partsofspeaking

These are a few photos from our trip across the US.  We have logged 2000 miles on a trip from Georgia, through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska (just barely, maybe only for a couple of minutes), South Dakota (thus the photos), Wyoming, and tonight in Colorado.  We left Friday afternoon and it's now Tuesday night.  We will stay put in Denver and Colorado Springs for four nights. We found South Dakota beautiful.  My goal was to see Mount Rushmore; my husband's was to get to Denver to see friends. In South Dakota we saw five landmarks, and I put them in order from best to least. 1.  Mt. Rushmore 2.  Badlands 3.  The World's Only Corn Palace in Mitchell 4/5.  A toss up:  Wall Drug Store and the Crazy Horse Memorial.  On a scale of 1-10 I give them both a .5.  Wall Drug is only slightly ahead because it didn't cost $24.00 to get into.  The Memorial is a Class A ripoff. I h...

This title may seem really odd coming from me, but this article has some interesting things to say. https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/07/11/how-to-change-your-mind-michael-pollan/ Now, don't worry.  This author's seeming advocacy for psychedelics is perplexing, to say the least. I am more interested in the attention aspects. I was taught since childhood that LSD made one jump off high buildings and hallucinate bizarre identities; I grew up with the story of Art Linklater's daughter's suicide while on LSD.  Taking such things is a huge leap of faith in, well, I don't know! But his comments on attention, habit, and how we don't really see are vital. I am getting ready to take a long road trip with my husband and I want to see, truly. A Christian should have an answer to this writer's view that spirituality and experiencing God is just a chemical reaction of the brain that is counterfeited by mushroom "off the road in a state park" in the Nor...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/find-your-passion-is-terrible-advice/564932/

Wonderful article on the role of arts in worship, growth, kingdom. Amen. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/july-august/arts-effective-for-evangelism-bezalel-oholiab.html

For some reason I really wanted to go to a movie last night, maybe all the rain we've had, so I ran over to see Solo: A Star Wars Story after dinner. I got out in enough time to walk the dog late. This is the movie people love to hate. I thought it was fun. Too long, perhaps, but creative. I liked the droid who set the other droids and slaves free. I loved "Lando." I think, except for the dark hair, Alden looked enough like Harrison and was cute as all get out. There were lots of fun connections to the first ones (like "I ran the kessel run in 20 parsecs--what the heck does this mean?" we find out). Chewy is great. The colors are dark, but they are supposed to be. We see that he is an outlaw with a heart of gold who really does want to help the oppressed. So why the hate? As my son says, "It's not as good as the movie they have in their head." But that movie in their head is not nearly as good as they think it is. It's all about nostalgia,...

This is the last installment on this topic of speaking online for webinars, etc. Please use archives to find the earlier ones. I wrote this for an open resource textbook on public speaking. It is one of the appendices. This book, Exploring Public Speaking , (soon in third edition), is free and quite good if I do say so myself. It is being used all over the world and I really think it is the best source out there if you want to save your basic public speaking students and cover all the same material, plus some. If you google the title and my name, you can find it at the University System of Georgia repository.  Contact me and I'll send you the link to the ancillaries. You should at least check it out. Speaking for an Online Class             This writer teaches an online business communication course where she requires either a face-to-face (if possible) presentation or one done online.   In thes...

When I open my web browser, it gives me links to interesting articles. They are probably a form of intellectual clickbait--the links are about education, technology, the brain, creativity, all subjects of vital interest to me. I have become a fan of a website called Brain Pickings, and bought Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet at its advice. Here is an interesting link on Creativity: https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/06/28/freeman-dyson-maker-of-patterns-creativity/ In reading this it occurred to me that scholars in the hard sciences and economics, for example, do not get their Nobel Prizes until many years after their work is published, as if it has to be vetted for quite some time. That makes sense. Apparently the same is not true for the Peace Prize. Barack Obama got one just for being elected, within his first year. You can take that for what it's worth. 

Empathy and Perspective Taking based on imagination is flawed.  Try talking and listening! http://nautil.us/blog/taking-another-persons-perspective-doesnt-help-you-understand-them