April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks

Pranks. The good, the bad and the downright dangerous--from American fraternities to New Guinea initiations--pranks initiate their subjects into the larger group. If they survive!

clipped from www.nytimes.com Psychologists have studied pranks for years, often in the context of harassment, bullying and all manner of malicious exclusion and prejudice. Yet practical jokes are far more commonly an effort to bring a person into a group, anthropologists have found — an integral part of rituals around the world intended to temper success with humility. And recent research suggests that the experience of being duped can stir self-reflection in a way few other experiences can, functioning as a check on arrogance or obliviousness. What Hoffman called the good prank, which humorously satirizes human fears or failings, is found in a wide variety of initiation rites and coming-of-age rituals. In a paper published last year, three psychologists argued that the sensation of being duped — anger, self-blame, bitterness — was such a singular cocktail that it forced an uncomfortable kind of self-awareness. How much of a dupe am I? Where are my blind spots?

The Art of Healing

How better aesthetics in hospitals can make for happier—and healthier—patients by Virginia Postrel

clipped from www.theatlantic.com But why assume good medicine must come with bad design? Most hotel guests care more about reliable reservations than about crisp duvet covers. That doesn’t mean they want ugly rooms, though. Given the choice, they’ll go for the hotel that offers the best of both. When Starwood Hotels, which owns the Westin, Sheraton, and W brands, upgraded its rooms in the late 1990s, the rest of the hotel industry followed. Under similar competitive pressure, medical facilities react the same way. When Baby Boomer women started choosing hotel-like birthing centers over hospital delivery rooms, hospitals quickly wised up. Now even rural hospitals offer well-designed labor-delivery-recovery suites. “People do shop, and they will actually sometimes change an obstetrician because they want a certain hospital experience,” says Malkin. Much of the time, however, patients don’t know they can do better.

Red Army Choir Does Lynyrd Skynyrd

From Nellie Durand (wife of double-whammy greatest living Elvis and Brett Farve fan)...

clipped from blog.wired.com What do you get when you take a Finnish rock group that calls itself Leningrad Cowboys, back them up with the Red Army Choir, and put them in front of a stadium full of screaming Russian teenagers to sing Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama? Thanks to this YouTube clip (via Russia Blog), the answer to that burning question is now just a click away.

Apple developing full-fledged digital lifestyle fitness companion

Link via Mark Ott:

clipped from www.appleinsider.com A series of patent filings discovered by AppleInsider this week provides an overview of four distinct components that will comprise the system, including an iTunes-like software application, hardware-based heart rate and physiological sensors, a rewards tracker, and a component to facilitate synchronous group activities. "The lifestyle companion system also can interview the user about non-health related topics, e.g., spirituality/religion, identity (e.g., sense of belonging), relationships, career, financial condition, environment, hobbies, interests, other personal information, and goals regarding the same," Apple wrote in one of the filings.

Podcast for Christopher Fuller @ VizThink

Using Design Visuals To Communicate Ideas: A Podcast from Vizthink '08 by Jeff Parks

clipped from www.boxesandarrows.com In late January I had the pleasure of attending the VizThink conference in San Francisco. As an Information Architect I wanted to learn how to use different ideas around design to assist me with “big IA” and “little IA” projects. The folks kind enough to join me in this conversation include: Christopher Fuller Griot’s Eye Daniel Rose Bell Canada Ken and Rebecca Hope Motive8 Infographics Noah Iliinsky Complex Diagrams Listen to podcast >>

The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle

Gavin Blake in Australia, suggests viewing this video from TED 2005. William McDough quotes Kevin Kelly, "There is no end game, there is only The Infinite Game."

Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account "All children, all species, for all time." A tireless proponent of absolute sustainability (with a deadpan sense of humor), he explains his philosophy of "cradle to cradle" design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics. He also shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world's largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he's designing in China.

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Rohdesign is the site of designer Mike Rohde, who writes about design, sketching, writing, mobile computing, technology, travel, cycling, books, music and more.

via Lee Potts of Visual Being.

clipped from www.rohdesign.com SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up! I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week. With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees. Speakers Featured Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.

Heaven on HEMA

Have fun shopping at this crazy on-line store from the Netherlands. If only strolling the aisles of Target were so exciting!

Thanks to Nellie Durand!

Sons Of Lwala: A Documentary of Hope

Milton and Fred Ochieng’ are two brothers from Kenya whose village sent them to America to become doctors. But after losing both parents to AIDS they are left with a heartbreaking task: to return home and finish the health clinic their father started before getting sick.

Unable to raise enough money on their own, the brothers are joined by students, politicians, and a rock band who launch a fund raising drive among young people across the United States. Sons of Lwala follows Milton and Fred on their incredible journey as they find a way, despite all odds, to open their village’s first hospital.

From Project Sunshine:

Amid all the stories that have hit the news about Kenya in the recent weeks, the story of the sons of Lwala has to be told, and what a better way to tell this story than through a film. So, for those of you in the Nashville, TN area or in front of a computer, you are welcome to donate and/or buy tickets for a benefit screening of the story of the two young doctors who returned to Lwala to build a hospital after being educated in the United States

How To Take Action

After Fred and Milton completed the hospital, with the help of well wishers and friends, they realised that they needed to keep it open, and created the Lwala Community Alliance to continue funding the initial donation.

Filmmaker Barry Simmons says via the team’s Facebook page:

It’s time (finally!) to celebrate the completion of our little documentary, and more importantly, to gather around Milton and Fred for a blow-out night at TPAC to raise money for their clinic in Lwala! The screening will be in Nashville on Thursday, March 27. Order tickets at www.tpac.org/lwala.

And just in case you are wondering what your donation will do:

So folks, you can watch the trailer here or the trailer below.

Stamen Design: Information Visualization is a Medium

A jet-lagged Regine Debatty of Worldchanging.com writes from etech08 in San Diego.

She describes her excitement listening to Eric Rodenbeck, founder and creative director of Stamen Design, talk on Information Visualization is a Medium.

clipped from www.worldchanging.com Worldchanging readers may already be familiar with the work of Stamen, especially with the visualizations they created for Digg.com (Swarm and Stack) or the brilliant cabspotting, which Alex wrote about here a while ago. The focus of the talk was on process of analysis and how the concept works both for Stamen and culturally. For Stamen Information visualization is a medium, not a technique per se. The first project that illustrated this statement is Trulia Insight, a real estate aggregator, search and information tool they developed for Trulia, a real estate company based in San Francisco which aggregates information about properties around the United States. The mashup combines historical real estate data with a "heat map" that displays which properties are hot. People looking for a house can search for real estate by zip code, or other parameters like size, cost, and building type. Houses glow different colors as they are built and re-built over the years,