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Everyone
wants to be successful - yet obviously not many are - so it's natural
to ask whether there's a secret to success.
Do having high IQ, rich parents, and going to college prep school guarantee success? One would think so, but ask anyone who knows a smart and promising student drop out of college or otherwise flame out.
So, what is the missing ingredient? In this interesting article by Paul Tough for The New York Times Magazine, the secret sauce is "character".
For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are “a patently unfair system” because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. “This push on tests,” he told me, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”
The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”
Parents, if you read only one article today, let it be this one: Link (Image: Tape installation by Stephen Doyle / Photo by Stephen Wilkes for the NY Times)
Unless you are an ultimate Nintendo fan, and know every game that came out on the console in 1988, you’re going to have a hard time identifying all of these great games. But really, who’s keeping score? These awesomely adorable illustrations are by Campbell Whyte, and have a quirky cute style all their own. See if you can figure them all out, and be sure to follow the link over to Destructoid if you want to see all 65 of these adorable illustrations!
Link -via Destructoid
Allie notices bad grammar and lazy typing. One common mistake we see a lot is to make the words “a lot” into one word, but Allie takes this particular mistake in stride. So that we may all enjoy the joke, she illustrated the Alot.
The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I’d normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world.
See the Alot in many different situations at Hyperbole and a Half. Link -via Buzzfeed
I bet you didn’t know that Lando Calrissian had a Rodian half-brother named Guido Calrissian. Well, he didn’t, but that’s what I’m naming my custom character from the time-killing site where you can also make one.
Still from Blade Runner; Warner Bros. 1982
A long time ago they were called robots. That rather pedestrian term evolved into android, droid, cyborg, and artificial intelligence, among others. Plenty of movies have featured them in one fashion or another, and Unreality’s Madison cobbled together the ten best, with Blade Runner’s Roy Batty coming in at number 5.
Roy Batty, quite simply, is a bad, bad dude. As leader of the Nexus-6 replicants, Batty is a combat model used for military battles, and so his speed, strength, and combat skills are far beyond those of a human being. He also has a genius level intellect, which he employs to torment Deckard. He eventually shows empathy for Deckard, though, and Batty himself appears to be more human than the humans who sought out to have him destroyed.
Find out which cinematic circuit board made the top of the list.
Link (updated link has blasted malware worm away, all should be well).
Update 10/18/09 by Alex – delinked. The malware is in Unreality Mag’s ad server. There’s a rogue ad rotating amongst regular ads. Pls keep this delinked and do not remove/repost. Thanks!
Which Disney princess are you? Just answer these 10 probing (kidding!) questions over at Brainfall to find out.
Apparently, I’m Pocahontas:
You defy convention and sometimes do what is considered taboo. Unfortunately, others do not always appreciate your differences, so it’s good that you are so strong-willed. You are loyal and you believe in fate. Your true love will find you one day.
Link – via The Zeray Gazette (Maybe they’ll do villains next, now that will be fun!)
So, which Disney Princess are you?
