Do you find this offensive? On my ride home today the local sportsradio station was talking about how this ad was offensive to members of the homosexual community. A gay man even called to say he was offensive. I think they are missing the boat. If you sat and watched sports with my friends, you'd hear "That ain't right" a lot. When someone dunks viciously on another pplayer, "that ain't right". When a linebacker blows up a quarterback, "that ain't right". When Albert Pujols crushes a 550' jack, "that ain't right". It's not a judgement on sexuality. I know plenty of gay men. None of them would welcome the picture above happening to them. They don't play basketball just hoping some guy rubs their junk on them. Gay, straight or even my wife, nobody wants my junk on their face when playing sports. It's about domination. Dominating someone like that on the basketball court, "that ain't right".

Reminds me of a job with a cell phone company I had 10 years ago. We ran an ad showing a young child in midair, waterwings on, jumping into his fathers open arms in a pool. We got hundreds of letters saying we supported tossing children. I had to write letters to these morons telling them we were sorry we offended them (they were morons) and that they misunderstood (they are morons) the advertising campaign. People looking for something to be offensive will find it wherever they look.

Well more fun for me as my drinking buddy/neighbor is officially moving to Taiwan. He will be gone for the next month and 2 weeks after returning, he is moving. His family will be following probably around end of year if they can get into school mid-year. I'm sad that I'm losing my friend for 2 years, but as much as he travels now, I probably won't see him any less. I hope my new neighbors are cool because I have not had good luck until now.

Anyway, I'll leave you with another video today for a song my son and I like on the game Rock Band.

Sometimes, people in this strip are going to not act retarded just by dumb luck or because it’s the only way to offer a necessary opposing viewpoint.

Today, Joel is the lucky beneficiary of that simple truth. He somehow realized that $1,000 is worth more than the opportunity to be in a cat food commercial, and (presumably) get mistaken for a cat version of country music (mewsic?) singers.

If there are two choices, and two people who each have to pick a different one, one of them is reasonably likely to make the right choice, I suppose.

So, congratulations, Joel. You’re the smart one. Wear that mantle proudly.

How does it work?  A professor, who specialises in the psychology of music, claims that music of any kind stimulates the brain as a whole.  So, taking part in musical activities can influence other areas of our development. 

How do they know this?  During a brain scan taken while a musician is playing, their whole brain shows evidence of advanced stimulation and action.    

The government is finally latching on to this and trying to get school children to sing more.   The thinking behind this is that learning song lyrics can improve mental agility and reading skills.  Educationalists could then use music to reinforce challenging concepts such as numeracy, motor skills and language development.

The relationship between learning and music is well established.  One of my favourite thinkers, Howard Gardner, pioneered the concept of ‘Multiple Intelligences’, one of which was a musical intelligence. Each of these types of intelligence – linguistic, logical, visual, tactile, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal – is associated with a distinct learning style.

Acceleration Learning was pioneered in the 1970’s by a Bulgarian professor of psychotherapy called Georgi Lozanov.  His early programme focused on teaching a foreign language, utilizing the techniques of music with relaxation and suggestion.  He found that music is effective in creating the relaxed state of mind that is a condition to learning, as well as involving the whole mind in the learning process.

Want to learn faster and deeper?  Get all your senses involved!  Want to keep what you’ve learned in your memory?  Incorporate rhythm and rhyme into your learning events!

But music can do much more than this.  According to ethnomusicologist and author Elizabeth Miles, music can also energise, relax, focus, heal, uplift, cleanse and create.  Check out her cool website.  She applies the power of music to fields as diverse as human resources and workplace performance to healthcare and medicine.

No wonder the ancients used music to cure hangovers, plague and depression… and we moderns use it to expresses personal and national identity.

What pieces of music mean something to you?

Until recently, many psychologists believed that fluid intelligence was a genetic trait. Everyone has some level of fluid intelligence, but just how much is pre-determined by one's biology.

A fascinating new study, however, hints at the promise that we can increase our fluid intelligence.

Published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), "Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory," is an article that: (1) explores the relationship between working memory and Gf, and (2) details how improving working memory can increase one's fluid intelligence.

(What is working memory? Good question. It's a kind of short-term memory process that allows for the temporary storing and manipulation of information. Just how short-term? Think seconds-long. For example, it's the kind of memory we use when asking a gas station attendant for directions. We remember "turn left at the third light, stay straight for two blocks, then make a right at the intersection of Jones and Geary" just long enough to process it. But these details do not enter our long-term memory.)

The NYT has a great summary of this exciting research. In "Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower," Nicholas Bakalar summarizes and offers highlights from the NPAS journal article:

First they measured the fluid intelligence of four groups of volunteers using standard tests. Then they trained each in a complicated memory task, an elaborate variation on Concentration, the child’s card game, in which they memorized simultaneously presented auditory and visual stimuli that they had to recall later.

The game was set up so that as the participants succeeded, the tasks became harder, and as they failed, the tasks became easier. This assured a high level of difficulty, adjusted individually for each participant, but not so high as to destroy motivation to keep working. The four groups underwent a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively. At the end of each training, researchers tested the participants’ fluid intelligence again. To make sure they were not just improving their test-taking skills, the researchers compared them with control groups that took the tests without the training.

The results were striking. Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement.

“Intelligence has always been considered principally an immutable inherited trait,” said Susanne M. Jaeggi, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the paper. “Our results show you can increase your intelligence with appropriate training.”

Why did the training work? The authors suggest several aspects of the exercise relevant to solving new problems: ignoring irrelevant items, monitoring ongoing performance, managing two tasks simultaneously and connecting related items to one another in space and time.

This is the abstract from the NPAS journal article:

Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory
Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Walter J. Perrig

Abstract

Fluid intelligence (Gf) refers to the ability to reason and to solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge. Gf is critical for a wide variety of cognitive tasks, and it is considered one of the most important factors in learning. Moreover, Gf is closely related to professional and education success, especially in complex and demanding environments. Although performance on tests of Gf can be improved through direct practice on the tests themselves, there is no evidence that training on any other regiment yields increased Gf in adults. Furthermore, there is a long history of research into cognitive training showing that, although performance in trained tasks can increase dramatically, transfer of this learning to other tasks remains poor. Here, we present evidence for transfer from training on a demanding working memory task to measures of Gf. This transfer results even though the trained task is entirely different from the intelligence test itself. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the extent of gain in intelligence critically depends on the amount of training: the more training, the more improvement in Gf. That is, the training effect is dosage-dependent. Thus, in contrast to many previous studies, we conclude that it is possible to improve Gf without practicing the testing tasks themselves, opening a wide range of applications.

Play, think...
J.R. Atwood

A small thing pops up, memories from the past come, and he's back drinking.  He took that sip that first night when he was angry, and now he's drinking again what would appear to be regularly.  Makes me wonder, can we really fight what's in our nature?  I always thought so, I still think so, but the more I observe the more it would appear otherwise.

Because aside from this man, I know a girl that's subject to act impulsively, according simply to whatever she feels at the moment.  She hates it and its pretty obvious, and she wants to change.  But she insists that mo matter how much she tries, it just doesn't quite work.  and I believe her.

To go against your nature, to fight your desires and emotions, it can be quite a crushing thing.  Perhaps it could even kill you in a way.  I don't think you can ever actually change those things, but you can contain it and overpower it with determination and faith.  To train your mind to go against all of its reflexes pretty much drives you insane.  With good reason.  and yet no matter how good you get at it, that little beast still remains, and he grows stronger.  The struggle is certainly constant.

How do you break such strong habits, and how on earth do you keep them contained once you've finally gotten out?  I swear it's all a giant head game.  A very daunting mind fuck.  I know, I've been there.  I still am, I struggle with all kinds of internal complexes.

When I was younger, a girl told me that she sometimes worried about my temper, that I was too violent.  Not towards her, just in general.  She told me because she cared for me and she was concerned.  That little habit I somehow broke, definitely not soon enough, but I broke it maybe half a year later.  It wasn't easy at all, and once I finally broke it I didn't even realize it, it's only in these moments of reflection that I notice things like this.  That change was subconscious because I had such a desire to change that little part of me to make her happy. I ended up losing her, and the habit broke, I guess I pinpointed it as a major reason we were never together, and I broke it off as a means of never running into a similar situation in the future.

Funny part is its really gone.  Or rather not gone entirely, I've got a bunch of reserved anger and I can tell at times, if I'm too tired to keep control, or too bothered, too negative, too annoyed, my temper lashes.  But I'm still not violent, just quick to yell.  That one girl apparently got under my skin so much that even when my fits come, I can't be violent without some kind of restrictive thought popping up.  and if I am unusually impulsive, there's instant regret, as though I let myself down, as though I let her down.  Which is odd considering we don't even talk to her anymore.

I think it goes to show how much others can impact your life and personality.  Even the way you think.  What other habits have I broken?  As I'm sure you can tell, I'm not very impulsive any more, I think most things out way too much before I do anything.  Sometimes I even analyze things after I do them, it definitely leads to internal turmoil.

My major habit at one point was biting my nails.  It's the first one I actually told myself I was going to quit without any external stimulus.  There was never anyone saying "Oh man, you've got to quit biting your nails", I just did it because I could.  One day I sat down and told myself "Hey, I'm going to quit biting my nails" and started trying immediately, and what do you know, the habit is gone.

Now I keep my nails long as a reminder that any habit can be broken if I try hard enough, they make pretty great motivation believe it or not.  The impressive part is whenever a nail breaks, I bite them all off as opposed to cutting them.  But I still haven't fallen back into biting them out of habit or nervousness or anything

I guess our ability to reason is what really differentiates us from animals.  Some of us don't reason nearly as much as we should, and it can be a danger to not only ourselves, but the people around us as well.

If you have a bad habit, a habit that worries you, I would suggest you try to break it, and keep trying.  It's never going to be gone, but you can control it.  Even if you have to start out with something small and irrelevant like biting your nails.  It's definitely not easy work, but you know some habits just need to be broken in able to become happier.

Tags: habits, experience, life, thoughts, nature, change, mind, control, self-control, etc, human, brainpower!

Brainpower komt hart/hard
Het laatste dat ik van MC Brainpower heb gehoord was die overspannen diss naar Extince. Hij gebruikte daarbij dat bekende Star Wars-deuntje. Grappig, als je bedenkt dat het artwork van zijn nieuwe album Hart/Hard ook erg op dat van Star Wars lijkt.
Om de release van zijn nieuwe album te vieren heeft Brainpower samen met de mensen van Nike ID twee Air Max modellen ontworpen, te weten een zwarte Air Max '87 en een rode Air Max '90 in dezelfde stijl als zijn album artwork uiteraard.
Van beide sneakers zijn 6 paar uitgebracht. De modellen komen in packs waar ook een T-Shirt en het Album in zit. Het pack is samengesteld door Patta. Zoals gezegd zijn er wereldwijd maar 12 paar Brainpower Packs, dus als je geinteresseerd bent moet je even contact opnemen.

14 april is de verwachte release van Brainpowers nieuwe dubbel-album Hart/Hard.

Meer foto's na de click.
Beeld: Patta

Seth Godin's post yesterday about Marketing HR reminded me of a survey series I saw in The Economist a couple years ago. Titled The Battle for Brainpower*, the first article starts with the very prescient words of Winston Churchill:

"...the empires of the future will be the empires of the mind."

The New Superpowers

Google, Microsoft, Sun, etc., are the new superpowers of the world, and there's an ongoing battle for position in the global marketplace. The key to winning this particular war will require that companies stop viewing people as "natural resources," but instead, as Seth puts it, as "talent." Companies like Google seem to get it:

The company has assembled a formidable hiring machine to help it find the people it needs. It has also experimented with clever new recruiting tools, such as billboards featuring complicated mathematical problems.

Appreciating and seeking talent isn't the only necessity for long-term success. However, the company who chooses to undervalue talent, runs the risk of failing in the future.

Talent is too smart to stay long at a company that wants it to be a cog in a machine. Great companies want and need talent, but they have to work for it. (link)

The Individual

Personally, I believe there's a difference between being respected by the company you work for and believing they "owe" you something. When I worked with the younger, newly graduated peeps in my past corporate jobs, I saw something amazing: many of them felt they were owed something. I'm not sure where they got that idea, but the attitude made it incredibly difficult to work with these bright and talented individuals. And the untalented ones were just unbearable.

In this sense, talent becomes dispensable when the attitude outweighs the ability. As of last summer, there's over 6.5 billion people in the world. Do you really think there isn't someone out that who is as good, if not better, than you? As the search for talent stays on a global scale, I believe the smart companies will look for people with individual, global microbrands.

Global Microbrands

Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com turned me on to this thinking. I believe this is the original post on the topic. From a follow up post on the same subject, I found this:

It seems to me a lot of people of my generation are locked into this high-priced corporate, urban treadmill. Sure, they get paid a lot, but their overheads are also off the scale. The minute they stop tapdancing as fast as they can is the minute they are crushed under the wheels of commerce.

You know what? It's not sustainable.

However, the Global Microbrand is sustainable. With it you are not beholden to one boss, one company, one customer, one local economy or even one industry. Your brand develops relationships in enough different places to where your permanent address becomes almost irrelavant. (link)

Talent is power, but only insofar as it's not outweighed by aggravation. You may be a genius, but if no one can stand to be with or to listen to you, the world becomes a lonely place. I'm reminded of the playground when I think about balancing talent and corporate respect: nobody likes a bully, but the whiners are avoided, too.

What are you doing to build your global microbrand?

Comments?

(Image courtesy of Gaetan Lee. Some rights reserved.)

(Because it's an archived article, you have to be a paid subscriber to view it. If you're interested, it's in the October 7, 2006, edition)

Memory Boosters

Keep this in mind: Already some five million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, a figure set to triple by 2050 as theU.S. population ages. The result is a huge push to aid the aging brain. Many studies seem to link both mental and physical exercise to a well-oiled memory and less severe age-related decline. But proving cause and effect is hard. People with better brainpower may simply be more active, and some scientists warn that the evidence is slim-to-none in favor of individuals being able to control mental destiny. Still, some actions may be worth the effort:

• Stress signals  New ressearch supports the long-held belief that distress and anxiety are bad for the brain. A recent report links chronic stress with a mild form of cognitive impairment that can be a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.
• Mind games Brainteasers have not been proven to fend off dementia. Yet scientists say puzzle away - anything that takes you out of your normal range of thinking (or lightens your mood) can't hurt. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are options for puzzle haters.
• Give it a rest  "Poor sleep before or after learning makes it hard to encode new memories," says Harvard neurophysiologist Robert Stickgold. Data suggest a good night's sleep improves motor memory up to 30 percent after a lesson (e.g., piano). Leaving six hours between pursuits helps keep one skill from crowding out another.
• Help your heart  Your brain will likely benefit, too, from a healthy diet (antioxidant-rich foods like blueberries may protect brain cells, aiding memory), regular exercise, and possibly light use of alcohol (a new study indicates a daily glass might slow dementia).
• Cheat  Keep lists, jot reminders, repeat names aloud. And rely on others. "I just ask my wife," says Johns Hopkins neurologist Barry Gordon. "She remembers 99 percent of everything. She's a perfect memory aid."

If you don't have much time to surf and choose the best IQ test, look through the following list of tests. These are some of the best available online today.

Note, if you don't like the results, don't stress. You really can improve your IQ. Surely it will take some efforts, but it's not that impossible to do that.

So, here's the list:

1. HighIqSociety.com.

This one is the best. Period. First of all, (and you should already guess it) it's free of charge. Moreover, they provide the results immediately after you comlete the test. This free IQ test includes 36 questions, covering sequential reasoning, verbal analogues, factual knowledge, mathematics, visual memory, and analogical reasoning. But the main reason they are the best is that they have the most advanced test engine you can find on the Internet today. They provide a large pool of questions for each and every area of your intellect and the questions are drawn at random, assuring that no two tests will ever be the same.

2. IqTest.com.

This free IQ test is the second in our chart. This one is also very and very good one. They claim it to be the most scientifically valid IQ test online. Check it, maybe they are right. :) Firstly, this test was offered only to big businesses, schools, and in certified professional applications. Now it is available to anyone who wants to take it. This test not only measures your IQ, but also assesses your performance in other 13 different aspects of intelligence, which reveal your key brain strengths and weaknesses.

2. IntelligenceTest.com.

This free IQ test is also one of the best. It helps to determine your IQ by evaluating 9 major intellectual and mental abilities. But its main advantage is a free report including 25 pages of analysis packed with graphs, information, statistics, advice, and career tips, which you will get after the completion of the test! I think that information will be of interest for you.

4. TestCafe.com.

This one is free only partially. You can take it and know your IQ for free, but you must pay for the detailed report which explains every aspect in detail. This IQ Test has been taken by over 6 million people online and has been featured on such portals as iVillage.com, Compuserve, Netscape, and AOL. Note, that you have only 12 minutes to complete it. Do not hesitate!

5. IQTest.dk.

The last free IQ test in the list is this flash-based test. Its advantage is that it's culture fair, so you shouldn't worry about cultural variables, such as language, mathematics, etc. The test is mostly based on logic, but it also allows to test learning capability, memory, innovative thinking and the ability to address several problems simultaneously.

Have fun with the tests.

P.S. I hope you find this entry about free IQ tests useful.

Massive investment in education as a tool to increase their advantage in the world economy.

The trend is on supporting education, and countries are lining up and investing in education to insure they are poised to take advantage of the future.

Read this excerpt from Value Driven by Geoff Colvin in FORTUNE.

"We've known for a long time that this day was coming, and now it's here: Countries are finally realizing that their future prosperity depends not on natural resources or even on financial capital, but on human capital. Companies have been battling for years to attract and keep the best people. Now countries are engaging in the same fight"

Read the entire article here: The battle for brainpower.

For years the USA, Europe and Japan had the money, universities and jobs that attracted talent, and paid for it.

These countries are filled with national and imported global talent, and the benefits can be measured in dollars and cents, Gross National Product, number of patents, and technological leadership.

Things are changing.

What happens when this imported talent stays home?

The ability to attract or retain top talent in a country will result in more patents, more and better processes and products.

The overall increase in education in a country plus the import of talented people, will provide huge economic benefits to a country.

Future economic growth, it's not about cheap labor anymore.

We confuse the accumulation of facts with education.

A good education should inspire us to continue to discover and understand more. It should give us the tools and teach us how to think.

Thinking is the abilty to visualize, create and discover relationships between facts.

Intelligence should not only be measured by how much we know, but rather on how we apply our thinking and on much of that knowledge is passed to others for the future.

The future will be in the hands of those learning today.

Are you sharing your intelligence with others and creating that future?

(inspired by the study "Are they really ready to work?")

Related Links

The future of our entry level workforce - gloomy

Are they really ready to work? (PDF)

A study by Duke University on children revealed evidence that what you eat in the morning has a definite effect on your ability to learn and concentrate. Link

This is especially relevant for the business traveller. Too often breakfast is a cup of coffee and a donut. Add up the factors of jet lag, a poor night's sleep, change in personal routine, late night wining and dining clients, stress, and a lousy breakfast and you can quickly see how your professional results might not be at 100%.

Eat that brain boosting breakfast, protein and whole grains; including oatmeal, whole grain bread, toast or cereal, dried fruits or an egg white omelet. Turn your back on sugary and refined starches. Do yourself a favor, eat the right breakfast and let your brain work at 100% for the rest of the day.

Related Links

A better breakfast can boost a child's brainpower

11 steps to a better brain