Pitt Students Completely Melt Down After Visit From Conservative Writer – Behold, the next generation of industry leaders and politicians. There’s lots of stories like these, but this is in my own backyard—I can see the Cathedral of Learning if I look behind me at work. Phobialist doesn’t list “an irrational fear of a different opinion,” but it should.
This University of Oregon Study on Feminizing Glaciers Might Make You Root for Trump – Nothing can make me root for Trump, but along with the first link, it will make me root for the implosion of western academia.
What was a Church Service Like in the Second Century – Spoilers: there was no rock band doing worship.
No, honey, you can’t be anything you want to be. And that’s okay. – Kids, probably you’re average.
A Great JavaScript Side Project is your Most Important Asset – I need a side project. Any suggestions?
Different Types of Blast Beats (with notation) – Educational.
The Seen and the Unseen of Electric Cars
Exo Bar sampler pack – I just got mine last week, plus another from a friend who found out she’s allergic. They’re good! Here’s a picture of one of the cocoa nut (not coconut) bars. As you can see, no cricket legs or weird things sticking out. Tastes different but not unappealing.
more overflow – a sketchbook journal by Marcia Furman – My painter-friend Marcia does a sketchbook blog with daily updates. Something nice to look at in the middle of my very serious RSS feed reader.
5 Comments
The extraordinary whining about Milo’s performance convinces me that we aren’t that far from blood in the streets. And I am delighted to proclaim just how ordinary I am; it’s how God uses me that qualifies as special. I hate JScript but I actually liked the video on electric cars.
Re: electric cars–their popularity is all marketing. A friend of mine called them “sausage cars,” because if you saw how they were being made, you realize they’re not as good as you thought.
I probably shouldn’t have laughed at the first two. I have some issues with the article wanting to dump on high expectations, but I don’t want to fill up your comment box, so… I guess I’ll just say I have a primal desire to bite or punch the kind of people who write *that* sort of article.
“article wanting to dump on high expectations”
Can you elaborate? Not sure what you mean here. Or am I poking a hole in the viper’s nest by asking that? 🙂
I have a number of things to say about it. For a start, children are dreamers. They have an innocence to their faith in what could be–they have a certain joy (to whatever degree or other, depending on personality). I’m guessing this is why Jesus tells his followers to become like little children. But adulthood, especially for the pragmatist, can be a dream killer. The pragmatist will intentionally choose to subvert his dreams in order to be a “realist” or “practical”. And then you find these pragmatists taking their boatloads of cynicism for the dreams they once had and dumping all over the children who will grow up one day, as well. I often find these articles in Christian publications, where the authors discourage youth groups from promoting the excitement of faith because, as these pragmatists believe, life is ordinary and rarely if ever transcendent. God rarely chooses to use people in great ways.
A whole lot of life becomes what you make it, through both attitude and expectation. It really doesn’t matter one whit that high expectations cause people to cheat and lie. Cheaters and liars aren’t dreamers. They are people who have already lost their dreams and who are feeding their egos off outward appearances instead. This is why I didn’t want to write all this in a comment, ha ha. I have much to say on this subject. Ultimately, though, for people–even “average” people–to fulfill their purpose as humans, the answer does not lie in lowered expectations. The answer lies in training children to cope with disillusionment when their dreams don’t happen as they planned, or according to their trajectory. That way they can avoid becoming cynics and continue to pursue their dreams.
As far as avoiding the excitement of faith, which is not precisely pertinent to this article–well, whatever. The transcendent is something we lost little by little as we became a reformed and enlightened and rational society. But the transcendent still exists, and young people are more primed to encounter it because they aren’t as logical. I simply do not think it is the place of adults to force youths into being like them in attitude and thought.
Or as my dad quoted for me in a card right before I got married, because he apparently didn’t want me to lose my dreams, “Catch your dreams before they slip away; lose your dreams and you will lose your mind. Is life unkind?”–Jagger and Richards