Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. -- Henry Ford
Some of the maps seem identical but others point to vastly different patterns of language use across the continental US. Where is route pronounced root and where is it pronounced rowt? Does the "c" in grocery sound like "sss" or like "shh"? Do you say "vinegar and oil" or "oil and vinegar"? All of these questions answered and mapped via a dialect survey by a team of linguistics folks at Harvard University.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
The final line to Mary Schmich's legendary 1997 graduation address (and the basis of the Baz Luhrman tune, Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen), Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young.
Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you, only one tip for the future sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice, now...
$2 million hotel on Scottish coast selling for $11. A rather clever PR move by the outgoing owner, I'd say.
The owners of the Kimberley Hotel in Oban -- gateway to the Highlands and Islands -- have decided to raffle off the 17-bedroom property estimated to be worth $3.6-million in an Internet lottery. "We thought that holding a lottery whereby one lucky person can win the hotel outright for just 10 euros would be an uncommon way to sell the property, and might give someone without the means to own and manage a hotel the opportunity to realize a dream. We're very encouraged by the response thus far."
Creator of The Far Side, the best, most wonderfully bizarre cartoon ever:Gary Larson
In high school, Larson abandoned drawing and concentrated on music, principally playing jazz guitar, though there are sinister hints of an affair with the banjo. In college -- Washington State University -- he majored in communication, thinking he'd get a job writing ad copy for television and "save the world from inane advertising," as he told interviewer Al Young. He also crammed every biology and natural history course possible into his schedule.
After graduating in 1972, Larson inexplicably delayed his plunge into advertising reform, forming a jazz duo and then working in a music store. "I've always considered music stores to be the graveyards of musicians," he told Robert Cross of the Chicago Tribune. Out of the blue, the fed-up Larson sat down one day in 1976 and drew six cartoons, which he submitted to a local magazine, Pacific Search. They bought them for $90, and Larson was thrilled by the easy money. Next, a weekly paper, the Sumner News Review, paid him a lavish $3 a pop for a weekly cartoon. It wasn't until 1979 that he persuaded the Seattle Times to give him a weekly panel, "Nature's Way."
It's a trip. Today I rode a Segway for the first time. Unbelievably easy to manouvre and incredibly surreal to experience. Fun too. I'm convinced that it is a major technological achievement and that it will have a far-reaching impact on society - kinda like the cell phone (love 'em or hate 'em).
Segway is, so far, marketing this thing perfectly. And I think their big markets won't be individual novelty seekers or even lazy people but companies that need fleets - like on the factory floor or at airports - and non-car based cities, especially in developing countries. The guy who's Segway I just rode has a "dead" leg and is now once again mobile.
Dean Kamen's inventions start the same way—looking at a problem, ignoring the conventional thinking that surrounds it, and working tirelessly until it is solved—a formula he's used since high school. Like most of his innovations, Segway HT (originally known and often referred to by its code-name, "Ginger") reflects Dean's belief that science and engineering can be harnessed to improve people's daily lives. Dean and his team saw a way for his balancing technology to be applied to human transportation, brought together a core team to perfect it, and formed a new company to bring Segway HT and its vision to market.
Support the removal of landmines around the world simply by purchasing a wickedly funny book of cartoons, Get Your War On by David Rees.
Mine Facts: Global Landmine Crisis
The Problem
• The true measure of the global landmine crisis is the impact that landmines have on mine-affected communities
• Estimates of the number of landmines deployed vary widely because the precise location of mines is not known.
• A minefield is an area suspected of containing mines - an area that is rendered uninhabitable or that cannot be cultivated or put to productive use because local populations fear entering the area.
• Tragically, fundamental human instincts and the need for food all too often compel adults and children alike to enter mined areas.
• Traditionally, antipersonnel landmines were used for military defense purposes, but increasingly they are used as offensive weapons.
• Landmines are designed to target civilian populations, disrupt people's lives, and displace entire communities from their homes and agricultural bases.
• The purpose of landmines is to inflict maximum harm on victims and to create a state of military, political, social, and economic imbalance in war-torn societies.
• Landmines can be laid anywhere, including roads, paths, fields, buildings, waterways, bridges, forests, and deserts.
• Number of estimated landmines: 45 to 50 million.
• Number of countries affected by landmines: up to 70.
• Cost of producing a landmine: $3 to $30.
• Cost of removing a landmine: $300 to $1,000.
Landmine Survivors
• Landmines are indiscriminate weapons of war -- they do not distinguish between a soldier's footstep and a child's footsteps.
• Children are particularly vulnerable to landmines. Their small size places them closer to the source of a mine's explosion and, consequently, they often sustain more severe injuries than adults.
• At least 75% of landmine victims are civilians.
• Over half of landmine victims die from the initial explosion of a landmine.
• One-third of landmine victims survive, but suffer the loss of at least one limb.
• A person is maimed or killed by landmines at least once every hour and as often as every 22 minutes.
• The international effort to address the landmine problem is beginning to reduce the incidence of landmine accidents.
• Cost of providing an artificial limb to a landmine survivor: $100 to $3,000.
• Estimated number of mine survivor amputees living in developing countries: 300,000.
Socio-Economic Toll
• The consequences of landmines are felt years after hostilities cease.
• Landmine survivors suffer debilitating physical and emotional injuries.
• Families of landmine survivors, and their communities, are plagued by psychological and economic burdens.
• Landmines damage the environment.
• Landmines prevent the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes.
• Landmines inhibit political reconciliation and peace.
• Landmines impede long-term reconstruction of war-torn societies.
• Landmines render fertile farmland unusable, creating food shortages and severe malnutrition.
• Landmines restrict access to medical services, safe water and food, leading to diseases.
• Landmine survivors often find themselves unable to work, to go to school, or even to take care of their basic needs.
• Reintegration of landmine survivors into their communities can be an overwhelming challenge.
Google going the way of Xerox, Kleenex and Rollerblade? Call in the language police.
(via Ad to the Bone)
A nice little human interest piece in the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Herald about a local generalist.
The addition of another discipline only enhances this generalist’s pleasure.
"I’m fascinated with the interaction in my own mind of all the creative things I do, between how my music has affected my taste in painting, how theater affects me as a musician and all of it on me as a writer."
Schumpeter argued that capitalism exists in the state of ferment he dubbed "creative destruction," with spurts of innovation destroying established enterprises and yielding new ones. This view seems far more current than Smith's Newtonian notion of an "invisible hand" generating stability in the marketplace.
Smith was a conceptual breakthrough for Europe, but he didn't say much about bone-jarring technological shifts or the crucial role of entrepreneurship. "It's not difficult to be for Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter at the same time," maintains House majority leader Dick Armey. "The market must clean itself out by taking resources away from the losers, so it creatively destroys the losing companies and reallocates resources to the winning companies. That's really what's going on."
Who Killed the Idea? Hermann Vaske and BMW join forces to create a film - apparently a cross between investigative documentary and pulp detective movie - about ideas. Was shown at Cannes and will be online this Thursday.
(via Cup of Java)
Follow your bizarre, unique, confusing, enlightening, entertaining, meandering stream of consciousness. A flash movie.
They're travelling along what education researchers prosaically label the "indirect path" through postsecondary education toward the world of work. They belong to the best-educated generation Canada has ever produced, but they're taking their time getting there. And the evidence, while patchy, suggests it's what Canadians in their 20s are doing in huge numbers.
Meandering. Searching. Being cautious. Deciding that they've wound up on the wrong path and changing directions. Being very, in a word, postmodern.
Many spoke in interviews about feeling overwhelmed by options, and at the same time not pressured to fit in, free to search for a future to fit their ideals. Many are confused by the message that they'll have multiple careers in their lifetimes. Many look at their work-stressed and job-drudged parents and say that isn't for them.
Is it generational? Capricious Class of '94 takes long and winding road.
TV commercials for video games - especially of the sports and war variety - have, over the past couple years, really been pushing animation to near-reality status. If we pretend just enough, the characters are actual people. I felt the same way when watching the "Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths" battle scene of the new Matrix movie earlier this week. Although slick, there were moments when you could tell it was obviously an elaborate animation (I mean, technically of course) and not real actors being manipulated with special effects. I finally saw the worlds of fake video game characters cross paths with the world of real motion pictures actors. Video games making their characters more lifelike (in an unreal situation) while films putting their (real) characters in increasingly unreal situations, and sharing the expertise and technology to pull it off.
The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. --G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936)
The Seven Ages - The Infant; The Schoolboy; The Lover; The Soldier; The Justice; The Sixth Age; The Last Scene. Connecting medicine and ageing by borrowing a framework from Shakespeare: his famous reflection on the human lifespan as spoken by Jaques in the comedy As You Like It.
I recently uncovered a great quote that I had ripped out of one of the alt-weeklies here awhile back. Singer/songwriter Billy Bragg mentioned something in passing about journalists and songwriters that really says a lot about modern day journalism and songwriting. He said, "I think for songwriters it takes a bit more time to percolate ideas. Journalists write the first draft of history. Songwriters need more time to reflect."
In other words, good ideas cannot be rushed. This is especially true at the personal level. Creativity requires time to concentrate and to become totally involved in the project at hand. Deadlines are crucial but timelines must be reasonable so as not to negate the process. As an HBR editorial last year wrote, “When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed.” With technology hastening the pace, there is incredible pressure on human beings to keep up. However, human thinking is just as fast as it ever was. And it is important to remember that ideation, creation, innovation, inspiration, all of these things are the result of flesh and blood humans, not machines. Like it or not, the whole ideative-creative process rests on the fragility of the human mind.
Time is a crucial aspect of thoughtful projects. Speed kills truly thoughtful ideas. Immediacy - the bittersweet side-effect to technology - is a tyrant. It removes time to reflect, to ponder and to dream. So while it may be true that ideas themselves come in quick moments, reaching those surges can take some patience – and this is difficult to do with restless clients under as much pressure as they normally are. “[Ideation] depends both on having sufficient time to create the balls to juggle – exploring concepts and learning things that might somehow be useful – and having sufficient time to devote to the actual juggling.” (same HBR) Faster is slower; the optimal rate being far less than the fastest possible.
Stewart Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, put this point into clear perspective in an interview with Fast Company in 2000:
We're used to thinking that if a problem can't be solved within two years, it can't be solved, and that's a really bad way to live. The new economy is simultaneously more niche-oriented and more global, so we need to learn to perform effectively throughout that spectrum -- to address not only the urgent and the local, but also the important and the vast.
He had more books than I've ever seen in all my life - four walls, and such books as the Apocryphal Something-or-Other in ten volumes. He played Verdi operas and pantomined them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn't give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life. Dean stood before him with head bowed, repeating over and over again, "Yes...Yes...Yes." He took me into a corner. "That Rollo Greb is the greatest, most wonderful of all. That's what I was trying to tell you - that's what I want to be. I want to be like him. He's never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he's the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you'll finally get it."
"Get what?"
"IT! IT! I'll tell you - now no time, we have no time now."
Dean rushed back to watch Rollo Greb some more.
Excerpt from On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. Common and deep-seated beliefs, widespread norms, and behavior and performance standards are enemies of new ideas. Any society that prides itself on being harmonious and homogeneous is very unlikely to catalyze idiosyncratic thinking. Suppression of innovation need not be overt. It can be simply a matter of people’s walking around in tacit agreement and full comfort with the status quo.
From Nicholas Negroponte's essay Creating A Culture of Ideas. (via Z+blog)
I spent yesterday at my brother's university convocation. He was one of over 1000 young people graduating with undergraduate degrees in education. I'm very proud of Dave and know that he will be one of the best, most understanding high school teachers out there. We need more like him.
Speaking with a soon-to-be-retired elementary school vice-principal while at the ceremonies I learned of a rather frightening trend in elementary schools that I have already witnessed in high schools and blogged about here before. She told me that in order to consolidate teachers and supplies, a growing movement (in this area, anyway) is to make each elementary school in the district specialized in something. An art school. A phys ed school. A music school. A drama school. A language school. Etc. It's disappointing to think that kids still in single digit ages are being herded into fairly narrow academic trails so early on without being given a chance to dabble in a bit of everything first. Pure Content just posted a link to a related article at Boxes and Arrows: Coloring Outside the Lines.
Once upon a time, we were curious and everything we encountered was new. We were excited about discovering new things and the world offered unlimited possibilities.
Then we went to school and were taught to color inside the lines, that everything had its place and the world was ordered. But, outside of school, there was still the chaos of life to revel in, the unexplored woods at the end of the street where nothing was ordered and we could be cowboys or astronauts or presidents. We learned to balance the structure of school with the infinite possibilities of playtime.
In 1982, a couple of pre-teens - so impressed with the Raiders of the Lost Ark film playing then - set out to recreate it with a shot-for-shot remake - complete with costumes, kisses and action scenes. It is now playing in select repertory cinemas and has even garnered the attention of Steven Spielberg himself.
We’re talking 10-11-12 year olds. Kids at the age where they can do anything, dream of anything. We all dream a lot at 10-12… hell, on up through college and until we hit the real world. Some never cease dreaming, few ever really do the dream. Eric Zala, Jayson Lamb and Chris Strompolis shot a shot-for-shot remake of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Close to Seven years later… they finished.
(via I Love Everything)