Room to Think

Fun Fact: The ancient Greeks used to have spoken word poetry a sport in their Olympic games. As an English major, I never took the chance to really study spoken word poetry...sometimes known as slam poetry, or performance poetry. But even that's not quite right. Spoken word poetry really means that you're breathing life into the words on a page. I always appreciated spoken word--I loved watching poetry slams. But since I never considered myself "good at poetry", I tended to steer away from the classes I had a hunch I wouldn't do well in. That means I missed out on some pretty badass classes. Those poets know how to express themselves. They know how to connect.  They know how to make their listeners feel. "If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom", she's gonna call me "Point B." Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint the solar system on...

Quite frankly, I feel like I'm making a miracle right now just by starting this post. Blogging has dropped out of my life in the past couple months, and I have to apologize. Just so you know, about 30% of that apology goes out to you guys, my few and faithful readers.  The other 70% is an apology to the academic, driven part of myself that has been neglected in favor of lazing around playing Skyrim, not finding a job, not updating my resume, and generally enjoying not having to go back to school.  That said, I'm not a fan of my brain turning to mush, and with all this free time, I can either start writing again, or continue doing craft projects until my graduation money runs out. I'll do another post just for the reading and crafting I've been up to. (I promise.) For now, I think it's appropriate, that since it's Tuesday, that I should reintroduce TEDtalk Tuesdays.  So...this is where my brain is at. I'm learning about my favorite animal--the ...

This talk is given by Brenda Brathwaite, a woman who has been a game designer since she was fifteen. Doesn't that just make you jealous?  I totally am. She doesn't design video games anymore, but she was a lead designer at Atari from 2001-03. Right now, though, her passion lies in making board (bored?) games for social change.  She's even got a blog about it. This talk is specifically about why she began making these types of games: her 7 yr-old half-black daughter came home after learning about the Middle Passage in school, and shrugged it off as if it were "some black people going on a cruise". Brenda couldn't stand her daughter's apathy, so she made a game to relate her daughter to the events of the Middle Passage.  And by the time they were done playing, everyone was in tears. Her daughter related to the people in the game, and superimposed her own experiences and relationships onto those characters to make meaning from the game. ...

I'm blogging from a classroom today ( A classroom, not the classroom), in response to this post that my professor, Brenda, put up on the class blog. The class itself is "Online Writing as Literature", which is how I ought to refer to the course, instead of saying "oh yeah, I've got a class on blogging"  in that drawling sort of voice that implies an eye-roll, or lifting my eyebrows expectantly, as if to say, "you jealous ?" With this class, we're attempting to establish the importance of blogging in a "literature" sense, and I'm not exactly sure what that entails.  Let's see what wiki says .  (That's right, I'm calling up wikipedia during a midterm...you jelly ?) Wiki says: Literature is the art of written works , and is not bound to published sources.   The word "literature" literally means "acquaintance with letters" . The two major classifications are poetry and prose . It is u...

You know, I really seem to be on a happiness binge with these TEDtalks--or maybe that's just TED. Either way, here is your TEDtalk for today (I started this at 11pm on Tuesday, it still counts!) This guy's name is Shawn Achor, and he "accidentally" broke his sister's arm when she was five in order to save her from being in the path of an imaginary sniper bullet. He still has yet to be thanked.  =) He also applied to Harvard on a dare...and he got in.  O_O In all seriousness though (kinda?), he has some hugely important messages to share with all of us: "...if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average."--on research it's possible to be a male medical student at Yale named Bobo who has leprosy AND menopause.  (5:54) and most importantly: The formula for success is wrong. (9:11) "If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be happier....

Sorry guys. I know it's not Tuesday.  It's not even Thursday anymore, as far as many of you are concerned. Most of my excuses pertain to the recent PNW snowfall, and an onset of recklessness, laziness, procrastination, and a simple willingness to just be outside. What was I saying about general recklessness? I DID mean to post on Tuesday.  In fact, I watched several TEDtalks that day; videos ranging from a cool statistics program  with a speaker who is like a sports commentator, to a pair of hilarious jugglers , a man who nearly died from healthy living, and a slew of videos about the brain and how it works , and how that will change computing . So...I've been busy.  I just haven't blogged. I gave you a bunch of links to my recent escapades through TEDland, and since I know 99% of you DIDN'T watch my last TED video, I figure I'll just skip to my thoughts and let you explore as you want this week. The reason I watched so many TEDtalks on ...