Ingenial

So many great sections to quote from this article. Below are a few that stood out.

The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory, the scratch pad of consciousness, to long-term memory, the mind’s filing system.

Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that’s the challenge involved in moving information from working memory into long-term memory.

The problem is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself—our preferred method of both learning and analysis. Dazzled by the Net’s treasures, we are blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture.

What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from cultivators of personal knowledge into hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest. In the process, we seem fated to sacrifice much of what makes our minds so interesting.

Read the whole article.

Five different short films, one dialogue. The rules: the short movie must have the following lines in it, “What is that?”, “It’s a Unicorn”, “Never seen one up close before”, “Beautiful”, “Get away”, and “I’m sorry”.

Here are the five movies, all great in their own way:

1. The Gift

2. El Secreto de Mateo

3. The Hunt

4. Jun and the Hidden Skies

5. Darkroom (rated R)

You can find out more about the project in this video:

With all this hype about the iPad (and the fact that I don’t have one) I thought I’d console myself by rubbing in some recent research from the American Psychological Association proving things don’t bring happiness. As it turns out,

“No matter which wristwatch one buys, even if it is entirely satisfactory, it can still be compared to one in a store display — encouraging counterfactual thoughts about what it would be like with their positions reversed. After returning from vacation, in contrast, it is not so easy to compare a hypothetical Vail ski run with the waves actually ridden in Fiji.”

Experiences can’t be evaluated as clearly in contrast to alternative experiences one could have been having. Purchases, of course, have more permanent effects than most experiences. If I go to the park and play baseball tomorrow afternoon I may not even remember the experience in a week. However, the study showed that my satisfaction of the same event may actually increase over time rather than decrease:

“Satisfaction with material purchases tends to decrease over time, whereas satisfaction with experiential purchases tends to increase.”

The living proof of this has to be my grandparents. They look back on their experiences with fondness and joy but they never mention the “stuff” they owned. The conclusion? Invest in experiences you can enjoy for a lifetime over purchases you’ll enjoy for a few years. Read the rest here.

Via Unclutterer

Eating vegetables in season makes sense, because the amount of energy used to get a blueberry from a neighboring state is a tiny fraction of one flown in from Chile. Local veggies will likely taste better, too. But grocery stores don’t make it easy.

Visit the interactive calender at http://eatseasonably.co.uk/what-to-eat-now/calendar/ or download the PDFs in A4, A3, or A1 sizes.

Meet Makmende. Kenya’s biggest blogosphere sensation and most dangerous Chuck Norris challenger to date. People in Kenya are saying things like:

• They once made a Makmende toilet paper, but there was a problem: It wouldn’t take shit from anybody.
• The world is not ending because Makmende killed The Antichrist.
• Makmende is the only guy who can drink boiling chai from a sufuria.

Learn why they’re saying these things by watching the video below:

See an article about the phenomenon written by Africa blogger Ethan Zuckerman.

“Cunning, clever, conniving, and creative,” as one prosecutor would call him, Blanchard eluded the police for years. But eventually he made a mistake. And that mistake would take two officers from the modest police force of Winnipeg, Canada, on a wild ride of high tech capers across Africa, Canada, and Europe. Says Mitch McCormick, one of those Winnipeg investigators, “We had never seen anything like it.”

…

And there it was: In a cavernous room, in an alarmed case, behind bulletproof glass, on a weight-sensitive pedestal — a delicate but dazzling 10-pointed star of diamonds fanned around one monstrous pearl. Five seconds after laying eyes on it, Blanchard knew he would try to take it.

Read the full story.

Here’s a question for you: If you had to come up with an “anti-creativity checklist” for your organization… a checklist guaranteed to stifle imagination, innovation, and out-of-box thinking… a checklist designed specifically for people who want nothing to do with disruptive change… what would your checklist look like?

If you had to pick someone to write the autopsy report on the Wall Street financial collapse 18 months ago, you couldn’t do any better than Michael Lewis. He is one of the country’s preeminent non-fiction writers with a knack for turning complicated, mind numbing material into fascinating yarns.

He wrote his first bestseller, “Liar’s Poker,” about his experiences as a young Wall Street bond trader when he was still in his 20s and has since followed up with seven more bestsellers on subjects ranging from Silicon Valley in “The New New Thing” to big time sports in “Money Ball” and “The Blind Side.”

His new book, called “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” comes out later this week and it explains how some of Wall Street’s finest minds managed to destroy $1.75 trillion of wealth in the subprime mortgage markets.

“60 Minutes”  spent two days debriefing Lewis at his home in California:

Part I – how the collapse came about and who knew what was going on

Part II – the culture of bonuses and ratings and why it’s unnecessary

Extra: The $8.4 billion dollar bet

This question plagues GQ staff writer and correspondent Andrew Corsello and now it can plague you. In a tell-all profile of Manny and his entourage Corsello reveals the tangled web of politics, stealing, lies and downright weirdness surrounding the greatest lightweight fighter on earth.

Not to say Corsello’s picture of Manning is all bad either. He points out Pacman’s human elements in sometimes humorous ways but the overall tone of the piece: reverence. Awe even. Corsello’s oft-repeated phase: “Because he is Pacquiao” becomes a worshipful chorus by the end of the article.

In many ways the article is as scattered and splintered as Manny’s own life. It flits between the author’s rambling musings, snapshots of a dominating Manny Pacquiao in the ring, an epic tale about meeting the boxer, Pacquiao’s rags to riches story, insane glimpses of the boxer’s entourage and quotes from boxing’s greatest commentators. I will leave you with one of the articles’ random stories:

“Sometimes, the way things happen with Manny, it’s like, parables,” Ramos says. “Here’s one: At the last training camp there were about thirty of us there. Now, one of my jobs is to lower the overall costs of living. So we go to this Thai restaurant next to [Roach's gym]. Our bill there was between $500 and $700 every day. So I said, ‘Manny, why don’t we buy some food from the local Philippine restaurant and have it delivered to your apartment? It’ll only cost about $150.’ Manny took me by the shoulders and in front of everybody said, ‘Don’t ever mess with another man’s livelihood. Now let us enjoy their food.’ “

Read the article at GQ

100 years ago, Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, a well known artist and illustrator of Russian Folk tales, traveled to northern Russia to collect folk art. He came across the wooden churches of Russia and fell in love with them, photographing them and bringing back to Moscow the sad news of their lamentable condition. Through his efforts and the sales of postcards like the one below, money was raised to restore the 300-year old churches.

100 years later, Richard Davies retraced Bilibin’s steps in northern Russia and photographed the now 400-year old churches, in their stunning condition considering their age. His photos will be exhibited in Finland and UK.

View the rest at RichardDavies.co.uk