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…
The COVID19 crisis has disrupted education globally at an unprecedented scale. In some ways, we are living through the largest educational social experiment in history! Over the past year I have been involved in a range of initiatives, discussions, interviews, and...
I have been a huge fan of Don Norman ever since I first ran into his book on the Psychology of Everyday Things (which he later renamed as The Design of Everyday Things, and the story behind that name change is worth reading as an excellent example of design). Don...
Koehler, Mishra & Yahya (2007) is an important paper in the TPACK related work for a range of reasons. The research captured in this paper actually predates the TCRecord (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) article, but the vagaries of publishing and journal waiting-lists...
The Lansing temple recently organized a special Diwali program. My daughter Shreya participated in a dance and I, as always, took photographs of the event. Click here or the image below to see all 161 of the photographs I took. Enjoy. You can also read a poem written...
Story in Reason Online about the Tata Nano, the cheapest car the world, or actually as the article seeks to prove, the cheapest car of all time (once you adjust for inflation). The Nano, produced by Indian company Tata, "is about 10 feet long, 5 feet wide. The...
I include below a copy of the AACTE Major Forum presentation (announcement here) that I made at New Orleans on Saturday, February 9. There were other things that I participated in (as listed here) and I will post about them later. Matt was supposed to do this talk (as...
Over the past couple of years my research team (the Deep-Play Research group) and I have been writing an on-going series of articles about rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century. Published in the journal TechTrends, these articles have been great...
For one reason or another I have not been bitten by the ambigram bug for a while - till suddenly a week or two ago, two new ambigrams popped into my head. A bit of work with Freehand later... here they are. Enjoy Computer Fiction
Back in 1986, Anand Narasimhan and I wrote a short story titled "We all fall down," that was published the popular-science magazine Science Today. Science Today, edited by Mukul Sharma who wrote science fiction himself, was maybe the only outlet where you could...
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.