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…
There is an absolutely dull and pointless story in today's NYTimes on creativity. Though it is titled Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work, this story clearly did not take much time to write. I agree not all articles in the Times are (or need to be) hard news......
An op-ed in today's NYTimes by William Poundstone about how the web can be used during an election to prevent election fraud. As the article describes a computer scientist and a mathematician "have proposed an ingenious method that would combine paper ballots and a...
I was just trying out Cuil the new search engine and came up with some strange results. This is what the front page looks like, rather dark for my liking, but again they had to do something different from Google's stark white front page. if you click on the "About...
The Origins Project at ASU is an attempt to explore humankind's most fundamental questions about our origins. As the website says, This project brings "together a diverse collection of the world’s leading scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals...
I was recently asked to write a chapter for a book that my colleague Ron Beghetto was editing with Laura McBain, called My Favorite Failure. Failure is never fun - and to pick one that was your favorite, is like deciding what your favorite form or torture is....
Josh Dean writes about his experience with learning from freely available curricula on the Web. What does that mean, How Much Can You Really Learn With a Free Online Education?. The article also has a set of links to such curricula that are available on the web.
Over the years our family has developed a mini-tradition of creating short videos to celebrate the new year. These videos are short, always typographical, and usually incorporate some kind of a visual illusion. Our craft has improved over the years, something that can...
Sean Nash of Nashworld (recognizing a fellow data visualization junkie in me) had sent me this link a while ago ... but I just got around to it today. Check out FeedVis. So what does FeedVis do - think of it as a tag-cloud generator on steroids. Lots of fun there -...
The Daily Show featured William Kamkwamba, a Malawian high school student who built a windmill by looking at pictures in a book! I have always been a fan of jugaad, the idea of indigenous creativity using the detritus that seems to be a function of our modern world....
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.