Unexamined assumption: teenagers having sex is a bad thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2223115.stm
[originally transmitted by e-mail August 31, 2002]
Saturday, August 31st, 2002
New strategy: scare adults into quitting smoking by threatening them with *teen sexuality*!
Friday, August 23rd, 2002
Intellectual fashions and prejudices
Many of us will have noticed that the fashion in understanding people has passed from the “conditioning” that was already being contested in my college days to “inborn temperament” / genes / “that’s just the way I am.” This is a great relief to my mother, as it lets her off the hook for my deviations and weirdnesses and she is free to just sit back and enjoy the show without feeling guilty.
In the current context of gene-mapping we are fascinated by correlations between the physical and psychological, such as finger length and sexual orientation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/695142.stm If it’s in your bones, it can’t be in your upbringing.
I was jolted out of my complacency yesterday when I read the following article on headlined “Jealous types have different-sized feet” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2208426.stm and read the researcher’s conclusion that asymmetrical people being unattractive, are possessive. Oh. You mean that physical asymmetry and romantic jealousy don’t have a single biological cause? That people’s feelings might actually have a meaning?
Musing over the implications of my mindless trendiness I started reading an article on the neurological antecedents of the ability to read [medscape.com dead link] with my usual pointless fascination with the workings of the human machine. And was brought up halfway with the thought: these researchers are studying aphasics who can’t read because they have had brain damage of some kind, probably mostly strokes. These are people who used to be able to read, who are surrounded by people who read.
But many people worldwide can’t read. 53% of African women and 33% of African men; 63% of South Asian women and 37% of South Asian men. [literacyonline.org dead link] They haven’t all had strokes. In the real world we live in, almost all of us have neurologically what it takes to read. What we don’t have are the social and political conditions. Put poignantly by a South African journalist: “It is a fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than learning how to read.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1909220.stm
This isn’t anything that mapping the human genome is going to help us with.
So I’m happy to read about those peculiarly obsessed people measuring people’s ears and mapping differences in their size against scores on jealousy tools, and their very human interpretation of their results. The pendulum has started to swing back, and it seems like it’s about time.
[originally transmitted by e-mail August 23, 2002]
Thursday, August 22nd, 2002
The amazing diving tugboat
This is a link you may have seen before; this particular site has a page with lots of nautical details for the technically inclined.
A colleague sent this to me with a challenge to do my wet-blanket schtick and debunk the story. But I didn’t feel like it. It didn’t set off any of my hoax alarms. Nowhere in the story was I enjoined to do anything [except not to dive tugboats at home] or to be afraid of anything. It wasn’t scandalous, it didn’t target an enemy, it was long and complicated instead of short and neatly set up. It asked me to think and examine and understand, and there was no punch line.
But all that thinking about why I didn’t feel the need to check out the story got me curious… and I looked it up on the web.
Seems to check out. (Score another one for my hoax alarm system!)
——Start of Forwarded Message ———
> From: Tresa, Marc
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 3:28 PM
> Subject: This is so cool – and seems legit…
>
> Don’t forget to follow the link at the bottom of the page
> to view the pictures !!
> http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/index.html
>
>
——End of Forwarded Message ———
[Originally transmitted by e-mail August 22, 2002]
Wednesday, August 14th, 2002
Sam Johnson was snarky about women, but he was also a thoughtful depressive.
“There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant them at once with ease and novelty, and vitiate them with the luxury of learning. The necessity of doing something and the fear of undertaking much sink the historian to a genealogist, the philosopher to a journalist of the weather, and the mathematician to a constructor of dials.”
– Johnson: Rambler #103 (March 12, 1751)
[Originally transmitted by e-mail August 14, 2002]
Tuesday, August 13th, 2002
Michael Aronin – success handicap
Okay, so it’s mushy, so you can’t help thinking about Dr. Johnson’s comment on women preaching. But I will defend to the death anyone who tells me to embrace my limitations.
***
My name is Michael Aronin, and I have been a professional speaker for five years. Prior to speaking, I spent six years as a professional comedian. Somehow trying to make people laugh while ducking beer bottles helped me develop my stage presence (at least the Blues Brothers had chicken wire in front of them!)
Being born with Cerebral Palsy has been a challenge, but becoming a professional speaker has been more challenging.
The way I walk and talk makes some people uncomfortable. When I walk on the platform, I can sense the tension in the room. Once they realize that first of all, I’m not going to fall, and secondly that they will be able to understand my slightly over-enunciated diction, they begin to relax.
One way I try to help this process along is through humor. Sometimes I say something like, “Gee, by the time I get up here, my time’s done. Thank you for coming!” My humor helps to break the tension when I hit the platform. I love feeling the transition from my audience laughing out of nervousness to laughing with me and seeing me for me, not my disability. And it happens every single time.
Having a physical handicap is not a laughing matter. But there is a big difference between a laughing matter and being funny. Humor is the highest form of social interaction and can relieve tension from the most uncomfortable situations. I am not comfortable to look at or listen to until my humor starts to flow. At that point my handicap becomes my greatest asset.
What kind of handicap can you turn into your biggest asset? C’mon, you have lots of handicaps. If you can’t list them quickly I’ll just call your spouse. He or she knows them all.
I deliver a two-pronged message. First, that people who face challenges can move forward and succeed. I use myself and my humor as an example. And second, that everyone – yes everyone – has a disability. Mine just happens to be physical. Yours might be physical too, or it might be something you try to hide within.
Handicaps are everywhere. From parking spaces to people who get on the airplane first. I didn’t choose to have a handicap, but I did choose to do my best to deal with it in a manner that fulfills me. Interestingly, as I seek my fulfillment, it also encourages others to seek theirs.
When I speak, I show and tell people that they have the choice whether they are going to let their disabilities drag them down, or help them to push on and become better people. I had the same choices. And somehow when people see me wiggling around on the stage almost falling with every step, but howling with laughter after I say something funny, it makes them feel as good as it makes me feel.
Handicapped people also have goals. One of mine is walking for two straight days without falling (just kidding). When I achieve a goal I set for myself, I give myself extra credit (my mother was a teacher!) by recognizing the extra challenge I faced in achieving my goal. This extra credit makes the achievement even sweeter. How much credit do you give yourself after you achieve a goal? How much do you celebrate? How much should you celebrate?
Isn’t it interesting that the words handicapped and celebration can appear in the same thought and the same sentence? One of life’s blessings is to take your best asset and share it with people so that they can realize their own gifts, which may be disguised as a handicap.
If you’re ever in an airport and you see someone walking down the aisle that looks like a drunken pilot, that would be me, and I’ll look forward to shaking your hand.
Michael Aronin is a nationally acclaimed speaker who teaches his audiences how to get past personal shortcomings and move forward productively in their careers.
For more information contact Michelle Joyce at 800-242-5388 or go to his website at www.michaelaronin.com.
[Originally transmitted by e-mail August 13, 2002]
Wednesday, August 7th, 2002
Finally, something *totally useful* on the web!
http://www.dnt-inc.com/barhtmls/knittech.html
[originally transmitted by e-mail July 8, 2002]