Growing up, one of the things that I was taught was that embellishing was wrong. That was confusing to me since the actual definition of embellish is: "To make beautiful, as by ornamentation; decorate." Of course, my mom and various "teachers" really meant to teach me that telling lies is a Bad Thing(tm). Alas, like so many of us, precision in language isn't much of a priority — we over-rely upon the communication of our emotionalism to impart our intent.

In Spiral Learning, Kathy Sierra talks about the need to and benefits of iterating quickly through the entire cycle of learning. If I may be so bold, what she's talking about is the notion of Successive Embellishment. Basically, start small and simple and then iterate. But, rather than the traditional view of us following the spiral inward, tighter and tighter, we're going the other way: we follow the spiral outward, embellishing what we've already done — not only makes it more beautiful but also more valuable.

Your homework, should you accept it, is to connect Successive Embellishment with the notion of Passionate Curiousity.