Answer one of the following questions this week:
Is it true that hurt people hurt people?
Would you rather be invincible from physical or emotional harm?
Life is unfair. It is unfair to everyone. So isn't that fair?
Some physicists claim that time travel is impossible. Isn't living already travelling through time?
Would you rather have your ideal job or your ideal mate?
Sunday, November 16, 2014
WEEK TEN READING--IN THIS CASE, WEEK TEN WATCHING
This week, watch this video lecture. It is short and sweet. Your writing this week will be to respond to any element of the video, so just watch with your mind open:
Malcolm Gladwell, Customer Success Tipping Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhpjTH_GItU
Enjoy,
dr. s
Malcolm Gladwell, Customer Success Tipping Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhpjTH_GItU
Enjoy,
dr. s
Friday, November 14, 2014
TORTILLA CURTAIN ESSAYS
Greetings,
This is just a friendly note to say that the Tortilla Curtain essays have been graded and returned. If you did not receive yours, please contact me.
Best wishes,
Dr. S
This is just a friendly note to say that the Tortilla Curtain essays have been graded and returned. If you did not receive yours, please contact me.
Best wishes,
Dr. S
Sunday, November 9, 2014
WEEK NINE BLOG ENTRY
Answer any ONE of the following random questions:
People in the U.S. seem to have more hobbies than people in other countries. Why is that?
Do you have a hobby? Why do people have hobbies?
The U.S. is a country of sub-cultures. People often define themselves by allegiance to one of their smaller sub cultures. Why is that?
Have you ever followed a trend and knew you were following a trend?
If none of these bizarre questions is working for you, respond to any idea from the book.
People in the U.S. seem to have more hobbies than people in other countries. Why is that?
Do you have a hobby? Why do people have hobbies?
The U.S. is a country of sub-cultures. People often define themselves by allegiance to one of their smaller sub cultures. Why is that?
Have you ever followed a trend and knew you were following a trend?
If none of these bizarre questions is working for you, respond to any idea from the book.
WEEK NINE READING
Here is a book review of The Tipping Point:
"The Next Big Thing"
Malcolm Gladwell examines what makes fads, well, faddish.
by Alan Wolfe
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/05/reviews/000305.05wolfet.html
It's hard not to be fascinated by fads. A previously unwanted item will attract sudden, enormous, inexplicable attention. The company that provides it will run out. Pundits will read into its popularity portentous meanings for contemporary civilization. The lucky few will make fantastic sums of money. Then, as mysteriously as it appeared, the item wanes in desirability. Within a year or two, whatever it was that had sent people into a frenzy becomes the answer to a trivia question.
Fads remind us of the potential for disorder always lying behind the placid surface of daily life. Economists study fads for examples of speculative mania -- Dutch tulips, perhaps today's Nasdaq -- that inevitably result in depressions. Sociologists teach that in the middle of a fad individuals are more likely to be swayed by crowd psychology than by their own wants. Satirists find in fads human foibles writ large; Melville's ''Confidence Man'' and Twain's ''Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg'' are built around the illusions that lead people to deny what their eyes see in favor of what their hearts desire. ''The Tipping Point,'' by Malcolm Gladwell, is a lively, timely and engaging study of fads. Some of those he writes about fit snugly into the long tradition of crowd behavior: out-of-fashion Hush Puppies resurged into popularity in 1994 and '95; teenagers, despite repeated health warnings, continue to smoke and in the past few years have been doing so in increasing numbers; and in 1998 a book called ''Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood'' reached a sales mark of two and a half million copies. Some of the other phenomena analyzed by Gladwell are a bit more unusual, including the decline in crime in New York City that began under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. But all of them can be taken as examples of how unpredictable people can be when they find themselves in the throes of doing what everyone else is doing at the same time. Unlike previous observers of fads, however, Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, does not emphasize what they teach us about human irrationality. He does the exact opposite. Fads, he claims, are not really fads at all. They are illustrations of what he calls ''the tipping point,'' a term that he appropriates from the highly rational language of medical science, and that he defines as the ''one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once.'' Ideas and products and messages and behaviors, Gladwell writes, spread just as viruses do. Viruses are contagious, but they move through a population at something like a leisurely pace until a tipping point is reached and they explode into an epidemic. Gladwell extends the idea of the tipping point from natural to social phenomena, from epidemics to fads, insisting that we can discover the scientific principles that govern both.
Gladwell calls the first such principle the Law of the Few. An idea or behavior spreads because of the unusual qualities of a few key groups of individuals. There are the connectors, networked people who know seemingly everyone and who can make or break reputations on their word alone. There are the mavens, people who acquire such detailed knowledge of a product that others turn to them repeatedly for advice. Then there are the salesmen, those whose enthusiasm for a product can send its sales spiralling upward.
The second law of fads, according to Gladwell, is the Stickiness Factor. All kinds of potential fads exist around us, but only certain ones take. ''Sesame Street'' was failing miserably with test groups when someone, as a last-ditch move, thought of blending real people with puppets. Including a map highlighting the location of the infirmary induced many Yale seniors to heed previously disregarded warnings about getting a tetanus shot. At a time of message overload, finding a way to make something stick is part of making it survive. Finally, Gladwell discusses the Power of Context. One reason crime declined in New York is that officials put into practice the much-debated broken-windows theory, which held that if subways were cleaned of graffiti and windows were repaired, people would begin to obey the law. Altering the context altered the result. Gladwell offers another example: the Rule of 150. Groups smaller than 150 cannot influence many outside them. Larger groups tend to become impersonal. Knowing that, we begin to realize that one can create a large fad by first creating a series of smaller ones. Gladwell, who made his career in journalism as a science writer, has a knack for explaining psychological experiments clearly; ''The Tipping Point'' is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world. But its central premise, no matter how often asserted, fails to persuade. Gladwell's rules of epidemic behavior are common sense dressed up as science. We do not need to know about how a virus spreads to know that networking is important, that good salesmen move products or that most ad campaigns fail. And some of his ideas -- for example, that 150 is the ideal size of a human group because 1 to 150 also happens to be the ratio of the size of our neocortex to the size of our entire brain -- are just fanciful. A virus spreads by replicating itself into as many hosts as it can find. The tipping point it reaches is quantitative in nature; matters achieve epidemic proportions when replication takes off mathematically. The social tipping points of everyday life, by contrast, are qualitative. What makes them fascinating is not the number of times things repeat themselves but the fact that events taking place after the tipping point is reached are not the same as those that took place before. Consider the most well known of social tipping points, though one that Gladwell does not analyze: partly integrated neighborhoods segregating themselves when whites come to feel that too many blacks live there. A white person who sells a house to an African-American because the latter makes the best offer is ostensibly engaged in the same behavior as a white person who sells a house to an African-American because he is in a panic and just wants to unload his property at any price. But subjectively, their actions are completely different. Before the tipping point, the white seller is rational. Afterwards, his consciousness has changed, and he acts out of fear, ignorance or both. The tipping point takes on a life of its own because human beings, the transmittal agents, unlike viruses, have minds of their own. Forcing science where science does not belong results not only in misunderstanding; it could also cause harm if taken too seriously. Gladwell points to a rash of Young Werther suicides that took place in Micronesia in the 1970's and 80's. Just like crime or smoking, suicide is contagious, he writes, citing the studies of a University of California sociologist who found that suicides increase after reports of suicide appear in the newspapers. As with any form of social behavior, there will always be an imitative factor. But it is simply wrong to say that the very essence of suicide is a private language between members of a common subculture. Suicide may not have any essence, but if it has one, it is a private act of a person with serious mental disturbances and not a language at all. Anyone who believes that suicide is contagious the way the flu is contagious may well be distracted from giving the kind of attention that a potential suicide victim needs, the help to deal with problems inside, not behaviors outside. I wish Malcolm Gladwell had chosen to use his considerable skills as a journalist to describe more examples of actual tipping points. In reaching instead for theory, he reaches well beyond where he, or anyone else, can safely travel. The theory of tipping points requires that ''we reframe the way we think about the world,'' he writes. Actually, the way we think about the world has to reframe the often stilted theories we develop about it.
Alan Wolfe is the director of the Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
"The Next Big Thing"
Malcolm Gladwell examines what makes fads, well, faddish.
by Alan Wolfe
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/05/reviews/000305.05wolfet.html
It's hard not to be fascinated by fads. A previously unwanted item will attract sudden, enormous, inexplicable attention. The company that provides it will run out. Pundits will read into its popularity portentous meanings for contemporary civilization. The lucky few will make fantastic sums of money. Then, as mysteriously as it appeared, the item wanes in desirability. Within a year or two, whatever it was that had sent people into a frenzy becomes the answer to a trivia question.
Fads remind us of the potential for disorder always lying behind the placid surface of daily life. Economists study fads for examples of speculative mania -- Dutch tulips, perhaps today's Nasdaq -- that inevitably result in depressions. Sociologists teach that in the middle of a fad individuals are more likely to be swayed by crowd psychology than by their own wants. Satirists find in fads human foibles writ large; Melville's ''Confidence Man'' and Twain's ''Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg'' are built around the illusions that lead people to deny what their eyes see in favor of what their hearts desire. ''The Tipping Point,'' by Malcolm Gladwell, is a lively, timely and engaging study of fads. Some of those he writes about fit snugly into the long tradition of crowd behavior: out-of-fashion Hush Puppies resurged into popularity in 1994 and '95; teenagers, despite repeated health warnings, continue to smoke and in the past few years have been doing so in increasing numbers; and in 1998 a book called ''Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood'' reached a sales mark of two and a half million copies. Some of the other phenomena analyzed by Gladwell are a bit more unusual, including the decline in crime in New York City that began under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. But all of them can be taken as examples of how unpredictable people can be when they find themselves in the throes of doing what everyone else is doing at the same time. Unlike previous observers of fads, however, Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, does not emphasize what they teach us about human irrationality. He does the exact opposite. Fads, he claims, are not really fads at all. They are illustrations of what he calls ''the tipping point,'' a term that he appropriates from the highly rational language of medical science, and that he defines as the ''one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once.'' Ideas and products and messages and behaviors, Gladwell writes, spread just as viruses do. Viruses are contagious, but they move through a population at something like a leisurely pace until a tipping point is reached and they explode into an epidemic. Gladwell extends the idea of the tipping point from natural to social phenomena, from epidemics to fads, insisting that we can discover the scientific principles that govern both.
Gladwell calls the first such principle the Law of the Few. An idea or behavior spreads because of the unusual qualities of a few key groups of individuals. There are the connectors, networked people who know seemingly everyone and who can make or break reputations on their word alone. There are the mavens, people who acquire such detailed knowledge of a product that others turn to them repeatedly for advice. Then there are the salesmen, those whose enthusiasm for a product can send its sales spiralling upward.
The second law of fads, according to Gladwell, is the Stickiness Factor. All kinds of potential fads exist around us, but only certain ones take. ''Sesame Street'' was failing miserably with test groups when someone, as a last-ditch move, thought of blending real people with puppets. Including a map highlighting the location of the infirmary induced many Yale seniors to heed previously disregarded warnings about getting a tetanus shot. At a time of message overload, finding a way to make something stick is part of making it survive. Finally, Gladwell discusses the Power of Context. One reason crime declined in New York is that officials put into practice the much-debated broken-windows theory, which held that if subways were cleaned of graffiti and windows were repaired, people would begin to obey the law. Altering the context altered the result. Gladwell offers another example: the Rule of 150. Groups smaller than 150 cannot influence many outside them. Larger groups tend to become impersonal. Knowing that, we begin to realize that one can create a large fad by first creating a series of smaller ones. Gladwell, who made his career in journalism as a science writer, has a knack for explaining psychological experiments clearly; ''The Tipping Point'' is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world. But its central premise, no matter how often asserted, fails to persuade. Gladwell's rules of epidemic behavior are common sense dressed up as science. We do not need to know about how a virus spreads to know that networking is important, that good salesmen move products or that most ad campaigns fail. And some of his ideas -- for example, that 150 is the ideal size of a human group because 1 to 150 also happens to be the ratio of the size of our neocortex to the size of our entire brain -- are just fanciful. A virus spreads by replicating itself into as many hosts as it can find. The tipping point it reaches is quantitative in nature; matters achieve epidemic proportions when replication takes off mathematically. The social tipping points of everyday life, by contrast, are qualitative. What makes them fascinating is not the number of times things repeat themselves but the fact that events taking place after the tipping point is reached are not the same as those that took place before. Consider the most well known of social tipping points, though one that Gladwell does not analyze: partly integrated neighborhoods segregating themselves when whites come to feel that too many blacks live there. A white person who sells a house to an African-American because the latter makes the best offer is ostensibly engaged in the same behavior as a white person who sells a house to an African-American because he is in a panic and just wants to unload his property at any price. But subjectively, their actions are completely different. Before the tipping point, the white seller is rational. Afterwards, his consciousness has changed, and he acts out of fear, ignorance or both. The tipping point takes on a life of its own because human beings, the transmittal agents, unlike viruses, have minds of their own. Forcing science where science does not belong results not only in misunderstanding; it could also cause harm if taken too seriously. Gladwell points to a rash of Young Werther suicides that took place in Micronesia in the 1970's and 80's. Just like crime or smoking, suicide is contagious, he writes, citing the studies of a University of California sociologist who found that suicides increase after reports of suicide appear in the newspapers. As with any form of social behavior, there will always be an imitative factor. But it is simply wrong to say that the very essence of suicide is a private language between members of a common subculture. Suicide may not have any essence, but if it has one, it is a private act of a person with serious mental disturbances and not a language at all. Anyone who believes that suicide is contagious the way the flu is contagious may well be distracted from giving the kind of attention that a potential suicide victim needs, the help to deal with problems inside, not behaviors outside. I wish Malcolm Gladwell had chosen to use his considerable skills as a journalist to describe more examples of actual tipping points. In reaching instead for theory, he reaches well beyond where he, or anyone else, can safely travel. The theory of tipping points requires that ''we reframe the way we think about the world,'' he writes. Actually, the way we think about the world has to reframe the often stilted theories we develop about it.
Alan Wolfe is the director of the Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
TIPPING POINT ESSAY ASSIGNMENT...
Can you believe that the quarter is coming to an end? Our final assignment (we have no final exam, by the way) deals with our final reading of the quarter, Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.
The assignment is below. If you have any questions, please oh please let me know!!!
TIPPING POINT ESSAY ASSIGNMENT:
The assignment is below. If you have any questions, please oh please let me know!!!
TIPPING POINT ESSAY ASSIGNMENT:
The essay should uploaded to turnitin.com. It will be 2-3 pages in length, double spaced.
There are two essay topics to choose from.
Obviously, as you read through the book look for examples that will help you build a fabulous final paper!
Write a 2-3 page double spaced essay on one of the following topics:
1. How might one or more of the ideas in the book The Tipping Point apply to your chosen major or profession?
2. Locate a trend [social, political, cultural, other] that seems to exhibit a "tipping point" phenomenon. Provide a brief explanation of why you think this phenomenon meets Gladwell's criteria for tipping point phenomenon; does it exhibit contagiousness. or little causes having big effects, or dramatic change?
THIS IS DUE NOVEMBER 24 TO TURNITIN.COM
LATE PAPERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED, AND YOU CANNOT PASS THE CLASS WITHOUT THIS ASSIGNMENT, SO BE SURE IT IS IN ON TIME.
Monday, November 3, 2014
WEEK EIGHT BLOG ENTRY
Answer one questions...or all of them...or just ponder anything your heart desires!
Have you ever voted? What was it like?
Is it important for individuals to vote?
Do you belong to a political party? If so, have you ever voted against your party?
How would you define politics in the U.S. at this stage of our history? In 100 years, what will historians say about the 2000s and 2010s?
Have you ever voted? What was it like?
Is it important for individuals to vote?
Do you belong to a political party? If so, have you ever voted against your party?
How would you define politics in the U.S. at this stage of our history? In 100 years, what will historians say about the 2000s and 2010s?
WEEK EIGHT READING
SHOULD AMERICANS BE REQUIRED TO VOTE?
William Galston: James Madison would be smiling
Let's imagine a future in which Americans must vote, or face a penalty.
It's April 2021. Media outlets around the country headlined major agreements between Democrats and Republicans on the long-stalled issues of tax and immigration reform. Commentators marveled at the momentous shift in American politics away from the polarization and gridlock of the previous two decades.
What happened? Although opinions differed, observers agreed on one key point: The decision to follow the lead of countries such as Australia and institute mandatory voting in national elections transformed the political landscape. As turnout rose from 60% to 90%, citizens with less intense partisan and ideological commitments flooded into the electorate. Campaigns could no longer prevail simply by mobilizing core supporters. Instead, they had to persuade swing voters to come their way. They soon discovered that these new voters preferred compromise to confrontation and civil discourse to scorched-earth rhetoric. Candidates who presented themselves as willing to reach across the aisle to get things done got a boost while zealots went down to defeat.
Both political parties soon realized that they had a stake in a nominating process that produced the kinds of candidates the expanded electorate preferred. They eliminated party caucuses dominated by intense minorities and opened up their primaries to independents. They discovered that maximizing participation in their primaries was the best way of preparing for the general election. Individual donors, who wanted to invest in winners, favored candidates who could command broad support.
Once in office, members of the House and Senate tried hard to keep faith with the expanded electorate that had sent them to Washington. They spent less time in party caucuses and more doing serious legislative work. Congressional leaders returned power to the committees, where members relearned the art of compromise across party lines.
And somewhere, James Madison was smiling. Reforming institutions to change incentives is always the most effective course, and once again it had worked.
William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in its governance studies program.
Donna Brazile: You have to pay taxes, so why not have to vote?
Mandatory voting requires citizens to present themselves at the polling place and either cast their votes on the candidates and issues, or spoil a ballot, indicating their disgust with the entire lot.
I've come to favor mandatory voting. It will sink the role of big money in our elections. Campaign spending is becoming a scourge and a scandal in our self-government. Millions are even spent for the anti-democratic purpose of reducing voter turnout for the opposition.
All that money, from secret contributors — guaranteeing greater influence for those who have money, over those who do not — cannot possibly have a healthy effect on the candidates on whom it pours. Are things better since the Supreme Court allowed big money to be introduced?
In the United States, voter turnout for midterm elections has been under 50% since the 1940s. This means that less than half of the American electorate gets to decide which party will control Congress. This can't be a good thing. In places that have mandatory voting, like Australia, there are indications of less polarization and dissatisfaction in the electorate.
I know some bristle at the idea of having to cast a vote, even a protest vote for Lassie. Yet, voting is the essential, central and indispensable feature of democracy. We require jury attendance, paying taxes, and public education attendance because those are also essential functions. Is voting less important?
Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee. A nationally syndicated columnist, she is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of "Cooking With Grease: Stirring the Pots in America."
Monday, October 27, 2014
WEEK SEVEN BLOG ENTRY
Is baseball still the national sport? Does it feel like there is more emphasis and support for professional football? Is that the new national sport?
WEEK SEVEN WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
As ou read, try to link the Tortilla Curtain to something that seems entirely unrelated. Is the book related to the World Series? To a movie you saw? To your favorite song? Just write imaginatively!
Monday, October 20, 2014
WEEK SIX BLOG ENTRY
How important are walls in our world? Which are more powerful, physical ones or non-physical ones?
WEEK SIX WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
Since you have started to read Tortilla Curtain this week, what is one line that stands out to you? Why that one?
Saturday, October 18, 2014
TC BOYLE SYNTHESIS “ESSAY” DUE TO TURNITIN BY NOVEMBER 8TH
I put
"essay" in quotes because this is not an essay, per se. It is more, a
synthesis exercise.
As you
read TC Boyle, number on a page from
1-10. Write out the ten sentences from the book that catch your eye or make
you think. After each sentence, give a brief
description of what the sentences means to you or why you included it.
HERE IS
AN EXAMPLE:
1.
"For a long moment they stood there, examining
each other, unwitting perpetrator and unwitting victim, and then the man let
the useless bag drop from his fingers with a tinkle of broken glass" Page
8
This sentence caught my eye because of
the word unwitting. Why does the author put these people together so early in
the book and then say that they are both “unwitting?”
2.
She didn't answer, and he felt the cold seep into
his veins, a coldness and a weariness like nothing he'd ever known. Page 355
Boyle does a good job of
describing the emptiness of death in this sentence, both cold and weary and
unlike anything Candido, or anyone, can experience.
After those
ten sentences comes the more difficult but rewarding part. You are going to
write a synthesis. A synthesis is a type of writing where you take various
unrelated writings and find some insight drawn from them. It is writing that
creates connections between thoughts. You are not comparing the
thoughts, but you are using these ten sentences to say one thing. When you
examine the ten sentences together, what new
insight do you gain that may have
been undeveloped just by looking at the individual sentences?
That will
be labeled “Synthesis” and will be at the bottom of the numbered ten sentences.
As I
said, this is a little weird, but it usually produces good writing. You are simply
numbering and writing about ten sentences and then writing about how they are
connected. In fact, STRIVE FOR CONNECTEDNESS. GO BEYOND THE OBVIOUS. SYNTHESIS
IS ABOUT INFERRING MEANING, NOT ABOUT STATING THE OBVIOUS. I am grading your
writing in this section, but more importantly, I am grading your ability to
create a unique synthesis, an original claim about the book.
THE
SYNTHESIS SECTION IS APPROXIMATELY ONE PAGE.
Since
it is a bit odd, I wanted to give you one good example of the synthesis part.
The length of the synthesis is about a page. The author should have used one or
two more examples of his main point of synthesis. But as you can see, the
author has located clearly what the one area is that ties his sentences
together. By the way, if your key idea only captures five or six of your sentences,
that is fine too. You do not have to use all ten. Also, where this one is
lacking is in the analysis. It is a bit pedestrian. Strive for depth!
STUDENT SAMPLE:
SYNTHESIS
The similar connection between most of
the chosen passages would be the racist or hate aspect. The focus on race or
between being Mexican or not is a huge factor throughout the book. It seems as
though all the characters want to be or think that they are better than the
person next to them. “Fucking Beaners. Rip it up man. Destroy it.” (page 64).
This is an example of a quote from the book that shows the anger or animosity
towards different races. Most of the quotes are also driven with anger or hate.
I found that harsh words were spoken when characters were most upset or seemed
to be in some type of turmoil. The unique choice of words Boyle uses for these
passages is also a connection between the quotes. It seems as though Boyle
chooses words that build some type of emotion or fire within the reader, as if
he was aiming to provoke emotion within the reader. At the very least these
quotes cause the reader to pause and think or feel the anger or pain the
characters are feeling at the time. Another link between these quotes would be
their context they are almost all referring to someone other than themselves,
or trying to pass the blame a different way. Overall this book and these quotes
are thought provoking as well as emotion filled passages that allow a person to
feel what the characters are feeling.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
FACE TO FACE MEETING
Remember, our mandatory face to face meeting is this Saturday, October 18th, from 9 to noon. We meet int he Classroom Building 102. Look on a CSUB map to find out where that is...but if you park near the Dore Theatre and walk South you cannot miss it.
We will be writing the mandatory in-class essay. We will talk about the prompt on Saturday and will also work on some other writing issues that can only be done face to face.
I look forward to seeing all you fabulous writers on Saturday!
Dr. S
We will be writing the mandatory in-class essay. We will talk about the prompt on Saturday and will also work on some other writing issues that can only be done face to face.
I look forward to seeing all you fabulous writers on Saturday!
Dr. S
WEEK FIVE BLOG ENTRY
With Christmas just around the corner, (after Halloween, Thanksgiving, the rest of English 305, and about a million other things) I thought we would talk about the holidays.
1. What is your favorite holiday memory?
--or--
2. What is your earliest holiday memory?
By the way, this week's reading and writing will help prepare you for our lovely face to face meeting on Saturday.
1. What is your favorite holiday memory?
--or--
2. What is your earliest holiday memory?
By the way, this week's reading and writing will help prepare you for our lovely face to face meeting on Saturday.
WEEK FIVE READING
Kids' Belief in Santa Myth Is
Healthy, Psychologists Say
Spoiler alert: This
article contains information suggesting Santa Claus may not be real.
is a bad thing.
But for many children, believing in Santa is a normal and healthy part of
development, psychologists say.
to the poor,
and it's those values that are important, Lorber told LiveScience. "It's a
real story, it's a real value and it's something that inspires children
," he said.
That's the spirit of Christmas, though today's consumer culture may have
drifted from that spirit a bit, he added. [10 Beasts and
Dragons: How Reality Made Myth]
The Santa story is also
deeply embedded in popular culture, with Santa showing up at shopping malls and
in plenty of TV shows and movies, said Stephanie Wagner, a clinical
psychologist at the NYU Child Study Center in New York.
whether Santa
is real, parents need to decide whether the child really is ready to
know the truth, Lorber said. The best way to handle that is to ask the child if
he or she still believes in Santa. If they do, it might be too soon to tell
them.
is a bad thing.
But for many children, believing in Santa is a normal and healthy part of
development, psychologists say. to the poor,
and it's those values that are important, Lorber told LiveScience. "It's a
real story, it's a real value and it's something that inspires children," he said.
That's the spirit of Christmas, though today's consumer culture may have
drifted from that spirit a bit, he added. [10 Beasts and
Dragons: How Reality Made Myth] whether Santa
is real, parents need to decide whether the child really is ready to
know the truth, Lorber said. The best way to handle that is to ask the child if
he or she still believes in Santa. If they do, it might be too soon to tell
them.Monday, October 6, 2014
WEEK FOUR BLOG ENTRY
Answer one of the following questions in your blog entry this week:
1. What is the greatest single song of all time and why?
2. Do you have a memory that is directly linked to a song?
For example, you are on your first date and the Katy Perry song Dark Horse plays on the radio three separate times during the evening. So now whenever you think of the date, you are reminded of the song, and vice versa.
1. What is the greatest single song of all time and why?
2. Do you have a memory that is directly linked to a song?
For example, you are on your first date and the Katy Perry song Dark Horse plays on the radio three separate times during the evening. So now whenever you think of the date, you are reminded of the song, and vice versa.
WEEK FOUR READING
Is Music the Key to Success?
By JOANNE LIPMAN
CONDOLEEZZA RICE trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.
Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?
The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.
The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.
Will your school music program turn your kid into a Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody Allen (clarinet)? Probably not. These are singular achievers. But the way these and other visionaries I spoke to process music is intriguing. As is the way many of them apply music’s lessons of focus and discipline into new ways of thinking and communicating — even problem solving.
Look carefully and you’ll find musicians at the top of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music scholarships; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional violinist. Both Microsoft’s Mr. Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.
“It’s not a coincidence,” says Mr. Greenspan, who gave up jazz clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living room. “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere chance is extremely small.” The cautious former Fed chief adds, “That’s all that you can judge about the facts. The crucial question is: why does that connection exist?”
Paul Allen offers an answer. He says music “reinforces your confidence in the ability to create.” Mr. Allen began playing the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager. Even in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar at the end of marathon days of programming. The music was the emotional analog to his day job, with each channeling a different type of creative impulse. In both, he says, “something is pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and express yourself in a new way.”
Mr. Todd says there is a connection between years of practice and competition and what he calls the “drive for perfection.” The veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a cellist for his most famous work, the Apple “1984” commercial depicting rebellion against a dictator. “I was thinking of Stravinsky when I came up with that idea,” he says. He adds that his cello performance background helps him work collaboratively: “Ensemble playing trains you, quite literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to follow.”
For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music functions as a “hidden language,” as Mr. Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas. When he ran the World Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn traveled to more than 100 countries, often taking in local performances (and occasionally joining in on a borrowed cello), which helped him understand “the culture of people, as distinct from their balance sheet.”
It’s in that context that the much-discussed connection between math and music resonates most. Both are at heart modes of expression. Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, says he sees similarities between his piano playing and investing strategy; as he says, both “relate to pattern recognition, and some people extend these paradigms across different senses.”
Mr. Kovner and the concert pianist Robert Taub both describe a sort of synesthesia — they perceive patterns in a three-dimensional way. Mr. Taub, who gained fame for his Beethoven recordings and has since founded a music software company, MuseAmi, says that when he performs, he can “visualize all of the notes and their interrelationships,” a skill that translates intellectually into making “multiple connections in multiple spheres.”
For others I spoke to, their passion for music is more notable than their talent. Woody Allen told me bluntly, “I’m not an accomplished musician. I get total traction from the fact that I’m in movies.”
Mr. Allen sees music as a diversion, unconnected to his day job. He likens himself to “a weekend tennis player who comes in once a week to play. I don’t have a particularly good ear at all or a particularly good sense of timing. In comedy, I’ve got a good instinct for rhythm. In music, I don’t, really.”
Still, he practices the clarinet at least half an hour every day, because wind players will lose their embouchure (mouth position) if they don’t: “If you want to play at all you have to practice. I have to practice every single day to be as bad as I am.” He performs regularly, even touring internationally with his New Orleans jazz band. “I never thought I would be playing in concert halls of the world to 5,000, 6,000 people,” he says. “I will say, quite unexpectedly, it enriched my life tremendously.”
Music provides balance, explains Mr. Wolfensohn, who began cello lessons as an adult. “You aren’t trying to win any races or be the leader of this or the leader of that. You’re enjoying it because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which is totally unrelated to your professional status.”
For Roger McNamee, whose Elevation Partners is perhaps best known for its early investment in Facebook, “music and technology have converged,” he says. He became expert on Facebook by using it to promote his band, Moonalice, and now is focusing on video by live-streaming its concerts. He says musicians and top professionals share “the almost desperate need to dive deep.” This capacity to obsess seems to unite top performers in music and other fields.
Ms. Zahn remembers spending up to four hours a day “holed up in cramped practice rooms trying to master a phrase” on her cello. Mr. Todd, now 41, recounted in detail the solo audition at age 17 when he got the second-highest mark rather than the highest mark — though he still was principal horn in Florida’s All-State Orchestra.
“I’ve always believed the reason I’ve gotten ahead is by outworking other people,” he says. It’s a skill learned by “playing that solo one more time, working on that one little section one more time,” and it translates into “working on something over and over again, or double-checking or triple-checking.” He adds, “There’s nothing like music to teach you that eventually if you work hard enough, it does get better. You see the results.”
That’s an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country.
Consider the qualities these high achievers say music has sharpened: collaboration, creativity, discipline and the capacity to reconcile conflicting ideas. All are qualities notably absent from public life. Music may not make you a genius, or rich, or even a better person. But it helps train you to think differently, to process different points of view — and most important, to take pleasure in listening.
WEEK FOUR WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
Is music the key to success?
--or--
How has music impacted your experience of or thinking about life?
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How has music impacted your experience of or thinking about life?
Sunday, September 28, 2014
WEEK THREE BLOG ENTRY
What is the strangest thing you have ever eaten? Ants from Columbia? Pancreas from Spain? Cow heart from Peru? Deep fried grilled cheese from the Kern County Fair?
Alternatively, if you are not that kind of eater or have not tried such culinary oddities, what is one food you would never eat?
Alternatively, if you are not that kind of eater or have not tried such culinary oddities, what is one food you would never eat?
WEEK THREE READING
This is somewhat funny and is about food, so enjoy!
More people probably hate me than I realize. It's not because I'm a bad person—although I am— but instead it's because of my being a food writer. Chefs hate food writers and they are right to hate them. Most of their reasons are good ones; here are nine of them. By the way, these apply to all food writers, but to critics in particular, who are objects of special loathing to chefs.
Nine Good Reasons All Chefs Hate All Food Writers
More people probably hate me than I realize. It's not because I'm a bad person—although I am— but instead it's because of my being a food writer. Chefs hate food writers and they are right to hate them. Most of their reasons are good ones; here are nine of them. By the way, these apply to all food writers, but to critics in particular, who are objects of special loathing to chefs.
1. Who Watches the Watchmen?
Adam Gopnik, writing about gastronomy in the New Yorker in 2005, made a statement of such clarity and force that I sat up straight in my bed: "All artists in all fields despise all critics all the time." As a writer, there was nothing that made me seethe like the patronizing feedback of bad writers who had managed upward into an editor position. "I think what you're trying to say here..." is no worse than "an uninspired ramen shows hardly any effort whatsoever." And it doesn't have to be an officially sanctioned critic. Anybody who can type can write critically about them, including mooks they wouldn't let clean the bathroom.
Adam Gopnik, writing about gastronomy in the New Yorker in 2005, made a statement of such clarity and force that I sat up straight in my bed: "All artists in all fields despise all critics all the time." As a writer, there was nothing that made me seethe like the patronizing feedback of bad writers who had managed upward into an editor position. "I think what you're trying to say here..." is no worse than "an uninspired ramen shows hardly any effort whatsoever." And it doesn't have to be an officially sanctioned critic. Anybody who can type can write critically about them, including mooks they wouldn't let clean the bathroom.
2. The Hit
To add injury to insult, restaurants take a bigger hit than most people realize when they have a food writer come in. The three remaining expense-account critics in the country have the power to inflict more damage, but they at least pay their own way. 95% of the other writers—soon to be 100%—get comped. The cost of the food is the smallest part of the comp. The restaurant loses the table for at least a turn, which means they lose all of the money that table would spend. And if the writer lingers, orders big wines, or gets there late, the pain only gets worse.
To add injury to insult, restaurants take a bigger hit than most people realize when they have a food writer come in. The three remaining expense-account critics in the country have the power to inflict more damage, but they at least pay their own way. 95% of the other writers—soon to be 100%—get comped. The cost of the food is the smallest part of the comp. The restaurant loses the table for at least a turn, which means they lose all of the money that table would spend. And if the writer lingers, orders big wines, or gets there late, the pain only gets worse.
3. You Have To Be Nice To Them.
Everybody I meet as a writer is nice to me, and I was for many years weak minded enough to actually think that I was, at long last, popular and well-liked. Far from it! The more a chef is forced to feign warm delight at a writer's appearance, the more he or she will hate them. It's only human nature to rebel, violently, against such mummery. Just think of all the angry breakups that follow long periods of false harmony.
Everybody I meet as a writer is nice to me, and I was for many years weak minded enough to actually think that I was, at long last, popular and well-liked. Far from it! The more a chef is forced to feign warm delight at a writer's appearance, the more he or she will hate them. It's only human nature to rebel, violently, against such mummery. Just think of all the angry breakups that follow long periods of false harmony.
4. They Literally Have No Idea What They Are Talking About.
One of the biggest and most obnoxious fallacies of food writing is the way the whole thing revolves around the writer's perspective. A restaurant, to the Writer's Gaze, appears simply as a series of plates that appear on the table, delivered by friendly young people. The enormous effort behind them is totally out of sight, as is the fact that the dish the writer eats is one of dozens made that night, all of which vary slightly in quality. Add to this most writers' near-total ignorance of restaurant economics and staffing, and the restaurant is in the position of being subjected to the prejudices of an unwelcome and unformed mind.
One of the biggest and most obnoxious fallacies of food writing is the way the whole thing revolves around the writer's perspective. A restaurant, to the Writer's Gaze, appears simply as a series of plates that appear on the table, delivered by friendly young people. The enormous effort behind them is totally out of sight, as is the fact that the dish the writer eats is one of dozens made that night, all of which vary slightly in quality. Add to this most writers' near-total ignorance of restaurant economics and staffing, and the restaurant is in the position of being subjected to the prejudices of an unwelcome and unformed mind.
5. Their Entitlement
Because writers have so much unearned power, and because they are so used to everybody kissing their ass, they begin, inevitably, to take such treatment for granted. A whole nosegay of privileges that would be unthinkable to a civilian diner—primo reservations on short notice, chatting with the chef, getting as much time as you want with the wine guy, getting things out of order, or in cut portions—are merely the basic terms of the relationship between writer and chef. How can that not rankle?
Because writers have so much unearned power, and because they are so used to everybody kissing their ass, they begin, inevitably, to take such treatment for granted. A whole nosegay of privileges that would be unthinkable to a civilian diner—primo reservations on short notice, chatting with the chef, getting as much time as you want with the wine guy, getting things out of order, or in cut portions—are merely the basic terms of the relationship between writer and chef. How can that not rankle?
6. Their Fickleness
Even if a writer isn't prejudiced and misinformed, which they nearly always are, their worthless opinions are rarely even held strongly by themselves. They pick up some random object of their fulsome praise, and then drop him into permanent obscurity as soon as the next pretty boy comes along.
Even if a writer isn't prejudiced and misinformed, which they nearly always are, their worthless opinions are rarely even held strongly by themselves. They pick up some random object of their fulsome praise, and then drop him into permanent obscurity as soon as the next pretty boy comes along.
7. What Phonies They Are
Writers are big phonies. They tell you how much they loved everything, and how awesome you are, and then either never write about you, or write slightingly. Faint praise is in its way even more maddening that out-and-out hectoring, if only because the latter at least gives a chef the full attention he thinks he deserves.
Writers are big phonies. They tell you how much they loved everything, and how awesome you are, and then either never write about you, or write slightingly. Faint praise is in its way even more maddening that out-and-out hectoring, if only because the latter at least gives a chef the full attention he thinks he deserves.
8. They Have Power, Even the Bad Ones
Writers have power to help or hurt restaurants—even the weakest and least qualified of them. Any asshole with a platform can do more to help or hurt his business than even the most loyal of customers.
Writers have power to help or hurt restaurants—even the weakest and least qualified of them. Any asshole with a platform can do more to help or hurt his business than even the most loyal of customers.
9. They Are Dumb
Many writers are dumb and, like all dumb people, they think they are smart because they are too dumb to know otherwise. These people are grenades primed to explode if their infant minds are rubbed the wrong way for any reason whatsoever.
Many writers are dumb and, like all dumb people, they think they are smart because they are too dumb to know otherwise. These people are grenades primed to explode if their infant minds are rubbed the wrong way for any reason whatsoever.
Chefs—and by extension GMs, owners, line cooks, and everybody else who depends upon the restaurant for their livelihood—are typically men or women of spirit, and frequently artists in their own way. Nothing could be more natural than for them to feel a powerful antipathy to their would-be judges. Unfortunately for them, there's nothing they can do about it. I feel for them.
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