Post a Commentasymmetric insight
how facinating...
via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight
The illusion of asymmetric insight is a cognitive bias that involves the fact that people perceive their knowledge of others to surpass other people's knowledge of them. The source for this bias seems to stem from the fact that observed behaviors of others are more revealing than one's own similar behaviors.
Relatedly, people seem to believe that they know themselves better than their peers know themselves and that their social group knows and understands other social groups better than other social groups know them.
f***ing brilliant
something i don't often talk about is the difficulties of my childhood. it seems so trite to have childhood problems, to be misunderstood, to have "teenage angst." people don't take it seriously when you're in pain if you don't outwardly show it - the very nature of self defense.
i saw this video on TED this morning and thought it brought a totally new and unique spin on how feeling like you're on the fringe leads to severe isolation and hope at the same time. i've tried to explain how i've come around in my life to let myself go and let the world in as a way to heal, and this is more eloquent than anything i've been able to say.
while race has not been my struggle, i have had others, and i truly believe that only by letting go of the self and our perception of self that we are freed to reevaluate what we can be, and are no longer tied to labeling ourselves. we are all connected, and we all have access to the eternal - meaning we can shift and evolve and not need to only be one thing in our lives. anyway, love this highly personal iteration of ego and the speaker's relationship with it.
zombie apocalypse playlist
put your iTunes on shuffle.
1. overall theme of the apocalypse
i want you / kings of leon
2. song playing when you kill your first zombie
three little birds / bob marley and the wailers
3. as you get chased by a horde
dirt in the ground / tom waits
4. when you have to kill your loved one
insulin / chadwick stokes
5. when you find a group of survivors
suite for cello #3 in C major / yo-yo ma
6. when you meet a new love interest
life on mars? / seu jorge
7. when you have to make a final stand
big black hole & the little baby star / sean hayes
8. when you think you’ve survived it all
homeward, these shoes / iron & wine
9. when you discover a bite mark on you
pick a fight / danny and the ketchups
10. song playing over the end credits
ingots / kaki king
perspective
one of the hardest things for a goal-oriented nonprofit to do is create perspective. what does $100 do for your goal? how many meals does it buy? how many bricks does it lay? how do you convey that to donors in a way that matters?
i saw this product yesterday and was blown away by how it took a simple concept and made it tactile. check out the want / need glass by alesina design:
if your cup runneth over, you need to plug the hole yourself to stop the waste - and start thinking about the blessing we have in our access to water versus the scarcity that exists in other places.
not sure how i feel about this.
one of my favorite artists, who i have a huge amount of respect for, had a very intriguing tweet... but the first repsonse gave me another reason for pause.
on one hand, i love that these things exist, and i love the responder's desire to help... on the other hand, this respsonse - heartfelt as it may be - makes me cringe just a little with a "this is why terrorists hate us" feeling. our response is with capitalism. and as honorable as it may be, wanting to collect display art so you can tell the story behind it rings hollow, only because it appears this respondent doesn't quite know what she's asking for.
other disclaimer - i have NO IDEA who this respondent is, and am making no comment on her person or character.
the year in film, 2010
LOVE. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.
drives home the power and thrill of storytelling and imagination - especially around 3:30. such a rollercoaster of emotions. have you seen the BBC series about the human face? watched the show "Lie to Me" and their explorations of micro-expressions?
face after face of unabashed FEELING. it's a thrilling way to spend a couple minutes. enjoy!
brilliant
a call for entries of the highest order
http://www.theimpossiblebrief.com/
THIS is what is important about the reach and capability of major advertising firms.
mumford and sons behind the scenes
i have to think this energy, this joie de vivre, is what makes this band so great.
the accordians, the celebration of bandmates, the dreamy hilly countryside... all these things are what we dream they're like when we're not looking. and the first advice i usually give brands is to build a public persona that people would want to hang out with, something they can connect to in a characture or exaggerated way... and in this video, i'd say mission accomplished.
Regina Spektor lyrics
This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath
No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again
Regina Spektor, On the Radio
playing every character
i totally forgot that Busta Rhymes did this before Dave Grohl... it's killing me though that youtube took down the examples i found where Busta was working in a linear storyline like Foo Fighters - this example isn't the best, but there are definitely a ton of costume changes... anyway, enjoy this tangent that takes us back to the 90s
american dream
was looking at a friend's photos of his little babies on facebook and iron & wine's "naked as we came" popped into my head - of course the tiny babes were in the nude! such gorgeous, stark pictures of new life :)
but one iron & wine lyric stuck with me - "one will spread our ashes round the yard"
and i was thinking about this father i know, he's from Germany and now living in southern California and he's got this beautiful wife and these amazing babies and i was thinking, that's so wildly Americana to think that any of us will ever experience what it means to have a FAMILY HOME, somewhere we grew up and our parents did too that we know undeniably as the homestead of our forefathers.
it's such a pioneer, westward expansion, land grab concept, and i always picture this kind of house somewhere just inside the woody northeast coast... the idea that there's a place with generations of history, where we have grandma's china, that kind of thing. where you actually could spread ashes round the yard.
i get stuck sometimes on the idea that i'm fairly rootless and i'm pretty okay with it. i'm second generation, my grandparents settled in Chicago suburbs, i lived in four houses before i went to college, and i've changed apartments at least every two years since finishing college in 2003. my dream? to live in my van for 3 months and go on a north American tour, doing branding workshops for nonprofits. a bleeding heart Jack Kerouac in a jeep.
will these naked babies ever live in a country where we can establish ourselves in a physical location? or has the melting pot become an ever-churning thing? or am i too urban to have a good sense of it? now i'm thinking about my good friend in Iowa, whose family has a farm, who is on the path of that northeastern idea i have in my head - there has been a family farm for two generations. how long will it last?
and does the permanence / impermanence tension even matter in the big picture of America?
Ferris Club
everyone's heard the idea that ferris bueller doesn't actually exist, and that he's just the manifestation of cameron's frustration and what cameron wishes he was.
but someone actually made a trailer for it, and i would TOTALLY see the movie.
frightening and brilliant.
reminds me of garfield-minus-garfield:
Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the extential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep inot the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.
The Moth
how have i not heard of this??????
thanks to my little sister anne for sending me such a gem.
can't wait for thursday at Martyr's,
which is incidentially just around the corner from me :)
What is the The Moth?
The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first "Moth" evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York. Today, The Moth conducts eight ongoing programs and has brought more than 3,000 live stories to over 100,000 audience members.
Why "The Moth"?
The screen around Wanda's porch had a hole where moths would flutter in and get trapped in the light. Similarly, George and his friends found that the characters in their best stories would often find themselves drawn to some bright light—of adventure, ambition, knowledge—but then find themselves burned or trapped, leaving them with some essential conflict to face before the story could reach its conclusion. So George and his original group of storytellers called themselves "The Moths". George took the name with him to New York, where he hoped that New Yorkers, too, would find themselves drawn to storytelling as moths to a flame. They did. With no advertising, through sheer word of mouth, every show to date has sold out in 48 hours or less.
retelling of genesis
from prolifik films.
a former pastor of mine posted this to his facebook wall - a little dramatic for my taste, but impactful, and serves to shake a person loose from zoning out of a familiar story.
Free Fall from ProlifikFilms on Vimeo.
do you ever really go back to the pentateuch just to smell the dirt of Eden again? or do you skip it because you think you know it so well?
this video brings to mind my favorite religion classes from college - ones that broke context just for the sake of looking at it with fresh eyes. like once i had to write a paper about who the serpent was if it wasn't the devil.
yeah. think about it.
and think about what other stories you might take for granted, whether they're fables, fairy tales, literary classics, or your own brand's vision statement.
maybe i'm just up too late...
totally cried at the end. a couple times i had trouble sticking through the whole video because of her heavy handed accent - nothing against accents of course but she lays it on thick for humor and self-deprication and after a while it can feel cheesy - but the payoff is just so subtle, so perfect. definitely worth the wait.
where this name came from
the term "progressive conspiracy"
is a freaking mouthful.
progressive conspiracy came from writing down a lot of words around an idea. it looked something like this:
moving things forward
tow trucks, carrying a burden, sharing a burden, playing telephone, spiderwebs, time-lapse photography of a sunset. evolution, progression, darwin, growth, roots, stalk, branches, mustard seeds, mellowing, softening... bill withers singing 'grandma's hands', my nana getting older, feeling the water wash over your feet on the ocean shore, sprinting across a soccer field, potted plants growing in the sun... refinement, process, maturation, understanding, perspective.
sharing an idea
sharing of concepts, values, culture, the passing down of storytelling binding one generation to the next... verbal contracts, aseop's fables, greek mythology, roman mythology, norse, native american mythology, creation myths, early Christianity, the punk underground, conspiracy, the passing of secret notes, the underground railroad, the shifting of culture, the universalizing of individual experience, the elation and devastation of social events. the way our memories, disappointments and tiny victories shape us, the way books, dreams, fragments, edges, speeches, and other people's memories inspire us.
this kind of free-form thought is one way we get to the bigger picture - it's not just what we're trying to say, but how we choose to say it. of all the combinations in the world, "progressive conspiracy" is my favorite way to say "i want to help you figure out how to refine the way you pass along your stories."
Stomping Ground school portraits
how astounding. how modern.
and yet, how appalingly "of our times".
most of me loves this, but a tiny little atom in the back of my head is whining, seriously? does every last facet of our universe have to be so ultra-expressive and unique? that said, i of course recognize how great it is for parents to have this kind of photo for grandparents, posterity, etc.
school portraits by Stomping Ground
