The whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts

A cigarette, a balcony, and I

Watch a light snow.

No wind, not too cold.

An individual catches my eye

playing in subtle updrafts

It moves and moves and moves...

I follow it out of sight.

The snowflake will soon be on the ground

Joining the millions that came before.

But as the snowflake fell, it danced

as if it became aware.

*This is my stab at poetry.*

Music Teachers are Sexy

One of the most important documents for a music educator is his/her philosophy of music education. This 1-page paper goes along with the resume to the possible employer. It is basically a portrait of how we feel about music education. It's very short and I have about 17 drafts accumulated during my years as a student.

My first one was a bunch of crap. I was aiming to please. They became gradually worse until today when I read my most recent abbarition from August 2007. It is nice to see that I have improved as a writer in the last three years... this paper was just silly.

I am writing an outline of important points to be included in my newest one and I have about 4 pages of material. To sort all this out I decided to take a peek at some examples from other universities. As I am reading all these I find that people fall into 2 main categories:

1) The textbook told me what I needed to write here

2) I lost my textbook so I'm going to fake it... music classes are pretty easy.

I have read about 20 different papers from undergrad and grad students and it looks pretty bleak. Everyone seems to miss the point. They might mention something about their own passion with music, or open with an anecdote about how they lost their virginity in the band locker room while Claire de Lune was playing in the background but they completely miss what seems to me as so simple: 'I love music and I want to share it with everyone'.

Why should we continue to fund music programs? Music can make you cower in a corner (The Ring soundtrack), start riots (Rage Against the Machine), pounce your lover (anything George Clinton), or trick you into thinking your chest is going to explode (Doctor Gradus...). My goal in music education is to introduce new music to the students that will elicit these different responses. All you sheeple (yeah I said it) will continue to pay for it because you can't get enough of it. We sex you into loving this stuff we love. Well... at least some of us do.

Nike Wisdom?

I met a cool girl and because I can't think of a better way to say it... she digs me. It's fantastic.

So, what do I do with this information? I have scripts and guiding paths for everything I confront on a day to day basis and this situation is comparable to being thrust into deep space and trying to figure out how to breath. I have had relationships, I've been on dates, I'm not a virgin... I'm not unfamiliar ground. Have I become senile? I have absolutely no idea how to handle this. Quite frankly I'm trapped in the confines of my emotions for the first time in (many many) years. I think I'm having a hard time following that and listening to myself because I have blocked it out for so long.

Should I be wearing a bullet-proof vest for this? Telling my self-defensive habits to have a few days off is makes me want to crawl into bed and not leave for the next week while I wait for all this to pass.

There was a moment last night where I was reacting on nothing but the high school puppy-love emotions. And.. well.. she digs me. So what do I do?

Stop complicating thing and just fuckin go for it.

P-funk.

Kyra..

My xkcd friend is following me. I'm actually embarrassed. I never really expected anyone to read this crap. It was more of a 'well now its out there' venting point. A psychological trick on myself to voice my opinion maybe.

I tried to send this in a message but being new to this blogging thing I couldn't figure out how to do it so this will have to work.

***This is a temporary filler space for the comic that I am drawing (after I learn how to draw) that explains my feelings better than words. Suffice it to say that I'm happy I have xkcd friends***

a shout-out to Mike Behe

I'll just start off by saying I'm pissed.

I'm pissed.

I'm sick of hearing it people. It's crap. Actually, it's a complete lack of crap. If there was crap involved, at least it would have weight and a smell. You could even throw it.

But alas, creationism, intelligent design (whatever you choose to call it) is bunk. It is not science anything. The 'scientific' argument you try to make is based in fallacy. Science builds its house upon the rock, and creation builds it's house on sand.

No, I do not know how it began. At least, not until we build a time-machine. I placed a pretty high bid on a flux-capacitor yesterday and you will be the first to know (either next week or last week). Yes, everything is so fragile that a small change in any of a million things could end life on this planet. No, I don't think someone created this universe for us. We fight like hell to stay warm, stay cool, stay hydrated, make babies, and find food. No, I don't need god to tell me not to kill, not to steal, or not to sleep with my best friend's wife. No, I don't have all the answers. Like everyone else, I'm still looking. Yes, it would be much easier to believe and trust in the lord. But, that just doesn't fucking cut it for me.

I have spent the last few years meeting some very nice, kind, godly, and scientifically misguided individuals. I opened my mind to their perspective on the subject and I found this: "trust in god". I'm very happy that you found enlightenment in some kind of 'spiritual' experience however loosely you may define it. NO! Science will never be able to disprove your god. The point is:

Humans started this fun little game of looking at things, asking questions about it, and using logic to find some answers. History shows that it became pretty popular. It took us hundreds of years to figure out what few rules we understand now. If you want to learn, you can. But please don't sit and bitch because you don't want to play.

Maybe you would be happier if your god gave you a better way to deal with that whole eternal damnation thing. Oh wait, I think there is someone on a soapbox over there... oh wait it's me.

How silly.

Post number 1 (pay no attention to the time stamp)

Greetings,

Welcome to my blog. This first post is for me. I'm trying to outline my goals for this blog.

1) writing more
2)feedback
3)world domination

This post will be changed from time to time as I find a better way to articulate these thoughts. For example, objective number 3 might change to something less trivial.

Thanks for reading/posting.

what i do on friday nights and thoughts on net neutrality

I read this webcomic:

http://xkcd.com/261/

at 15 til midnight and curiosity struck me with Godwin's Law. This drove me (again..) to wikipedia. I read the the entire article twice and then again clicking on the first thing I was not familiar with which was Reductio ad Hitlerum (other instances include names/theories/pop culture references... etc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

After following the same pattern, read, read again, click, I land at ad hominem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Again I followed the same pattern and now I am at a very specific concept through simple means.

I started with reading a thought provoking comic strip (which is sometimes over my head intellectually) and I picked one thing to explore. This referred me to wikipedia and I followed the same pattern. Curiosity --> pursuit of knowledge --> discovery of basic concept(s) and then back out with each level the same way I went in synthesizing this information.

Why am I writing this down? Two reasons: As a nascent educator, learning about learning is a passion of mine and there is a heated debate about the efficacy of the internet.

I have heard professors, fellow students, and pure bigots criticize wikipedia and the entirety of the internet for being an insurmountable mass of information that is, at times, complete bunk. My retort to that argument is: in an hour I went from reading a web comic to learning specifics about grammar in the English language, intellectual debate, and more.

This is a wonderful, but promising, example of the sedentary lifestyle. 50 years ago this process would involve hours searching in a library, which you would have to drive, walk or take a bus to, then get a library card (if you're me then add lose library card and get new library card to this list of obstacles) in order to merely begin to utilize this resource. After these obstacles the size of the library would also have its limitations. How would someone go about self-education on the topic of spiraling conversational trends to Hitler comparisons in pop culture? The largest library in the world would have the obstacle of sheer size. Librarians would have to be professionals with great skills of navigation in order to traverse the columns of books.

Sure, the internet has its flaws (http://www.glennbeck.com/) and wikipedia is not the end-all best source for accurate information but it is a start. And you have to admit the efficiency is astounding. Overcoming misinformation is just a matter of society becoming skeptical of information and basing their knowledge on support from multiple sources and personal experience instead of developing an opinion solely from the megaphone of political pundits. Books are not free from misinformation and misinterpretations either. History shows us what happens with poor interpretations of religious text...

Pursuit of knowledge is an endless journey for society. The development of wikipedia, as well as other sites, in our generation has given us a tool to learn at a faster rate than our parents. We do utilize the internet but it is in danger of being reduced to censorship because of religious and capital agendas. The issue of net neutrality might not be volatile as nuclear disarmament, but when society chokes knowledge it begins to atrophy.


Opinions please.



words in bold are words that required use of dictionary.com for correct spelling

***This was originally posted on my facebook page (11-28-09)