STUCK? READ a poem….
May 15th, 2012 § 1 Comment
Here’s one of my favorites from American prose poet Russell Edson. I first came across it in 1982 when it appeared in ‘Scientific American’ – where it was used to illustrate the juxtaposition of art and science. His poems are surreal and a little bit unsettling. Donald Hall has said of Edson’s poetry, “It’s fanciful, it’s even funny—but his humor carries discomfort with it, like all serious humor.”
When Science Is In The Country
When science is in the country a cow meows and the moon jumps from limb to limb through the trees like a silver ape.
The cow bow-wow to hear all voice of itself. The grass sinks back into the earth looking for its mother.
A farmer dreamed he harvested the universe, and had a barn full of stars, and a herd of clouds fenced in the pasture.
The farmer awoke to something screaming in the kitchen, which he identified as the farmette.
Oh my my, cried the farmer, what is to become of what became?
It’s a good piece of bread and a bad farmer man, she cried.
Oh the devil take the monotony of the field. she screamed.
Which grows your eating things, she wailed. Which is the hell with me too, he screamed.
And the farmette? she screamed.
And the farmette, he howled.
A scientist looked through his magnifying glass in the neighborhood.
100 PIECES of advice from movies…
May 8th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Really like this link:
As the writers at www.shortlist.com put it:
Instructing us on how to see ourselves and the world around us, screenwriters have been acting as unappreciated and extremely helpful friends for years now and we think it’s only fair to give them the credit they deserve.
THE SATURDAY life: James Lovelock – now that’s what I call out of the box thinking!
May 8th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
James Lovelock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Despite being an eminent scientist in the conventional sense of the word, there’s an on-going debate as to whether the cuddly-looking 92 year old James Lovelock is a threat to society.
Whether Jim Lovelock contributed to the invention of the microwave cooker may be moot – but one thing that can be directly attributed to him is the argon detector, which allowed for the measurement of trace elements in the atmosphere. Initially this was used to detect levels of pesticide in the environment, but later led to the development of the Gaia hypotheses which suggests that the Earth’s biosphere acts as a self-organising system. It’s a bold and contentious claim that’s caused 40 years of controversy within the wider scientific community and remains a live issue to this day. You need only scan a few of the many scientific blogs out there to realise how much this seemingly harmless elderly gentleman gets up so many people’s noses!
Pre Gaia, Lovelock enjoyed an eminent career as an inventor, working for more than 20 years at the Institute of Medical Research, then for Nasa at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Post Gaia he happily decamped to Devon to follow a totally different path. This is how he explained his actions:
“I hope that I have shown that science can still be a vocation, not just a career. Something that can even be done at home, in the way an artist or novelist works.”
Too important to be dismissed as a crank, too radical to be taken seriously: is he the new Copernicus, or just a publicity-seeking alarmist with an over-stimulated imagination? John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics says:
“He is the most important and original scientific thinker in the world today.”
But then – people have their doubts about John Gray too… So, on the whole, the jury remains out. Fortunately, unlike Galileo, he won’t be tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, forced to recant, or spent the rest of his life under house arrest, which I suppose is progress…
You can agree with him or not about climate change, but, if nothing else, his life is an example of the ability to think outside of conventional wisdom. To get a taste of what I mean I’d recommend you listen to this interview from the BBC Radio 4 series THE LIFE SCIENTIFIC. Click here to download
GOOD ADVICE: Don’t try to be great…
May 3rd, 2012 § 1 Comment
“It comes from some advice that was actually given to me by a talk show host in Chicago. It’s a live TV show. And about 30 seconds before air time, when you’re nervous and worried about falling off your stool with everything else, he leans over to the guest and he says, don’t try to be great. And the reason it was so effective is that it makes you far less nervous. At that point, you don’t have to worry about being the best guest ever. You can say, look, I’ll be solid. That was what he says, just be solid, because at that point, it’s in your control. You know the material. You don’t have to be wonderful. …
“You might end up being great, but so many of those things are beyond your control. And if, from day one, you’re putting pressure on yourself to be in the NBA or win a Pulitzer Prize, it might actually lead you to make some decisions that are too risk averse or not to do some things that will lead in better directions in the long run.”
To read more (from NPR) go HERE
THE BRAND universe (who owns what)…..
May 3rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
For more charts like this go here: Business Insider
FOSTERING CREATIVITY In the workplace…
May 2nd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
ANTI-INSIGHT?…. audience walk out when scientist suggest the moon merely reflects, (rather than emits) light!
May 2nd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Somewhere in America a chap called Bill Nye (Children’s TV’s ‘The Science Guy’) was booed by an audience when he suggested that Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.” may not be an accurate representation of the scientific facts and that the moon does not create light of its own, but merely reflects light from the sun!
Read the full article, published on the ‘Think Atheist’ blog here: Baying at the Moon Man
Nye was in Wako, Texas, to give two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming and energy consumption. But he got into hot water when he suggested the The Lesser Light, was not a light at all, but only a reflector. At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled “We believe in God!” and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they’d always suspected. This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.
PROCESS + time = creative ideas…
May 1st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
THIS WEEK’S ADAGE contains an interview with Marla Kaplowitz CEO of top media agency MEC. She explains how her agency goes about uncovering insights and developing strategies.
To my mind, what’s important for smaller business or agency planners to consider is not the actual processes Kaplowitz suggest, but the need to have processes in place and a respect for the time and resources required to get real insight. Here’s a few of the process her agency employ:
To start with Kaplowitz suggests:
“You can’t sit at your desk and stare at a screen all day. Go for a walk, go to the museum, have a conversation over lunch, read your Twitter feed, go to a yoga class — whatever opens your mind so you can come up with a big idea.”
She’ll then undertakes a process called “blockage buster,” which looks at the macro issues that stand in the way of success. There is also something called “brain-walking,” which seems to be a major brain-dumping exercise where any sort of idea is captured and evaluated, sometimes with just internal staff and sometimes with the client involved as well.
She also has a process called ”Navigator” made up of three steps: “Discover” — exploring the business and consumer challenges and looking at similar situations where strategies and solutions already exist. “Create” — generating all kinds of insights, and organising them so that big ideas can be constructed from a range of smaller ones. “Measure,” where they develop the KPIs (key performance indicators) that can be used to evaluate progress.
The Navigator process takes between one and three months depending on whether they do proprietary research, some of which is based on creating ‘communities’ of consumers to develop ideas on-line.
Once an insight has been identified, they can then begin to develop a strategy that leverages that insight, taking care to ensure it is in keeping with the DNA of the brand they are working on.
She then goes on to describe the various criteria that must be considered to ensure any new strategies are appropriate.
Brand and design agencies must have a process similar in place if they are to provide the relevant strategies for their clients.
Check out the full interview here:
