Idiots don't write comedy

Sure, two guys kicking each other in the butt is funny for most people ... for about two or three seconds. Anybody could write a script for that.

But real comedy, the kind of stuff that people will still find to be funny decades, even centuries later -- think the best of Aristophanes or Shakespeare -- is the fruit of genius.

So don't be surprised that the author of this fascinating article below is the same fellow who brought you Monty Python:

"I was a history teacher for ten years and I enjoyed it very much indeed. But today's educational trends, which focus on specific metrics of accountability, represent a fundamental change in mind-set that demands some pretty astounding creativity on the teacher's part.

I've been interested in what makes people creative ever since I started writing forty years ago. My first discovery was that I would frequently go to bed with a problem unsolved, and then find in the morning not only that the solution had mysteriously arrived, but that I couldn't quite remember what the problem had been in the first place. Very strange.

Then I came across research done at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s by Donald W. MacKinnon. He had examined what made people creative, and he found that the professionals rated "most creative" by their colleagues displayed two characteristics: They had a greater facility for play, meaning they would contemplate and play with a problem out of real curiosity, not because they had to, and they were prepared to ponder the problem for much longer before resolving it. The more creative professionals had a "childish capacity" for play -- childish in the sense of the total, timeless absorption that children achieve when they're intrigued."

More at: http://www.edutopia.org/creativity-intelligence-john-cleese

Curiosity kills more than cats

So I read today about a little boy who seriously cut himself when he curiously poked his finger into a hole in some sort of metal box in the restroom and encountered a jagged piece of metal within.

Curiosity, plain and simple.

Curiosity is linked to intelligence. Your average earthworm exhibits little to no interest in anything other than ingesting dirt. It nevers appears to wonder why, its annelid life-goal being but to squirm and die.

But the brainier a beast, the more it sniffles its surroundings and pokes its various digits, appendages, nose and tongue into every nook and cranny.

The old proverb warns against such behavior. And indeed, with good reason. Curiosity, in the animal world, seems to cause a lot of casualties. In The Hedgehog's Dillema, by Hugh Warwick, we are warned to be careful what manner of substances we slather around our yards in hedgehog country, as the spiny beast loves to sample any intriguing new scent it encounters.

Human parents struggle mightly to prevent their young offspring from ingesting pocket change, thumbtacks, household poisons and electric sockets, to name a few. Once a modicum of growth is developed, there is yet no rest for the weary: the young ones promptly try to shove beans and such into their nostrils or ears as well; and the schemes only get more convoluted as the children get older.

How is it that such a deadly trait as curiosity goes hand-in-hand with intelligence?

Quote of the Day

"His wish is not to seem,
but be,
the best,
Reaping the deep-sown furrow
of his mind
In which all goodly counsels
have their root."

-- Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes

The dark side of brilliance

We prize and value intelligence but I had a disturbing thought watching a special on monkey-hunting chimps last night.

The purpose of intelligence in nature, at its most basic, is to kill.

Whether it's a dog or a dolphin, a monkey or a man, nature's purpose for a better brain is to improve the odds of a successful hunt.

Sure, people now use their brains to paint pictures and erect skyscrapers, but we only have time for such diversions because we have become the most effective killers on the planet, having eliminated our every natural rival and enemy except disease and having learned how to keep our meat on hand in a stockyard until we're ready to chop it up for the table.

Quick lunch break post --check this out

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/about.html