Soaring Ideas Sell!

Having a look at my Flickr photo sharing statistics recently had a few surprises for me. Because the pictures that have a great audience early on often fade into obscurity. Instead, its the slow seller with a few looks a week that seems to build and build into an evergreen product. And when you analyse their appeal, usually the are an ordinary photo of an object that interests people or that they have a reason for looking at; an old glider (sailplane to our American cousins), a quiet village street or even a vintage cider farm’s cart for example. In the end, they all sell!

This is also true of ideas – religious ones as well as secular thoughts. If an idea has appeal and is needed by someone to get through a problem then they will be used. Maybe not by many but they will sell in the end.

Now there is a thought for those who say thinking is dead. After all, in this age of austerity why not treat yourself today to a new idea. Actually they don’t sell well because they are free!

Time for the Journey

Have you noticed how quickly time is passing these days. It seems that our Christmas presents were only being unwrapped yesterday. Even the interminable days of winter seems a thing of the past. And so, the weeks rotate at an almost breath-taking pace.

Well they say its a sign of old age. But there may be more true in this cliché than most. For, we judge the length of our journeys in life by the number and quality of landmarks we pass. In youth, everything is new and fresh and exciting. Can’t you recall the first date … the first important exam result.. the first… And so the weeks passed through a landscape of highs and lows which remember for all the right and wrong reasons. But when we get older, few events are new or challenging or refreshing. In fact,  as the years pass, we become like a ship at sea. For when we look back we see only a rapidly fading wake and a bland horizon.

What’s to be done? Time for finding a new challenge, a new venture and new discovery. Time to really look at the landscape around and then start to landscape the future. For then, life’s journey returns from sea voyage to alpine walk even of it is a bit of a hike!

An education you can’t refuse

The problem with education these days is that it costs so much. Or so I thought until a few days ago. It was then I came across a free online resource from the Open University.  Now, since its foundation in the 60’s, the OU has been one of the jewels in the British higher education. Because, established as it was to serve the era of  ‘the white heat of technology’, its real success was in  attracting mature students when to be an undergraduate over age 30 was definitely – as they say in current parlance – not cool.

But the OU did more than recreating ‘maturies’ as students.  For it took the rather seedy world of distance learning, then given the unattractive heading of correspondence courses, and shook it to its foundations. For, arguably, it blazed the trail for the modern multimedia education and online training we can all benefit from today. After all, if you wanted people to enjoy learning after a hard days work, you had to grab their attention with materials that were worth opening up.

However, as I said earlier ‘all singing – all dancing’ courses are expensive.  That’s why the OU is offering such an irresistable bargain.  Because  it makes available online a whole raft of their courses ranging from basic studies skill through to complex computer networking taking in the humanities and the law on the way. There are even student forums and a video conference facility thrown in for good measure.

So if you have fancied dipping your toes into latin, wondered about human consciousness or felt that the Enlightenment is your forte, then put ‘open learning’ into your search engine and enjoy opening your mind to the light of knowledge. What is more, it won’t cost you a bean!