoned, points out to me that computers cannot answer “why” questions, so that explains the meltdown!  

To this day it is interesting to see who was listening back then.  Way too many of my peers were not doing so, and that is one reason why Donald Trump got so many votes in 2020!  They should have known better than to vote for a busted machine!  But, I digress.

Fast-forward to 2020, and I am struggling to finish The Emperor’s New Mind, written, published and autographed by Sir Roger Penrose, an emeritus professor of math and physics at Oxford, which I bought when I went to hear him speak at “The Smithsonian” back in 1990.  I had tried to read it then, but it is WAY over my head, so I put it on the shelf, where it had stayed ever since.  My guilt, however, kept nagging at me, so I pulled the book back down and ground my way through it last winter.  (Penrose got half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics for his work with “black holes” and Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, so his is the only “Nobel” autograph I have.)

The premise of the book is Penrose’s assertion that the operations of the intra-connected human mind must reflect sub-atomic quantum mechanics, so he is (as am I) a skeptic when it comes to whether or not computers, even “quantum” computers, will ever truly mimic human intelligence.  I vainly slogged through his presentation and analysis of mental function and the physics of quantum behavior, but he never raised the issue of a “why” question, or that computers cannot master the human thought processes of “because.”  Computers are very good and very fast at making choices between “Door No. One” and “Door No. Two,” binary decision-making, but they cannot do subjective decision-making.  They do not have a “whim” button!  (“Because I said so, dammit!”)

I have since watched Penrose in a live interview streamed online.  He is famous for fashioning various tiling patterns that are mathematically convoluted (so-called “Penrose Tiles”), and he and his father designed a never-ending “stairway” that was supposedly inspiration for M. C. Escher’s “Waterfall” painting!  He will be 90 years old in August.  I have failed to understand much of his book, but I can appreciate his skepticism about “Artificial Intelligence.”  I’ve been wrong about computers before, such as doubting the eventual reality of digitized voice recognition and dictation but, and notwithstanding the scary memory of “Hal” from the movie 2001, I doubt very seriously that computers will ever manifest true human-level intelligence.

Now, where did I put those FT albums?  Time to burn a doobie and reminisce about Bach’s Also Sprach Zarathustra!