Posts by mark taslov
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Hard News: Music! That one album, in reply to linger,
Perhaps the monitor icon links at the top of posts need to be more conspicuous? FG you stealth you…epic
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Access: National Standards and the…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
that the wee lass was barely vocal when she began at the school
Yes, that really is remarkable Rosemary. The changes to the lyrics are by Christian rock band Cloverton.
The first step, surely, on the road to creativity is finding a child’s natural medium?
It’s an interesting question, because for the most part our traditional education process hinges on a process of suppressing the creativity that most children innately possess – except in cases such as Kaylee’s where there is an obvious talent to be nurtured. The difficulty this presents for teachers is in finding the balance between encouraging meritocracy and working in the best interests of all members of the chorus. Again I’m a little weary about too strongly conflating the arts with creativity in this X-Factor/The Voice/ American Idol age, in that creativity is a means of using our minds to resolve the problems that life presents – from science to maths and all in between, some children don’t have a natural medium and some only reveal theirs much later:
some of his teachers thought he might be retarded (mentally handicapped); he was unable to speak fluently (with ease and grace) at age nine
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Access: National Standards and the…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Thanks for this Rosemary, I caught the brief clip on the news so it’s wonderful to hear it all the way through. This performance illustrates well the mutual exclusivity of the overlapping concepts; art and creativity. Here the artistic accomplishment is measurable in our response as listeners while the creativity required to perform a Leonard Cohen song verbatim in a uniformed, static group is of little note.
I think it’s important to remain vigilant about this distinction as Hilary’s pointed out:
Uniformity, not creativity is the aim.
Because it would be all to easy for a Government to throw wads of cash at this type of issue without specifying clear outcomes, doing so simply to placate criticism at a lack of funding for ‘arts and creativity’ – most schools probably already have the vital ingredients for the clip above: a stage, a piano and a few brave pure voices.
As Hilary’s opening paragraph highlights, exploring and developing creativity – which is essentially a form of problem solving – doesn’t require expensive resources: in fact the scarcer the resources, the greater the degree of creativity encouraged.
A couple of years back The Verlaine’s Graeme Downe’s quoted a songwriter who was guest speaker for his composition class:
"you only have to make one mistake to ruin a song"
What I found unusual about his paying homage to this idea is that a leading feature of the Verlaines’ music to me is their capacity to produce flawed masterpieces, the ruin of a song being an entirely subjective experience and the success of a song often contingent on its conformity to the vernacular.
Though you probably won’t thank me for it, The art brut of The Shaggs (whom Zappa named as the #3 greatest band in history) illustrates the conflicted nature of the interaction between artistic accomplishment and creativity in a way that defies conventional wisdom and offers a confounding window into Dot Wiggin’s put-upon adolescent mind; highlighting the very fine line between encouraging children to speak and putting words in their mouths.
Sorry, a much longer spiel than I'd intended ~ Merry Christmas!
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Hard News: 2016: The arc of a year, in reply to Russell Brown,
That was fitting end to the series, an apodictic argument for change Russell. Seconding Zach’s thoughts above. If they’re even up to the task, the polies need to get their heads around this pronto. Congratulations!
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Anyway I’ll step away, I didn’t post to argue or have a discussion about the merits of Apple, I just found the reference troubling in context.
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Speaker: Fleeing Syria for the…, in reply to James Littlewood*,
Jobs is an easy example of an immigrant story which went well
But Seinfeld’s easier no? At the very least he has a clean enough track record in employment relations not to dilute the point or have it misconstrued.
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Speaker: Fleeing Syria for the…, in reply to linger,
ewwww!!!
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Speaker: Fleeing Syria for the…, in reply to clintonlogan,
Jobs was a deeply flawed character
Absolutely. My link above was page 4 of a 7.
My favourite paragraph in your piece was:
Tragically, the problem is systemic and extends way beyond footwear. From bananas to inflatable lawn Santas to mobile phones, modern consumerism relies on a marginalised group of humans getting totally screwed over for our retail gratification.
That’s the message I took away in this holiday period. Because if we reach a point where we’re prepared to look the other way while people rail at low income service workers; deny paternity; fire people without notice; short change friends; refuse to offer stock options to long time collaborators; harass interviewees, park in handicap spots; create a culture of fear in the workplace which stretches to raiding peoples’ homes and intimidating journalists; were it to ever come to pass that this type of misanthropy be excusable because someone built something, then we might as well be electing billionaire cunts to rule the free world.
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This is a great article expressing a worthy sentiment and featuring beautiful photography Clinton, but I found the Steve Jobs reference “troubling”.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Internet…, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I went on my first internet date about 14 years ago, it was a great experience and so I continued using the medium until I met my spouse. I’ve met some good people and some not so good. I’ve been sexually assaulted a couple of times by people I met online. Another person I met called to cancel our second date and inform me they’d just downed a bunch of sleeping pills, fear of a repeat kept me on the leash until I found out that I was one of a harem. One person I met was biter, another called me up a couple of months after our brief dating period had ended to ask to borrow money. Generally speaking most people were decent individuals.