Rocco Maiolo's Ramblings and Musings

The ease of getting information has made us lazy, I think. Maybe we don't retain it as well; it has become disposable. I mean, years ago if we wanted to find out how to fix a leaky faucet or if we wanted to know who Narcissus was, we'd have to go to the library, look through the card catalogue, maybe ask the librarian where to look, find the book, and read up on it. You'd think that if we wanted to know something that badly -- and went through all that trouble to learn it -- that we'd probably retain it. Or we wouldn't bother finding out at all because it wasn't worth the effort. Let me give an example: I ran across a word in a Steve Martini novel that I was reading. Cool word, I thought. I looked it up. I do that often at http://www.dictionary.com/ . The word meant a person having a homegrown, nontraditional kind of education. I didn't write the word down anywhere; now I can't remember the word and it's driving me crazy. Maybe if I had to go grab ...

I was caught in the middle of a friendly debate regarding Outliers a while ago; it went something like this: EM: Outliers is a great book! ST: Ya, but what practical good is it? EM: Well it explains how... ST: Okay, what's its thesis in a nutshell? EM: (gives articulate answer) but it's not that kind of book. ST: I don't get it... EM: read the book... Anyhow, I'd been wanting to read the book, so I borrowed it from EM. I told him I'd tell him what I thought, so here it goes: What jumps out at me -- in direct response to the question "what good is it?" -- is the notion that there are no rags-to-riches, self-made success stories. Behind every huge success (like Bill Gates) there is opportunity, hard-work, community and legacy (cultural background). Most of those things don't answer the question above because they're out of the individual's control. The one thing that is not is "Community". As a teacher/parent/fellow human being, tha...

Summer time for a teacher is a time when you realize that if you don't seize the day that -- bam -- 60 of them are gone before you know it and it's September. This year, I'm making plans to avoid that; in my journal, I've listed things that I want to do: join my brother's gym write (songs and stuff) do some wine tours play squash with my daughter squeeze in a 2 day camping trip read about 10 books and so on Gotta commit these things to paper -- it takes you one step closer to actually doing them. That's it; super short blog. I'm going to write a song now -- gonna call it "Summertime"