Of David, Goliath And Fireman Dressups, This Weekend

1) Animals who Yoga. Yoga Animals. Yogimals.

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2) Dis is a collection of mushroom pictures. Because I wanted to link to a collection of mushroom pictures. The Magical World Of Mushrooms

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3) 22 Worst Foods (And would you believe #16 is Milk?!)

(Also because I blogged at some point about dry fruit actually being really bad for kids’ teeth because they stick and have all those sugars; not that dried fruit is unhealthy, just it requires more brushing work…)

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4) Abused Dog Thrown Down Rubbish Chute Survives

Caveat: The first few pictures are graphic. Scroll quickly to the good stuff that’ll make you misty eyed. No pictures because I thought it was better seeing the whole progression, but I didn’t want to put either the awful abuse pics up or give the ending away…

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5) Are Viruses The Next Cure For Cancer?

They used a Measles virus to cure two otherwise deemed-incurable blood cancer patients. Longread to be sure, but I liked the thought process/ problem-solving stimulation thing, it’s part of how I explained “curing cancer” to Rockstar. Cancer = very terrible disease often caused by errant cell mutation (mutation like when drain turtles become pizza-eating Mutant Ninja Turtles.) Curing its countless forms = great discovery/ invention.

Cancer cells = also cells. Chemotherapy, involving harsh chemicals among others, is a terrible treatment for a terrible disease – it kills fast-growing cells, not all of which are cancerous ones (so for e.g. hair might also fall out). Hence also using various virus to target certain cells hence long article link about using organisms that cause one not-quite-so-terrible-but-still-bad disease to target another terrible disease. Hence like chemo, the viruses they used to cure two otherwise incurable cancer patients have nasty side effects too.

So the key to curing any terrible disease caused by rapid cell mutation is arguably how to do so while killing as few other good cells as possible. (I know, it’s like I seem to put everything into a derivatives-ish perspective but it has to do with a way to solve problems (as in puzzles problems not troubles problems) – by breaking them into smaller, more vanilla pieces where possible…)

(Was that about how you explain it to a 6 or 7 year old?)

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6) Break that up with pictures…… Of dogs with secret identities. Haha no, it’s dogs with weird markings.

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7) Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. 

Not a link, a mini book review/ cheat summary of a book I enjoyed some time ago, it’s a book about:

a) Determining whether the Goliaths in our lives are really such – when you look at the Biblical story of David and Goliath, do you see a small shepherd youth up against a formidable warrior in seemingly insurmountable odds?

Scholars however now have a theory that Goliath was likely suffering from “Giantism” and therefore disabled – slow, with poor eyesight. David, on the other hand, in refusing armor, was strategically increasing his mobility and formidability. But lemme just say – even if you know armor slows you down, it takes bravery to refuse it when you’re up for a fight to the death because “conventional wisdom” dictates you put on armor for hand-to-hand combat. 

In reality, Goliath had about as much chance against David as he would’ve had against someone with a modern day gun. But how many of us would’ve seen it that way? The “best” way to a shot of bravery, I believe, is faith. 

It would also summarize how I felt about keeping close to God when involved in the markets – you can do everything right and have the most efficient risk-management systems known to man and then you hit the proverbial unseen iceberg, another Too Big To Fail happens. We deal forever with imperfect knowledge. That should actually make us very dependent on God.

b) How “disability” (for e.g. David was too small to borrow Saul’s armor) can be an advantage. Two examples are David Boies and Gary Cohn, both dyslexics who struggled through conventional early schooling. The former led the prosecution against Microsoft in that high-profile antitrust case (continuing to make classic dyslexic mispronunciations while absolutely demolishing witnesses for the defense), the latter is President and COO of a certain little financial institution you might have heard of – Goldman Sachs.

Boies and Cohn reminded me of a pretty technical programmer I used to know, who recommended a book (unfortunately I was working then and have now forgotten the title of the book, but the lesson remains) about overcoming learning disabilities. If you can get over the My Child Does Not Have A Learning Disability! huffiness/ pride, it’s not a bad place to look for more ideas on how to teach your own child even if they don’t have a disability. I’m just saying…

On another note, imagine Boies and Cohn back in the day before dyslexia was easily identified, underperforming students sitting in a classroom furiously working out how to get themselves out of the pickle of not being able to read to do their schoolwork.

Boies would later describe how because he still can’t read nearly as easily as your average person, he had to push himself to listen and commit to memory as much as he could of lectures and lessons, the first time round… He would go on to make classic dyslexic mistakes during his devastating cross-examination of Microsoft…. but the cross-examination was no less devastating.

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8) So… At some point I realized the Miss actually doesn’t do many dress ups, “for a girl.” (Don’t scream at me, it’s just a simple statement from observing some other girls – I hadn’t even realized for e.g. that Rockstar’s school “Trashion Fashion” was pretty competitive amongst the girls because they wanted to get on the catwalk and stuff)… Well then anyway The Miss’ 5-second skit this week is titled, “If It Fits….”

The Miss is wearing pink pufferfish motive jammies under Rockstar’s former fireman costume for Kindy Halloween complete with firehose velcroed to shoulder, and…. a ski hat. And considering accessorizing with my Alexander Mcqueen skull-motif scarf. First skit with two titles – number two might be “Why not?”

Good weekend, dears…