As I wrote recently, I’m fascinated by what influences people to be who/what they are. Perhaps in the same vein, I’m also curious about how what we learn transfers to other situations. There is a robust body of research studying learning transfer; it’s elusive to pin down how what we learn in one situation can be applied to another.
10. “Mom, we kind of always assumed you were our father.”
9. “I’m taking you out to dinner, but we have to hurry; Taco Bell closes at nine.”
8. “What do you mean, ‘What is it?’ – It’s a nose hair trimmer!”
7. “Here’s all the ingredients for a fantastic Mother’s Day dinner. All you have to do is cook it!”
6. “And you are…?”
5. “Uncle Dad knows about us!”
4. “Of course these flowers aren’t stolen from a funeral home. That banner just means, when you go to bed tonight, I hope you rest peacefully.”
3. “Mom, I have a surprise for you: I’m adopted!!”
2. “Here’s your gift, Mom: a DVD of Oedipus Rex –you sexy thing you!”
1. “Honey, I’m afraid the kids now have a new Mom. Her name used to be Bruce.”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
You know that old equation that goes something like this: hard work + dedication + dreams = success. An updated version has emerged: hard work + dedication + dreams + parents = success. Really, that version is hard work + dedication + dreams + parents = success + parents. Parents have gotten into this thing on both sides! You don’t have to be Poincaré to notice, though, that if you minus [parents] from both sides of the equation, you still get the original formulation. [Read more →]
Look, man, I’m no prude (I can hear, from those privy to my debauched past, the knowing snickers rising). I don’t have a Grandpa Simpsonesque view of smut on TV (particularly in episode 7G05). I enjoy the sight of a pretty woman and don’t feel bad about saying that. [Read more →]
In a favorite early article of mine about digital culture, John Perry Barlow asked “Is There a There in Cyberspace?” He wondered, back in ’95, if we could find community in those bits in the ether. [Read more →]
The reality is that I did not walk seven miles uphill both ways to school in three feet of snow, even in June. Neither did you. But things were different when we were little, weren’t they, you 30- and 40- and 50-somethings? Things were certainly different when it snowed. [Read more →]
I’m a member of two school boards: I was elected to Riverton’s BoE and am an appointed member of Palmyra’s BoE. (Riverton is a sending district for Palmyra High School.) One of my favorite logical fallacies is ad hominem. Could these different bits of information cohere? We’ll see. [Read more →]
If you’re of/in a certain stage/mindset/class, you’re thinking about where your kids are going to go to college. More likely, you’re lying awake at night wondering how you’re going to pay for it, perhaps tinged with a nagging feeling that maybe you shouldn’t bother. [Read more →]
I was warned that this title would discourage almost all readers. So be it. The fact remains, that if you are ever lucky enough to play a character, say a dwarf fighter or a halfing rogue, in a good ol’ Dungeons & Dragons game, you definitely want Peter Jackson to be your DM.
Christmas 2014, forever to be remembered by me as the year of complete dissolution of internal ideological opposition. A bunch of presents were purchased and exchanged in my house that I did not approve. Yet, it will be the year not that I gave in, but the year I realized I had been giving in for a long time. [Read more →]
So, to me, these two dudes – and I wanna stress that they are dudes — in my house seem to be at the video games a lot. I thought this would never happen to me. I thought I would steer them to loftier pursuits. But there they, at FIFA and Minecraft. I have this awful feeling their brains are leaking intellect because of video games. I particularly worry about the brightness of their literacy lights. [Read more →]
Part 10 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.
The Denver Post reported recently that thousands of high school students in Colorado refused to take standardized state tests. Activism? Test fatigue? Obstinancy? Whatever the case, I like that we’re hearing the student voice, which is often absent in the many conversations about testing. [Read more →]
You probably are out there writing like a maniac every day of your life. A good friend of mine, on the Website 11trees, recently posted a smart blog entry describing how much he wrote in one day, what he viewed as just an average day for a “knowledge worker.” In this one-day writing diary, he calculates that he comes in at 2,500 words, a number he uses to make this point: “We write more words every day than many college or high school students write in an entire term.” [Read more →]
Maggie Simpson has the baby with one eyebrow. Humbert Humbert has Clare Quilty. Randall Patrick McMurphy has Nurse Ratched. Seinfeld has Newman. Randy “Macho Man” Savage has Hulk Hogan. Perhaps you think about, on those dark nights, who you might hate the most in the world. For me, it’s easy: My pre-kid self. [Read more →]
So we got rid of cable about a year ago. The kids are not alright. Of course, they’re bitter about it, and maybe rightfully so, because I’m not convinced any of us are better off. You know, you get rid of cable to live a more intellectual life, to get more in touch with yourself, with your family. But is any of that happening? [Read more →]
Being pregnant, in my experience, is kinda like being part of an extremely trippy science experiment for the better part of a year. Suddenly, the body with which you have been intimately familiar for thirty-some-odd years changes drastically, turning you into a pod person for an ever-growing alien life form. It’s terrifying. There is a lot of poking and prodding, and I’m not just talking about what happens in the doctor’s office. I’m getting advice bombs lobbed at me from all angles, usually from people I don’t know all that well. I love talking to friends and family about every aspect of my pregnancy but the comments and questions I get from co-workers or strangers on the train have ranged from mildly odd to just plain uncomfortable. Here are some of the many things I will NOT miss hearing once my baby is born. [Read more →]
Part 9 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.
Perhaps it’s surprising considering the U.S.’s supposed death spiral in mathematics, but we like numbers. We like the idea of pinning exactitude on things, on, you know, the right answer. And numbers lend themselves to lists and rankings. We like lists and rankings, particularly school rankings. From magazine stories about colleges to Websites about grammar schools, school lists abound. But what those lists and numbers don’t tell you at all is what kind of experience your individual kid will have at a school. Along the way, they may be committing serious, mean-spirited damage to lots of communities where real kids are trying to learn. [Read more →]
You’ve likely heard a lot about the Adrian Peterson debacle (including a good piece on this site), but I’m not weighing in here on abuse, or whether he’s justifiably doing what was done to him, or even on the various dummies who’ve gotten some press time because of this. I’m not writing about all that. [Read more →]
On NPR the other day I heard Graham Hill talking about the project LifeEdited. That prompted me to watch his TED talk about his idea, “Edit Your Life.” Hill talks about his own efforts to edit his living space, and proposes how much simpler, and, surprisingly, better, our lives might be if we made do with a lot less. [Read more →]
Once us humans reach a certain age, a gene activates that triggers an unwavering belief that our generation is vastly superior to the one currently coming to bloom. With unflinching righteousness, we believe that back in our day, things were more character-forming. All schools were farther away from all homes. There were weird places that were always uphill. Roads were bumpier. Things weighed more. Life was tougher. [Read more →]
