A running current through my mind has been the value of a liberal education. My officemates from China and Vietnam have talked about how they didn’t have hobbies growing up, since their parents strongly encouraged them to study hard, to the exclusion of everything else. This can be very efficient in creating people who are very good at a very narrow skillset. However, when it comes to working as a team or public speaking, they are at a disadvantage to many students from the US. Even worse, if it turns out that they don’t enjoy doing the job that they were trained from a young age to do, then it can be very difficult for them to find their own path.
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Perspective and proper citation
This might sound cheesy, but I find it incredible that we live on a planet that is so very small on the cosmic scale, but so big on a human scale. How insignificant we are, yet how important our actions are on a human scale.
Earth, as seen from the International Space Station
(Image Credit: ISS Expedition 7 Crew, EOL, NASA)
Also, I found this image while searching for a space picture for my business card (custom-made here). I was looking specifically for images of the Earth seen from space. I honed in on this one and wanted to find out where the original was. As it turned out, many many people had reposted it without citing the source. I eventually used tineye to hunt down all instances of this image on the internet, to bring you the source that the photo is linked to above.
I’m still not sure whether I have permission to use this on a business card. I read their image use guidelines, but I couldn’t figure out whether this would count as “advertising” or not, so I emailed the contact on their advertising guidelines page. I’ll update this page when I hear back from them.