Welcome to Wise Hat!
Esoteric, eclectic, electric, eccentric - these are just some of the words that appear on this page. Here are some more:
Can you spare some change?
I'm not thinking about money.
There's an old story about a king (for some reason it's always a king) that was prone to excess. When he was feeling on top of the world his largesse knew no bounds. He showered his favourites with goodies and ran up huge deficits in the process. He was just killing the kingdom with kindness. But then, when he was down, his fear and loathing ran rampant. Yesterday's favourite was the day's danger and the prisons would be filled to overflowing. Even with the inmates working for no wages it cost a fortune. Bankruptcy and ruin were but a breath away. The kingdom was desperate for respite.
So the king commanded his advisers to find some third way to help him keep the middle ground. And being a king, and this being a story, he commanded them on pain of death.
Now, it's said that fear of death focuses the mind wonderfully. But not by this author. Fear feeds fear and fear of death feeds death. The king had all but run out of advisers when his mood changed and he came up with the idea of offering half his kingdom and the hand of his daughter in marriage to the one who found a solution. Not fancying any of the advisors his daughter was quick to offer a suggestion. She presented the king with a ring upon which were inscribed four simple words.
Now those of you who know your stories and those of you with good eyesight may well think you know what the words were. You may think that the king was touched by his daughter's wisdom and learnt to live without excess. After all, the story supposes, the king was just a man and as such just needed a reminder to be good.
Not on your life, and not on mine.
The real problem was less the king than the notion of kingship. Of course, a tyrant is worse than a non tyrant but what people in their right minds or their left ones would give one man so much power? Why would they submit to such a structure? Why accept something so baseless and unjust?
Fear, greed, disdain, ego - more words that appear on this page, but hopefully are not manifest elsewhere in this site.
This introduction seems to be going on a bit. There's a switch somewhere near the top of the page that will hide it. The same switch is on most pages. There's a certain element of randomness running through the site and the switch can be used to hide it. The randomness contributes to a further sprinkling of juxtaposition.
Anything that helps us to think and to feel is surely a good thing. This site is about change. Best get on with it.
Word Doodle
November 2004
Christmas Count
Here's the video I made for children's Christmas parties this year:
Kansai ETJ Expo 2009
I'm one of two guest speakers this year. I'll be giving a presentation about choice in the children's classroom. Notes and files for downloading can be found here. If you'd like to attend I'll be speaking in the afternoon. Here's a link to the conference site.
This site needs an overhaul
It's been a while since this site was last updated. I think it's in need of a face lift but probably adding some fresh content is more important. The projects I have been working on, flash games and video don't lend themselves readily to being integrated into this site with the current layout. We'll see.
Humanist Teaching Blog
I've been writing this column for ELT News for a while. Here's a link.
This page updated by Chris Hunt, 20th December 2009
