genealogy of ideas, why everything is a remix, or what T.S. Eliot can teach us about creativity. Austin Kleon is positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet. His Newspaper Blackout project is essentially a postmodern florilegium, using a black Sharpie to make art and poetry by redacting newspaper articles. In this excellent talk from The Economist‘s Human Potential Summit, titled Steal Like an Artist, Kleon makes an articulate and compelling case for combinatorial creativity and the role of remix in the idea economy. Kleon, who has clearly seen Kirby Ferguson’s excellent Everything is... posted on Mar 1 2012 (9,063 reads)

Japanese warrior looked perplexed. He had just offered tea to his Chinese adversary and asked whether his guest fully appreciated its quality, only to be told, “Nature does not make distinctions on tea. We do. I am not interested in the finer distinctions of the tea you have offered me because I have already decided to enjoy it.” The Japanese warrior slowly asked, “By the same logic, I take it then that you don’t consider any martial art as superior or inferior?” The Chinese warrior nodded and said, “Yes. It is the skill of the practitioner that brings out the essence of the art, and some are more skilled than others.” The Japanese warrior ret... posted on Mar 3 2012 (19,759 reads)

in today’s school system are not being prepared well for tomorrow’s world. As someone who went from the corporate world and then the government world to the ever-changing online world, I know how the world of yesterday is rapidly becoming irrelevant. I was trained in the newspaper industry, where we all believed we would be relevant forever — and I now believe will go the way of the horse and buggy. Unfortunately, I was educated in a school system that believed the world in which it existed would remain essentially the same, with minor changes in fashion. We were trained with a skill set that was based on what jobs were most in demand in the 1980s, not what ... posted on Mar 10 2012 (188,179 reads)

remix culture and collaborative creativity are an evolutionary advantage. Much has been said about what makes us human and what it means to be human. Language, which we’ve previously seen co-evolved with music to separate us from our primal ancestors, is not only one of the defining differentiators of our species, but also a key to our evolutionary success, responsible for the hallmarks of humanity, from art to technology to morality. So argues evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel in Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind — a fascinating new addition to these 5 essential books on language, tracing 80... posted on Mar 11 2012 (34,442 reads)

is Ankur I was introduced to him about seven minutes before the start of a meditation gathering in a modest Mumbai home. "This is Ankur," our host Sachi had said, with the catching enthusiasm she’s known and loved for, "He's an amazing photographer and has recently gone totally ‘gift economy’." For the uninitiated, in this context the term gift economy means a system in which people do not charge for their services, but rather offer them up in the unconditional spirit of a gift, inviting recipients to “pay-forward” what they wish from their heart. It represents a broader shift, a movement if you will, from; transaction to trus... posted on Mar 13 2012 (40,079 reads)

start a new life.  How did he start searching for his parents? Today, Brierley owns an industrial supplies store in Tasmania. But he never stopped thinking about his long-lost parents. In recent years, he started to remember the Khandwa train station where his journey began. And that's where he started looking. What did he do then? Brierley used Google Earth and some fragmented childhood memories to hunt in towns around the train station. "I kept in my head the images of the town I grew up in, the streets I used to wander and the faces of my family," he tells Tasmania's The Mercury. Brierley spent hours on Google Earth zooming around ... posted on Mar 17 2012 (17,792 reads)

you your own worst critic? It’s common to beat ourselves up for faults big and small. But according to psychologist Kristin Neff, that self-criticism comes at a price: It makes us anxious, dissatisfied with our life, and even depressed. Kristin Neff For the last decade, Neff has been a pioneer in the study of “self-compassion,” the revolutionary idea that you can actually be kind to yourself, accept your own faults—and enjoy deep emotional benefits as a result. Last year, she distilled the results of her research in the popular book Self-Compassion.  Neff, an associate professor in human development and culture at the University of Tex... posted on Apr 7 2012 (75,179 reads)

almost spat it out by reflex. My friend had handed me a plastic bottle of milk with a bright pink label, and I'd taken a sip from it assuming that it was strawberry flavored, but it turned out to be regular milk -- cold and fresh -- which I actually like. So why such a strong and immediate reaction? In the words of the poet Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." Mine was a trivial example, but it showed me that buying into inaccurate labels can create significant dissonance between expectations and reality. If something relatively automatic like the sense of taste can be duped by subconscious assumptions, it made me wonder just how muc... posted on May 9 2012 (24,033 reads)

M. was only 13 years old when his troubles with alcohol began. He stole bottles of hard liquor from his neighbor’s garage, enjoying how alcohol made him feel. Soon, he was drinking every day and using drugs, too. Shortly after turning 21, he crashed a car during an alcohol-induced blackout. A judge ordered him to attend Alcohol Anonymous (AA) meetings, where recovering alcoholics encourage each other to become (and stay) sober by sharing personal stories and following AA’s famous 12-step model. When Victor attended his first AA meeting, he was terrified. "I didn't say anything," he says. "I just stared at the floor the whole time and left as soon ... posted on May 16 2012 (11,496 reads)

recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of scientific research revealing precisely how positive feelings like happiness are good for us. We know that they motivate us to pursue important goals and overcome obstacles, protect us from some effects of stress, connect us closely with other people, and even stave off physical and mental ailments. This has made happiness pretty trendy. The science of happiness made the covers of Time, Oprah, and even The Economist, and it has spawned a small industry of motivational speakers, psychotherapists, and research enterprises. This website,Greater Good, features roughly 400 articles about happiness, and its parenting... posted on May 24 2012 (22,125 reads)

humans have begun to explore the mysteries of outer space, both by sending unmanned probes and physically traveling beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, a vast number of amazing pictures have been collected. Often photographs of outer space are recorded for the purposes of science, but are also often breathtakingly beautiful images revealing the wonders of the universe. This post brings together 20 of the most astounding pictures of space ever created. 1. Planet Earth This beautiful image was originally dubbed ‘The Blue Marble’ by the astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft who took it, since at the time, with the sun behind them and the whole of the visible plan... posted on Nov 9 2015 (384,548 reads)

short of a new level of worldwide leadership and commitment for sustainable and  equitable change will suffice to create a better world today and for future generations. For the first time technologies and resources exist to transform   our   situation and generate lasting results. The choice is ours.   Hundreds  of transformational leaders are producing results in 60 countries on every continent. I currently focus on 40 of these courageous leaders around the world. My journey over 20 years has been profound, walking alongside many courageous and compassionate leaders -— leaders walking different, yet similar, paths! Their profile: women... posted on Jul 20 2012 (17,582 reads)

September 15, 2011, at over 60 locations worldwide, people handed out their own money to complete strangers, two coins or notes at a time, asking recipients to pass half on to someone else. Here are our reflections on the event, including why and how it happened. Life Beyond Economic Growth Most of the world’s transactions do not involve finance. From parenting, caregiving, growing and sharing food, volunteering, and borrowing library items to doing household chores and exchanging ideas on the Internet, aspects of the informal economy are familiar to us all. A brief historical look also reminds us that our current monetary systems aren’t all we’ve ever kno... posted on Sep 14 2012 (14,211 reads)

this great line by Ani Tenzin Palmo, an English woman who spent 12 years in a cave in Tibet: “We do not know what a thought is, yet we’re thinking them all the time.” gobyg It’s true. The amount of knowledge we have about the brain has doubled in the last 20 years. Yet there’s still a lot we don’t know. In recent years, though, we have started to better understand the neural bases of states like happiness, gratitude, resilience, love, compassion, and so forth. And better understanding them means we can skillfully stimulate the neural substrates of those states—which, in turn, means we can strengthen them. Because as the... posted on Sep 15 2012 (148,471 reads)

images: First, as a 6-year-old boy growing up in New York City, I am walking with my father on a crowded midtown street. The rush of pedestrians suddenly backs up before me as people narrow into a single lane to avoid a large object on the sidewalk. To my astonishment, the object turns out to be a human being lying unconscious against a building. My father quickly points to a bottle in a paper bag next to him. Not one of the passing herd seems to actually notice the man -- certainly, none make eye contact -- as they robotically follow the makeshift detour. My father, who I look up to as a model loving, caring man, explains that the poor soul on the sidewalk "just needs to sleep i... posted on Sep 18 2012 (18,274 reads)

mornings are the busiest days of the week at D-Town Farm. That’s when up to 30 volunteers from across Detroit come out to till the earth and tend the crops at the seven-acre mini-farm on the city’s west side. They sow, hoe, prune, compost, trap pest animals, build paths and fences, and harvest­—all the activities necessary to grow healthy organic fruits and vegetables to nurture the community. There is a 1.5-acre vegetable garden, a 150-square-foot garlic plot, a small apple orchard, numerous beds of salad greens in a couple of hoop houses, a small apiary, and a plot of medicinal herbs such as purslane, burdock, and white thistle. “One of our goals ... posted on Oct 25 2012 (10,630 reads)

I struggle to understand the world, I often remember that all I really need to learn I can learn from children. I can learn from the wonder with which they see the world, from their ability to live completely in any given moment, from the way they can both laugh and cry freely, from their unconditional love, trust and belief. I often wonder why and how and when we lose those things that we know to be natural and right when we are children. Most of what I have learned about greed, and its opposite charity, I have learned from the children in my life. In the early days of Akanksha, I remember organizing a party for our children at a club. There was much excitem... posted on Dec 16 2012 (21,558 reads)

Leon was the first runner to cross the finish line at the Gusher Marathon in Beaumont, Texas on Saturday with a time of 3:07:35. But Leon, who has brain cancer, insists that his 6-year-old daughter was technically the winner -- he pushed her in a stroller the entire 26-mile race. "Here sore, reflecting and grateful, I still can’t believe that I won a marathon. Well, I came in second behind Kiana," Leon wrote on his blog. Leon, now 32, was diagnosed with a Grade 2 Diffuse Astrocytoma in Nov. 2010, shortly after his 30th birthday. "Life goes downhill fast after you turn 30,” he joked in an interview with The Huffington ... posted on Mar 18 2013 (13,364 reads)

100 guests comprising an eclectic background—from professionals to slum children. Although they had anticipated serving about 60-70 patrons, the participation of a dozen-plus volunteers from the city came as a bonus and helped them enhance the scale of hospitality by a notch.  However, for Sthalekar, opening more cafés is just the means to the end: The day when people will make giving a way of life and these spaces will become redundant. It is hard to believe that the images of Sthalekar Google juxtaposes are of the same person: One clad in a loose khadi kurta, sporting a French beard and wearing a hearty smile; the other a snapshot of him in the CNBC show. Ask him... posted on Apr 29 2013 (31,275 reads)

has been touted to be a cure for nearly everything in life, from depression, to memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and more. At the same time, similar to the topic of sleep, I found myself having very little specific and scientific knowledge about what exercise really does to our bodies and our brains. “Yes, yes, I know all about it, that’s the thing with the endorphins, that makes you feel good and why we should exercise and stuff, right?” is what I can hear myself say to someone bringing this up. I would pick up things here and there, yet really digging into the connection of exercise and how it effects us has never been something I... posted on Aug 27 2013 (59,060 reads)