April 10, 2012
Women in Science: Einstein’s Advice to a Little Girl Who Wants to Be a Scientist
Maria Popova,
Brain Pickings, April 9, 2012.
Einstein, to a girl writing to him wanting to be a scientist, and hoping that being a girl would not be a problem: "I do not mind that you are a girl, but the main thing is that you yourself do not mind. There is no reason for it."
Search for Meaning
Doug Noon,
Borderland, April 9, 2012.
From 20 years ago, a year or so after the fall of the Berlin Wall, David Orr wrote, "The plain fact is that the planet does not need more “successful” people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it." Still true today. Thanks to Doug Noon for citing this and reflecting - with feeling - on the purpose of education.
The Great Collision
Umair Haque,
Harvard Business Review, April 9, 2012.
One of the few quality reads on the Harvard Business Review blogs is Umair Haque. In this post he writes about the collision between the idea that most every person - and not just a select (white, male) few, can aspire to, well, limitless potential, and not just lives of drudgery and poverty. But, he writes, "What happens when limitless potential crashes headlong into boundaries, prison bars, and maybe even self-imposed limitations? What happens... when we sell ourselves short?" Not to say there aren't real barriers between people and the lives they could be leading. But the first, and most important revolution, is in one's own mind, in believing that we are capable of more, and deserving of more.
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