This is a brilliant talk by Ken Robinson about the nature of intelligence, creativity, and what our educational system is doing to kill it. Do schools kill creativity? Only if you go to class.
Filed under: Creativity | Education | Humor | Science | Video
I’ve liked the Cardigans ever since “Lovefool” (which I really didn’t like much) was popular. Since then, they have gotten older and darker and I’ve loved each album they’ve done in the past ten years or so. This first one is off of their latest album “Super Extra Heavy Gravity (2005),” and the second one is from “Gran Tourismo (1998)”. I suppose that’s all there is to say. What do you think?
Loosing My Favorite Game
I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to be Nicer
I couldn’t decide which I liked better, so here’s both videos from “Later with Jools Holland” (One with each singer).
No Lucifer
Waving Flags
I miss Don and Janet. We used to see them all the time and went to their house every whatever-day-of-the-week it was to watch Friends when Julie and Don were in Graduate school together. Janet is one of the most talented interpreters of imagination and how it splashes out all over everything that I’ve ever known. She once made a bar (yes a bar) for Don as a birthday present.
What happens when they decide to make something together? Tales of the Merman, that’s what. If you’re one of those fuddy-duddies who need things to make sense, then I don’t know what to say to you. I never have.
1987: The year after I graduated from high school. My bands used to play with Screaming Trees now and again when they came to Eugene. They’ve always been one of my very favorite bands. I still don’t understand how they weren’t huge.
I fell in love with this sound on Robyn Hitchock’s “Airscape” from the eerily beautiful album, “Element of Light”, but I’ve never really heard a whole song played on a Glass Harp. This guy is really good.
I was visiting my friend John’s MySpace page a minute ago and saw that he has posted a trailer for a documentary about one of my favorite bands from Seattle, Silkworm. Halfway through the trailer they start talking about Michael’s death. I hadn’t even known he had died.
It was a little more than two years ago when, apparently, his car was hit by a woman speeding and trying to kill herself. Michael was a great drummer with - as I recall - an amazingly sweet personality and no pretension. That was rare in the 90s rock world of Seattle.
I remember standing to the side of the stage at the Off Ramp watching him play. Coincidentally - after posting just an hour or so ago about smiling rock musicians - I remember him smiling shyly as he played. Man, he really hit the drums hard.
I’m sorry he’s gone and my thoughts go out to his family and the rest of Silkworm. Cheers, Michael.
I posted this video a long time ago, but it was before the new-fangled video hosting places made it easy to embed video. Or maybe it was this creaky old Wordpress blog software that wouldn’t let me do it. Whatever the reason, bask in the wonder that is the Lyrebird:
Why haven’t I posted this before? This is one of my favorite bands: great lyrics, great music, great energy. And a fucked up perspective. Yay.
I picked this version because it sounds pretty good (not as good as the official video, but live is better for me). This version of the song performed live at Bonnaroo is great too. The sound isn’t as good, but I feel good every time I see how happy Craig Finn seems at the start of the song. It reminds me of how playing shows used to make me feel.
Again with the video. What the fuck? If I had something to say, I’d say it. I guess I’m just an Everyday Normal Guy.
I know it’s monumentally lazy to stroll back here every few weeks to post a video, but…well, I guess that’s all I have room for. Hell, it’s not like anyone reads this fucking blog anyway.
I found this video on YouTube of NoMeansNo back before they had a guitar player. I think I saw them at the Vatican in Eugene as a duo, but can’t remember those days all that clearly. This probably would have been from the mid-’80s sometime. I played with them a couple of times around 88 or 89, but they had grey hair by then.