Happy Soul Food Friday!
Here is to your independent thinking, while recognizing our collective interdependence this week.
“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking”- Benjamin Franklin
“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”- John Adams
“Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.”– John Milton
“Thought is free.”- William Shakespeare
Ok after all those heavy hitters, let’s loosen things up with some titillating punography:
· I tried to catch some fog. I mist.
· When chemists die, they barium.
· Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.
· A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
· I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.
· How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.
· I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.
· This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore.
· I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. I can’t put it down.
· I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words .
· They told me I had type A blood, but it was a type-O.
· This dyslexic man walks into a bra .
· I didn’t like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.
· A cross-eyed teacher lost her job because she couldn’t control her pupils?
· When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.
· What does a clock do when it’s hungry? It goes back four seconds..
· I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me!
· Broken pencils are pointless.
· What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.
· England has no Kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool .
· I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
· I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.
· All the toilets in London police stations have been stolen. Police say they have nothing to go on.
· I took the job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.
· Velcro – what a rip off!
· Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.
“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”–Henry Ford
As a social scientist I remain committed to the importance of the Liberal Arts and Humanities as part of a well-rounded Higher Education to cultivate our reserve of knowledge, depth of experience, and hone our abilities:
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever”, said Mahatma Gandhi.
Education and inevitably self-education provide the most treasured gift of discovering our personhood. Nowhere has this been more true than in the “ivy-walled university” experience where those of us blessed to have this were literally free to find ourselves, and enjoy some “development time” without the rules and regulations of living in our parents homes- on one side of the time continuum, or having to deal with the daily grind and responsibilities of the working world on the other. This rightly experienced is the liberating part of a liberal arts education.
Are we liberating young people through a whole person educational experience that teaches them how to develop and grow their social capital and cultural intelligence, or are we narrowly shackling them to an academic schedule and performance-driven, over-achievement based life experience, that they will more than likely inherit soon enough from their founding fathers and mothers?
With that sort of restrictive myopic mindset on the role and value of education, why not start indentured servitude at 13- surely that will foster a strong work ethic and bring out the best in our youth?
Last time I checked, we did away with leeches and bloodletting.
Legislation like No Child Left Behind- run its unnatural course will lead to NO CHILD LEFT.
We must preserve access, affordability and quality in the educational experience for future generations, and remain open to transforming the educational experience if it is not working- after all the root of the word education is educare to look at things from diverse points of view…
This article validates the importance not just of the physical and life sciences but the humanities and social sciences as vital to the future, especially in the context of independence and interdependence.
Charitable Giving: The Only Things we Keep in Life, are the Things That we Give Away:
Overall Americans gave $316 Billion to Charity and, Re-Balanced their Philanthropic Portfolio…
Freeing Up Some Time for Summer?
If you are committed to cultivating a world view and cultural Immersion, consider a Pivot to Asia
Whether you are traveling near or far, I am not sure if many of us will make it all the way across the globe, so instead enjoy these pictures from China without the jet lag and travel woes…
Thanks this week to the inestimable Larry H and all of you who invest positive energy back into our communities!
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
None but ourselves can free our minds.” –Bob Marley
May you have a liberating week…
Love,
Neville
“Independence?
That’s middle class blasphemy.
We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”
-George Bernard Shaw
Happy Soul Food Friday! 
Again–this edition added to my holiday weekend–really enjoyed the the puns and the pictures –thank you–share all with my family.