Dan Lipka Web Log

Can you teach someone to be creative? Often, creative abilities are usually thought of as skills that people just seem to have naturally. However, the more time I spent with Molly the more I think creativity is a skill, like math, reading, athletics, or anything else (of course people might have some positive or negative genetic predisposition to learning any skill). In school, there are specific classes on auditory creativity (music) and visual creativity (art), but there are no classes that focus on mental creativity. As parents throughout the country complain when music and art classes are closed, they should be equally upset that mental creativity classes don’t exist at all. Although people might think that creativity isn’t something you can teach, everyday Molly is proving that theory wrong. Of course, all kids are creativity, but Lindy and I have actively tried to help Molly explore her creative instincts. Molly, like most children, loves storied, but more

My father is a pessimist, and old fashion pessimist. When talking about almost anyone in his life there is almost nobody that seemed to have inspired him. However, (besides sports heroes) there are only a few exceptions, well there are really two; two brothers. When my father talks about John and Robert Kennedy (especially Robert) his face lights up, he smiles, and his eyes look 30 years younger. There haven’t been any public figures in my entire life that has ever made me feel that sense of inspiration, brought on by their personal confidence, intellect, and convictions, that Robert Kennedy apparently brought to entire generation. A true leader, whose own convictions are those of the people, and who had the ability to convey his ideas and see them thought. No public figure I know meets that simple standard. I recognize that the media has played a role in forcing public figures to be especially conservative with their thoughts and their policies. The media’s intense sea

I am a Jets Fan. The Jets had a great season last year. The Jets will have another great season this year. Two of those sentences are true, the other is sadly all wrong. Last year the Jets had one of the easiest schedules in the history of the NFL and beating only one team with a winning record all season. In 2007, it they play a much harder schedule, and their team is only slightly improved. I’m realistically predicting 6-10, and optimistically going with 8-8. They can only go so far with no offensive line, no defensive line, only one cornerback and one safety, and no tight end. A few weeks ago I thought that since this season was most likely not going to lead to a playoff game, why not trade their injury-prone QB (to a team like Atlanta) to a first or second round draft pick. Give the backup a chance, and build for the future. Of course, they would never do something like that, because professional sports executives are terrified of making bold moved because their

I was watching a show on life, the universe, and everything and several scientists said that finding life on other planets would be the greatest discovery in the history of man. Unless that life is intelligent to the point of being able to communicate with us, I couldn’t disagree more with these scientists. I see very little practical, metaphysical, religious, or scientific significance to finding random life on other planets. What are we going to learn? So we are not “alone” in the universe, so what? This will not disprove any part of any religious theory in any way. It will have no impact on life on this planet. And although it is an interested topic, why should we (as a nation) be spending money to explore something simple for the sake of exploration. Sure, I wouldn’t mind so much if there was nothing better to spend the money on, but as long as real problems like lack of clean drinking water, genocide, and poverty (on the global scale) exist maybe we would should focus