Skip to main content

Molto Grazie…

I'm flattered that one of my favourite bloggers has listed me in her blogroll under the heading of 'Blogs about ideas'. As I said, I'm a flattered and more than a little embarrassed by the chasm between the quality of The Conversation Agent blog and mine. It is beautifully written by Valeria Maltoni whom, I gather, is a PR professional from the United States.

What I like about her posts:

They are always interesting. I find myself engaged with topics that I would not especially be interested in normally.

She writes with humanity. I'm not a big fan of dispassionate objectivity. Often it is a front for dogma. If you've read more than a handful of my own witterings you'll know I am advocate for the Emersonian idea that 'a foolish consistency is the hob-goblin of little minds'. But don't get me wrong - Ms Maltoni isn't inconsistent, on the contrary she is consistently excellent - and never piously 'objective'.

In short she's a wonderful conversationalist. Brava!

(As a footnote I'm reminded of a story about Gladstone and Disraeli. Apparently if you went to Gladstone's home for dinner you would leave, certain that Mr Gladstone was the smartest person and the finest orator you had, or ever would, meet. As you pulled on your coat and prepared to step out into the snow to hail a cab after sharing a meal with Mr Disraeli you would be sure of one thing - if nothing else - that you were the most scintillating company ever to have graced his table.

I like that.)

Comments

  1. Valeria Maltoni5:15 am

    You're very welcome, David. The other day I actually spent a good deal of time on the Idealog site reading articles and blog posts there and finding inspiration. That's part of what I define conversation -- listening, reading, observing what others work on, what they think, etc.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse
1 comment
Read more and leave a comment

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer
9 comments
Read more and leave a comment