Must credit David McCandless, whose blog Information is Beautiful has provided the inspiration and heavily influenced the look and feel of this design. If you find this interesting his work will blow your mind. I’ll try to be more original in future efforts. Also the Guardian Datablog is an excellent source of both data, ideas, and visualisations.

The data for this is also available.

A couple of times recently I’ve commented on a book I’ve been reading on twitter and mentioned the author in my post. Both times the author has promptly replied in a very genuine way. Twitter enables that sort of instant gratification dialog with someone who you wouldn’t normally get a chance to interact with. It succeeds because there is no obligation or onus on the recipient of an @ message to respond.

The first time this happened was with Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) when I commented that I was a bit disappointed with his book that it didn’t really cater for the more knowledgeable audience and was a bit basic for me. His response and his disappointment that I hadn’t enjoyed it was really heartfelt.

The second time this happened was just yesterday when I received a reply from Tom Chatfield (@tomchatfield). I’d just received his book, Fun Inc.; Why games are the 21st century’s most serious business. I mentioned that I hoped the book goes beyond the usual games are important anecdotes, facts and figures that are generally rolled out on this topic. His reply was simple and to the point. “you and me both”.

I don’t think this sort of dialog would have been possible in the past without significant investment of time and effort on both sides.

The original…

Google remembers the Cookie Monster.

Amazon Discount

However I think one of the rules about stealing is don’t get caught. So when I saw the Vision Express ad below on the TV today.

I couldn’t but help be reminded of a video by the Japanese director Nagi Noda who died recently. See if you can spot any similarities…

It’s nothing new for ad agencies to steal good ideas from music videos, but usually the same director is involved for both. See Nagi Noda’s music video for sentimental journey and the ads she was commissioned to make for Coke, which some of you may remember.

Ireland for example look like this:

The UK looks like this:And the US looks like this:

I think things like this have been around for a while, but they’re always interesting. Sort of like a map homunculus, a person where the external body parts represent the internal system. This homunculus shows the the body parts scaled by the size of the sensory area of the brain devoted to them.

keyboard

Cartoon a tribute to Jessica Hagy’s great blog (and book) Indexed.

Watching someone tip their keyboard upside down at work reminded me of a great xkcd cartoon, keyboards are disgusting.

I’m not sure if I should be glad or disturbed that my Mac laptop didn’t yield such a treasure trove of grossness.

Coldplay - Strawberry Swing
Director: Shynola
(embedding disabled on youtube)

Lucy and the Teenage Monster - Dance Steps
Directors: David Strindberg, Johan Bring

Tiesto/Sneaky Sound System - I Will Be Here
Director: Muto Masashi

Just Jack - The Day I Died
Directors: Ben & Joe Delaney
(embedding disabled on youtube)

The Walkmen - On the Water
Director: Nir Ben Jacob

Ill Ease - Here Comes Trouble
Director: George Wu

Sour - Hibi No Neiro
Directors: Masashi Kawamura, Hal Kirkland, Magico Nakamura, Masayoshi Nakamura

Neurosonics Audiomedical
Director: Chris Cairns

Major Lazer - Pon the Floor
Director: Eric Wareheim

The Hickey Underworld - Blonde Fire
Director: Joe Vanhoutteghem

Many of the Tim Pope videos are available on his website.

It’s basically a back and forth about the pros and cons of both positive and negative thinking.

He asks “why do smart people engage in negative thinking?” One thing that he may not have considered is couterfactual thinking. For those of you who have never studied cognitive psychology, counterfactual thinking is the approach of trying to disprove an idea to verify it’s truth. It’s the foundation of the scientific method that is the foundation of academia.

What’s interesting about counterfactual thinking is that despite it being the right way to approach logical problems very few people actually ever use it. Even those who use the scientific method on a daily basis fail to use counterfactual thinking in logic problems.

Want to try it for yourself? Bearing in mind that you’ve been primed to use counterfactual thinking so this is not a very rigorous test.

You are shown a set of four cards placed on a table each of which has a number on one side and a colored patch on the other side. The visible faces of the cards show 3, 8, red and brown. Which card(s) should you turn over in order to test the truth of the proposition that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red?

Solution

The response Wason considered correct was to turn the cards showing 8 and brown, but no other card. Remember how the question was stated: “If the card shows an even number, then its opposite face is red.” If we turn over the card labelled “3″ and find that it is red, this does not invalidate the rule. Likewise, if we turn over the red card and find that it has the label “3″, this also does not make the rule false. On the other hand, if the brown card has the label “4″, this invalidates the rule: it has an even number, but is not red.

From Wikipedia

For more on this problem, read the article on the Wason Selection Test.

Do smart people think negatively to think more counterfactually?