Foer is the kind of adult for whom a pre-Huggies life was rudderless.
Jonah Lehrer on the Picasso quote “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”: “From the perspective of the brain, Picasso is on to something, as the frontal lobes (and the DPLFC in particular) are the last brain areas to fully develop. And so the super-ego settles in, and we become too self-conscious to create. Obviously, we need the frontal lobes to function – just look at the tragic life of SB – but every talent comes with a tradeoff. When we repress our urge to confabulate we also repress the urge to create. To quote Picasso once again: ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.’ But it’s still a lie.” Related: Ken Robinson’s TED talk on how education is restraining the creativity of children.
The Boston Globe writes about the Davis Square Tiles Project, which tracks down the students who 30 years ago put up painted tiles at Davis Square T station’s brick entrance wall. (via.) “’How many people walk by those tiles and think they were made by some third-grader this year?’ said Sabino Lagattolla. Lagattolla, who drew a sailing ship under a beaming yellow sun when he was in second grade, is now a 38-year-old network engineer, living in Hudson with a wife, two children, and another baby due in November.”
“It may be that we thrive when certain of our relationships are drained of emotion, that we may then be able to explore our lives more fully, because emotions tend to act as a brake. They reinforce the status quo. They set up a kind of tyranny rather like the psychology of a very small child, which may be entirely governed by passionate emotions that are in fact very limiting. It’s only when the child learns to control its emotions that he can begin to explore all sorts of interesting possibilities at the other end of the nursery.” – JG Ballard in a 1997 interview in Frieze.
The future of fashion right here: the shoe that grows with kids’ feet
Abandoned schools in Detroit might double as zombie movie sets. (via.) On the other hand, “Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished.”
The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist. (via.)
Last year, Odakyu Railway held a “Train Design Contest” to collect drawings from children all over Japan. At the conclusion, two of the submitted works were used to decorate actual trains. (via.)
Someday Twins Will Rule the World
Since 1980, the number of twins has climbed 75%. I wonder how this is changing elementary school friendship dynamics. Are twins more or less likely to be bullied? Are there non-twin on twin rivalries? My favorite band at the moment — School of Seven Bells — is fronted by twins. By 2030 or so, will they be icons for some future hipster twin subculture? Could a twin ever get elected president?
Right now there is some hrmphing at mothers of twins, as it indicates later age at the birth of the child or using IVF or both. On Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style last year, a mother of twins received a makeover. She was quite horrible and deserving of all the hate from Television Without Pity. But then some comments started mocking her because she had twins. Like it’s something pathetic about her femininity if she needed … help. I hope I don’t need to point out how disgusting and wrong that is. After all, so did Angelina Jolie (probably.) Anyway, I was just thinking about all that as today John Mullan in The Guardian lists the best twins in literature (via.) And then some chilling news in The Telegraph about a village in Brazil where, attributed to Josef Mengele’s experiments, “as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed” (via.)
Scientific American reminds us why many highly intelligent children do poorly later in life: they never need to put effort into their studies. “If the scholastic achievement of highly intelligent children remains below average for an extended period, many teachers will fail to recognize their potential. As a result, such students may not get the encouragement they need, further depressing their desire to learn. They may fall far behind in their schoolwork and even develop behavior problems. Boys may turn aggressive or become class clowns. Girls often develop performance anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms.” The trick for educators is to both challenge gifted students and reward persistence as well as excellence.
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