Artistic Footprint

If you’ve got some time to kill, I highly recommend the following lectures, mostly found from Ted.com’s best of the web.

some of these are pretty long, but totally worth your time, and are rated by me as “Life Changing”

A beginning link between atheism and corrupt religiousness

Rick Mercer interviews a kamloops crew I met while on deployment in chetwynd:

Rick Mercer Interview the Ice Pilots in NWT, whom I met shooting the history channel’s Dam buster episode in Mackenzie, BC:

Another great Ken Robinson animation about shifting education paradigms

Naomi Klein searches for outside the box methods to alter our perspective and motivate our resolve for climate change activism

Marcus Buckingham and the Truth About You

Rachel Maddow talks about Right Winged closed circuit Media Universes and explains “false facts”

A.J. Jackobs abides by over 700 rules set by the bible for a year

Sam Harris: Science can Answer Moral Questions

Robert Sapolsky: The Uniqueness of Humans

Douglas Adams: Parrots, the Universe, and Everything:

Elaine Morgan: An Old Woman’s lifetime acheivement of proving that humans evolved from Aquatic Apes, yet to be embraced by the scientific community:

Vilayanur Ramachandran: On Phantom Limb Syndrome and how humans learn by watching.

(search for more from Vilayanur. This guys on to something.)

Christopher DeCharms: Invents a realtime MRI that allows the brain to relieve pain and “program ourselves”

Noah Feldman says Politics and Religion manipulable technologies

Barbara Egnrenreich: Teaches us about how optimism masks our true necessary response

And Check out this clip from Season 5 episode 5,  of Rescue Me from FX networks, Sheila Keefe played by Callie Thorne, a NYFD firefighter’s widow after 911.

Some people get the travel bug and go see the world. I got the snowbug. I do firedances on occasion to please the snow god Ullr and bring big coastal dumps. I’d happily skip on work to be knee deep in pow, but I fixed that problem by getting a job on the hill. Problem-solved (sort of)

The thing I find interesting is that there are many different ways to enjoy the hill (or perhaps I’m just addicted to categorizing things):

Moustached-grandpa: has a ski-in/out chalet, is a local at the family resort and knows the resort like the back of his hand. He’s loyal to this hill alone, and is uncomfortable anywhere else.

Overconfident business-man: who believes he owns the slopes, and his skiis have been custom-made shitty. LOVES moguls and the opportunity to advertise their successes on the chairlift. (their trophy wives usually don’t ski, and spend their time in the resort spa all day)

Little Fat kids: Sweatty, Stumpy loud and often annoying little shits. But hey they enjoy the field trip that gets them out of school, and a little exercise and time away from their PS3 is a refreshing change

Steeze Junkies: – well in my opinion just look plain fucking retarded. They wear pants and jackets in sizes that no human could fill, their bulbous eyes hidden behind impractical sunnies, they taught themselves how to ride – with an invisible friend or sitting in the back seat, power sliding from side to side. But they can rip up boxes and rails like nobody’s business.

The Escaped Pro: This guy is the shit. Drives an old pickup, lives in the backcountry, and literally is known by a select few. The phantom of the slopes, he was born with a snowboard attached to his feet, and at the first sight of sponsorship, realised that money can’t buy the love he’s got for true solitary pillow-dropping. He realises the bad taste that corporate sponshorship does to his riding style and would rather make his own friends.

Ski-bums: People who live out of their vans, on the dull when they can get it, eat canned beans over toast, ride broken equipment and have no style – I think I fall into this category

The Bi-sexual: This person does it all. owns 3 pairs of skis, 2 boards, a split deck, snowshoes and a set of skins. Usually not seen on the chairlift, but digs a snow-pit to put their AVI-one to use and then hits the backcountry. The total undisclosed pro who rides for themselves only, and wets themselves at the possibility of riding where no-one has ridden before.

In any shape or form, it’s awesome to see people so in love with a mixture of gravity and frozen water.

To Be Continued……

Your legs are screaming, your heart is 10 beats behind, amongst a cage that doesn’t fit the volume of your lungs. Your jaw opens like a shark, bearing teeth like a starved wolf pouncing on its scared-stiff prey. You’re pushing the limits as you’re shot into the air and you feel something squeeze adrenaline into your bloodstream, burning through your arteries out to your fingers and toes. Everything “fits” as you place your board back on earth, fuelling your transition. Your eyes dart back and forth, focusing on the next feature to hit. Nothing can stop you now. The snow pounding back at you is synced to the fast-paced beat of the track in your ears, motivating you to launch higher, go faster. You’re not thinking about anything. There’s just not enough time for your cognitive mind, you are being controlled by real-time instinct. Everything is instant and all you know is that you just fucking want it. You shove that toe edge in like you own the bitch you`re sticking it to. She reacts by throwing a huge cloud of pow and shreddies into the air like a curtain for your glorious entrance. You reach the lift and in seconds you`re on your way to hit it again, with more rage.

This is what I call: `being in the fucking zone` its the difference between a good day and a bad day. Complies with any sport, specifically jib. Its the between a frustrating painful day in the park and stomping and riding away clean. It`s why you smack into the gound in a heap of steeze vs. a rolling tumble and landing on your feet and not even giving a shit. It`s pain vs. good burn. Things hurt less, the body works as a unit, every move is timed perfectly, and there`s a surreal perspective on the edge of control. You`ve seized the reigns and cranked down on the bucking bronco and turned its fire into your own. There`s a breif lucid moment where the only phrase that sparks your neurons is: `fuck yea`

little is known (on my behalf anyways) of what goes on to make your brain tick to the gold medal clock. First thing is the conditions. Sure you can definately make fun out of a shit-piss foggy rainsoaked day, but it`s not as likely. A bluebird with either sweet groomies or *meh* maybe just thigh-high of fresh will do. Just the sight of that is an immediate stoke to the fire inside. Next is the people. You`d never go to a theme park alone would you? Who else do you have to share the conversation of `dude I fucking rocked the gnar of that cliff eh?` Having someone ahead of you (hopefully who knows the ropes) shows you where the best hits are and how to hit them. Failing that you`ve always got your mates to push you over that edge, out of your comfort zone and into the air. Third is a good set of tunes. Anything faster than your heartbeat will do, because for some reason your heart and your step will lay rubber on the asphalt to keep up. I listen to a playlist of tracks that make me feel like I`m Travis Rice or Jeremy Jones (farfetched of course.) Lastly is a constant supply of dirty drops, rails, booters, rollers, spins, shreds, and chutes. A constant high of blasting up and over and not looking back because you`re too all you care about is the next one.

And at the end of the day, you`re left with an exhausted heart softened by a cold brew and a  good sore pair of legs being tendered in the womb of a churning mountainside hot tub.

How to live without money.

The funny thing is, that in this world, you can’t. We have created a culture where you no longer live by natural selection but by financial succession. People can work in an economic sandbox toying with innessential trades of passive income to survive in a material world.

Does the evolution of money, inflation, taxes, and trade exemplify the root human instinct? The harder you work and the more optimistically creative your mind, the more successful you are. Sounds like natural selection to me… The prospect of inflation and taxes seems to be parallel with the concept of community, and trade the exchange of information and invention.

But in some ways, money personifies humans in a way that is far too systematic, calcuated, graphed out way that is scary and over simplified, creating an easily markettable norm of categories that are inherently inhuman. Categories that are concerned with survival in a material world as opposed to a realistic, resolved method of living that allows resources to sustain a worldly community.

We know already that the supply of resources in the human food-chain is obviously top-heavy, and has created an infatuation of gluttony within the poorer communities. The cliche of white western citizens with an obvious “head start” is being naturally assimilated by the masses of those who seek opportunity where we once took it for granted. Do they have the sense to correct our mistakes and learn that we weren’t capable of doing it right? Do they notice that our lavishing lives of comfort and adventure they so eagerly want are horridly greedy and unnattainable for eternity?

I’m trying to invent, in my brain, a method of community, trade, and progression without the concept of corruption, instability, and innaccountability of the economy. Community has been tarnished by digital ostracization and an ease of personal access, trade has been misinterpretted by false advertising, manipulation, and corner-cutting, all through the veneer of a neverending supply as if we have created our own heaven at the expense of our own hell.

Locally, I want to live in world of paying it forward. Where one good deed begets another for the benefit of a tightly nitted group. Specifically close friends and family, because it appears as though that is the limits of a structurally sound community. Its difficult for me to be comfortable around friends that are more financially successful and willing to cover for me in desperate times with no perspective of retribution, but I have to step back and understand that my relationship with them is not based on a tab, statement, or chequebook. We keep a mental tally in our heads that is expressed amongst ourselves that determines who owes who, and has nothing to do with a trade system, but the necessity to keep the well-oiled machine of a community running on track. I believe it is important to understand that people shouldn’t meet halfway by balancing an account, but that a certain placement, possibly of no cost at all, can be equal in value and maintain a strong relationship.

So lets rebuild the concept of community and understand that money cannot govern our emotions, desires, friendships, or sustainability. Instead, realise that the appreciation of smaller, well-suited friends and family have the power to continue the world within, and alter the world without. Think twice about who you really are your friends, and develop your own true community that touches your life directly every day. This malleable bubble of teamwork changes with your values as well as theirs, but somehow you will always find like-minded people who will accept you and your beliefs into a system that preserves them.

Something about the way the “free first world” is turning strikes the thought in me that… perhaps humans were not meant to live in such a large community. This coming from a Great White Northerner with a sparse population of 30 million. But regardless I find that taking a large amount of people, all who have different needs, ideas, and beliefs, and categorizing them as one entity with a common governing body just doesn’t quite cut it.

From what I see of city life on a daily basis is that people have some sort of constant confusion, lack of awareness, an automaticity in their stride, and bewilderment of the crowds among them.

People ride together on busses, all heading to the same direction, but they can’t stand the confrontation of another person trying to make room to sit down. This idea of a personal space or private bubble, sewn together in designer clothes, senses cut off with headphones, eyes dazing the busy streets to avoid contact with another pair.

We no longer know our neighbours by name and spend statistically 25% of our time glued to a flickering screen that sells useless products and services through fear.

Social Networking has been redefined from the baseball field to a digital game, obscuring our identities with our photoshopped lives, not just our makeup and vanity. Friends and family are always far enough away that the best way to communicate is, again, through electronic means, hidden behind a backspace key.

As a crowd, humans are not an intelligent species. We’re more like a flock of birds or a school of fish. We mimick each other or our idols, develop styles that help people judge us by our cover, and shy away from an opportunity to make a decision for ourselves. I think this is very scary for our little brains up there in this big world. It’s a lot to take in and most minds can’t grasp the big picture, and would much rather conform to the simple, easier ways about things. But that’s really dangerous! thats where the weak, ignorant, and malleable neurons follow what the big man on the TV tells us.

I think that humans inherently were designed to live in smaller communities, and we’re having problems evolving our brains to be compatible with the expansion of the metropolitan. In towns and villages, the people are much more calm, they take their time, enjoy a life with no traffic or crowding. They rely on eachother for help to keep the community intact. A small community can still fit the definition of a team, whereas a city relies on paperback systems and automated programs.

I’m sure anything with the word ‘Valentines’ in the title would likely attract like… 90% chicks to 10% dudes, so hopefully I’ve left my bros out of the loop in this obviously sentimental, estrogen-infested post. But hey – love is just as universal as laughter, and they usually both go hand in hand. These are my thoughts towards probably the most powerful and greatest emotion humans have.

I like watching people in love. Especially those getting through the hard times. Self repair turns into a true human ability to share compassion and a desire to mend. Maybe that’s what the love songs are all about. The attempts to make a crashed world on a minute scale better. The one chance for people to retribute their mistakes by giving back to another person. An uninsisted pay it forward to create the greater good, the anomaly on the selfish gene map. Love may be the one chance humans have to save themselves. The true unexplaned ruler of the universe. The hole in the heart. Not dependency or infatuation, but a necessity to survival.

Some people find love at a young age. The “highschool sweetheart” syndrome. Those that manage to seize the reigns and harness its relentless speed are the lucky ones who seem destined to live the fairy tale. Some have no comprehension of what this new feeling is and no preparation for its wrath. The turmoil of a constant tumbling into the abyss of jealousy, infatuation, necessity, and one-way streets and do not enters. In fact the idea that your emotion defines love is not even considered, and once you do, she’s long gone and there’s nothing you can do. It’s an inevitable, constant, undying feeling that won’t go away. Nothing could save you from this infection of affection. But you can’t do anything about it, even though you know in your head that you MUST. The scheming, conniving love that blotches your imagination with images of a perfect, blissful world. How every part of your life would come together if she was there.

I don’t believe love is exlusive. I think it’s pretty fucking limited. There are girls out there that were the epitome of awesome. So fucking perfect, fit every nook and cranny that needed to be filled. But somehow they just didn’t hit the spot. That instinctive, head over heels, hot and bothered, stammering level of affection that most often causes awkward silences, slurred speech, and a just plain lack of control. Of course being out of control is scary shit. And as soon as that scared shitless feeling creeps up, things inevitably get uncomfortable. Independence is shattered, ominous woes of potential hurt, the edgy feeling of opening up with the hopes of trust are big changes that question its worth. Eventually your heart tells you that the world is a shit place and you need to protect yourself better. Go through this enough times and eventually you’re wearing a spiderweb of steel and thorns that keeps your independent, headstrong body locked away, wondering why.

The funny thing about love is that you have no control over it, no matter how much you’d like to think you do. You can’t control who you love, when, where, or why. Trying to force it and just wanting to be with somebody, anybody, is a futile and painful approach. It’s why someone dates hurtful people regardless of the advice of their friends,  its why you maintain a constant feeling of loss when someone gives up on you, it’s why you happen to meet the right person at the worst place or time, doomed for disaster.  But it’s also the same reason for this immensely forceful attraction that makes you fight to the bitter end and make things work. Its leaving a career for a person, or disappearing off the face of the planet in lust.

I would define love as an attachment. Something that isn’t complete without the other. It is nothing – has no value, no place, no direction, no engine without it. This is my call to all you unhappy folk. To be blunt and painful, life is nothing without true passionate love. But on a lighter side, a very select few of us manage to find it, and even fewer of those can harness it. This cannot be taken as a calleous, abrasive amplification of your despair, but a shock to get your whole ensemble motivated. Fight for what you need. Persist, be a fucking dick, break a nose and knock out a few teeth. This is LOVE and the two of you NEED it!

Hopefully this reinforces the love that you have, or it makes you ask the questions that need to be asked and sets you on your way.

Women: Genetically chained to being a stay-at home mom? Caregivers of the universe? Queens of the submissive male phsyche? A rat race to become a trophy wife?

Whos to say that they can’t be whatever they want, just as us bacon-bringers always had the opporunity to do? From what the golden age trend portrayed, women have always had this “job” to do. Their full-time, 24-7 career of mothering, cleaning, and household commanding officer. Not an easy career choice by any means, I sure as fuck couldn’t do it, but it’s the job that literally keeps the world turning, so mad props to them.

The workforce is making a turn, and of course over the last couple decades, women can be seen in every trade and discipline. Women want to be entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, culinary artists… and firefighters, medics, soldiers. I believe that they should have always been entitled to this, but situationally, they naturally used to lead a domesticated family-oriented life.

I speak more about the blue collar grunt work of trade careers. The firefighters, paramedics, military, construction – shit like that. The human resources folk of these trades have decided that the best Public Relations investment is to meet quotas of female to male ratios, of minority to majority equilibriums, and I think that’s a crock of shit. First and foremost, I have come across many a woman that could whip Schwarzenneger into shape, and I would expect nothing less than someone looking to fulfill the requirements of a job that needed it. Put simply, if you’re a chick and you want the job, I’ve seen examples of women just like you who can easily make the cut. There’s a reason for tough jobs – they’ve got a tough fucking job to do, and they need tough people. That has nothing to do with if you’re white, black, male, female, green, martian, arab, or jew. They need the best people for the job to get the best results of a rough day at work.

Let me give you an example. You’re driving home from work and some douchebag drunk driver hits you head on. The lower half of your body becomes completely entangled in the spiderweb of steel and aluminum. You’re barely conscious as your blood pressure rapidly drops as your perfuse blood onto the floor mats. You’ve got minutes to live. Who would you rather have save you? someone who got the job of rescueing you because of concessions made by their department? or a faceless human in a uniform who is the fucking best of the best because the application system picked them to succeed in that exact situation?

If you want the job, play the part.

The long and endless battle. Wanks on Planks vs Dicks on Sticks. Who owns the slopes and why?

Skiing was there first. Grainy old photographs line the heritage chalets with ancient wooden whittled 2x4s. but boardsports always had their space. The epitome of going against the grain, the anti-establishment lifestyle took its form on the concrete, surf, and soon to be snow. The funny thing about snowboarding is that it came to be right at the time that snow industry was dying. It took five years for mountain resorts to respect snowboarding as a sport they could endorse, and thats how it all began.

Snowboarding gave way to a huge new way to shred the gnar. You ride sideways, you’ve got a duck stance. You can ride backwards or forwards, and you’ve only got one edge to hold you on the mountain.

Skiing almost lost it. The industry hit a lull just as Jake Burton Carpenter was rubbing in polyeurethane on the top sheet with a scuba mask on. I remember those days. I myself snapped my collarbone while skiing and successively gave into peer pressure in joining the twin tip movement. The term “skiing is for little fat kids” got thrown around a lot.

But as things always do, boardsports just aren’t boardsports if they aren’t lingering in the background. The sub counter-culture. Skiing came back full force. Ski producers like Salomon and K2 reinvented the ski to incorporate snowboard characteristics, specifically twin tips.

So skiing seems to have had a bit of a burp in the retro-years. But it’s still just as strong as ever. But its important to note that skiing would be nothing if it hadn’t been for snowboarding, and you pompous oafs with your season passes, volvo SUVs and spandex onesuits had best come to terms with that.

Snowboarding helped bring in a whole wack of other amazing good things. The underground marijuana industry creates $4 billion annually in Vancouver alone (coincidence? I think not) We’ve also created awesome new terrain features like the half pipe and terrain parks, which otherwise would never have existed. For those of you unfamiliar with the industry, a mountain in New Zealand, Snow Park, is… well just a huge park cut into a mountain, and any self-respecting boardsport filmmaker would make the trip down there if he plans to sell his DVD. We’ve also created a new language all of its own to describe the conditions of snow or outcome of the day of riding (see below)

One thing I’ve noticed has remained static. Skiiers, for the most part, still ride that boring old way. The perfect S-turns, synchronized to the beat of some Journey track, making a fucking mess of a fresh line, or at worse, creating these moguls to swell up their knees on. The thing that I love about snowboarding, and is so natural and innevitable to those that try the sport, is that snowboarders ride to have fun. Theres no business in it unless it starts with monkey. Snowboarders move left and right, up and down, with the spontaneity of what they see. “I’m gonna check this out – oo that looks like fun. Lets ride over this”

Where skiers do prevail is the trade of expertise. It seems the natural option to progress and learn more about their sport. Snowboarders habitually learn till they turn, and then think that they own the sport. Snowboarding IS hard to master, and I’m fully aware of my boarded brethren that are foresakenly chained at the ankle, the power-sliders with an invisible friend. If you’re new to snowboarding, embrace your title as a wank on a plank and take some lessons. Learn a thing or two, break the bad habits and figure out how to manage your sleek, cambred, sidecutted beast.

What’s most important here is that we’re all having fun. Gravity sports is a great way to beat the trend of 9-5. to come up top and forget about life and just shred. Doesn’t matter if you’re on a monoski, snowblade, snowboard or ski. Just get out there and find something you love that keeps you eager to depart the norm.

For those of you still reading, here are a few synonyms for the word snow that I’ve added to my vocabulary:

pow

groomies

gnar

kibbles and bits

muffins

cookies

camel snot

hoar

shreddies

trackout

slush

sugar

chicken-soup

velvet

champagne

corn starch

Bean Bag Filling

Beach Sand

Snowment

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9479741

This woman is entitled to her opinion, but not on Television. That’s the beauty of a news network. They are SUPPOSED to provide factual information. Of course we all know that this is not the case due to omissions and network bias and government regulations. However this Christine Brennan has withdrawn her role as a USA sports columnist and publicly expressed her opinion on national news. Will her words have any effect on the olympics? no. Any effect on snowboarding? fuck no. If the olympic committee wants snowboarding for “ratings” then so be it. But it’s not up to Christine, and personally, she was an idiot for commenting.

When I was growing up I would often eavesdrop on the question: are people good?

I always thought… why wouldn’t they? Why would people bother with not being good? how would that help us?

But good is not faith. It’s not love, heroism or fame, it’s not a deed or a duty, and it’s not a fantasy

Then I learned that a criminal can be right, or that people need to protect themselves. That everything you do for someone else, you are actually doing for yourself, and every time you fail at being good, you sink deeper into a hole of self wallowing. Its the times when you do something truly altruistic and pure, that benefits anyone but yourself, you are actually good.

The biggest lesson I learned from asking this question is… Am I good? The answer is quite simply, “I don’t know.” First of all, I can’t answer that, it’s up to my friends. But in a world where everyone is born genetically selfish in order to maintain self preservation, how can one find the time to be good? If your life is spent making ends meet and living on a dime, your acts of good will are unconventional, and aren’t understood by the materialistic. Everyone wants good things for themselves. Peace, love, happiness, a bit of adventure… modest goals for one person to make themselves happy. But other things can make us feel happy too. Gratitude. When someone thanks you, it gives you a feeling of worth and importance. Love. When someone loves you, it makes you feel necessary and capable. Attentiveness. When someone listens to you, you feel intelligent and informative.

Humans have a lot of differences with our fellow neighbours. Many animals have tear glands, but only humans cry. We can look at a picture of an injured dog and sympathize with it. We embrace things like music and art. We run into burning buildings for each other and cure diseases that we aren’t diagnosed with. Perhaps the characteristics of a colonized species? or do we possess a very rare trait?

What is the most special, adored, and amazing thing about children? Their creativity. Their perma-stoke of simple, everyday things. They don’t care if they get dirty, they are constantly asking questions and literally forming their world with their hands, mouths, toes, and noses.

Which leads me to a very sobing question…: What the hell happened? Why does this curiosity stop? why has life become so predictable and dull for us adults, when compared to that of a child’s?

I believe we educate the creativity out of ourselves. We take these inquisitive, energetic, young minds and we lock them in a primitive, disciplined cage for 8 hours every day for the majority of their development.

Fundamentally, school is awesome. The fact that it is free and unavailable to half the world says that yes, school should be cherished and we should be grateful to have it. It provides us with a unified means of communication, an understanding of the natural world, and a social network of like-minded individuals. It provides opportunity and motivation.

However. And this is a BIG however. School can so easily be destructive, exploited, abused, corrupt, and even dangerous. For starters, the classroom hasn’t evolved since it was invented. An adult standing at the front lecturing and writing in big letters, with bored and unnattentive younglings writing down every word verbatim. Little feet aren’t pitter-pattering, nor are hands folding and glueing. they’re copying and pasting data into their brains. We all have different brains with different methods of learning, but there is no dynamic in instruction. Some people learn by listening. Some by grabbing it with their hands and physically doing it. Others have to talk and discuss the ways around a problem. And yet from kindergarten to PhD, there’s always someone just lecturing. monotonous, waste-my-time transfer of language from mouth to ear. Am I the only one who knows that this is not how the brain works? Couldn’t you master a problem faster if you actually experienced it?

If you learned something, and then forgot it, what was the point of learning it? and if you forgot the majority of what you learned in school (which is a TV show theme now) then wasn’t all that just a big waste of time?

Do you remember the teachers that you liked? The teachers that gave a shit and didn’t use a lesson plan? I had a chemistry teacher that would ask and answer really awesome questions from start to finish. He’d tell us what molecules were in flu medications and why they worked, or the pros vs. cons of using a mulching lawnmower because of the removal of nitrates. – very interesting by the way. I had another teacher that would teach us how to speak mandarin during the last 20 minutes of history class. And another teacher that would take his shoe off and slap it on a map of the earth to explain how the scale works. “The scale means that there are 20,000 shoes where my shoe is on this map, just like there would be 20,000 icecream cones in the space that this icecream cone sits” These teachers wouldn’t let me leave without having explained how something works a million different ways until it finally clicked in my head. They welcomed my questions and saw my lack of understanding as an opporunity to help me. These are all teachers that literally go above and beyond the call of duty because they enjoy their work and understand what they are doing.

I also remember the shitty teachers. The ones who work for the school board because they like their summers off. They use lesson plans that they wrote up 15 years ago. They throw slides up on the projector and watch porn on the internet while you copy it down – Sometimes they even leave the room! The teachers that mark you based on your attire and how much ass you kiss rather than your actual efforts. Yes, I remember you. If you don’t give two shits about working in education, then you should just get the fuck out, because you’re causing far too much damage.

Teachers are in constant direct contact with their future taxpayers, scientists, diplomats, and soldiers. They literally have control of the worlds future. Those that work their asses off to help a kid understand why things work are fucking Legends. The washed out, dull, blood-sucking teachers that don’t give a fuck are responsible for people like George Bush and Sarah Palin.

And if you’re one of those parents that doesn’t answer your kids’ questions…. then just… fuck you. I loathe you. The kid that you personally gave birth to and are raising from the ground up is asking you for help. They look at a bug on the ground and say “what does he do?” and if your answer doesn’t begin with the word “because” then you might as well just drown your kid in the bathtub. It’s like you’re penalizing your kid for wondering something, and eventually, they will stop asking questions. Or you’ll just end up buying them an X-box. But the biggest difference between kids and adults is that kids WANT to learn!

Not only should you answer their questions like it’s your responsibility as an adult, you should encourage them! ask them questions! Treat them like they just landed on a foreign planet and want to know what everything is!  And if you’re a kid and reading this, try to ignore my swearing. Its ugly and distasteful. But PLEASE I beg you. Ask as many questions as you can! stay away from drugs, and stay away from Televisions! they plant weeds in your brains!

I think the greatest thing about a kid is that they don’t care what anyone thinks. They aren’t even aware that someone is judging their work or thinking they’re stupid. They draw a picture of a giraffe that looks nothing like a giraffe to you, but to them, that’s what a fucking giraffe looks like. And the determination in that belief is unbreakable.

It’s time we stop doctoring the “disease” of creativity. People aren’t remembered for the car they drove or their trophy wife, or the money. The people that are remembered are the mozarts, piccassos, armstrongs, shakespears, tarantinos, and mandelas. These are people whose creativity blasted through the gate of education and landed on the moon, wrote a legendary play, or ended apartheid. You know, things that humans can say they are proud to have acheived. Something you’d like to show your alien neighbours.

When I used to teach kids, I’d break down the door of awkwardness, and immediately it’d be a battle of the weirdest. I’d try to be stranger and weirder than the kids, and you’d be amazed by how excited they get and how hard they try to impress you right back with their many expressions, voices, and quirky observations. They can help you see things that you didn’t know were there.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

This one’s a bit of a bore, but a very interesting point of view: kids teach themselves English and the use of open-source information without the aid of an instructor:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html