TftD #19

Everyone is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid.

--Albert Einstein

PBS Superheroes Save The Future!

Who will save humanity from "...brain-shrinking reality TV and watch the world...LEARN!"?

It's the "PBS Avengers" - Carl Sagan, Mister Rogers, Bill Nye (the Science Guy), and Bob Ross!

We should only be so lucky....

TftD #18

As children get older, schools progressively focus more and more above the waist… above the neck… slightly to one side.

--Sir Ken Robinson

TftD #17

Our children grow up in a culture permeated with the idea that there are "smart people" and "dumb people". The social construction of the individual is as a bundle of aptitudes. There are people who are "good at math" and people who "can't do math". Everything is set up for children to attribute their first unsuccessful or unpleasant learning experiences to their own disabilities. ... Within this framework children will define themselves in terms of their limitations, and this definition will be consolidated throughout their lives. Only rarely does some exceptional event lead people to reorganize their intellectual self-image in such a way as to open up new perspectives on what is learnable. 

-- Seymour Papert: Mindstorms (pg 43)

Louis C.K. on Creative Work

An interesting bit on the value of struggle during the creative process from comedian Louis C.K. (from the 4/25/13 Rolling Stone):

"When it's time to write, I have one computer that has no ability to get on the Internet.  Because the ability to just move your finger less than a millimeter and be looking straight into someone's #*$^ or at a new Porsche, or a whole movie - To Kill a Mockingbird, let's just sit here and watch the whole thing! - it's too much.  So if you put a couple of moves between you and that, you've got a fighting chance. 

When I hit a stopping moment in what I'm writing, a moment of agitation - that itch always leads to a brand new thing, to inspiration.  But if you bail out and buy a product online, you're robbing yourself.  It's terrible, so I sit there: "F*ck, f*ck."  The worst thing happening to this generation is that they're taking discomfort away from themselves."

Lawrence Lessig's Grand Plan to Recover the Republic

Lawrence Lessig does it again with a stunningly compelling call to arms for fixing the growing issues within our government that simply cannot be ignored and must be reformed.

Crazy facts (3:00) :

• .26% of American gave $200 or more to any federal candidate.
• .05% gave the maximum amount to any federal candidate.
• .01% (1% of the 1%) gave $10,000 or more to federal candidates.
• In the last election cycle, .000042% (that's 132 Americans) gave 60% of the Super PAC money spent.

Something's gotta give...

Hard?  Perhaps.  But what's the alternative?

(then again, maybe it's not so tough... "a single statute... for small dollar-funded elections" (11:30))

TftD #16

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by, 

And that has made all the difference. 

-- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken