Posts tagged Culture

Season 2 of Homeland is definitely coming

RadioTimes:

US cable channel Showtime will premiere season two on 30 September - but UK viewers will almost certainly have to wait a bit longer to see answers to the questions raised by the tense season one finale.

I’ve absolutely loved season one of Homeland. It’s been thoroughly engrossing television. And now that we’ve been left - unsurprisingly - in suspense, I was very keen to know when we would get to see season two. The good news is that it’s definitely being made. The other good news is that the US even as a season premiere date. Now we just need to wait and see when we’ll get it here in the UK.

Please don’t make us wait too long Channel 4!

Taking Lunch: How a real lunch break can transform your day

Ryan Offutt:

Researchers have found that workers who take breaks within the work day and stop working report a greater sense of well-being. After a long period of work, a lunch break lets people recover. Those who work through lunch don’t recover at all; in fact, they carry on using their intellectual and emotional resources, leaving themselves drained (we all know what that feels like. Ugh).

Ryan is a very good friend of mine and, after a little nudging, he has - finally - started a new blog called ‘Mind Games’. He’ll be writing about psychology, work, play, creativity, improvisation, collaboration, and fun.

This is his first post and it’s a good one. He challenges you to spend the next month taking a proper lunch break and monitoring the effect it has on you. The post if full of suggestions for also making sure you make the most of the time.

Scientists restore sight in blind mice

BBC News:

Scientists have taken a crucial step towards restoring the sight of people suffering from degenerative eye diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.

“This is a landmark study” says Professor Robin Ali who led the research. “We’ve shown for the first time that transplanted photoreceptors can integrate successfully with the retinal circuitry, making synaptic connections, and truly improving vision”.

Always great to hear about these kind of breakthroughs.

Modern civilisation is a cage

Dean Sharp:

Modern civilization is a cage—a recently developed artificial habitat for humans who’ve spent the previous 2,000,000 years living in close connection with the earth.

Don’t think you’re in a cage? You sleep on a nice comfy bed, live in a temperature controlled box, drink water from bottles, sit around most of the time … and as far as exercise goes, exactly what’s the difference between a treadmill and a hamster wheel?

But don’t despair. Like any other animal born in captivity, you can manage to live a long healthy life as long as you make sure you get enough exercise, have some bright shiny toys to play with, and don’t let your keepers overfeed you or feed you anything other than what your species has evolved to eat in its natural habitat.

Thought-provoking post from my friend, Dean.

Earning attention

Chris Brogan:

It took me 8 years to get my first 100 readers.

Great post on the right and wrong ways to go about earning attention for the content you create.

Keep reading books in order to avoid becoming narcissistic

Justin Zoradi commenting on some alarming - if unsurprising - statistics about how little Americans read after leaving school:

I’m not too worried about the lack of reading for the sake of the book industry or ensuring profit for publishing houses.

I’m worried that the lack of reading is a canary in the mineshaft, warning us of a stifling narcissism in our midst.

The connection he makes between a lack of reading (plus experiencing different cultures, contexts, etc) and narcissism is fascinating but makes a lot of sense. Reading broadens the mind to different perspectives and view points which inevitably fosters an understanding of the world that is bigger than just me, me, me. Though, if you only read books that you know you’ll agree with and don’t stretch you, then the impact will no doubt be significantly reduced.

Ultimately, if you want to avoid being totally narcissistic, it would seem that reading a diversity of books on a broad range of subjects and view points is going to be a good starting point.

Amazon trying to rewrite the rules of publishing

This is an interesting article that doesn’t put Amazon in a very good light. It’s both a fascinating and uncertain time for books and publishing and Amazon’s tactics - and their fast approaching monopoly - should be something that makes all book lovers nervous. Amazon don’t seem to have had much close, investigative reporting done by the media, and very little negative reporting at all. They’re still somewhat of a media darling. But I for one hope that they don’t get a free, unchallenged waltz into a position of monopoly status when it comes to books. We need there to be healthy competition.

Parenting confessional and the importance of green play

Mark Hoelterhoff:

I am trying to write a blog about playing outside while simultaneously being bothered that my children want to play outside. The real interruption is my attempt to hijack a Saturday afternoon to be a writer. My daughter reminds me it is time for some green play. As parents we know that kids should not be sat inside all day watching TV and playing video games, but sometimes it’s an easy option. Professionals and students should be critical of studies linking the outdoors with well-being because there are some methodological problems and countless confounding variables. However intuitively there is something real to me about this connection to nature.

Mark is a good friend of mine and this is from the first of new series of posts he’s going to be writing on this subject.

What Sony meant to say about hiking the price on Whitney Houston's album

The Guardian reporting on Sony’s statement:

“Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the UK iTunes store on Sunday,” Sony told Billboard, the US music industry newspaper. “When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologise for any offence caused.”

Of course, if they were telling the truth, the statement would have read more like this:

“After hearing of Whitney Houston’s death, we decided to deliberately and cynically raise the price of her album in order to make a ton of money by milking everyone who wanted to buy her music and remember her. Once we had made enough money off of these impulse purchases we lowered the price back to its original amount.”

We can be pretty sure that my version of the statement is more accurate than Sony’s as, if they were truly sorry, they’d be refunding everyone. But they’re not.

"Better"

Merlin Mann:

What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks – empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.

This is a great little essay.

Even in 1940, Britain was not united on the side of good against evil

Jonathan Freedland:

It was not inevitable, still less our destiny, that Britain and America would fight the good fight against Nazism. It was a choice that, at times, hung by a thread; that could, had the politics played out even slightly differently, gone the other way. The year 1940 was epic, but not as clear-cut or straightforward as our collective myth-making suggests. Which only makes it more intriguing.

This is a really fascinating essay by Freedland and gives an intriguing snapshot into the true state of affairs in Britain in 1940.