Carmina Burana

So there's a ballet called Carmina Burana by a guy named Carl Orff that tells the story of humanity from creation to apocalypse. It's pretty dark -- I've heard the text is based on the writings of apostate monks from the 13th century who abandoned their faith to live a life of wantonness.

If I was in an instrumental rock band (like Mogwai, Mono, or Explosions in the Sky or something), I would love to do an album and/or a live show that does the same thing, but stays true to the story of humanity the Bible tells. It's a powerful story and it could comfortably be divided into distinct songs -- Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, for example. Maybe you could even combine it with live painting or at least a trippy video on a projector.

Teachers

Think of the best teacher you ever had in school. Could she successfully teach a class of 200? Or 500? Of course. She might have to figure out how to test/grade that many students, but she could definitely hold their attention and communicate clearly.

Now think of the worst teacher you ever had. Could he successfully teach a class of only 4 students? No. He was incompetent -- didn't matter how few students he had. Schools freak out about student:teacher ratios, but this ratio is not necessarily correlated to how much students actually learn.

Same goes for any kind of leader. A good leader can command an army; a bad leader can't control a boy scout patrol. Organizations (schools, churches, companies, etc.) should divide the people who need to be led by the number of leaders, not divide them into groups and then try to scrounge up people to lead them just for the sake of having convenient groups.

Celebrities

"When I asked Gawker managing editor Choire Sicha whether it was possible to ignore talentless celebrities, he responded with the remorse of a custodian of cultural decline: 'Everyone can, and should, be ignored. We were warned about this situation we find ourselves in by philosophers, and well before it happened. It's just too bad we weren't warned by celebrities, or we would have listened to them.'"
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/why-the-hipster-must-die

Odd Dance

"Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It's an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it."
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

Lacanian

"The hipster is the child of the postmodern – a mixture of cynicism and rebellion, buried under conformism and apathy – everything taken at face value and rolled into one. In its self-centric dynamic it is obsessed with its own identity, yet it is defined by what it is not (hipsters deny being hipsters). Speaking philosophically hipsterdom raises a glass to the Lacanian lack, and it is good this way, for the hipster is the epitome of the marketing age, the ravaging consumerism and the celebration of desire. They are the product of marketing and also the source of it, they set trends and have trends fed back to them in a loop of fashion, obscure bands and indie clubs."
http://anticapitalists.org/2012/06/08/more-than-just-aesthetics/