Watch Bobby McFerrin work the crowd at this science fair:
http://vimeo.com/5822555
The people behind him sitting in a semi-circle are recognized as part of the leading edge of science. The UberNerds. He demonstrates that all of them know the pentatonic scale whether they know they gnow or not. Then, as I've previously suggested, knock yourself out watching the various Nobel Prize winners and such say their piece, and then politely argue for their own perspective. I'd bet good money McFerrin will stay in your memory banks longer.
I'm gone run this rap on my friend who teaches chemistry. He's got a captive audience to practice on year around (except for the generous holiday package that comes with getting a State check) as a way to teach chemistry.
He teaches the courses the medico students like nurses have to pass to even take the state boards to get certified. His students are very motivated, and seriously want to pass his courses whether they like him personally or not.
I come from a family of teachers. I know what's wot about whether a teacher means what they say. He wants his students to pass his chemistry courses at least as badly FOR them as they wanna pass for themselves. I'm just interested in conning him into doing something FOR-himself to see if I can get over. That might be a rare treat. Very rare. Practically non-existent.
I don't really have to do anything except maybe send him the link above. He's not only a nerd of the Uber kind, but he's also a musician of considerable talent who can rip it up on a goodly number of different instruments.
He'll get the connection between what McFerrin is doing and the pundits behind him are doing. I can imagine him hopping around as if on a giant, invisible piano keyboard in front of his students and grinning like a maniac to encourage them to walk the ceiling with their newfound understanding about faith.
If I could explain it to him, and if he would tolerate me jacking my jaws long enow to get my point across, such as if what might happen if he were to read this blog entry all the way through, I'd simply point out that McFerrin didn't announce his intent previous to proving to them through their own involuntary responses that they knew something they didn't necessarily have to know the nay-me of for it to be there anyway.
There is a much larger database than the only one people usually think they have, that they can reach for upon an accepted mentor's suggestion (either that or a trickster who wouldn't dream of asking permission). It's usually mo' bettah if the audience don't know what's being asked of them until the fat lady sings.
If you were a dyed-in-the-wool nerd by self-definition, and you were in that crowd at that science fair at the very minute McFerrin conferred enlightenment upon all of them indescriminately, as if he were Billy Graham or the Pope himself, it might be extremely difficult for his new chelas to deny they had reached for a very non-scientific resource they might get fired for formally documenting, and then, unexplainably applauding, wildly and without reserve for being endowed with irrefutable proof that something they hadn't counted on being there without the names to give them light.
Later, to be found quietly reflecting inside they own well-tended Gethsemane... "Even me... ? Are you sure, Bobby? Like... me too? Hell yeah, It might cost me my cushy job, but I'll take a slice of THAT!"
It might cost everybody their cushy job and/or lifestyle. What McFerrin demonstrated in his presentation was that there is a better way to teach that wot's being taken for formal education. It's like Prego Spaghetti Sauce. "It's all in there!"
If McFerrin taught ten people to fish that day, the Singularity ain't that far off. If his proving to those nerds in first person they know how to sing the pentatonic scale as a group together and do it right without aforeknowledge or hesitation, then somebody, maybe a lotta somebodies, are teaching other people to reach for their unused cosmography unheralded in other ways, but the end is near, and it's a done deal.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
