Sunday, March 4, 2012

Speaking Engagement

I have an upcoming speaking engagement at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Harford County on Sunday, 25 March. The title of my discussion is "The Basic Beliefs and Practices of Islam and the Notion of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys." You can find more details at the UU website.

14 comments:

  1. I wish you the best at the engagement, M. Will you post about how it went after the fact?

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  2. Thanks, Suze. My post from 24 Oct 11 has audience feedback from a previous speaking engagement on the same topic.

    I liked your current post on fasting. I agree that it's tough, but it does give a different perspective. I've heard that Ghandi did talking fasts on Thursdays. I tried it once. Amazing how cleared you get when you don't talk all day.

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  3. Good luck! I hope it goes well.

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  4. Ruth - These talks always go great. My favorite part's the audience Q&A. I learn so much from so many different people during that time.

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  5. I've thought about such things -- talking fasts. Hard to do (impossible) when you're the mother of an elementary-aged kid. But I think I can imagine the impact of removing spoken language on our thoughts. I wonder if it is at all possible to order thought? I imagine not as the phenomenon is just too unstable a thing. Still, experiments are worthwhile, if only to open up new cognitive vistas.

    I'm not on Facebook, and wish I could actually hear you speak. I'm hoping that you'll be posting more on your ideas/philosophies/beliefs in the coming months. I would be interested to read and engage. You wouldn't by chance be doing the A-Z Challenge in April?

    Also, just glanced up to your words in response to Ruth. I can see why you would love the audience Q&A. That sort of interaction was very gratifying to me when I taught junior high and high school.

    Have a great week, friend.

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  6. Sounds like a very interesting talk. Hope it goes well!

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  7. Oh wow, that's great. Sounds like an interesting talk! Best of luck with it!

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  8. Suze - for me, the talking fast bathed my mind in silence, a sort of mental yoga for intellectual relaxation. If we removed spoken language from our thoughts, we'd think in terms different than narrative, perhaps in images, like I believe my dog thinks, or how babies think (they don't have language to arrange and organize their thinking).

    I don't know about the A-Z Challenge. I'll look it up.

    I bet you were a fantastic teacher :)

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    1. Believe it or not, I spend a lot of time thinking about how language impacts cognition and I'm actually wondering if our increasingly visual culture is prompting a shift in consciousness on an evolutionary order.

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  9. Thanks, Charlie. The talks always go well (gosh, I hope I didn't just jinx myself).

    BTW, hang in there reading "On Writing." The 2nd half has some good writing advice.

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  10. Thanks, Lynda. Hey, I enjoyed your recent blog post on tips to write comedy. Even though I tend to write about the more troublesome aspects of the human experience, I do try to throw in flashes of the funny.

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  11. Ooh, sounds interesting. I'll check out the link. Good luck and I hope you have a great time.

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  12. Medeia - the talks always are interesting...not because of me, but because of the fascinating responses and comments I get from the Unitarian congregations. Thanks for stopping by!

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  13. Suze - I can see what you're saying, although I don't believe our consciousness is evolving from language to visual. I think our consciousness is evolving towards the fleeting and immediate with increasingly smaller attention spans and increasingly larger "disposable" components in our lives.

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