Iris

visionary notes — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:48:11 +0000

Iris

Originally uploaded by borealnz

borealnz has taken an extraordinary photo here! Amazing colours.

MLWG, A CHARA?

visionary notes — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:07:29 +0000

I miss ye darling. I do.

Another Rhodia

visionary notes — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:43:24 +0000

Rhodia Drive » Blog Archive » Rhodia ad at Stylus magazine

creative with picasa.

visionary notes — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:21:25 +0000

creative with picasa.

Originally uploaded by Janny Brocken.

Well now..this is absolutely lovely…Janny, ya are the creative one!

Barbara McGivern

visionary notes — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:55:49 +0000

Audart Gallery, Barbara McGivern, Acrylic and Gold Leaf Paintings, Toronto

Blogged with Flock

Women to Watch in 2007

visionary notes — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:14:26 +0000

Simply the love of my life and the most brilliant woman I know. Wonderful Mother to her children, writer, poet, artist par excellence! If she knew what a comfort she is to MCG, ahh if she only knew. MLWG I love you.

Ekobo from Design Sponge

visionary notes — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:03:58 +0000

Aluna: World’s First Tidal Powered Moon Clock

visionary notes — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 05:25:41 +0000

Imagine a breathtaking sculpture that combines
cutting edge design and technology with an ancient knowledge of the Earth’s
natural rhythms.

A monumental timepiece for the planet, a beacon for a sustainable future,
reconnecting people with the Moon and tides. Find
out more…

Aluna: World’s First Tidal Powered Moon Clock

The Art of Conversation via the Economist

visionary notes — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 04:59:30 +0000

SIR ISAIAH BERLIN, a Latvian-born Oxford philosopher who died in 1997, may well have ranked among the greatest conversationalists who ever lived. According to Robert Darnton, a Princeton historian, Berlin’s friends would “watch him as if he were a trapeze artist, soaring through every imaginable subject, spinning, flipping, hanging by his heels and without a touch of showmanship”. Darnton reckoned that Berlin’s only match in relatively modern times might have been Denis Diderot, an 18th-century French Enlightenment philosopher. By one account Diderot’s conversation was “enlivened by absolute sincerity, subtle without obscurity, varied in its forms, dazzling in its flights of imagination, fertile in ideas and in its capacity to inspire ideas in others. One let oneself drift along with it for hours at a time, as if one were gliding down a fresh and limpid river, whose banks were adorned with rich estates and beautiful houses.”

The principle that it is rude to interrupt another speaker goes back at least to Cicero, writing in44BC, who said that good conversation required “alternation” among participants. In his essay “On Duties”, Cicero remarked that nobody, to his knowledge, had yet set down the rules for ordinary conversation, though many had done so for public speaking. He had a shot at it himself, and quickly arrived at the sort of list that self-help authors have been echoing ever since. The rules we learn from Cicero are these: speak clearly; speak easily but not too much, especially when others want their turn; do not interrupt; be courteous; deal seriously with serious matters and gracefully with lighter ones; never criticise people behind their backs; stick to subjects of general interest; do not talk about yourself; and, above all, never lose your temper.

Probably only two cardinal rules were lacking from Cicero’s list: remember people’s names, and be a good listener. Each of these pieces of advice also has a long pedigree. At a pinch you might trace the point about names back to Plato. Both found a persuasive modern advocate in Dale Carnegie, a teacher of public speaking who decided in 1936 that Americans needed educating more broadly in “the fine art of getting along”. His book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is still in print 70 years later and has sold 15m copies. To remember names, and to listen well, are two of Carnegie’s “six ways to make people like you”. The others are to become genuinely interested in other people; smile; talk in terms of the other person’s interests; and make the other person feel important.

The second golden age of conversation, among the French elites in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, is much better documented. Historians associate the rise of conversation at this time with the prestige enjoyed by women in French high society, which was perhaps unique in Europe before or since. Women ran the salons where the culture of the time was created, and their presence civilised the men they invited there. Another factor was the leisure forced on the French aristocracy by an absolute monarchy. Their political ambitions thwarted, the upper classes turned their energies towards entertaining themselves. A man without conversation was liable to find himself devalued, whatever his other qualities: “In England it was enough that Newton was the greatest mathematician of the century,” wrote Jean d’Alembert, a French philosopher and mathematician; “in France he would have been expected to be agreeable too.”

The conversation of the French salons and dinner tables became as stylised as a ballet. The basic skills brought to the table were expected to include politesse (sincere good manners), esprit (wit), galanterie (gallantry), complaisance (obligingness), enjouement (cheerfulness) and flatterie. More specific techniques would be required as the conversation took flight. A comic mood would require displays of raillerie (playful teasing), plaisanterie (joking), bons mots (epigrams), traits and pointes (rhetorical figures involving “subtle, unexpected wit”, according to Benedetta Craveri, a historian of the period), and, later, persiflage (mocking under the guise of praising). Even silences had to be finely judged. The Duc de La Rochefoucauld distinguished between an “eloquent” silence, a “mocking” silence and a “respectful” silence. The mastery of such “airs and tones”, he said, was “granted to few”.

Conversation was also flourishing across the channel in the early 18th century, but for a different reason. This was the golden age of the British coffee house. Whereas the French salon excluded politics from polite conversation, in the British coffee house politics was a main preoccupation. Foreign visitors remarked both on the free range of speech there and on the mingling of classes and professions. A modern German sociologist, Jürgen Habermas, linked the coffee houses with what he called the “rise of a public space” outside the control of the state, or, as we might say now, civil society.

The art of conversation | Chattering classes | Economist.com

Cheers to the Scotswoman of the Year

visionary notes — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:15:19 +0000

“Janey Godley’s not your average comedian”