Miep Gies passed away. A documentary to view and remember.
My buddy, Suze, has been pushing for me to read, Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn
I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love
at the moment. I'm only a third of the way in, so I'm not going to comment yet. I'll just say that I really appreciated Ariel Levy's comment about Gilbert in her review of Committed, Gilbert's new book. "One generally doesn’t indulge another person’s emotional processing at
this length unless the jabbering is likely to conclude with sex." Totally. Wish she would shut up about being such a "creative" person. I would think that a truly "creative" person who come up with a synonym or something.
Laughing at the falling, frozen iguanas. (via Megan)
Apt. 11d 
“I’m only a third of the way in, so I’m not going to comment yet.”
Why ever not?
I’ve written a whole bunch of reviews of books I haven’t finished yet. I call them Premature Evaluations.
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I found “Eat, Pray, Love” interesting but also a bit tiresome – how many people have the luxury of finding themselves? We’re all too busy doing the mundane, honourable things like earning a living, keeping a home, raising children…
A bit too much navel-gazing.
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I always suspected that Eat, Pray, Love would cause me to roll my eyes based on the synopsis, and the quotes in Levy’s review do nothing to change my impression.
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I really enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love. I thought it was fantastic, in a “suck you in, can’t put it down kind-a-way.” It doesn’t mean that some portions of the book were weak or not as compelling. With all due respect, books written in the narrative format are obviously navel-gazing, so I don’t think this is fair critique.
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Just reading the blurb for Rewired churns my stomach. My guess is, don’t put money in this guy’s pocket. The book will tout an approach you can buy from him, have next to no research, and what research it cites, when you track it down, won’t actually say anything like he claims. He’s got all the warning signs, a third rate career, (Cal State Dominguez Hills?), a sudden jump to the mass market on a not particularly new insight (fears of kiddie rapists on cyberspace are vastly overblown!), lots of self-promotion, and a sweet consulting gig for a company that markets his products and services.
I can already tell you that the book cites studies that compare kids brains and adults brains to justify radically changing teaching. But since the study cited studied only 6 brains and we don’t know what the scans were like of kids brains pre-internet (b/c nobody was scanning kids brains then) the data is completely meaningless. Yes adult brains and kid brains are different. But is that because of technology or lack of experience?
There are a whole bunch of technofuturists making the rounds of independent schools and public schools and most are frauds. Avoid Ian Jukes, at all costs.
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