Category: insight
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Students Today
More good work from Michael Wesch, Asst Professor of Cultural Anthroplogy at Kansas State University. "A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience…
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On How We Judge Communication
"My language is not about designing words or even visual symbols for people to interpret, it is about being in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment." This is a quote from Amanda Baggs who has Autism. Amanda has made an amazing short film to describe how she experiences the world. I came…
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How British Women Feel About the Weather
Bearing in mind the appalling Summer we’ve had (at least until this weekend) we thought it would be a bit of fun to poll our women’s panel (7,500 women…nationally representative) on it. So here it is people – how British women feel about the British weather: I count the days until I go to warmer…
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How to Create the Perfect Conspiracy Theory
Conspiracy theories pervade modern culture. They are more popular than ever: 9/11, Roswell, Princess Diana, JFK, man on the moon – almost every significant global event has a theory attached to it. The internet has become the perfect vehicle to perpetuate conspiracy culture with its freedom of individual and group expression, ubiquity, and ability to…
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What Does Green Colour Look Like?
Lovely film from the Eye Bank Association of India featured on non-profit blog Houtlust. This was a bronze winner at Cannes and you can see why. The film focuses around the Holi (the Indian festival of colours), and is designed to raise awareness about eye donation to help with corneal disorders which can cause blindness.…
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More Rabbit than Sainsbury’s
Quirky little insight I read over the weekend… What is the average number of words spoken by a person in a day? Take a guess – 5,000? 10,000? Work done by James Pennebaker of the University of Texas using small devices to record snippets of conversation at regular intervals throughout the day has given us…
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Busy is as Busy Does
When you ask someone you know how they are, how often does their answer contain the word ‘busy’? I’m betting it’s more often than not. (Some) People seem to take a certain pride in just how busy their lives are – if I’m always on the go, then I’m engaged, occupied, industrious, active, in demand,…
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The Language of Colour
There are apparently a maximum of 11 basic colours that can be described by any culture or language (try counting them – it seems to be true). But there are a myriad more than 11 ways in which colours are perceived and defined – a phenomenon described in a fascinating interview in New Scientist (sub…
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Death and taxes
Check this out (courtesy of Guy Kawasaki). A visual depicting the US Federal Budget. The site allows you to zoom in, out and around. Amazing comparisons to be had here. Have a guess what those big blue fellas on the left are…
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Curious Psychology#5: The Colour of Letters
Imagine the letter ‘a’. Think hard about it. If ‘a’ was a colour, what would it be? Now think about the letter ‘y’. If ‘y’ was a colour what would it be? Now click here: Download synaesthetic_alphabet.jpg Get it right? If you did, likelihood is that it’s not down to chance. Synaesthesia is an involuntary…