Author Archives: David Truss

Sprinting a marathon

You can’t sprint for an entire marathon. Your body won’t let you do it.

I’m lying on the floor, with an achy back. I’ll skip my morning workout after a bit of a stretch. I’m thankful I have an option to stand up at my desk, I’ll be using this option t today.

This has been a great year for health for me. Despite breaking my kneecap in February, I have been working out consistently, I’ve increased my strength, I’ve dropped to my healthy university weight. I’ve been stretching and caring for a slightly injured shoulder that has recovered really well.

So now, my back has decided to do what my back likes to do and seize up. I should be used to this but it has been so good this year that I forgot how much my back can detract from my day when it hurts. I mean, I am used to discomfort but the dull ache doesn’t affect me like the real ache I feel now.

I was trying to think of what’s different, what I physically did to bring on my current back issues and the only thing I can think of is sleeping in a bad position. That shouldn’t be such a big problem. Then I thought about this year and how the backdrop of it has been so stressful.

There is a constant worry about health and the safety of those in my care. There is the pace of work, the stress of those around us, the state of world politics, the second wave of coronavirus, the change to rainy weather… and the fact that I carry my stress in my back.

It feels like I’m trying to sprint a marathon and my back is the part of my body that has said, ‘enough’. Maybe this is my cue to remember that there is a lot of school year left, and to pace myself a bit. I can’t keep sprinting, but I can go the distance if I remember that this is an endurance race and not a a 100 metre dash.

Working through our differences

Let’s play a little game of ‘Have you ever?’ It’s a quiet game that you play inside your head, no one but you needs to know your answers:

Have you ever planned to buy something locally (at a farmer’s market or local lumber store or specialty shop) and then when you saw the price you decided to go to the cheaper big chain or online store?

Have you ever lied to someone because the truth was too hard to tell?

Have you ever done anything that went against your religious or core beliefs, knowing it was wrong, but you did it anyway?

Have you ever chosen to make sacrifices in order to align more with your religious or core beliefs, even though you’d rather not make those sacrifices?

Have you ever done something not because you wanted to, but because you feared other options or outcomes?

Have you ever looked at people different than you and unfairly judged them (regardless of whether you felt justified or you realized you made a mistake later)?

Have you ever made a decision that was not based on what you really wanted, but on what was in your opinion the lesser evil?

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We all make compromises. We all make choices that do not align perfectly with our values and/or we all make sacrifices because they do align with those values. We are not perfect. We don’t always make perfect choices.

We can and do hold different values than other people. And while we can hold other people accountable for doing unjust things that harm us or others, we should not judge another for simply making decisions we would not make. We don’t always know what drives others to those decisions, what personal compromises they had to make, what values they chose to focus on or to ignore. We can challenge ideas, but we do not gain anything from the judgement of others simply because they made choices we would not make.

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” Edmund Burke

We live in a pluralistic society. In such a society we will have neighbours with different values than us. We can not both celebrate their differences and also judge our neighbours for not thinking the same as us. A fair and just society relies on us working through our differences, not condemning others for being different.

A house divided

You don’t have to be American to know that the election today is one that matters significantly to a lot of people in the USA, and across the world.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

I am not aware of any democratic nation that has stood so divided? Twice.

I hope the foundation of American democracy can peacefully withstand the results of today and the coming months. I do not believe a new house can be easy built if this one crumbles.

It wouldn’t surprise me

I find it mind boggling that a day before the presidential election south of our border, I would not be surprised if I hear about bloodshed on Election Day. It wouldn’t surprise me to see partisan violence causing death in a open, democratic society, in the country touted as a symbol of freedom. How sad is that?

The FBI is investigating a Friday incident in Hays County, Texas, where a group of Trump supporters in trucks surrounded and followed a Biden campaign bus on I-35.1 At least one minor collision can be seen in footage of the incident. Texas Democrats canceled three scheduled events on Friday, citing “safety concerns.” Trump tweeted a video of the incident with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS.”2 (Source)

When I read something like this, and see that the US president condones rather than criticizes the behaviour, I’m just flabbergasted! It’s like a principal of a school publicly congratulating a school yard bully. What behaviours can you expect to happen on the school yard after that?

How did we get here? What will the cost be tomorrow? Will people lose their lives trying to exercise their right to vote… in the USA… in 2020?

I really hope not, but at this point in time I wouldn’t bet against it. It just wouldn’t surprise me, and I find that very, very sad.

Common Sense and Speculation

I was planning a long post to look at Covid-19 numbers and the pandemic. With global numbers around 1/2 a million new cases a day and 18-20% of those in the US, it is fairly obvious that the 2nd wave is clearly upon us. Some would argue that the second wave is worse than the first wave. I don’t think so, but I do think we are at a dangerous point where it could get worse.

I started taking screen shots and saving links to research, but I really don’t have it in me this Sunday afternoon to be writing a formal essay on Covid-19. If you want some supporting resources, here is a LinkTree to some great research from an epidemiologist.

The following is what has me concerned right now about the pandemic:

1. Of course the numbers now are worse than wave 1. During wave 1 people couldn’t get tested, there weren’t enough tests out there. A relative in California had covid in March and was sent home without a test. She isn’t a March/wave 1 statistic, as many hundreds of thousands were not, simply from a lack of testing. However, that doesn’t mean that the numbers now are good, and without effort to slow the spread, they will get worse.

2. Some people are easily fooled and manipulated. The idea that masks are either something political or something that infringes on personal rights is asinine. That people mix up being a good citizen with being a rule-following sheep is insulting to the human race. We have survived as tribes, and communities, and as a species because we are communal and support each other in times of need. We are in a time of need to cooperate and support each other.

3. There is only one way to achieve herd immunity that is morally acceptable and that is with a vaccine. Any other approach is a disregard for human life and for the most vulnerable people in our society.

4. We will need a large percentage of the population to get vaccinated. This won’t happen initially. I’m completely pro-vaccine. I’m booked for a flu shot. I will get a Covid-19 vaccine… but I’m not racing to get one that has been rushed to market without being properly tested.

5. Speculations: These are assumptions I’m making, unlike the things above that are based on facts, research and common sense, these are things that I believe will happen in the future. (Hopefully still based on common sense, but I could be wrong!)

A) We will have a safe vaccine in 6 months to a year. What that means is that we will be heading into 2022 before we have a grasp of how well we will come out from the shadow of this virus.

B) We will start to see some normalcy to our world in the middle of 2021 because rapid testing will be affordable and widespread. So things like travel can happen with 1-3 day quarantines rather than 14 days. Entire offices or schools could get tested and contact tracing will help reduce the spread. So, despite the vaccine taking more time to arrive, with proper efforts to protect ourselves and to be willingly tested, things will get better before widespread vaccine adoption.

C) Anti-vaccination and anti-mask groups will stop getting the over-glorified attention they don’t deserve, and they will diminish in size. I’m most likely to be wrong with this speculation if the current US president is re-elected, and his downplaying Covid-19 propaganda is permitted to continue.

D) Despite my optimism that anti-vaccine and anti-mask groups popularity will wane, I think we will struggle with: Conspiracy theories being confused for news; Fake news being so common and well presented that it will become harder to distinguish from real news; And, social media will continue to promote the spread of bad ideas for quite some time. We are going to witness an epic battle between Truth, fake news, censorship, and sensationalization that will leave everyone wondering where they can look to find any information that doesn’t need fact checking?

So, take a deep breath, and buckle up for another year of uncertainty. We need to recognize that nothing is going back to 2019’s version of normal for some time. That said, we need to support each other, do our part, keep our BS filters on high alert, and make smart choices as we head into the holiday season and the new year.

How hard is it to be considerate?

I love Starbucks pumpkin scones. Since they are seasonal and I haven’t had enough of them yet this year, I talked my wife into picking up Starbucks on the way to our walk this afternoon… it doesn’t take much convincing:)

We walked into the store and lined up behind just a couple people. Then the person behind us came in without a mask. A server said to him, “Excuse me sir, we have a mask policy in the store.”

He responded, “I have a breathing condition, I can’t wear masks.”

I’ll be honest, I rolled my eyes at this. Then another customer spoke up and called him an ‘@$$hole’. I thought that was uncalled for. It’s one thing to be upset, still another to just attack the person.

When my wife was ordering, I saw an employee giving the mask-less customer a $4 gift card, and apologizing to him, saying that he shouldn’t have to hear that in the store. A very thoughtful gesture, and the customer responded that it was ok, and that he doesn’t let comments like that bother him.

Then this unmasked customer’s masked wife or girlfriend joined him in line and later while we were waiting for our drinks, I noticed two things that the unmasked customer did that I thought were quite inconsiderate. First, he waited inside, while his masked partner went outside to wait. Second, he leaned around the plexiglass separating the employees from the customers and made a couple different requests (for a glass of water and something else I didn’t hear).

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is one of the rare people that can’t actually wear a mask for less than 7 minutes to order a coffee. Sure, he can have that. But what about wearing a visor? What about respecting the protective plexiglass that was put there to separate employees from customers? What about having your partner line up for the drink and staying out of the store? Or what about having her wait inside while you wait outside after the order?

I didn’t say anything to him. Maybe I should have, but he’d already had a rude interaction with another customer and it’s not in my nature to escalate conflict. But I think the mask-less customer could have been more considerate towards everyone in the store.  And I think it’s just a matter of courtesy that the rude customer didn’t need to be such an @$$ himself.

I commend the Starbucks employee for doing something good… something considerate. I just wish others could do the same.
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More posts on wearing a mask:

I’d rather be a sheep than a lemming

Wear a mask

I don’t agree to disagree

When bad ideas go viral

Smile with your eyes

A Life Consumed

Overstimulated, over stressed,
Anxiety heightened but not addressed.

Faces lit in a constant glow,
From a device, in hands, below.

Palms cup, thumbs type,
Or click, or ‘Like’, or swipe.

Acceptance measured by affirmation,
But never enough for self-appreciation.

Pressure builds to levels previously unknown,
From always being connected, yet always feeling alone.

A-Life-Consumed-2020-10-30-Poem-David-Truss

Averages and Parachute Packing

This is Part 2 of:

Average tells us nothing.

Here are some very well rounded marks of a hypothetical student in a course:

The student starts out very average with 60% on the first 3 tests:

On the next test, the student shows much greater comprehension:

Then on the final test, the student shows mastery of the PLO’s, the prescribed learning outcomes:

Now if these were tests on completely different units, unrelated to each other, you could argue that the student deserves a 70% final. However if the student was learning information that was cumulative and knowledge at the end of the course required understanding of previous work, then wouldn’t the student deserve a higher mark?

For example, if the student was learning to code, and the simple(r) concepts learned at the start of the course (that the first 3 tests were on) were required understanding to do well in the second part of the course: Shouldn’t the student’s final mark represent greater understanding of the course than the 70% final mark from the average of all 5 tests?

The Parachute Packing Analogy

I love the simplicity of this example! There are 3 students who are in a parachute packing class:

Students take 3 tests during the course.

Student A starts off strong and gets an A on the first test, gets a B on the second test, is over-confident, flounders and gets a C on their final test.

Student B is a solid B student and gets B’s on all 3 tests.

Student C struggles on the first test and gets a C, starts understanding the concepts and gets a B on the second test, then totally understands all the concepts and finishes with an A on the final test.

All 3 students have a ‘B’ average in the course.

Which student do you want to pack your parachute?

Average tells us nothing.

Part 1

It might be an exaggeration to say that it tells us nothing, but averages don’t usually give us enough information to be useful.

Individual student level: In Math class, kid gets an ‘A’ on his test on positive and negative integers. Then he gets a ‘C’ on fractions. Score averages to a ‘B’… but when the kid moves on to algebra, and most of the algebra includes solving problems with fractions, it’s unlikely the kid will do better than a ‘C’. The important information is the ‘C’ in fractions, not the ‘B’ average.

On a team level: When some team members have done amazing things and other tram members have done nothing new, measuring the average means absolutely nothing. You can’t look at averages when some team members will move and some won’t. The reality is that everybody has to be moving in the right direction, and when some are standing still, it doesn’t matter where the average is, it doesn’t matter if the average is moving slightly up.

The fact is that we are failing or we have failed if we don’t figure out where we are weakest and improve where we need it most. Athletes get this. They know that the weakest part of their performance is the area where there is the most room for improvement… this is a mindset we need on our teams to move forward.

Part 2: The Parachute Packing analogy and school grades.

When the street lights came on

How many of us Gen X kids stayed out until the street lights came on? That was the signal to head hone for bed. Until the street lights came on, all your parents knew about your location was that you were somewhere in the neighbourhood…. somewhere.

Kids today, their parents always know where they are. This isn’t that new. Even us X’ers didn’t let our kids have this freedom. We grew up in an era when news reports started telling us what a bad world we live in. Unsafe. Dangerous for kids.

Now we are locked down in a way that really limits kids freedoms even more. Where are you going? Who are you seeing? Are they all in your small bubble of friends? Coronavirus has locked us all down and limited where we go and who we see.

This is really tough for kids. They don’t have any equivalent experience of being out until the street lights turn on. They don’t have a place to be unsupervised by adults… not to raise hell and cause trouble, just to be kids.

How much of their time is organized. Even fun is organized… soccer practice, dance classes, music lessons, are all put in the calendar. Play is scheduled, like recess and lunch at school, every free moment isn’t really free at all.

I think we need to find ways to give kids some of the freedom we had as kids, when we could stay out, unsupervised, until the street lights came on.