"... the essence of the thing ..."

"To become some other thing, you have to not be that thing in the first place, and, if you are that thing, then it is hard for you to really believe that anyone else can become it, since the essence of the thing is having been it all along."

-from The View from a Bridge by Adam Gopnik in this week's issue of the New Yorker.

"Good morning Baltimore! Every day's like an open door."

"My ma tells me no 
   but my feet tell me go!"

-from "Hairspray"'s opening song "Good Morning Baltimore!"


Tickets are still available for "Hairspray in Concert" narrated by Mr. John Waters with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Meyerhoff Hall, Baltimore, tonight and tomorrow night, plus Saturday and Sunday matinees. Saw the world premier last night at Strathmore; laughed so hard I cried. And how often does that happen at the symphony?


From the BSO website:

Jack Everly, conductor
John Waters, narrator (BSO debut)
Micky Dolenz, Wilbur Turnblad
Beth Leavel, Velma von Tussle
Paul Vogt, Edna Turnblad
Featuring:
Marissa Perry as "Tracy Turnblad"
Julie Kavanagh as "Penny Pingleton"
Nick Adams as "Link Larkin"
Rhiannon Hansen as "Amber von Tussle"
NaTasha Williams as "Motormouth Maybelle"
Marcus Terell as "Seaweed J. Stubbs"
Bret Shuford as "Corny Collins"
Alix Korey as "Female Authority Figure"
Chris Briante as "Male Authority Figure"
Also with: The Divas of Song (Natalie Renee, Nikki Stephenson, and Melissa VanPelt) as "The Dynamites."

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16!

The New York Times obituary of Dr. Lynn Margulis (1938 - 2011) notes that her groundbreaking 1967 paper proposing the endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotes had been rejected by fifteen journals before its eventual publication.

See this man if you possibly can!

Mr. Reggie Watts, who is not writing a book entitled "The Coolness of the Closeness of Now", was amazing last night at the Wooly Mammoth Theater, where tickets are selling fast for performances through this Friday.

We were pleased to note...

We got our car registration renewal in the mail, including that sticker with the two digits of the year that you gotta stick in the upper right-hand corner of your license plate.

In our state, that registration sticker has always had a seven-digit number printed on it. To find out if a registration sticker belonged on a particular plate, the police would have to enter that seven-digit number into a database search. This was not convenient, especially since it appeared that there were some individuals who pilfered stickers, instead of paying their renewal fees.

So, we were pleased to note that our new sticker bears, as its sticker number, not some "random" seven-digit number, but rather the license plate number! It matches!

Much more sensible.

However, as we have argued before, it would be even more sensible to abolish not just the registration sticker number, but also the license plate number. They could both be replaced with the driver's cellphone number – and this would make our roads much safer and more courteous.

2059

The close of this year ending with "9", NeuroCooking friends, makes me look not back over the decade, but instead ahead five decades, to ask how 2009 will look to the people of 2059.

I was going to predict that they will ask why we ate so much high-fructose corn-syrup, but a friend with trusted taste says that doing so would make me sound shrill, or batty, a self-marginalized web-ranter. (Though she admits some people would find it funny). So no, we won't make any predictions about the future that touch upon sensitive topics like agribusiness, politics, war, science, health, sex, or religion (certainly we won't mention that 2009 saw the first Vatican conference on possible theological implications of extraterrestrial life). People are too sensitive about that kind of stuff; we wouldn't want to risk offending anyone.

Instead, I predict:

The people of 2059 will look back upon 2009's use of petroleum-fueled motor-vehicles for the daily distribution of pulped-wood newspapers, like we look back on horse-drawn milk-wagons.

baker, farmer, computer, photographer

The word "computer" used to mean a person who computed. (Think of a clerk adding up numbers in a ledger).

So, "computer" was like "baker" or "farmer", until it changed to refer to a machine, rather than a person.

Now that Sony has introduced the new "IPT-DSI Party-Shot Personal Photographer", an "innovative camera dock that pans 360 degrees and tilts 24 degrees, automatically detects faces, adjusts composition [reportedly using the rule of thirds] and takes photos for you", we wonder whether a similar transformation will take hold of the word "photographer".

the danger of assumption

There is a difference between sharing information and projecting information onto another person, or inviting information to be projected onto you. Be clear about the connection you are trying to make: are you really communicating what you wish to be communicating?

Beware of making broad pronouncements and assuming that your listener comprehends your intended meaning. For example, we often tell people where we grew up, where we went to school, or what kind of work we do, out of an actual desire for our listeners to make certain assumptions about us. This is lazy communication: disingenuous, disrespectful, and potentially dangerous to the outcome of our conversation.

If it is a value you are trying to communicate, explicitly communicate that value. Share a story that illustrates that value. Do not assume that your listener understands the underlying values and intended meaning of your broad statements.

If you are asking your listener to take action, perhaps even to significantly change his or her behavior, both of you need to be clear about the motivating force for that action. That's the only way to sustain behavioral change.

Assumptions rob you of a chance to express and define your values and to be truly heard and understood. In our rush to connect with people (or our desire to manipulate them), we make broad pronouncements, actually inviting assumptions and stereotyping about our character. When we invite our listeners to assume things about us, we are letting them know that we are freely assuming things about them. True discourse has been halted.