"Disruption is overrated."

"'Disruption is overrated,' [Stone] said. 'If you tell good stories, the platforms are sort of beside the point. We made the most analog thing you can think of, a play at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, and it worked out as well as anything we have ever done.'"

-Matt Stone, quoted by David Carr today in the NewYork Times.

"Teaching to see."

May I suggest that you find a big screen and a comfy chair before clicking through to watch this amazing 38-minute video produced by Edward Tufte?

One Night Only: The Brontes, Live!

We loved Dizzy Miss Lizzie's production of "The Brontes" at last summer's Capital Fringe Festival, and next Monday (January 7th) at 6 PM, NeuroCooking friends in the National Capital Area have a chance to see it at the Kennedy Center, for free.

"Back out of all this now too much for us ..."

At a recent conference in Sonoma, California, I met the poet Jill McDonough. 

Most of the conference attendees were architects and designers. I'd flown in from Maryland to show how magnetic resonance imaging can reveal the functional organization of the human brain; she'd flown in from Boston to read poetry at the closing dinner.

Please may I suggest, dear NeuroCooking friends, that you read this poem, then wipe your tears, and buy this book?

___________

[Note regarding post title: The opening of Robert Frost's Directive is repurposed as a line in "Blackwater" from the book "Where You Live."]

Not that there'd be anything wrong with that...

My talk at the upcoming Applied Brilliance Conference will be nothing like this:

"Unknown engines underneath the city..."

You can hear "Transcendental Youth," the new album from the Mountain Goats that is due out next week, streaming live (and free) at this link, and you can see Mr. John Darnielle introduce and perform "Harlem Roulette" (from the new album) right here:

"How strange is the lot of us mortals!"

"Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving." 

- Albert Einstein.


h/t: Andrew Sullivan

"h" vs. "H" (and the Mountain Goats, Down Under)

The Mountain Goats rocking Melbourne's Toff, 9 May 2012 (iPhone photo).

Last week I was in Melbourne, Australia, for the 20th annual meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. Melbourne is a great place for live music, and, as it happened, I found out in advance that the Mountain Goats would be in town! So, when I travelled Down Under I did so with a ticket for what was to be a sold-out show at Melbourne's The Toff in Town.

How eager was I to see the Mountain Goats (whose songs I've loved for years, but whom I'd never seen live)? Let's just say I went to the Toff a whole day early, to check out the venue, which is how I came to see Max Savage and the False Idols play soul-tinged country-western Rock-n-Roll:

Max Savage and the False Idols at the Toff, 8 May 2012 (camera: Ricoh GX-100).

However, dear NeuroCooking friends, my topic today may not be singer-songwriters, or rock-n-roll, or intimate venues for live music, or fantastic audiences who shout out the choruses to early Mountain Goats songs, allowing Mr. John Darnielle to sing just the verses, or even the persistent paradox of how listening to songs about self-destructive persons engaged in abusive relationships can be uplifting. No, my topic today may be beer.

I like hoppy beers, like India Pale Ales. When I visit someplace with unfamiliar offerings on tap, especially overseas, I will ask the bartender to recommend a beer. So, that Tuesday night at the Toff, I asked the bartender:

"What's hoppy? Like an IPA?"

And he replied:

"Yes. Would you like a taste?"

I did a double-take, and looked at the taps, and yes, they had a beer on tap called "Hoppy."

And yes, it was.

This "hoppy" vs. "Hoppy" reminded me, instantly, of the old "Who's on first" routine:

It's too late to see Abbott and Costello live, but, thankfully, it's not too late to see the Mountain Goats, which I recommend that you do, wherever and whenever you can!

"We love you, John!" The Mountain Goats at the Toff, 9 May 2012 (iPhone photo).

Mr. Feffer goes to New York.

With all due respect to Ms. Ginevra de' Benci, when it comes to the arts, one of the best things about Washington D.C. is the Capital Fringe Festival, and, for each of the past three years, one of the best things about the Capital Fringe Festival has been the plays of Mr. John Feffer.

For one night only, on Monday, April 23rd, NeuroCooking friends in the New York City area can see Mr. Feffer play seven characters in his 2011 work, "The Bird" ("In search of adventure in Poland 1989, a young man discovers a female assassin, a Jewish skinhead, a mysterious bird, and the end of innocence.").

That's at the Tada theater, 15 W 28th St, New York, April 23rd, at 8 PM. Tickets here.

"Discovering things is actually pretty easy..."

"Discovering things is actually pretty easy; understanding them is really hard."

- Prof. Peter Agre (2003 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry), this morning at Pathology Ground Rounds in Hurd Hall, Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Persuasive Communication

I was recently interviewed for a magazine article on persuasion. Unfortunately, I just found out that the not-to-be-named magazine folded before the interview could run. Here are some excerpts from my unpublished Q&A with the journalist:

Q: Can learning the right ways to approach people with requests help people become more assertive? How so? We all hate rocking the boat, but why is it important to stand up for yourself and ask for what you want?

A: We all want to be heard. We don’t even necessarily want to “win” or get our way; we crave being heard and understood. The Earl of Chesterfield is quoted as saying, "Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request." Being able to voice our authentic feelings and desires while at the same time showing respect and empathy for our listeners is incredibly powerful. Continually tamping down on one’s own passion is eventually exhausting and demoralizing.

Q: What are the keys to being a persuasive person - and how is this different from being manipulative?
A: We need to understand that we are primarily communicating because there’s something we want our audience to do. It may be that we want our listener to undertake a different approach to solving a problem, or we want our partner or roommate to take out the garbage, or we want to help a friend feel better – there is an end goal to our communication. Persuasion is not coercion, or manipulation; it’s about moving toward action.

Persuasion is about helping change people’s minds about changing their minds. It’s not about telling people what to do, but facilitating their own discovery of the action and the rewards of taking such action. It’s about engagement, and helping people find meaning, and requires two-way communication. Being effectively persuasive is about respecting how other people see the world.

Q: When trying to get someone to see your side, are there tactics that work across the board, or do you have to know your audience and adjust?

A: I recommend a 3-step process, based on history, experience, and an understanding of the science behind cognition, emotion, and memory. I've trademarked it Heart, Head & Hand™. Heart, Head & Hand™ recommends first establishing a relevant and emotional context for communication, then delivering facts and data, and then asking the audience to take action. The order is crucial.

Q: So how can you read your audience – what should you look for?

A: Start with a clear understanding of what you want your listener to do as a result of your communication. Consider how your listener may need to feel in order to take the desired action. Might you have a story you can share about a time when you felt similarly?

Think, too, about where your work and concerns overlap with your audience’s work and concerns. Draw a Venn diagram and map it out. Seeing it visually can provide insight, and thus confidence.

Q: How important is confidence in being persuasive? How can you exude confidence without seeming cocky or arrogant?
A: Too often, we fail to show up, to show emotion, to show passion and desire. Showing passion is crucial to successfully moving listeners to action, and to making change happen. In a professional setting, passion and emotion need not translate as emotional. Emotion, in a professional setting, means delivering your information, and your request for change, with passion and confidence, and within a context that the audience finds meaningful.

"Let hot be hot and cold be cold, let the stone be hard and heavy."

"People grew bored waiting for Moses, too—

some never liked him anyway,

another Mr. Know-It-All,

and why so assured after forty years

of wrong turns? And what made so many women

look at him that way?"

- from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by Connie Wanek in her book "On Speaking Terms" (2010) from Copper Canyon Press.

"Luxury itself..."

"Though my debts are heavy
honey would pay them all.
Honey heals, honey mends.
A spoon takes more than it can hold
without reproach. A knife plunges deep,
but does no injury."

- from "Honey" by Connie Wanek in her book "On Speaking Terms" (2010) from Copper Canyon Press.

Made in Japan by Mr. Shin-ichi Konno.

We've never seen a bike quite like this Cherubim that was on display over the weekend in Austin, Texas at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (here's another view, with its creator).

Four-legged opera stars?

The Seattle Opera's new production of Don Quixote features a horse & a donkey.

surface your passion, again

Last week, Lisa Lepson of Joshua Venture Group explained social entrepreneurship to me:

Social entrepreneurship works because it is rooted in a personal and passionate story. And personal passion, powerfully packaged as story, is what drives change in the world.

surface your passion!

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

What part of speech are you?

"I seem to be a verb."

-R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)

"... I took black coffee ..."

"For fifteen days I struggled to prove that no functions analogous to those I have since called Fuchsian functions could exist; I was then very ignorant. Every day I sat down at my work table where I spent an hour or two; I tried a great number of combinations and arrived at no result. One evening, contrary to my custom, I took black coffee; I could not go to sleep; ideas swarmed up in clouds; I sensed them clashing until, to put it so, a pair would hook together to form a stable combination. By morning I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those derived from the hypergeometric series. I had only to write up the results which took me a few hours."

- Jules Henri Poincaré (1854 – 1912), excerpted from "Science et Methode" (1908)

Why not a trompe-l'œil bike?

Cyclists who like the look of wood will be happy to learn that Rob Pollock will paint your bike's frame in faux wood-grain for $1500.