The Day Abstraction Died and the Quest for Perfection
There was a time when you drew pictures. With crayons and fat pencils you traced your world, oblivious to constraints that now stifle your creativity. There wasn’t a right or wrong way to draw, you just created. Your eyes savored everything they saw and you learned to explain this on paper with scribbles. You drew [...]
The Pirate Club: Now Accepting New Members
Yesterday on the kitchen table was a newspaper. That in itself would be unusual given that I don’t subscribe to a newspaper, but this one was particularly different.The masthead of this paper said, “The Pirate News.” It was hand-written, photocopied, then colored by some eight-year-olds. It was fantastic. I asked my son what the story [...]
The Cult of Lego, and the Genesis of Creativity
I was recently included in a book called Cult of Lego. I am honored that my Lego camera continues to resonate with people six years after it made the rounds on the internet. Cult of Lego is a really impressive book, weighing in at almost 300 pages of fascinating photos, amazing projects, and colorful personalities. [...]
The Parable of the Thousand Dollar Nail
Squeak. Creeeeeek. Squeak. Every time Mr. Smith walked through his living room the wood floor would squeak. It drove him crazy. “I would pay anything to get this old floor fixed,” he told himself. He had tried calling the local flooring specialists, but after a close inspection the specialists told him that there was nothing [...]
Inspirational Videos Describing How Our Brains Work
It is fascinating to study how our brains work. Understanding what makes people do what they do opens the door to seriously powerful abilities. You can influence behavior. You can predict people’s actions. You can inspire people. You can overcome fear. You can produce meaningful work. Here are some videos that talk about our brains [...]
How to escape zugzwang
For the last week or so I have been thinking about the term zugzwang. Have you ever heard that word before? Zugzwang is created when you put someone in a situation where they are forced to move even though any movement would weaken their position. Isn’t that a beautiful idea? In our hyper-competitive society it [...]
Best Music of 2010
I have been sitting on my best-of list for too long so I decided to just get it up before it got buried in the my pile of unpublished posts. Better late than never, I suppose. Here’s what got the most play on my iPod last year: Best Alubums of 2010 1. The Suburbs, by [...]
