The kids are alright
One of my grievances with the copious information made accessible by digital media is that I am incessantly reminded of my inferiority to others. Now before you call me out for diffidence, mind that I am comparing myself to young savants—not exactly my peers. While I know that such collation is inappropriate, it happens, and it is not my fault. It is the fault of the parents who champion their prodigies for all the Internet to ogle. Por ejemplo,
- Magnus Carlsen on 60 Minutes. (via @seangraf)
- French preschoolers on Twitter.
- 11-year-old Nanaka is good at skateboarding. [SLYT]
I recall a car ride years ago where I thought that I had discovered a pattern innate in arithmetic. The minutiae of my discovery escape me, but it was something to the effect that a sequence of consecutive numbers iterates back and forth between an amount that can equally split, and amounts that cannot be equally split. It felt as if I had cracked the code of our mysterious universe. But not much further along that car ride, I remembered a teacher having discussed “odds and evens.” Thanks to the Internet, I no longer have to struggle with the illusion that I might be brilliant.
Also, I am digging this M.I.A. track, “Bad Girls.”
