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Poetry: Catching Life by the Throat
I remember reading Rumi and thinking how very much akin it was to white water rafting. Great poetry is like that, leaving you breathless. There are astonishments, surprises that transform to deeply...
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Remembering Deming
December 20th will be the death anniversary of William Edwards Deming, a giant of the business world by any standard. Deming died in 1993, respected in his native America but totally revered in Japan,...
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Play, learn and feed the world
FreeRice is a unique site engaging people of all ages to do good. Select a subject to play: English Vocabulary, Math, Chemistry, French, etc., and you are asked questions. You can select a suitable...
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Cool cups for tea
The 'cool' is literal. These are double-walled glass cups, with a vacuum seal -- nice to your hands while your tea remains piping hot. Made by teasetc. and sold in twos.I just got them from Amazon...
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"Hire managers of one"
We use their product Basecamp for managing our projects and think it's pretty good. But equally impressive to me is the thinking that is 37signals, the mother ship. The company is whimsically named...
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The computational effort behind Avatar
Two hundred and thirty million dollars later, James Cameron wants us to see Avatar and we shall surely oblige. The movie is being hailed as a game-changer in 3-D animation. You may wonder at the raw...
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Product placement (by the trash!)
Blu Dot, a Minneapolis furniture maker, decided on their first anniversary to do an experiment. They make the "Real Good" chair, a sleek metal affair. Helped by Mono, a marketing agency, they asked,...
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Which has more caffeine, tea or coffee? The final answer...
As a convert from umpteen cups of coffee to umpteen cups of tea, I am often asked if that doesn't mean (surprise!) more caffeine? I have been taken aback by this and thought I would research this...
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A decade of too many choices?
I am all for product choices, as long as they are real and relevant, presented sensibly. But then there are companies that think that permutational excess qualifies as “shelf space” and that a hundred...
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2010: women exceed 50% of the American workforce
I must admit that I was taken by surprise. The usual conversations about women in the American workforce have to do with the injustice of unequal pay at all levels, the low representation in leadership...
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The Photographer
Afghanistan is the wound that never heals. A reminder of the past comes in the form of a riveting book, “The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders”. This is the story of...
View ArticleProgress, not praise, is the real motivator
The Harvard Business Review just came out with "The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010". The one that caught my eye was the first item, "What Really Motivates Workers", by Teresa Amabile and Steven...
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Pencil art as you have never seen it
I am wary about craft masquerading as art, but Jennifer Maestre's work is quite impressive. Inspired by sea urchins, this pencil sculpture has an unexpected spiky charm. It's a feel somehow different...
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Brilliant advertising
I first came across the name of this German advertising company in the "The 9th Annual Year in Ideas" issue of The New York Times Magazine. In "The Advertisement That Watches You", the article...
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Paper as art
Peter Callesen is a Danish artist who is a master of paper. His work, dazzling in its meticulous execution, and often fantastical in its themes, is something to behold. A4 paper, white, cut and glued...
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Simplifiers and Complexifiers
You know these people: add one to a team and the work at hand becomes easier. These are the Simplifiers. They create order from chaos. Conversely, add a Complexifier and the work takes on byzantine...
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A Google tool you didn't know about
Well - at least I didn't know about it. It's Google's free Sketchup software for 3D modeling. There is a Pro version for $495 that we can leave to the pros.Network World did a nice slideshow of 10...
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Cool drop caps
ool drop caps, like the "C" that leads this paragraph, are available from Daily Drop Cap. This is a project by typographer Jessica Hische where she creates a hand-crafted initial letter each day. It's...
View ArticleIslands of irrationality
I first heard the phrase from Professor Anwar Syed who used to teach Political Science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The concept is simple. Everyone has a set of beliefs that are...
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Piet Hein's Grooks
ARS BREVIS: There is/one art,/no more,/no less:/to do/all things/with art-/lessnessPiet Hein died in 1996 at the ripe age of 91. A Danish scientist and mathematician who "played mental ping-pong with...
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