Resilient Egyptians Find Ways Around Internet Shutdown

When Egypt shut down the internet Monday, resilient communicators were undaunted. Speak to Tweet, a new service by Google’s SayNow, allows people to leave a voice mail message that gets sent out as a tweet.  People are also using land lines and faxes and human messengers.  

 Fast Company quotes Ujjwal Singh, co founder of Say Now, as saying the new service was created over the last weekend to help people in Egypt stay connected.  The service requires no internet connections—though telephone communications also are vulnerable to government intervention in dangerous times, and repressive governments can also use technology to target dissidents. Cell phone and text messaging services in Egypt have  been disrupted.

 But burgeoning crowds continue to gather in public, and the role of social media in popular uprisings in many countries has sent shockwaves through the world’s autocratic governments. The New York Times reports China, wary of events in Egypt, is censoring Egyptian news on the Internet.

 Experts say an internet shutdown would be much less feasible in a country like the U.S. where a large number of service providers have extraordinarily complex networks with built in redundancies and resilience.  However,  a bill called “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset,” sponsored by Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut,  would allow a U.S. president  stop internet connection in the U.S. in the face of a “cyberemergency” that threatened national security. The bill has many critics, and passage is not certain.  

 If Internet service is stopped anywhere in the world, the geeks at Wired have creative suggestions on how to continue communicating. They invite readers to add more.

What Words Jump-Start the Imagination? Ask Poets, Linguists and Marketers

O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention…

Shakespeare,  Henry V

 In the prologue to Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the Chorus urges audience members, in phrases rich with image and metaphor, to put their imaginations to work envisioning  the clash of  two mighty monarchies, the fields of France and the famine, fire, swords and blood of war on an unadorned wooden stage.  

In a recent FastCompany story “How to Pick the Perfect Brand Name,”  Chip Heath and Dan Heath describe creative processes that inspire product names designed to ignite the imagination of customers by evoking the essence of some real emotion or desire.  And they say successes usually don’t come in lightening-bolt moments, but in the blending of separate and diverse considerations. For instance, how cool is the BlackBerry, and what muses of invention served up that name?

When David Placek, CEO of the boutique naming firm Lexicon, took on the assignment to name the new device, the story explains, he knew PDAs have bad associations-their rings and buzzes annoy us in meeting and movies, and we’re stressed by their perpetual presence. So he wanted something that denotes joy.

 Placek has a network of 70 linguists in 50 countries who brainstorm about words, sounds, word parts, analogies and metaphors that suggest a certain idea or feel that could epitomize a product. They’re not told what the product is. Another team at Lexicon brainstorms in parallel-and they don’t know the product of client either. Sometimes Lexicon leaders create two or three teams, each pursing a different angle. In naming Levi’s Curve ID jeans,advertised to have fits for all figures,  the teams explored references in surveying and engineering.  Other names, such as the Colgate Wisp, which evokes the lightness and gentleness of the small, portable formless toothbrush, emerged similarly.  Read a San Francisco Chronicle  story about how Lexicon arrived at Zune for the name of an IPod competitor.

The teams working blindly on joy came up with a long list that included bubble baths, fly-fishing, cooking and evening martinis. Then someone added “picking strawberries,” which could conjure up leisurely visits to idyllic gardens.  But the linguists thought the “aw” in strawberry sounded slow, like stall and dawdle. So someone wrote blackberry. And as the brothers Heath write, “Hey, wait, the keys on the PDA look just like the seeds in a blackberry.” Epiphany! 

Initially, they write, the client had expected something more descriptive, like EasyMail. But now the BlackBerry website extols tasty aps and experiences that get sweeter all the time. Listen to Mike Lazaridis  CEO of Research in Motion waxing enthusiastic about the new BlackBerry Playbook.    

Brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath, who have long studied imagination,  decision making, entrepreneurship  and the durability of ideas,  are the authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, and Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

Brain Structure and Social Networks May be Connected

Our brain structure may be related to our social networks-the bigger our amygdala,  the bigger and more complex our networks seem to be.

 In an article in Nature, a team of researchers from Boston University and Harvard University report on their study of 58 adults whose social networks were described and whose amygdala volume was measured by MRI data and other technological means. They found the individuals with the largest amygdalas were regularly in contact with the largest numbers of people, and that their networks were the most complex, meaning that the members of their network could be divided into many distinct groups.

 The amygdala is perhaps most popularly known as the seat of human anxiety and fear. Scientists have spent years studying a woman whose amygdala was destroyed in childhood by a congenital disorder. A DiscoveryNews story describes the woman’s documented neutrality toward snakes, spiders and physical peril, and tells how her inability to be frightened has led her into danger. 

 But the amygdala has many complex functions. It is closely connected to nearly every structure in the brain, and is essential in determining friend or foe and providing information for a variety of social decisions. Much remains to be learned-some scientists have associated an enlarged amygdala with bipolar disorder, and a smaller  or malfunctioning amygdala with autism and schizophrenia.  The size of the left and right sides of the amygdala has also been associated with extroversion and introversion. 

 The Harvard and Boston University researchers did not find any correlation between social networks and the size of the hippocampus or other subcortical brain region. However, their research suggested an association with social connectivity and three regions in the cerebral cortex of the brain, two of which are connected to the amygdala.  Interestingly, the Nature story reports no association between amygdala volume and social satisfaction or happiness.

 We may not have as much control over our networks as we’d like to imagine. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, in the book Connected, write that our genes influence not only the size and structure of our networks, but our positions in them. Studying more than 90,000 adolescents from 142 schools, they found that genetic factors accounted for 47 percent of how popular the kids were-and how big their networks were. That’s not surprising, because appearance and social status influence popularity.  But they also found that people in the center of networks had different genetic makeup than people on the peripheries, and that people whose network connections knew each other differed genetically from people whose connections were strangers or members of diverse groups.

 Scientists think a larger amygdala has evolved over eons as civilization has placed increasing demands on our ability to process complex social information. Yun Xie, of Wired, wonders whether people create bigger social networks because they born are with bigger amydalas or whether the amygdala grows as people discover more friends and foes

Biodiversity Decline Can Increase Human Disease

 The decline and extinction of plant and animal species and their habitats isn’t only a loss of the world’s natural riches.  Scientists find it is also increasing the spread of infectious diseases and influencing the emergence of new diseases.

 Take the case of the opossum and the white-footed mouse and their surprising role in the spread of Lyme disease among humans.  The more white-footed mice there are, the more  Lyme disease humans get, while the presence of opossums may actually protect us. Opossum populations are declining as their natural forest habitats are bulldozed for development. White footed- mice, which are less dependent on forests, are flourishing.  In several cases, researchers say, the species most likely to decline as biodiversity is lost are the ones most likely to reduce the transmission of pathogens.

 The December 2 issue of the journal Nature reports on findings by 13 scientists that robust biodiversity tends to decrease the transmission of infectious diseases, while declining biodiversity increases that danger. They also say that principle seems to hold even if the population of the species hosting the pathogen remains stable: in an environment with a wide variety of species, the spread of disease is less likely. Researchers studied the spread several contagious human illnesses, including Lyme, West Nile virus, schistosomiasis, a parasitic affliction among people in tropical climates, and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, an often-fatal disease spread by rats.  They note that from 1940 to 2004 more than 300 new “emerging disease events” were found in humans, and that many old diseases such as malaria are reasserting themselves with a vengeance. Researchers also found that increased spread of disease in plants, animals and the corals in the sea accompanies biodiversity declines.    

 Conventional thinking has dictated that human diseases are best understood by looking at humans. “Now there is the beginning of a movement to bring  epidemiology and econolgy together,”  EPA scientist Montira Pongsiri told ScienceDaily.   Pongsiri and Joe Roman, a biologist at the University of Vermont,  wrote about biodiversity and global disease ecology in the December issue of BioScience.   

 Roman explained to ScienceDaily that Lyme disease was probably rare historically,  because ticks once fed on a wide range of small mammals in the forests and some of those hosts were poor carriers for the disease,  so only a small number of infected ticks reached human populations. The Nature article points out ticks that try to bite sharp-clawed opossums are likely to get picked off and killed. White-footed mice thrive in species poor environments, such as small patches of forest on the edge of neighbor hoods, Roman said. They carry Lyme infections without getting sick themselves,  and with other small mammals gone, they are a prime host for large numbers of ticks to feed on.              

 An NPR broadcast on the topic reports there were 30,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. in 2009, up from 12,000 in 1995.  The Nature study reports on land in Virginia where research showed ticks that fed on the mice were highly likely to be infected, and ticks that fed on opossums were not. Low bird diversity increases the numbers of mosquitoes that spread West Nile, The article also reported field studies showing the reservoir of rodent hantavirus increased when rodent diversity declined.  

  Diverse Voices in Joyful Song

 A flash mob has been described as a group of friends and strangers who gather on short notice in some public place to do something spontaneous and entertaining.  Enjoy The Philadelphia Opera Company’s “Hallalujah,”  a Random Act of Culture, and the exuberant performance of the Christmas Food Court Flash Mob.

Clockwork Universe Has Complex Ancient Origins

 An ancient artifact found more than 100 years ago in a Roman ship that sunk in the Mediterranean sea in the second century BC  holds new clues to a view of the universe that has influenced scholars and thinkers for more than two millennia. 

 The notion of a clockwork universe is often associated with Newton, but the ancient Greek view of the universes as geometric in nature suggests the idea is rooted in a much deeper past.   Sponge divers who sought shelter from a storm on the tiny island of Antikythera off the Greek coast in 1900 discovered the wreck, which seemed to be filled with the spoils of war. Amidst the trove of jewelry, statues, coins and weapons, was an elaborate bronze device about the size of a shoe box that contained more than 30 bronze gear wheels and was covered with thousands of  Greek inscriptions. But a corroded mass his hid its intricate inner mystery, so it not carefully examined for decades.

 A story by Jo Marchant in the Nov. 25 issue of Nature describes the discovery-now called the Antikythera Mechanism-as a technologically sophisticated clockwork device that displayed the sun, moon, and the five planets known at the time. The name of the Greek craftsman who built the device is lost to antiquity, and some historians think the device is so sophisticated it must have been the product of generations of achievement. A handle turns to indicate the path of celestial bodies, and the appearance and disappearance of major stars at different times of the year are charted.  A complex interplay of gear wheels riding on other gear wheels allows for elliptical movements, and sun and moon movements that varied from fast to slow in different parts of their trajectories. It also represented the four year cycles of the Olympic games and predicted eclipses.  

 Scholars exploring its capabilities were astonished. The British historian Derek De Solla Price who studied Antikythera Mechanism in the 1950s, likened its discovery to opening King Tut’s tomb for the first time and finding a fully functional internal combustion engine inside. Marchant, who became so fascinated with the device that she wrote her book Decoding the Heavens about it,  says it was utterly unlike any else historians had seen from the first or second centuries BC. In fact, its technological complexity was unmatched until the eighteenth century. Before it was authenticated, some thought it must be a hoax or something that had been dropped accidentally into the sunken ship. Others suspected it had been produced by aliens.

 Radiographic studies of the internal gear wheels  and work by scholars at the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project helped reconstruct a large circular dial with two concentric scales, one marked with months of the year, and one marked with 12 signs of the zodiac.  Researchers also identified two spiral dials, one showing a repeating  235 month calendar, and one showing a 223 month calendar.  Marchant explains that after 235 months, or 19 years,  the distribution of new moons in the solar year is the same. The 223 month calendar represents an eclipse cycle. Both cycles were identified initially by Babylonian astronomers. Astronomy scholar James Evans and others  believe the design of the mechanism is Babylonian rather than Greek, a signifncant addition to historical analysis. 

 So where did the Greek concept of a geometric cosmos come from?  Marchant says scholarship on the Antikythera Mechanism  suggests the Greek or Greeks who developed it were inspired by Babylonian mathematics and astronomy.  Marchant quotes Evans in her article:  “Maybe we need to rethink the connection between  mechanics and astronomy.   People think of it as purely one way, but maybe there was more of an interplay.” In other words, she writes, when that Greek mechanic shaped the Antikythera Mechanism’s complex gear trains, he didn’t just create one device, he  helped shape a view of the universe that would last 2,000 years.  Listen to  Marchant and Evans discuss this amazing device, which they compare in sophistication to an ancient celestial IPod.

Is Energy a Basic Human Right? Organization’s Work Answers Yes

Will the patient be OK after four hours of oxygen?  Can we turn it off?  If she looks really bad, can we turn on the generator?

No doctor wants that conversation, but it happens in places where electricity is scarce and unreliable.  The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), is an independent non-profit that works to design and implement solar power in the developing world. Its mission asserts that energy is a basic human right that underlies advances in education, health, agriculture and economic growth.  Watch an inspiring film that shows how SELF has brought renewable energy to a remote Village Health World Clinic in Africa, which allows doctors to have access to refrigerated vaccines and to medical information and tools on the internet, as well as light and clean water. Thousands of people in nearby areas benefit.

 Working with governments, industries and other organizations, SELF has worked on solar electricity projects in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  One of the projects is a Solar Market Garden in Benin, in West Africa. SELF and other organizations  install solar powered pumps that use low-pressure drip irrigation, which conserves water and increases crop yield in arid regions.  For an engaging conversation about how energy can be brought to homes and whole villages in the developing world, read the Harvard Business Review blog posts on the idea of  Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar  to design a $300 house that could be replicated to create whole communities.  SELF’s  Bob  Freling suggests it’s possible.

 Solar power does more than improve the quality of life by providing reliable and inexpensive energy.  Energy sources that replace oil products and batteries help the planet. According to the SELF website,  the organization  installs 1,000 solar systems a year in developing villages, averaging 50 watts each.  By replacing the use of kerosene and diesel fuel, the organization estimates that each system will offset six tons of CO2 emissions over its 20 year life.   The organization estimates that its present installations prevent 6,000 tons of CO2 from entering  the atmosphere each year.

 Curious about how readers answered last week’s  New York Times budget deficit reduction puzzle? Click here.  

Big Spender or Skinflint? A Budget Puzzle: Do Try This at Home

Slash military spending? Shred the social safety net?  Reduce taxes? Raise taxes? Appoint another blue ribbon commission?

 A $418 billion federal budget deficit projected for 2015 isn’t small potatoes.   Politicians,  pundits, TV talking heads and ordinary citizens are talking about deficits and their opinions that are often adamant and emotional. “O.K., You Fix the Budget,”   an interactive online puzzle created by the New York Times, is a terrific challenge for all of us to come up with new plans to repair the nation’s finances. New York Times economic writer David Leonhardt describes how the exercise came about, and how it was designed with the aid of policy analysts and economists with conservative, centrist and liberal views.

 Economist William Gale of the Brookings Institution points out in Leonhardt’s story that voters have tended to reward politicians who say they worry about the budget much more than politicians who are actually willing to cut specific programs or raise taxes. In fact, Politico.com recently reported that the House Appropriations Committee, which has control over spending and used to be a plum assignment, scares a lot of politicians these days: several would-be budget cutters have declines an opportunity to serve.

 Of course, not everyone thinks deficits are deadly. Several prominent economists, all considered progressive, challenge the whole premise that our current deficits are an evil that will burden future generations and ferment national decline.  Paul Krugman, a Pulitzer prize wining economist and Times columnist, wrote in February that “fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.” He says running big deficits during a recession is the right things to do, and the deficits should actually be bigger because we ought to be doing more to create jobs. But of course, no one thinks the present system is perfect.

Back to the challenge at hand.  All economists agree that short term and long term deficits are different. So you are challenged to cut $1.345 trillion from the 2030 budget.  By that year, many retired baby boomers will be depending on Social Security and Medicare, and health care costs are escalating every year.  The Times offers options for cutting spending in domestic programs, foreign aid, health care, the military and social security, and 15 revenue options through changes in taxation.  Confused about all those decisions? You can access opinions of experts and scholars. 

 Princeton Economics Professor Uwe Reinhardt says that Americans pay less in taxes than people in the rest of the industrialized worlds, and that we tend to want services we don’t want to pay for.  He suggests a deficit reduction framework with 38 per cent in spending cuts and 62 percent in tax increases.  Your own social and political views will influence how you break it down, but you can’t reasonably fix the budget with spending cuts or tax hikes alone. Take the budget challenge here. You can even share your plan on line.

Secret World of Microbes in the Atmosphere Impacts Life on Earth, Researchers Discover

Teeming communities of microorganisms fill the air over our heads, and scientists are just beginning to learn what their presence means for weather,  climate change  and human health.

A story by Vanessa Schipani in The Scientist reports every cubic meter of air holds more than 100 million tiny organisms.The airborne particles of dust that travel over and above land masses also carry vast and diverse assortments of bacteria, fungi and viruses. It turns out that the earth’s atmosphere has microbial diversity that is on a par with the microbial life of terrestrial soil.

Jessica Green, a microbial ecologist at the University of Oregon, thinks microbes are inhabitants of the air, not just riders on the wind.If microbes are metabolically alive-eating, breathing, reproducing-while suspended in air and cloud water, she says, they could potentially sustain population through many generations.”If the atmosphere is a habitat where microbes live,” she says, “this will fundamentally change our conception of atmospheric processes.”

Christine Rogers, an aerobiologist at the University of Massachusetts, explains how airborne microbes may influence climatechange. She says increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be creating more and larger plants, which provide food for microscopic fungi. Microbes provide surfaces for condensation of water vapor, so they have an important role in forming clouds and influencing rain and snow.  Scientists say if the microbes are metabolically active, they may also influence the carbon and nitrogen cycles vital to life as we know it.

More microbes in the air would suggest more clouds. Cloud volume impacts how much heat is trapped in the atmosphere, and how much heat is reflected from the sun.  The Scientist story notes researchers aren’t sure whether more clouds will heat or cool the atmosphere, but they are sure increasing clouds will impact climate one way or another. Allergy and asthma sufferers, however, can expect more misery. Rogers explains bigger plants produce more pollen, and the common allergy causing fungus alternaria alternate produces three times more spores when it feeds on the CO2 enriched plants. Airborne bacteria are also implicated in respiratory ills.

Noah Fierer, a microbial ecologist at the University of  Colorado, who has been studying life in the air for years, plans to create a global map of aerial microbes. He plans to start with a survey of every part of the continental U.S. by developing  a low-cost sampling devicethose volunteers in every state could use to sample bacteria in the air above their homes. He and his team also are working on plans to sample viruses and fungi in the air. He believes microbial maps will help determine the impact of urban, suburban and agricultural land use, as well as the influence of airborne microbes on weather and human health and disease.

………………………A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns

And the round ocean and the living air

And the blue sky…..

…………..William Wordsworth, lines composed in 1798

Plexus Summit 2010: Relationships Bridge Distances Between Peoples, Create Fountains of Learning

 I am a human being.  Everything that occurs to other human beings occurs also to me.

Immanuel Kant’s translation of an observation of the poet and playwright Terentius, who was freed after arriving in Rome as a slave. 

 When people view the world through a lens of classical realism, Norbert Wetzel says, they assume they perceive reality exactly as it is, that cognition matters more than relationships, and that it is possible to measure the core of another person. This view assumes people are the same, he says, and that experts can understand them. It’s a hierarchical process that happens in schools, prisons and hospitals.

 In health care, he says, that means medical professionals looks for evidence and pathology that can be diagnosed and treated.  And diagnosis can be an instrument of control, he adds, noting there ‘s  a Medical Information Bureau, where insurers and others can look up information about our medical histories and life styles.

Wetzel, a  psychologist  and family therapist, is co-founder of the Center for Family, Community and Social Justice in Princeton, N.J. He has served on the faculties of Rutgers University and the Family Institute of the University of Heidelberg Medical School in Germany, and is adjunct associate professor for couples and family therapy at the Princeton Theological Seminary.  He spoke at the annual gathering of the Plexus community November 5-7, co-hosted by Plexus Institute and the Social Justice Initiative of the Department of Communications  at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) 

Wetzel now guides the Center’s Family Empowerment Program for inner-city youth and their families. The center sends 18 to 20 teams of social workers, clinicians and community resource specialists to New Jersey schools. “I recently spoke with someone who said to me, you are in the land of someone.  I am in the land of no one,” Wetzel recalls.  “We work in inner cities, areas of poverty. There are immigrants with no documents. They fit the definition of stateless people, with no rights. They are outsiders.” 

Diversity: A Fountain of  Interruption and Surprise

In a school, he recalls, his team heard a guard say heavy security  and police presence are necessary because that’s what students will need to understand when they go to prison.

 But schools don’t need to be gateways to prison. And we are not all the same. In fact, says Wetzel, what makes is human is our “otherness,” whether that means race, age, gender, culture or personal experience.   In this view, diversity is a source of interruption and surprise. And a valuable resource.  Viewing the world through a relational lens, Wetzel says, “We realize the self is not sufficient.  We live with a metaphysical desire to escape the self, to get into relationship.”  Kant’s translation of Terentius  suggests the philosophical underpinning of the relational paradigm and Wetzel’s work.  

The Land of No One, the Land of Someone

 Wetzel and his teams work with families and communities rather than individuals. He recalls a 14-year-old caught possessing a gun. A psychiatrist described the boy as pathologically dangerous.   In a session with the youngster and his family, it turned out the boy had been terrorized by gang members who fatally shot his older brother. Context brought out new information about the boy, and identified people who were a healing presence in his life.  In another instance, a troubled girl was able to change her own behavior after learning part of her family narrative.  Coyotes—who are paid to smuggle people—had brought her mother on a dangerous journey from Central America to the U.S. Understanding what her mother had endured to try to give her child a better, safer life gave the girl a new perspective.

The theme of the gathering was Bridges and Borders: Transforming Constraints into Opportunities. Relationships bridge the distances between peoples and cultures. As Wetzel  puts it, there is no end to the process of relationship-founded learning.   Attendees could also consider lessons learned in examining physical boundaries and geographical differences.

Gardens and Fountains: Growing, Building, Processing

The session began with a tour of the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens, a botanical garden where nearly 800 species of plants native to the Chihuahua Desert and adjacent regions in Mexico and the U.S. are cultivated on the UTEP campus. Some are exotic, some endangered. Some have lacy delicate leaves and some have the bold shapes of cacti and stiff-spined grasses.  There is wild cotton, vivid salvia, and flowers with subtle yellow and gold colors. There is apache pine, which has long needles that have been used since ancient times in basket weaving. Plants are artfully placed and carefully trended. In the Sensory Garden, a gentle waterfall on shallow ledges of a re-circulating fountain provides a safe watering place for insects, butterflies and small birds.  The Contemplative Garden, protected by circular walls and a wooden overhead lattice, features another fountain where drops of water fall softly onto metal bell-shaped resonators that hang gracefully above a pool in a large copper pan. University metallurgy students made the resonators.

 Elsewhere in the garden, a Bhutanese prayer wheel, given to the university by Bhutan in 2003, is housed in a wooden enclosure built by a local master carpenter who followed the Bhutanese tradition of using oak pegs rather than nails or bolts.  All the buildings on the UTEP campus, new and old, are designed in styles inspired by classical Bhutanese architecture, with colorful ceramic medallions embedded in walls, and overhanging roofs.

Other conference events included a workshop on positive deviance and social change, and  a presentation by Henri Lipmanowicz on liberating structures, a collection of processes that allow large and small groups to address problems and make decisions by tapping into the collective wisdom of their members.  Lipmanowicz is chair of Plexus Institute and a retired executive who was president of the Merck Intercontinental and Japan Division. Several small group discussions followed the presentations. Some probed work and career issues, communication among those with differing views, the value of small changes,  music as medicine, and the importance of stories and story telling.  One discussion centered on the need for hospital patients to tell their stories, and the need for others to hear them.  Another explored the way informal conversation can influence public policy. In one group, Wetzel observed that stories are relational because they are always told TO someone.  A UTEP doctoral student described interviewing elderly braceros—migrant workers—who remained kind and grateful despite years of hardships. She said their spirit made her feel humble and determined to overlook minor inconveniences of her own.  Another student told of greater sympathy for a difficult boss after she learned how the woman had overcome abusive relationships and changed her own life.    

Learning Science, Relationships on the Move

Remember learning about the laws of motion? Bill Robertson, also known as Doctor Skateboard, is an assistant professor of science education. He gives breath-taking physical performances to illustrate principles in physics, geometry, mechanics, balance, and the relationship between velocity and acceleration. He explains why the skateboard is a machine, then talks about the forces in play as he spins, flips, flies, and does handstands on the speeding platform.  What’s the opposite of gravity, he asks.  “Levity,” someone wisecracks. Robertson laughs, and in another amazing air-born maneuver, demonstrates the concept of lift.    

Creative Crossings through Music and Art

Through out, the versatile modern day troubadour Scott Grace explained, extolled, prodded and entertained with the kind of extemporaneously created melodies and lyrics that move audiences to laughter and tears. 

 Contra Flujo, meaning  “Against the Flow,” a modern art exhibit at the UTEP Rubin Center for the Visual Arts was a stunning immersion in realities and relationships on both sides of the  U.S.—Mexican border. A visitor first sees I-Machinarius, which represents Mexico in a wall sized display of moving gears and chains and crude oil. The Mexican artist, Marcela Armas, has explained the piece is a commentary on energy consumption, politics and relations with the U.S.  Kerry Doyle,  assistant director of the center and curator of the exhibit,  guided visitors through the displays. She explained the idea was to celebrate  100^th  anniversary of the Mexican Revolution as well as the challenges of today’s border issues.  Art serves as a metaphorical bridge between Cuidad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border, and El Paso, on the US side.  Doyle, a community organizer and artist who has ,lived and worked in both cities,  says a UTEP chemistry professor involved in research on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico supplied the crude oil for Armas’s piece.  She says Juarez has an active artist community, including some young artists determined their city will be known for something other than violence.  Murals they have created on the walls of buildings, she says, are appreciated by neighbors, who plant nearby gardens and protect them from would-be vandals. 

Armas has another emotionally powerful piece. A wall sized abstract map shows portions of Mexico and the U.S. The border is electrified and designed to light up bright red as human bodies approach.  A series of fine lines cross the border and reach far into both countries. It is a gripping dramatization of danger and structural interconnection.   Another interactive exhibit invites visitors to hold each end of a level until it is perfectly centered. Video and photographs show people in differing  circumstances achieving balance. Some manage the balance through the metal mesh of the border fence.  Read Doyle’s insightful discussion of the exhibit pieces here.

Worlds of Wonder

The concluding event was a visit to one of the world’s great natural wonders, the 275 square miles of glistening, undulating mounds of white sand created by the largest gypsum dune field on earth.  The White Sands Monument in New Mexico in the  Chihuahuan  Desert  has exceptionally dynamic dunes that change shape and move as much as 30 feet a year depending on the winds. As sand is piled high by winds, it moves forward by gravity, then collapses as gravity continues its downward force. Visitors can slide and sled on some of the steeper slopes. The ephemeral sands and colors that shift with changing sunlight, weather and advancing hours create awesome beauty and majesty.  The place is an inspiration for exploring science. It also has its share of folk tales and myths. The vinagarroon is a real arachnid, but the supposedly fearsome children of the earth, insects rumored to be fatally venomous, are really pretty harmless potato bugs also known as Jerusalem crickets. Read the Legend of Pavla Blanca. The ghost of the lovely young Manuela, who perished in the desert while searching for her lost lover nearly five centuries ago, is said to appear in her gossamer white wedding gown on certain lonely wind-swept evenings.

Special thanks to Professor Arvind Singhal, doctoral student Lucia Dura, and the students, faculty, staff and others at UTEP as well as conference attendees, presenters and people at Plexus Institute who helped make this gathering memorable.

Our Brains, Our Networks, Our Gifts, and Notes from the Organizational Development Conference

 To Lead Well, Rest, Reflect and Don’t Hijack Anyone’s Amygdala  

 We don’t know how to get better leaders,  David Rock asserts, even though more than 60,000 books on leadership have been published.

 Social issues are more important to brain function than we have generally realized, says Rock, an author and researcher who coined the term “neuroleadership” and co-founded  the NeuroLeadership Institute.  He reports studies indicate social pain and physical pain activate the same brain areas, and that social pain was actually decreased more by Tylenol than by a placebo. Further, he says, threats are stronger and longer lasting than rewards. If we can’t decide whether something is good or bad, we decide its very bad. He says that’s because the brain is a prediction machine, and uncertainty is a threat.

 Neuroscience teaches us that threats shut down creativity and close us to learning. They deplete resources available to our prefrontal cortex, where thought happens. So if you want to be a change agent, avoid making people feel threatened.

 Rock, used humor and drama while addressing the Organizational Development Conference  2010 in New Orleans. He displayed a vintage ad trumpeting that “More Doctors Smoke Camels,” and another showing a healthy baby along with text that urges parents to “Start Cola earlier.”  These notions make us squeamish now because science has debunked them, and Rock predicts years from now people will make the same discoveries about today’s leadership: “They’ll look back at us and say did that actually do that to people?”

 He calls neuroleadership the neuroscicence of making decisions, solving problems, staying cool under pressure, collaborating with others and facilitating change.  He says “the elephant in the room” is what happens to people in organizations: as they move up, their need for technical skills decreases, and their need for self-awareness, social skill, reflective thinking and insight increases. But social skills drop as people move up. Tension and creativity-killing anxiety often start at the top.  “The good news, “ he adds, “is that it’s not your fault. It’s the nature of the beast.”

 The David Rock free webinar on the “neuroscience of engagement” will be held from 4-5 PM ET Nov. 16 Rock is to facilitate, and registration is at http://www.resultscoaches.com/coach-training/signup.shtml

  Rock developed the SCARF model:  status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fair ness are the things that can make us feel very rewarded or very threatened.  If a situation dictates that threats in one domain are inevitable,  rewards in another domain can sometimes offset the negative impact.   

 Another leadership trait we misinterpret, says Rock, involves creativity and insight.  Intensity, focus, and trying hard to solve a problem inhibit insights. As Rock explains it, when we have insight, our brains actually change. When we solve problems in a linear way, they don’t.  Insight requires reflection and quiet. Any thought contains millions of strands, he says, but insights are quiet signals, connections among small numbers of neurons.  Insights happen often, he adds, but we don’t notice them amidst the electrical activity of anxiety and stress. That’s why people often have “aha” moments in the shower or upon waking. 

 Perhaps, Rock suggests, we will some day make breakthroughs in the way we relate to one another that are as profound as the breakthroughs we have made in technology. Rock is the author of Your Brain at Work, he blogs for PsychologyToday, and wrote “Managing with the Brain in Mind” for the journal Strategy + Business.

Other gems from Organizational Development Conference  2010

 Constraints and Freedom Dance a Creative Duet

 “Prelude”, the first dance choreographed by Garth Fagan in 1981, was subtitled “Discipline in Freedom,” and the thought has influenced an extraordinary career that has brought him the Tony, Oliver and Astaire awards and accolades as one of the most creative artists in dance today.

 “My father used to say that discipline is freedom,” he told an audience at the ODN conference, “and finally I realized what he meant. If you are disciplined to solve problems in your own field, you will be free to solve whatever else the world throws at you.”

 Fagan loves and understands classical ballet. As a choreographer of modern dance, he uses movements that require the same skill and precision, but even more freedom. He says he hires dancers for their intelligence and willingness to risk innovation as well as their technical competence.  His stunning choreography of the Broadway musical “The Lion King”  has been widely acclaimed, and his Garth Fagan Dance Company  is celebrating its 40^th season.  He admires improvisation with a certain caveat: it’s great when it is done at a very high level, but below that, it is likely to be repetitious and boring. He encourages his dancers to perform according to plan. “Break rules,” he says. “But before you break them it’s nice if you know what they are.”

 How do you build a company of 14 virtuoso dancers who are intelligent, vulnerable and willing to try unusual things?  Funding for the arts is atrocious in America, Fagan observes, and he wanted his dancers on salary. His music ranges Bach to boogie, and he uses Chinese as well as Western composers, so his dancers need to be intellectually as well as physically nimble.  His leadership style, as he describes it, is both nurturing and demanding. When one of his dancers was distraught over the death of her cat, he admits his first thought was “suck it up.” 

“But I had to nourish her,” he recalls. “I said wherever that cat is in cat heaven, it would love to see you dance in two days.”

 Invisible Capital and Entrepreneurship

 If you have a great idea, work hard and have a positive attitude, you’ll succeed as an entrepreneur, right? “That’s what the entrepreneurial-industrial complex wants you to think,” says consultant and author  Chris Rabb, “and that belief facilitates a harmful ideology.”

 Statistics underscore the difficulties of starting new businesses, he says: Only 12 per cent of businesses last more than four years, have one employee and make more than $25,000 a year. If you are  African American or Latino, the figures are lower,  and the racial wealth gap in America is widening.

 The best predictors for wealth in this country, Rabb says, are homeownership, investments, and owning one’s own business. Indicators for a successful start in business are education,  sufficient start up capital, ability to choose the right industry, and experience in a family –owned business, not necessarily one’s own family’s business.  Education alone doesn’t bring wealth.

 Rabb ironically notes he is the sixth generation of college educated people in his family and he says he’s not rich.  His great great grandfather bought himself out of slavery, operated a store, and passed it on to his son, who became a physician.  One of a long line of entrepreneurs, Chris Rabb started a clothing company when he was at Yale, and later founded a technology based company with his brother.  He has also worked for the White House Conference Small Business and the Enterprise Center in Philadelphia, where he helped create a nationally recognized business incubator. He recently joined DEMOS, A New York based non profit devoted to economic justice and broad citizen participation.

 In his new book Invisible Capital: How Unseen Forces Shapes Entrepreneurial Opportunity Rabb discusses what he terms commonwealth enterprises, which create community assets and help sustain communities at the same time they create shared prosperity. Innovation in entrepreneurship is needed, he says, and structures might include co-ops, nonprofits, and low-profits that provide socially beneficial goods and services.   Rabb gives a lively presentation, in which he defines invisible capital as human, social and cultural capital that is often invisible, like the wind. He also reminds his audience that Horatio Alger, the nineteenth century writer who created the archetypical American stories of rags to riches through hard work, was himself a second generation Harvard graduate, who incidentally  toured Europe before settling down to his job.

In a session entitled Reaching Resonance,  Engaging Organizations through Emotional Intelligence, Cindy Maher and Carol Grannis  of Leading Edge Coaching and Development, delivered some bits if profound wisdom and performed some hilarious skits that showed with boisterous indelicacy things that really shouldn’t happen at work.  The wisdom is that when people are stressed,  “flooding” happens, meaning that blood flows away from the brain and the stress victim may not understand  or remember what has been said.  Not great for getting instructions from the boss or presenting one’s own ideas. Resonant behavior spreads quickly through groups, they said, and a whole group can become stressed in less than 15 minutes.   Interestingly, when people are engaged in good conversation, their heart rates tend to become synchronized.  The good news is that laughter tells people there is safety, engagement and connection, and both presenters provided laughs aplenty.  Ms. Maher was charmingly convincing in roles of overwrought bosses and employees, and Ms. Grannis evoked peals of laughter portraying  an oblivious boss engrossed in personal phone conversation while a waiting employee cooled her heels and work issues escalated. 

 In a session  on Arts-Based Learning: A New Paradigm for  the 21^st Century OD Professional, Michael Y. Brenner of IdeAgency  cited the 2010 IBM Global CEO Study in which a majority of the CEOs interviewed called creativity the most important leadership competency.  Traditional logical, rational, linear leadership skills are not enough in  today’s complex world , Brenner said. Leaders need synthesis as well as analysis, and imagination and empathy to collaborate with others and solve problem.  Art, in all its forms, helps us see things differently and explore the deeply held assumptions and beliefs we often fail to question.  For many at the  session, a brief exercise with modeling clay illustrated the potential of Brenner’s approach.

 Can networking skills be learned?  Arthur Lerner, of  Networking Forward and Deborah Peluso, of The Change Collaborative, introduced engaging ways to connect with people in their Networking Forward Program.   Good networking is about giving and receiving gifts, they explained. Participants in small groups were asked to talk about the best gifts they had ever received,  and then discuss a more difficult question, the best gifts they had ever given.  Most of the gifts discussed  emphasized emotional connection, commitment, time spent  and  generosity of spirit. When gifts of material things were mentioned,  they usually held symbolic rather than monetary value. Often, people found real value of gifts given and received  became more apparent with the passage of time.  Just about every language has some term for human connectedness, one group of participants observed. In Setswama, the traditional language of Botswana, a man from Africa observed, it is kopano.

The Organizational Development Network 2010 Conference in New Orleans had many wonderful presentations. You can find “handouts”  from many of these interesting sessions by visiting:

http://www.odnetwork.org/events/conferences/conf2010/rfp/handouts.php