Archive for March, 2008

Rituals, of a Kind.

We’ve tripped on the wires of reactionary parenting once or twice, but it is difficult to avoid those traps so delicately shaped in the vacancies left by our common sense. There is a gush of information that is unavoidable as a diligent parent. There is a sense of being overwhelmed by opinion and editorializing, the advice of helpful relations, and an incessant cluck of reasons filtering across the information fibers so thoroughly penetrating our home. It is enough to push a dad to a kind of parental anarchy, to rebel against the norms of expectations and creed, and deliberately fight the grain of mixed counsel so freely offered by countless voices.

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Full text from March 26, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Skepdad thoughts

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lost musings

If you’ve been privy to the six months that comprise the early development of this blog, visiting often, reading diligently, and participating on the fringes of wordsmithery that drapes this domain in some vague recollection of pandering advice, then you have also witnessed a bumbling fool of a new father attempt to compose the impossible. I often have this deep rooted fear that my own cherry-picked musings on the state of critical thought are in jeopardy, caught in the gravity-well of logical fallacy — and it is with straining effort and scattered triumph that I continue to pluck away on this project. As such, we were traveling recently, bumbling through an international jaunt with our little hatchling in tow, and lest not be saved from our typical mid-vacation discovery of some local bookstore, we spent a few hours wandering the foreign stacks and perusing literature from a bevy of random topics.

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Full text from March 25, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Meta-Skepdad

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Creative Kids for March 2008

Why creativity? As I wrote in one of my first posts, I think there are “Three Eyes” to encouraging critical thought, and one of those is Imagination. And what I wrote then still holds true: Creative imagination is a double-edged sword for a skeptic; Imagination defines the ability to construct false realities as readily as it defines the ability to extend knowledge, seek answers, and forge new questions. But we need imagination. We need to understand the power and scope of this tool, to harness its potential for the right reasons and with the right momentum. As with any sword, the more apt one is with handling it the less likely one is to cause harm to oneself and others.

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Full text from March 8, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: The Three Eyes

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skep/dad’s “free time” the first

I have gaps in my attendance here. And the fact that this is a parenting blog, such a statement should be fairly self explanatory. I’m a busy guy. I’m in demand (or so I’m told.) And I’ve got a little girl who yearns for my undivided attention. So here are some “free time” moments that I don’t have the “free time” (except on a lunch break) to flesh out much further at the moment.

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Full text from March 6, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Skepdad thoughts

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Leadership: Growth Minds Versus Static Minds

As election season abounds around me, I am thinking more about leadership than usual. Fast Company semi-recently published a book review (Mind-set: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck) in an article about leadership.[1] Though, I cannot speak for the book, the article seemed to have more to say on the subjects of intelligence and critical thought than on the subject at hand — which was, incidentally, how to be a good leader. This is not exactly a criticism. In fact, wouldn’t the world be a better place were leadership and intelligence not so often perceived as opposites. Rather, it was that the article was attempting to imply a connection between the perception of intelligence by individuals to their actions in leadership roles that I picked up on the topic for my own analysis.

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Full text from March 5, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Skeptical Mindsets

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