When The Bough Breaks

Not too long ago I published a post titled "Academic Inflation and New Education Paradigms", it had a cool short video featuring Ken Robinson and also referenced his book - "Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative" (I am happy to report that I have finished reading it, but a more detailed coverage will be a subject of another post, stay tuned). The basic premise of the video as well as the book - a major overhaul of our education system is urgently needed. It was designed at a different time, in a different world, and for a different purpose; thus, it can not meet the demands of today or the future.

So, while Ken Robinson takes a poke or two at our current system's bias towards academicism and science at the expense of arts and creativity, there are others who feel we are not biased enough at the time when the rate of acceleration in the field of science and technology is arguably the highest in recorded history.

A few month ago I've read a very interesting article in IEEE's Computer magazine - "Mental Discipline" by David Alan Grier of George Washington University. It talks about the following dynamic - world’s increasing complexity paired with decreasing standards of scientific education; and a general tendency towards black-boxing (an activity that hides expertise by taking a body of knowledge and incorporating some of its ideas in a machine, then hiding the inner operation of that machine behind an opaque facade). IEEE's Computer Society made the podcast of the article available online:

I hope we are not going to find ourselves in a situation that resembles many science fiction novels, being a Star Trek fan I will have to reference ST:TNG:17 - "When The Bough Breaks" (Stardate: 41509.1) and thanks to YouTube here's the visual aid:

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The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews

We have just returned from a very nice vacation (more about it in a different post), which I have used, among other things, to finish reading a couple of books - " Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) " by none other than Richard P. Feynman himself, and " Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews " by Michael Bar-Zohar: Both are (IMHO) great books, but in this post I wanted to cover the latter (more on Mr. Feynman after I finish reading " What Do You Care What Other People Think?: further adventures of a curious character "). First of all, I would like to thank my good friend Al for turning me onto the subject and gifting me the book. I thought I knew quite a bit about the history and the fate of European Jewry during the WWII and the " Die Endlösung " . After all, I have read extensively on the subject, both in school and later on; watched many documentary and popular movies...

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Omar Khayyám, The Rubaiyat #1

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