Lachman Balchandani issue. 3 books. Summer, finally. Will they let the pandemic end?

2021 06 10

After a very cold winter and spring, a cool summer is relatively welcome. Today the weather went up to 72°F. It feels balmy. The Ukrainian genes dominate in Eddie – he calls it hot.

We have not had to water the lawn yet – it rains every day. We have to mow twice a week, and the weeds in the new dacha have sprouted and grown exuberantly over the last month.

The people who voiced interest in summer use of the dachas haven't materialized, and we have had other things to do. The dachas are lying fallow. Nonetheless, our timing seems to have been good. The dollar, which was at 27.80 hryvnya when we bought it, has fallen to 27.10 and is falling rapidly. The Ukrainians understand money printing better than Joe Biden.

Eddie failed the entrance examination for the lycée we had selected. We thought everything was in his favor. Instead of the promised Ukrainian and math tests, it was math only. That's his strong point.  Eddie, however, is not familiar with the process of taking tests and tends to get overly anxious.

There were other complicating factors. While I had spent the last year looking at educational alternatives, signing him up to take the tests, locating practice exams and so on, I got shouldered aside in the last week, not altogether a bad thing. Oksana understood the requirements for health certificates, educational certificates and so on better than I did. But in the transition of ownership of the process Eddie didn't study the right stuff in preparation. Net result: although his peers consider him to be at the top of his class in math, two classmates passed the test and he didn't.

There was a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking this morning. I had been thinking about this eventuality for some time, and I'm standing fast. I have long said that Eddie's school has not been doing a good job of preparing him in English or Ukrainian. In teaching chess, they obsessed with the time clock but have never once discussed chess openings. The books I bought for Eddie on the subject have gone unused and unappreciated. My assessment that he was good enough in math to come through anyhow seems to have been wrong.

The upshot is that I have talked myself into homeschooling, which some of you may remember was the theme of a book I wrote it years ago about raising Eddie. I am quite confident that I can do a better job than any school in teaching him math, English, history and science at a fifth-grade level.

The distaff contingent raises every conceivable contingency as to why it won't work. I am fortunate to have sufficient life experience to understand that this reaction is to be expected and to counter it. I am standing firm. Painting myself into a corner would be another way to phrase it. I will work with Eddie to get his math and English up to the level they should be.

Along the way, I am going to teach him how to keyboard. Typing in English and Ukrainian. His handwriting is atrocious, as is mine, and there is simply no need to waste time fruitlessly attempting to improve it. I am also going to teach him how to use dictation software. He has resisted so far, but I'm going to hold his feet to the fire.

That's where Lachman Balchandani comes in. Bob will remember him well. Bob is the one who observed that as a Booz, Allen consultant Lachman was always "at the other job." Basically, he did nothing. This past year Eddie has had homework assignments from both me and the school. However, whenever I asked him about the stuff I had asked him to do, he had something urgent "at the other job." That excuse will disappear.

Eddie needs to learn the art of written communication. One way or another, via handwriting, keyboarding, dictation and translation or whatever he is going to learn to express himself this year.

The great virtue of written communication is that one can subject it to analysis for grammar and usage. Eddie has a lot to say in Ukrainian and English, but the grammatical errors slide by. When he has to write things down, they will not.

Part of my scheme is to teach him to use Microsoft Word, including the spelling and grammar checker. We will get Ukrainian versions in addition to English. He needs to get in the habit of expressing himself correctly. It will not happen overnight, of course, but the sooner he gets acquainted with the tools the better off he will be.

Another scheme is to teach him Excel. He is good at arithmetic, and I want to encourage him to continue to develop his ability to do things in his head. However, it is also extremely useful to be able to visualize how one would do something in a spreadsheet. This morning I reviewed matrix multiplication in the context of the least-squares algorithm in statistics. While Eddie would certainly be able to multiply tens of pairs of numbers and sum results, that is exactly the kind of thing for which spreadsheets are made.

The time I will dedicate to Eddie is recouped from several other endeavors, such as this blog. I'm no longer writing many reviews for Amazon. They are unappreciative. The last book I read, The Truth About Covid 19, already has 7000 reviews. They don't need mine. The one prior to that, "Vaccines, Truth, Lies and Controversies" (thanks, JoAnne) could probably benefit. Moreover, it was the more useful book.

Some vaccines are useful. Those for smallpox and polio have changed our world for the better. The danger from these diseases is so diminished that it is not clear that it currently offsets the risks of vaccination. Measles is another story. Dangerous and still prevalent. It does make sense to get a measles vaccination.

The book is not whatsoever kind to the vaccine manufacturers. Measles is a case in point. Whereas measles and mumps to make sense, and the vaccines do not contain additives that anybody questions, the rubella portion seems to be neither as necessary nor as safe.

Eddie got a measles shot two years ago. Examining the documents more closely, it was an MMR shot. You cannot get just plain measles. Oksana says that he needs a booster. I will go along, but reluctantly.

The book claims that there is no association between measles vaccination and autism. I'm not so sure, but since autism usually shows up before the age of two, I'm simply going to wait to get my daughters vaccinated against measles.  We can bet on herd immunity for those two years.

Vaccines: Truth, Lies and Controversy came out before Covid 19. It says that flu shots are generally ill advised. Statistics now show that people who have made a practice of getting their flu shots are more vulnerable to Covid 19 than the general population. The vaccines have compromised their immune systems in ways that both books describe in detail. Another one it says to avoid is HPV. My opinion has always been that if people manage their sex lives discreetly, HPV should not be much of an issue. It makes no sense to mandate it for broad swathes of the population. Apparently, it is questionable both in terms of efficacy and safety.

One valuable thing about the book is that it draws on the Danish medical database, which includes fairly comprehensive life histories of an entire population. The Danes do have a "control group" of unvaccinated people with whom to compare. It's a very useful aspect of the book.

A number of acquaintances have let us know via Facebook and other media that they have gotten the Covid shots. In my view the evidence is out there for anybody who wants to read it. It is not my place to tell them they've put themselves in danger. I am sure that they consider me a paranoid fool for not vaccinating my family. It's a question of who you're going to believe. I'm not going to be changing any minds over the short run. If my gloomy prognosis is right, it should be evident over the longer run without my saying anything.


The number of new cases of Covid the has dropped below 1000 per day in Ukraine. I have to assume this is computed by the old measure – positive PCR tests – which wildly exaggerate. Not too many people wear masks in public, and even on public transit more and more brave souls board without them. Yet, I am sure there is intense international pressure not to drop the maskarade. As I have written before, my kids don't wear them and mine is always at half-mask. As a sign of the times, Eddie and I ate at the Flagman seafood restaurant and store. No mask required at the restaurant, but they yelled at me twice when I walked over to look at fish in the store. Insanity.

My hypothesis that the Covid prophylaxis was protecting me against strep throat seems to have fallen apart. I pushed my rate up to 78 RPM on Tuesday and felt something in my throat the next morning. I called today to cancel my cataract operation as I take it easy. I searched the net – sure I had done it before – to see if there was any way to avoid recurrent strep throat. Nope. Just put up with it. Probably a salt gargle after working out would be a good idea.

I'm sending this email to both the ukr.net and protonmail distributions. Once again, if you receive only one of them, please let me know which one. From now on I will send primarily via protonmail with another mailing from ukr.net for just those whose mail servers reject protonmail.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, the women good-looking, and the kids no more enthusiastic about schoolwork than any prior generation.

Next day – June 11, 2021

Well programmed - people's response to home schooling

Unbelievable the pushback I'm getting.

My observation is that Eddie needs to learn to read, write and speak Ukrainian and English. This involves knowing, or being able to deal with spelling and grammar. In my mind that involves knowing how to use the tools that will help them with spelling and grammar. It involves knowing how to organize one's thoughts.

He also needs to understand arithmetic. The Kahn Academy's free online curriculum for fifth grade is a pretty good indication of the material that it needs to be covered.

None of the Ukrainians who are filling me with good advice would accept this is a statement of the problem. I hear over and over that I need to use the state specified textbooks and make sure that Eddie gets tested every three months. If he doesn't get tested every three months we can say goodbye to admission to University.

This is a classic question of substance versus credentials. Credentials take precedence here. I am fighting an uphill battle. Fortunately, I don't have to argue credentials over the summer. Until September the argument is that he should be enjoying his free time with his friends. I'll get whacked with the credentials question in the fall.

Today I am going to do what Eddie's school has never done, put together a curriculum. This is in response to one of the credentialist's challenge yesterday that I had no curriculum. That was true. After one day I had no curriculum. Nobody will answer my question as to why after seven years of operation Eddie's prior school has no written curriculum either.

This is just a little bit of venting before I get down to the business of writing something.

This small discussion about Eddie's education I think gives insight into why people go along with the Covid 19 panic and vaccination program. They are well programmed.

Graham