Art strikes again.

Interesting step forward has been made concerning my older post Reason art if you can.

Slovenian IEDC-Bled School of Management has opened center for innovative learning. What is innovative there?

"Different learning methods, especially with art techniques, helping people become more reflective, responsible and creative because art inspires. (...) In last years school is seeking for parallels between science, art and philosophy, which should lead students to become more responsible leaders."

Too good to be true?
Photo: Dejan - Days of Poetry and Wine, Medana 2008

Fear.

Interesting technophobia thought that came upon between the forum chat with my E-tourism students: It is OK if we are afraid of things we do not know. But fear can not be the reason for not trying to explain these things and learn to use them right.

Can be applied to xenophobia in multicultural environments also...
Photo: NenaDejan - puppets in Nena's play All different all wrong

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Nice passion, beauty and death philosophy from Steve Jobs to Stanford graduates. Goes with a thought I have just remembered, but I don't know where I have read it: "The goal of our lives is to live as long as possible and die as young as possible."

With Slovene subtitles. Found through Blaž Kos.

Reason art if you can.

Unaticipated* chicken-ginger-paprika insight was ignited today:

If we assume our mind is partly conscious and partly unconscious, then there are also two ways of human society education. Classical education speaks mostly to our conscious part. And unconscious? OK, there are some attempts of unconscious education. But there is another universe of possibilities out there...

Art talks to us mostly in unconscious/non-rational way. So - let's use it for this reason more. To teach and to learn without reason.

* the point here is in Slovene translation of the word "nenadejan" ;)
Photo: Dejan, East Side Gallery, Berlin Wall

Create.

There are some common traits which I apparently share with Andrej Nabergoj. His latest post is again in line with my work and life directions. Specially following sentence that describes Schumpeter's enetepreneur. Only I would broaden it to a sense of a fulfilled, happy and creative human:

There is the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one’s energy and ingenuity.

(Photo: Dejan Križaj, flash from a creative, local party in a recently purchased lab)

Persist.

Another goody in my collection of razor sharp web posts (from here). Dealing with habits of highly innovative people.

1. Persistence - Innovation involves more than just great ideas. We need faith, hard work and a laser sharp focus for the end result to keep persisting for our vision in the face of roadblocks. We tend to see the end result of a creative idea in awe, but what we don’t see are the actions, hard work and persistence behind the scene to make the vision a reality.

The other six are:

2. Remove Self-Limiting Inhibitions
3. Take Risks, Make Mistakes
4. Escape
5. Writing Things Down
6. Find Patterns & Create Combinations
7. Curiosity

(Photo: Dejan Križaj)

Be cool.

The power of managerial terrorism is not the only option when accomplishing common goals.

"Great ideas and shared values drive people. They call it - cool power."

I love this post.

(Photo: Dejan Križaj)

Kill

Nice concept of dealing with a nasty topic.

Be free.

There are texts where you just can not change anything. Below is one of them from here.

“I go nowhere. Movies, theater, exhibitions–nothing. My only inspiration is my life. I am old. I have made every mistake possible. I have paid for everything. I am not very good to lead the daily life, to speak frankly. But I am very interested in high-quality literature and very, very interested in science, mathematics, biology, astrophysics, and things like that. I love the poetry of these things.

I live mainly on my oyster farm in the southwest of France, on a small island with 12 houses and without cars, electricity, or water. It’s a very rough life, a very basic life. The island is full of mud. I also have a house on a small island in Venice. If you are with the person you love, a good book, good music, and in front of you is the sea, the forest, the Venice bay, or 200 million oysters, that’s enough.

Every morning, take royal jelly and omega-3 oil, eat oysters, and have a good sexual life. Don’t care about anything, and never listen to anybody. Be free.”

Nothing could better describe myself, than this interview, one of the best I have read in a long time. Meet Philippe Starck, my personal hero, and maybe the most famous and prolific designer alive.

Read the interview with Starck for Fast Company.

Thanks, Andrej, for your description.

Paintings in the stall

"Because some museums and galleries exhibit manure, we decided to display paintings in our stall."
Vinči, farmer in the Museum of Too Modern Art

"Ker v nekaterih muzejih in galerijah razstavljajo gnoj, smo se pri nas odločili, da v štalo obesimo slike. "
Vinči, kmet v Muzeju premoderne umetnosti

Location by Dejan. Digged by Nena. Photo by Dejan.

Working for your pension?

According to the author below, last year's HSBC survey results showed that among 20.000 adults around the world 60% of them intend to work after they have retired. As Dr. Patrick Dixon says:

"In future in many nations it will be a crime to discriminate on the basis of age, to force someone out of a job simply because they are 'too old', when they are fit and able to do the job as well as anyone else."

"Most people who retire say they are as busy after retirement than before. While this may not be accurate, the fact is that total leisure becomes boring to many people after a while."

How much money AND leisure activities should we then utilize when young-and-active and how much should we save for retired-and-active stage?
(foto: Dejan Križaj - active grandfather Janko /left/ and active sisters' father-in-law Jože)

Creative spam

Spammers can be quite boring and annoying, but some are creative and funny.

My spam filter is apparently not ready for this kind of art which sneaked to my Inbox ;)

Click on picture to understand the technique.

Are you rich?

Interesting Finance article written by the richest woman in Slovenia. Unfortunately not in English. Some highlights:

"Now I can work what I want and speak what I think."

"I buy a new car each five or six years, I go on holiday five times a year and each year I buy blackberries when I first see them regardless the price. These are things you can afford although you are not one of the 100 richest..."

"I like Gadafi's sentence which you can read at Tripoli airport: 'Man in need is slave indeed.'"

"It is important that things that you own and do are important to you. Do you know what is important to you?"
(Photo: scol22, www.sxc.hu)

Awarded Muslims' suicide mission

Two Pakistan Army pilots have just received the highest Slovenian award ‘Golden Order for Services’ (English, Slovene).

Story behind it is mentioned in many blogs, sites... - for instance here. Awarded pilots almost miraculously rescued Slovenian climber Tomaž Humar from Nanga Parbat.

The interesting part of all the buzz is pilot's statement (according to Slovene source) at the ceremony. For him award is a message to the world that Muslims can perform suicide missions likewise to help others...

(foto: Dejan, view from local "Nanga" Rodica, 2005)

Life experiment

I take life as a never ending experiment so I am not sure at the moment if there can be any general rules for raising a kid. (There can be general rules in technology, physics etc. but can there be any for rational AND irrational human mind?)

Nevertheless, here (bumped to it from here) is a good one (for me): "Rather than reacting to behavior, discover the needs leading to the behavior."

(Two nephew mouses as for aesthetic appeal, not as lab-mouses :)

Innovation barriers

Interesting reminder that innovations can fail it they are ahead of their times or overblown by high expectations...

Like some recent eTechnologies: Apple Newton, Digital audio tape, DIVX, Dot-bombs, E-books, IBM PCjr, Internet currency, Iridium, Microsoft Bob, The Net PC, The paperless office, Push technology, Smart appliances, Virtual reality, Apple Lisa, Dreamcast, NeXT, OS/2, Qube, Speech recognition, WebTV...

Suits well to Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations Theory.

Oman spices February/March '07

I needed a few weeks to find time for breathing Arabic again...

Oman February/March 2007 !

HERE you need a few minutes to load 10MB Flash movie (pictures with Quran recitation).

Alternatively (for fast viewing), the same pictures without background Quran are here.

Da Vinci Code for Web of Life

Da Vinci Code, biodiversity and Fritjof Capra's Web of Life. What do they have in common? Start with this movie and continue with further readings of the first three.

Seven deadly sins in business

In the first post of his blog Business, sex and technologies Blaž Kos wrote that majority of the companies are taking advantage of human weaknesses. These weaknesses can be presented by seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed/avarice, sloth/laziness, wrath/anger, envy/jealousy, pride/hubris/vanity.

(In Slovene the sins are: napuh, zavist, požrešnost, pohota, jeza, pohlep, lenoba.)

Sins or means for enjoying the life? Depends on your levels.

Human nature of clash

Clashing from sport...

slovene / english









.. to religion.

original article (click on picture) is in Slovene (Dnevnik, 5.2.07) but similar text can be found here.