Researchers have now concluded, through a recent study, that candy is more tempting when you can see it and it’s within reach. Shocking but true. According to the AP report on the study, the researchers ”gave 40 university secretaries 30 chocolate kisses in either a clear or an opaque candy jar placed on their desks […]

Two items of interest today that may seem worlds apart, but to my mind are wonderfully resonant: 1) Last night, the Madison City Council voted 15 to 5 to support the refinancing of the Overture Center for the Arts (see my entry yesterday for details). I sat through all five hours of the public testimony […]

I often wonder what becomes of those grateful families on Extreme Makeover Home Edition in the years following the gift of a glorious new home. After the unveiling, after the tears of joy dry away, after they clean the yard of stray ”good luck” banners and coffee cups, they must eventually discover what it means […]

Yesterday’s New York Times magazine explores the interrupted life of the modern office worker (login required). It turns out, as most of us will acknowledge, that distractions don’t interrupt our work, but rather distractions make up the bulk of our work. According to one researcher who measured actual drones doing actual droning: Each employee spent […]

I’m writing in a different part of the blogosphere this week, as part of a group discussion hosted by Barry Hessenius. The topic at hand is the impact and response to the current stress on philanthropic dollars, in the wake of Katrina, Rita, and Pakistan, and on the heels of a down economy that had […]

There are interesting conversations bubbling about the contrary positions of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Rise of the Creative Class author Richard Florida (Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson weighs in on the debate, as well). Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, suggests that technology, transportation, and travel are increasingly ”flattening” the world, diminishing the […]

Tom Borrup discusses asset-based community development and works to connect that way of thinking to the arts and culture world. In a nutshell, an asset-based approach seeks to discover and connect what a community has to work with — people, money, facilities, social networks, etc. — rather than working to import or create what it […]

I finally got around to reconstructing my speech to the New Jersey Theatre Alliance conference on September 23. It’s available in web and PDF format in the Thoughtbucket section of this weblog. Comments, criticisms, and large wads of unmarked cash are welcome. If you’re an impatient sort, here’s the gist of it: ….such is the […]

A fascinating project from graduate students at Stanford, MIT, and CalTech, and a senior research scientist at Yahoo! (described here and available in greater detail here) seeks to make visual the interconnections of 10,000 music artists as perceived by their audience. Based on user ratings and preferences from 150,000 Yahoo! Music LAUNCHcast members, the project […]

Great thoughts and comments in Carol Coletta’s ”Smart City” radio program, as she interviews Jennie Winhall of the UK’s Design Council and Williams College economist Stephen Sheppard (you can hear the program here). Winhall works for a special division of the Design Council called RED, which strives to apply design and process analysis to complex […]