CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Some methods of boosting academic achievement are as much a shift in mindset as anything else. The use of concentric circle mandalas came with a significant degree of risk (psychosis) and was out of favor by 1980, or at least so we imagine. From Elmhurst's 1970 yearbook.
Here's a precursor to John Blase's logic that God is blue:
If God is Love (as the Bible says) and Love is Blue (as the song says) then the law of transitivity leads me to at least consider the possibility that God is Blue (as I’ve long hunched). —"In Praise of Blue," 2020
"These are the sheep -- What Winnie calls darlings!!!!!!! We call them perfect b------s." By Charles Rawson. Courtesy of the State Library of Queensland.