Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

To business owners — including mediators, attorneys and other conflict specialists– who already blog, this article is dated (2004). For those who are newer to the concept of using blogs and other online tools as part of professional, business and personal development, it’s useful.

As his (2004) bio states (he is now Managing Director at FastCompany.TV):

Robert Scoble is one of bloggingʼs best-known personalities. He is Microsoftʼs technical evangelist for the US .NET Platform Strategy. Before joining Microsoft, Scoble held a variety of jobs ranging from planning conferences at Fawcette Technical Publications, to being director of marketing for weblog software producer UserLand Software, to being sales support manager at NEC Mobile Solutions. He has a 10-year-old son and enjoys technology of all kinds, from playing with his Tivo and Xbox Live system to tinkering around with digital cameras.

Here’s his article The Corporate Weblog Manifesto from ChangeThis. As he says in his introduction:

Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here are my ideas of things to consider before you start.

His points include:

• Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
• Post fast on good news or bad.
• Use a human voice.
• Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards.
• Have a thick skin.
• Underpromise and over deliver.
• If your life is in turmoil and/or you’re unhappy, don’t write.

You can find the article at ChangeThis or download it by clicking here:The Corporate Weblog Manifesto.

This in from Science In the NewsSigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, as a service for its members and the public):

Headlines – January 4, 2008

Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap
[from the New York Times (Registration Required)]

In 1984 and again in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization, produced books on the evidence
supporting the theory of evolution and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science
classes.

On Thursday, it produced a third. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.

“We wanted to produce a report that would be valuable and accessible to school board members and teachers and clergy,” said Barbara A. Schaal, a vice president of the academy, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and a member of the panel that produced the book.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/us/04evolve.html

Or: http://snipurl.com/1wk52

Here are my notes for the presentation I made Saturday in the ACR neurobiology series — it’s just notes; you’ll have to go to the links for more information.
October 2007 ACR/Phoenix
Science, Ethics, and Spirit In a High Conflict Practice HIGHLIGHTS
Gini Nelson, MA, JD
www.EngagingConflicts.com

Workshop emphasizes importance of responsible self-education, of gaining literacy in the areas of science, ethics, and spirit. What follows generally are some ideas, examples, and resources to assist.

Science matters, as does psychology:

• http://www.engagingconflicts.com/ (Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts blog)

• http://engagingconflicts.com/index.php/archives/183 (science literacy and science writing)
• http://engagingconflicts.com/index.php/archives/137 (the difference between psychology and neuroscience and why we need psychology)
• http://engagingconflicts.com/index.php/archives/128 (example: “bad” popular science that perpetuates gender stereotypes)

Developments in science, ethics, and spirit can’t easily be presented as black and white, 1s, 2s, and 3s, especially in the context of a quick workshop. These areas are so complex that we should expect a multidisciplinary approach that is “blurry, interesting, useful, and always in beta”: Read more »

Welcome to a new blog, Science and Religion, at DiscoverMagazine.com. Father Holleran has, to me, an interesting background and the right approach to these discussions, some of which he states in his inaugural post :

The second caution has to do with what we mean by “religion.” As a Roman Catholic priest, I obviously come to the conversation with my formation in the wondrously rich intellectual tradition of Catholicism. I do not, however, have a formal theological degree. What I do have is Jesuit training, not only from high school (Regis) and college (Fordham), but also as a Jesuit myself for five years. Perhaps more importantly, I have over twenty years’ experience as a hermit contemplative monk in the Carthusian Order. (The life of the Grande Chartreuse, where I lived for seven years, is the subject of the recent documentary Into Great Silence [click here to see the New Yorker's review and click here to hear Father Holleran talk about the film]. While there I was in charge of the production of our liqueur—Chartreuse—a job that surely mingles not only herbal ingredients but also art and science!) For this reason, I do not consider my stance to be either conservative or liberal but contemplative. By this I mean an attitude that shuns ideology and rests in the grateful and often scary appreciation of the real as it reveals itself in all its splendor. For this reason, too, I have an immense respect for other religions and their traditions, and look forward to having blog participants enlarge the discourse with insights from their own spiritual backgrounds. I myself have training in yoga and more especially in Zen Buddhism, and hope to be able to offer for your consideration some contributions from these venerable worldviews.

Perhaps a better way of saying this is that I have an enormous respect for the often tortuous and frequently exciting personal journey of each individual in sincerity and freedom.

Cognitive Daily over at ScienceBlogs has several fine posts relating to science literacy. They are associated with both the desire and/or need for the general public to understand science better, and a debate over whether or how scientists should be “framing” their research in communicating with the public in order for the general audience to understand its relevance. I believe the points are directly relevant for Engaging Conflicts readers for at least two reasons. First, science and claims of scientific validity are used increasingly in training seminars and in our practical explanations of how and why we and our clients act as we do. We need science literacy to better evaluate these claims. Second, if we want the general audience to better understand the goals, values and methods of engaging conflicts (I go back to one of Bernie Mayer’s points that very few mediators have clients beating down their doors for their services, and that most successful mediators get the bulk of their casework through court-ordered programs), we need to communicate in the way the general public understands.

Read more »

Psychology studies behavior, and neuroscience studies the nervous system. They overlap in studying what is commonly called “the mind.”

ScienceBlogs reinitiated a revised “Ask a ScienceBlogger” feature, wherein an expert will respond to readers’ questions. This week they responded to this question:

What’s the difference between psychology and neuroscience? Is psychology still relevant as we learn more about the brain and how it works?

They conclude that studying both psychology and neuroscience is the best way to understand it all: behavior, the nervous system, the mind.

Belated Happy International Women’s Day (it was yesterday)! Omni Brain at Science Blogs used the day to highlight the 4000 Years of Women in Science site, and the Women in Science site. Omni Brain’s post contrasted these women’s real achievements with:

Louann Brizendine, author of best-selling book The Female Brain, which Nature described as “riddled with scientific errors”. In an NPR Fresh Air radio broadcast, linguist Geoff Nunberg announced that Brizendine was the unanimous winner of the first annual Becky Award for “the single most ridiculous or misleading bit of linguistic nonsense that somebody manages to put over in the media.”

Mark Liberman of Language Log disproved her claim that women use 20,000 words per day, and speak faster, compared to men averaging 7,000. (Turns out she referenced a 1970s self-help guru who simply made it up.) But despite his efforts and the bestowing of the 2006 Becky Award, the stereotyped fictitious claims are still being propagated: Elle Magazine wrote about it in their February issue.

EngagingConflicts previously posted about Brizendine’s book here.

Santa Fe, New Mexico is a wonderful place to live for many reasons, including the eclectic mix of what used to be called New Age mysticism (I’m not sure what the current best term might be – the closest I come is quantum mysticism, now) and cutting edge science exemplified by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), just 45 miles away. When I first moved here, I had to learn some physical and biological science (previously, I had done a masters in sociology, and a law degree) because I was an environmental attorney at the New Mexico Environment Department. I was the primary permitting and enforcement attorney for hazardous and radioactive waste issues, which, in New Mexico, included addressing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and uranium mill tailings, as well as LANL. I respect science – almost as much as I love the law – and my renamed blog topic category Theory to Practice is meant to facilitate both science education and practical applications of science.

Towards science education, I came across this 2003 Statement on New Mexico Science Education by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows, which, while not intended as such, gives some background to what science education is.

As to quantum mysticism, I am agnostic about it just as I am to any other religion or religious path. As I said in one of this blog’s introductory posts, Why Speak Of Spirit and Conflict In the Same Breath?:

What’s so engaging about conflict and spirit? First, most people get solace and direction in stressful times through their religious or spiritual beliefs; information that supports or enriches those beliefs (including practice tools) will strengthen that resource when facing conflict. Second, some people are stressed because of questions about religion and/or spirituality that they think arise out of science. But most of us don’t know much about science … what is it? More to the point, how does science help explain our impulses towards religion and spirituality, and how we chose to practice them (including explaining why those impulses can turn to violence and conflict in some circumstances)? Can the areas of science that relate to religion and spirituality help prevent, reduce, contain or resolve conflict?

Some people may experience conflict when confronting an insistence that there is only one way, or even just a best way, to experience and practice religion and/or spirituality — and what they know gives insufficient solace, or is different. Others may watch with confusion how some forms of religion are changing, as we see especially in the United States in the perhaps parallel growths of more fundamentalist mega churches, and post-modern quantum mysticism. Can science help here?

For the rest of that post, just click on the link. I’ve renamed this category Ethics and Spirit.

Discover magazine recently posted its list of the top 100 science stories of 2006, a special report on the most interesting, amazing, and important science news of the year. Articles of particular interest to conflict specialists include these articles about human nature: #72, the source of empathy found in mirror neurons; #58, what differentiates us from chimps, specifically, after comparing human and chimpanzee genomes, the discovery of 49 places where an accelerated rate of mutation stood out in the human genome, places called HARs, for “human accelerated regions;” and others among the top 6 mind and brain stories.

The New York Times today has an op-ed contribution by Michael Tomasello, the co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, suggesting that the evolution of our highly visible human eyes — referring to the fact that the large whites of our eyes are several times larger than those of other primates — “made it easier to coordinate close-range collaborative activities in which discerning where the other was looking and perhaps what she was planning, benefited both participants.” And why “collaborative”?

[E]volution cannot select the color of my eyes based on advantages to you. Evolutionary theory tells us that, in general, the only individuals who are around today are those whose ancestors did things that were beneficial to their own survival and reproduction. If I have eyes whose direction is especially easy to follow, it must be of some advantage to me.

If I am, in effect, advertising the direction of my eyes, I must be in a social environment full of others who are not often inclined to take advantage of this to my detriment — by, say, beating me to the food [that I have detected] or escaping aggression [from the approaching dominant male in a fighting mood] before me. Indeed, I must be in a cooperative social environment in which others following the directions of my eyes somehow benefits me.