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Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains
“A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect.”
This is a great post on the power of storytelling. The brain remembers stories and that is the main argument the author makes in this article. Stories are powerful and now there is scientific evidence to prove it.
“If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Overall, it hits our language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that’s it, nothing else happens. When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.”
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The Art of Being Still
This is a great post – something writers are guilty of: Not finding enough time to write. “they fret about writer’s block or about never having the time to write,” writes Silas House. “Yet as they complain, they spend a whole lot of that precious time posting cartoons about writing on Facebook or putting up statuses about how if they only had more free time they just know they could get their novels written.”
I just recently saw tweets from an author who was in the process of writing a book, who was writing reflections on Twitter on the process of writing and then complaining of not being able to concentrate on writing. So take a look at this blog. So much of it rings true in this ‘digital era’.
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Slate: The 2012 Underrated books
Slate magazine has listed overlooked fiction and nonfiction books of 2012. I haven’t heard about many of these books, so it’s a nice gesture on the part of Slate to decide to run the underrated list instead of the best list which what usually runs around this time every year. Some the books mentioned include ‘Londoners’ by Craig Taylor:
“For obvious reasons, Londoners was much more of an event when it was published in the United Kingdom in 2011, though you need not be interested in the English capital to appreciate Craig Taylor’s journalistic achievement. Collecting dozens of first-person testimonies, from a fruit vendor to financiers to city officials to frustrated former residents who left for the country, Taylor paints a vast portrait of London that doubles as record of modern Western life itself. It made me wish a similar book existed for every city or town on Earth, though Taylor’s curiosity and eye for diverse characters would be hard to replicate.”
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NYT’s Best Books for 2012
The verdict is out. The New York Times has named the best books of 2012. Some the authors listed include Zadie Smith and author of Zeitoun, David Eggers. The book list includes both fiction and non-fiction. Here’s the paragraph on the Eggers new book, A Hologram For the King: “In an empty city in Saudi Arabia, a middle-aged American businessman waits day after day to close the deal he hopes will redeem his forlorn life. Eggers, continuing the worldly outlook that informed his recent books “Zeitoun” and “What Is the What,” spins this spare story — a globalized “Death of a Salesman” — into a tightly controlled parable of America’s international standing and a riff on middle-class decline that approaches Beckett in its absurdist despair.You can get snippets about the books before you decide to read them.”
The books have been selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
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Why Technology-Penetration Rates are Worthless
Katy Pearce, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Communication, argues that Internet penetrations rates aren’t important. She warns of generalizations such as “84 percent of women in country x have a mobile phone…therefore women’s empowerment through technology is possible. She writes that it is not surprising that countries with a younger, better educated and wealthier societies would have higher Internet penetration. At the same time, she argues, the price of the internet is also a factor. She lays out in the article specific factors that make general statements on penetration levels irrelevant. Worth a read.
“So what is to be done about this problem? There are a few options. One may be to stop caring about penetration rates. This is not a race. Given the numerous contributing factors to these rates, the actual percentage is essentially meaningless. Given the way that these are manipulated, deemphasizing penetration rates may be best. Another solution would be an attempt at better measurement. Surveys would be best.”
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Social Innovation and Future Engagement
Will businesses, governments and non-profits finally realize the potential of social innovation. This article says there are some that are doing that already like OpenIDEO that partnered with non-profits, businesses and governments to create a series of collaborative social innovation challenges. Read more about the networks that have been formed, the fundraising that has taken place and the benefits of collaboration.
“The success of collaborative social innovation initiatives shows that organizations and people are capable of co-creating innovative solutions to complex problems, and has created a new model for change makers to showcase their innovations, for governments and foundations to find solutions to societal issues and for businesses to realize sustainable growth.”
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Social Media Shedding Light on Environmental Issues
Social media networks are used to shed light on environmental issues in Jordan, Jordan Times, reports. As you will remember with the Ajloun Forrest and Birgish, the campaigns took a life of their own on social media but it was also the fact that action was taken offline as well that the campaigns have succeeded so far.
“Environment protection societies and NGOs deem social media networks a “great and exceptional opportunity” to make a positive behavioural change in environment protection and the consumption of water and energy, Shoshan told The Jordan Times. ”
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The Best Writing from The Atlantic’s Technology Channel
Commentary:
The Atlantic just released a series of best blog stories which can be downloaded for free until the end of the year. The author writes this it’s a personal how-to-guide “for producing meaningful, in-depth stories in a resource-starved, time-crunched media age”. It is also a great post that gives insight on tech blogs and how they can last.“But how to create stock in a blogging environment? It may sound crazy as a content strategy, but we developed a worldview: habits of mind, ways of researching, types of writing. Then, we used the news to challenge ourselves, to test what we thought we knew about how technology worked. Embedded in many stories in this volume, you can see us going back and forth with ourselves over the biggest issues in technology. How much can humans shape the tools they use? What is the relationship between our minds and the tools we think with, from spreadsheets to drones? What is the potential for manipulating biology? How do communications technologies structure the way ideas spread?”
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Tech Start-ups are About to Start Dropping Like Flies
An article on a new report out called “Series A Crunch” on the flood of seed funding for startups that has not translated into an increase in investment that can turn a promising start-up into a real company.”The hardiest will find a way to survive on their own”. The focus, worldwide, but especially in Jordan will need to be on sustainability — not only in funding but in local staff, creativity and long terms vision. 2012 was the year of ideas and many had a chance. 2013 will be about who will survive.
“As PandoDaily’s Sarah Lacey points out, the Series A crunch shows that big investors are proceeding with due caution, rather than hurling millions at anything with a “.com” in its name like they did in the late 1990s. A few big flameouts like Groupon and Zyngaaside, Lacey is right that “the bulk of the froth in the Web 2.0 world was mostly just in the private hands of insiders, not the public markets or broader economy.” The coming year may be a brutal one for startups, but those left standing will be better off than before.”
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What’s going to get MENA’s young people to work?
“ver the next decade, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) faces the challenge of creating 40 million jobs for its youth with an estimated 10.7 million new entrants expected to join the labor force. With nearly one in five people between the ages of 15 and 24, the region has one of the youngest populations in the world. Caroline Freund, MENA Chief Economist, notes that the employment response must be well above average to employ the current and future jobseekers.”
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Why social media – not violence – could bring change to Oman
“The Arab Spring left the Gulf state of Oman relatively unscathed, with long-term ruler Sultan Qaboos moving to quieten discontent by introducing reforms, but how long can tradition hold back calls for change?”
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Viewpoint: How Obama secures his legacy
“Obama ran as a two-term president, and has the potential to make the next four years transcendent. But only, as Ellis Cose explains, if he rolls up his sleeves and gets to the hard work of governing.”
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Crowdfunding Citizen Journalism in Cairo
“Mosireen, a media collective in downtown Cairo that has become a vital source of video reports about life in post-revolutionary Egypt, is engaged in an online crowdfunding campaign.”
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Twitter to Add Photo Filters to Compete With Instagram
Adding filters may seem like a trivial addition to a social network that processes a billion 140-character missives every two days, but it could be an important part of the company’s business.
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The 15 Best Movies About Journalism
The list. The 15 Best Movies About Journalism
“1. His Girl Friday (1940)
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Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell butt heads in this story of an ex-husband and editor trying to win back his star reporter and ex-wife, whom he still loves. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the dehumanization of their subjects. There’s one bleak exchange about changing the time of a hanging to make the evening edition. It’s cutthroat. Russell’s character laments that she doesn’t want to be a reporter, she just wants to be a woman. It’s a bit dated, but the ethical dilemmas are devastating. And in the end, Hildy is more journalist than lady.
2. All The President’s Men (1976)
There’s three types of freshman journalism majors: ones who want to be Carrie Bradshaw, ones who want to write for Rolling Stone, and ones who want to be Woodward and Bernstein. I was the last one. All The President’s Men follows the Watergate scandal and features Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as sexier versions of Woodward and Bernstein. Nice.” -
‘Irish Times’ to change in look and size
“‘The Irish Times’ is enhancing the newspaper and its journalism at a time of rapid digital development, writes Kevin O’Sullivan, Editor.
From tomorrow, The Irish Times will change in look and size. Most significantly, our journalism will be strengthened to better serve our readers from Monday to Friday, and to do so in a distinctive way at the weekend.
Renowned designers Palmer Watson have joined us in redesigning the newspaper to make it more modern, more readable, and more convenient to consume by virtue of being a little narrower in size.
We have talked to readers, regular and occasional, about how they read the paper, their preferences and what engages them. We have taken on board research on the case for change in presentation of our journalism today, particularly in response to how people consume news through a wide variety of devices and yet retain an affinity for print.”
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The death of Arab secularism
The death of Arab secularism is the story of a country that no longer exists and a world almost impossible to imagine. That world can be glimpsed in old newsreels from the Arab cities of the 1950s and 1960s. The cities of the post-war period – Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, Baghdad and Aden – look much the same as many developing countries of the time: American-built cars, European-style suits, a certain easy mingling of men and women…
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Chronicling Lives After Guantanamo Bay
“Shephard has followed the stories of several prisoners after they were released, including Salim Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, and Canadian Omar Khadr, the youngest Guantanamo prisoner. Recently, she traveled to Albania to meet with Abu Bakr Qassim, one of several Muslims belonging to China’s Uighur minority who were captured in Pakistan and mistakenly detained at Guantanamo.”
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Syria’s rebels fear foreign jihadis in their midst
“In early summer, Abu Ismael, a six-year veteran of al-Qaida, left the insurgency still blazing in his homeland of Iraq and travelled to what he believes is the start of the apocalypse. He secured cash from a benefactor in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, then approached a weapons dealer in Anbar province, a desolate corner of the country that was not long ago a staging point for jihadis arriving from Syria and is now a gateway for those going the other way.
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“It was easy,” he said, in the sitting room of a house in the Syrian city of Aleppo. “The money was no problem, neither was the weapon, or the motivation. This will be a fight against the great enemy.” -
Dreams to despair for Egypt’s young
“Nabil Ali’s tuktuk is his pride and joy. The 21-year-old polishes the hub cabs to within an inch of their life and he carries three bottles of dashboard polish on board, in case he needs to spruce up the tuktuk between passengers.
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No attention to detail is spared – the windscreen wipers have silver skulls on each blade and to really make his vehicle stand out, he fitted it with an extra-large double exhaust pipe – in pink.
Nabil paid about $800 (£500; 620 euro) for the extras but for him, it is money well-spent. It means more people want to ride with him rather than his fellow tuktuk drivers in Egypt. And that’s important. The past year or so – especially during the revolution – has been tough.” -
Review: The Army’s Role in Israeli Politics | The National Interest
“AS PART of its negotiations with the United States, Israel promised to freeze “all settlement activity” (including natural growth of settlements), a pledge later enshrined in the “road map” agreed upon in 2003. Later, Israel argued that it had arranged a private deal with the Bush administration, in exchange for its withdrawal from Gaza, to allow settlement growth within the “construction line” of such settlements—in other words, to build up but not out.
Daniel C. Kurtzer, then the American ambassador to Israel, denies discussions between the United States and Israel resulted in what he called “an implementable understanding.” But I have a vivid memory of a conversation with him in his ambassadorial office in which an exasperated Kurtzer complained that he had been unable to get any satellite photos or detailed maps from the Israeli government or army showing where these construction lines were.”
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This Is Not a Revolution
“Darkness descends upon the Arab world. Waste, death, and destruction attend a fight for a better life. Outsiders compete for influence and settle accounts. The peaceful demonstrations with which this began, the lofty values that inspired them, become distant memories. Elections are festive occasions where political visions are an afterthought. The only consistent program is religious and is stirred by the past. A scramble for power is unleashed, without clear rules, values, or endpoint. It will not stop with regime change or survival. History does not move forward. It slips sideways.”
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Pamuk’s Second Novel Released In English
Radio Interview: Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s 1983 novel Silent House is being released in English for the first time this week. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel talks with the Nobel Laureate about what took so long to get the book translated and how he’s changed as a writer since it was first published in Turkish nearly 30 years ago.
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Hairdressers say former militant group members in Iraq turn ‘emo’
“After victimizing dozens of teenagers for donning “emo” hair styles, members affiliated with al-Qaeda and other militia groups in Iraq are turning into “emos,” a local news website reported on Saturday.
“Emo” is short for “emotional” and in the West generally identifies teens or young adults who listen to alternative music, dress in black, and have radical hairstyles and body piercings. While they are sometimes stereotyped as “gay,” to Iraqis, “emos” are widely synonymous as such and were targeted by extremist groups who smashed their heads with concrete blocks early this year. In March, Hana al-Bayaty of Brussels Tribunal, an NGO dealing with Iraqi issues, said the current figure of “emos” killed in Iraq ranged “between 90 and 100.” But for local hairdressers, who have witnessed a change in style among their extremist customers in the eastern province of Diyala, an “al-Qaeda emo” has started circulating as a joke, according to Al-Sumaria News.”
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Book: The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings
“The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings sheds light on the historical context and initial impact of the mass uprisings that have shaken the Arab world since December 2010. The volume documents the first nine months of the Arab uprisings and explains the backgrounds and trajectories of these popular movements and regime strategies to contain them. It provides critical analysis and at times first-hand accounts of events that have received little or superficial coverage in Western and Arab media alike. While the book focuses on those states that have been most affected by the uprisings, including Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, it also covers the impact on Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq.
As the initial phase of the uprisings subsides, counter-revolution sets in, and grand narratives crystallize, it is important to take note of the diversity of reactions that emanated from activists, scholars, and others as the uprisings were first unfolding. In this sense, the volume archives the realm of possibilities, both imaginative and practical, optimistic and pessimistic, that were opened up as people sought to make sense of the rapidly unfolding events.”
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