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| When I say, "Let's barbecue," what do you think of? Traditionally, I envision a nice sunny day, inviting some people over to my backyard, firing up a grill (either charcoal or gas) and placing marinated meat on it with the eventual goal of eating said meat. This event, in Virginia, is known as "cooking out."* If you say, "Let's barbecue," all you will get is a bunch of blank stares. First of all, "barbecue" is a noun, not a verb, and it specifically references the meat. So you could say, "Wow, that barbecue was tasty," but not "Let's barbecue." That would be like saying, "Let's beef." And it is a very specific kind of meat too. It is almost always pork rather than beef, smoked rather than grilled, and in a vinegar-based sauce rather than tomato-based one.
Of course, I should have known there were regional variations. Texas BBQ (Bee-Bee-Cue) is also a completely different beast.
*It is also acceptable to say, "Grilling out."
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| Hello Xanga world. I've missed you.
More and more I have become convinced that communication is a very fragile thing. It takes so many steps to transmit a thought from person A to person B. For example, let's say you have an idea in your brain that you want to communicate to your friend. All of this needs to happen:
1) Your brain expends energy to generate an idea.
2) Your brain decides which words best represent that idea.
3) Those words are spoken out loud.
4) Your friend hears those words.
5) Your friend's brain translates those words into an idea.
Hopefully the original idea in your brain is the same idea that is ultimately understood in your friend's brain. It takes all this to successfully transmit a thought - it has to happen again in reverse for you to be the recipient of a thought. Is it any wonder that communication is hard?
The overall mechanism has so many points where it can potentially get gummed up. And a break down in any one of those steps can lead to communication failure, which is probably why it happens so frequently. For example:
1) Your brain may be clouded, and you fail to think through the original idea clearly. If you yourself don't understand what you want to say, there is no way you can get someone else to understand it.
2) You may have an idea thought out clearly, but fail to choose the right words to elucidate the idea.
3) You may choose the right words in your head, but it comes out all wrong in your speech.
4) Your conversation partner has different meanings for the words you chose, leading to a different idea understood than the one you desired.
5) Your conversation partner's brain may be clouded and not clearly process your words.
As the originator of the idea and the speaker, you can only do your part to ensure that communication works. That means avoiding number 1, 2, and 3. There is nothing you can do about number 4 and 5. And here's the thing - when someone does their end well, you notice. They have a certain presence that commands the right to be heard, and consequently respected.
....
I firmly believe the bulk of the difficulty in doctoring stems
from communication. For the most part, the mental reasoning that leads
to a diagnosis is linear, clear cut, and fairly easy to learn. It is
the communication which generates the information the doctor uses to make the
diagnosis that is multifaceted, messy, and difficult to perfect. To date, this
is the area where I have been most humbled in my interactions with patients.
Setting: Patient and I are having a conversation about controlling his high blood pressure:
Me, thinking to myself: "Crap, what do I need to tell this guy??" (Failure number 1)
.....
Me thinking to myself: "He needs to be very regular in taking his blood pressure medicine, lipitor." (Lipitor is not for high blood pressure)
Me saying out loud: "You need to be very regular about taking your lipitor."
Patient: "I'm not on lipitor. I'm on captopril."
Me: "That's what I meant. Captopril." (Failure number 2)
.....
Me, thinking to myself: "Oh yeah, I should tell him that he should cut down on his salt."
Me, saying out loud: "You should probably think about considering an idea that perhaps it would be a good practice to use some sodium less than the norm of what you usually do."
Patient: "Huh?" (Failure number 3)
.....
Me, saying out loud: "You should cut down on your salt."
Patient: "OK."
Patient goes home, stops adding salt, but starts dousing soy sauce over everything. In this case, he doesn't understand soy sauce to also be "salt." (Failure number 4)
.....
Me saying out loud: "You should cut down on your salt."
Patient: "I'm late to my appointment with President Truman." (Failure number 5)
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| Almost everyone has heard the Rite of Spring (click on the link to hear excerpts), a ballet set to music composed by Igor Stravinsky. Remember Fantasia? It was the piece of music accompanying the animated sequence depicting the origin of simple life forms, the evolution of the dinosaurs, and their eventual destruction. Musically, one of the most interesting things about the Rite of Spring is that featured a plethora of minor third chords, (as opposed to perfect fourths or perfect fifths, which on a whole, are much more soothing to the ear), asymmetric rhythms, and just generally a ton of dissonance.
Now here's the fascinating part (by the way, I learned this recently from Radio Lab, an excellent podcast). Picture opening night for the Rite of Spring. It's a warm summer evening, 1913 in Paris. Igor Stravinsky is nervous and unsure as to how the crowd will receive his piece. The ballet starts to a lovely bassoon solo - the melody stemming from a traditional Lithuanian folk song. Some elements of dischord appear a couple minutes into the piece, and to Stravinsky's displeasure the crowd becomes agitated. Some people even boo. About three minutes into the piece, when the minor third chords appear and the dissonance becomes fully pronounced, the audience riots. They go completely beserk. There's blood. Chairs are thrown. Old ladies hit each other with their purses. All this incited, by the music.
What is it about music that makes us tick the way we do? Why do major chords make us happy and minor chords make us feel sad? There seems to be something deeply fundamental here. This American Life recently did a piece where they investigated the musical pitches emitted by our appliances. For example, say you're at work. Your computer is making a certain buzz. Let's say that buzz is tonally a middle C. The heating unit might be churning out a C# and together this makes a minor second, which is generally regarded as a terrible sound. This incessant minor second may affect your mood, and maybe that's part of the reason why you feel crappy at work.
I have a theory that every automobile maker in the world should get together and standardize car horn pitches. Every car horn pitch should only allowed to be G or D, making a perfect fifth, which is musically, a very pleasing chord. That way, when cars are pissed off at each other in traffic and they start honking, rather than hearing dissonant chords which might just RAISE tempers, you'll have beautiful, soul satisfying perfect fifths that may just help diffuse the situation.
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| The church I attend is in the middle of constructing an extension to the main building, which when completed will more than double the current size. It's scheduled to be finished by December. It's very exciting!
Today during service, instead of the normal pastoral prayer, we had a "prayer walk." The congregation was lead through the still unfinished extension and encouraged to pray over the various rooms. Walking through an unfinished building is a little surreal, with all the cords, insulation, and guts of the building still exposed. I imagine it's a little like how Jonah felt sitting in the belly of the whale.
Pastor Singh explained what we were to do: "If you walk by a future children's Sunday school room, try to envision that room with children, being taught the truth of God. Pray that many children will come to know Christ in that room." And so on, for the various other rooms - adult Sunday school, fellowship hall, etc. Everyone migrated to the obvious candidates, like nursery, counseling rooms, even kitchen. I felt really bad for the storage room. No one was praying over it. But when I tried to pray over the storage room, it was really hard. I didn't know how to pray. "Dear Lord, please use this room to store the chemicals in a way that will glorify you."
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| I just want to publicly state, because I don't know how long it's going to last, that as of Sunday, October 7th, 2007, CAL IS RANKED NUMBER TWO IN THE NATION. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Blast LSU. If they had just went ahead and lost (as it looked like they were going to do for most of the game) we would be #1.
Not that I'm not happy with being #2.
For now.
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