“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Grammys.”

Grammys, you’re idiots. You actually put on a decent show last Sunday — including a brilliantly awesome performance of “15 Steps” by Radiohead with the USC Trojan Marching Band! — and now you go and pull it from YouTube. This is how you fade from relevance. When will you morons learn how this internet thing works? Too late, probably.

Anyhow, grab the torrent (it’s better quality anyway) or take a peek at the rehearsal. This rendition of “15 Steps” is truly fabulous.… more

Romeo Dallaire is a Canadian senator, humanitarian, author, and retired lieutenant-general. He is best known for the position he was assigned to in 1993: Force Commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda. Responsible for the UN forces mandated to maintain order in the country yet left powerless by the UN itself, Dallaire witnessed firsthand the grisly bloodshed of the Rwanda genocide.

Dallaire wrote a book – Shake Hands with the Devil – about the experience, which has since spawned documentaries and a feature film. He continues to advocate strongly for human rights and for a more widespread understanding that all humans are human.… more

Two of the foundational elements of creative generalism — both of which I’ve noted here before — are these: 1) that Creative Generalist is a ying-yang sort of term in which the the executional focus of creativity is balanced with the big picture oversight and broader ideation of generalism, and that 2) corporate leaders need to be Creative Generalists. Essentially, this is also the central thesis of David Aaker’s recently published new book Spanning Silos: The New CMO Imperative.

Aaker, a giant in the field of branding and marketing theory, argues that decentralization has spawned powerful product, country, and functional silos which jeopardize companies’ overall marketing efforts.… more

To those of us living in the deep freeze of winter, the heavenly sun-swept photos coming from Tourism Queensland are tempting indeed. Their latest marketing campaign, The Best Job in the World, is a stroke of genius. They’ve posted for the position of Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, a job that supposedly comes with a paradise villa, AUD$150k salary, and mandate to simply enjoy life and blog about the area. Brilliant.… more

A belated happy new year to my faithful readers.

I’ve not posted for a while because I’ve been especially busy – first in a lazy laid-back way during the holidays and then, last week, as a presenting exhibitor at the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

It was my first CES and although most vets found it to be quieter than in past years (due to the economy, of course) it’s still really really big and busy. I spent much of the sleepless week presenting, speaking, interviewing, and running around schlepping but I did have a little bit of time to wander around and see what the world of gadget makers are up to.… more

An interesting thread at Ask Metafilter pondering the question, “Is it possible to be a polymath these days?“.

I especially like this particular response:

Aristotle and DaVinci were incredible, but they didn’t know everything. People are (rightly) so impressed with them, they base “what one should know” on what they knew. So of course it seems like they knew everything.

What did Aristotle know about cooking? Did he know how to make a sculpture? How much did DaVinci know about Africa?

There have been times when the topics studied at universities (or through other formal methods of teaching and learning) were relatively small compared to how many there are now.… more

I received a friendly email from Brian, the Director at a cool summer camp for kids and teens called Beam Camp. It’s a 4-week summer program (July 18-August 16) for boys and girls aged 7-17 in Strafford, New Hampshire. They’re looking for some big collaborative ideas. Here’s the overview and how you can participate:

Beam Campers cultivate hands-on skills in the fine and manual arts while exploring innovative thinking, design and the creative process. They transform ideas into artifacts and personal achievement into community success.

Each summer Beam commissions a Project Master to design a unique large-scale collaborative endeavor that campers produce and enjoy.… more

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)… more

One of the great joys of concert-going is the random unexpected discovery of a new band, the opener. Added to my playlist as of last Thursday: Montreal’s aKido.

Dancing in Chains – AKIDO from akidomusic on Vimeo.… more

I just finished reading Steven Pinker’s bestselling The Stuff of Thought, the Harvard experimental psychologist’s latest book about how the mind works. For some reason I wasn’t expecting much from it but by the end it left me wanting more.

This is a great book for curious people. (That last sentence could even be open to analysis.) Pinker eloquently goes through case after case and example after example of how and why we use language to convey ideas, and likewise how ideas shape our language. Grammar, semantics, pragmatics, inferences, naming trends, cursing – so many things that we take for granted are dissected with the goal of presenting human nature back to ourselves.… more