Friday, September 04, 2015

Halt the Bias Against Simplicity of Single Statement: Zil-ch Evol

The courage is to be vulnerable ... Totally vulnerable :-)

MO'N who practices what he preaches: The most transformative and resilient leaders that I’ve worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognize the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability.
Rising Strong Brene Brown

Jervis Back 2014 Bird life

They seem to be everywhere. I enter an airport giftshop on my way to Chicago, and a stack of adult colouring-books stares me in the face. Go into any major newsagent, supermarket or bookshop and you’ll find a prominent display of adult colouring-books. Four out of the 10 bestselling books on Amazon UK are adult colouring-books. One,Animal Kingdom, by the illustrator Millie Marotta, has sold half-a-million copies since its publication last year. Hey grown ups put down the colouring pens


Just As we Thought:“You are mostly not you,”microbial ecologist Rob Knight wrote in hisfascinating exploration of the human microbiome, in which he pointed out that only 1% of the genes in our bodies are human and the remaining 99% are microbial. It’s a staggering realization even for grownups, so how are tiny humans to grapple with these tiny organisms and their enormous impact on us and the rest of life? That’s what zoologist and children’s book author Nicola Davies explores in Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes (public library), with gorgeous art by English illustrator Emily Sutton — a marvelous addition to the best children’s books celebrating science

Creativity embeds knowledge so that it can become practice. We move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands. We are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration — it is how we fold our experiences into our being… The Asaro tribe of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea has a beautiful saying: “Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle.”

Kieran Healy (Duke) recently presented a paper entitled “F**k Nuance” at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting. He writes:
Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Sociologists typically use it as a term of praise, and almost without exception when nuance is mentioned it is because someone is asking for more of it. I shall argue that, for the problems facing Sociology at present, demanding more nuance typically obstructs the development of theory that is intellectually interesting, empirically generative, or practically successful.
He discusses the problem in aninterview at The Chronicle of Higher Education A hard core bias against simplicity


The intelligence behind complexity ...  IPR here we come ;-)
Calvin Hobbes writing academia
If all existing philosophical work—and all records and knowledge of it—were to be destroyed in some disaster, and only one sentence could be passed on to future intelligent beings (roughly like us we’ll assume) for them to restart the philosophical enterprise, what should that statement be?
The question is based on a similar one about science, which Richard Feynman originally asked and answered, and which Tom Chivers recently asked a dozen scientists (viaKottke). Feynman said: “I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.” THE one statement To best restart philosophy ...

Sosa is a gynecological teaching associate, and she holds one of modern medicine’s most awkward jobs, using her body to guide med students through some of its most delicate, dreaded exams. Every week, she lies back for dozens of the next medical generation’s first pelvic and breast screenings, steering gloved fingers through the mysteries of her own anatomy and relaying the in-depth feedback they’ll need out in the wild.
She is not, in the traditional sense, a medical professional herself: A 31-year-old theater actor, she has also worked recent jobs at a bakery and Barnes & Noble. Yet what she lacks in faculty prestige, she and her compatriots — including a squad of male urological teaching associates, who teach genital and prostate exams — make up for in humor, candor and endurance. For nervous students, she is like an enthusiastic surgical dummy, awake through the operation and cheering them on…
In New York and Los Angeles, the simulated patients are often actors; here, in eastern Virginia, they are part-time or former professors, baristas, retail workers and house spouses, all contract workers paid by the session, and not extraordinarily so. Gliva-McConvey, the program director, said wages were confidential but added, “All I can say is, we don’t pay them enough.”
Vocabulary becomes hugely important to avoiding clumsy wording. Teachers are taught to neutralize sexual language — it’s a “table,” not a “bed”; a “drape,” not a “sheet” — and cut back on awkward phrases: Say “footrests” instead of the too-equestrian “stirrups”; “lots of pressure” instead of “this is going to hurt.” Students aren’t supposed to “grab,” “stick in” or “pull out” anything, though in the moment, instructor Kelene Williams said with a laugh, “sometimes neutral doesn’t come out.”
The article is…unsettling…throughout, kudos to Drew Harwell, and I thank M. for the pointer.
- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.KDJUunmN.dpuf