A human being at rest runs on 90 watts … that’s how much power you need just to lie down. And if you’re a hunter-gatherer and you live in the Amazon, you’ll need about 250 watts. That’s how much energy it takes to run about and find food. So how much energy does our lifestyle [in America] require? Well, when you add up all our calories and then you add up the energy needed to run the computer and the air-conditioner, you get an incredibly large number, somewhere around 11,000 watts. Now you can ask yourself: What kind of animal requires 11,000 watts to live? And what you find is that we have created a lifestyle where we need more watts than a blue whale. We require more energy than the biggest animal that has ever existed. That is why our lifestyle is unsustainable. We can’t have seven billion blue whales on this planet. It’s not even clear that we can afford to have 300 million blue whales.
Elizabeth Gilbert: A New Way to Think About Creativity
If you’re only as good as your last movie or book or play, how do you face the next creative challenge knowing it might not be as successful? Gilbert bravely explores what comes after a flash of brilliance in a splendidly well-told talk.
Source: insteadofwatchingtv
One of the first watercolors for the book! Unlocking the Right Brain will features images made with a mix of traditional and digital techniques.
Quite a lovely brain illustration! Even better, the type in the book will be printed letterpress!
— Visual Turn
Source: rightbrainbook
Creative students are teachers' "least favorite"
“Psychologists at Union College surveyed several dozen elementary school teachers in 1995. While every teacher said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they were mistaken. In fact, when the teachers were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.”
