I have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting with hundreds of students across the country, many of whom have struggled for years against severe depression, manic-depressive illness, or alcoholism. A disturbing number have nearly died from their suicide attempts. Rarely do their parents or professors have any idea of the extent of their suffering or what it takes for them simply to show up for class, take their examinations, or write their papers.
Kay Redfield Jamison

The following short TED talk is quite interesting — I have written some postings about/related to suicide on this blog (for example, about the “It get’s better” project or somewhat related the TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert), partly because I think that creative people are more prone to it than others, and it is a shame when a creative (or almost any other) voice is lost. The following talk highlights a problem that is usually not talked about, but felt deeply by those involved, by someone closely involved:

For me an eye-opening experience was reading the book quoted at the beginning of the posting: “Night Falls Fast — understanding suicide.” by Kay Redfield Jamison (1999, New York: Vintage Books). I sincerely think that suicide is an option and a freedom every person must have — one has the right but not the obligation to live, but I also think that in most cases suicide isn’t a “free” decision, it’s the symptom of an illness. People are driven to suicide by psychological disorders like depression or schizophrenia. It’s not a rational choice or freedom, but impaired judgment and a skewed world-view. It’s coercion, not freedom of choice. I can highly recommend Jamison’s book in this regard — it’s not nice to read, it’s not a book to enjoy, but it’s eye-opening.

I watched the TED Talk by Johanna Blakley about fashion recently and it blew me away. Which is surprising, giving that I always¹ wear black and I’m not that interested in fashion. But I like beautiful dresses on beautiful women and I thought it would be interesting.

It was, but not because it was about fashion, or beautiful women, — but because it was about copyright.

Apparently in the US, it’s very hard to protect fashion design. There is no copyright protection, only trademark protection, because dresses are too utilitarian to own.

And they profit immensely from it.

They have to be creative constantly, because their newest design will immediately be copied by other companies. It forces them to up their game, accelerates development and allows them “to paint with a broader pallet of design choices”. You can actually take from the best and ignore the rest — and get away with it!
Imagine if you could ignore copyright in other areas. The kind of innovation possible, the kind of creativity that would have to be done because the big players can’t simply rest on past successes.

It will not happen, of course, given that the big players have all of their processes adapted to the current model and could not cope with a need for rapid innovation. They’re heavy infantry that would be lost in the woods, while quick special forces like design project would outmaneuver them.

But it would be very nice.

You can find more information at http://www.readytoshare.org.

¹ Unless colleagues give me a green/black shirt for my birthday and I have to wear it at least once.

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
John Keating in “Dead Poets Society”

Again a TED Talk (well, they are really great) — this time about Design and why the lecturer (Marian Bantjes) thinks it’s a worthwhile pursuit in life. I really liked her analogy that “inspiration is cross-pollinating” — that art can inspire science and vice versa.

I stumble over a very good TED talk by Rory Sutherland (2010) about behavioral economics and the power of simple solutions. Very interesting. The presentation is actually the second one he did hold at TED (and he refers to his first one at the beginning). So you might want to have a look at this presenation first.

Just stumbled upon the following TEDTalk by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: “Inside a school for suicide bombers”. It’s … hard to watch. Unfortunately, yeah, these techniques do work. Luckily not with everyone, but with the majority.

Sure, there are dozens of questions you could ask, like “If being a martyr is so great, why are you still alive?”. But I agree with her as she said:

“If you grew up in these circumstances, faced with these choices, would you choose to live in this world or in the glorious afterlife? As one Taliban recruiter told me, ‘There will always be sacrificial lambs in this war.’”

And I would guess they have answers (and “reprimands”) for these questions. It’s like a sales person without any conscience and with a completely free reign.

I wonder how it would be possible to stop these atrocities. There are some interesting comments on the site and I guess the answer would be superficially similar to the problem: Education. But an education that values individual life and self-determination.

TEDTalks has a good presentation about the development of diagnostic tools for developing countries. Besides the interesting presentation style of George Whitesides, the way how the problem was solved and the thought processes involved are brilliant and enlightening.

Given the postings on feedback lately, I was reminded of one of the best TEDtalks I have ever seen: Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity. Gilbert talks about the expectations of success (and failure) after having published a very successful book and the ways to deal with these expectations. She is alone on the stage, pure talk, no Powerpoint, but what she says and how she says it is simply perfect.

(Yeah, I know, the placeholder image of the TEDTalk doesn’t look so well — don’t let it fool you, the talk is awesome!)