Game of Thrones did it again…

So Bronn was already awesome:

But decided to up it EXPONENTIALLY last night:

While Tyrion couldn’t be more impressed:

With how it all turned out [SPOILER]:

All while Davos just derped:

In summary:

PREVIEW: Is Brazil Ready for the World Cup?

Brazil will be hosting the FIFA World Cup in two years, and the 2016 Olympics just after that, but will the city be ready? Is Brazil as a nation able to host such prestigious events? But more importantly, are FIFA and the Olympic guidelines unreasonable to bring honor to developing and growing nations like Brazil? More to come in a full post.

Self-Disciplined to Discipline.

I hate LOVE following obscure intellectuals’ lives. At the top of that list today is Larry Sanger: co-founder of Wikipedia, self-proclaimed philosopher, and one of the absolute nerdiest looking guys I have ever seen. [PROOF!] So it comes with no surprise when he posts this article on homeschooling (a life long dream of mine) and the disparity of those parents who choose it for their children.

As an intellectual concerned with not only raising his children with a classical education (Latin, mathematics, piano lessons), but also modern applicable sciences such as computer engineering and programming, Sanger sought help from various online communities of homeschooling parents to guide him. And while early education was full of great help (really, what kind of parent would have a 4 year old programming Java or Perl), he lost traction as his boys grew older and as he started to come in contact with more canned curricula and rigid systems or in some cases no curricula and extremely loose systems.

Where Sanger lost point with specifically the community at WellTrainedMinds.com was over the philosophies of home schooling, because why you do something is just as important what you do and how you do it. He found a lot of parents who had solid educations but rigid and very limiting curricula and courses putting their children back through the same routine, even while having grievances with their own outcomes. Other parents avoided topics they hadn’t or wouldn’t understand or agree with simply for the sake of avoiding questions they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) answer from their children. And then there were the parents who specifically let their children essentially choose whether or not they would want to be intellectual, which made them (the parents) anti-intellectual.

What struck a chord with me was that my parents fell safely into that second category, of knowing they wouldn’t be able to teach me another language, or anything past basic algebra, or much about classical literature other than that they enjoyed the book when they were told to read it, and my parents were humble enough to address these issues head on: by sending me to professional educators. Where they were successful to address their lack, I was often slack and rebuked many of my teachers for pseudo-intellectualism and producing a false sense of security in my parents that they made the right choice with my education.

Now my parents couldn’t personally walk me through Catcher in the Rye and point out the symbolism, but even at that my English teacher in 10th grade couldn’t either. That probably lead to me having a poor interpretation of the story until I reread it recently with the copy I had stolen from that 10th grade class. (Again, I had a really poor interpretation of it then, and acted in accordance with that almost and prevalent existentialist, pre-YOLO era-style interpretation of the story.) In large ways my high school years were an absolute failure, and that cascaded and collapsed into much of my first two years of college with poor discipline and a lack of respect for educators in many fields.

But what I lack for most primary educators, I hold in high esteem for the discipline that could have easily and is currently addressing that sloth I held for public education. My parents did the best they could, and it was a moral, responsible, and wise choice to send me to public school despite my wishes to be home schooled up until the day I entered high school; if I had be educated at home I likely would have been a tyrant and have lost the value of this discipline I now hold so dearly. I understand now that while I was never home schooled, and while I squandered much of my high school years, I can enter into a new period of self-schooling. I now believe myself to hold the necessary faculties to dive into the wealth of classical education that I never was privy to and to soak it up from all corners of the internet and with a well worn library card. But my discipline is not coming from my own desire for self, but out of my self for my child’s desire.

Children are a promise, an inheritance, the legacy that a man and woman leave behind. “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” (Proverbs 13.22) The education I pursue today is the wisdom it will take to leave for my children and grandchildren not only a financial portfolio that will serve this family well, but a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, and -God willing- of morality to ensure the abundance of my inheritance, of my children. I am self-disciplined today, to be sure that I can teach discipline to my children, to instill within them not only the means and know-how to get a job done, but the philosophy behind it, the “why” for which they will work that much harder. This effort is as much for my pleasure as it is a prayer for their success, may God bless it and yield to it it’s proper fruit in it’s proper season. Amen.