When one is enthralled with the beauty on the surface of the ocean, the immensity of its depths can never be discerned.
~ Wu Hsin
slip:4a303.
Enthralled →
Second best bee →
It was a bit spooky to see my own reflection in this bee’s eye. And the best bee photo I’ve ever taken is amazing, even if I do say so myself.
ɕ
Cognitive biases →
If our goal is to help people make better choices, it helps to first create better feelings.
~ Seth Godin from, Narrative and feelings | Seth’s Blog
slip:4usena1.
Godin often makes insightful points like this one. But I often wish he’d use his enormous reach to also talk about the other part—
If our goal is to help people make better choices, it helps even more to show them how they can use their rationality. It’s an inbuilt feature of being human—sometimes I’ve argued it is the defining characteristic of being human. It is, in fact, our planetaryily-unique super power. (We have other super-powers, like compassion, which I think may not be unique to humans.)
Yes, as Godin points out, we should create better feelings for others. But how great would each of our lives be if we weren’t governed by our feelings. The goal isn’t to eliminate feelings nor emotions—that’s a dumb idea. The goal is for all the parts of who we each are, to get the appropriate due.
ɕ
Education with Nicole Colter →
How can podcasting serve as an effective tool for active learning and decentralizing power dynamics in the classroom?
Experimenting with podcasting helps students move from passive listeners to active creators.
They always get surprised at the end that, even as painful as it is in the process, you can look back and be like, ‘I knew nothing about any of this and now look what we’ve created.’
~ Nicole Colter (19:36)
The conversation explores the innovative use of podcasting as a tool for active learning in higher education, particularly in a management class. Nicole explains how podcasting helps decentralize classroom power dynamics, allowing students to collaborate, manage projects, and co-create learning experiences. By recording interviews with textbook authors, students engage in active learning while gaining communication and organizational skills.
Nicole highlights the broader learning benefits of podcasting, such as fostering creativity, confidence, and reflective listening. She shares how students begin to see themselves as creators and take initiative beyond assigned tasks. Topics discussed include decentralized pedagogy, alternative assessment methods like “ungrading,” and the value of indirect learning outcomes. Nicole also reflects on challenges such as students’ initial struggles with conversation and project management, ultimately noting their surprise and pride in their final accomplishments.
(more…)Education with Mark Hochgesang →
What motivates someone to start podcasting as an educational pursuit after retirement, and what are the challenges they face?
Podcasting begins as a post-retirement pursuit but becomes an unexpected journey of storytelling and learning.
And also kind of express my point of view on a multitude of different things happening in that sports world. So that’s how it all kind of kicked off and as we talked about kind of pre-mic episode here I am a learner at heart and I knew that I was starting from ground 0 but that was invigorating for me.
~ Mark Hochgesang (1:21)
The conversation explores how podcasting became an unexpected post-retirement pursuit for Mark. Starting with a suggestion from former colleagues, podcasting offered a way to share perspectives on sports while continuing to learn and engage with others. The discussion touches on the personal aspects of podcasting, such as storytelling, preparation, and the intimacy of audio communication. His episodes often feature guests who have overcome adversity or achieved significant milestones, reflecting his interest in inspiring and game-changing stories.
The conversation also highlights the challenges of producing a podcast, from mastering technical aspects like sound quality to managing the editing workload. Preparation and thoughtful content development play significant roles, as does the balancing act of how much of the host’s personality to include. Podcasting has also strengthened connections within his immediate circle and reconnected him with old colleagues, further emphasizing the communal and connective power of the medium.
(more…)Actions and perceptions →
Operatics, combat and confusion. Sloth and servility. Every day they blot out those sacred principles of yours—which you day-dream thoughtlessly about, or just let slide. Your actions and perceptions need to aim: at accomplishing practical ends; at the exercise of thought; at maintaining a confidence founded on understanding. An unobtrusive confidence—hidden in plain sight.
~ Marcus Aurelius
When will you let yourself enjoy straightforwardness? Seriousness? Or understanding individual things—their nature and substance, their place in the world, their life span, their composition, who can possess them, whose they are to give and to receive?
slip:4a470.
And speaking of cognitive biases →
Confirmation bias is one of my faves. You know, where you suddenly notice all the other cars like yours when you buy one, or spot coincidences from which you draw an [erroneous] causal conclusion. I know right? Screw you cobbled-together-brain! But this coincidence can’t just be a coincidence:
I’ve been reading-around my copy of The Daily Stoic for about 5 years now. Each page of the book is for a specific date. I long-ago got sick of lugging the book around, so I photographed every page, and loaded them into my personal productivity software. For five years, I’ve had annually repeating todos with the day’s image attached. (Yes, it was a few hours of work to set up 365 todo’s, with “recurs every year on the same date,” and an attached image. Yes, it was absolutely worth it.) So every year, on the same date, the same photo of the same page of the Daily Stoic comes up for me to read. (Craig-level crazy: The image for February 29 is attached to the todo for February 28 and I read it every year.) Finally, you need to know that only a small percentage of the Daily Stoic entries quote from Marcus Aurelius’s, Meditations.
Recently, I bought a fresh, hardcover of my favorite translation of Aurelius’s Meditations. (My paperback copy of this same translation is mangled and marked up, and the typography isn’t as spiffy.) I photographed each page, and set it on recurring todos. This was slightly more complicated because it’s not a page-for-each-date. I simply counted the images and made the todo’s recur that often. So each day a page comes up, but it’s not the same page on the same date each year. (There are 139 pages of content, so I’m reading Meditations 2+ times per calendar year.) For added complexity, the modern book is comprised of Aurelius’s 12 original books; Each was a long scroll on which he wrote entries in sequence. What’s on each page of the modern book is simply determined by book layout: It might be Aurelius’s original book 4, entries 11 and 12, or it might have part of an entry continued from the previous page, or an entry which is cut short that runs to the next page. Sure, it’s messy to try to read a book a-page-a-day if it wasn’t designed that way, but it works, and I get to visit Marcus each day.
That’s the setup. Here’s the coincidence…
Today I hit a Daily Stoic entry that quotes Meditations. The page that’s up for reading in my sequence from Meditations, CONTAINS THE QUOTED PASSAGE.
o_O
After looking around suspiciously… “Am I on Candid Camera?” After looking up suspiciously… I decided I better blog about this.
ɕ
Campfire, marshmallows and conversation →
Many moon ago, Movers Mindset had a weekly team meeting with 5 people. It was simply a video call to socialize. Work-related discussion was allowed, but mostly we were just talking about training, sharing instagram videos, discussing news and events in our sports and its surrounds, … that sort of stuff. Just hanging out with people who have a shared interest.
From the start we knew we didn’t want to record those calls. That suddenly makes everything too permanent; You have to show up looking not-insane, and you automatically hold back some of your energy to be on the safe side. But we also felt that we were losing something by having no artifact at all. Much of what we were discussing and sharing in the team call would be of interest to others— but we didn’t want non-team-members attending our private call. Thus, no recording. The meeting gave us what we needed, and that was good enough.
Time passed. (And many great team meetings were had.)
One day, as I sat around wondering how to make the already-great calls even better, my mind drifted as it so often does. It wandered back to the 80s/90s and I thought of the seemingly endless hours I’d spent on text-based chat with people in far off places. Stuck underground in some computer lab, (for real,) I’d open a text window and visit some distant friend. It was real-time interaction, but in a restricted medium; Restricted, at the time, because that’s all we had. But still, it was magical to have real-time access to other people. It felt so much more alive than bullentin boards (the online kind), Usenet, and email. Still wondering how to make our team meetings better, I recalled this once-in-a-lifetime experience I had.
It went like this…
(more…)The future →
The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.
~ William Gibson
slip:4a374.
Whimsy →
This is Cathy Forest coming to you live from a big pile of primevial ooze for the running of the classic, Human Race. It’s the top of the Precambrian Era and …
~ The Frantics from, The Human Race – YouTube
It’s 2 minutes and 18 seconds of audio, and is completely G-rated. If it doesn’t make you laugh, there’s something wrong with you. I first heard this in 1986—which, alarmingly, I figured out because someone has put the Doctor Demento Show’s play-lists online. So as I was hunting for this, I first discovered when I’d heard it, which just made me want to hear it that much more. Share the heck out of it, make it go viral and make the world a better place through laughter.
ɕ