During this crazy campaign season, we get to see both the beauty and the extremely ugliness of American politics. First and foremost are the candidates and how they interact with the populous. From watching and reading about the various campaigns, I've realized that there are three key ways the candidates convey their message to the public. They are Platitudes, Plans, and Positions.

Platitude means an overused remark or statement, mostly of a moral nature, but because of its overuse, has very little meaning left. What are some of the platitudes? Well, we get the "Make America Great Again" comment. What does that even mean, right? Is America not great now? If you ask anyone around the world (which is the only meaningful way to ascertain whether America is great or not), they will say that, yes, after 7 years of the Obama administration, America has once again come out on top. We're now clearly the most powerful nation on earth, and Obama's restraint in not profligately slinging arrows at various nations have repaired America's wanton imperialistic image that was forged during the Bush-Cheney error, uh, I mean era.

What are other platitudes? How about the old stand-by, "Abortion is terrible." Well, yes, no one wants to abort, even the woman who conceived through rape or incest. But in many cases, there are medical and other valid reasons to perform the medical procedure. It's a platitude because it's a moral statement that carries no value because those who promote the cause are all the more likely to break that pledge by actually having abortions.

Another platitude is the gem, "Tax cuts for the wealthy will trickle down to everyone else." It's the trickle-down economic theory of Ronald Reagan which has created the worst economic disaster for the United States over the past 30-plus years. Trickle down doesn't work, and tax cuts doesn't work. Look at all the (red) states that have implemented tax cuts: Kansas, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and others. Each and every one of them have been a miserable failure, all demonstrating, so ever clearly, that the proposed prescription for economic recovery is most definitely NOT tax cuts for the rich.

Plan is bogeyman of the distrusting folks who wish to put candidates into an no-win bind. When candidates propose ideas, doubtful critics resort to demanding a fully written out plan on how to implement the ideas. That is not possible.

When John F. Kennedy proposed, on May 25, 1961, to send a man to the moon within the decade, he most certainly didn't have a plan in mind. There was no way that Kennedy had the details of creating the Mercury missions, the Gemini missions, and then the Apollo missions. He probably had zero knowledge of rocketry or even basic understanding of the calculus involved in determining the energy needed to send the payload into space. In other words, Kennedy most certainly did not have a plan in mind. He just set a goal and let the smarter people formulate a plan.

Even if the candidate has a plan, chances are, that plan will not be the one that will be used. There are many parties to a major project and everyone will have a say on how to make the project succeed. One sure way to get a project to fail is to not get buy-in from even just one party. That neglected party will do its utmost to scuttle the plan because it wasn't included in a positive way.

Thus, those scuttlebutts who demand candidates to offer up concrete plans are basically just blowing smoke and creating a strawman to knock down. Don't ask for plans.

Positions are really what voters should look for. A candidate's position is what voters should only look at. No, not the winning (or not) smile, or the candidate's family, or whether the candidate has any scruples (we all do). The question should always boil down to positions. All debates and town halls should ask candidates to state their positions, and on as many issues as possible.

Does the candidate favor higher or lower taxes for the top income earners? Does the candidate favor a government-run healthcare system or not? Does the candidate favor increased regulations on Wall Street? Of course, the candidates can provide a more nuanced response than yes or no. In many such broad questions, where the candidate rests with his or her answer can tell a lot about the candidate's values. Perhaps the candidate doesn't want the government to be running hospitals. But the candidate wants the government to provide the payment program. Maybe the candidate doesn't want more regulations on Wall Street, but perhaps just better and more enforcement of the existing regulations.

A candidate's position is where voters get to decide, "Yes, I want to back candidate X because (s)he is for the position that I like." That position could be free abortions to zero abortions, or gun-free areas to everybody be packing.

Find where you stand on various positions. Then find the candidate that best fit your positions. Don't listen to platitudes and don't demand a fully formed plan to implement those positions.

The cable car grip-men are the rock stars of the public transportation sector here in San Francisco. First, they get to clang their bells as they careen down Powell or Taylor or Hyde. They're generally big and burly, like a former football player. While their skills are unique and require extensive training and practice, the cable car operators can't hold a candle to the respect earned by the humble muni bus driver.


The muni bus driver has a tougher going compared to the cable car and trolley drivers. The latter operators are on tracks, so cars, cyclists and pedestrians are required to move out of their way. That takes one responsibility off their load. The bus driver, because they can maneuver around cars and other objects, have to take evasive action to avoid contact. Imagine yourself doing so. Here you are, manning a huge, heavy machine, filled with more people than any other transport besides BART. You have to avoid people (like me, sometimes) who jaywalk and jump in front of the bus. You have to avoid the drunkards, the homeless, the manic drivers, the double-parked UPS trucks, and rabid cyclists.

Then, there are the overhead cables. Sometimes, the boom arms detach and the driver has to get out to realign the arms. That's hazard pay right there.

The buses also have tougher routes. All right, the cable cars do go up those impossibly steep hills. But so do some buses. The buses do that while swerving around cars and pedestrians. The buses also have to tackle tight corners. Neither cable cars nor the trolleys have tight corners. Dem's good machine handlin' there, guys! Congrats.

The key complaint about the Muni buses is that they're slow. But the public don't see why they're slow. They're slow because of the cars and traffic and the pedestrians mindlessly walking in front of the buses. These drivers have infinite patience. I know I can't do their job because I'd just drive through all the parked cars and jaywalkers (despite being one myself, although I tend to eschew blocking traffic when jaywalking). The buses come to a stop 3 in a row because the first one was blocked by some double-parked shipping truck dropping off products in Chinatown or in the Mission, or a UPS truck delivery parcels out on Market.

If you don't believe me, take a late-evening ride. The same route as during the rush hour would take twice as long, but during the calmer evening commute, the bus zips right through the city with no delays.

The bus drivers are also very friendly. They value their passengers. There's one driver who does the 30 Stockton run who speaks chinese to the passengers. And he's black! Another 30 Stockton driver shouts out the upcoming stops with far more information than what's presented on the screens. The tourists who ride that bus will know they are in good hands. If you're short on change, "No problem!" They just wave you in and you're good. I've gotten on before with $20s and $5s and they just waved in on. They didn't give me a transfer receipt, though, but that's fair.

It is the best $2 transportation bargain here in the city, that's for sure, and we have to all thank the humble Muni bus driver for the daily valiant efforts to push us along. I personally offer a verbal thank-you whenever I step off the bus. That's the best I can do in lieu of a tip.

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist wrote a book called, The World Is Flat, signaling that globalization and international trade will help lift all nations. Essentially, my little blog here is a refutation and extension of that hypothesis. Friedman uses the "flat earth"metaphor, although I don't quite understand the analogy. What is patently true, both literally and figuratively, is that the world is finite.

Let's assume you're a regular Joe or Josephine. The 99%'ers, if you will.  Suppose someone hands you a nickel. Just like that. You get a nickel in the mail, say. Like a refund check from the credit card company overcharging you. What would you do? Well, if it's a check, you might bother to walk it over to the bank and deposit it. If it were a nickel coin, you might stick it in your pocket together with your kleenex and lint and bus transfer and other useless items. Then, after a week, before you put that pair of jeans in the wash, you notice the nickel and drop it in your change jar. Or, if someone actually handed you the nickel out on the street, you might walk up to the next homeless/beggar and drop that nickel into the cup. Not another moment's thought.

How about 50¢? Well, for four-bits, you might keep that change and actually use it for bus fare or a soda. But, if someone handed you the 50¢ out on the street, you might as well just drop it in some beggar's cup again. Still, if you had that 50¢, you'd keep it and use it to round out your coffee purchase.

Now, suppose someone handed you $5. An abe, a fiver, a fin. Now this is serious money. Most likely, you won't drop it in a beggar's cup. But, if it's a good street entertainer, say a crazy violinist-acrobat-magican, you'll toss that $5 into the violin case. You might splurge on a quickie fast food: go to McDonald's and get the value meal. Or you might head to a bar for a beer, especially if you got the $5 in the late afternoon.

And with $50? With $50, you'd probably replace that broken iPhone earbud with a better one that has a microphone on the wire. You might even buy two so in case you lose one again. Or, you'd buy that book you always wanted to read. Maybe treat your friend to a movie and quickie dinner. Sure, why not. Someone just handed you a $50, have fun, right? Hey, you might even offer a bigger tip at a dining establishment that actually expects tips. Depending on the circumstances, you might use it for emergency stuff, like gas for the car, groceries for the week, or depositing it in your checking account to cover for the possible overdraft when your utility bill check clears before your paycheck is deposited in your bank.

But notice that dropping that $50 into a beggar's cup is probably out of the realm of possibilities.

At $500, things go a bit dicey, but in today's world, $500 is still play money. You might buy a replacement iPhone instead of new earbuds. You'd make a date for dinner with a special friend at a special location. You know, white table linens, crystals, the works (and still have change, probably). If you have a family, then you'd take the whole family out to some amusement park or a weekend at Tahoe or Yosemite (assuming you live in the greater Bay Area, for context). Or, you spend it on groceries for your family, hold the rest for utilities and other bills for the month. But, essentially, that frees up money that you would have used for groceries and utilities to be used in other discretionary ways, like getting that iPhone or a new sofa.

So what happens when you get an unexpected windfall of $5000? Now the decision becomes more weighty. Let's say you're already reasonably well off. That is, you're not living paycheck to paycheck. You don't have a large nest egg, but you can enjoy a night or two per week out with no negative financial ramifications. Then, that $5000 becomes a nice discretionary gift. You might buy that super cool flat screen. Or a nice stereo system, if people do that anymore now. Or take a weekend or a week flight out to Italy with your significant other. A cruise? Unlikely since there's more prep work to get a cruise booking. If you have kids, you would definitely consider putting it into a college fund. Winter time? Ski trip! Spring time? Golf outing! Summer time? Camping! Also, you can take a portion of it and add it to your IRA, if you have one. Leave the rest for fun or rainy-day spending. Fix up that garage door or leaky window.

At $50,000, decision options expand. Note that any thoughts of dropping any amount to a beggar has gone completely off the table. Maybe it's time for the new car. Upgrade that water heater and air conditioner. Put some towards the kids' college funds. Trip around the world, baby! Load up on the IRA. At $50K, you might be asking for some expert advice. Someone more expert than your uncle or cousin, unless your uncle or cousin is a certified financial planner. You might even buy a few shares of stock, not because it's an investment, but probably as a trophy stock, so you can say to friends, "Yeah, I have some shares of Apple."

When we get to $500,000, that money changes from something to be traded for an item into a money-making vehicle. A one-time $500,000 windfall would most likely go into real estate or investments. In the former case, if the person has a mortgage on a home, then that half-million would help pay down the principal. In the latter case, the person already has a home and the mortgage is low enough to ignore, so the person would put the money into a safe, conservative investment vehicle, perhaps a mutual fund with a mix of growth and value equities and some bonds for stability.

At $5,000,000, the person becomes what the government can legally call an accredited investor. As such, this person can use the money explicitly for investing in high-risk, high-return opportunities like private placements, first round investments in start-ups, and so on. Here, the person no longer considers the use of the money as "spending it," but rather as "investing it."

And here is the nutshell. When a person is so rich as to be in the investment mentality, such as those in the 1%, expenses no longer exist; there are only investments. They're either good investments or bad investments. When such a person buys a cup of coffee, it's not an expense anymore. It's an investment, and if the return on investment for that cup of coffee is $0, according to his thought process, he'd like to get that coffee for free.

When people have a lot of money, they really do treat money differently than when they didn't have as much.  Money has no value if it's not spent.  It does have potential value, much like potential energy.  When someone has so much money in potential, they're not using it, by definition.  Money that is spent, that flows through the economy, enables others to succeed (on the monetary metric), and will likely help that person ultimately increase his own monetary potential.

This investment mentality is why rich folks are generally bad tippers. This is why rich folks hate taxes (they can't control how the taxes are being "invested" towards their personal favorite needs, unlike a charitable contribution). This is why they will never pay retail. This is why they prefer to pay almost nothing for employees, because they don't see how it's a high ROI opportunity. The human mind actually will change its view of money from being a transactional fungible device to an investment vehicle.

Throughout all of human history, humans have always overcome problems with solutions. Solving problems in creative ways is a uniquely human trait that far outstrips the abilities of other animals to solve their own set of problems. Humans created the wheel, clothing, beer, farming, money, houses, wagons, ships, cars, telephone, and on and on, all to solve particular problems.

Unlike physics, the economic science of problem solving is a perpetual motion machine: all solutions are ultimately hacks; temporary solutions that either beget a better solution or create new problems that demand new solutions. And it's a positive economic engine because there is usually a profit tied to solving a problem.

A situation becomes a problem when there is a burdensome economic cost. If I need to get from point A to point B, that's a burden -- hence, a problem. If someone can provide me with a quicker or easier way to get from A to B, that's a solution and I am willing to trade something for that solution. Money was created to make the trade more fungible, the lack of which was a problem prior to the invention of money.

For the longest time, the game was played earnestly where legitimate problems were identified, and hardworking people toiled to create solutions. Again, in the grand scheme of things, every solution is just a temporary hack. There is no such thing as the "ultimate" solution to a problem. Problems sometimes become extinct because the solutions have pushed the problem so far away from reality. For example, we no longer have to worry abut the problem of human underpopulation. (For many millennia, the survival of the homo sapiens species was touch and go. We could have died out and cro-magnons or the neanderthals might have taken over.)

The problem-solution paradigm is ingrained, at least, in western civilization. The scientific method is really nothing more than an application of the problem-solution paradigm applied towards the understanding of the natural world. Engineering is the creation. Virtually all avocations of man is related to this problem-solution paradigm. (I imagine music -- instrumental music, and novel writing as avocations that do not directly address a problem, other than the default problem of earning a living using an avocation.)

The problem-solution paradigm is also the only perpetual motion machine. Value is created when a solution is found. It is not a zero-sum game where the value of a solution is equal to the cost of the problem. The value of the solution is much greater than the problem's present and future cost. That's how we humans have managed to create great wealth (ok, it is sort of arbitrary: a dollar bill means nothing to a donkey), but also great physical creations like buildings and dams and highways and ships and planes. All these changes could not occur if creation is equal to the destruction. (All right, it's not totally a perpetual motion machine, since the earth is not a totally closed system. We have a sun that shines upon the planet tera-watts of power every day. That energy is stored in the tides, the winds, the plants, in the food we eat, the fuel we use. And all that energy is often used to power our solutions to problems.)

So what's the problem? The problem now is that there are entities who have decided that, rather than seek out problems and solve them, they will instead claim to solve a problem, but instead of solving it, will extend and create more problems so that they can continue to cash in on "solving" the problem. They manufacture problems that they can solve.

Who are these people? What group does this? Well, the large global companies primarily. Evidence?

Oil companies choose not to build additional refineries. Whether there is a glut or a shortage of crude oil, the bottleneck is exactly at the refinery. Consumers cannot get gas at the stations until that gasoline exits the refinery. But oil companies do not build additional refineries. Oil companies use two excuses: environmental groups don't want refineries and existing refineries are sufficient. The truth, however, is that by limiting the refineries, the oil companies can game the pricing for retail gasoline. They also don't have to spend capital to build refineries. And lastly, they can use the constriction to argue for more drilling rights. Drilling is cheaper than building refineries because the drill platform is much simpler to build.

Another example is the health care industry. Specifically, the pharmaceutical industry. All right, creating a drug that literally saves lives without negative side effects and is also relatively cheap is a very difficult problem to solve. It is almost a herculean job to solve health care problems. Now, I'm not going to the cheap route to claim that with proper diet, good exercise and some exotic herbs will prevent most of the health problems that these drugs are attempting to cure. Those courses of action are most certainly beneficial to one's health. But make no mistake: western medicine in the form of pills and injections have shown to be a very capable solution to many health-related problems.

But what the health care industry has decided to do now is not to research and develop medicine-based solutions to health problems; problems like diabetes, cancer, renal failure, high blood pressure. They have decided to first go after the low hanging fruit: restless leg syndrome, hair loss, erectile dysfunction, cosmetic medical treatments (botox and the like). One reason, a justifiable one, is because treating these disorders aren't likely to involve using medicine that could kill the patient: it's unlikely that a hair loss pill will kill Uncle Bill.

A second reason is because a lot of these "problems" were invented by the medical community itself. Sure, hair loss has been around since the time of Moses, but people just dealt with it. It's not a problem. Now, we have a solution, so we now have a problem to attach a solution to. Most ADD and ADHD symptoms were once categorized as "being a kid." Now, they're problems and there are drugs to solve them. I'm not belittling the sufferers of ADD/ADHD (and they're primarily the parents), but I remember as a kid seeing other kids, including myself, exhibiting behaviors which we now would label as ADD/ADHD behaviors. None of us were drugged. The teachers and parents dealt with it and eventually, we outgrew being a goofball.

The third reason is because these therapies are among a group of treatment programs that becomes enduring. When you take a pill for treating hair loss, that only works as long as you keep taking the pills, or until you decide that baldness is perfectly fine. Viagra doesn't permanently cure erectile dysfunction. It works for the next few hours after dosing. Now, are they trying that with medicine for the more serious problems like cancer or diabetes or heart disease or AIDS? Well, I would be making a big fool of myself if I were to just say, "YES." I'm not in the pharmaceutical industry and I don't know all the details of all the current research work. But, from talking with people who are in the industry, there seems to be more of a move to make drugs that don't necessarily cure (solve) the disease (problem), but instead delay the critical effects of the problem. Why cure AIDS when you can get them to take a cocktail of drugs to indefinitely minimize the effects of AIDS? Why cure diabetes when you can get them to inject insulin forever? It's cash-flow, baby.

The health care industry, particularly the pharmaceutical industry have moved from curing to mitigating. The problem -- a real problem -- is that this course of treatment is not viable in the long term. For various infectious diseases, from bacterial to viral, the bug evolves. If the "solution" is mitigation, the bug doesn't die, it just get repressed until it's physiologically irrelevant. But over time, the bug evolves to deal with the treatment and then it blossoms into a real nasty bug.  Of course, that's a boon to the health industry: a new problem!

So this not-solving-the-problem-entirely is itself a problem. There is a solution to it, and it involves political will. Governments have to intercede and get these industries to do the right thing. Governments can basically do this in two ways: monetary incentives and disincentives (grants in the former, taxes in the latter) and penalties. At the moment, the US government, at least, have not tried using the penalties option, and mostly use just the monetary incentive option. We need to take back our control of the oversight groups: the Department of Energy, the FDA, the HHS, EPA and use them to enforce laws that are already written. Now, coming this November, which party and which candidate for president is more likely to attempt this?

President Obama has his critics, just like all other presidents before him.  As presidents go, Obama has few "scandals" that plague his administration, compared to previous presidents.  One particular scandal pinned on Obama is that of Solyndra.

Those on the right regularly put the Solyndra scandal as a prime example of Obama mismanagement, or corruption, or something.  But as scandals go, I find the Solyndra incident to be the least effective in positioning the Obama administration as failing or corrupt.  Here's why.

First, let's understand what Solyndra is.  Solyndra manufactured solar photovoltaic systems.  Its supposed technical advantage -- the secret sauce -- was that the cylindrical (Solyndra/cylindrical… get it?) design would allow for solar energy absorption from any direction through direct, indirect and reflected light.  Most flat-panel solar panels are most effective during a short span of time when the sun is directly overhead of the panels.  Solyndra's design allowed the panels to be effective during the whole span of sun's presence from dawn to dusk.

Now, there's been hucksters offering cheap energy since time immemorial.  Was Solyndra a scam?  Unlikely.  Their energy efficiency claims were not fully backed by technical reports, but they clearly were not making "perpetual motion" machine claims.  They were well-vetted by numerous venture capitalists who generally don't invest money in obvious fraud (unless they're part of the fraud).  Kaiser Family Foundation, Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital Partners… these are serious VCs and they don't throw money at nothing.

What doomed Solyndra wasn't the technology, but the business case they presented.  Cheaper, although less efficient, traditional solar panels were still better off than Solyndra technology.  The cost to generate electricity via solar panels have dropped drastically over the past 10 years and the minor improvements that Solyndra could offer did not offset the cost of using the technology.

So where's the scandal?  The US government is committed to developing green energy.  Outside of a few trolls and those whose livelihood depends on the oil and gas industry (or the dying nuclear industry), who can be against renewable, clean, cheap green energy?  The US government gave Solyndra a $535 million loan guarantee to construct a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for their solar panels.  Of all the different ways to invest in a company, a loan guarantee is one of the least risky.  A loan guarantee tells the entity asking for the loan, "Hey, you make the case to get a loan from somewhere: a bank, friends and family, angel investors, whomever.  We're on your back to tell these people that, at worst, they'll get back the principal if things go wrong."  In other words, the government isn't betting on the technology.  Otherwise, it would have been a direct payment for the technology, or a grant.  The government is saying to Solyndra, "You still have a job to convince others to give you money."

Ok, that might suggest that the Department of Energy and the US government isn't too keen on the technology.  Well, I don't know the inner workings of the DoE, so I can't comment whether this action is standard operating procedure or a special case.  But it appears that this route the government took is precisely the right one.  It is a nascent, untried technology, so the government can't be cavalier with using the tax payers' money.  If the government were fully invested in the business, it would have gone through congress to appropriate the money to fund the technology, like everything else the government commits to such as aircraft carriers and fighter jets.

True, the executive team of Solyndra spent the money profligately with fancy offices and pricey office furniture.  But the fact that 100% of the loan wasn't used strictly on the construction of the manufacturing plant wasn't what doomed the company.  Again, they did not foresee the precipitous drop in silicon prices that made their technology economically obsolete.

But that's not a bad turn of events.  The US government is committed to seeing green energy succeed.  It is not committed to seeing each and every or any particular company involved in green energy succeed.  The fact that solar panel costs have dropped is a win.  That Solyndra lost is collateral damage while winning the war on creating green energy.  If Solyndra thrived, we the people win.  If Solyndra failed as it did, because there are cheaper alternatives, we the people still win.  The only way to lose is to not try.

The government isn't there to bet on the jockey (and really, it shouldn't).  The government is there to bet on the choice of the race.  And the green energy race is the right bet.

Which is precisely the role of government: providing capital to untried, but promising technology.  Failure in a particular technological attempt is still a win in the overall scheme of things, because we all learn from that attempt.  The US government, through the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds tens of thousands of small research projects, from obscure math research to huge large Hadron collider type experiments, to studies of supersymmetry in string theory, to field work hunting for dinosaur fossils.  Science and technology is never 100% success.  It is usually 10% success.  Some even claim 1%.  Try doing something, like cure brain cancer. 99 out of 100 times, you're doing it wrong, or your conclusions are wrong, or your results show nothing beneficial.  That's the nature of science.  The graduate chairman, when I received my PhD in math, said, "If your 'theorems' you just proved aren't wrong 99 times out of 100, you haven't been working hard enough."  Most attempts in science lead in the wrong direction.  The long-running success of science is fundamentally due to the many failures it left in its wake.

So the whole Solyndra incident is a classic case of betting on the horse and having the horse lose, only to be glad that the race now has top-level competitors.  Society wins in the end.  This is why I find the whole issue so befuddling.  If people are going to criticize Obama as a bad president, the Solyndra incident is just not a good example of bad leadership.  It is an example of exactly the right leadership.

When discussing education, everyone has an opinion. Yet, despite it being one of the big unsolved problems of the 20th and 21st century, a huge money sink for donors and the government, and everybody feeling that the status quo in education is seriously wanting, there is no consensus for a solution. We can't put a finger on it. Some argue for tougher grading. Some argue for more back to basics, the "three-Rs." And some argue for more play time or creative arts (I'm more in this camp). But whatever solutions people dream up, none are implemented and there's a good reason they're not. As bad as how some of us view the current state of education, we do realize that many people graduate and become nice, decent productive citizens. Secondly, no one wants to gamble their kid's future on some unproven, untried teaching scheme.

So what's the solution? As lacking in humility as anyone else, I too have ideas for possible solutions. But, I keep them to myself because I know they're untested. People who know me would know better to entrust their kids' future to my harebrained ideas, as great as they may be.

But I do have a suggestion for finding the solution to the education problem. In order to implement my suggestion, we all have to agree on some ground rules. We need to agree how to measure success. Obviously, we can't expect every student to end up as CEOs or rock-star surgeons or genuine presidential contenders. But without common agreements, there will be no way to evaluate my or any other competing solutions.

What is our desire for our children? I don't have any children of my own, but if I did, I would want that after they're grown up and moved out on their own, that they would be self-sufficient. I wouldn't want them to live in despair. I don't want them to be needing a handout or rely on parents or others for survival. I'm not being cruel: of course I would help out in times of need. Yet, I'm sure all parents would prefer that their children can survive and thrive on their own. I want them to live a long and happy life and pass away long after I do. In short, we all want our children to be better off than we are.

Notice that this metric, as vague as it might sound, has never been used by our current education system. Indeed, the long-term measure of happiness and success is expressedly avoided at all costs. In my high school years, only one class taught anything remotely related to the long-term view of being an adult, and it barely glossed over those topics. My undergraduate experience had one elective course that also just tangentially broached the topic, and terribly mis-taught it. My graduate education dealt with nothing of the sort and just assumed that someone else already taught those subjects to perfection.

My suggestion is to have a top-down approach to developing a winning education reform. My suggestion is called the "Six More Months" approach. We begin with the graduating college seniors. We provide a six-month "finishing school" training for graduating seniors to prepare, coach and advise them for life outside school. We teach them what employers want for employees "right out of the starting blocks". Rather than teaching more academic abstract nonsense, we ground these graduates with very down-to-earth knowledge that will give them an edge over their peers.

What exactly are these down-to-earth knowledge? That's not hard to determine. We get that with a wet finger in the air and see the immediate results. Once we learn what we need to teach, then we push back that six months to prep students so that when they do graduate, they will possess the same knowledge and assets that those who got the extra six months training got.

We keep pushing this back, stopping only to ensure what we've done meets the measurables and achieves our goals. It may take a few years to push back a block of six months. No problem. After a few more years, we'll learn that that some of the old things we've taught are completely unnecessary. We'll learn to trim useless courses and replace them with pertinent courses: those courses that will prep them for the following six months, which are needed for the subsequent six months and so on, all leading to a polished, prepared graduate.

The model applies to any sort of post-college life, whether it's in tech or marketing or athletics or the creative arts. The role of the educator is more of a coach and trainer with a heavy dose of sagacity to provide the graduate with real world knowledge. Some of those real-world knowledge could be taught earlier in the education-life of the student, so we would.

By following this method, parents, students and teachers all know they are working towards the same results and goals: testable, proven goals that have been shown by the previous graduates to be the successful route.

Technology moves on, always advancing. The internet, to use a bad analogy, is like a series of tubes, much like the sewer system we now have. Before the sewer system, people took a dump into a pot and then poured the contents out into the streets from their window. That is, if they had a chamber pot to use. Otherwise, it was go to the backyard (which was easier to do back then) and pretend to be like any other animal.

But technology moves on and we (the government, really) built, or required building onto, the sewer system. Now, we're all better off for it. Now, we can fit 800,000 into San Francisco without it stinking to high heaven. We can fit 8 million people into NY without the effluent causing thousands of terrible diseases.

So the internet was born in the late 60s and over time became much like a sewer system. It's everywhere and (almost) everyone is connected to it. (Hard to believe, but there are places in the US not connected to either the internet nor the sewer system, but I digress.)

Today, the internet is as crucial and essential to daily living as a well-run sewer system. Yeah, twenty years ago, if you didn't have internet access, it wasn't the end of the world. Nor was access to a sewer system 200 years ago. But technology moves on, always advancing.

Today, it is essential to have internet access, not just for Facebooking or watching porn or instantly messaging friends, but for all sorts of activities that cannot possibly be done without the thing called the "internet". One most important and unique capability of the internet is the crowd-sourcing ability. How else can 10-thousand to 10-million people contemplate and discuss or vote on or evaluate something at the same instant?

Well, I can go on about the utility of the internet, but the galling problem is the two bills -- SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate -- that wants to bring us back from a sewer-system society to a chamber-pot society. SOPA/PIPA will require that you can only use your own toilet. You can't use someone else's toilet, and no one can use your toilet. And not only that, you can only put your own shit and piss in that toilet. You can't toss in illegal toilet paper or maybe yesterday's soup that has spoiled. If someone took a dump in your toilet, your sewer system access could be turned off. If you barfed in that toilet, your sewer system access could be turned off. Heaven forbid if someone else decided to barf in your toilet.

Worse, the alleged point of SOPA/PIPA is to prevent piracy. But it won't. Someone wishing to get a sniff of your wonderful shit has only to go find the sewer line and pop a hole there. He can extract whatever he wants and he can put in whatever he wants. People wanting to pirate some shit will still be able to, and still do it illegally.

SOPA/PIPA allows for punishment without due process. You take a dump and an undigested corn drops through. Bang, your sewer access is closed. And you don't even know it happened, until things start blocking up and you can't get access.

I just watched the documentary, Freakonomics, made from the book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It was an entertaining and enlightening documentary highlighting several chapters from the book.

One particular episode in the documentary was quite eye-opening. It was the chapter on giving incentives to ninth graders to earn better grades. What was eye-opening was not whether the incentives ($50 every month that the student maintains a C or higher in every class, plus a lottery with a chance at winning $500) worked or not (it didn't work as well as hoped), but a very brief clip on what was taught in ninth grade biology.

I don't know about you, but I skipped biology. Ninth grade for me was physical science, which was just an introduction to science. It taught the scientific method and used physical sciences to demonstrate how to use the scientific method and how to measure and replicate experiments. Experiments in physical science are easily measureable with minimal tools; no microscopes, oscilloscopes, radiation detectors and the like. I enjoyed it a lot.

When I was in ninth grade, my sister was in tenth and she took biology. She brought home the biology textbook which was three inches thick and weighed a bunch. She also brought home a frog in formaldehyde that was partially dissected. Heavy book and eww. I decided to skip biology in tenth grade and instead take chemistry, the generic eleventh grade science class.

But here, in this documentary, ninth graders were learning biology and one question asked by the teacher was, "two phenotypes are homologous if they have the same…" where the answer was "alleles." I may mis-quote the question, but that really emphasizes my point. That point is, why the heck are they teaching alleles and phenotypes to ninth graders? How many people will ever need to know such information once they graduate from college?

Sure, we can all use more and better biologists to help improve medicine or save the environment or even create new controlled bacteria to grow fuel. That's not the point. The point is that probably 95% of the general population will never see or hear about phenotypes, alleles and homology ever, outside of their biology class. Whereas 100% of the general population eat and drink and have sex (probably, maybe not 100%), become diseased, grow old and die.

What biology should be teaching is how to eat and drink better for our health; how to have sex better for our and our child's health; what political, technological, and economical factors are involved in helping people become more fit, what may become of us, biologically, as we age from 1 - 13, 14 - 25, 25 - 60, and 60 to death; issues in gerontology; and how to deal with death and grieving.

Are they biology? Not all exactly in the exact scientific nomenclature of sciences, but nothing in life is compartmentalized into neat, clean, mutually exclusive categories. There are political, economic and technological factors involved in almost everything in life. Rather than teaching about alleles and phenotypes -- knowledge and understanding that is useful probably only to a select few involved in molecular biology, a field that a person might decide to enter into soon after college -- we should be teaching students pertinent items related to biology. And the most pertinent item for almost all students is themselves.

We should be teaching hygiene, pharmacological and metabolic effects of injesting things. We should teach nutrition and improving one's health. Explain how exercise affects bone and muscle growth as well as reduction of body fat. If we do, we will firstly have kids knowing things that will be useful to them for the rest of their lives no matter whether they become molecular biologists or wall street financiers or baseball players or even drugged out stoners living in the streets. Secondly, because it's pertinent to the kids, it will involve and interest them more and make them want to learn the subject, thereby helping them get a better grade. Thirdly, some of this information is crucially lacking among our citizens and people really ought to know such items.

Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, schools taught the vanguard of knowledge. What is known now as basic algebra was, back then, a new way of thinking to solve problems. Biology was novel back then because people thought god made everything and nothing has changed since Adam and Eve. People learned them not because they wanted to become knowledgeable (well, that was a secondary benefit), but because they wanted to know these things to succeed in life. We need to return to that incentive: teaching kids how to succeed in life. Part of succeeding in life is to not do biologically stupid things and unnecessarily shorten one's life. There is so much that we can teach and re-teach about basic biology related to human and humanity that it would cover six or ten years of learning. We don't need to push the vanguard of learning what alleles are.