Eighteen years ago today the Berlin Wall became irrelevant. I was in Berlin when it happened. About one million people from east block nations, starving for freedom, flooded into West Berlin in a matter of hours. The whole city was “standing room only” as people exercised the kind of freedom that […]

Seth Godin wrote an interesting article about the value of going to a big name school versus a lesser-name school that set my gears in motion. In it he writes:

There’s no question that a Harvard degree helps (or is even required) in a few fields. There’s also no doubt that spending four years at […]

Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4— Part 5
It is very probable—almost certain—that the great mass of men . . .were utterly unconscious, that their conditions, or their minds were capable of improvement. They not only looked upon the educated few as superior beings; but they supposed […]

Continued from part 2
Part 3 of 3: Proof of Knowledge
Not every college is going to give credit for learning to draw and animate (although mine did so it’s not unheard of). I advocate that where the credetial isn’t required, evidence of expertise is all that is needed. Still, one may argue that […]

Continued from part 1
Part 2 of 3: The Gift of Knowledge
According to Eric S. Raymond in his essay about open-source development, “The Cathedral & the Bazaar,” the free market is an exchange economy based on the trading of scarce goods and services. Scarcity is what creates the value. Raymond argues that a gift economy, […]

Part 1 of 3: Finding the Right Words
No one has ever been “self-educated.” The term itself is wrong. It is a misnomer that is evidence of society’s inability to find the right words to describe the education process behind those who have not been educated in formal institutions. Frederick Douglass, as […]

Above is a sketch I’m doing for my newphew’s Boy Scout pack. While I’m on the subject of my nephew (Avery) check out his blog. Yes, my nephew blogs! Better yet, he blogs in support of the troops. You can link to it here:
The Popcorn Scholar
My brother, Cam, is supervising Avery’s […]

This week Squidoo launched an offshoot project called SquidWho. I’ve been a fan of Squidoo since the beginning due to its usefulness in aggregating different technologies to share knowledge. SquidWho has some nice features and I’ve decided to make webpages (which Squidoo calls lenses) about some of the people who have influenced me.
Here […]

Collaborating and learning from others is essential to intellectual development. Being self-taught is a misnomer; after all, no one learns in a vacuum.
I encourage those who like to draw, and those who would like to learn to draw, to post their artwork over at Drawingboard.org. You may have noticed it among […]

Recently, Seth Godin published a book called The Dip which is about concentrating only on the things you can be the best at, and pushing through the obstacles to make it happen.
If you’ve been following my posts on creating expertise, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Noticeable ability, […]