Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Ideas, wrapped in behaviors

(Some thoughts under development ... )

Ideas, when they form and float through our minds, are just ideas.

Expressing ideas, the act of communicating, is behavior.

We like to believe that our writing, our speaking, our conversations, we like to believe we deal only with ideas. But to me that seems incomplete. It seems to me we often react to the behaviors that we perceive as much or even more than the ideas wrapped in those behaviors.

Words matter
. Words matter because words create consequences. Communicating with words is a behavior.

And behaviors create consequences.

 

See also:
Show me, don't tell me
and
A sustainable culture begins with a healthy, sustainable attitude

 

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Amusing Ourselves to Death

I've mentioned this book several times recently in comments elsewhere. It occurred to me that I should mention it at my own web site, too:

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman

If TV news and talk radio leave you feeling something other than well-informed, Postman's little book might explain why.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

web log, with explosions and funny hats

Occasionally I'm reminded that the concept, "blog", came from "web log", a log of interesting web sites. Pointing out other people's worthy efforts can be one way to support them. Here are two worthy efforts that I support by pointing and clicking:

Trinifar writes clear and concise, yet detailed, essays about sustainability concepts. Trinifar's writing path takes up where mine leaves off. The essay title, “Learning to think about the future”, would have made a good subtitle for my site. (Darn, too late, I guess.)

“Learning to think about the future” would also be a good subtitle for this video about climate change. The science teacher who began this YouTube effort a few months ago has refined his message. He sets an excellent example of clear and careful thinking about a challenging topic. He delivers an urgent and serious message, punctuated with explosions and funny hats.

science teacher explains global warming while wearing a funny hat

(click to open this video in a new window or tab)
“While we debate ...
we're running the experiment ...
and we're in the test tube.”



As far as thinking about future posts at this blog, here are a couple of topics that have rattled around inside my head recently:

soap and water; and
What does it mean to “just” get along?