John Griogair Bell - Arlecchino Malbenvolio

Hey, there, all.

Now that the quarter is over, I’ve had a moment to catch my breath. I put my fall final, from Dissent, Injustice and the Making of America, online. I mention it because it carries forward some of the PALOD themes and things I was thinking about. There’s some definite palod-isms like “willing and able” but there’s some new thinking in there.

Anyhow, if you do end up reading it, and have any comments, let me know. I’ll eventually have my other weekly papers online too, but not yet.

http://www.arlecchino.org/ildottore/diamoa/final.html

Thanks!

(BTW, having my papers online really rocks when I was able to use Google to find a quote I needed from a previous paper!)

Okay, sorry, but this was too interesting. There’s a book out, by a
consultant that lives in Walla Walla, called “The Blind Men and the
Elephant: Mastering Project Work”, and here’s a review on Slashdot:

Each participant on a collaborative project encounters a piece of that
project, rarely the whole elephant. We grasp whatever we can — an ear,
a tail, a trunk, a leg, a tusk, a broad, flat side. Based on what we
grasp (our piece of the project) we extrapolate an understanding of the
whole: a fan, a rope, a snake, a tree, a spear, a wall. Schmaltz
develops these analogies in terms of project experience. We encounter a
fan that brings us fresh air, a rope that binds us together, a snake
that abuses our trust, a tree that evolves in structure above and
beneath the surface, a spear that puts us on the defensive, a wall that
challenges our personal progress. A chapter is devoted to each analogy.”

http://books.slashdot.org/books/03/12/03/0413225.shtml?tid=187&tid=188&tid=192

Time to annoy my community again!

One of patrick’s wish list items for a theoretical 4th qtr was a book,
“Creating a World that Works for All” by Sharif Abdullah. The
description mentions that the book is about the idea that “exclusivity”
is a core issue.

I thought I’d mention that I’d run across a website, derived from
another book, that speaks about “rankism” and the idea of creating a
universal dignity movement.

These things seem linked to me, so I thought I’d mention it:

http://www.dignitarians.org/

I ran into this quote, which seems familiar, so I’m not sure but that it
might have shown up in PALOD, but it’s relevant anyway:

Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you
may be wrong.”

Also, I noticed that New Dimensions, which runs on KAOS sunday mornings,
is possibly running an interview with Sharif Abdullah the week of Dec
15-21. So, you might be interested in checking that out.