Arranged Delirium

There’s an interesting OpEd piece from the NYT that underscores the dichotomy within higher education: do we train for employable skills, or educate people so they can learn for themselves? Is is a focused skill-set that people need, or a broader sense of developing knowledge? It’s basically a piece contrasting the educational views of two well-known and successful college drop-outs: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. If you click through to the discussion link, there is a series of responses you can read. I’m particularly taken with Trachtenberg’s statement: “Gates is studying the science of education. Jobs is creating the art of learning.” I think that’s at the heart of the current conflict of education - but its hard for me to see why there isn’t room for both approaches…

Follow-up: Through the comments, I found my way to Snow’s essay Two Cultures, which you can read via Google Books. But there’s a short re-cap and exploratory article published in The Telegraph. While the debate was central to Britain, it more-or-less reflects the dichotomy we see in higher education in the US today. In these times of budget cuts, the conflict is made more clear as resources go to specific programs, which in essence emphasize specific ways of learning. The question becomes is this being well-thought out as a matter of curriculum design, or is it a response to student demand?

My friends like to make fun of me because there are so many pictures of me pointing something out to students or fellow travelers. What can I say? I’ve got a lot of good information to share! But in defense of my pointing abilities, it would seem that it’s not something everyone can manage. I submit this image of my friend Charles, who very clearly has yet to master the technique:

Note my look of disgust and contempt. Don’t worry Chuck! Just keep practicing. You’ll get there!

I have to thank (?) my colleague AMH for pointing me toward Rebecca Black and her rendition of Friday. It’s painful and we all want to mock it - that’s understandable. Just take a look:

But in truth, I just feel sorry for her. There’s a lot of hate out there. But perhaps more frightening is the fact that some young girl’s parents thought it was a good idea to pay for a vanity label to produce a video for her and then go public with it. Really? Yes.

Our College paper actually had a good article on it, attributing the epic fail to Ark Music Factory, the vanity label that actually produced this tripe (I refuse to link to them in fear that more traffic might be driven their way, even if only three people read this). I’d link to the newspaper article but the Red & Black doesn’t have a web edition, because…well, why doesn’t the Red & Black have a web edition? It would take all of 30 minutes to set up and would give our students a more realistic understanding of journalism. But I digress…

The biggest affront to me personally was the vapid nature of the lyrics. Listening to this song, actually made me more stupid. And, while I don’t possess the empirical evidence, I’m quite sure it killed some of my brain cells without the corresponding ‘high’ one might anticipate. I really need to stop now. Just Google it and you can find all the nasty mockery you’d like. I’m so dumb now I can’t even type. My kid’s toddler music is more complex and lyrically mature than this song. Its mere existence causes me to see the world as a darker place.

Addendum: And to continue my rant, I think this underscores the broader narcissistic fascination with ourselves that our culture has embraced due to the extreme prevalence of ‘social’ media - which is actually just all about the individual.

Texture and Abstract are showing in San Diego soon. I think the show runs from mid-April through May. Given the geographic spread of my readership of three people, I’m pretty sure no-one is near Balboa Park; but since I was asked to help spread the word it seems a post is the least I can do:

I’m sure they’d love to take your money if you are in the area and would like to see some compelling art work. I can’t imagine a better location!

I inadvertently stubbled across a meme this week as I was developing some imagery. I’d been working on some ideas I’ve had about breaking the rules of landscape photography by creating some vertical compositions and I developed this shot of a double rainbow:

Of course, this lead students to point me toward the Double Rainbow phenomenon on YouTube. Its over a year old now, so I’m late to the party, but I thought I’d link to it here in case you’ve missed it too:

This eventually led to the Double Rainbow Song (now available on iTunes):

...as well as various other parodies, such as the Actress Monologue:

Apparently I’ve been living under a rock. But the sad thing about this is that seeing a double rainbow is really a very cool thing. Or better yet - a triple rainbow! I’m pretty sure though that a triple rainbow would have sent YosemiteBear into such fits of apoplexy, that he likely would not have survived the experience.