Archive for the ‘too good to be true’ Category

The Pleasures of Imagination

Why do humans prefer to be a part of unreal worlds?

One solution to this puzzle is that the pleasures of the imagination exist because they hijack mental systems that have evolved for real-world pleasure. We enjoy imaginative experiences because at some level we don’t distinguish them from real ones. This is a powerful idea, one that I think is basicallyathough not entirelyaright. (Certain phenomena, including horror movies and masochistic daydreams, require a different type of explanation.)

.:chronicle.com->

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

Isaac Asimov on the blind intelligence, and deaf society.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

.:talentdevelop.com->

Primary Sources: No Secrets

WikiLeaks front man Julian Paul Assange and his Icelandic transformation- how did his wish to under-serve those who hold "power without accountability" lead to the disintegration of his own orchestrated press club release? This New Yorker article by Raffi Khatchadourian due out next week explores his undoings in and out of the Bunker.

"If it feels a little bit like we're amateurs, it is because we are. Everyone is an amateur in this business."

.:newyorker.com->

What is Collective Intelligence?

What separates us from the rest of our non-human mutant ancestors? Collective intelligence brings together fragments of knowledge to create a fostered generation of urbanites and traders. Density brings specialized people together whom never know that they are so closely defined by the miles that actually separate them. Exchange started in Africa:

The process of cumulative innovation that has doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per capita income ninefoldaworld-wideain little more than a century is driven by ideas having sex. And things like the search engine, the mobile phone and container shipping just made ideas a whole lot more promiscuous still.

.:online.wsj.com->

Leaving the Internet

One comic book writer’s quest to leave the internet….

If you want to communicate with this revolutionary he will still be accepting snail mails.

I’m Tired Too, Kid…

This is amazing…

Disputed Island Disappears into Sea

NEW DELHI (AP) - For nearly 30 years,AIndiaAandABangladeshAhave argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island’s gone.

New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor atAJadavpur UniversityAinACalcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed byAsatellite imageryAandAsea patrols, he said.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,"Asaid Hazra.

.:Continue reading at weather.com->

Time to Rethink Design

David Carlson of the David Report has released a new trend look at the state of a full design world. Design contamination has taken over an expertise that is barely 100 years old; new products are simply the variations of old themes- (conceptual design, new articulations of the same, design signatures and design as art).

However if we are able to get back to using aging products and making design matter in a lifecycle, there is a cleaner horizon.

Designer Naoto Fukasawa: "I understand that myArole is about enhancing our living…. I've become moreAattached to the current life, and have started considering the betterment of our lives in a reality where we allAbelong, rather than predicting what could happen".

We need new storytellers:

Fred Alan Wolf - The Dreaming Universe (1994):A"Aboriginals believe in two forms of time: two parallelAstreams of activity. One is the daily objective activity,Athe other is an infinite spiritual cycle, called dreamtime,Amore real than reality itself…".

Carlson poses a great question, how do we A"change old habits and not to perpetuate the sales argument that the main role of designAis added value."

Read the full report in one of three forms: PDF, Flip Through Version or Text

Rediculous [sic] Signs

30 some-odd unintentionally hilarious,A (often) misspelled, (mostly) political signs.