Get Shouty

China is employing a hardcore programme of boot camp-style military training, psychological counselling and even electrocution to deal with the problem of internet addiction.

“If you let someone go online and then don’t let them, you may see a physical reaction just like someone coming off drugs,” Tao Ran, a former military researcher working in an internet addiction treatment centre, told MSNBC.

“Today you go half an hour, and the next day you need 45 minutes. It’s like starting with one glass and then needing half a bottle to feel the same way.”

Yep- I think they have a point with the addiction thing. No quite so sure about the torture though…

I’ve been quiet for a bit.

My need to blog, to continue my lover’s tiff with the world, has been somewhat silenced by the loss of a dear friend, a great contributor to my personal community.

This chap lived lavishly- always funny, up for nonsense, travelled the world widely and slowly and won the hand of the beautiful blond. His ability to cut through crap and deliver the choicest of opinions at exactly the right time leaves a hole in a lot of people’s lives.

He would be the last person to expect participation in any kind of Grief Olympics. I salute you Adam and thank you for the reminder that- you don’t know if you’re going to have a short innings, so make sure you have a damn fine one.

It’s far, FAR too cold to go outside, and this site Savage Chickens just warms the cockles of my heart.

Photo Credit:  Gilfer

More than half the Australian aboriginal male population and 40% of females die before reaching the age of 50

Comprising just 2% of the population, they make up an estimated 12% of the homeless, 19% of the prison population, 31% of people living in “improvised dwellings”, 41% of child abuse and neglect cases and 50% of inhabitants of dwellings with 10 or more people.

The imprisonment rate for adults is 14 times higher than it is for the non-Indigenous population, while the unemployment rate is nearly three times higher, around 23%, compared to 8% in the general population.

We have concentration camps for refugees. We are racist.

 But we have a sense of beauty and also a sense of humour.

I’m sorry for what we have done. I celebrate who we are.

There are two things that I really love that I don’t remember learning how to do. One is swimming, though a thousand mornings of getting up at 4am to eat endless laps changed my passion for it. The other is reading, but no matter how much, or how long, or how intently I do this my affair with words has remained unchanged.

Last year when I spent a heap of time in China I had my first experience of being illiterate. Through travel and the kind of work I do I’ve had plenty of experiences of not being able to make myself understood and not understanding what people are saying around me. If Creating Confusion were an Olympic sport I could represent the country, but I’d always been able to read the signs.

In China I’m illiterate, innumerate, I can’t read a map, and I can’t even match word shapes. While your options become very limited, there’s a sort of freedom involved in the experience too- your attention is not pulled by the  millions of hungry words contained in the urban streetscape. You are free to attribute meaning as you go.

I’m finding that I have a similar reaction to brands in the States. I can’t read them. I don’t know what they mean. I can’t put them in a hierarchy. I don’t know the difference between Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Macy’s intuitively. In a supermarket isle I don’t know how to make a decision between the hundreds of types of cereal.

I will make decisions as a consumer, and again it’s a freeing experience. I’m not bound by the heritage of the brand, or by what my friends say about it- only the signs that the brand uses to communicate with me will make the difference.

Today when I woke up there were rabbit tracks in the snow across the driveway. I could track it’s journey right around the house. My very first sparkly blue sky morning in a world of white.

Tonight when I came home I found I could see my own perfectly preserved footprints from the morning- careful measured steps from not wanting to slip in my first day at work clothes.

This means, I’m told, that it didn’t get above zero centigrade.

I loved having an experience of exploring the yard on bunny feet.  And I like being reminded of the notion that you leave a mark by your passage to contemplate later.

 Will it make me more careful? My friends know that I am the Mistress of Spectacular Stacks, so probably not. But I will be able to capture the crash scene perfectly.
 

I do love this gem from MisEntropy:

“Blogging is a device for combining solitude with good company”

Being a big fan of pearls of wisdom I thought I share a few of my favourites:

Don’t freak out ’till you find out

Become the change you seek

You can’t aspire to mediocrity

Specialisation is for insects

If you think you can’t, you’re right

What’s your favourite pearl of wisdom?

 Kickers is asking it’s audience to go do  something.

 They given you lots of links and launching points. A place to make a pledge before you pop your clogs.

It’s not serious, and no one on the site takes it seriously either.

But I do love that ‘something’, an understanding of the notion that not all hip young things want to make music, or a film or a difference. Just something.

People want to do something and sometimes all things. The question is always ‘Where do I start’?

Gavin the Terrible has tagged me with a viral meme. Ewwww!

Each person who is tagged has to divulge five personal things that most people don’t know. You then have to tag five others.   Five things:

1 My friends know me as Fiend. Enough said.

2 I am a dyed in the wool foodie, my pate is famous and I can tackle a 10 course degustation with matching wines midweek. I am always in charge of chocolate for gatherings.

3 My brothers and I all live walking distance from each other even though we all grew up in a different city.

4 Life without exercise is very noisy. Without at least half an hour of strenuous activity my brain is a little like a yapping terrier. The benefits are a thousand fold.

5 I played flute in an orchestra for five years. I worked in the music industry for nearly 10. Tours, awards, rock star hangovers- all that nonsense. They say you should find your passion and find out how to make a living out of it. ‘They’ are wrong. You should find you passion and feed it yourself. Never, NEVER sell it.

I’ve tagged

Paul and you can read his response here

AngryMan– and you can read his response here

Seb fellow Sydney coffee morning regular and all round interested and interesting guy has left his 5 in the comments section

Vando has been quiet- probably because I can’t seem to leave a message for him (drat you Blogger!)

Christy is a little busy right now to keep her blog up to date but she has one of the most beautiful daughters on the planet so I’ll forgive her

This piece of art is by Banksy. Part of his ‘help‘ manifesto says this:

“The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit. “

Harsh- but so’s the world. Seriously go take a look at his work.

Mark Boyd posted a beautiful manifesto to GapingVoid:

What we make is not the point. That we make, that we DO, is.
Making stuff develops the ability to see, hear, taste, smell and feel.
Making stuff is about problem solving, the openness to possibilities, development of skills, internal and external navigation and resolution, a sense of exploration and adventure. 
Making stuff transforms one from a consumer to a contributor.
Making stuff is not passive.
Making stuff involves making choices. Realizing you have choices and making them is empowering. Empowerment leads to confidence, and the courage to question and challenge the status quo. Making stuff and sharing it is a social and political act, which opens avenues for communication.
Dare to fail big, and attempt to change the world.

I love that challenge. Make stuff to change myself and change the world.  

I wanted to comment on UGC and show the picture and it’s story (in the post below Beauty= Truth) as an example of expression (in conversation with the video blog piece) in our 2.0 Share Economy (I’ll reference CK too!)

Note: CK reminded me that it is Vaspers that named the Share Economy.

I assure you that they’ll be hypertext love and linkages. I might even get to a conclusion.

But I’m not at my desk and I can’t remember any of my passwords….ANY

Sob. It would be great if my google/flickr ID gave me access to my blog account.

This makes me think of a couple things I know for sure about falling down:

•  
  • You walk away bruised, humbled and a little bit smarter.
  • You only ever have to get up once more than you fall over.

beauty = truth, etc., originally uploaded by romanlily.

I found this beautiful post that supported this photo on flickr:

I picked up a great many things in my years in the Christian church. There are still wholly formed passages of Scripture floating around in the back corridors of my brain, unsung hymns with lovely melodies that bring tears to the eyes. There are also many logical arguments living in my brain on expired leases. The Teleological argument, the Cosmological argument, the Ontological argument. Their business cards are still here in my purse.

I was trained vigorously in these arguments in the philosophy course I took in college. Twelve years later, every time I start flirting with a religious framework that does not center around the very particular conservative Christian system of sacrifice and atonement I was trained in, Teleo, Cosmo, and Onto pop up, look over my shoulder nervously. “Are you sure you want to do that?” “I’m thinking you might regret that eventually.”

For a brief passage early in the decade, my then-husband and I attended elaborate Christian apologetics courses at night. We would drive to a big church on the other side of town and listen to heady lectures delivered by well-educated professors on the validity of the Christian message. We took notes in the notebooks they provided us. They talked a lot about “the inherent dignity of man,” which is a beautiful belief, one I deeply miss now that I have stepped away from the Christian ecosystem it lives in. It’s good to have a belief system that honors the anonymous moments of suffering and sadness that each person endures.

What I’m wondering now is who’s still around when Teleo, Cosmo, and Onto finally fall asleep. Can I invite the “inherent dignity of man” over for tea? The logicians are so severe. They are made of bone. There is no muscle in them, no heart. I don’t want a belief system that adores my brain and ignores my body. I want to believe something that makes my chest hurt. In a good way.

I’ve been scratching about this issue for quite a while in my journal. A few weeks ago, I wrote this question in the margins of my journal. And yeah, it’s sort of an ontological argument, I suppose. But so far, I can’t answer the question, and that’s okay with me.

I like the brands that I work with to be friends with their consumers.

I was reading an article about ‘friends with benefits’, which is not a bad way of describing the current relationship between brands and consumers- mostly useful, sometimes amusing and yet there is no commitment, real affinity or long term relationship.

Take Aristotle’s concept of friendship. He proposed three models: friendship based on utility (a friend who provides something useful to us); friendship based on pleasure (we enjoy a friend’s company); and friendship based on virtue or mutual admiration (we find a friend who shares our values).

You can see in the Brand Utility movement the notion of the first model. It has at it’s heart the notion that, in order to achieve engagement, marketers should create widgets or things that consumers can actually use.

Undoubtedly most brands have surfed the wave of Pleasure: the friendship has been based on amusing and entertaining brand experiences.

Increasingly brands also have a Virtue component too, usually bundled away at the back. There are, of course great examples like this , this and this.

As Aristotle would argue, the reason friendships based on utility are incomplete, is that they are motivated by short-term considerations and are contingent on changeable circumstances. Similarly, friendships based on pleasure are contingent on feelings and accidental conditions. The friendship of mutual admiration is most enduring, and complete, because they “wish well for each other for each other’s own sake”, in addition to being useful and pleasant to each other.

I like to say that employed individually and without complexity and integration into a brand’s persona, these approach models simply create brand ephemera

Get the mix right:

and you’d move your brand beyond the five minute fling and into something that would last.