Author Archives: David Truss

Playing with geometry

The image below is a blue cube octahedron with each triangular face forming a tetra-octa-tetra pattern coming out from the center.

This is a tetra-octa-tetra, with two yellow tetrahedrons on opposite sides of an octahedron:

I’m fascinated by these shapes thanks to my uncle, Joseph Truss, who has been playing with these shapes for decades, and who believes the fundamental building blocks of our universe is the tetrahedron. We live in a ‘Tetraverse’.

But the geometry he describes goes far beyond this. He intuitively understands the underlying structure of the universe through geometry in a way that mathematical physicists understand it through math.

Watch this 28 minute movie, Hacking Reality. It gets to some of the topics Joe and I discuss. I really think he’s on to something some of the smartest physicists in the world are still trying to figure out… but he’s done it purely by playing with geometry, and visually/intuitively making sense of how shapes are formed and come together.

Unsustainable and increasing inequality

Here is page 7 of an OXFAM report, Inequity Kills:

What’s not necessarily well known is that the Forbes and Bloomberg ‘Top 10 Richest’ lists never includes some of the richest and wealthiest families which have accumulated wealth above and beyond anyone on these lists… there is a lot more extreme wealth than these lists suggest.

Add to this the first two sentences in the report’s summary:

“A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. 6 The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.”

This kind of lopsided wealth distribution simply can’t be sustained. And yet in the hardest times of the pandemic, when many low wage people couldn’t work, prices and inflation skyrocketed while corporations that produce oil, and sell groceries, reported their greatest profits in years. They also returned their largest dividends to stock holders… most of whom are already very rich and can afford to hold a significant amount of stocks. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘The rich get richer while the poor get poorer,’ and it seems that this is more true now than it ever has.

I stumbled onto this report after reading this article on NPR, “Move over, Jeff Bezos. India’s richest man is now wealthier than the Amazon founder“. The Billionaire club used to be almost exclusively a Saudi and USA thing, other than old family wealth, but now it’s a global phenomenon. Everywhere in the world there are small groups of people accumulating wealth in significant size, while there are populations in significant size that are dropping below the poverty line. This simply isn’t sustainable. That said, I don’t see anything upsetting this trend in the near future. Further, I’m at a loss to think of how this will change in the coming years?

At what point does a society with a few people owning more than half of the global wealth become unproductive for the wealthy? The abject poor can’t by the products the rich manufacture. The suffering middle class with less-than-ever disposable income, and more-than-ever accumulated debt soon won’t be able to help either. So what breaks? How does this self-correct?

I certainly don’t have any answers.

Unexpectedly clever

There is no such thing as a perfect worksheet, and students will often read a question and figure out an unintended way to answer it. Here are two clever responses… the difference being the teacher’s assessment.

I look at the first one and I can hear the Madagascar movie version of it in my head. The teacher states the obvious, “Not the answer I was looking for” and gives it a big red X.

It’s obvious in the second one that the answer also wasn’t what the teacher was looking for, but that teacher gave it a big red check mark and a star.

“Not what I was looking for” does not mean wrong.

A clever response may be unexpected, however whether it was an intentional circumvention of the intended outcome or just insightful and clever it deserves to be appreciated rather than marked incorrectly. In my books, both these kids deserve a star.

Public spaces

It’s interesting how we think of social media as our main public spaces. When did that happen? I’m not going to wax poetic about the way things used to be, instead I’m going to ask what could be possible?

How could we create richer public spaces? What would draw people to these places? When is the last time you went to an evening presentation in a library? Or a concert in a park? (As opposed to a bar, nightclub, or theatre.)

Where can we close traffic to cars and create larger spaces for meeting and socializing?

Do we have to run special events or can we create spaces that people want to go to because they are public, open, and free?

Maybe what we have is enough, but I can’t help but wonder if we couldn’t design better public spaces, or even better neighbourhoods, that invite people to be more connected face to face. And if we did design these spaces better, would they be used? I think it’s worth thinking about, and trying. As more and more people flock to bigger and bigger communities and cities, high rises are taking over the landscape. With greater density comes greater opportunity to find like-minded people to be social with… and our public spaces should be designed to consider this.

Good doesn’t have to be enjoyable

I said this to my massage therapist one day when she had her elbow pressed deep into my back, “Good doesn’t have to be enjoyable”. It was uncomfortable. In no way was it enjoyable. But it was so, so good! She was working out a knot in my upper back very slowly, with a whole lot of pressure. The feeling verged on pain, but it was really good. I knew that in the coming days I would feel a lot of relief thanks to my muscles being worked over in a slow, hard, methodical way.

I think it can be easy to forget that some things are good for you, even if they aren’t fun. Ask any athlete who is stuck just below the skill level required to do a challenging move. Ask a student who is stuck on a concept, but keeps working to figure it out. Ask someone new to a an enjoyable job but the work itself is challenging to do well. Ask a person in the gym working a muscle group to fatigue and their spotter pushing them to do 3 more assisted reps, when their body wants to quit… good doesn’t have to be enjoyable.

There are many things in life that are good to do, that involve some level of uncomfortableness or discomfort, yet are absolutely worth doing. Difficult conversations are another excellent example. Very often people avoid hard but necessary conversations and the lack of communication either allows discomfort and upset to continue or actually makes matters worse. It really isn’t enjoyable having hard but necessary conversation and yet it is so valuable to have these conversations rather than avoid them.

Enjoyment isn’t a necessary byproduct of doing something that is good for you. Immediate enjoyment might not even be desirable. Sometimes it is valuable to take pleasure and enjoyment out of the equation if you want to push yourself to do something that is good for you in the long run.

I think sports is a good place to learn this as a kid. Running faster helps you play better, but that means doing tiring drills. Repeating an action over and over again can be boring, but when you use that skill properly in a game you are rewarded.

Mottos like ‘Just do it’ and ‘No pain, no gain’ come to mind. Doing something well or that’s good for you doesn’t always have an immediate reward, and so it might not be fun to do, even if it’s good for you.

Lack of integration not information

We have access to more information than we could ever use. The sum of knowledge available to us is far beyond anyone’s comprehension. Creativity and ingenuity do not come from more knowledge but rather two kinds of integration:

1. Integration of understanding.

There is a difference between understanding how an ocean wave works, and knowing when to catch a wave when surfing or body surfing. There is a difference between studying covalent bonds and understanding how two chemicals will interact.

2. Integration of fields of study.

A mathematician who sees poetry in a series or pattern of numbers. An engineer who sees an ant nest and wonders what they can learn about airflow in buildings.

In this day and age, lack of information is seldom the problem, but lack of integration is.

For schools, integration means getting out of subject silos, and thinking about cross-curricular projects. STEM and STEAM education, and trying to solve hard problems without a single correct answer. Integration of curriculum, inquiry learning, iterations, and learning through failure by hitting roadblocks that require out-of-the-box thinking and solutions.

Integration comes from challenging experiences that require base knowledge in more than one field. So, while knowledge and information are necessary, information is not sufficient without integration of ideas from other subjects and fields. The learning really begins where subjects and concepts intersect… and where learning across different fields is meaningfully integrated.

A Quote on Judgement

“We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.”

I saw this quote and wondered who said it? I was lead by my search to Stephen Covey, “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.”

This made me think about all the things I have the good intention to say and to do, but I don’t follow through. Looking at this from the outside, there is no action, just unrealized intention. For example, I wanted to show my appreciation or write a thank you card, but never got around to it; good intentions, but to anyone else, no action. In fact, lack of action could actually be judged as lack of appreciation. My intentions were good but…

We very often don’t know another person’s intentions. We judge their behaviours and actions (or lack there of) and assume their intentions. And we know our intentions and don’t always see that our actions don’t represent what those intentions are.

This quote is a reminder not just to think about what another person’s intentions are, but also for us to think about how our actions truly represent our behaviours and actions to others. Are we living a congruent life where are actions demonstrate our intentions? Because good intentions are not enough if we aren’t expressing them.

Broke the mold

I enjoyed television until a couple shows broke the mold. Then, many shows disappointed me because they became too predictable. The shows that changed the watching experience for me were Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Both of these had me bought in, made me a fan, gave me characters I really enjoyed… then killed them off!

At first this was hard to accept. But then suddenly the show got better. At any moment a favourite cast member could be killed off.

I grew up on Scooby Doo, The Lone Ranger, Magnum PI, The 6 Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch Charlie’s Angels, Chips, Hawaii 5-0, The A-Team, the cartoon version of Spiderman, and many more shows that had similar formulas… the good guys always win in the end, and no matter how perilous, the star characters always survived.

As soon as this mold was broken, these shows, and the many series that followed them, seemed terribly simplistic. I mean, they were simplistic before these shows changed the formula, but having gone through the experience of a series with characters that could die at any moment, the old drama/suspense/mystery formula just ceased to be enjoyable.

In July I got into listening to a novel series called ‘The Grey Man’ by Mark Greaney. The Grey Man is a former spy who is a hired mercenary who only hunts bad guys, but is also targeted by the CIA, and his former colleagues.

I was really excited to see that a movie version came out, but it was painfully bad. I know that movies have to take liberties when moving from text to screen, but this movie had the Gray Man do many things that undermined his character. He didn’t work alone. He chose a dangerous hand-to-hand Hollywood ending battle over an easy kill. Essentially, for the sake of a few dramatic scenes, they ignored his true character and put him into the hero mold that most movies have… but it is precisely because he didn’t fit that mold that I and many others liked this character.

I really don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do I don’t want to see the same boring formula that has been used for years. I want to watch shows where the mold has been broken, and the story isn’t watered down to fit a cliche formula that no longer appeals to me… not that it ever really did, it’s just what was available.

Listen up

I’m currently listening to two books and a long form podcast, and when I have down time I tend to be listening to one of these. Watering the garden, having a hot tub, doing the dishes, walking, riding my exercise bike, each of these are done with headphones on.

I rarely read anymore, I listen. Sometimes it’s hard to pay attention, but I actually found reading harder. First of all I’m a painfully slow reader. And secondly, the slow pace makes me more susceptible to being distracted. I would often read a book and then realize I wasn’t absorbing what I was reading. After catching myself being distracted, I could often look back 3-4 paragraphs, or even a couple pages, and not remember reading any of it. While I can be distracted listening, it’s usually only when the task I’m doing requires me to think a bit, like when I’m driving.

The first year that I started listening to books rather than reading them I went from reading 3 books in a year to listening to 26. This year I’ll likely surpass 30. Looking at my Audible stats, I listened to an average of over 3.5 hours a day in July.

Since downloading Audible, I’ve listened for over 2 months, (over 1,400 hours). There is no way that I would have read for a third of that long in the same amount of time!

And that’s just my books, not podcasts, which I listen to for a few hours each month. I don’t watch tv, other than an occasional series with my wife, and I don’t follow sports. I listen. Summer was all about fiction, now I’m getting back into books that I learn from. I find fiction too much of a distraction during the school year. When I listen to books I learn from, I get more value out of reading and out of work. But if I get a good novel recommendation, I occasionally switch up and treat it the same way someone else would treat a movie.

Audio books have transformed they way I consume books… I read them with my ears.

The Value of Critical Feedback

It’s so important to have friends and colleagues who can give you critical feedback. Yesterday I did a presentation to all of our students on the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. This was not an overview but just an introduction to the book with a personal story that demonstrated how the book influenced me in a positive way. Over the next few weeks I plan on sharing around 10 two-minute videos to help students develop and integrate one positive habit at school, using the strategies in the book.

After my presentation one of my teachers said, “Really good presentation, do you want some critical feedback?” I replied positively and she shared it with me.

I was sharing a slide about my fitness journey and tracking my workouts, and in my first year of tracking I also tracked intermittent fasting. It wasn’t part of my original plan, but I ended up talking for a bit about this too, and how it really doesn’t do much for you other than reducing calorie intake, but that it did reduce my after dinner snacking and helped me lose some unwanted weight.

This was what I got feedback on. My colleague told me that this part of the presentation wasn’t needed, and that for some of our students weight and weight loss as a topic as could be very triggering.

This was a great point! As I reflected on what I said, I not only agreed with my colleague’s feedback, I recognized how a fairly fit, pretty skinny guy talking about weight loss was insensitive… and again, wasn’t even necessary to make my point. It was easy for me to acknowledge this, see the value in receiving this feedback, and be thankful for receiving it.

This feedback will help me be a little more sensitive and thoughtful in my upcoming videos and in future presentations. I really appreciate working in an environment where my colleagues feel comfortable giving me feedback like this. Critical feedback is essential for growth, and while it can be hard to hear that my presentation might have been insensitive to some, it’s far better to know this than to be ignorant of it.

We also work hard to create an environment where our students can give each other critical feedback, and I know that this is far more likely to happen if adults in the building are also open to giving and receiving it amongst each other. Our students see their peers give a lot of presentations, and they have been getting better and better at giving good feedback, but it can still be challenging for them both giving and receiving critical feedback. The important thing is to make sure the culture is to make critical feedback constructive, even if poignant. What value does the critical feedback provide? If this is kept in mind, then the feedback can be far more helpful than just positive praise and platitudes.

But the relationship is dependent on both the giver and receiver understanding the positive intent of critical feedback. In my example above, I could clearly see my error and appreciate the feedback. That doesn’t always happen with critical feedback, and so when the feedback is not as well received, or not as obvious, that’s when it’s important to have a culture of acceptance and openness to feedback. If the culture is there, then it’s just feedback. When the culture is missing, critical feedback can be demotivating, or even hurtful.

Packaged well, in the right environment, critical feedback is a fantastic way to help adults and students alike learn and grow. It turns challenges and failures into opportunities to improve… and even the process itself holds tremendous value because giving critical feedback well is a communication skill everyone can value learning.