Notes, art, humor, history, hopes, dreams and nonsense.
2012 notes, Year 5
This is one of those back-dated posts. :-)
I will bring what I find on my site and out in the wild of the internet, from various years, and date them the end of July. Follow-up. Souvenirs.
Someone had asked in the Mothering magazine forum what was with Learn Nothing Day—was it serious? A joke? She didn't know what to think about it.
On July 24, 2012, "mary3mama" posted this response:
The original discussion: Can someone explain -Learn Nothing Day- to me?
I will bring what I find on my site and out in the wild of the internet, from various years, and date them the end of July. Follow-up. Souvenirs.
Someone had asked in the Mothering magazine forum what was with Learn Nothing Day—was it serious? A joke? She didn't know what to think about it.
On July 24, 2012, "mary3mama" posted this response:
Coincidentally, I just blogged about Learn Nothing Day.Nice blog post.
Here's my post: Oops
Here's the page on Sandra Dodd's site about the day.
IMHO the day serves to highlight that learning is a natural human function. The idea that we could truly spend a day 'learning nothing' is humorous. Which is what my own blog post is about.
So while I don't see it as a joke (and certainly not a criticism) it is light-hearted and joyful.
The original discussion: Can someone explain -Learn Nothing Day- to me?
Year 5
This was published July 24, 2012 as Learn Nothing Day, year 5,and there were comments there, too.
Five years and people STILL can't succeed.
Someone (whose name I didn't save and who should remain anonymous) wrote
In the comments there was a link to a blog post: Epic Fail
Five years and people STILL can't succeed.
Well, hell. (That rhymes aurally and visually both, though well mell would be prettier visual; bummer it doesn't mean anything. Maybe in Wales they could do something with well llew...)
It's still morning in the U.S. and people are giving up already left and right. I will add to this reportage as the day goes on, which should be fine, because unschoolers should be staying away from the internet if they don't want to learn something today anyway.
Sarah Dickinson made a cake while attempting not to learn:
Kelly Haldorson made a graphic image that was shared around Facebook. I looked at some of those.
Is that like smoke-a-cigar day or cut-yourself-on-purpose day? Why chose to damage yourself? Thanks alot Google, we have one more evidence that you are NOT looking out for our interests, rather herding us like sheep being stolen from the shepherd.In order to blame Google, she would have to NOT READ that I made it up and Holly did the art.
There was a little discussion on Facebook where I said it was like a game, and you join in by showing you know how it works. In response to a question, then, about whether it's a holiday or a game, I wrote:
Well... it's a holiday when people demonstrate what they've learned about learning by attempting not to learn, which is kind of a science experiment and kind of a festival and sort of a game.It's like a set of Thinking Sticks. It's a game, it's a tool, it's a toy. :-) More than one thing is happening.
In the comments there was a link to a blog post: Epic Fail
Comments on Gift Opening
Cleaning up here and there, in 2022, I didn't want to lose these comments, which were on my page on facebook in 2010. I'm backdating the post, so it will show in 2010.
Meryl Lynn
Meryl Lynn
Learn Nothing Day has started here in NY and my 7yo son couldn't wait to learn nothing. In the last 11 minutes, he keeps acknowledging all the things he's learning even in our dark bedroom. He just said he's having so much fun!Sandra Dodd
Wait… shouldn't you sleep? This is LND-EVE. Maybe he should try again in the morning. 🙂 Should a holiday start at midnight, or morning? Maybe it depends whether it's a holiday created before clocks or AFTER (digital and electronic midnight-bearing date-changing) clocks.Blanche Melamed
holiday's start at sundown the night before here in Israel. I kinda like that. happy LND!Sandra Dodd
Good point, Blanche. Well, people can open their Learn Nothing Day gifts whenever they want to. 🙂Meryl Lynn
He woke up and he noticed that he started learning right away 🙂
3rd Learn Nothing Day (imported report)
The original is on my personal blog as 3rd Learn Nothing Day winding down There are a couple of comments there, but I've brought the code from the other blogpost to reside here, and backdated it here to that same date, July 24, 2010. (It's actually being added here on June 23, 2014.)
This was very cute, on facebook. I came across a discussion of people all using the same "profile image" I had (more or less):
And now that I've been informed that a package I sent to Adam Daniel in the U.K. has arrived, I can show this image of Holly, in an ACE Festival shirt, yesterday:
My birthday gift was a lot of help to clean up the library and rearrange things so that when our new couch [well, not really "couch," but set of modular couchish-to-guest-bed(s) thing] arrives on Tuesday there will be a good space for it. Found some things I had lost, and gathered up some books to give away. Kirby called to wish me a happy birthday, and talked to me and Marty about things we can send back to Austin with him when he visits, and IT RAINED! Real, hard rain with thunder and lightning. Beautiful. We opened up doors and windows. After the rain, Marty and Ashlee went and got food from Golden Pride—smoked chicken and carne adovada burritos. Holly's friend Tony was here. He played piano downstairs and we got to hear. He's the keyboardist for Holly's favorite local band. Very nice birthday.
This was very cute, on facebook. I came across a discussion of people all using the same "profile image" I had (more or less):
And now that I've been informed that a package I sent to Adam Daniel in the U.K. has arrived, I can show this image of Holly, in an ACE Festival shirt, yesterday:
 And one of me in a paisley scarf I received in the mail from Deb Lewis in Montana (along with some other cool birthday goodies). Real woven paisley, in shades of brown. BEAUTIFUL. she suggested I might be able to blend in some in India next winter with this! |
My birthday gift was a lot of help to clean up the library and rearrange things so that when our new couch [well, not really "couch," but set of modular couchish-to-guest-bed(s) thing] arrives on Tuesday there will be a good space for it. Found some things I had lost, and gathered up some books to give away. Kirby called to wish me a happy birthday, and talked to me and Marty about things we can send back to Austin with him when he visits, and IT RAINED! Real, hard rain with thunder and lightning. Beautiful. We opened up doors and windows. After the rain, Marty and Ashlee went and got food from Golden Pride—smoked chicken and carne adovada burritos. Holly's friend Tony was here. He played piano downstairs and we got to hear. He's the keyboardist for Holly's favorite local band. Very nice birthday.
It's a holiday for unschoolers, and gosh, do we ever need it!
June 13, 2009, blog post by Kelly Sturman/livingjoyfully
Mark your Calendars
__________
Backup copy in case that one disappears:
__________
Mark your Calendars
__________
Backup copy in case that one disappears:
__________
July 24th is Learn Nothing Day!
It's a holiday for unschoolers, and gosh, do we ever need it! That old adage "you learn something new every day" is so true! We are learning all the time...
"You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn
You grieve you learn
You choke you learn
You laugh you learn
You choose you learn
You pray you learn
You ask you learn
You live you learn"
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn
You grieve you learn
You choke you learn
You laugh you learn
You choose you learn
You pray you learn
You ask you learn
You live you learn"
~Alanis Morissette, "You Learn"
Don't we deserve a day off? ;-)
So, with the holiday just six weeks away, we are going to have to think hard to figure out how to take a day off from all this non-stop learning! Obviously, we can't go anywhere; we'd see something new or meet someone new and then we'd learn something. So, we'll have to say at home. But stay at home and do what?
Let's see... maybe we could just sleep the day away? No, that won't work! How many creative ideas arise from dreams? Lots! That opening guitar riff to the Rolling Stones' song "Satisfaction"? It came to Keith Richards in a dream. Likewise, Paul McCartney woke up one morning with the melody to "Yesterday" floating around in his head. Here is a list of some other songs and stories, including The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and also Frankenstein, that came to artists while they slept. I'm sure the list is not all inclusive!
Okay, so sleeping all day is too risky. Hmm... maybe we could "zone out" in front of the ol' "boob tube" for the day? Ah, no; that won't work. 'Cause "boob tube" is a misnomer; there is really so much to learn from watching television. Even if we carefully avoid all the "educational" channels, even if we steer clear of the game shows (where we might pick up a fact or two), even if we try really hard to find something incredibly insipid and or asinine, there remains a very really risk that our brains are bound to make connections between what we are watching and what we already know. That's what brains do. The next thing you know, we will be thinking creatively, and having ideas, and learning. Uh-oh!
Okay, maybe we could play games all day? Hmm.... well... we can't play Boggle or Scrabble or Scattergories or Upwords or Malarky. Mad Libs is out. Ditto Monopoly, Clue, Statego, Battleship, Othello, DaVinci's Challenge, Mastermind, chess, checkers, Go, card games of any sort... Heck, even Jenga requires strategic thinking.
Video games, maybe? Lots of folks say those rot your brain! But wait. Even those folks admit that video games can improve eye-hand coordination. Kinesthetic learning. DRAT! And the truth is, many video games teach so much more: reading, writing, typing; goal setting and problem solving. Economics, both micro and macro; history; mythology; science and technology; geography and mapping skills... and and and on it goes. Looks like we'll have to avoid video games, too, on Learn Nothing Day.
Well, golly gee! This is really going to be a challenge! It's a good thing we've got six weeks to plan; we're going to need it. How can you go a day without learning a single thing?
But seriously...
For more on what can be learned from watching TV and playing video games; these are just a sampling of the many articles out there discussing the benefits:
From The New Yorker:
From CNN:
From Wired:
From Discover:
From Live Science:
Real and imagined languages
GERMAN:
Erster Internationaler Welt-nichtslerntag
translated by Bea Mantovani, who also contributed Mandarin:
CHINESE:
Just for fun:
Mandarin Chinese (I hope you can read the characters, I wrote it in
phonetics next to it just in case.)
第一国际无会日 (di yi guo ji wu xue ri)
(not 100 % sure this would sound great to a native ;-)
SAMOAN:
O le aso e leai se mea afia.
emmy tofa
HINDI, KANNADA, MARATHI
From Hema A. Bharadwaj in Pune, India:
LOLSPEAK:
Learn Nothing Day translated into lolspeak:
http://lolcats.com/
but no klikn doze linx on dai wut bees for lernin nuttin! humorz be
notoryus fur sneekin inta yuz brainiaks and makin yez lurn stuffiez.
Joyce
KLINGON:
ghoj pagh jaj
(If someone would like to expand on that or correct the grammar, that would be fine. Nancy Wooten is not fluent in Klingon, but did the best she could.)
OP:
I've translated it into the "op" language I used as a kid: Lopearopnop Noptophopinopgop Dopayop
(add "op" to every consonant (including "y" whether it's used as a vowel or consonant).
Robin B.
(Ropobopinop Bop)
Erster Internationaler Welt-nichtslerntag
translated by Bea Mantovani, who also contributed Mandarin:
CHINESE:
Just for fun:
Mandarin Chinese (I hope you can read the characters, I wrote it in
phonetics next to it just in case.)
第一国际无会日 (di yi guo ji wu xue ri)
(not 100 % sure this would sound great to a native ;-)
SAMOAN:
O le aso e leai se mea afia.
emmy tofa
HINDI, KANNADA, MARATHI
From Hema A. Bharadwaj in Pune, India:
It's "Aaj kuch mat seekho". Meaning "don't learn anything today" in Hindi.
And in Kannada it is "Evat enoo kali byadaa"
and in Marathi it i s "Aaz kaahi shikoo nakaa"
LOLSPEAK:
Learn Nothing Day translated into lolspeak:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
dai wut bees fur lernin nuttin
http://lolcats.com/
but no klikn doze linx on dai wut bees for lernin nuttin! humorz be
notoryus fur sneekin inta yuz brainiaks and makin yez lurn stuffiez.
Joyce
KLINGON:
ghoj pagh jaj
(If someone would like to expand on that or correct the grammar, that would be fine. Nancy Wooten is not fluent in Klingon, but did the best she could.)
OP:
I've translated it into the "op" language I used as a kid: Lopearopnop Noptophopinopgop Dopayop
(add "op" to every consonant (including "y" whether it's used as a vowel or consonant).
Robin B.
(Ropobopinop Bop)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)