From the basest of things, art: Scott Wade

June 27, 2008

A generalization:  Many creationists complain that evolution “can’t be true” because it doesn’t exalt humans enough.  This is the old Bishop Wilberforce whine, about whether you are related to the monkeys on your mother’s side or father’s side.

“Nothing good can come from humble beginnings” is the thrust of the creationist argument, apparently with the creationists who make the claim losing every neuron they ever had that held the story of Jesus in their memory.

Nature, art, and life, keep pounding home the fact that the creationist argument is seriously in error.  But as Robert Frost wondered, how many times did the apple have to fall before Newton took the hint?  Scott Wade has taken the rebuttal to the creationists’ argument to new heights, and made art out of it.  From dust, is art:

Einstein, by Scott Wade

Credit Barcroft Media via The Daily Telegraph.

Click the thumbnail picture for a larger view:  Scott Wade creates Albert Einstein out of dust

Britain’s Daily Telegraph has a slide show with seven of Wade’s works.

Mr. Wade’s own website features a slide show demonstrating the creation of artworks, step by step.  Wade lives on a dirt road, a  half-mile from pavement.  In the course of coming and going, he gets a lot of material to work with.

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  If life gives you dust, make art.  If life gives you limes, make margaritas.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Science Notes.

Leave a Comment » | Art, Creationism, Humor, Life | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

28 poems on living life to the fullest, today

June 25, 2008

So, you just graduated from [pick one: high school, college, business school, law school, medical school, flight school, cooking school, firefighters academy, police academy] and you’re looking for a job. But here you are cruising the web instead of knocking on the doors of employers.  Carpe diem poems for making the most of time

You have come to the right place. To keep you in the flow where you need to be to get that job, let me suggest this article from the Academy of American Poets, “Carpe Diem: Poems for making the most of time.” And most especially, let me suggest the 28 poems they list there on plucking the day. The chief list of 28 you will find below the fold.

The Latin phrase and a lot of the history of the idea in poetry gets a lithe explanation in the essay there:

The Latin phrase carpe diem originated in the “Odes,” a long series of poems composed by the Roman poet Horace in 65 B.C.E., in which he writes:

Scale back your long hopes

to a short period. While we
speak, time is envious and

is running away from us.
Seize the day, trusting
little in the future.

Various permutations of the phrase appear in other ancient works of verse, including the expression “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” which is derived from the Biblical book of Isaiah. At the close of “De rosis nascentibus,” a poem attributed to both Ausonius and Virgil, the phrase “collige, virgo, rosas” appears, meaning “gather, girl, the roses.” The expression urges the young woman to enjoy life and the freedom of youth before it passes.

Since Horace, poets have regularly adapted the sentiment of carpe diem as a means to several ends, most notably for procuring the affections of a beloved by pointing out the fleeting nature of life . . .

The careful reader will find another three poems on the topic hidden in the list at the end of the article.

Graduates, you’d be happy with just a little per diem at the moment. I can’t give you that. You might find that these poets give you much more. Seize the opportunity, and see for yourself.

Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Famous quotes, Life, Literature, Poetry, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

School of Wow

June 7, 2008

A river of real learning, a rising tide of excellence.

Art from students at the school I’d like to attend many days:

Art on the beach, The Living Classroom

Wouldn’t you like to do what those students at the Community School of West Seattle do?

See also Andy Goldsworthy.

1 Comment | Art, Education, Education blogs, Education quality, Education success, Learning, Life, Natural history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cheap suit

June 5, 2008

Suit pants from Lands End

A hole wore through the seat of the pants I was wearing the other day — a bit of a bother since it was the only pair of pants to that suit. Drat the luck. “Cheap suit,” I thought. And then I thought again, and laughed.

It’s a suit I bought from Lands End, a company of usually impeccable quality.

But, what do you expect these days?

Did I mention that I bought the suit in 1991 or 1992? The suit lasted longer than younger son James has been in school.

Good suit. Cheap, too.

I’ll buy another.

Lands End suit

3 Comments | Life, Personal, Point of personal privilege | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pressure of trivialities

June 3, 2008

Graduation Part II comes Thursday night.  James leaves Duncanville High School with good memories of the 12 or 13 hours he wasn’t doing homework this past year.  The graduation is in Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas — same place all the Dallas ISD high schools hold their ceremonies.  Sometimes it seems the old basketball crowds stayed after the Mavericks decamped.  Remember somber and sober graduation ceremonies? 

Winding up the first year in Dallas ISD, with silly tests all over the place and procedures that would make Byzantium appear the model of efficiency.  I’ve never caught up from the mid-year landing here, and the next two days will be grueling, to get out on time.

Quietly, the Bathtub will roll over 800,000 visitor clicks in three or four hours from now — certainly before midnight.  The Berlin Wall continues to be the major topic day in and day out, followed by Sabat’s compelling cartoon of the African tsunami of drought, and that ancient jumping goat. 

So much to say.  So tired.

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Posted by Ed Darrell

Taxis to the past, and the future

May 30, 2008

Bill Howdle lives, for a while longer anyway, in Manitoba. He’s got heart disease and a brain tumor, which explain the name of his blog, Dying man’s daily journal.

He used to drive a taxi. One woman was grateful he did.

That story is well worth the time to read it. Click on the link. After all, each of us is dying. We might learn something.

1 Comment | A Good Story, Ethics, Good Deeds, Health care, Life | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Good though: Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

May 27, 2008

Utah Phillips died Friday. He was 73. He died at his home in Nevada City, California.

Wonderful tribute at Fifteen Iguana.

Utah Phillips publicity shot

Utah Phillips (publicity photo via Bluegrass Today)

Phillips’s website lists planned tributes, memorials and the funeral in Nevada City, California. KVMR Radio’s site has an obit and links to other tributes.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | A Good Story, Business Ethics, Citizenship, Current History, History, History and art, History audio sources, Humor, Labor and unions, Life, Music | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Graduation 2008, part 1

May 24, 2008

Today is graduation day for some of my seniors, at the school where I teach. It’s a wonderful affair, and it will be good to see them off on the next step, ceremonial though it is.

The chaos caused by graduation in this district cannot be minimized, for an odd scheduling reason. Today the seniors graduate. Tuesday, we’re back in class with everyone else, with a couple of days of instruction and finals yet to go. It’s nice to have the seniors gone — the halls are much easier to navigate, the juniors are already stepping up, the sophomores and freshmen suddenly realize the work they do leads to something — but the schedule seems out of whack.

I’m trying to adapt.

This year our family has multiple graduations — well, two. Younger son James graduates in a bit over a week, assuming he gets in a mass of work in classes that appeared after the state tests (for which he was exempt because he passed them all the previous year), and after more AP tests than I thought humanly possible.

James’ school held a ceremony and reception for the top 11% of the graduates, 75 kids who may be in the top 10% (a magic number in Texas because it guarantees admission to Texas colleges). Texas colleges won a majority of the plans of the graduates, but there was an impressive number of students off to out-of-state schools of high repute. (James is off to Lawrence, in Wisconsin.)

I wake up in a cold sweat. Clearly we must have done something right, as parents of graduating kids, as teachers of graduating kids. What was it?

5 Comments | Education, Life, No Child Left Behind Act, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Feynman: The beat goes on

March 11, 2008

Wow.

I believe this is an excerpt from a NOVA tribute to Feynman, which has never been available commercially so far as I have found.  Anybody know how to get a copy of the video?

Among other things, the piece included comments from some of Feynman’s closest friends, and it detailed their fascination with a tiny republic then inside of the Soviet Union, Tannu Tuva, which Feynman had determined to be the most obscure and difficult nation on Earth to travel to — and so, of course, he wanted to go.  The place is known today as Tuva.

No denying the man his orange juice.

1 Comment | Heroes, History, History images, Life, Physics, Point of personal privilege, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chemistry: No fun if nothing explodes

November 1, 2007

Our house had two or three of the things around from my three older brothers — you know, the old Gilbert or Chemcraft chemistry sets, complete with potentially dangerous chemicals, test tubes, an alcohol lamp, a couple of beakers and stands, and instructions for how to make cool reactions with warnings about not making things explode.

chemistry glassware with colored water

We all made things explode, of course. That’s the fun stuff. Making jellied alcohol was fun, too — older brother Wes did that at Halloween, as I recall, the better to make a flaming hand (once was enough, thanks). We didn’t worry so much about the poisonous qualities of hydrogen sulfide, as we did worry about how to claim somebody else was suffering from flatulence when we made it. The kits and their metal boxes were in poor repair by the time I got around to them, but other kids in the neighborhood had new ones, and we always had the labs at the junior high and high school, which were stocked with enough dangerous stuff to keep us on the edge of blowing up the school, we thought (probably incorrectly).

One sign of laboratory experience: The acid holes in the Levi jeans. Older son Kenny recently discovered these things still happen in a lab at college. It had never occurred to him to worry about it before — one of his favorite t-shirts, too. (Holes in clothes appear not to be the fashion statement they were for his parents . . .)

12 Angry Men laments the wussification of these old chemistry sets. No danger anymore, he says.

Someone in comments claims you can still get the dangerous stuff.

But someone else claims such kits may be illegal under Homeland Security and DEA rules. Heck, they say even Erlenmeyer flasks are illegal in Texas. They used to be very popular among the secretaries in the biology department because they made such fine vases for the single-stemmed flowers their grad-student admirers could afford. Gotta see what’s up with that.

Technology changes so you can’t get it anymore.

But, kids with solid chemistry experience make more money in the real world — especially chemical engineers. Here’s a Catch-22: Kids can make more money if they have the experience to get the job, but they can’t get the experience until they get the job.

Update, November 1:  The PBS/Wired Science segment on kids doing chemistry, and chemistry sets

4 Comments | Education, History, Learning, Life, Science, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

September 11 blogging

September 11, 2007

Three or four times I’ve started out to look at events of September 11, today.  Apart from my understanding that too much action was started in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, without understanding the history of the people involved, the nations involved, or the people to be involved in future action, the posts all dissolve into rant.

Anger makes it difficult to say anything erudite, or informative.  Maybe later.

I would like to hear from teachers who dealt with kids today.  It was six years ago — high school students, and perhaps 7th and 8th graders, have great interest in the World Trade Center bombings, and often those interests produce questions that go unanswered.  In one six-week period, I had a woman (now graduated) who complained that we didn’t spend enough time on the event — a week would have been appropriate, she thought, in a course that covered from 1900 to 2005 in six weeks.

What are your students’ concerns.  What do you do in class to commemorate the events, or to teach from the events, and what do you wish you could do?

Comments are open.

1 Comment | Current History, Freedom - Political, History, Life, Patriotism, Teaching, War on Terrorism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pushing them out of the nest

August 29, 2007

It’s been an interesting last few days. Saturday we drove to Austin to catch a session with a group called Colleges That Change Lives (CTCL), as younger son James is looking hard to find a good college fit for next fall. Sunday, Troop 355 honored its fifth Eagle this year (one of the five being James), and then we attended the ordination of a friend from our congregation, a recent graduate from Brite Divinity at TCU.

School started yesterday across Texas.

This afternoon older son Kenny popped in for a quick laundry run and to pick up some items he needs for the start of his third year at UT-Dallas.

So much change, all the time.

Over at Musings of a Dinosaur, a touching piece about sending the young ones off to college, in contrast to our own college trips 30 or so years ago.  Teachers have more to send off to college, more often.  Either that’s what ages us, or it’s what keeps us young.

6 Comments | College, Education, Family, First day, History, Life | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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