think or thwim

Minnesota Public Radio has put together a site to compare presidential and senate candidate’s stances on various issues. They have a short quiz you can take to see which candidate most closely matches your views. They also have a summary of each candidate’s position on each issue.

Zappos demonstrates how marketing should be done: I Heart Zappos

1. Treat your customers the way you would like to be treated.
2. They will tell other people, and if you’re lucky they will have a blog.
3. If what you did is sufficiently cool, the story will spread and everyone will know about it within a few months.

:: Everybody

A few weeks ago I linked to a presentation by Matthieu Ricard about how to be happy. He’s a Buddhist monk who participates in research into how meditation affects the brain with Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin. This documentary is about that research. It’s also a good introduction to Buddhism.

Dr. Davidson tells me that the emergence of positive emotions may be due to this: Mindfulness meditation strengthens the neurological circuits that calm a part of the brain that acts as a trigger for fear and anger. This raises the possibility that we have a way to create a kind of buffer between the brain’s violent impulses and our actions.

- Tenzin Gyatso

Do you want to get rid of something that can’t go in with the normal recycling or trash (old monitor, batteries, paint, compact fluorescents, etc)?

1. Go to Earth911.org
2. Type in the name of the item into the green box at the top of the page.
3. Enter your zipcode.

You’ll get a list of options sorted by distance.

So far, it’s only for the United States, but they are currently expanding into Europe.

Herman Miller plans to redesign their entire line of furniture using cradle to cradle design, which means designing the entire lifecycle of the materials. Ultimately it means every part is either recyclable or biodegradable. Last year Herman Miller had redesigned 6% of their products. Now they are up to 16%.

I’m no chair connoisseur, but I have spent some time in an Aeron chair which I thought was pretty good (not everyone agrees) Designed before the cradle to cradle protocol was adopted, it takes two hours to disassemble.

The Mirra chair was their first attempt at redesign. It can be taken apart in 15 minutes. Only 4% of the parts are not recyclable. The Celle chair was the second redesign. It’s even simpler to disassemble to reuse the parts.

At this point, they don’t have a system in place to take the chairs back and recycle them, but they plan to in the future.

For more details, see this transcript of a talk by Scott Charon and Susan Lyons.

:: Core 77

This is a short excerpt from a TED Conference presentation by Ted MacCready. He compares the total mass of all humans, domestic animals and pets to the total mass of all other vertebrates over time.

This part stuck out to me, but you should watch the whole thing. The story of how he got interested in designing the bicycle powered plane that crossed the English Channel is great. Watch the rest at TEDTalks.

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh enlightens the TED Conference audience about bonobos. Here’s some of the things they’ve learned by watching humans:

• Understand English.
• Start a fire with a lighter.
• Extinguish a fire with a bucket of water.
• Make and use stone tools.
• Communicate with drawings.
• Play Pacman.

The video also shows a bonobo recognizing herself in the mirror. The list of self aware animals appears to be too short.

:: Your Daily Awesome

Fat Car (2005)

Fat House (2003)

House Attack (2006)

Wurm placed the house atop the Museum Moderner Kunst for the opening of his exhibition there last year. If you’d like one for the top of your museum, theres a video showing how he did it at YouTube.

This is a good story: Ellis Paul - Deadhead Pilot

And I like his music. Here’s God’s Promise. The lyrics are by Woody Guthrie. Ellis Paul wrote music. The guy that uploaded it to YouTube put the pictures with it.

God’s Promise is on these CDs: The Speed of Trees and Essentials

ellispaul.com

(thanks Gene)