biomimicry

I've been absolutely fascinated and obsessed with biomimicry lately. Fred Gelli has been applying the concept here in Brazil under the title "Branding 3.0". Asknature.org is one of my favorites. Absolutely genius.

what separates us from apes

"I saw that he [chimpanzee greybeard] was picking little pieces of grass and using them to fish termites from their underground nest. Not only that, he would sometimes pick a leafy twig and strip the leaves - modifying an object to make it suitable for an specific purpose. The beginning of tool making. The reason this was so exciting and a breakthrough is that at that time it was defined that humans, only humans, would make tools. When I was in school, we were defined as "Men, the Tool Maker". So then, Louis Leavy, my mentor, heard this news, he said 'We must now redefine Men, redefine Tool or accept chimpanzees as Humans.' "

Jane Goodall

a truly whole mind

"Not only does Jill Bolte Taylor use the best stage prop I've ever witnessed in a live speech, but she manages to talk about left brain and right brain in a way that helps us understand the power of living with a truly whole mind."




"Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another."

via metacool.

we feel fine and universe

This is one of the most interesting things I have seen in a while.

"Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence. Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written."



"Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Harris' work celebrates the world's diversity even as it illustrates the universal concerns of its occupants. His computer programs scour the Internet for unfiltered content, which his beautiful interfaces then organize to create coherence from the chaos.

His projects are both intensely personal (the "We Feel Fine" project, made with Sep Kanvar, which scans the world's blogs to collect snapshots of the writers' feelings) and entirely global (the new "Universe," which turns current events into constellations of words). But their effect is the same -- to show off a world that resonates with shared emotions, concerns, problems, triumphs and troubles."

if I controlled the internet (a poem)

"Flat pages can't contain Rives' storytelling, even when paper is his medium. The pop-up books he creates for children unfold with surprise: The Christmas Pop-Up Present expands to reveal moving parts, hidden areas and miniature booklets inside. On stage, his poems burst in many directions, too, exposing multiple layers and unexpected treats: childhood memories, grown-up humor, notions of love and lust, of what is lost forever and of what’s still out there waiting to unfold."

via Ted