The Kamikaze Equation

E=mc2: Einstein's equation that gave birth to the atom bomb

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  • God's Equation
  • The Kamikaze Equation
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  • God's Equation

    • Most people, including teachers, community leaders, and some family members, tried to tell me I couldn't amount to anything because of who my parents were and where I grew up. But I hated being poor, recognized my natural gifts, and was too hardheaded to accept their plight for me. Along the way, I tried to kill a girl for knocking my books from my desk some 5 or 6 times. I took a switch from my teachers and cursed her out. I pulled a knife and threaten to cut a girl for writing my name on a list of boys who were talking in class I was only bluffing this time.

    I put tacks in a teacher's chair. The teacher didn't show up for school and the Superintendant showed up in her place. Luckily, I told the Superintendant there was some paper in her chair and she let me remove the tacks before she sat down.

    God's Equation

    Even luckier, she never saw the tacks. Hayes, a large pounds teacher attaked me after the knife incident. Rumors have it that she had me up off the floor and I was shaking as if about to expire. I was so scared that I don't remember much about it. In the following years, Ms Hayes told all of my sisters and brothers what she did to me. She sent word for years that I come to visit her which I failed to do until it was too late.

    She heard I had changed and was on the right track. I regret not making it to see her before she died. At 15 years of age, I met a teacher named Mrs. Fulton who told me, "I've been watching you. If you try a little harder, you can make all A's.

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    No one had ever told me anything like that before. Her words still drive me to this day.

    As a homeschooled kid, I used to wonder if I'd ever get rounded up on truancy violations. We filled out all of the necessary paperwork, but what if there was a screwup we were, after all, talking about the government and they ended up knocking on my door, ready to take me over to the detention center until my mother could get it all straightened out.

    So part of me gets a bad taste in my mouth, looking at all those buses on TV and Melton in his G. But I have to admit: This is much closer to the Frank Melton I used to love watching on TV than just about anything else he's done. Because on "The Bottom Line" when I watched it, it was ALWAYS primarily about the city not doing enough for at-risk youth--keeping drug dealers and prostitutes out of their neighborhoods, making sure they get to school, and so on.

    This stands in sharp relief from the rhetoric of many of his supporters, who just dismiss every black male under 40 as a "thug.

    The Kamikaze Equation

    I'm not sure he's doing the right thing, but he's doing what the good Frank Melton would do--the Dr. Jeckyll persona, as it were. The more interesting question for me, though, is what will actually happen to the kids over the next few years. If kids end up going back to school and graduating and being able to earn real money and escape the cycle of poverty, that's great beyond words, and it'll do some real good for this city.

    But rounding the kids up on the buses, while maybe a necessary first step, is the easy part. Like independent media outlets around the world, the Jackson Free Press works hard to produce important content on a limited budget. We'd love your help! Support the JFP and get a few perks along the way!

    Click here for more info. User agreement and privacy statement. Jackson Free Press Jump to content. And that's the truth … sho-nuff. Previous Comments ID Comment I agree with the sometimes needed literal foot-in-the-you-know-what remedy. Author Ray Carter Date T More like this story [Kamikaze] A Simple Plan. The American smiled and shook his head. The pattern comes from the Gold Rush days. Silicon Valley was never planned. That's not how my country works. His hair was thick and black with a few gray streaks. Like most middle-aged Japanese, he looked younger than his years.

    His eyes were bright and intelligent. But his face betrayed no emotion. That was a joke, yes? Surely you don't believe we are modern shoguns," he said with a smile. The California born detective shrugged. Aragon was an octo-Asian.

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    • [Kamikaze] A Simple Plan?

    His great grandmother had been Japanese. His eyes bore only the slightest hint of Asian epicanthic fold. Most Japanese saw him as just another gaijin. Worse, he had strange, cat colored eyes. Ethnically, his roots sank into Spanish and French soil.

    Culturally, he considered himself 80 percent American, 10 percent old European, 10 percent Japanese. Politically he was percent Yankee. Aragon had spent a semester in Kyoto studying the language as part of his post grad work in '73 during the "Oil Shoku" period.

    He took them up on their offer in '74 but never fit into the bureaucratic mold and quit in ' There are people back in my country who say that Japan is mounting a campaign to win the technology war by capturing the chip market. You asked me to be frank and give you my impressions and opinions.

    Well, so far at every place I've been I've seen the same thing. An ancient castle surrounded by a garden and a moat rising out of an array of modern high rise corporate and government towers. Aragon understood the Japanese mind in a way few of his fellow countrymen did. Evoking blunt confrontation and competitiveness was to be avoided at all costs.

    One had to pay special attention to comparative social status. Use precise honorifics to nail down hierarchial positions. He had the unenviable task of walking a slippery tightrope, juggling honesty and what his current employers could easily view as insult. Saving face was every bit as important to these high tech planners as it had been to their Samurai ancestors. To a man with a hammer all problems look like nails. To Americans and Europeans alike, we Japanese are engaged in a national conspiracy to take over the world. But it is not so.

    I can tell you from my experience in negotiations with different Japanese companies that we fiercely compete against each other. No company can allow another in its industry to get an edge. We sit down to discuss a rational solution to our problems only when the pain reaches unbearable levels, threatening to wipe out an entire industry. But we can't come to terms right away no matter how bad the crisis.

    We must get up from the first session and leave. There is a second, a third, even a fourth.

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    Nobel prizes Particle physics Physics features. Silicon Valley was never planned. To Americans and Europeans alike, we Japanese are engaged in a national conspiracy to take over the world. Culturally, he considered himself 80 percent American, 10 percent old European, 10 percent Japanese. That all we can do is copy your ideas and products and make them better.

    Finally, after days and sleepless nights of haggling over every point, when fatigue is setting in, we reach agreement. Only after it is clear to all sides that everyone has suffered and fought bravely to the end do we come to terms," Takawa said in a wry tone.

    God's Equation

    Aragon realized he had stepped over some invisible line. At the very least he had embarrassed his hosts. He could see that in Takawa's tight smile, hear it in a mounting tension animating his voice. They asked him to be candid in his assessment of their plan to use Silicon Valley as a template for their Technopolis scheme.

    Yet the concepts were so alien to their minds that they were automatically offended when he talked straight. How could they grasp American diversity and individualism? Theirs was the most homogeneous major nation in the world. He couldn't see how he could convey to them that Silicon Valley was a product of spontaneous combustion. And they were using opposite principles to try to recreate it.

    He struggled with his thoughts and used the most common form of peer communications in the country. He rubbed his hands together and cleared his throat. Takawa took his cue and continued. In the future, will we be able to compete against the Koreans, Taiwanese and Chinese for the low price markets? Will we be able to win the battles against the Europeans for the sophisticated markets?

    You Americans think we are not creative. That all we can do is copy your ideas and products and make them better. That strategy worked in the past but not tomorrow. In the future we have to create and innovate to survive. We have to plan today and prove you wrong tomorrow. There was no doubt in Aragon's mind that he had hit a delicate nerve. His escort was upset. Both had failed in their attempts to shift back and forth from American styles of thinking and communicating to Japanese.

    While you want to copy Silicon Valley, American corporate executives, government types and intellectuals are trying to find ways to copy the Japanese economic miracle.