John Green, Syria, and Pirates!

You know what’s the worst? When you’ve come to your self-inflicted blog deadline, and you have NOTHING TO SAY.

The weird thing is that there’s so much I could talk about. Syria. The first day of school. A summer well spent. Healthcare. Education systems. And any number of other things I’m working on in my Real Person Job (RPJ).

But none of that is really sparking much creativity. Instead I’m left thinking that what I would say this week is tired, and has been said better, by more articulate people.

So instead today, I’m going to provide you with my top three Favorites of the Moment. These videos and articles are some of the most useful and insightful things that I’ve stumbled upon in the last few hours. They are pieces that say things better, and more articulately than I can at the moment.

Enjoy the foray into my somewhat bizarre sense of taste:

1. First up – I watched this video by John Green this morning and thought it made some excellent points about the reason that capitalists should appreciate the benefits of providing healthcare for the masses. Though I’m personally not sure how effective nationalized healthcare will actually be in this country – especially in its current form – I certainly appreciate the argument that being forced to find a “normal” job just to get healthcare suppresses creativity and innovation. Plus, he talks about Pizza. Mmm, pizza.

This video comes from awesome John Green, author of TheFault in our Stars (a FANTASTIC book btw), who, with his incredibly creative brother Hank Green, has created what many see as the Mecca of YouTube creativity and entrepreneurship. They’ve basically made a living out of making free YouTube videos. Now THAT’S talent.
*Note that the above video is property of the Vlogbrothers - I had nothing at all to do with it - I've embedded it here to avoid you having to click that pesky link to take you somewhere else - but you should visit their YouTube channel Vlogbrothers for more of their awesome content. 

2. This “9questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask” Washington Post article has been making the rounds of Facebook recently. I finally took a gander this morning and found it was actually pretty helpful. It struck a nice balance of not too general but not too complex either. Granted, it’s a little depressing to see the history of an entire country leading up to, and including, a massive civil war reduced to 2,800 words to placate the masses of 20-30s somethings (myself included) who have the attention span of squirrels…but nonetheless, the author Max Fisher does a really nice job of hitting the main points in a way to make you, if nothing else, at least intelligent enough on the subject to have a cocktail party conversation about this incredibly depressing topic.

3. And for something considerably lighter, but oddly fascinating we turn to Mental Floss – the authority on all the things you never knew, but didn’t know you should be sad that you didn’t know, until you knew them. (How’s that for a sentence.) Whydid pirates wear eye patches? came across the Twitter-verse this morning. It’s a quick, “huh, who knew?” piece of information that you can quote at a cocktail party after impressing someone with all your knowledge of Syria and the American healthcare system gained from numbers 1 and 2 above.

Those are my Favorites of the Moment (which I think is going to become a thing I do occasionally – because let’s face it, sometimes making everyone else do the hard work is just so much easier.)

I’ll end with this:

I find it fascinating that in our world today we have instant access to so many different types of information. And there are so many different ways to present that information into easily digestible, understandable information bits. I’ll admit, the soul-crushing academician in me screams that these aren’t reliable sources of information: “What do they know?! They didn’t do years of research to lead to these conclusions! It’s just like Wikipedia.”

But let’s call that what it is:

Professional jealousy.

These creative people, who didn’t choose to slave away at school for 10+ years for advance degrees and alphabet soup letters behind their names, have created some of the most interesting and enlightening ways to present information that have ever been seen. It’s not a traditional book, lecture, pencil, paper way of doing things. But that doesn’t make it wrong.

The beauty (and terror?) of the world we live in, is that many people have many diverse opinions on many different topics. And never before in the course of human history have so many people been able to share their opinions so widely and openly without being squelched by the richest and most powerful members of society. It means people like me, in my little corner of the internet can share my random, totally uninteresting thoughts and send them out into the world to be consumed by anyone who’s stumbles upon them.

Laptop (via stock.xchng)

That’s totally weird.

But this Internet culture has created an environment where thinking and creativity and innovation and sharing can exist in a place unprecedented. Where the totally ordinary folks like John and Hank Greens of the world can become icons, rock stars. Where the Washington Post employs humorous bloggers because they can reach young audiences in a way that the tired journalism of old never could. Where there is an entire staff of people at a place called Mental Floss (best name ever!) who get paid to devote their time to finding the next quirky fun fact worthy of sharing at the office cocktail party.

Yup. This Internet thing is pretty darn cool. And I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.