This was originaly posted my own blog at blogspot. Then John Bonnes left me a nice message telling me why he deleted it. He thought that is was spam because it wanst baseball related. Which is fine but I have retuned this post to make it more Twins and Baseball Centric

TED talks are one of the most popular ways a college student can waste time surfing the internet. If you are unfamiliar with them I highly reccmend that you stop reading this and check it out. http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinso...reativity.html here is his most popular talk and there is another http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U that has similar point but more clever animation to keep you engaged.




According to Sir Ken Robinson he believes that schools are killing the american dream because of its standardization and constant assessment that ruins creativity. In my education classes at the University of Minnesota, we always talk about being creative and what an import skill is it in the word today. What is creativity? is means that you "think outside of the box!" Which is by far one of the worst definitions in the world for creativity because it concretely defines somethings that is far from it.


I bought the The element ( on ebook no less) because I knew it would be a great investment for me as a future educator and could help me to develop some of my own passions. In the book he makes several quotes that really stood out to me..


Here are the highlights with my own analysis.

" Finding the right tribe can be essential to finding you element. On the other hand, feeling deep down that with your the wrong one is probably a good sign that you should look somewhere else" Find people that share your passions, they become a great support system. If you don't find them than you are probably in the wrong in area. THIS IS WHERE TWINSDAILY.COM COMES INTO PLAY. If you love baseball, the twins, writing, better quotes than the cliche ones that players provide than go for twinsdaily. My prediction is that eventually, newspapers will be replaced. by online. Because why should the newspaper force to read "battle your tails off"


" never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that you for you is play. This turns possible underachievers into happy warriors" When you are a child you like to play because it is fun. Simply try to find work that is fun for you. One of my friends from college when he was younger loved playing in the garden and looking at worms. After graduating with a degree in biology and evolution he is about to enter graduate school for a masters in science that will lead him into the DNR


" what is true is that if your unprepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original" This is Sir Ken Robinson classic line and is found on his webpage. Simply look it up


" The Element is the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion" Once you are here you will always find happiness. Twins Daily Can you help you find that element.


" the real question is not are you intelligent but how intelligent are you? Think what are you really good at?


"Other examples of tribes inspiring individuals to greater heights abound: the sports teams- the 1969 New York Knicks, the "no Name defense" of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, the 1991 Minnesota Twins ls " The MN Twins of 1991 get a huge following here in this book and I think it is well deserved. Because they really played as a tribe not as a team.


" the Social psychologist Robert Cialdina has term for this. He calls is Basking in Reflected Glory or BIRGing. in the 1970's Ciadlina and others conducted a study about BIRGing and found that students at a number of american universities were much more likely to wear university-related clothing on the Monday after the their school won a football game. " BIRGins is really just another term for bandwagon fans. My personal opinion is that the Minnesota Market is full of BIRGers because there are four sports teams in one area. rarely do all of the teams do well at the same time. Robinson also adds that you need be a real fan that is with you in the good times and the bad. ( something that is a testament to the recent seasons and the past)




"The idea of luck is a powerful way of illustrating the importance of our basic attitudes in affecting whetere or not we find out our element" You make you own luck, or the harder you work the luckier you get. Attitude is crucial.


Robinson speaking on the podium on the Baseball Cooperstown about when Pee Wee Reese put his arm around him " I had lost my confidence and Pee Wee picked me up with his words of encouragement. He gave me hope when all hope was gone" Another baseball cliche story but this shows how important it is to have mentor when you pursue your passion.




" for a long time, he couldn't even grasp the difference between net and gross income. One days in exasperation his director of finance took him aside after a Virgin board meeting and said 'Richard, think of it this way;If you go fishing and throw a net into the sea you catch in the net is yours to keep thats your net profit. Everything else is the gross" I finally get this analogy for years as a caddie I was a having difficulty with gross and net scores. Net is what you keep... gross is everything else.




" .. the Best way to improve education is not to focus on primarily on the curriculum, nor an assessment, important thought these things are. the most powerful method of improving education is to invent in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers" I love to here these because assetment and exams doesn't always predict academic success. I learned in one of my educational psychology teachers that the ACT only predicts college success for two years really. Other than that is doesn't predict a student's life. Never let an exam predict your knowledge or success.




Bottom life you are thinking about pursing something that gives you great happiness in your life. Read this book and develop a plan to pursue. Happiness is there you just need to go out and get it. And Twins Daily is a great to way find your tribe, a mentor, and pursue your passion

Every Monday of the baseball season I have to check the ESPN mlb website by noon. why might you ask? Too see the power rankings and where the twins rank in compassion with rest of MLB. Here is the link for this week's rankings http://espn.go.com/mlb/powerrankings
Now, I am sure there are more rankings out there that are more accurate and fair to teams that are not covered in the Eastern Sports Programming Network.(the Twins are near the bottom) But one of the reasons I like these rankings is the comment section on the right column of the table. Most of the time , if I am not mistaken, there is a comment by Twins Daily's own Nick Nelson. He usaully provides a great sentence that accurately describes the week that the Twins had. Then ESPN lets Nick post the Twins daily link after his comment. This is link is part of the reason I found this website.

However for some reason, this week NICK didnt provide the comment. Instead ESPN.com did.!!!!
They wrote some silly thing about Scott Diamond.


So my questions for you all are..
What is ESPN's connection with Twins daily?
Why is there some weeks they provide the week and sometimes they do not?
Maybe Nick could elaberate..but a curious fan wants to know.

Thanks
Also the term power rankings makes me think about this classic YouTube Clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs

I am writing on this website because of my ipad.
When I started graduated school this June at the University of Minnesota in the Masters in Education/Mathematics Education initial licensure program my professor gave everyone his ipad education sales pitch. He said to us that through his experience and constant networking he found that school districts in the state are now starting to put curriculum on their on ipads. Thus getting one could highly increase the probability of us getting hired. So I had a little extra money saved up, and splurchased on the ipad 3 64 GB. Which I now realize that 64 GB is way way way more memory that I needed. But such is life..

Anyway, through the ipad I download the twitter app and I started just out of curiosity to follow some seroius twins fans. I think it went a little something like this.. Twins President Dave st. Peter lead me Parker Hagman ,who happens to live in the same town as my parents. (We should meet up sometime Parker...) Then I followed Twins Geek, and then through SABR i started to follow Cee Angie.... haha I can tell I am addicted twitter becauseas I write this I am expecting to @ mention them. My twitter addcition continued as the summer progressed and through the SABR 42 convention.

I attended the SABR 42 convention and met some more serious baseballs fans, some of which I was following on twitter. Although I did not introduce myself to some of the hardcore fans like, Cee Angi, Aaron Gleeman, and Twins geek because honestly I couldnt come up with anything good to stay. Also THE AVERAGE OF AGE SABR MEMBERS IS 55. I am only only 22....But that convention changed my life because it conviced me that I needed to stop consuming and start producing on my passion, obsession, and addiction of Baseball. I can read about it all day if time allowed.

I would love to be a professional newspaper reader who everyday reads the newspaper of all 30 teams in the country. Even today, the only way I can get myself out of bed in the morning is convinceing myself that I get to read the Star Tribune and see how the twins did. But now that I have a smart phone with the ESPN scorecenter app I simply do not read what Lavell E Neal ( wavle as we call him in our family) and Joe C write everyday. Because I know how my Twins did. Plus I really get sick of Gardy and some of the players saying the same old " we won today because we battle our tails off" or another old cliche. Ugh give me freshness, give me spice ,give me something. Anyway through twitter, I found Twinsdaily.com a fan forum that has an excellent hub of seroius twins fans like me. My first comment was about why the Twins shouldnt trade with the cardinals because of Kyle Lohse. Which there really was not any merit behind it as but I just wanted to get my first comment on there. I was ripped a new one. Lesson learned. Come up with something good say and do not care what other people think.

As I mentioned in a comment before my Brother is a serous college hockey fan/UMD Bulldogs fan and he started posting on http://board.uscho.com/ every weekend. He even met his fiance out of it. So that might be possible but who knows what life has in store for me. As TwinsGeek said on his website, The easy part of blogging is getting going, the hard part is keeping people interested. I will try to have some different opinions about baseball besides Joe Mauer sucks this year even though he is having a good one with some numbers that I am too lazy to post. Also, one last thing..
WARNING MY TYPING AND WRITING SEEMS TO LOVE TYPOS. SO IF YOU SEE ONE I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE.

And who knows what this blog has store for me. But I know that I love baseball, I love my ipad, and I love twitter.