Doing Science – Page 24 – ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

Outsourcing a Thesis

2015-01-17

I recently had a comment to the thesis writing with outlines posting. The person wrote about her unique method of outsourcing the draft. A comment/rant.
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The Power of Silence (and the little green (wo)man)

2015-01-14

The Thesis Whisperer has a beautiful posting about an anything-but-beautiful situation: A person working for a prof is being exploited and goes (almost) crazy due to the seriously impaired communication. Two short comments.
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Questionable Views in Academia

2015-01-12

There was an interesting question on stackexchange Academia regarding how to deal with the questionable views of a colleague and whether his prospective employer should be warned about them. I repost the question and one answer (mine) here.
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GoodReader iOS App is now able to easily read PDF files to you via Text-to-Speech

2014-11-15

GoodReader is a very good app to display PDFs and other files on an iPad or iPhone. With the latest update, you can even get it to read PDFs and text files to you.
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Recommendation: Mac Power Users 221: Academic Workflows with Aleh Cherp

2014-11-02

Mac Power Users recently had Aleh Cherp from macademic as guest on the show. It's a really interesting episode, not only if you are an academic.
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Using the Computer’s Text-to-Speech Feature as Proofreading Support

2014-11-01

It's hard to proof-read what you have written. You know what it should say, but will you notice when you have written something else? Or whether a construction is too complicated to be readable? The computer's text-to-speech feature can be helpful here.
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Creating Serendipitous Organizational Creativity

2014-10-30

An interesting comment about Steve Jobs and the way he build teams that were continuously creative.
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Self-Reflective Students

2014-10-06

A beautiful moment from Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" about enabling students to become more self-reflective.
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Another great idea bites the dust — How bad management can kill good creativity

2014-10-02

A short comment on how creativity can be strangled by the work environment.
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Loyalty is a two-way street — even in Academia

2014-10-01

Talking badly about one's "superiors" is seen very negatively. Sometimes righteously so, but there are cases where anything else than talking badly would be a case of slavish obedience.
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This is a private blog showing my opinions. If you have an issue with what I write here, either don’t read it or talk to me directly. Don’t waste your time — or mine — dragging my employer into matters where they hold no authority.

The institution I work for, or rather the people officially representing it, have already distanced themselves from this blog. I find this unnecessary, as I’ve clearly stated in the «About this Blog» section that this is a personal blog.

Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who lack the backbone to address their concerns directly and instead resort to passive-aggressive tattling to others. Such behavior strikes me as not only cowardly, but also spineless, gutless, and wholly unprincipled. Moreover, these efforts are as pathetic as they are futile.

That said, I might listen if you present compelling arguments and evidence, as constructive feedback is always welcome. Who knows? We might even both gain something valuable from the interaction.

A comment for those seeking to use this site for personal gain: Given the increase in requests, let me be clear. I write on this blog because I want to. It’s my hobby, my playground. Sometimes people point me to interesting products/services and I write about them. But any request regarding ads or sponsored placements ends up the trash without a reply. And if you think something would be of interest, differentiate yourself from the spammers by referring to a posting — in an intelligent way. (I get enough auto-generated mails to identify them immediately.)

BTW, posts can get updated after I published them if I spot spelling errors (not a native speaker) or think a different wording might improve precision and clarity.

This blog is not focused on a single topic, or method. As long as it is relevant to improving creativity (or allowing it in the first place), it's fair game.
Some postings on this blog deal with freedom, as I think that we need freedom of thought, of speech, of association, etc. pp. to solve mankind's problems. Thus, some postings may seem a bit remote when it comes to organizing creativity. Freedom is, however, the bedrock of creativity.
The heterogeneity of the postings can make reading this blog a bit cumbersome, at least if you are only interested in one topic. You can either use the search function (above), or use the categories or the tags to narrow down the postings you see.