All In The Mind - The Power of Plasticity

"The dogma used to be that the adult brain was a rigid, unchangeable organ, but that pessimistic perspective is now being radically revised. Psychiatrist Dr Norman Doidge journeyed into the labs and lives of the 'neuroplasticians' -- once scientific mavericks, they're challenging the old neurological nihilism. Professor Jeffrey Schwartz is one. They both join Natasha Mitchell in discussion to reveal how the human brain has underestimated itself! Next week, plasticity on the couch..."

scottberkun.com » How to detect bullshit

"Everyone lies: it’s just a question of how, when and why. From the relationship saving “yes, you do look thin in those pants” to the improbable “your table will be ready in 5 minutes”, manipulating the truth is part of the human condition. Accept it now.

I’m positive that given our irrational nature and difficultly accepting tough truths, we’re collectively better off with some of our deceptions. They buffer us from each other (and from ourselves), avoid unnecessary conflicts, and keep the wonderful confusion of our psychologies tucked away from those who don’t care. White lies are the spackle of civilization, tucked into the dirty corners and crevices our necessary, but pretentiously inflexible idealisms create. Small lies prop up and support our powerful truths, holding together the insanely half honest, half false chaos that spins the world."

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media | chrisbrogan.com

"Branding one’s self in an online environment built on entropy and go-baby-go is difficult at best, and impossible if you forget to take your happy pills. To that end, I’ve come up with a quick list of 100 things you might do to help with these efforts. Feel free to add your ideas to the comments section."

Mind Hacks: The problem of believing in belief

"Sam Harris is better known as a leading atheist, but he's also completing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and a forthcoming study by Harris is a flawed but important contribution to how we understand the neuropsychology of belief.

Harris and his colleagues asked participants to respond to a number of statements with buttons presses indicating that they either believed, disbelieved or were undecided about each proposition."

The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig von Mises

First published, 1912. Translated from the German by H. E. Batson. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1981. © 1980 by Bettina Bien Greaves.

Sanity check: Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments? | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

"Gartner has embarked on a wide-reaching new study of Google and its potential impact on IT, enterprise businesses, and society in general in the coming years. On April 10 at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Las Vegas, Gartner Vice President Richard Hunter revealed some of the first data points from this study.

The two most interesting points were:

1.) The best way to think of Google is as a disruptive technology.

2.) Disruptive technologies create big losers and big winners, and one of the biggest losers in the Google disruption could be traditional IT departments."

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing | Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

"Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly..."

The Write Event: The Reticular Activating System—Your Brain's Unique Screening Device

"We are literally bombarded with sensory images, sounds and goings on all day long. Just imagine what your life would be like if you were aware of every single one of them—it would be mental bedlam! The hair down your neck after a haircut, the clicking sound of your keyboard, the hum of the fan, the voices that surround you. You are saved from that sort of nerve-racking experience by a wonderful design feature of your brain called the Reticular Activating System.

The RAS consists of a bundle of densely packed nerve cells located in the central core of the brainstem. Roughly the size of a little finger, the RAS runs from the top of the spinal cord into the middle of the brain. This area of tightly packed nerve fibers and cells contain nearly 70% of your brain's estimated 200 billion nerve cells or a total of 140 billion cells."

The 50 most significant moments of Internet history - Crave at CNET.co.uk

"We decided to plough the history of the entire Internet, from the roots of its underlying technology, to the Web properties that helped it explode, the litigation it endured on the way and disasters companies have suffered as a result of the Net's popularity. We've picked 50 of what we think are the most significant moments, in ten categories spanning almost 40 years of Internet history..."

That was the week that was...Week ending September 26, 2008 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"A round-up from the recruiting industry’s group blogs, portals and individual archives..."

Cognitive Neuroscience Society

The Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) is committed to the development of mind and brain research aimed at investigating the psychological, computational, and neuroscientific bases of cognition. The term cognitive neuroscience has now been with us for almost three decades, and identifies an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the nature of thought."

Gustave de Molinari - The Utopia of Liberty

"We are adversaries, and yet the goal which we both pursue is the same. What is the common goal of economists and socialists? Is it not a society where the production of all the goods necessary to the maintenance and embellishment of life shall be as abundant as possible, and where the distribution of these same goods among those who have created them through their labour shall be as just as possible? May not our common ideal, apart from all distinction of schools, be summarised in these two words: abundance and justice?"

'Rage against the machines' by Tom Chatfield | Prospect Magazine

"Mogwai is cutting down the time he spends playing World of Warcraft. Twenty hours a week or less now, compared to a peak of over 70. It's not that he has lost interest—just that he's no longer working his way up the greasy pole. He's got to the top. He heads his own guild, has 20,000 gold pieces in the bank and wields the Twin Blades of Azzinoth; weapons so powerful and difficult to acquire that other players often (virtually) follow Mogwai around just to look at them. In his own words, he's "e-famous." He was recently offered $8,000 for his Warcraft account, a sum he only briefly considered accepting. Given that he has clocked up over 4,500 hours of play, the prospective buyers were hardly making it worth his while. Plus, more sentimentally, he feels his character is not his alone to sell: "The strange thing about this character is that he doesn't just belong to me. Every item he has he got through the hard work of 20 or more other people. Selling him would be a slap in their faces." As in many modern online games, co-operation is the only way to progress, with the most challenging encounters manageable only with the collaboration of other experienced players. Hence the need for leaders, guilds—in-game collectives, sometimes containing hundreds of players—and online friendships measured in years. "When I started, I didn't care about the other people. Now they are the only reason I continue."

It takes more than a résumé | ajc.com

"If the last time you searched for a job was 20, 10 or even five years ago, you probably feel like you’ve stumbled into a whole new world. You’d be right.

We’ve entered the world of “cloud recruiting and job searching,” according to Michael Marlatt, recruiting consultant with Search Wizards at Microsoft.

It’s a techno-savvy world where recruiters search for candidates and job seekers find positions virtually, or in the “clouds.” It’s a world where people speak in terms of Web 2.0 (the trends toward an increasingly interactive Web) and Mobile 2.0, which is “the convergence of mobile services and Web services,” that allows people access to sending and receiving information anywhere, anytime."

James Ray Live - Reticular Activating System

11 Rules for Selling to a Skeptic | Hansis.net

"Let’s face it: the greatest accomplishment for a member of the sales community is closing a deal with a skeptic. Many who are proficient at this art agree that it is far more gratifying to convince someone who initially felt your product was not necessary that it indeed is, than to complete what the industry terms an “easy sell.” Lucky for us all, plenty of doubters buy products and services everyday. Let us examine eleven of the fundamental techniques used by those who succeed in persuading the worst of cynics."

Blog Commenting 2.0 cometh! | Community Guy, Jake McKee

"The global commenting system IntenseDebate was acquired by Automattic, the company that owns Wordpress.com and drives the Wordpress.org project. This is literally going to revolutionize the way blog commenting takes place on blogs worldwide."

Permanent Innovation Blog: Turning Points: Important events change how we think

"While we experience of accelerating change when a lot of events happen one after another, there is a second type of change that also affects how we feel. This is the huge event that in one moment changes how everyone thinks. Sometimes this is called a ‘turning point.’"

Get Me Jamie Notter: A Bit of A Rant About Strategic Planning

"I heard Peter Senge speak a while back and he talked about being in 'a bubble.' His conclusion was that bubbles (like the dot com bubble) are not destined to grow and grow and then burst. They can avoid this fate, however, ONLY if the people inside the bubble can communicate effectively with people outside the bubble. Otherwise, people in the bubble simply talk to each other, which reinforces the status quo assumptions and world view.

My sense is that is what's going on with associations and strategic planning. The Journal of Association Leadership article about consensus guidelines for association strategic planning is a bubble article: people in the bubble working with other people in the bubble to articulate and codify the bubble party line."

Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » The Avatar Afterlife

"The Long Now Foundation posts speculation that our avatars will soon be programmed with our online preferences, leading to an afterlife for our digital personas:

The software used to track the online behavior of users, within in particular system (virtual worlds or social networks) could be modified to track the entirety of their online behavior, over a longer space of time – say thirty years. At the end of this period the data could be used to program an avatar. This avatar would inhabit a virtual world or worlds and be programmed with all the users personal data, preferences and potential responses– would this lead to an avatar afterlife?"

Building Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results - The McKinsey Quarterly - web 2.0 enterprise survey - Information Technology - Management

"Companies have adopted more Web 2.0 tools this year than in 2007 and are using them for higher-value purposes, according to McKinsey’s second annual survey on the business use of Web 2.0 technologies.

Some 21 percent of the respondents are very satisfied with the way their companies use Web 2.0 tools, which are changing management practices and even organizational structures.

Other companies report that the barriers to adopting Web 2.0 tools include management’s inability to grasp their potential financial returns, unresponsive corporate cultures, and less-than-enthusiastic leadership."

Bob Sutton: Leadership During the Worst of Times: Michael McCain at Maple Leaf

"Anyone interesting in how to lead during a crisis can learn something from this horrible tragedy. The CEO's grace and unminced words have impressed many in Canada, and I expect this case will take a place next to Johnson & Johnson's famous response to the Tylenol poisonings in the 1980s. In fact, the Canadian press is already making the comparison here"

Very superstitious: why we believe | Blog | Futurismic

"I’ve always been curious as to why human beings are superstitious, now evolutionary biologists believe it is the result of natural selection. Prof Kevin Foster of Harvard University defines superstition as the tendency to falsely link cause and effect..."

120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power > Litemind

"Here are 120 things you can do starting today to help you think faster, improve memory, comprehend information better and unleash your brain’s full potential."

Important work can be done while daydreaming - The Boston Globe

"The ability to think abstractly that flourishes during daydreams also has important social benefits. Mostly, what we daydream about is each other, as the mind retrieves memories, contemplates 'what if' scenarios, and thinks about how it should behave in the future. In this sense, the content of daydreams often resembles a soap opera, with people reflecting on social interactions both real and make-believe. We can leave behind the world as it is and start imagining the world as it might be, if only we hadn't lost our temper, or had superpowers, or were sipping a daiquiri on a Caribbean beach. It is this ability to tune out the present moment and contemplate the make-believe that separates the human mind from every other."

Copywrite, Ink.: Digging Holes For Bloggers: Naked Boy

"Sometimes, the best rule of thumb for bloggers is to think before taking action. Take J. Son, who produces Naked Boy News, for example. He almost jeopardized the entire jury selection process in the ongoing O.J. Simpson trial."

All Things Web 2.0 » Christian Mayaud

"All Things Web 2.0 has been created in response to the heavy blog traffic generated by my original post 'All Things Web 2.0 - The List' on my blog Sacred Cow Dung."

The leader’s imperative: Ethics, integrity, and responsibility | J. C. Ficarrotta | Purdue Libraries

Military academies aim to educate for leadership. As a nation, we hope that even those graduates who do not serve full careers in the military will eventually assume positions of leadership in other institutions. The essays in this volume are a complete collection of the distinguished lectures in ethics given at the U.S. Air Force Academy from the fall of 1988 to the spring of 1999.

I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You - Clive Thompson - NYTimes.com

"Zuckerberg, a doe-eyed 24-year-old C.E.O., founded Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard two years earlier, and the site quickly amassed nine million users. By 2006, students were posting heaps of personal details onto their Facebook pages, including lists of their favorite TV shows, whether they were dating (and whom), what music they had in rotation and the various ad hoc “groups” they had joined (like “Sex and the City” Lovers). All day long, they’d post “status” notes explaining their moods — “hating Monday,” “skipping class b/c i’m hung over.” After each party, they’d stagger home to the dorm and upload pictures of the soused revelry, and spend the morning after commenting on how wasted everybody looked. Facebook became the de facto public commons — the way students found out what everyone around them was like and what he or she was doing."

The Life of Buddha

Zeigen » Blog Archive » The Web 2.0 dilemma: Public vs. personal personas

"For all web 2.0 sites, the first job is to clearly explain what the site is about, show how it benefits the prospective user, and ease new users up the learning curve. Once that’s done, helping users understand and manage their role along the public/personal continuum is essential to making the site sticky and successful. Tagging and categorization is the answer for that. Smart tools and good design will be needed to make this task intuitive and easy.

With Flickr, you can subscribe to a user’s entire photostream, or just to an individual series (as tagged by the user). The next step for many other web 2.0 sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and most of all FriendFeed, is to catch up to that concept."

That was the week that was...Week ending August 29, 2008 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"A round-up from the recruiting industry’s group blogs, portals and individual archives..."