Newest Excuse

Wormhole fest post here.

It's not difficult to find methods of procrastination or make excuses for indulging in them. My best one this week is that my children are on spring break and I'm in full mom-mode cooking and giving them some special care. But each morning when I wake up, surprised at how late I slept, I'm reminded of a more scientific rational for not getting more of my A to Z posts ready this week.

Statistics show that the recent time change to Daylight Savings Time is really slowing me down. Some of the things we can blame on the recent loss of an hour's sleep?

How about higher blood pressure and more chance of heart attack until we adjust? More care accidents occur. More wasting time on the web when we should be working. Overeating. More headaches. Just about every study points out lower productivity at work. Even the stock market supposedly reacts with a bit of a nap.

I can vouch for lower productivity on this home front but I'm not sure I can blame it on that lost hour.

As a sports family, we've always loved this time change for giving us that hour of daylight in the evening so we could 'play ball.' And after this vicious winter, the extra sunlight will be appreciated.

Just as there are many negative things connected to this time, some studies also show that once you adjust to the change, you'll be happier as the hours of natural light extend into evening. That's my next excuse. How can I write when it's so sunny and warm out?

Did the time change bother you at all? All adjusted by now? Did you notice any of the above mentioned issues? What's your biggest rational to procrastinate recently? Have a good one I can use?

Don't forget Wormhole Week. Join the fun as we speculate on our technological future.

2014 Wormfest

What an exciting Monday. Let's start with Stephen Tremp's kickoff for his Escalation blog tour. He's visiting Alex J. Cavanaugh today and will appear here later this month. Good luck to Stephen.

This week is also National Wormhole Week. The Wormfest blog hop is hosted by Stephen Tremp, Alex J. Cavanaugh and L. Diane Wolfe. This years science theme challenge is to name one technological advance that you believe will greatly benefit mankind and also one that might set humanity back. Find the full list of participants on any of their blogs.

I didn't even have to think about this one as a former educator. Each year more and more educational opportunities become available online. It's wonderful. Probably most of you attended a traditional school like I did. We had a choice of three foreign languages at my old high school. Today I would have hundreds of choices. Your little school doesn't offer a certain science class, go online and find it. Attend college online. My son has done all his master's work online. It's convenient, saves money and seems of infinite possibilities. The advantages to online education are too numerous for a short post.

Many, maybe even most high schools, already offer some courses online or an entire cyper curriculum for their students. Some have hybrid learning courses where they meet with an instructor some classroom meetings but most learning is with their computers. For the properly motivated eager learner, these type of learning environments can be great. But the unmotivated student often needs the presence of an actual teacher to offer encouragement and guidance. Not all students will have equal access to all the educational options no matter how much we vow to make that happen. Could the future of educational as an online entity create a gap between the best and brightest and even the average student? Will the important social skills learned in schools become a thing of the past? How far will technology go in limiting personal interaction?

I think we're already within the educational wormhole. Good or bad? What do you think?

I hope you'll share your wormhole thoughts this week. Remember to visit Stephen Tremp and follow his blog tour and the Wormfest. Also visit L. Diane and Alex J.

Highly Creative

Once in a while I'll follow a link to one of the Huffington Post articles. I'm never sure how scientific their lists are but they do make interesting reading. They like putting numbers in their posts. I would actually read more of their stuff if their pages didn't take so long to load sometimes. Too many adverts.

18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently has a long descriptive list of creative people. Of course, I had to compare myself to those habits. I surprised myself by seeing myself in some but not all of them.

I do daydream and I tend to observe everything around me. I don't want to miss anything. I like some, need solitude at times. I like being alone, not always easy growing up in a big family and having one of my own. I admit to asking the big questions though I don't get many answers.

I don't fit them all. I'm not a big risk taker but I think we'll all do less of that as we mature. I hope. A few of the others don't fit me either. I guess I'm a somewhat creative person, not quite qualifying as highly creative. If you have time, go to the article and see how you rate in the creativity rankings.

Thanks to all the wonderful visitors for IWSG on Wednesday. It was a fun and busy day. Don't forget Wormhole blog hop starting on Monday.

Do you think you're highly creative? Disagree or agree with Huffington's list?

National Wormhole Day

Thanks to Stephen Tremp and Laura and Luanne at Bards and Prophets for putting together this neat little fantasy jaunt. Each post is a short plan of what you would do if you could step through that wormhole to any place and time. Would you go forward or backward? Would you try to change something?

I guess I've watched too much Doctor Who, but I would be afraid to go back and time to change something. You know changing one little thing in the past could have big repercussions for our present despite how tempting it might be. So I would go to the future.

First of all, I really, really have always wanted to go through the Stargate. I really believe there is life on other worlds and I want to see them. So for my Wormhole day trek, I want to go one thousand years in the future where I can experience some travel to other worlds or at least learn about them. I want to know. And if I pick up the cure for some diseases while I'm there, I'll bring that back too. Perhaps the answer to the world energy needs and a way to end poverty and have world peace. The only way mankind will survive that long is if we've overcome those issues.

So where would you go? Want some ideas? Visit other bloggers for Wormhole Day.