Artificial and pathological

The Chicago Reader has an article with Dr. Yung Tae, the physicist and skateboarder who allegedly fixed the wonky skateboard controller for the sequel to Tony Hawk Ride called Shred… that’s suppsedly out now? Geez, who knew? It’s a pretty interesting article, but real story is the half hour long video on Dr Tae’s web site titled Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning, which asks the question Can skateboarding give us a better model for teaching and learning? I’ll give you a clue, nobody bothers to make a half hour long video if the answer is “No.” It’s clearly labeled as the most important thing on his web site. “Real-life research is more like skateboarding than something manufactured in a school curriculum. The school is the thing that’s artificial and pathological.” That’s a quote from Dr Tae, so you can tell he’s passionate about it. If you’ve got still more time to kill, check out The Physics of Skateboaridng. He’s got three episode previews online. Previews for what? I don’t know yet, I’m still trying to figure out when I’m going to have time to finish the first half hour video. Yes, but as a known scientist it would be a bit surprising if a girl blinded me with science.

– Thanks to Gene Sato for the tip.

UPDATE: Forgot to link to Tae’s web site, but it’s linked now.