Unba//anced

from The Next Mayor.com:

This is waaaay off topic
via The Next Mayor by wendy on May 08, 2007

But it is funny, and gives a small window into, well, civic reputations. But only if you don't take it too seriously.

Did you see this?

So on the Daily Show tonight, Jon Stewart and Aasif Mandvi are riffing on John McCain saying in the GOP debate that he'd chase Osama bin Laden to the "gates of hell."

Mandvi appears by a chain link fence, talking about all the excitement buzzing around the Gates of Hell, where he happened to be "visiting some family."

Mandvi: "... There's no question this could really revitalize this whole region.

"There's no secret times have been tough. Whether it was the closing of the Navy Yard, or the Eagles' crushing loss to the Saints in the division playoffs, this town is as broken as its famous Liberty Bell ... "

Jon Stewart: "Wait, Asif, are you telling me the Gates of Hell are in Philadelphia? Is that what you are saying? That cannot be what you're saying."

Mandvi: "South Jersey, Jon. But close enough."

And if you don't have a sense of humor about where you live, then you don't have a sense of humor.


And another post about the state of education today and how it's sucking the creativity of youth and future from Creative Generalist:

The Knowledge Web

Not having seen his BBC and PBS series Connections, I was unaware of science historian James Burke until a kind commenter here (thanks Jeffrey!) tipped me off to a superb interview he gave last fall with The Stranova Blog. The interview mainly covers Burke's Knowledge Web, an ambitious volnteer-run project with the goal of mapping out the time, space, and technology of human thought and experience for the purpose of facilitating broad inter-connected learning in education. This is must-listen! Here's just one bite:

The problem, it seems to me, with modern education is that it's 17th century education. It's still alive and kicking too much. We take little kids and we spend their entire lives preparing them to be successful by learning more and more about less and less. In the present century, our brain's know a fantastic amount about almost nothing. I have a friend who got his doctorate in Milton's use of the comma and he's now head of the department because that type of specialization is highly valued.

The problem with it, it seems to me, is it comes about from technology requirements and economic requirements of the past for which these types of structures were very sensibly created. That is to say, to run with the ball, to take the material discovered in the Industrial Revolution or even before it in the 17th century - exploration of the planet, new sciences around and after Galileo - and to concentrate on these discoveries in order to maximize the benefit to society that they provide. And to do that you needed a type of intellectual microscope to burrow deep into these things. Once you know what gravity is you really need to find out what it does for you, what it does itself, what is it down to the smallest detail. That's laudable and it's entirely necessary in the past.

It seems to me - and I risk the ire of every academic - that taking knowledge from this academic point of view is doing society a disservice in the sense that what we need in the next 100 years - especially we in the West with the so-called "flat earth" happening around us - is how we get people to think creatively. It is no longer a sign of intelligence that someone can remember things. It should no longer be a test of things if they can give the right answer. Because the right answer...is often the least creative one and the ones least likely to get you flak from your tutor. You see, in creative thinking you often make mistakes. If you make mistakes in specialist reductionist learning you fail and if you don't get the degree you are unintelligent. Well, that's self-evidently nonsense!

So, what this sort of interdisciplinary approach to knowledge that the Knowledge Web represents is an attempt to try and create some sort of infrastructure in which people can learn to think cross-disciplinarily and therefore creatively beacause I believe that all creative thinking comes from bringing concepts, ideas, and people together in new ways. The way you do that is to break the boundaries between the disciplines and cross them. And that for most specialists is scary and not to be done.

And for everyone living in Philly and registered under one of the two main political parties, go vote next Tuesday because that, moreso than the election in November, will determine who the next mayor will be....b/c everyone knows no one votes republican in the city ;-)

current mood: eh
current noise: noon news on WHYY (NPR)