Who needs your help and what does it really mean to lend a hand? Those are the bigger, underlying questions that serve as the backdrop of this seemingly simple Typewriter Rodeo poem.
help
Advice
There are many types of advice, some good and others not so good. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of giving and taking advice.
Higher Ed: Asking For Help In Education
Asking for help can be difficult or embarrassing sometimes, and for a variety reasons we don’t always do it when we should. But the truth is, everyone needs help sometimes, including students – who can occasionally use a hand with a tricky subject. In this episode of KUT’s podcast Higher Ed, KUT’s Jennifer Stayton and Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger discuss the most effective ways to ask for and use help in education. Ed argues that in education, students need to seek the most effective help for them and then take that assistance to heart. Listen to the full episode to hear Ed and Jennifer discuss effective help; the danger of just getting the answers without understanding what they mean; and the out-of-the-box way Ed helps his students during office hours.
It is also time for a new puzzler. This one – about a mysterious collection of clues – may require some assistance to solve.
This episode was recorded Feb. 28, 2018.
One Texan In The Global Village
There is an unusual map of the world that was once a popular poster. You still see it around in many places because it is a map that makes you see the world in new ways. This map reduces the world’s 7.3 billion people to a village of just 100 people. It keeps all the ratios the same so we can get a look at the world in miniature.
So on this map you will see that there are 60 Asians in the world – that’s counting China, Japan, India and Eastern Russia. More than half of the world lives in Asia.
Europe has 11 people. Africa has a few more: 16. Africa has a lot more room. If you add all of the Americas together, from the North Pole all the way down to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, you get 14 people.
The United States is only five people. Texas is one whole person in that village. Imagine. Out of the entire population of this vast planet, only one gets the honor, the rare pleasure of being a Texan.
Reminds me of another map observation from Bob Wheeler, author of “Forged of a Hotter Fire.” I like to make sure I mention Wheeler’s book whenever I can because his work floats around the internet with his name divorced from it. He gets no credit.
Here is what Bob Wheeler has to say in his marvelous little Texas-centric book: “Look at Texas for me for just a second. That picture with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast and the Red River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at it they know what it is. It’s Texas. Take any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt and he’ll know what it is.”
Wheeler said that he thought “most everyone everywhere would like, just once, to be a real Texan – to ride a horse or drive a pickup,” perhaps they longed to drive off to the freedom of vast blue skies to horizons unknown. Wheeler believed that everyone, deep down, had a longing for something that might be called Texas. Might be so.
W.F Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell Ice Cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.