Missouri's first State Poet Laureate. Walter Bargen. I can't tell you how pleased I am by this. Walter is a first-rate poet and, just if not more importantly, a decent human being. He will be formally introduced on February 13th at the state capitol. After that, he will serve a…
I came across an article a few days ago written by John Hockenberry, an award-winning journalist who once worked for NBC's Dateline and is now a fellow at MIT's Media Lab. Titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience": What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC, this article is a…
In this entertaining video, Ken Robinson discusses the critical role creativity should play in education. Robinson is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Robinson argues that Western education has failed to teach young people to think critically about life, art, culture, and humanism. Instead, most education is geared to producing workers. In the process, most education systems downplay or even disparage art: "Don't do music; you're not going to be a musician." Many brilliant people are taught to think that they are failures because the things they do well--often valuable things-are not valued by most schools. Robinson argues that we've got to develop a new "ecology" of education--we've got to stop "strip-mining young minds."
This disturbing NYT graphic allows you to count them up, all the deaths that billions of U.S. tax dollars can buy. It includes all of the deaths of those in uniforms caused by the conflict, not just the deaths of U.S. soldiers. It does not show the civilian deaths. "[S]adly,…
I caught this list of telltale signs over at De-conversion: Resources for Skeptical, De-converting or Former Christians. Here are a few items from the list: You see nothing wrong with stating “facts†about what God thinks as if you are His personal secretary. You complain about Christians not being allowed…