Another post on the limits of my creativity

Three projects to describe here

In the weeks leading up to Canada Day, I helped the residents of my Long Term Care Home make papier mache, uh, blobs. Most were just wrapping balloons with the paper soaking in flour water but one had some shape with four legs and a head. One failure here is that the residents often have limited mobility and could not do a lot. Mostly, we chatted while my coworker and I did the work. The residents did more of the painting afterward. The papier mache was touched up and finished by my coworker and I. I gotta say, my coworker did more, and better, painting than I. I got the job done while she got the job done well. Perhaps we complement each other.

I joked that I was going to fill the pinatas with the residents' medications but instead we went with more traditional fillings - sugar free chocolate and candy and hair clips. Okay, hair clips might not be traditional but, especially in this time of CoVID, nobody is coming in to cut the residents' hair and the clips are very useful.

Success and failure: Most of the work was done by staff rather than residents. I don't know if lower tables would help so the residents could be 'over' the activity rather than reaching forward to it.ergonomically, their positions in wheelchairs wasn't ideal. Residents were able to paint solid colours but due to palsy or other issues could not paint details well. We staff did a lot of touch up on the papier mache and then a lot of other work on them. I am still working on crafts that residents do the majority of the work. One success was in breaking them open on Canada Day. We hung two from the ceiling and gave the residents foam paddles. A well aimed blow would tear the pinata open but instead, basically a game of tetherball started with the residents batting the increasingly battered bee back and forth to each other. We will use some of the other papier mache creations and find some version of a tetherball that is heavy enough and also gentle enough when impacts occur.

The second activity in the image above was a 'graduation ceremony' for new hires at the LTC Home that missed their actual ceremonies due to CoVID. One coworker went out of her way to say she was sad that she missed her grad. So, Brian to the rescue!

I learned a few things about the young staff that missed their grads, called a few parents up and arranged a ceremony in the Home. A lot went well and a lot did not and this was a unique event; I do not expect a second chance to get it right. So that was my big problem with it; that I wasn't able to sort out all the issues and problems that could happen, that I didn't work it through in my head, or that I didn't have someone edit my ideas to point out possible problems.

Here's what happened.

I prepared the robes and everything else in secret, then sent my coworker away on an errand. In the ten minutes she was away, I cleaned out part of the dining room of all the tables and found enough residents awake to fill it up. I also hung grad decorations on the walls and prepared the computer and so on.  For clothing, I secretly changed from shorts and a Hawaiian shirt to good pants, a shirt and tie. Good stuff! First problem; in moving all those tables on the hottest day of the year to that point, I soaked through my shirt, leaving huge dark stains across my stomach and back.

We had mortarboard hats and 'grad' sashes for a previous activity and I got the grads into PPE robes in place of more traditional ones. I played Pomp and Circumstance and lead the graduates into the dining room. The ceremony went fairly well although my voice was far squeakier than I thought - listening to the recording was embarrassing. And I did not explain fully to the residents what was going on. Otherwise, it went very well. 

Very well on the third floor, that is! Our LTC Home has two floors of residents and we keep them the floors separate - even staff do not mix much. So once the third floor was done, I raced downstairs to do it again on the second. This was faster, clumsier and all round messier. In my defence, my manager who would have taken some of the tasks, was away unexpectedly.

So I say this was well thought out but not as well executed as I would like and I will not have a chance to repeat it.

The final activity I have been working on that has required creativity is shuffleboard. Not the table top version with small discs you slide across a waxed surface but the larger floor one where you push larger discs with a pole. Below are some of the discs I cut from a 1 X 8 and the launcher that will soon go on the end of a pole. The discs are not done and also not all that round but that gives a few residents a job to do this week. We have two fairly able bodied residents who would otherwise have access to out of doors but because of CoVID are trapped inside. They should be able to use sand paper and smooth out these discs. The cutting and shaping on my end took nearly two hours. This is in part due to not having the best or proper tools for the job. I don't want to give so much free labour to my job but in this case, again because of CoVID, I needed something to do aside from feel lonely. This work helped me and will help residents. Time well spent!

TWIC: designing a workable UI, implications are everything, Scalzi, science fiction history, sound effects, business

Steve Schoger explains and demonstrates fixing the design of a user interface. This is the sort of lesson I need. I am the sort to make a workable device with cool features but without obvious design or planning for how it will be used.
---
Never state what you can imply.
---
Scalzi is socially conscious.
---
Taking notes on how Stephen King writes. Each of the points below has examples and discussion that I snipped. Follow the link for all the details:

Stephen often writes about the antagonist and the protagonist. He follows both stories....
He dedicates chapters for character development. ...
He ends most chapters with a cliffhanger. ...
He shortens his sentences when there is action....

---
Writing prizes for Canadians, by the CBC.
---
I have Scapple, made by the same people who make Scrivener, the word processor that writer's rave about (as a wannabe writer, I only mention - it takes a while to learn how to use).  Ah, back to Scapple. It is a sort of mind mapping program. I am not sure how to use it efficiently - drawing such things on paper feels more natural for me. My internet friend Gord Sellar found a good use for it.
---
Youtube series on history of science fiction writing. This is the most recent video. These videos run 6 to 9 minutes.


---
Radio sound effects from BBC.

These 16,016 BBC Sound Effects are made available by the BBC in WAV format to download for use under the terms of the RemArc Licence. The Sound Effects are BBC copyright, but they may be used for personal, educational or research purposes, as detailed in the license.

---
Surviving Creativity is a podcast by a trio deeply involved in making comics. The most recent podcast is about how superhero movies have made billions but super hero comics have not profited much thereby. The discussion is a deep dive into the subject and Scott Kurtz is upset. The main point I took from this episode was that creative businesses need to innovate constantly. Comic book distribution has not done so in the US.
---

---

TWIC: Nano prep, computer design, dinosaurs

This week's online workshop on preparing for Nanowrimo focused on Worldbuilding.
World building questions to help you visualize your setting.
Elements of setting.
A map generator I wasn't previously aware of.
I previously mentioned Jerry's Map, a map he has been building for decades of a land that does not exist. Here is his blog. And his website.
Thinking about setting. An ESL worksheet.
A setting worksheet. Here it is shrunk a little:

A reminder for me: The Chatnano commands for Timmy.
---
In other news:
Google is designing with an eye to fun while Apple is designing with minimalism in mind. I don't know a lot about computers although I have a Windows notebook and an Apple desktop. I should note the differences but I don't use the Mac much - I like it and it has lasted longer than I had expected but my son is always on it. Anyway, The style and features of my Acer computer running Windows 10 are what I imagine they need to be or should be or have to be. I haven't put any thought in to what they could be or what could be different. So articles like this get me considering different options.
---
Dinosaur Art has its problems but it is not guesswork.

We’re also stacking up fossils with preserved skin and other forms of soft-tissue, giving us direct insight into tissue types and bulk in certain species, as well as evolutionary maps of anatomical evolution. With these, we can make ever tighter predictions about, say, whether a dinosaur was covered in feathers or scales. Sometimes, we get it wrong, as we might have for Tyrannosaurus. Recently described Tyrannosaurus skin impressions suggest that – contrary to all its closest relatives and the expectations based on them – Tyrannosaurus was probably mostly or entirely scaled, and not covered in fluff as we’ve recently assumed. What this tells us is that tyrannosaur skin evolution was more complex than we thought, with some earlier species having feathers, but later species losing some or all of them. But rather than sobbing over the need to scrub feathers from older artwork, artists can be happy about this: our data has taken a step forward, and all future artwork of Tyrannosaurus can be just that little bit more accurate.

---
Characters. Tips on writing exciting ones.
---
Setting.
---
Bad (and some good) writing advice.
---
Originality in story telling. Is it possible?
---
In important but not necessarily creativity-related news, Canada's spy agency has released a malware-fighting tool. I don't understand such things well enough to know if I should download and attempt to use it but for those in the know, it's available.

TWIC: Malahat, education, copyright, productivity

I've added Canadian literary magazine Malahat to the sidebar.
---
Brains and education. More ESL related but how to learn and teach better must involve creativity to some extent.
---
How to copyright a book.
---
Design and book covers.
---
Productivity vs hours worked. I think my writing productivity would improve with fewer hours at the computer.
---
10 tumblr blogs full of writing tips.
---
Medieval fantasy map generator.
---

TWIC: Holy ... It's already Sunday, the danger of social media

It's already Sunday and I haven't prepared a This Week In Creativity yet!

This stroller looks satisfactory but also homemade. I am not complaining about the amateur design but rather impressed with the reasoning and logic behind all the design features. and also that I might be capable of building something similar if I needed to.


---
Why haven't I been keeping up with events for my blog? I guess beautiful weather has something to do with it. At my surprisesaplenty blog I share some photos of a recent cycling trip in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.
----

Amateurs and Professionals.
I dream about being a professional writer. I really should buckle down and just write.

I used to write a few hours on a random Saturday every third week of the month. I never got better, and I couldn’t understand why. Then I started writing 500 words a day for as little as twenty to thirty minutes per day. Within a year, I had found my voice. 

Frequency trumps quantity. It’s better to work a little toward mastering your craft every day than a lot once in a while. John Grisham knew this, too: he wrote his first novel in small pieces, during the only free hour he had before work every morning. By the time he was done, three years later, he’d created a new genre: the legal thriller.

What if he’d decided it was too painful to get up to write at 5:00am every day? What if he’d given into the overwhelming feeling of writing a novel on top of 70-hour work weeks? What if you decide the same?

I like a lot about this article but I wonder what "the overwhelming feeling of writing a novel" is.
---
The BBC tells us that idle moments are crucial for creativity. The article starts by noting that passengers on flights from some countries to the US cannot access electronic devices and how galling those 11 hours will be without being plugged in. Then,

“My most creative moments come when my brain is allowed to rest,” says Megan King, a graphic designer for the architecture and engineering firm exp Global Inc. As a designer, King is expected to come up with new, compelling ideas all the time. “Sometimes I’ll spend all day working on a project and I’ll feel that I never quite created something that I’m really happy with,” King says. “I’ll get a good night’s sleep and [the next day], get something done in 15 minutes that is more innovative.”

But “I’m addicted to my smartphone,” she says.

A few years ago, when I really got into running, I needed, desperately needed, some audio to distract me from the monotony of running. As I got more into it, I adjusted my playlists, even deliberately adding a few mp3 files of 5 minutes of silence.

The BBC article discusses being taking breaks from screen time but with my hand writing I don't care to use notebooks for more than organizing notes. I can fill a few pages with text in a pinch but there are often real problems with rereading them later -even for me, the author! Still, I think it is time for me to set some limits for social media. I like blogging and feel this is a sort of creative outlet or place to organize my thoughts. I need to put more time into actually writing blog posts rather than these TWICs, which are mostly cut-and-paste. And yet sometimes they are all the content I produce here.

My friends and family are scattered across the globe so if I stopped using Facebook some friends would wonder if the North Koreans had started to attack. Still, I can definitely cut down on time there.

Feedly will be the toughest thing to cut back on. It is the source for much of my TWIC material and a place where I choose what news I want to read.

I shouldn't leave this for later. I might change this plan but as of now, I will be on Facebook for ten minutes morning and evening and on Feedly for the same period (another ten minutes, not the same ten). Quora will get ten minutes every other day. On rainy days and weekends, I can spend more time on social media but only when I set a limit before starting.

TWIC: World building, animation, infographics, note-taking, Gangwon animals,

Man! I read a post at Tor on authors who were great world-builders and decided I wanted to introduce the subject by mentioning Zelazny's alien religion that allowed avatars to create worlds but actually finding the name of the religion or the aliens took a long time. Zelazny wasn't on the list of world-builders, by the way and the religion and/or the aliens were Pei'ans.
Anyway, the article would be better described as Five Classic Female Authors Who Were Great at World Building and it is a great list. I now want to go back to the stories by these authors I read in the eighties.
---
Animation and Disney's Multi-plane camera. I have heard of animation cells but didn't know how they worked. This usage of them is wonderfully ingenious while also appearing totally obvious. I love the confluence of "That's amazing" and "That clearly follows".
---
I was interested in trying to make an infographic or two last year and found the exercise more difficult that I had imagined. Lining up words and explanation with a coherent image is not easy. Nat Geo's infographics and Best Maps of 2016. A chunk of one from the first link:

---
An interview with Al Jaffee.

---
Not entirely related to creativity but definitely to curiosity. Why build a fort in a star shape?
---

This subject could be a full post and may be at some time. For now, I am busy at an ESL and science camp and don't have the time.  At Quora, someone asked about the best distraction-free and minimalist writing tool. So far, a few software tools have been offered. The third, suggestion was, obviously, pen and paper. This made me think about my own actual writing (as opposed to typing) and the posts I've seen in several places for Bullet Journals. That link offers the best rundown on what they are although this one might have more in-depth information - I have a terrible internet connection here so there is a lot I can't see.  That latter link describes it as an analog system for the digital age.

From this site (the second one in the paragraph above) comes a quick intro to Bullet Journaling:

Bullet journal: a method of journaling and note-taking that uses bullet points as the core structure
Index: a table of contents that you update as you go
Daily Log: shit you did and/or need to do today (+ other observations)
Monthly Log: traditional month calendar + shit you need to do that month + shit you forgot to do last month
Rapid Logging: symbols that help you get that shit done
Future Log: year-at-a-glance calendar where you can put events, goals, and long-term shit you need to do

You can use any journal or notebook you want. You deliberately lock a few pages into 'modules' or specific uses. The common or required ones are: index and various calendars (year and month) but I might also devote a set number of pages to Running and Book Notes. 'Camp' is too big a subject and handier for me to take those notes as the need arises. The system also includes various symbols so that you to-do lists carry more information with fewer characters (this is the 'rapid logging' mentioned above).

I have always kept my journal as a sort of commonplace book. That is, I am now more aware of what a Bullet Journal is than I ever was of the specifics of a commonplace book. Indeed, that Wikipedia link, which I have just read more closely, quotes John Locke: " Commonplace books, it must be stressed, are not journals, which are chronological and introspective."  Mine is mostly chronological and the only connection I now see with a formal commonplace book is the wide variety of material I include in them.

More on Commonplace Books:

[The author is giving an example of a historic event he found interesting] He [an Athenian general] continued to interrupt and contradict the other generals. Finally, the Spartan general threatened to strike Themistocles if he didn’t shut up and stop. “Strike!” Themistocles shouted back, “But listen!”
When I read this, I immediately began a ritual that I have practiced for many years–and that others have done for centuries before me–I marked down the passage and later transferred it to my “commonplace book.” Why? Because it’s a great line and it stood out to me. I wrote it down I’ll want to have it around for later reference, for potentially using it in my writing or work, or for possible inspiration at some point in the future.
In other posts, we’ve talked about how to read more, which books to read, how to read books above your level and how to write. Well, the commonplace book is a thread that runs through all those ideas. It what ties those efforts together and makes you better at each one of them.

---
Since I mentioned I am working at a science camp, here is a little cutie we found in the forest:

---

Stephen King's ten rules for success (video).

After my discussion above, he is anti-notebook.
---

Harvard's digital photo photo course (free).
---

Creator of Zelda games discusses how he designs games.

---

TWIC: online class, design, research, scheming, night vale

The university of Iowa has an online class on How Writers Write Fiction.

How Writers Write Fiction 2016: Storied Women will bring together beginning and experienced writers for the study and practice of writing fiction. Class videos, readings, and writing assignments will invite new writers to experiment with the creation of fictional characters, scenes, and stories. Advanced writers will be challenged to examine their convictions and to refine and expand their craft. Centering on character - the characters created by women writers and the female characters created by all writers - this MOOC will lead participants through a progressive study of how authors from around the world approach each aspect of writing fiction.
October 12, 2016 - November 22, 2016

---

Another class is offered The Open University and starts (well started) on October 3.

Start Writing Fiction focuses on a skill which is central to the writing of all stories and novels – creating characters.
You will listen to established writers, such as Louis de Bernières, Patricia Duncker, Alex Garland, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tim Pears, Michèle Roberts and Monique Roffey, talk about how they started writing. You’ll consider the rituals of writing and the importance of keeping a journal.


You’ll learn how to develop your ideas and the importance of reflecting on writing and editing, and you’ll hear other writers talking about their approaches to research and consider ways of turning events into a plot.

---
From Boingboing, Designing the Future of Work and Design Fiction. The latter appears to be a Gedankenexperiment, an attempt to imagine what effects a new technology will have.
---
Grammar Snobbery and why you shouldn't engage in it.
---
The following are not strongly related to creativity but do share some characteristics.

Some of the history of free/open software. I use OBS and Audacity and am grateful to have powerful tools at my disposal.
-
One free/open piece of software that seems interesting is Cryptpad, which attempts to make a sahred word processor similar to Google Docs but with the text fully encrypted.
-
I have discussed my lack of productivity as connected to a lack of creative stuff. Maybe I need to sleep less. An article on those who don't need as much sleep.
---
A dissection of a scheme to scam millions from Amazon. I think, though it is unclear to me, that the person used various Amazon Prime (is that the name of the account that allows you do download unlimited books?) accounts to download 'books' - terrible messes similar to a cat walking across the keyboard - for which he received royalties.
---
Doctorow on the success of Welcome to Night vale.

Stories become great by hacking your brain. Nothing that happens in fictionmatters. The people in fiction are fictional so their triumphs and tragedies have literally no consequence. The death of the yogurt you doomed to a fiery death in your gut-acid this morning is infinitely more tragic than the "deaths" of Romeo and Juliette. The yogurt was a alive and then it died. Romeo and Juliette never lived in the first place.
Stories trick your naive, empathic mind into resonating in sympathy (literally) with the plight of their imaginary people. Usually they do this by scrupulously avoiding any reminder that these are imaginary people. That "willing suspension of disbelief" is a bargain between the creator and the audience: the creator tells the tale and hews to something that is plausible (or at least consistent) and the audience member doesn't pinch herself and say, "Cut it out with the quickened heart, the leaking tears, the smiles of triumph, you dope, this is all made up!"

I have been satisfied with Welcome to Night Vale, but not thrilled. Well, I have some long drives coming up, maybe it is time to dive in and binge listen. Their website is here.

TWIC: Sci-Am, Quora and Boingboing

In the previous post, I introduced my growing addiction to Quora a well-done Q&A site.  Here are some of the things that caught my eye there:
POV in Fantasy novels.

HOW CAN I MASTER POV? (Head hopping included)
There are a lot of facets to improving one's understanding of POV:
1. Syntax - the grammar and language rules of POV
This is the type of book learnin' foreign to many non-schooled writers.
2. Mode - the choices you're free to make WITHIN the rules
These are the different POVs, and different modes have different impacts.

I think 'head hopping' is changing the Point of View too often in a scene.
---
A link to the Creative Writing feed.
There are currently questions about routines, writing classes, cliches and flaw and one person looking for help in telling his/her 15 year old daughter she is a bad writer.  For this latter request, I was impressed with the sympathy in the answer:

You want what's best for your daughter.
The writing students who go on to publication and success often aren't the ones you expect. Talent by itself doesn't mean much (although it helps).
Teachability is what's important -- it doesn't matter how bad you are in the beginning if you keep on learning and improving, if you develop a strong feel for your audience. You don't have to be gifted to achieve a clean, workable prose style. What's more important is an ability to understand the elements of story and how to construct a good one. (There are many amazing prose stylists who are lousy, boring, incompetent storytellers. Writing and storytelling inform each other, but are not the same thing.)

---
Sympathetic is my keyword for describing the writing at Quora.  People do give thoughtless responses but it feels they are less common there.  My writing has improved in trying to honestly and clearly answer questions there.  Of course, as a white, middle-aged English speaker, I figure I have all the answers anyway so the site is perfect for me to educate the world.
---

From Sci Am, does creativity decline with age?

 First, the precise relation between age and creativity depends on the domain. Some creative types—such as lyrical poets and mathematicians—tend to have early peaks and relatively rapid declines, whereas others—among them, historians and philosophers—are prone to later peaks and gradual, even negligible declines.

The article seems to look at when people have their creative peak, which is different from when their maximum creative ability is.  I took up wood carving in my forties and my peak is likely to be in my fifties but that doesn't seem to equal when my biological peak should be.  To put it coarsely, if a man or woman is celibate until they are sixty, his/her actual sexual peak will be in his/her sixties but his/her biological peak would be long past.
---
Sci-am on designing buttons and options on websites:

Step count matters. One click is always easier to learn and remember than several.
A classic example: If there are only two or three choices—say, Sleep, Restart and Shut Down—don't put them in a pop-up menu. Lay them all out on the screen; you have the room. Pop-up menus in general should be a last resort because nobody knows what options are in one until someone thinks to click it. And that's another step.

At a university I worked at, to enter each grade score for each student required four mouse-clicks. I understand that some operations - Delete All - need an extra warning step, but most operations do not.  I had hundreds of students and four or five scores to enter for each one.  It was better than handwriting the details, but not much and so much better was possible.
---
Moving to Boingboing on Design Discipline. They link to medium.com and rules for design.

8. Feedback mechanisms.
It is hard to negotiate with algorithms, and most platforms do not have HR departments for handling everyday issues workers encounter, from late payment to unfair reviews. Platforms need to establish feedback mechanisms and equivalents of customer support services for those working on them. “If I were starting an Internet company or designing an app for something,” one of our respondents commented, “I would say that we must have phone customer service 24/7.” As platforms come to dominate more sectors of the economy, customers and workers alike will come to expect effective means for providing feedback.

---
B'Boing also tells us how to make Escher-style tiles.
---
B'boing also has news of unusual sources for research.  A motel owner spied on his renters for 30 years! - and kept meticulous notes.

True to his word, Foos had taken meticulous notes, filling reams of paper with his observations of cheaters; closeted gay people; swingers; forbidden interracial couples; gigolos; feuding holiday makers; fetishists, and more, across a wide swathe of human sexuality. Foos's notebooks -- which he began to send to Talese -- were full of self-serving and increasingly cynical and detached observations in a mock-clinical style that chronicled Foos's slide into a kind of obsessive misanthropy that left him hating the people he couldn't look away from.

Quora Man! and TWIC: design, infographics, simple text editors and writing about women

I've been spending way too much time on Quora these days, but I think my writing has improved as a result.  I'm sure Quora has an official description but I think of it as a thoughtful Yahoo Answers! or the like.  In my writing there, I have tried to explain things clearly and sympathetically to the person asking the question and those with similar questions.

I wrote 'sympathetically' because I spent most of my time answering questions about evolution and i try to imagine the (entirely anonymous) questioner as seriously asking and willing to learn.  That is not always the case away from Quora and admit with embarrassment that my responses have gotten hot and sometimes even rude.

I am one of the top ten answerers, as voted by readers, in Evolution (process) and am quite proud of the fact. Many times, I see the problems with my writing but here is an example of positive reviews of my writing.  I'm posting it here so I can remind myself that I can write well, damnit!   Here is my top essay there:

Science:

Is evolutionary theory falsifiable?

Again, please stay on topic without mentioning theistic arguments or involving God in the discussion. Please answer scientifically or logically... Many failed to do so in previous similar questions...


Brian Dean, science enthusiast and evolution proponent
35.6k Views • Brian is a Most Viewed Writer in Evolution (process) with 30+ answers.


There are two major or popular ways to falsify the theory of evolution. First, the famous 'rabbit in the Precambrian' fossil and second, far less famous and more recently proposed, finding two but not three or four species with a common ancestor containing the same viral DNA at the same location. I will give more detail on these points, but first I want to offer sympathy with your question.

The Theory of Evolution has changed and adapted and itself evolved over the past 160 odd years that it sure seems that nothing can falsify or disprove it. Lack of fossil evidence? ... Well, uh, Punctuated Equilibrium. Natural Selection isn't enough on its own to allow evolution of all the diversity we see? ... Well, uh, Sexual selection, Genetic Drift and Founder Effect can be used to patch over the flaw. 

More specifically, the theory of evolution somehow explains the human reproduction strategy of having few offspring and caring for them nearly forever and the salmon strategy of having thousands of eggs and not caring for them at all. (Note these are termed K- and r- selected strategies are are well explained here: K and r reproductive strategies ) 

Here I will say remind readers that I am an evolution proponent and described the above difficulties with acceptance of the theory as examples. Punc Eek does explain the fossil record pretty well, for example. 

The problem for evolution is that there are so many different strategies for success. Just as the US Navy does not use aircraft carriers exclusively, but rather a wide variety of craft suited to different purposes, small, simple living things succeed in situations where larger, more complex living things do not, and vice versa. 

Further, the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and made room for mammals to grow and diversify has no place in the theory. The diversity of life is a complex mess and further confusion is added by inorganic events. 

All that said, back to my two claims on how the theory of evolution could be falsified or proven wrong. 

The "Fossil rabbits in Precambrian deposits" suggestion was an offhand one made by J.B. Haldane (Wikipedia tells me this may be untrue: Precambrian rabbit ) and can be expanded to mean any mammalian fossil found in rock over 250 million years old. From that same link are some reasons why such fossils might not disprove evolution:
" The first question raised by the assertion of such a discovery would be whether thealleged "Precambrian rabbits" really were fossilized rabbits. Alternative interpretations might include incorrect identification of the "fossils", incorrect dating of the rocks, and a hoax such as the Piltdown Man was shown to be."
Still, something of this sort would cause great problems for the theory. 

The discovery that viruses can and do insert occasionally their own genetic material into Eukaryote chromosomes is relatively new. The image below is slide 17 of this lecture PPT set: Bio%201130 c%203 19%20lecture

If Chimps and Bonobos shared the same bit of viral DNA and we did not, that would be no problem for the theory but if Gorillas and chimps carried the same viral DNA and we did not, this would be a serious problem for the theory. Or, if humans and gorillas carried the viral DNA but chimps or bonobos or both did not, we would have the same problem. There is evidence -somewhere and I cannot find the link or citation - for gorillas and orangutans that share the DNA of a specific virus that we humans do not have. Further study (again, going from memory only) showed the viral DNA was on different chromosomes and although from the same type of virus were different segments (gorillas had section A of the viral DNA and orangutans has section G, while the shared ancestor DNA should be of the same section), implying that there were two separate viral DNA insertion events. 

I would suggest a third thing that would prove evolution false would be eyeless vertebrates.... wait, there's a catch. There exist eyeless fish but these cave-dwellers actually have eyes that are covered by flesh. If a mammalian species were found to have no eyes and no vestiges of ancestors with eyes or genes for eye development, this would be a huge problem for evolution. 

Finally, and I am brushing against your limit against mentioning religion here, if we ever found the creatures that some creationists think evolutionists need, that would disprove evolution hard! I am writing about the 'croco-duck' the 'Bird-dog' and the 'bull-frog' that were championed by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. And also the 'frunkey', that one creationist felt should exist between frogs and monkeys. 

As a test to the asker:
"Please answer scientifically or logically... Many failed to do so in previous similar questions."
Can you link to such an example?

------

135 design facts - in slideshow form, but still interesting.  There is a lot about fonts which isn't my favorite, but other subjects are also covered.

via Kottke.
---

At Nik's Learning Technology Blog, Nik looks at software to make interactive infographics.  I want to do this now.
---
Randall Munroe makes the XKCD comic and also has written a few books explaining various scientific ideas. A recent book described many concepts and technologies using only the 1000 most common words. I like the challenge of the idea but my understanding is that many circumlocutions were required to work around the limitation.  Such tricks do not always make the subject matter clearer.  Again, I like the idea but I probably won't use it with my ESL students who are themselves limited to a similar vocabulary.  If I wanted to, I could:  There is now a text editor that restricts you to those most common words.
---
Iggy Pop explains American Valhalla.
---
How to write about scientists who are women. Tip: Don't ask about clothes or cooking.

TWIC: Sleep, read, donate, build, dig, learn, understand, archive

I'm hitting Boingboing pretty hard today:

Sleep in a Van Gogh painting in Chicago.

---
Donate to a workshop for young horror, fantasy or science fiction writers.
---
Read how Gibson wrote Neuromancer.
---
Build your own boardgame.

Junior Game Inventors Kit. The kit includes everything you need to start building a game: a pre-cut box, a blank folds-to-square game board, paper to cover box and board, nine pawns, a pair of standard dice, a 12-sided numbered die, 56 blank cards, and a bundle of play money. You can also purchase a la carte from a long list of goodies. I added a money tray, a set of ten chipboard blanks, and ten stands to the basic kit. They offer an Advanced Game Board Inventors Kit as well, with a mind-boggling array of pieces.

I enjoy requiring my students to make a boardgame for homework. I think they enjoy it, too.  For simplicity's sake, I usually just supply dice and square Post it Notes in a variety of colours.  I need to work on game pieces to move through the game.  Most student-made games start as variations of Snakes & Ladders and grow from there.

---
Dig through Europeana archive of videos, sounds, books, and artwork - millions of items to be found here. Via B'boing.

I will also note here that I have gone through my own archive and labelled my links to the many archives I've featured.
---
Learn how to write award-winning magazine articles.
---
Understand the appeal of the ampersand.

symbols to last 10,000 years

Word Count
Jan 6: 0
Jan 7: 0

Jan 8: 740 words

---

Nuclear waste, whether from medical equipment, power generation or bomb-making materials, can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.  Where can you put it?  How can you keep people away from it?  From 99% invisible:

Storing something safely forever is a huge design problem; in fact, the jury’s still out on whether WIPP has solved the basics of the storage problem at all. In February 2014, a leak was detected that exposed several workers to radiation, and WIPP has been closed since. The Department of Energy now predicts that it could be up to three years before WIPP is fully operational again.

We know these facts because we can look them up and read the news in a shared language. The problem that the aforementioned panel was convened to address was how to communicate information to people 10,000 years in the future.

This WIPP site is going to be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, though this panel was only responsible for keeping this place sufficiently marked for humans for the next 10,000 years—thinking beyond that timeframe was presumed to be impossible.

From the similar Human Interference Task Force:

Three parts of any communication about nuclear waste must be conveyed to posterity:

• that it is a message at all 

• that dangerous material is stored in a given location
• information about the type of dangerous substance

Hmm.  This figure is apparently around 30,000 years old.

Wikipedia has more on stone fertility goddesses.

If this figure is recognizable after such a length of time, then making a symbol meant to last 10,000 years doesn't seem impossible.  From one of the above links, Carl Sagan suggested a skull-and-crossbones type of symbol; maybe a sickly figure would be as recognizable as the above is of womanhood.

I am not convinced that, now that we have written language, we will lose it again or lose the ability to read ancient scripts.  Still, 'maybe' is not good enough regarding the poisonous power of nuclear waste.  It would be better to be sure.

TWIC: self-diagnosis of epilepsy and whole lot more!

This summer, I noted the absence of two medical complaints that had appeared and disappeared mysteriously.

This condition started, I think, during a bout of food poisoning. between races to the toilet, I would relax and fall asleep. The dream would get weird and very realistic and I felt strong dejavu. Then my stomach would tighten and I would awaken trying to remember the dream.
But trying to remember also seemed like a trigger. For the next few years, I would be daydreaming and sometimes my train of thought would take me to a buried memory and as I tried to recall it, suddenly my stomach would cramp, I would feel weak and have trouble standing – just too tired. Then it would go away. I would get maybe five episodes over a day or a day and half and those episodes would start very intense but fade. I distinctly remember two things. 1) being afraid to remember something for fear it would trigger another attack and 2) trying to remember the scene or event that tantalized just before the attack.

I still don't know why they started or stopped but a writer being interviewed at A.C. Fuller's excellent Writer 2.0 podcast described having similar symptoms.  Turns out, deja vu can be caused by epilepsy!  At epilepsy.com, Mikey4 writes:

...tip me off to possible temporal lobe epilepsy after searching around a bit. They generally last about 10-20 seconds and are not accompanied by the same dread, or stomach discomfort, or fear, or happiness that seems to be common with many TLE patients, but they're also momentarily quite strong (and frustrating!) for me.

Kristin Seaborg, a doctor and the author interviewed by Fuller described similar sensations in her interview.  I don't know what this means for me. Seaborg was free of symptoms for many years so my current period without episodes doesn't mean that much.  Well, if I have another episode, I will know what to suggest to the doctor.

---

There are a lot of books and more that claim to improve a person's creativity.  I still don't know if any of them work but many of them have been handy and useful in my ESL classes if lacking in other value.  Working to link disparate words in the Central Word activity requires the creation of new sentences and, well, might improve creativity.

Luminosity's Brain Training games are now known not to cause cognitive improvement and the company has been fined millions for making such claims.

“Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease,” FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich said in a statement. “But Lumosity simply did not have the science to back up its ads.”

Again, I think lateral thinking puzzles and such can work as homework and improve fluency, so I'm happy to link to these examples.

---

This link might be the same as I recently gave regarding mnemonics, but it is via another source.  Joshua Foer via Kottke.

---

Sci Am says the key to creative greatness appears to be doing things differently, even when that leads to failure.

It’s a great myth that creative geniuses consistently produce great works.

They don’t. In fact, systematic analyses of the career trajectories of people labeled geniuses show that their output tends to be highly uneven, with a few good ideas mixed in with many more false starts. While consistency may be the key to expertise, the secret to creative greatness appears to be doing things differently—even when that means failing.

...

So how are creative masterminds so successful, if they don’t really know what they’re doing? Simonton’s extensive analysis of geniuses found two major factors to be critical in explaining the creative process of geniuses. First, creative geniuses simultaneously immerse themselves in many diverse ideas and projects. Second, and perhaps even more important, they also have extraordinary productivity. Creators create. Again and again and again. In fact, Simonton has found that the quality of creative ideas is a positive function of quantity: The more ideas creators generate (regardless of the quality of each idea), the greater the chances they would produce an eventual masterpiece.

---

Last year, I took a free creativity class online from Stanford University.  Going into it, I decided to adopt a 'student's mind'; that is, I worked to be positive and open to new ideas and to restrain my  sarcasm.  I was wise to do that and should keep working on the practice. 

Giving others the benefit of the doubt, then, may not invite deception; it instead seems to pay off—literally, Stavrova says: “So in most places in the U.S. and western Europe, being less cynical might be a better way to go.”

----

During the course, the professor lauded open offices.  I was skeptical at the time but they sure look nice.  Turns out, open offices are mostly terrible.

Maria went to a school with an open design. "Distracting at best and frustrating at worst," she writes, "wide-open classrooms went, for the most part, the way of other ill-considered architectural fads of the time, like concrete domes. The biggest problem with an open design, she writes, is noise. I agree with that. Wired magazine had an open plan and the constant noise and interruptions made it impossible to do actual work there

---

Con artists are master story tellers.

The lies described here were such that people feared to question them.  When a young woman in front of the Winnipeg bus station told me she needed money to go home, I was suspicious and didn't give her any.  If she had claimed sexual assault, I would have felt terrible if I were to ask questions or ask for proof.

---

Mark Frauenfelder has a course available on Skillshare.  I am sure it is a good one but I am more interested in the proliferation of online classes.  I have taken classes through Coursera and others that offer them from universities even though the classes don't always include university credit.  Skillshare doesn't seem to have any connection to universities.

Skillshare is a terrific online learning community for creative people. It teaches you new skills through well-made videos with great production values. I've been using Skillshare to teach myself Adobe After Effects. All the videos feature people who are professionals in their field. I love this site.

I found a cheap set of classes -also from Boingboing (Frauenfelder writes there) on public relations and the like.  I also registered for classes from 'goodriter' which were briefly free.  I'll be sure to describe what i think of their value once I find time to take them. I don't feel online classes have to be from a university to be valuable but I do trust the content more -even after describing my concerns with the creativity class I took. Does my reader (is it too much to hope for readers?) have any opinion on such classes?
Added Later: The Boingboing-promoted courses were with Stack Social and the goodriter classes were with Udemy.

---

Justin Green was a comic, uh, maker?  Author?  He made comics. They didn't pay the bills.  He went on to make signs in the final days of hand-lettering and hand-painting such things.  Then he wrote comics on the subject.  His comics are here.

The early strips tell how Green found his footing; including the one-thousand hours required to brush a perfect “O.” In later strips he requested techniques and stories from veteran brushmen. They offered priceless knowledge like how to mix your paint so it stays put under the hot sun or how much arm-twisting to apply when a client lets an invoice sit for too long. Some of these sign painters became recurring characters in “Sign Game,” and a few died during its run leaving these strips – and a few fading signs – as their final memorial.

---

Make a bicycle out of two Ikea stools!

---

Escape rooms are the new thing.  Earlier, I wrote about Altered Reality Games, a presentation I enjoyed from the 2015 International KOTESOL Conference.  They seem to have a few things in common.

...we met the six other players we were going to be locked in a room with. After a staff member explained the rules (no phones, no bathroom breaks, no brute force attacks on combination locks) we were led into a small room with a long table and a wall of old books. The door was locked behind us. We had one hour to figure out how to unlock the door and get out.
This is the smallest escape room yet, I thought. Were we going to spend an hour cramped together in here? I put the thought out of my head as I joined the others in going over the clues that would lead to the solving of the various puzzles. It didn't take long for us to crack the first puzzle. As soon as we did, one of the walls slid away to reveal a much larger room: the mysterious laboratory of of the Alchemist, an unseen evil being who was in the final stages of concocting a Philosopher's Stone to take over the world. It was our job to foil the Alchemist by solving a series of puzzles that would unite the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water and let us escape from the room before our time ran out.

---

I am still working on my steampunk book set in 1830's Italy (and elsewhere) and secret societies play a big part.  Boingboing describes a book of Secret Society art.

What is made most apparent is how deeply these societies are entangled with folk elements. Images of death and resurrection abound, as do beehives, goats, and of course the all-seeing eye. There is esoteric lore and mystery layered with mystery. As David Byrne says in his foreword to the book, “The obscuring layers are the content.” And yet, the humble often outsider nature of the examples in this book reveal the most startling truth about Freemasons and others secret societies: these are the homegrown fellowships of our ancestors, people looking for fraternity and the warmth of a lodge, often during our country’s most difficult times. These were simple men and women, not the secret rulers of the universe.

---

What is the next frontier for science fiction and fantasy?  Tyler Cowan, at Marginal Revolution, looks at an Economist article.  Briefly, the answers are caves and forest canopies.

---

I love used book stores and hope they do make a comeback.

TYIC: eclectic dump of links that barely relate to creativity research

This Year in Creativity: I normally do a This Week... feature but this post was so long, I felt it needed a broader title.

The fantasy I typically read is based on European mythology.  I have lived in South Korea for more than a decade so so I also read fantasy with Asian themes.  Can or does science fiction have a similar regional flavour?  Gord Sellar wrote a short story about the effects of climate change on African protagonists that showed to me it can. I think the story is Dhuluma No More. And an interview with Sellar that I now want to read.  Boingboing has a link to ten of the best African fantasy and Sci Fi stories.

--
Mnemonics is a crossover subject for me: it fits here in creative expression and also as something useful for my teaching career.  Here are two links from Boingboing: memorizing a deck of playing cards and how a pissing wolf can help your memory.  As a layperson in mnemonics, I gotta say you need to put a whole lot of work into the basics of the craft before it all becomes useful.
---
How have bicycles changed?  What will a future bike look like?  Kottke has an answer to the first question.
---
Science fiction authors Randy Rucker and Bruce Sterling discuss their work.
---
Guidelines for design of London Tube Stations.

1. Achieve balance across the network.

2. Look beyond the Bostwick gates.  

3. Consider wholeness.

4. Prioritise comfort for staff and customers.

5. Delight and surprise. Every Underground station should include at least one moment of delight and surprise, to improve customers' journeys and the working environment for staff. Such moments help put the network on the map, as a world-class leader of design. 

6. Use materials to create atmosphere.

7. Create ambience with lighting.  

8. Integrate products and services.

9. Prepare for the future.

---
How should we work in the future?  Industrial jobs are vanishing.  Flex time is increasing as is tele-commuting. What should the new dogmas be?
---
I mentioned Sellar earlier. He has a discussion on gamifying education.
---
Giving up a technology.  What would you give up?  Almost entirely unrelated, I wonder about giving up technologically obsolete phrases.  We should find new phrases for "Roll up/down a car's window" and "Rewind" when discussing digital video, "hang up" when ending a phone call...
---
A review of ways to Go gradeless in a traditionally graded school:

How does she [Starr Sackstein] and each of her students negotiate the final grade for the course?
How does she resolve any differences in opinion between her and a student when negotiating the final grade for the course?
Are individual assignments, products, projects, etc. negotiated as well? Do they receive a grade for each of these or just a final grade at the end of the course?
Is she really going gradeless if students are giving themselves a grade?

---
Computer generated novels. At least one of the 'novels' is a computer generated list of pixel colours on the cover of an edition of "The Sun Also Rises". ""Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Brass. Drab. Drab. University of California Gold. Brass. Brass. Dark tan. Dark tan. Dark tan. Brass. Raw umber. Raw umber. Coffee. Dark brown. Olive Drab #7."

Another story consists of parts of D&D adventure templates.

The Dragon of Nuria
A generated gamebook.
By Mark Rickerby for NaNoGenMo2015.
Prologue
Throughout your journey in these lands, you’ve heard subtle tales of a spreading shadow that grow more and more threatening as you get closer to the village of Nuria.
The stories tell of Ir, a horrifying green dragon whose foul magic is spreading throughout the air and water and poisoning the countryside. The villagers beseech you to help fight this menace before the darkness takes its toll.
Somewhere near Nuria is the entrance to Ir’s dungeon. Others have found riches in treasure there, though many are never seen again.
To search for the entrance and ENTER the dungeon, turn to §1.
§1
You step into a shrine. There is a monster here: GHOUL (STRENGTH: 10, STAMINA: 12). You must FIGHT. You gain initiative. You find a bag of exquisite diamonds here. If you defeat the monster, you can take the treasure.
To go SOUTH turn to §2
To go EAST turn to §17
§2
You step into a wrecked armory. You find a bag of precious emeralds here.
To go NORTH turn to §1
To go SOUTH turn to §3
To go EAST turn to §18

The rules of the computer generated novel contest require posted the code, so others with similar skills can see how you did it. Look here for Dragon of Nuria.
---
Cory Doctorow on Neil Gaiman's speech on how to maintain long-haul creativity.

It's easy to be creative in short bursts, but sustained (and sustainable) creative endeavor is hard and often tedious, and requires a bunch of habits that are damned hard to get into and easy to slip out of. In my own writing life, the transition from someone who could only write under inspiration to someone who wrote even when having "writers' block" (which just means that you don't like the words you're writing, and the answer is to write them anyway) was the most important thing that ever happened to me, professionally speaking.

---
I cannot get this drum machine to work.  Help, anyone?
---
I think it is a problem for a person to write on a subject they don't know well.  On the other hand, I have written a novel set in Nepal and another set in Italy.  I did spend a few weeks in Nepal but none in Italy. Anyway, I would like to set a story in historic Central America so this Sci Am article is interesting.  It is even interesting if I don't write such a story.

Archaeologists believe the elite sent their fine merchandise with a “middle-man”, in order to do business with the people. “If Cerén’s citizens believed the objects were too expensive, [the merchants] were not compelled to stay, and were free to take their merchandise to the next market, to try and get a better deal,” Gallardo says.

The information found at Cerén contradicts the hypothesis that the Mayan elites controlled every single aspect of society, including the economy, politics, religion, arts and sciences, during the Classic Period, which is considered one of the most productive stages of the Pre-Hispanic Era, between 250 and 900 AD.

----
The shed where Andy Rooney wrote.

I spent some time in Rensselaerville, New York, this fall, where Andy Rooney used to pass his summers. Not far from his home, he had a five-sided shed in which he did his writing. It had an AC unit stuck to the side of it and triangle-shaped windows on its roof. He called it the Pentagon.

---
Conductive ink spread with a standard ballpoint pen.

The ink, made of silver salt and adhesive rubber, sticks to various surfaces, and the resulting circuits stay conductive despite repeated bending. If the wiring breaks, retracing the lines would fix it. “It’s a very simple method to make hand-drawn stretchable circuits,” says Jun Yang, a professor of mechanical and materials engineering at the University of Western Ontario. “You can easily make wearable electronics,” he says. “Just hand draw a circuit to make a personalized T-shirt.”

---
Help learn about Shakespeare's time by transcribing period writings.

Citizen scientists can learn about the period by transcribing letters and ‘receipt’ (recipe) books in the first phase of the project. Later project organizers will add miscellanies, family papers, legal and literary documents. Along the way volunteers will find words that have yet to be recorded in—and will eventually be added to—the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary.

---
npr: Jane Golden: Making Art with each other, for each other. Autoplay audio.

public art: statues, murals, even graffiti
public art is not a thrill nor an extravagance

Alternative Realities Games and ESL

I've just finished day one of two of KOTESOL International Conference.  Some presentations were better than others but one, though not the best transfer of information seems the most interesting to build on in the next semester.

An Alternative Reality Game has many of the following elements: fictional narrative, interactive, transmedia (takes place in the real world and online in a variety of media), "This is not a game" mentality (don't break character), puzzles and codes.  The 1997 Michael Douglas movie, The Game, is an example and another one is given below.

Oh, the talk was given by Paul Starr of Seoul National University.  He gave a good talk that explained the basics but I don't think it got into the "Participants will then be asked to design some basic ARG elements for their own learning environments." part described in the conference guide.  To be fair, he had a lot to cover in a short time and I did become interested enough in the idea to want to learn more and that's gotta be an indicator of success.

I think I'm at three now:  On the third hand, he also included a code game on his handout so some of us ignored part of his talk to solve his mini game.

I teach various classes at my university and also run voluntary activities at the "English Cafe".  In the past, we've watched The Simpsons -with questions to be answered for a prize, played board games (again with prizes available) and every semester we have a scavenger hunt.  If I can get this going, next semester we will have an ARG instead of the Scavenger Hunt.

As my very first brainstormed ideas, I envision:

• Some kind of code or QR code in the official class information for ESL students.  Leading to...
• Posters randomly appearing on campus - at the English Cafe and elsewhere.
• Interruptions or notices during half-times of sporting events or school festival week.
• Directions to as many English locations on campus - the library has at least two floors with English hard cover books, the ESL profs' offices, the TOEIC testing room, ....

The big thing lacking is a narrative.  As a sci-fi/ fantasy fan, could it be the signals of a future Dongseo student trapped in time by an experiment in the engineering or medical training spaces?  Or is that too cliche?  Whatever, I want to do this.


ARGs on Dave's ESL Cafe

An old ARG that rests, slowly decaying, online.

Socks incorporated

Alternative Reality Gaming  Network
--------------------
Added October 20, 2015: An ARG to celebrate open access week at U of T library.

A concerned group of citizens is investigating a conspiracy hiding facts about the mysterious and controversial past of this masterpiece of brutalist architecture. At the same time a noble, if shadowy, society is working to keep its secrets hidden."
"Led by the University of Toronto libraries, Open Robarts is an alternate reality game celebrating the tensions between open access and the control of information. Designed by local Toronto artist David Oxley and author Mark Foo, Open Robarts explores themes of information and control, and is meant to draw attention to and celebrate open access forGlobal Open Access Week 2015. There are many ways into the game, even for non-locals. 

TWIC: City Flags, overwork and Camp Nano

Roman Mars of the 99% Invisible Podcast has also done a TED talk on City Flags and how poorly designed they are.  I have yet to see the video but I am not surprised; people often overestimate their skills in unfamiliar fields.  I can say the 99% Invisible podcast is informative and well-done.
---
Scientific American tells us that the exhausted brain is a creative one.

...it turns out that mental exhaustion from overwork can itself unleash creativity. When we are tired, our mind can be too weary to control our thoughts, and eccentric ideas that might normally be filtered out as non-relevant can bubble up, suggests a recent study by Rémi Radel at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France. This means that perhaps creative ideas can be hatched at the workplace, right when we feel drained from a mental overload.

I don't want to quote too much from the article; you should read it yourself.  In brief, though, 'exhausted' is a relative term.  Research subjects were given challenges with greater or lesser distractions and those that had to struggle to focus more were more creative in tests afterwards.

The technical term is 'inhibition'.  Rested minds inhibited their mental digressions while tired ones were uninhibited and brought new ideas to combine with the project at hand.

As for the tests:

First, they asked the students to enlist multiple, innovative uses for common objects, such as paperclip, newspaper, shoe. Next, they tested the students’ ability to connect unrelated words. They presented the students with a “priming word” followed by “target word” – for example, they flashed the word tiger followed by the word loni, jumbled from lion – and asked the students to vote whether the target word was a real or a non-existent word.

Finally:

Being creative is not just about achieving a state of low inhibition, which is probably what we get from alcohol or drugs, but about tweaking inhibition for brief stints without losing control.

---
I don't think it is a microscopically small camp, but it is a Nanowrimo Camp and it runs through July.  I don't know if I will formally enter it but I have prepared some writing goals myself and will share them here soon.

A chair from a champagne cork.

At Design Within Reach, people were challenged to make a chair from only the cork, foil and label and cage of one or two champagne bottles.  I like this entry from Michael Parker.

The entries were due between early December 2014 and mid-January 2015.  Time to think about this for next year.