Steal My Ideas, Please

It’s happened to me, it’s happened to my wife, maybe it’s happened to a lot of people. You take the pot off the stove and forget to turn the burner off. Generally, it’s no big deal … there’s nothing to catch fire. But wouldn’t it be safer to have burners that sense, “Hey, yo, there’s […]

Just suppose carrots could jump into your shopping cart. Or apples could climb down from the tree. Or tomatoes could flick away some insect pests. Would you still eat them? It’s easy to think of plant food as dead or at least unconscious, because, well, it is. But suppose by some mechanical / genetic / robotic […]

Inventions have intentions, and so can things. Or at least they can so succinctly personify an idea, they seem alive. Those are the ideas that catch on, that stick the most. They’re pared to such a level of simplicity, of elegance, they seem to embody one thought. Of course, we might disagree on what that […]

Turn carbon-dioxide back into gasoline. The trick is that this climate-saving energy-source idea includes a road map to its achievement.

Know why nothing is absolute? (Or as metaphysicians might say, “Nothing is Everything.” Bad cosmic joke.) Because each of us has two infinite halves. (Go with me … this isn’t meant as fact.) Maybe multiple infinite halves. Take mind and soul. Can you love a person with all your soul and but not all your […]

Finished reading Made to Stick and enjoyed its many valuable insights about “Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” as the subtitle says. I hope to write at length about some notions like how objects can have intentions, and how smart the section was on remembering to appeal to people’s more noble sides, the impulses higher […]

This CAN’T be original … it’s more of a realization sinking in. I constantly criticize strategies I see as pointless … and yet my own strategies are often pointless, too. Aha, I realize: You need to figure out how to give yourself advice.
OK, let’s try that painful exercise.
The Mucha rules:
(1) Do some market research! Know your audience! Stop doing […]

Been reading a great book, Made to Stick. Basically, it’s a great guide to shaping ideas so they’ll catch on better. I’m sure I’ll be writing a whole series of posts about its advice and insights.
Here’s a great tip related to storytelling, credited by the book to screenwriter Robert McKee: Get viewers/readers hooked by giving […]

That Manning-to-Tyree escape and catch in the Super Bowl was legendary stuff. So it needs legendary name. Something like the Immaculate Reception, that famous Franco Harris play. How about this then: The Spectaculate Reception. Yeah, I know spectaculate is not a word, but doesn’t that make the moniker all the more memorable?

See previous item. When there’s a way to search our own brains, it could be called the Noodle Google. or Google Noodle. Either that, or Google Noodle is a site where you search for pasta.

Imagine how much the Web will be revolutionized (and I’m sure that others have) when search engines can search images. Still pictures. Videos. And sounds. Basically it’d be some phantasmadupercollossal tech that “looks” and “hears” incredibly fast, recognizes what it sees, labels and categorizes everything in its memory, and makes it all ready for instant […]

I totally missed this during the show, but people online here, there and also here are saying that the man Hurley saw in the chair in Jacob’s cabin sure looked a lot like Jack’s dad, Christian Shepard (played by John Terry). Makes sense, since it sure seemed Jack thought his dad was still alive in the season-finale flash-forward. […]