Category: Exploration

Holy da Vinci, Batman!

 

 From The Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of the comic-book author Bob Kane, (books by this author) born in the Bronx (1916), who was working at DC Comics in 1939 when his editors began asking for more superhero characters to follow up on the success of Superman. Kane thought about it over the weekend, and on Monday morning he turned in some sketches of a character he called Batman. The character made his debut in DC Comics number 27, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” in May of 1939. He is alter ego of multimillionaire Bruce Wayne and one of the few superheroes in the history of comic books who doesn’t have any special powers. He’s just rich enough to build himself special crime-fighting gadgets. Kane said he based the character partly on Zorro, because he liked the idea of a fashionable rich guy dressing up as a vigilante at night to fight crime. He got the idea for Batman’s costume from a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of a bat-winged flying machine.

So, burning question:

Your faced with a creative challenge. What do you do? What resources will you draw from, (literally, if you’re an artist, or figuratively, if you’re tangling another sort of task)? Did you ever imagine that Bob Kane would use the genius of a 420-year dead guy to inspire him? Happens all the time.

Grog Goes Green. (Or Not.)

Read this article: For Early Man, Going Green Wasn’t Easy: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112124572

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So, even our ancestors didn’t have an easy time keeping the planet from harm. But did they imagine, as they were struggling for survival, that our skies would blacken with pollutants and poisons, our oceans would fill with plastic islands, miles wide and deep, or the land would be filled with garbage for hundreds of years? Who knows?

Here are some questions to think about:

Who’s responsible for our futures?

Is progress always right, or always wrong?

Does technology change cultures, or cultures change technology?

Blackbird singing in the dead of night…

 

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Now you’re going to think I’m obsessed with crows. I’m not. (At least I don’t think I am. In any case, that’s between me and my “doctor.”) My husband sent me this link to this story, including video, from Wired magazine. Again, these birds are demonstrating intelligence and creative thinking. Check out this story and links, and let me know your thoughts: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/aesopscrows/

Questions: Who was this fellow Aesop they refer to in the article? What did he do that he is now famous for? Do you know of stories from your own culture that are like Aesop’s? Could you write a modern-day fable? What would be the moral or lesson?

Got Imagination?

Smith’s book, How to be an Explorer of the World, is a feast for the mind and soul. Don’t live in a world of grays and browns – wake up and smell the creativity!

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Explorer-World-Portable/dp/0399534601

 You know me. I like to be creative. Think. Make art. Write. Read. I really appreciate what Keri Smith put together in her book about exploration.

For example, on page 144-145, she writes:

Thought Experiments: Einstein used “thought experiments” (questions that can only be solved using imagination), on a regular basis. He actually formulated the special theory of relativity by asking the question, ‘what would it be like to travel on a beam of light?’ It is interesting to conduct these thought experiments in the midst of everyday life.

Some thought experiment starters:

  • what if all my neighbors had secret lives?
  • what if the newspaper held all the secrets of the universe in some kind of code?
  • what if all leaves had secret messages embedded on them?
  • what if little elves lived on the roof and only came out at night?
  • what if my house were a playgroun? a blank canvas? had secret powers?

 

Pale Blue Planet

We are here: Pale Blue Planet

This is an homage to Carl Sagan’s famous speech about our little dust mote — we are so tiny, so insignificant, so small — and yet, we continue to dream big. I for one think that even though we are living and dying on something so small, what are our alternatives? Yes, we can and should take better care of each other and our world, because it’s the only one we’ve got.

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