Suddenly great?

"No great thing is created suddenly." - Epictetus

Via: Alex

Photo: Dejan, Museum of Too Modern Art

Fun Theory.

How to evolve? With the help of fun!
Thanks, iAlja, for this great video and post.

Only tools and mechanisms.

Technology is only a tool. Market is only a mechanism that separates effective from ineffective.

How we use technology (for nuclear weapons or nuclear power stations) and how much wilderness we leave on market - this depends on us only.

Blaž Kos

Photo: Dejan

Plan.

Plan to be surprised.

From Dan in Real Life (2007)

Photo: Dejan

What cripples kids?

Taras Kermauner gives precise description of briliant father character in Bogdan Novak's novel Niki: "Reader is disgusted while following his deformed behaviour, moralistic violence of archaic authoritarianism, which cripples children, instead of rising them through love and solidarity into free people."

Slovene original: "Sijajen je lik očeta - gradbenika; bralcu se upira, ko sledi njegovemu deformiranemu značaju, moralističnemu nasilju arhaične avtoritarnosti, ki otroke pohablja, namesto, da bi jih vzgajal v ljubezni in solidarnosti v svobodne ljudi."

Photo: Dejan

Top-notch or only good?

"Kaplan has taught me that wise man has plenty of ideas and the only thing that differentiates top-notch of only good is the way how idea is carried out, how it becomes reality."

A Life Decoded by J. Craig Venter

Photo: Dejan

Religion and culture.

Another religion/culture clash. Only in Slovene, unfortunately. Try translate.google.com.

Photo: www.terrafolk.org

Human imperfection neglects serious/precise approach?

"So don't brood over everything in that super-serious way of yours. All of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don't live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right?"

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Photo: Dejan

Give a way to hand it to you.

"If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you."

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Photo: Dejan - flower giving bees a way

Oman.

Finally - this year's Oman pics, too!

Photo: Dejan

Who do you love?

Thanks, Carrie.

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.