Sharing inspiration from the worlds of design, science, art and social wellbeing. Stories of human potential, the beauty of what exists right now, and working towards the Greater Good.
Katie Stagliano grew a really big cabbage... and was inspired to donate it to a soup kitchen. When she found out if fed 275 homeless people she was moved to do more.... now, Katie has six gardens and she's giving food to the needy. What an awesome inspiring girl.
This video shows a seminal experiment that Daniel Simons and his co-author and fellow psychologist Christopher Chabris conducted more than a decade ago. It opened up to the two American professors the phenomenon of "inattentional blindness", alerting them to the many tricks that our brains routinely play on all of us. Have a go. I remember doing this many years ago now and I was in disbelief. Goes to show... we don't know the HALF OF IT.
http://www.semipermanent.com/ organisers had some great speakers as always. I went to last years in Brisbane, and 2010 in Melbourne so I got to hear Timba Smits twice. Such a detailed, perfectionist with a singular style. Very clever chap whose done the hard yards to get where he is. He took risks and believed in what he wanted. Go Timba! Just ordered my next issue of Wooden Toy, can't wait for it to arrive in my mailbox.
Sylvia Ji is clearly not a presenter, and is a real live paid-up artist. So gorgeous to hear her inner secrets, motivations, concerns and get a glimpse into her as a person. Her style is at once contemplative, spiritual, enigmatic, and yet whimsically funny. And very beautiful.
Now Beastman has gone and created a brand ID for himself... he be the brand. Clever. Nice work. Harder than it might look. Somehow his style reminds me of Serafin... Hmmm.
http://www.bendpress.com/ for the blog belonging to the clever and so lucky... jammy... tinny... imagine getting handed a job like he did at 20. I'm kinda jealous. Not even kinda... proper green! Still he's made it HIS and made a life out of work I think is really fun, creative, imaginative and inspirational!! Plus I love skating and snowboarding culture so it's right up my alley.
Awakening a transformed global vision: an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet
I can't say any more than the video does... it's so great that people are taking up the challenge themselves as individuals. Governments will not do it, WE HAVE TO. We must all become ACTIVE CITIZENS. Active Citizens of the planet.
Rick was born more than 40 years ago without the ability to talk, walk or barely move. Doctors told Dick and his wife to put Rick in an institution. They didn't. And this moving video just goes to show that they made the right decision. See how this father-son duo started running marathons and why it brings joy to Rick's life. There's also an amazing 58 year old legally blind man. Just goes to show. We really can do anything we put our minds to.
I fantasize about being able to help in an emergency. But watching this video makes me want to cry. I just want to acknowledge the work humanitarian organisations are doing over there.. and those individuals who risk their own lives to make a difference in these situations.
Don’t miss this fantastic story on Pakistan featuring Save the Children aid worker and Melburnian Claire Sanford which aired in many CNN territories across the world.
Not much is given away these days. But the School of Thinking offers us a training solution that helps us expand the way we think. I enjoyed it and think it's well worth sharing.
Why be interested in increasing your own speed of thought?
If you don’t upgrade your brain software then you’ll be stuck with what you’ve got.
Although this sounds a bit like a TV advertorial (But wait there’s more!) I’ve listed some of the many real benefits that can come from increasing your own speed of thought:
• be more open-minded
• be better able to escape from your point-of-view
• be able to see more opportunities
• be faster at solving problems
• enjoy making decisions
• increase your survival skills
• be fitter in the marketplace
• be more effective at planning
• get much better results
• find it easier to be creative
• be faster to take advantage of changes in circumstances
• get things done quicker
• think more and worry less
• lower your stress levels
• increase your family’s peace and happiness
• see information in new and more useful ways
• generate better and better alternatives
• apply speed of thought to your personal and family life
• be better at sports and career problems and opportunities
• be a speed thinker!
How can I double my Speed of Thought?
A simple way is by daily training.
If you wish you can get this training pro bono from the School of Thinking.
Two things on my mind because two outstanding thoughts were presented to me today. Which makes today great!!
Fistly, just got back from my first iMax experience. Experienced Hubble 3D. All I can say is wow. And refer back to a previous post, I've re-embedded the video below because it is just fantastic to see perspective put to all the numbers (with 23 0's at the end). It's great, but it ain't got nothing on Hubble 3D which allows us to travel through our galaxy getting us up close and personal with nebulae and flying through the galaxies. Awe-inspiring stuff. “Dazzling” – New York Times, “Spectacular” – L.A. Times, “Out of this world” – Variety; are some other (more authoritative comments).
Secondly, I was privilidged today to hear Andrew Hewett, Executive Director of Oxfam speak at one of our Lunch and Learn sessions. He's a incredible man. Vastly knowledgeable, he's been working in the humanitarian arena for a long time, having started working at Oxfam in 1991, he has a bias towards advocacy and campaigning. I learned so much hearing him speak. What stuck was the idea that we as NGO's need to cause change in bigger organisations, and rate ourselves on the CHANGES we've managed to influence rather than how much money we've raised. It makes so much sense because real change in policy, and real change in the GLOBAL POPULATION is how we'll solve our worlds troubles. He talked about ACTIVE CITIZENS, a term I am loving. It conjures up all sorts of great ideas about citizens of a each and every country taking ownership working towards the greater good.
I wanted to share this email with you. It's from Mike Penrose, Director of Emergency Programmes, Save the Children. It's so moving for me to work in an organisation like Save the Children. People I work with have lost friends and colleagues, and it's made even sadder because they were all making a stand for the world... making a positive difference.
Mike writes and speaks really well (if you ever get a chance to hear him speak I recommend it). He's been 'there' and seen 'that'. Horrors we can't even imagine. Today and yesterday I was working on the creation of Emergency Appeal ads for the Pakistan Floodings Appeal. I have spent hours looking at images from the last few days. Heartbreaking imagery, and the quotes are devastatingly sad. It's been a tough couple of days, sitting at my computer being moved to sadness by these images. I wonder, what would it be like 'on the field', in real life when all the senses are involved.
Oh boy. Just put my really hectic couple of workdays into perspective.
-------------------
World Humanitarian Day was created a year ago to celebrate the successes of global humanitarian action and to remind the world of the risks that emergency humanitarian workers face each day.
Last year we lost 109 colleagues and friends to violence (more than UN peacekeeping), that is one of us every three and a half days, and another 92 were kidnapped, but despite these risks we delivered life saving assistance to millions of hungry, displaced and vulnerable people.
By the end of this week the Save the Children Australia emergencies team will have 5 staff members in Pakistan responding to the devastating floods currently affecting 20 million people. Over the past year we have directly responded with people, technical support and money to disasters in Indonesia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Haiti, Samoa, Sudan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia to name a few.
Most of us in SCA Emergencies who have been in this profession for a long period of time have lost colleagues and friends, and some of us have experienced violence first hand, but all directly or indirectly involved have made a difference. We are all part of this.
Can I ask that you go to the attached website, watch the video and read the factsheets to remind yourselves what we do, and why we do it. It is easy to get lost in statistics of disasters and the requirements of day to day life, so please remember, these are real people we talk about, real children we work with, and all have the same hopes dreams and fears as you and I.
Thank you very much for your ongoing support, and can I urge you to continue to work hard to ensure that the millions of children we serve, in Pakistan and elsewhere, are given a chance to life, happiness and opportunity.
This is a short film made for the New Zealand Book Council, featuring an excerpt from Maurice Gee's novel Going West. It's very beautiful.
FYI. Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s ten greatest living artists (according to Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2003).
Before I saw this I didn't know there was a genre called 'cut paper animation'. But apparently there is. And this film was awarded plenty of glint, winning an international prize for paper cut animation by New York’s Museum of Art and Design,the grand prize award at Moving Paper, an international film festival of cut paper animation and two Axis Gold awards.
So, if you are not one of the 840,000 youtube viewings that've gone before, I highly recommend the experience. The 2minutes is well worth it.
I watched this about a year ago...so it's not exactly new. But it sure did make me smile.
It's another of those simple but very cool little movies that inspires me so, mostly because any of us could make something like this, no film crew necessary. Love it!!
Very poor parents are being promised their children will receive education and money, when in truth they are being trafficked into Indian circuses, or brothels.
These families are poor, undernourished, covered in lice. They think they are sending their children to a better life. Most often they can't read or write so they make their mark on the contracts that they can't read.
Fortunately for the kids in this video (who live in at-risk areas) they were driven away to a better life through Esther Benjamins Trust.
Imagine what you'd need to do if you had to create your own reading light to read a book tonight?
Fascinating (as Ted always is) here is a talk about innovation through collaborative thinking... ideas that are born of many other ideas. Or as British author Matt Ridley puts it, what's happening is that "ideas are having sex with each other."
An intersting take on how society is as it is...
Trade is older than farming. Exchange caused specialisation. Does lack of exchange reverse innovation?
So we, society, are neurons in a bigger collective brain. Another exmaple of the spiritual wisdom that tells us we are part of the whole. A part of the matrix of totality.
Every year children like Tamba die needlessly from easily treatable causes, like diarrhoea. We believe every child deserves to live. And we know the difference you can make. Your $10 dollars a month can save the life of a child today.
24,000 CHILDREN WILL DIE TODAY.
THAT IS 17 PER MINUTE.
MOST COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED.
Wow. Scientists never cease to amaze me. Check out this article in New Scientist discussing the intelligence, and ingenuity of cells. Single cells. Sentient beings with their own intelligence, will and drive. It's mind-boggling in some respects but in others, it makes sense. A red alga can "work out" how to solve problems, an amoeba construct a stone home with all the "ingenuity" of a master builder...
Anyway, it could be that the brain’s power might well derive from data processing within each neuron (cell) rather than the electrical sparks between or communication between them.
University of Cambridge research biologist Brian J. Ford says “Each individual neuron is itself a computer, and the brain a vast community of microscopic computers… the human brain may be a trillion times more capable than we imagine."
Here he talks about the current way science studies cells parts, rather than cells as a whole. "Reductionism has us peering ever closer at the fibres in the paper of a musical score, and analysing the printer's ink. I want us to experience the symphony."
I'm so happy to have found this and hear Jeremy Gilley's vision. I am so inspired. And moved. And I wonder, how did I not know this before now? It matters not, now I do know and I'll be sure to get involved.
New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.
So what's biphasic I ask:
biphasic |bīˈfāzik|
adjective
having two phases the patient's biphasic recovery curve.
Lovely. I know that's also really good for dream-therapy, or at least remembering your dreams. At one stage in my life for about a year I trained myself to wake up after each dream. First of all I set my alarm for 2am and 4am and wrote what I remembered, but then eventually I just awoke several times in the night wrote my dreams and went back to sleep. If our sleep sessions are shorter, it allows less of a line between awake mind and sleeping mind, and therefore opens a world of frequencies that rest in between. Frequencies that would usually only be accessible whilst sleeping can become available whilst we're awake.
Anyway, off now... but my new job means I can have a midday nap every day WHOO HOOO.
Gorgeous... and a butchers. Great brand identity. Sexy looking store. And it's dead animals. Doesn't quite compute. Their award-winning website even has i-phone apps. Fabulous job to Dreamtime Australia Design. Their first retail store... and what a job. Certainly on the leading edge of butchery.
Stumbled upon this music video. Nice track. French. But what a great video. Inspiring for me to see... anyone can make a music video. Really... just takes a little imagination and the inclination to do it.
Just discovered Ainslie Roberts in a documentary.
His art is really powerful and moving.
Myth lives in his paintings. And the sacredness permeates.
Magic. Awe inspiring.
He wanted to bridge the gap between white man and the native Australians. His art interprets Aboriginal legends. He spent a lot of time living and walking with the native people.
Bless him. What an amazing man. He said "I truly believe there is no end to us we just go on and on and on." 12 March 1911 - 28 August 1993. http://www.ainslieroberts.com/
An aside that I just heard : Did you know we look to the left for instinct, and we look to the right for logical analysis?
TreeHugger is helping the masses get hooked on sustainability. Check it out and see if you become dependent. It's been called "One of the 100 Best Blogs" by Times Online, 2009.
I feel quite privileged to have been quoted on Donna Farhi's website.
This is where I spent January this year.
"As the inate movement patterns of being human reawaken I wonder how it could be that they were missing from my practice, and how I never noticed their absence. I now have a freedom of movement that stems from my very core and will surely continue to permeate my life. To explore and discover in a space of wisdom, trust, care and laughter has been a joyous, relaxed experience for me." ~ Rachel Anning
I think this is incredible. I've told so many people about it since I found it last year, and now I can share it with you.
Imagine being able to get guage of how the world is feeling right now. Or how women in England feel when it rains in June. Explore this site and you'll see that the world really does share the same emotions. I think this is mindblowing, a massive social experiement and real-time insites into how the world feels. Well, the 25% of the world who are online.
So this is a chap (should I say artist and computer scientist?) collecting partial glimpses of stories from reality.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
While I'm on the subject of universal inspiration, I highly recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (book or unabridged audiobook) published in 2004 Bryson starts with the birth of the universe and the creation of the earth, then tells us how they measured the earth, weighed the earth and all the crazy adventures that took place in between. With his usual wit (he's made me laugh out loud when reading, which is no easy task), he tells us about the personalities involved in all the great (and the downright dangerous) discoveries. He has talked to the world’s most advanced archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians to tell us about evolution, the discovery of elements, the counting of comets, the makeup of chromosomes and DNA, the mysteries of the seas, the composition of the air, and potential natural disasters.
My other favorite book is Seven Mysteries of Life written in 1975 by Guy Murchie. Although science has moved on significantly since he wrote this book, the themes, ideas and aspects he looks into are still relevant. This was where I first came across the comparison of humanity to a virus (visually, really impactful). Guy took 17 years to write The Seven Mysteries of Life, he set out to tell us about all aspects of life. His book is a delight to read, insightful and poetic, and a work so beautiful that it has been described as art.
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, By Bill Bryson
• The Seven mysteries of life: an exploration in science & philosophy, By Guy Murchie
Graphic designer, songwriter, creative thinker who wants to do some good in this crazy world. Sharing inspiration from design, science, art & social well-being.
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