I have written about the value of seeing humor in the futility of existence (see this and this) but humor can also be found in the existence of futility. Below is a motivational video that demonstrates this fact. Enjoy…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XI3U8eupNQ[/youtube]
As the young man says, “You can do anything that you think that you can do.” Well, may be not!
A few randomly selected blog posts…
Sean had this wonderful post on his blog (Is this a sluggish strategy?) about this whole scientific and mathematical poetry that is going around. He links to some excellent sci-po's written by his students (see Pushing Scientific Thought Into Art) and also provides a...
A search on YouTube reveals a wide range of videos related to TPACK. Most of them are serious descriptions of the framework (heck, I have created a few of those myself). But there is a smaller genre of TPACK videos that don't necessarily seek to explain the...
Noah, one of the students in my design doctoral seminar sent me this video by Ze Frank. Check it out.
Just found out about a review of the Handbook of TPACK by Dorian Stoilescu and Douglas McDougall for the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology (2009). You can read the full review here. Overall a positive review, with some pertinent criticism, particularly...
Ted Chiang is one of the greatest, insightful writers working today. I had written previously about one his short stories in a post titled: Truth of fact and feeling: Unpacking McLuhan (2/3) about his short story The truth of fact and the truth of feeling. (If you...
I had written previously about a blog started by students in our Educational Psychology and Educational Technology Ph.D. program (ideaplay.org) and had designed a couple of ambigrammatic logos for them. You can see the original post here. Here is one of the original...
One often hears the criticism that students today don't know how to write... the part of the blame is placed on technology, on the limitations of texting and twittering! For instance, here are two quotes from a book review TXTNG: THE GR8 DB8 by Marcus Merkmann in the...
Today's NYTimes has a story Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod about universities handing out iPhones and iTouchs to freshmen. A part of this may be making specific universities look "cool" to their incoming students - a requirement in the highly competitive world of...
My colleague and friend David Wong has this cool idea, about making ideas cool. Actually, he has been espousing these ideas for a while now (check out his scholarly publications, in particular The Rebirth of Cool [Word doc]). But now this academic has stepped out of...
Thanks Stewart. I have always appreciated your comments on this blog. This one was no exception. The inclusion of pastrami, gratuitous as it may have been, was just right. As the young man in the video says, “You just have to believe in yourself, formulate a plan of action, and follow through with it.” A perfect recipe for a massive headache.
Absurdity and futility are the soul of humor. That and pastrami. I find that too often people live in crisis, losing perspective. Humor is a balance. It’s a speedbump that stops the slide down the wrong end of the roller coaster.
When I was diagnosed with cancer many years ago, my doctor wanted to operate immediately. I put him off, explaining that “Wrestlemania” was only a week away and I needed to know who won the heavyweight championship before going under the knife. He lectured me about the danger and attempted to negotiate alternatives with me. We could DVR the event, he suggested. Perhaps I could be isolated until I could relive the event so the outcome wouldn’t be spoiled.
His voice was deep with concern and thick with empathy. A consummate professional. And all I wanted was a chuckle from him, or at least a smile. It was working the wrong room at Vegas.