Principle Nixes every Book in the Library for e-readers

Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception. This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, literature, fiction, novels, poetry, history, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital. "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books", said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ (the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned). We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology".

As the folks on engadget say "unless there are only 18 students at Cushing Academy, we're pretty sure the e-reader supply is going to come up short". The book is at the height of information technology, not the bottom, and I will tell you why. The book never needs an upgrade,it is extremely inexpensive making it available to the poorest of the poor and the rich alike, the only energy source required to read it is sunlight, and the only knowledge one needs to attain to decode it's contents is reading. Now, I'm all for technology, especially when you're referring to information that is updated on a daily basis like reference information found in encyclopedias, but that kind of information is not free and requires a subscription. It's also easily controlled or changed depending on who is reviewing and posting the information, the interest groups the information supports or denounces.

Protecting Us from Our Freedoms: Congress Set to Renew Patriot Act Spy Provisions

As night follows day, you can count on Congress to serve as loyal servants and willing accomplices of our out-of-control National Security State. Last week, in another shameless demonstration of congressional "bipartisanship," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) forged a filthy backroom deal that reauthorizes insidious surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act for an additional four years. "Like clockwork," the ACLU reports, Reid and McConnell "introduced a bill, S. 1038, that will extend the provisions until June 1, 2015." As of this writing, the text of that measure has yet to be published. And, like a faint echo from the past when the Patriot Act was signed into law nearly a decade ago in the wake of the 9/11 provocation and the anthrax attacks, the ACLU tells us that "the Senate begins its debate on Monday with votes possible that same night".

But why not forego a vote altogether. After all, with the White House "skipping a legal deadline to seek congressional authorization of the military action in Libya" under the War Powers Act, "few on the Hill are objecting," the Associated Press reports. Why not extend congressional "courtesy" to the White House over demands that their illegal spying on Americans continue indefinitely "as long as consultations with Congress continue"? Consensus by congressional Democrats and Republicans over extending the provisions, the World Socialist Web Site reports, "meets the demands of the Obama administration and the Justice Department for a 'clean' extension, that is, one that does not make any concessions to concerns over the infringement of civil liberties, particularly in relation to the authorization to seize the records of libraries and other institutions".

The Power of The Ideea - 2

Most people I have met who are quick to use their lack the capital to start businesses as their main excuse for not being entrepreneurs do not even have in the first place any ideas to work with. Instead, they are waiting for the capital to land before they then start looking for ideas. I have had people come up to me and say“,  have N1m, what business do you think I should go into?” to which I always lack what to tell them. As far as I am concerned, I think that isn’t entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship starts with idea generation, not finance. You have an idea that you are so passionate about, and then you persist in trying to see it get off the ground. The hustle in getting it to work.

Leveraging contacts, making the most of what you have and the constant refining of the idea is a large part of the fun of being an entrepreneur. If all entrepreneurs were to wait until they had enough capital before setting out to change their world with their ideas, only a fraction of today’s enterprises would exist. It reminds me of the Bible verse in Ecclesiastes 11:4: “Farmers who wait for the perfect weather never plant; if they should watch every cloud, they will never harvest”. Waiting for the perfect conditions before you set out on that road of entrepreneurship is as good as never setting out on that road: the conditions will never be perfect. Create that idea and believe in its power. Start wherever you are. “Start weaving. God will provide the thread” - German Proverb.

The Power of The Ideea

As someone who is very passionate about entrepreneurship and what it can do for the entrepreneur and the society at large, I never pass up on any opportunity to talk about it to others. And when I start, I could go on and on. One of the most common responses I have encountered is that of no capital or finance to start one’s own business. The lack of start-up finance is a very major obstacle, but is it enough to prevent entrepreneurship? One thing I have noticed, both from my experiences and observations is that you rarely ever have enough capital to get that your ass-kicking idea off the ground. This is especially so in Nigeria where there are barely any venture financiers willing to take risks with a new venture, where the banks are also sceptical about lending to small businesses, and have cut-throat interest rates. 

In other words, to start a business here, you must have enough personal funds or have family to support you. I remember my first business idea when I was 18, an internet music start up for which I needed a modest few hundreds of thousands of naira. It wasn’t the fact that I had the capital that spurred me to create that idea, because I didn’t have the money. What I believed in was the power of the idea and its immense potential. I knocked on doors with my business plan and travelled to meet people whom I could pitch my idea to. Even though the idea never took off eventually, I learned an invaluable lot from that experience, especially in trying to raise venture financing. I learned that in looking for a breakthrough, God doesn’t give you one. He shows you where to break through. It is your persistence at that point that does the work for you.

Education, Intelligence and One Other Thing

These passions of mine were directly linked to my talents, which mean they derive from my purpose. In my own case, it is a set of passions. For someone else, it might just be one. But the main point here is I discovered myself, and that made my education much easier. Some of these things cannot be acquired via a degree, or in a systematic manner in a controlled environment. But it has not stopped me from polishing my rough diamonds by self-education: books, mentoring, and practical activity. For me, when I call myself intelligent, it is not because I can name the capital of every country in the world (well, almost) or that I was a contestant in the Zain Africa Challenge for Universities, but because I am applying myself to give people value and myself fulfilment and satisfaction. And this is what education and intelligence should be about. Admittedly, not everyone would be able to discover his purpose or self, as I pointed out in my previous post: Why the North has fewer entrepreneurs. But everyone can and should be intelligent: be able to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Let it be that one is not intelligent because he graduated from a university with a First Class degree, but because he is applying the knowledge he has, gained from within and outside a classroom, aided by skills to bring value to society. Now, this is the responsibility of our educational system, especially at the tertiary level.

Now this brings us to the 2 other things: creativity and entrepreneurship. Creativity is defined as “relating to or involving the use of imagination or original ideas to create something”, while entrepreneurship, in my own words, is “the implementation of ideas created, be it in business, film, social change or politics”. From what I have experienced and observed, the discovery of self, which helps us to identify our passions gives us a paradigm shift in the way we view our world. For example, someone passionate about design sees the world through the eyes of design. That said, when that person ventures into design work, his/her work will be something new, from a different perspective. Another person equally passionate about design will also approach design from a new perspective, possibly building upon the work of the previous person. How come two people passionate about design approach it differently? This is because even though their passions are the same, their purpose is not the same. Every person’s purpose and passion(s) in life are shaped by this acronym: (S)pirit-filing, (H)eart’s Desires, (A)bility, (P)ersonality and (E)xperiences. This shows that no two people can have the same SHAPE, hence their view of the world cannot be the same because what is in them is not the same. 

This is one of the biggest influencers of creativity: in the sense that discovering oneself helps you see the world differently, and when you venture to apply yourself, you apply it differently. Discovering yourself never makes you a copycat. It makes you more original. Now since we have already defined entrepreneurship as “the implementation of ideas”, we now come to see why world over, entrepreneurs are regarded as bastions of creativity and innovation; why start-up ventures are envied for the flow of ideas in the workplace. This can be simply explained in the fact that entrepreneurs are people who have discovered themselves (educated), hence are applying themselves (intelligent) in a new, different, improved manner (creative). Whether that entrepreneur is an artiste or a businessman or a scientist, whatever he does is creative, ground-breaking and capable of defining history. I have tried within the limits of my knowledge and intelligence (pun intended) to be able to bring light to this issue. I also continue searching by asking myself questions and hoping that the Omniscient One reveals to me more, that I may share with the world and also learn from it. In subsequent posts, I shall continue exploring these subjects. May we all be educated, intelligent, creative and entrepreneurial. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein.

Education and Intelligence

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, education means to educate, while to educate means “giving intellectual, moral and social instruction”. This is usually done in a systematic manner in a controlled environment, with students/pupils, teachers and tutors, curricula and facilities. Intelligence, on the other hand, is defined by the same dictionary as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” However, for me, I have come to view these two terms differently, albeit slightly for intelligence. I choose to define education as “the discovery of self”, and intelligence as “the application of the discovery of self to add value to others and self”, in addition to the dictionary meaning. This is because I have come to observe that it is not in the giving of intellectual instruction and systematic learning that education lies. It is not in the acquiring of degrees and cramming theories and postulates that makes one educated. Rather, it is in the applying of knowledge into concrete results that add value to first, the society, and then to oneself that we can claim to be educated. This can especially be seen in the Nigerian educational context, where over 200 tertiary institutions produce an average of 600,000 graduates yearly. However, we barely create up to 100,000 jobs annually, meaning 500,000 graduates remain in the labour market yearly. 

This becomes a frustrating situation: we have been told that having an education guarantees us a job. How come we have such astonishingly high numbers of unemployed graduates? The answer lies in the fact that these graduates had merely been given “intellectual, moral and social instruction”, but without having their intelligence developed. Worse, the environment and nurturing they need to discover themselves has been totally inexistent. Hence, rather than creating job-creators, we are creating job-seekers. Now, what is this ‘discovery of self’ I keep referring to? The discovery of self refers to the situation when one is able to recognize the innate abilities he has been born with, his talents in no matter how raw a form they are in. but even beyond that, it is about discovering where their passion lies. Having a talent isn’t enough, but having a passion about something. And in most cases, our passion is almost always linked to our talent(s). Additionally, our passion leads us to our purpose: that higher calling we are willing to work for, which God has predestined for us to do. It is that calling which will give us the greatest fulfilment and satisfaction, beyond what money, fame and power can ever do for us. Now this is the tricky part: how do we discover our purpose? One of my favourite sermons of all times was based on the theme: The Discovery of Purpose. 

The preacher gave a simple 3-step approach to discovering our purpose: What is that thing or those things that comes to us naturally, in no matter how rough and raw a form? What is that one thing or things we can do for hours, without promise of pay, and lose ourselves while doing it? Whenever we dream about our future (and we all do that), what do we see ourselves doing or being? If we sit down and reflect on these questions, we begin to come up with rough answers to these questions and we find a connection between the three questions. Truth be told, the answers to these questions might be multiple. Like in my own case, I have always dreamt about being an entrepreneur, public speaker, teacher and politician / public office holder. I have dreamt or fantasized about politics since I was 9 years old, about starting a business since I was 10, running for public office and running a government since I was 13 and public speaking since I was 16. I started picking business tips, knowledge and following the stock market from age 12 and started business a year later, and I was pretty good at it from a young age. I was a high school debater and also convincing with words when I wanted to be, either speaking to one person or a group of persons. I started my consulting firm at the age of 22 when I discovered friends were always asking for advice as regards business ideas and strategy. And it goes on and on and on from then till now.

More Electronic Circuits

The world of electronics offers so many underestimated possibilities and it’s so vast and complex that you will be amazed. There are so many things that you can do, useful thing that you have never thought of. Electronic circuits are composed of individual component like transistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, resistors, which are connected by conductive wires of traces through which electric current can flow. This kind of combination, components and wires, allows various simple and complex operations to be performed like: signals amplified, computation performed, or data moved from one place to another. In a integrated circuit, also known as IC, the components and interconnections are formed on the same substrate, typically a semiconductor such as silicon or (less commonly) gallium arsenide. Digital electronic circuits use electric signals to take on discrete values, to represent logical and numeric values. These values also represent the information that is being processed. 

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