Bob's Blog

In her Brain Poppings blog, Maria Popova brings us these words from painter William Blake.

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.

Maria adds the thinking of Anne Truitt.

We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

Read more here.

Okay, I admit it. I have been visiting Twitter from time to time. Here is something a guy tweeted. His kids made this using only the laws of physics and some Pringles.



hat tip Elliot Blake

Scott Adams writes about creativity.

For me, creativity is a process by which I rapidly FORGET the thought that is currently in my head so a new one will fill the space. Your brain isn’t good at thinking of nothing, so when you eject your current thought, another rushes in to take its place. If you flush-and-replace enough thoughts in a row, you have experienced creativity. And if any of those new thoughts made your body respond with a laugh, a sigh, or chills, or anything else physical – you might have created art. I think of creativity as a system of cycling through ideas until one of them “moves” me, literally. If an idea doesn’t create some sort of physical change in my body, I rapidly reject it and move to the next thought.

Read more here.

Seth Godin writes,

Centered and complete.

These are not the conditions for creativity.

Creative people ship remarkable work because they seek to complete something, to heal something, to change something for the better. To move from where they are now to a more centered, more complete place.

You don't get creative once everything is okay. In fact, we are creative because everything isn't okay (yet).

Seth Godin is thinking today about opposites:

The opposite of creativity is fear.

And fear's enemy is creativity.

The opposite of yes is maybe.

Because maybe is non-definitive, and both yes and no give us closure and the chance to move ahead.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Us is not the enemy of them. Us is the opposite of alone.

They can become us as soon as we permit it.

Everything is the opposite of okay. Everything can never be okay. Except when we permit it.

The right is not the opposite of the left. Each side has the chance to go up, which is precisely the opposite of down.

Dreams are not the opposite of reality. Dreams inform reality.

As two of her children learn to oil paint, Ann Voskamp writes today about creativity, faith, risk, art, and burying fear.

Creativity, it’s good theology; it’s what God did in the beginning.

The essence of creativity is essentially risk, believing enough to leap into the yet unseen. The theological terms for this is faith.

You either bury your fear in faith. Otherwise you bury your talents.

Read more here.

Several more of his businesses failed before the premiere of his movie "Snow White." Today, most childhoods wouldn't be the same without his ideas.

Found here

There has been another rollout of another federal program, Common Core. Some people are saying that it is an even greater bust than Obamacare.

Ethan Young, a senior at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn., made an impassioned argument for dropping the new national education guidelines, which he called “a glowing conflict of interest … that illustrate a mistrust of teachers.”

“Somewhere our Founding Fathers are turning in their graves,” he said.

"In reality Common Core was contrived by an insular group of educational testing executives, with only two academic content specialists."

"The President essentially bribed states into implementation, offering 4.35 billion taxpayer dollars."

I have been fortunate to have had incredible educators who opened my eyes to the joy of learning. These standards mistrust teachers. Teaching is about interaction between teachers and students. There is no control in this model for students' participation or interest!

Standards based education is all about bureaucratic convenience.

Why don't we just manufacture robots, instead of students? They last longer, and they always do what they're told! (I've got news for you, son, that IS the plan!)

Creativity, appreciation, inquisitiveness: these are impossible to scale! They are the purpose of education!