It’s good to be geek

April 19, 2012

Sing if your glad to be geek. Once seen as the nerdy character that everyone made fun of, it seems that geeks are the way forward. The Royal Society of Arts launches its Geek Manifesto on the 9th May in London. They say….

“There has never been a better time to be a geek. What was once an insult used to marginalize the curious has become a badge of honour. People who care about science have stopped apologizing for their interests, and are gaining the political confidence to stand up for them instead.

Whether we want to improve education or cut crime, to enhance healthcare or generate clean energy, we need the experimental methods of science – the best tool humanity has yet developed for working out what works. Yet from the way we’re governed to the news we’re fed by the media, we’re let down by a lack of understanding and respect for its insights and evidence.”

Mark Henderson, the newly appointed head of communications at Wellcome Trust, visits the RSA to explain why and how we need to entrench scientific thinking more deeply into public life. With over a decade of experience as the science correspondent for the Times, Henderson has seen it all, and plans to gather a new agenda-setting movement and turn it into a force our leaders cannot ignore.

You can register for a place here http://rsamarkhenderson-estw.eventbrite.com/

Curious about being curious?

April 18, 2012 — 2 Comments

It pays to be curious. Why? There’s a lot of research around that shows that curious people enjoy better health and tend to live longer; find more opportunities; find pockets of meaning in their everyday lives; enjoy more satisfying social relationships; and tend to report that they are happier than average.

If you want to find out just how curious you are right now, you can take the ‘Curious Explorer Inventory’, a questionnaire that will take you no more than a few minutes to complete. Here’s how….

1. Leave a comment (any comment) against this post

2. Click follow and leave your email address

3. We will send you a password and instructions

4. Shortly afterwards we will email your Curious Explorer Inventory Report.

By the way its free. Just in case you were curious.

50 Things to do before you’re eleven and three quarters

April 17, 2012 — 1 Comment

The National Trust is trying to encourage young people to get away from the TV and computer screen to rediscover the outdoors. You remember creepy crawlies, mud pies, that broken collar bone you suffered falling from a tree. Great stuff.

They’ve published a list of Fifty things to do before you’re eleven and three quarters and even though I passed that age long ago I feel pretty pleased with the number of ticks I’ve achieved. I have to cry foul though, finding a geocache was never an option in the olden days. In case you’re interested, here is the full list…..

• Climb a tree
• Roll down a really big hill
• Camp out in the wild
• Build a den
• Skim a stone
• Run around in the rain
• Fly a kite
• Catch a fish with a net
• Eat an apple straight from a tree
• Play conkers
• Throw some snow
• Hunt for treasure on the beach
• Make a mud pie
• Dam a stream
• Go sledging
• Bury someone in the sand
• Set up a snail race
• Balance on a fallen tree
• Swing on a rope swing
• Make a mud slide
• Eat blackberries growing in the wild
• Take a look inside a tree
• Visit an island
• Feel like you’re flying in the wind
• Make a grass trumpet
• Hunt for fossils and bones
• Watch the sun wake up
• Climb a huge hill
• Get behind a waterfall
• Feed a bird from your hand
• Hunt for bugs
• Find some frogspawn
• Catch a butterfly in a net
• Track wild animals
• Discover what’s in a pond
• Call an owl
• Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool
• Bring up a butterfly
• Catch a crab
• Go on a nature walk at night
• Plant it, grow it, eat it
• Go wild swimming
• Go rafting
• Light a fire without matches
• Find your way with a map and compass
• Try bouldering
• Cook on a campfire
• Try abseiling
• Find a geocache
• Canoe down a river

Photo: Matt de Waard.

The only living boy in New York

April 16, 2012

According to US academic Philip Meyer, by April 2043 there will be just one regular reader of newspapers in the whole of the USA, a country of 312 million people. The analysis based on the current rates of decline of newspapers and the onset of digital reading is regarded even by Meyer as optimistic he says “The industry would lose critical mass and collapse long before then” on the grounds that nobody would continue to serve the needs of just a small number of traditional readers.

Still here’s an idea for using up all of those redundant digital readers which will be the inevitable consequence of newspaper decline – we could eat our fish and chips off them.

The Flogsta Scream

August 5, 2011

Yes. I know. The Flogsta Scream sounds like they are showing horror movies in an IKEA furniture warehouse.

But it’s not that. It’s a curious thing that they do at Upsalla University in Sweden.

Each night, at the stroke of 10pm, students in the Flogsta halls of residence either stand on the roof or stick their heads out of the window and scream as loud and for as long as their lungs will allow them.

Surely tuition fees in Sweden can’t be that high? No. It’s down to a tradition that began in the 1970’s and has stuck ever since. A group of students, following a long hard winter, became anxious and depressed as it was followed by long hard examinations. With the price of alcohol in Sweden roughly twice the price of high-octane rocket fuel, they looked for a simple, inexpensive way to relieve their frustrations.

The Flogsta scream was born, and continues to this day. A simple, yet great tradition.

Which brings me to the importance of traditions. These are small, often inconsequential things, which give a sense of continuity, belonging and a sense of community. Being part of something that is bigger than ourselves, requires only that small things be continued and acknowledged by a group as being valuable. We should take more care of our small traditions.

One of our great British traditions that has been around since the 1970’s is the trip to IKEA. You buy some shelves and dive straight in failing to read the instructions. Three hours later you end up in a total mess, with something resembling a giant gardening rake, rather than a set of swish Scandinavian bookshelves. Humiliatingly, you have to retrieve the instructions from the bin and start again. It’s then that you see that they have given this pile of MDF a sophisticated Scandinavian name.

‘Flogsta’.

There’s only one thing for it. Time for the Flogsta Sccrrreeeaaammm…..

The Social Animal – A Story of How Success Happens

July 5, 2011

I’ve been reading The Social Animal.

 All on my own.

I’m not sure if that’s cheating or just downright rude, but I’ve found it a remarkable experience. The book despite being a New York Times Bestseller faced an uphill battle in the UK, when Prime Minister David Cameron advised all members of his Cabinet to read it. This immediately ensured that at least half the population would not.

It’s clear from recent Government policies that at least half the Cabinet did not either– or if they did they just didn’t get it. The Social Animal is an adventure into the unconscious mind, how it influences our behaviour and the impact it can have upon success – happiness, relationships, career.

It’s a story told through the lives of two fictitious characters that pauses every so often to consider findings from neuroscience, sociology and psychology. It sounds a bit heavy but it isn’t at all. It’s one of those rare books with the ability to make you laugh out loud one moment and fight back the tears the next, as your life is projected before you in ways you hadn’t seen it before.

It’s powerful stuff.

Are you paying attention Michael Gove?

Gentleman footballer – the antidote to soccer’s bad boys

June 4, 2011

I had the great good fortune to help Brad Friedel to write his autobiography. It was great to hear that Tottenham Hotspurs have signed him up on a two year contract which will see him still playing Premier League football at the age of 42.

We need people like Brad Friedel. In a game that is dominated by headlines about bad boys and prima-donnas, Brad is a true gentleman on the field and off it. His actions speak louder than all of the words written about others whose brains seem to be in their feet.

Every profession has its unsung heroes. People who get on with things and who try to help others without crying out for attention all of the time.

Let’s hear it for Friedel the quiet American, and people like him whatever their profession.

Is your stationery behaving itself?

June 3, 2011

I go to a fishmongers opposite this shop. Whilst ruminating on the merits of Manx kippers and Morecambe Bay potted shrimps I looked at across the road and discovered that stationery now requires a solution. I’d never thought of it as being a problem before. Now I know this I feel that I’m burdened with whole new set of problems that i didn’t know I had. What’s going to happen? An unused highlighter pen threatens an industrial tribunal on the grounds of colour prejudice?  Perhaps my compliments slips are going to insult people? Or my notepaper imagines its an international superspy “The names Bond…..Basildon Bond”.

Thank heavens for Stationery Solutions (It’s in Wilmslow in case you have any burning problems with your stationery). Perhaps that’s the solution. Burn it (uncooperative stationery that is, not the shop).

Coincidently I’ve just had an email from ‘Ironing Solutions’. Now that’s a problem.

Explore, dream, discover…..

May 29, 2011 — 2 Comments

He may have been most famous for his fictitious characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, yet  Mark Twain enjoyed a curious career path. At various times in his life, he was apprentice printer; typesetter; riverboat pilot; failed gold miner; journalist; author; public speaker; investor; and eventual bankrupt. He was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and royalty.

Anyone stuck for a great quotation knows that Twain’s bank of humour and great insight is likely to get you out of a jam. This one caught our attention…..

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the harbour. Explore. Dream. Discover”.

We like it. It sums up the philosophy of The School of Curiosity. We are creating a place for everyone who thinks that they could do so much more with their lives. We don’t set out to tell you what you should do and how you should do it – that’s for you to uncover. We are just people who have no intention of living with disappointment twenty years from now.

You?