actually why don't you just stay home and watch the history channel

Reporting from San Francisco - The University of California on Tuesday began considering dramatic changes in the way it educates its students and raises revenue, including whether to offer three-year bachelor's degrees and enroll more out-of-state undergraduates.

UC's Commission on the Future heard its first set of proposals aimed at making the 10-campus system more efficient while preserving its academic strengths. Some ideas are sure to be controversial as they are discussed over the next few months, officials said.

"Some recommendations you may like a lot. Some you may think are terrible. But that's OK. They are important ideas to put forward," UC Regents Chairman Russell S. Gould said at the commission's meeting at UC San Francisco.

Proposals from the commission's five subcommittees include: encouraging some students to complete bachelor's degrees in three years through extra summer sessions and fewer requirements; doubling the number of out-of-state students, who now make up 5% of undergraduates and pay significantly higher fees; charging more for the most popular campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA; and expanding online course offerings.

LA Times | UC panel proposes three-year bachelor's degrees, other big changes

Problem: Fees are too high at the University of California for all students to afford an education there. Executive bonuses and construction projects continue to rise, as workers and staff are laid off.
Solution: Encourage students to take on a heavier course load and rush through school, ditch the classrooms and put classes online, reject more Californian students from the UC applicant pool.

Something's not right here.

creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status

TED Talks | Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

come on, kitty-kitty-kitty

If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

New York TImes | The Case for Working with Your Hands

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan

You can watch episodes of Cosmos here.

"Ambition is a state of feeling perpetually flawed." - Scott Adams

"Lord" Timothy Dexter... was an American eccentric businessman who was peculiarly lucky and never bothered to learn to spell.[...]

Because he was basically uneducated, his business sense was peculiar but extremely lucky. Somebody inspired him to send warming pans for sale to West Indies, a tropical area. His captain sold them as ladles for local molasses industry and made a good profit. Next Dexter sent wool mittens to the same place. Asian merchants bought them for export to Siberia.
His next venture was selling coal to Newcastle, which should have been a sure failure. His ships happened to arrive in the time of a coalminer's strike and potential customers were actually desperate.[...]

At the age of 50 he decided to write a book about himself - A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress. He wrote about himself and complained about politicians, clergy and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but absolutely no punctuation, and capital letters were sprinkled about at random[...] When people complained that it was hard to read, for the second edition he added an extra page - 13 lines of punctuation marks - asking readers to "peper and solt it as they plese."

One day he began to wonder what people would say about him after he died. He proceeded to announce his death and to prepare for a burial. About 3,000 people appeared for the wake. However, Dexter's wife refused to cry for his passing, for which he later caned her.

Wikipedia | "Lord" Timothy Dexter

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." - Abraham Lincoln

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

"When you decide to be something, you can be it. That’s what they don’t tell you in the church." - Frank Costello

Clip from a documentary on sex education in Holland.