Don’t you love it when two ideas unexpectedly rub together and give off sparks? My wife sent me an article from today’s New York Times, where Matt Miller writes

Still, there is something telling (if not downright dysfunctional) when a society’s most talented people feel they have to sacrifice the meaningful relationships every human craves as the price of exercising their talent.

A few minutes later, my daily quotation from Verba Volant arrived:

Quotation of the day:
Author - Dario Fo

Italian - ancora non si è capito che soltanto nel divertimento, nella passione e nel ridere si ottiene una vera crescita culturale

English - we still haven’t learned that real cultural growth only comes with enjoyment, passion and laughter.

Incidentally, Verba Volant is a great free site: Every day, they send you an interesting quotation, translated in many languages.
Click to subscribe to Verba Volant

John Paul Lumpp, the designer of Grow With the Flow, wrote me this afternoon to say

D,
I just got the proofs for GWTF. I scanned the book for possible errors in pagination, headers, and misplaced graphics. I did not see any problems. Now it’s your turn. I will get this to you as quickly as possible for your review.

Yeah!

Earlier this week, NPR did two linked interviews. One day, they talked to Steven Johnson, whose book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, presents the case “that the complexity of modern TV shows and video games might make today’s media consumer sharper than those of 30 years ago.” The next day, they interviewed Richard Louv, whose book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, “argues that kids are so plugged into television and video games that they’ve lost their connection to the natural world.”

There was just a little attempt to put the two authors at odds – to give each an opportunity to disagree with the other. I thought it was both civil and commonsensical that neither author did. Instead, both of them said that what kids need is balance. Agreed: I’d like to think that both technology and nature are useful and necessary for our kids, and that neither excludes the other, or stands in opposition to it.

Listen to the interviews