Education: Reform or Refuse?

In a new vain of discussion, I submit the issue of public education in the United States.
I recently read an article about public education in Japan which was very interesting and made me once again reflect on the crumbling public education system at home...

How can our public education system be augmented to be more effective for our children?

What are the most helpful/harmful aspects of our current system?

Have we moved away from more effective teaching methods or strategies?

Does the public education system as it stands today, serve to generate "cubicle fillers" or educated people who can choose the path of their lives?

What is the role of educators in helping children develop critical thinking skills and powers of reason and logic?

Please feel free to add any questions you feel more appropriate! I really want to see your thoughts on the subject so, Comment Away!

Photo found at http://gopalshenoy.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/education.jpg

A new approach, in hopes of your particpation...

So, because of the recent activity among friends, I wanted to post a thread here for real discourse about ideas that may be a bit inflammatory. Not long ago, I posted a video about a hypothetical philosophy professor who denied the existence of God, allegedly on the sole example of a falling piece of chalk breaking upon impact with the floor. The imaginary Prof asserted that if God were real He would save the chalk from shattering, and if He was not real then all Christians were fools. While there are numerous problems with this hypothetical scenario, the biggest issue is that the root of this video was a cause to bring Christ "back" into our school systems.

How can this position be rationalized? What are the key problems with this concept?

Is there any way that incorporating Christian teachings into American schools is acceptable?

Are professor's the minions of Satan? Did Jesus ride a dinosaur?

Is the world only 9,000 years old?

Is it just a coincidence that God made us so similar to apes? If God created us in his image, does this mean He looks more like apes than frogs? What way are we "in His image"? Why do we use the pronoun He to describe the Universal being which cannot or should not have gender if gender is determined by biological display in the nature of genitals/reproductive organs?

Ok, so some of those are jokes, but what are your thoughts? Don't hold back, but let's try to have an actual dialogue and just name-calling and attacking...

Comment away!!

Blix Nibiru: Hangman

This is a video of the Hang singing in Sherwood Forest at Rothbury, an annual festival held in the woods of Rothbury, Michigan. Beautiful music brought forth from that magical shell by my good friend Blix. He is an artist and musician with talent pouring from his fingertips, turning whatever project he gets involved with into a magical representation of his spirit. Let me balance all that gushing flowery speech by saying he's also a real turd(don't want him to get a big head! :) ). Anyway, I've posted a couple of other vids of him playing at Rothbury. Make sure you check out his blog and the closest things I could find to a homepage for Hangs. First, the pages.
Wikipedia has a fairly concise entry here.
Hang-Music.com is another good source of info on Hanghang.
The story behind hang and the concept of it as a musical sculpture make this an amazing instrument and an exceptional artistic endeavor.

Now for the videos!







ENJOY!

Seven Names for Seven Roles...

So, since my last post about HBO's cast for the Game of Thrones pilot the eggshell dam that held back all the exciting news has been shattered by the Hollywood reporter. They officially announced what GRRM has been hinting and anti-hinting about for days. Seven of the lead roles have been cast so far and the picks look pretty impressive from where I'm sitting.

The roles and actors cast are as follows:

Ser Jorah Mormont - Iain Glen
Jaime Lannister - Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Robb Stark - Richard Madden
Theon Greyjoy - Alfie Allen
Daenerys Targaryen - Tamzin Merchant
Sansa Stark - Sophie Turner
Arya Stark - Maisie Williams

The last two are young and relatively unknown actresses, although there is another actress named Sophie Turner, but she is not playing Sansa. :)
Honestly, this is just a short rundown here, but Martin gives an excellent description of the actors, their reasoning for the picks, as well as his hints decoded at Not A Blog.
Well, here's hoping that the rest of the casting goes smoothly and I can report on those pics too, in the near future!

A Song of HBO and Publishing

So, for those of you out there who don't know yet, I am a huge fan of George R R Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire". It is incredibly well-written chock-full of skillfully crafted characters and rife with heart-pounding adventure, nail-biting suspense, and brain-twisting intrigue. I read a lot, but I have never picked up a book that lead to nearly five thousand pages without me getting bored. And still I salivate for the next installment. George is a master of his craft, that is certain, yet his last two books of the series have been slow to birth. The wait has become infamous among his fans, (some of whom have even gone so far as to make a "hurry-the-F-up-blog") taking nearly five years for each of them. Yet for me, the pins and needles persist.

I remember the day I first laid my hands on GRRM's masterwork. I was working the night shift at a convenience store of the interstate in Valdosta, GA. My supervisor was the owner's son, Joe. He had read the first three books already and was still waiting on the fourth, A Feast for Crows, to hit the shelves. I still remember his warning: "Don't read 'em too fast, man. You'll want to. You won't be able to stop, but you have to pace yourself. I read them all as soon as they came out, and now I am still waiting on the next one. It has been years since the last one came out. Pace yourself!" I laughed. He didn't. I was sure just by looking at these stout paperbacks, that it would take me months to read them, maybe a full year or more. I was wrong, so wrong. I worked every night and in the hour-long lulls through my graveyard shift I read voraciously. I couldn't get enough of the hyper-realistic POV's in the pseudo-historic settings and the gentle trickle of mystery and magic(?) as the story progressed.





It only took me a couple of months to be chomping at the bit for the Feast I needed to quench my Martin fix. As soon as AFFC came out, I was on it in a heartbeat! I bought the hardback copy just so I could start reading a week or so earlier. Again, I ignored Joe's initial warning and poured through the pages with fervent zeal and finished in record time. I reread it and waited for the next volume. That was in 2005. I'm still waiting. We are all still waiting, some of us less patiently than others, but wait we must.

However, there are new updates and reasons to be excited. For example, HBO has decided to begin work on a pilot for a Song of Ice and Fire live action series. As of the typing of this blog post, seven roles have been cast! GRRM talks more about this on his LiveJournal "Not A Blog". He has given us hints and anti-hints but refuses to tell all unntil they give him the go-ahead. Another great resource for ASoIaF discussions and speculation is the Tower of the Hand forum. The self-described Encyclopedia of Ice and Fire is my favorite place to flesh out my own theories and relate to other GRRM freaks.


(I love this image of GRRM as a lord from Westeros, found here, at the cimmerian.)

Well, that is enough ASoIaF chatter for now, I will come back atchya with more soon!
peace all

Mind-blowing Audio-Visioptitronics...

This wonderfunk artwork can be found on YouTube among other interweb spots, and it is just itching to completely blow your mind! An interesting multi-dimensional trip through the fractal folds of existential hypereality, artist Marco Brambilla is sure to leave your pineal gland pulsating. Below is a blurb from www.toast-jam.com :

"Civilization, a video mural created by Marco Brambilla for the new Standard Hotel in New York City, depicts a journey from hell to heaven interpreted through modern film language using computer-enhanced found footage. This epic video mural contains over 300 individual channels of looped video blended into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images that illustrate a contemporary, satirical take on the concepts of Heaven and Hell."

Erik Davis and Dennis McKenna

Hallo friends and fiendrs!

I know it has been long months since my last return, I have had busy semesters and rocky soulquakes. Yet here I am with the promise of a son just days away. I hope none of you have forgotten my plots and plans, because I certainly have not!
One of my most profoundly influential non-personal relationships has been my fervent audio-pursuit of the infamous and beloved Terence McKenna. Lorenzo Haggerty and B Art exposed me and guided me through a lengthy course in Bard questing, and I relate his words into all of my favorite discussions. Today, I discovered that another great mind in consciousness expansion has his own radio/internet audioshow. Erik Davis of Techgnosis fame has been producing the Expanding Mind show for a few weeks now, and his most recent episode is being filtered through my headset as I type. This week his guest is Dennis McKenna, brother and collaborator of Terence. His work in entheogens and ethnobotany continue to inspire and educate generations and hundreds of independent psychonauts. It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to hear these great thinkers discuss their own ideas on such a complex subject.
Another major occupation of my recent years has been my pursuit of a degree in the field of anthropology. The further I have gotten into my anthro-research, the more I have realized how I may be able to bind and intertwine my interests and garner a more exciting path into entheogenic and anthropogenic works. My first step, the way I dipped my toes into independent research was through the activity of Parkour. My colleague and I participated in the rush and run of urban gymnastics and free-form exploration of the built environment. Our understanding became formed around the notion of redefining the ways in which humans, citizens, are allowed to move through, around, and over the modern landscape. This work is not exactly entheogenic, but is definitely resonant.
While I am still working in the realm of understanding place and landscape from an anthropological approach, my next independent work is to be in the vein of ethnopharmacology.
The same colleague with whom I worked with on Parkour and I will be taking an anthro-approach to the understanding of the presence and use of entheogens in human cultures. We have developed a syllabus for our work and will be following it synchronously with the Fall 2009 semester. We hope that the work we produce from this independent course will provide an example of our abilities for use in application to graduate schools, as well as gleaning a new or more complex understanding of the subject.
At the moment I am simply priming all of these engines, because my life is soon to be exponentially more complex, yet I believe spinning a dozen plates may just help me stay on my toes, however much I may wish to kick back and chill while it all falls down. So, I will bring this ramble to a temporary close as I get back to work. Until next time, breathe easy....

photo courtesy of: http://www.xoxomusicvideos.com/2009/03/everytime-lustral.html (not my own!)