Urban Onramps

round-up, 10/27

• Why YOU should church plant por este Bob Hyatt
• Micro-finance: A way out of poverty by Jennifer Roback Morse
• This Time, It’s Not the Economy
• Local man gives USC $35 million: He said he’s become wealthier than he ever imagined possible and wants to help others at his alma mater.
• Fallout of Hamas’s rule spurs Palestianian desire to flee:

Like Hushiyeh, a growing number of Palestinians are openly saying they’d like to leave the West Bank and Gaza if given the chance, raising concern about the possibility of a Palestinian brain drain. The sentiment, which flouts the long-held Palestinian belief that Israeli occupation can only be resisted by staying put, is yet another indication of the deepening despair since Hamas was elected to run the government.

• Nicaragua poised to outlaw all abortions
• College degree worth an extra $23,000 a year: Take heed: I like this number a lot better than the other number you get when discussing education-based income disparities. That number is “$1 million” - people like to say that over a lifetime you can expect to earn a million bucks more if you have a college degree. That’s not a good figure, though, because most people have a hard time understanding what a million bucks over the course of a very long period of time can do. But $23,000 every 12 months - now THAT’S a number you can get worked up about. Excuse me while I go grab some urban youth standing on the corner, admiring the rims on passing cars, and convince him to take a bazillion dollars in schools loans and go finish that degree…
• This is so amazing to me that I’m going to repost it in full. I’m actually reposting what JordonCooper had originally posted: Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, hacks his own brain:

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That’s consistent with any expert’s best guess of what’s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It’s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I’m no brain surgeon.

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it’s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.

My brain remapped.

My speech returned.

Not 100%, but close, like a car starting up on a cold winter night. And so I talked that night. A lot. And all the next day. A few times I felt my voice slipping away, so I repeated the nursery rhyme and tuned it back in. By the following night my voice was almost completely normal.

When I say my brain remapped, that’s the best description I have. During the worst of my voice problems, I would know in advance that I couldn’t get a word out. It was if I could feel the lack of connection between my brain and my vocal cords. But suddenly, yesterday, I felt the connection again. It wasn’t just being able to speak, it was KNOWING how. The knowing returned.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. I wonder if such a thing can occur at an emotional level as well….

posted Oct 27, 2006, 4:06pm by Rodolpho Carrasco