more of what i like

It matters a great deal if people have to write out questions in advance, or during the talk, and a moderator then reads out the question. That mechanism improves question quality and cuts down on the first three motives cited. Yet it is rarely used. In part we wish to experience the contrast between the speaker and the erratic questioners and the resulting drama.

I like the second commenter’s suggestion: “Take multiple questions at once. The moderator will take say three questions from three audience members before giving the presenter a chance to answer them one-by-one.”

Interesting. There’s a graphically-novelized version of Studs Terkel’s book from 1974, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Graphic novelizations make me cringe a little, but Harvey Pekar is behind it, so who knows.

I like #2: “Read people whose ideas or research you understand value.”

Okay-ish profile, but I like this bit in particular:

In “Sadie,” a ballad with a distinct Appalachian flavor, Newsom sings lines that could speak for thousands of musicians who’ve drawn on the deep well of American folk music: “This is an old song/These are old blues/This is not my tune/But it’s mine to use.”

An American child psychologist, Alison Gopnik, when reaching for an analogy to illuminate the world as experienced by a baby, compared it to Paris as experienced for the first time by an adult American: a pageant of novelty, colour, excitement. Reverse the analogy and you see that living in a foreign country can evoke many of the emotions of childhood: novelty, surprise, anxiety, relief, powerlessness, frustration, irresponsibility. It may be this sense of a return to childhood, consciously or not, that gives the pleasure of foreignness its edge of embarrassment.