Archive for the ‘curiosities’ Category
What Didn’t You See Today?
pylon of the month
pylon of the month
Giant Metal Men Matter
Have you noticed the gigantic metal men standing in your neighborhood? One’s over there, just above the tree line. Enormous and sinister. Sort of hulking at around 100 ft. tall. What’s that–you’ve not noticed it? How could you miss it, standing there in the wide open? Your kids saw it and have already made up stories about it: why it’s there and how it could reach down and grab anybody at any moment so let’s not spend too much time beneath it.
Electrical pylons are just one of the things we miss as we walk or drive around our city. They only become visible when someone shows you. Then you see them. Your eyes probably registered the shape and presence, but somehow the tall tower did not enter your consciousness. You needed someone to point it out—not that you particularly care about pylons. Same with people: do we even notice the janitor cleaning the corridor at the airport or the clerk at the grocery store? We are trained to have these people blend into the background, just like the pylons. Just like the homeless guy at the stop light on Hennepin and Lyndale. It makes our life easier—less to deal with—when we don’t see these things or people.
How much we are missing when we tune out stuff we don’t want to deal with?
One of my clients is trying to help a particular set of physicians tune in to a class of patients that are largely unstudied. These patients present with certain features in their heart that routinely exclude them from pharmaceutical and other clinical trials. The conventional wisdom is that the outcomes would be significantly worse if these patients were included. So they aren’t. It’s a kind of research Catch-22.
My challenge this week is how to help these physicians see these patients. These patients cannot be treated until they are seen. Which is true for all the invisible stuff in our lives: we can’t deal with it as long as it is out of sight.
More on pylon appreciation: Alain de Botton from The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
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“…transcribing whores for their pimp brains….”
The Author of Unremitting Failure is Failing at Failing
I cannot get enough of Unremitting Failure. Who is this person so bent on failing he (she?) succeeds so spectacularly with every post? My favorite line:
“It is perhaps true that some people write what they think, but we hold such people in contempt. They’re merely transcribing whores for their pimp brains as they turn out scholarly treatises, op ed pieces and the like.”
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Life is Full of Choices
Whisky is the Least Important
I’m not a whisky drinker but I can appreciate this beautiful bit of propaganda. The wonder of a life full of choices is unsettling. Invigorating.
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How Could this Book be More Interesting?
I’m about to go fishing with my Listentalk book proposal (via www.ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com). How could I make the summary (below) more interesting? Be honest. People respond to these posts by email, on Facebook and occasionally right here at “Engage.” Vent your spleen. I’m listening.
Listentalk: How Simple Conversation Changes Your Life Every Day
Why does one conversation make you scan the room for escape while the next sends you breathless to register to run a marathon—though you hate exercise? Listentalk: How Simple Conversation Changes Your Life Every Day shows how humble, mundane conversations have the power to turn our life direction every single day, by:
- Reminding us of the pivotal conversations that have shaped and sculpted our own lives. Like the chance comment to your 18-year-old-self from an acquaintance about a “school you should check out,” which sent you a direction that ended in law school, marriage and being appointed as a judge (true story).
- Showing how God purposefully composed the human condition so that while we are limited, we are limited together. Conversation has a way of bumping out our human limitations in extraordinary ways, so that my lack of understanding leads to a discussion that sheds light on a key topic but also opens an opportunity to pursue the work I love.
- Exposing the component parts of listening and talking so we can better understand how God speaks to and through us
- Providing practical insights into how we can listen and speak for powerful good every single day—including wise use of social media
Today’s incendiary and vitriolic talk leaves people feeling weary and soiled. Listentalk refreshes Christian adults, Sunday School classes, small groups and college students by reminding them of the wonder, curiosity and serendipity that have been part of the deep verbal connections that have shaped their lives. These deep connections have often sprung from the unlikeliest of mundane conversations.
Listentalk tells stories of conversations that both suggest and model an extraordinary set of expectations and outcomes for ordinary talk. Listentalk helps people see verbal, visual and other-sensory conversational episodes as the powerful shaping tools they are—and provides suggestions for making them even more powerful. Unlike possibility-thinking, self-help books, Listentalk is grounded in the nature and actions of the conversing God of the Bible who expected and realized world-changing outcomes from each conversational episode. Listentalk frees readers to see daily conversation in a very different light by inviting readers to reach out in trust to each day’s conversational partners—an ever-expanding set of partners due to changing attitudes (about communication, authority and the loss of gatekeepers) and developing technologies.
Listentalk offers a primer on navigating the growing social media space as redeemed conversational partners. Creating communities of target audiences is the new marketing strategy. Leading public conversations by reaching out with dialogue that gifts and blesses is not only supremely Christian, but supremely strategic.
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On Intersubjective Finitude
I think I just made that phrase up (really: Google says “No results found for “Intersubjective Finitude”). What I mean is that the human condition is chock-full of limits: we have limited energy, we age and parts droop or just stop working, finances are always ¾ empty (partly because we always want more than we have). Look: we still have to sleep every day because we simply run out of steam! The human condition is all about these limits.
I think it is purposeful.
The wonder of conversation is that it has the possibility of bumping out limits in the most surprising ways. I talk with my wife and she says something that lifts my spirits (and energy) in an unexpected way. A dinner discussion with a colleague reveals a new approach to exercise that may provide a more sought-after outcome. A haphazard conversation outside a coffee shop and I suddenly realize a next step for a vexing copywriting problem.
Our humanness bespeaks frailty and limits at every turn. And at every conversational turn, we run smack into words that would free us from momentary miseries. Multiply the effect by ten thousand in the mysterious conversations with God we call “prayer.”
I’ve been writing about it here as I get my book proposal ready to go out and seduce potential publishers.
What pivotal conversation will happen today?
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[Image Credit: Marc Johns]
Sinister Egyptian Texts
"We're here to help you."
Vodafone and France Telecom SA were forced by the Egyptian Government/army to send texts to their customers, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The texts had to do with “national security and general safety.” One example texted message: “Egyptian youth beware of rumors and listen to the voice of reason. Egypt is above everyone so protect it.”
The Egyptian government/army would likely argue those were not threatening messages, and were intended for general safety. But every time an institution speaks to an individual with an institutional voice, the results are less than believable. In this case, they were wildly unbelievable—given Egypt’s continued attempts to break up the persistent crowds and silence their demands. None of the actions of the increasingly desperate Egyptian government actions are at all surprising given their general shut down of the Internet.
The medium hobbled the institutional message by showing up on private phone carried in a private pocket or private purse. This alone makes national security and general safety messages extremely threatening. One thing the messages through the medium made clear: the army has taken control of private industry and will force their message into your personal sphere.
That’s not the right message for this revolutionary crowd.
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Read Just Right-Hand Pages
Really.
Marshall McLuhan: “I read only the right-hand pages of serious books.”
It’s about redundancy, people.
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Work Posters: Violence in the Service of Safety
Careful: Train Cars will Crush Your Skull
In classes I teach we often puzzle through how to get and retain attention. As a nation our attention spans continue to shrink so that a block of copy seems too huge a commitment. Many readers move on. These old work-safety posters are a gory-wonder in gaining attention and remaining memorable.
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Oh to be an Introspective French Firm.
People have conversations. Do companies?
On Tuesday the head of France’s national railroad apologized for trundling 20,000 Jews to Nazi camps in 1943-1944, as reported by the NYTimes and carried locally by the StarTribune. US Lawmakers, survivors and descendants had moved to block SNCF from winning US contracts had the company not acknowledge their role. The official word from the firm said the apology was part of “the company’s longtime effort to examine its past and denied that it was prompted by the company’s U.S. ambitions.”
There are at least three striking things about this story.
One: It defies logic to disconnect the company apology from looming loss of revenue from possible US contracts. To insist otherwise cheapens their communication. One clearly connects with the other.
Two: Applying economic pressure to force a company to tell the truth about their role in administering a great evil is a marvelous use of our capitalist instincts. There is a fair amount of both optimism and boldness in this move, especially since official spokespeople nearly always sidestep words that link their brand with anything other than blue sky, sunshine and happy smiling faces. Bravo, lawmakers, survivors and descendants!
Third: To think that a company has a “longtime effort to examine its past” strikes me as, also, beyond belief. Companies incorporate for economic muscle. They organize to move forward, they look for opportunity, hone in and exploit. Companies make money. Companies don’t sit at an outdoor café examining past failings. I’m hard-pressed to think of any introspective executive who would free a budget line item for “Company Introspection.” Please, please let there be such a leader in this world. But maybe French companies have a soul?
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conversation is an engine 