Why learning in a community of learners is a lot more fun
I very much relate to this talk given by author and YouTuber John Green about how learning is a lot more fun when done in a community of learners. He starts off the speech with an interesting anecdote about cartography and a little fictional town in Upstate NY called Agloe. This town was used by map makers as a copyright trap to see what companies were stealing from who and it became quite a bit of a funny story when the fake town of Agloe actually became a real thing.
If you've seen the God-awful movie Paper Towns (written by John Green himself), you'll already have heard the explanation in the movie. Side note: Cool idea, very terrible movie.
Anyway, as I was saying, I totally agree with John Green that the internet has really made learning quite fun. I always thought learning in a classroom setting was very boring mostly because it was done in such a way that made it more about achieving higher scores on tests instead of about learning about the concepts as a whole or getting the idea of something down and ingrained in you. I always think of it as having the knowledge to figure out something rather than just having the knowledge of knowing some facts. Anyway, this is a pretty good TED Talk. You should watch it.
Paper Towns -- one of the worst movies I've ever seen
I wish I could say I was exaggerating here, but seriously, WTF? This movie was terrible. Can this book Paper Towns really be by the same John Green that wrote The Fault In Our Stars? While The Fault In Our Stars was pretty great in my opinion (producing a great film as well), Paper Towns is just 100% pretentious garbage.
The whole story surrounding Margo and her "mysterious" disappearance just did not make any sense. And it was so forced onto the viewer that I was just like "wait, what?!" Her sudden re-connection with her neighbor (who has had a crush on her since grade school -- a der der der) to involve him in a series of revenge attacks was so stupid and contrived. That he would even follow her, even if he liked her, to such great lengths was entirely unbelievable. He's either seriously whipped since 10 years old or he's incredibly stupid. Quite possibly both.
AND THEN THERE'S THE STUPID ENDING! OMG. I wanted to punch my computer screen when it happened. I just couldn't believe the stupidity of the main character. If this is a peek into teenage lives and emotions these days, GOD HELP US ALL.