I’m very pleased to share with you one of the most comprehensible papers on Neuromarketing by Dr. Nick Lee, who is a Professor of Marketing and Organizational Research and the Editor of the European Journal of Marketing.

The paper was published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology in 2007. Since I don’t have “researcher rights” to the article, Dr. Nick Lee was very kind to send it to me personally. I’m very happy that he did share this paper with me.

I will try to shed some light on the important stuff from this wonderful paper by Dr. Nick Lee, Amanda J. Broderick and Laura Chamberlain.

The advantages of psychological measurements for marketing was mention two decades ago by Weinstein et. al. back in 1984. But it wasn’t until 2002 that the term “neuromarketing” was coined by Ale Smidts.

The Editor of Science, Donald Kennedy, said that “brain imaging will be used in ways that infringe personal privacy to a totally unacceptable degree”. And this is basically what the introduction tries to “solve”. They say that, it should be a clear distinction between the academic field of marketing research and commercial marketing, and that there should be some form of collaboration between the field of marketing an neuroscience in the future. This suggestion has been “fuzzy” for researches of both marketing and neuroscience.

Marketers feel that the instruments needed to study neuromarketing and/or neuroeconomics are absent from their “office”. There are not many researches of marketing that have access to PET, MEG, fMRI, EEG or GSR instrument, to be able to study how the brain reacts to different products and stimuli. Therefore there is this suggestion of a future collaboration between the two domains of academia, neuroscience and marketing. Marketers want to find the “buy button”, just as psychologist want tot find the “love button”.

The literature of neuroscience questions the ethics of neuromarketing and asks why we should use expensive medical instruments, such as an MRI, to make people buy more stuff, as if they are not already doing that? But from an academic point of view, marketing researches are not trying to make “the best product”. They want to understand the subconscious mind of consumers, and thus be able to augment their understanding of “why people buy”.

Just as neuroeconomics defines itself as “the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand economically relevant behaviour”, neuromarketing define itself as “a field of study can simply be defined as the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand human behavior in relation to markets and marketing exchanges”. From an academic perspective, there is much into marketing then such “consumer behavior”.

Today there are three companies in the US (NeuroFocus, BrightHouse and Buyology Inc.) and one in the UK (Neurosense) that actually do use fMRI, EEG and GSR for commercial purposes. But these companies has nothing to do with the academic research of neuromarketing since most of the data are confidential.

It’s very important to notice that the results that come from fMRI and EEG are very different. I will try to explain this in a later post.

What exact moments in a TV commercial are responsible for “brand awareness” and augmented “attention”, has been studied by Young (2002), using simple EEG measurements. The importance of “memory” and “information processing”, and augmented activity in the left frontal cortices, has also been studied using EEG, by Rossiter et. al. (2004).

Choice-making is based on “presumed reward”, by the consumers unconscious mind. Erk et. al (2002) found that objects of high social-value, such as sport cars, resulted in higher reward center activity (orbitofrontal cortices, anterior congulate regions, occipital cortices), than small cars. McClure et. al. (2004) found that there was a higher preference for Coke over Pepsi, and that there was a recruitment of emotion and affect-related areas of the brain (hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). But when the testers where blind folded, no such activity was found. This is the implications of a strong brand like Coke-Cola.

The final part of this paper gives suggestions for further research on neuromarketing. The key areas to investigate are trust, pricing, negotiation, and ethics.

An international crackdown on the use of woods from the world’s rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar ’s manufacturing plant, but no arrests.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Webb said the search warrant was obtained based on information in a sealed affidavit outlining the investigation.

Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson’s Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.

Some hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law.

Under the U.S. Lacey Act, trading in such banned woods is a federal offense, punishable by civil and criminal penalties or the seizure of property. Last year, the U.S. Congress amended a turn-of-the-century wildlife protection law (the Lacey Act) to extend its reach to endangered timber species and plants. See the next post Where Were You When Wood Became A Felony?

The following is a excerpt from the Classical Values Blog. It is very interesting and I highly recommend you read the entire article at http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/where_were_you_2.html

The 2008 Farm Bill (also known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka Public Law 110-246).

This amendment [to the Lacey Act] deals with illegal plants — the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country. Here are some excerpts from a summary:

The Lacey Act now makes it unlawful to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken in violation of the laws of a U.S. State, or any foreign law that protects plants. The Lacey Act also makes it unlawful to make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any plant.

The definition of the term “plant” includes “any wild member of the plant kingdom, including roots, seeds, parts, and products thereof, and including trees from either natural or planted forest stands.”

[...]

Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted. In any prosecution under the Lacey Act, the burden of proof of a violation rests on the government.

[...]

Violations of Lacey Act provisions for timber and other plant products, as well as fish and wildlife, may be prosecuted through either civil or criminal enforcement actions. Regardless of any prosecution, the tainted plants may be seized and forfeited.

Everyone means everyone, which includes every reader of this blog.

Obviously, this means that in the future, the Fish and Game guys will be able to accompany SWAT Team raiders to check all wood in homes and businesses for possible violations. Even if they’re wrong in their suspicions about the wood, it can still be confiscated. (Might that be a goal? To beef up employment at Fish and Game?)

Just think about the law enforcement possibilities alone. After kicking through and impounding your illegal wooden door, a federalized army of government termites could literally strip all wood paneling and flooring from every raided house as suspicious contraband, and haul away all the furniture, wood carvings, picture frames, tools, musical instruments! I can’t think of a better harassment tool. The list of potentially regulated items is mind-boggling:

the scope of products that will require a declaration under the Lacey Act is broad and includes certain live plants, plant parts, lumber, wood pulp, paper and paperboard, and products containing certain plant material or products, which may include certain furniture, tools, umbrellas, sporting goods, printed matter, musical instruments, products manufactured from plant-based resins, and textiles.

[...]

After September 30, 2009, based on experience with the implementation of the electronic system for declaration data collection, we will phase in enforcement of the declaration requirements for additional chapters containing plants and plant products covered by the Lacey Act, including (but not limited to) Ch. 12 (oil seeds, misc. grain, seed, fruit, plant, etc.), Ch. 13 (gums, lacs, resins, vegetable saps, extracts, etc.), Ch. 14 (vegetable plaiting materials and products not elsewhere specified or included), Ch. 45 (cork and articles of), Ch. 46 (basket ware and wickerwork), Ch. 66 (umbrellas, walking sticks, riding crops), Ch. 82 (tools), Ch. 93 (guns), Ch. 95 (toys, games and sporting equipment), Ch. 96 (brooms, pencils, and buttons), and Ch. 97 (works of art). We will announce a specific phase-in schedule for those chapters in a subsequent Federal Register notice.

Did they mention shipping pallets and cargo braces? Wood is not only in stuff, it’s in the stuff that the stuff comes in! Nearly everything is regulated.

Oh, and you firearm owners out there, let’s not forget gun handles!

Ch. 93 Headings (arms and ammunition).
9302 — Revolvers and pistols.
93051020 –Parts and accessories for revolvers and pistols.
Ch. 94 Headings (furniture, etc.).
940169 — Seats with wood frames.
Ch. 95 Headings (toys, games, & sporting equipment).
950420 — Articles and accessories for billiards.
Ch. 97 Headings (works of art).
9703 — Sculptures.

Glad I don’t own an art gallery, but my picture frames are not labeled, which means there are probably multiple potential felonies in progress in my home. (Perhaps I should be more careful about what I say.)

And while the NRA might not have noticed the impending crackdown on gun handles, at least IKEA is starting to speak up.

Between Wood Control and the Consumer Product Safety Nazis, I pity anyone in the secondhand business, including all Ebay and Craigslist sellers as well as people holding garage or yard sales.

In short, I pity the American people. This is not their fault, though, for no one has any control over what is going on. Not even the despicable fools we call “legislators” who cannot read the “laws” they pass because they are not meant to be read. As to the enforcers, they are only doing their job. They have to earn a living. And we are supposed to respect them, because they lay their lives on the line, “protecting” the public! From felonious wood!

Obviously, the full implications of this dramatic loss of freedom are beyond the capacity of a single post. After all, I am just one blogger, doing this by myself, without the kind of access to data that media organizations and think tanks might have. So, I cannot possibly hope to analyze everything. As things stand, I became exhausted last night just reading through the Lacey Act Amendment stuff pertaining to wood — and that was one mere fraction of an execrable, unreadable monstrosity. I don’t mean to whine, but slogging through such horrors is not exactly my idea of Saturday night fun. But who the hell else is going to do it? Flooring and furniture industry blogs? Who the hell reads them except people in the business? They’re all greedy tree haters and have no credibility. Besides, all big business is the enemy right now. We need to stand up not only against Big Cereal, but now Big Flooring! Big Siding! Big Furniture! (Is there such an industry as Big Chopstick?)

To read the entire article please go to: http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/where_were_you_2.html

I envy beyond all reason people live and/or work in converted warehouse spaces. On a recent bike trip around Williamsburg we stopped by a friend’s letterpress studio on N. 7th near the BQE, The Arm NYC. The owner, Dan, is one of these people. He lives and works in the light-filled space surrounded by beautifully patina’ed equipment and knock-your-socks-off original doors. He also has a dalmation named Henry who guards the front door from his plaid dog pillow.

from the Arm NYC website

Sure, it’s a little messy. But it has history. This kind of space makes me want to make things all day, lose track of time and forget even what century it is. And then take a nap with the dog.

These cute animals are literally right at your fingertips when you use this cool fingerprint technique.  Using your fingerprints and a pen, the possibilities are endless and you can create an entire zoo full of animals!  This is a great beginner project that can get a little messy if you don’t keep an eye on the ink pad.  To help keep things under control, make sure the ink is washable and that you have plenty of soap and water on hand!

Things you will need:

• A washable ink pad in the color of your choice
• A pen or fine-tip marker
• A piece of paper or note cards

Steps: Simply press your finger into the ink then press it firmly on your piece of paper.  Next, follow the guides below to create the different animals.  Try experimenting and see what you can come up with!

Bird

Cat

Fish

Monkey

Pig

Congratulations!  You are well on your way to creating a thumbprint zoo!  Use your imagination and see how many different animals you can come up with.  Have you done this project?  Did you do it differently?  Please feel free to share your comments and pictures in the comments section!

It is the end of the year and time to clean out your files so they are not packed full for next year.  

1. Do one file at a time– go completely through it to decide what you need to toss, keep, shred. Make sure to go through every file you have.

2. If you do NOT write it off on your taxes you can toss/shred (confirm with your accounting professional.)

3. If you do need to keep it, you will need to keep for 3-7yrs for tax audits.  Take   everything out of the current file.  Use an envelope or plastic bin to contain the papers.  Mark them “2009”.  Get a box and put the paperwork inside.  Mark “2009” on the outside of the box.  Put the box in the garage or somewhere away from your current filing system.

You should have empty or near empty file folders left.  If you need a new folder made, this is the time to make it.

Doing this now will make next years filing  SO much easier!

As I said before, I have recently started a new job.  With that has come a new, but bland, office.  So, I got to work.  The first project I have completed is a table for the office.  I found this ugly guy with a paper top for a couple of dollars at the thrift store:

I started by sanding the wood legs and sides a bit and then painting them black.  I then used scrapbook paper on the top.  I taped the paper down, starting with a full sheet in the very middle of the table.  When the sheets were lined up nicely, I used ModPodge to cover the sheets, using a foam brush.  I did several coats of this, drying in between. 

Black and white, of course!

One thing I learned from using the ModPodge was that it makes the paper wet, so at first it will bubble up.  This smooths out as it dries.  But, I did make the mistake of lining the paper sheets up perfectly edge to edge.  Lining them up with a bit of overlap would have prevented the sheets from moving as they dried.  I do have a few tiny spots where there are gaps between the paper now.  I learned!

This Wrap Story is part of a mini-series, documenting every present I’ve wrapped since the launch of this blog. For more, click the “Wrap Story” link in the right-hand column!

We were invited to a church friend’s birthday lunch and G. kindly watched N. so I could go. I expected a small gathering, but to my surprise we filled two banquet-length tables on the patio of Daisy Mint!

I gave the birthday girl a notepad made with papers retrieved from the recycling bins of MOCA (by me, who else). I made it a card and gift in one by writing the birthday wishes on the first page of the pad.

As you can see, I just tied a sheer ribbon into a bow around the notepad. I thought it might be best to keep it simple for a simple gift.

Oh my outrageously busy weekend…

It was the Totterdown Art Trail this weekend and as ever, it was blummin’ ace!

It was a real mission to get everything sorted this year with the little one here too, but having worked my socks off for the last couple of weeks, it all came together and I was really pleased with how my exhibition looked in the end. Jet proved to be entirely useless at helping me to get everything ready, but I think she did a good job of wooing all the punters during opening hours!

Here’s some lovely pics courtesy of the old ball and chain:

More details after the jump…

Kusudama flower ball tree decoration:

A tutorial for these can be found here.

Sunday in Atlanta was chilly and rainy so I got a lot of time in to make art. I completed this larger collage on canvas that I had started a few weekends ago. I initially glued down three pieces of paper, the copper, blue and light green, that appear in the background. Last weekend I glued the blue “swoosh” across it. I let it sit all week studying it from time to time. This weekend I finished up with the amber “swoosh”, yellow and blue acrylic paint and a little caron d’ache to darken some areas. It’s difficult to see on screen but I played with some areas of just acrylic gloss medium with no color to add some diversity without adding more colors.

I had gotten in the habit of being able to complete two or three pieces in a weekend when I was making smaller collages. Now, making larger ones, it’s taking me two or three weekends to finish one. Mostly because I have this funny fear of not wanting to waste paper so I’ll analyze the piece to death before committing to the glue! I just received two large orders of papers so I’ll let that fear go.

various papers, acrylic, caron d’ache, acrylic medium on gallery wrapped canvas. 16″ x 16″

Passing Through

Passing Through detail

have you ever wished you could find paper and stickers for a special trip you took – to a city, an area, a state, how about a country?

well wish no more! REMINISCE has just introduced a new line called PASSPORTS. there are 72 – that is SEVENTY TWO different destinations included in this line! each destination has it’s own two-sided paper and matching sticker sheet.

here’s a layout i did using the CHICAGO paper and stickers…

to create the skyline at the bottom of the layout, i used a craft knife to carefully cut out the skyline on the blue side of the double sided CHICAGO paper. then i backed the space with white cardstock.  I mounted the cut out skyline on a piece of white cardstock and cut it out again, then outlined it using a white gel pen. It has been adhered to the layout using 3D Dots. I moved it down and to the right of where it had been on the paper to create a “shadow” effect.

and, if you don’t happen to travel much, don’t worry, you can still think of fun ways to use this line! we love lots of different ethnic foods, so i decided to create an INTERNATIONAL RECIPE BINDER for some of my favorite recipes. i used the CHINA, INDIA, MEXICO, ITALY, FRANCE and SPAIN papers and stickers…

!!!

want more ideas for this line? then head over to the REMINISCE GALLERY and see more projects from the reminisce design team!

want even MORE ideas? then check out the REMINISCE BLOG,  there are some more awesome ideas there too!

Chris Gilmour. A life size bicycle made entirely out of cardboard and glue. Incredible.

The work of Chris Gilmour provokes surprise and amazement beyond what could appear to be a mere process of reproduction. In returning to the value of making and strongly emphasising it, these works reveal a process of understanding that lets us see everyday reality with new awareness and appreciation. This practice avoids a withdrawal into the limbo of craft, and implies an intimate and profound quest towards the reason of things.

See more of Chris’ work here. Also check this!

Silja Goetz

Illustrator

Madrid, Spain

Site >>> www.siljagoetz.com

The beautiful game is still reeling from the allegations (AFP photo)

BERLIN, Nov 22, 2009 (AFP) – A German paper said Sunday it had obtained details of some of the 200 matches under investigation in the match-fixing scandal that has rocked European football.

According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s website, the matches involved were generally lower profile matches and the gambling crooks bribed players to lose by a certain amount.

The paper listed a sample of matches from Switzerland, Belgium, Croatia and Turkey.

For example, investigators are reportedly probing a match in the Swiss second division that took place between Yverdon Sport and FC Thun on April 26, 2009.

Players from the away team were reportedly bribed 15,000 euros (22,000 dollars) to make sure they lost by a four-goal margin. The match ended 5-1.

In another match in the Belgian second division, players from UR Namur allegedly received backhanders to lose by two goals. Namur duly lost 2-0.

The beautiful game is still reeling from the allegations on Thursday that a gang of around 200 people have been rigging games in Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Austria and Switzerland.

“Without doubt this is the biggest scam there has ever been in European football,” UEFA’s match-fixing specialist Peter Limacher said at a news conference on Friday in Germany, where the probe was organised.

By bribing players, coaches, referees and officials to influence matches, the gang is thought to have earned as much as 10 million euros in huge bets with bookmakers in Europe and Asia, primarily in China.

Around 300 police carried out around 50 raids on Thursday in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Austria, arresting 15 people in Germany and two in Switzerland. More than a million euros in cash and property were seized.

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LIFESTYLE MANAGEMENT

Are You a Victim of Hurry Sickness

By

VIKRAM KARVE

A central element of lifestyle management is the skill to creatively balance achievement and work success with leisure activities, family life and social involvements.

Another critical aspect is the ability to feel comfortable at work and at home and to enjoy the experience of whatever is being done at that moment.

But nowadays, most of us are obsessed with getting results or completing one’s task. When task completion becomes more important than enjoying and understanding the work or activity one is doing at the given moment, a sure victim of “hurry sickness” is born.

The resultant constant sense of urgency is the trap of hurry sickness. One rushes to “get things done” to the point where it becomes an obsession.

Breaking this syndrome requires that you learn to enjoy experiences for the pleasure they give. When you gain pleasure from an experience, there is no need to get things done painstakingly.

Enjoy experiences, not rewards, and things will get done automatically without any constant stressful sense of urgency.

As defined from a psychological perspective, Hurry Sickness is:

“A pervasive and progressively urgent need to complete task in order to obtain rewards at completion without regard for other aspects of the work experience and by using maladaptive time strategies.”

They key causal factor in hurry sickness is the progressive need for task completion.

Enjoying what you are doing is neglected with a morbid urge to getting it done as quickly as possible, no matter what the activity.

The obsessive need for task completion extends to non-work involvements and activities like eating, playing, romance, making love, sex, leisure, having fun, loafing, taking a stroll, recreation, entertainment, leisure, sports, pastimes, hobbies, holidaying, exercising, lazing around, dozing, enjoying music, cooking, gardening, meditating, enjoying “doing nothing” and delightful timepass, what you consider “wasting your time” with your family, wife, kids, pet dog, friends…

This attitude of Hurry Sickness interferes with the enjoyment of these activities and experiences because of the persistent inclination to hurry up and finish it off.

Getting things done has become such a strong need because the payoffs or rewards for completion have assumed primary importance.

Your work experience has taught you that rewards always come at the end of the activity after you have put forth great effort to achieve a goal. You do not realize that happiness is not a destination but the manner of traveling.

Not only do you feel a sense of personal satisfaction from your achievements, but tangible rewards, such as promotion, cash incentives, awards, and advancements are given to you as well. With time, these rewards have become clearly linked with your self-esteem.

Each time you “succeed”, your ego, your inner self, sends a message to you which says, “You have done well. You are a commendable person because you succeeded again.” Your need for this kind of reassurance has become stronger than you would care to admit.

Time-Urgency quickly becomes a strong internal driving force towards task completion. Your life becomes a frenzy of completing one task after another. You are obsessed with time and wasting any of it becomes almost a mortal sin.

You strive to maximize your productivity by using time ever more efficiently, but you also have a sense that you are controlled by time and you don’t like it. Time is both your challenge and your enemy. A telling sign of hurry sickness is that even while relaxing, you are constantly fighting time-urgency and this that causes you unrest and never allows you to totally “switch off”.

Another way to seek to increase your output is to adopt maladaptive time-strategies. These questionable tactics do help you get more done over the short run, but you pay a heavy emotional price.

You now do everything faster, you have learned to “multitask” or “double up,” to do two or more things at once, and you are constantly preparing for what is coming next before you are finished what you are doing now.

The insidious trap is that you get something done quickly even when there is no reason to get anything done at all.

You hurry when there is no need to hurry – even when you have all the time in the world.

Because of your emphasis on task completion, you focus on finishing without regard for other holistic aspects of the experience.

In short, you have lost the ability to enjoy yourself while doing anything because of your incessant drive to get to the finish line.

Because you are afflicted by Hurry Sickness, you have lost the ability to emotionally rejuvenate yourself. Chronic fatigue and pessimism are symptoms of this malady.

SIGNS AND SIGNALS OF HURRY SICKNESS

Here are some behavioral signs, symptoms and signals that indicate hurry sickness:

1. Eating.

You now eat in the office while continuing to work or you just skip meals altogether. You multitask while eating. At home, you eat fast, gulp your food, finish meals well ahead of everyone else and eat in bigger bites without savoring the taste of food. Sharing pleasantries at the table is minimal because you cannot sit long enough. Ask yourself – are you eating mindfully and relishing every morsel of your food?

2. Sex.

Relaxed romantic sex and unhurried love-making is but a pleasant memory. The frequency has reduced and even when you do indulge in sex, it is a quick encounter and you are off to sleep or on to some other more “important” or “urgent” activity. Sex is less spontaneous and more mechanical these days. Love-making has become another hurry-up-and-get-it-done-with activity. Worse, you often indulge in “faking it” in order to get it over with in a hurry so you can quickly get on with the more “important” and “productive” things in life – your “high priority” activities!

3. Communications.

Your communication patterns now focus squarely on the negative. Feedback to others emphasizes mistakes and failings and you rarely compliment or offer sincere support to anyone these days. You don’t take the time any more for pleasant chat with family and colleagues. You have stopped listening. You make demands instead of working cooperatively with others or team-building. And hey, are you on your cell-phone most of the time?

4. Leisure.

You put aside less time for relaxation and you enjoy it less when you actually try to relax. Time-off is now more of a hassle than it is worth. When you sit still, you feel uncomfortable almost immediately. You have lost the ability to “do nothing” – it’s difficult for you to loosen up and enjoy an idle hour relaxing, doing nothing. Ask yourself why you work – reflect, contemplate, think about the fundamental reason why you work and realization will dawn upon you that the primary reason you work is to be able to enjoy your leisure, so why aren’t you taking a vacation every day and learning how to enjoy your leisure with full awareness?

5. Family.

Family members now “report” events to you, but you share little of yourself with them. You and your spouse argue more than you talk. The satisfactions of family life have diminished in quality and quantity. Your impatience is just as strong at home as in the office.

HOW TO CURE HURRY SICKNESS

Because you have hurry sickness, your initial tendency is to effect and expedite your “cure” in a hurry too.

But this hurry-up-and-get-it-done attitude may actually sabotage your recovery. What is required is patience, perspective and the ability to deal with setbacks in healthier ways.

It is easy to blame hurry sickness on the pressures of your job, the stress of daily living and what you have to do to survive in the fast paced world of today and on the insensitivity of the complex modern world. While each of these perceptions has a grain of truth in it, the fact remains that most of the responsibility for hurry sickness lies within you.

Your drive to get ahead is the real root of the problem and the fact is that you have lost all sense of perspective. Until you accept personal responsibility for your present state, you will not be in a position to confront and reverse the real mischief, damage and harm caused by hurry sickness.

Remember the well-known story of the hare and the tortoise.

Decelerate your life a bit, slow down, walk leisurely instead of driving and do not carry or switch off your cell-phone where you can, don’t multitask, do one thing at a time with full awareness and mindfulness and learn to enjoy the experience of whatever you are doing.

Do you believe in multitasking?

Are you a victim of Hurry Sickness?

Why don’t you rid yourself of this malady and enhance your quality of life?

Sure, you can get rid of Hurry Sickness!

Just stop multitasking and focus on whatever you are doing at the present moment.

Remember: HURRY BURRY SPOILS THE CURRY.

VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2009
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

vikramkarve@sify.com

http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/karve

http://www.ryze.com/go/karve

618 // November 22, 2009

Framed Cine-Kodak Eight Model 20 (1932 – movie camera)

I will apologize in advance, as some (maybe most of my frequent) readers have already seen these photos. Been off my feet for a week now, sick, so I have been running really low on recent photos and the reserve bank.

I’ve seen this idea done before, and most recently here – contrary to what you may think, these (heavy!) cameras are not contained in a shadowbox, but free-hanging from the frame itself.

Framed Kodak Instamatic 804 (1963 – film camera)

These are the simple black frames you can get at Walgreens. To get this effect, I:

1. Removed the glass from the frame as these cameras needed to stick out further than what it would’ve allowed.

2. Found and cut the scrapbook paper I wanted for each of these to the frame. Taped it to the back of the frame.

3. Since these frames were meant to be hung by the cardboard backing, that wouldn’t be nearly strong enough. Instead, I pounded two small nails to the back of the frame and threaded wire back and forth to reinforce a strong holder for the weight.

4. Measured and strung invisible string through each side of the camera and ultimately hung it from the frame itself – another small nail in the top center in the back of the frame.

Told you this sucker had to hold a lot of weight.

5. Use the brick drill bit and finally hung these suckers.

Hope you enjoy them — I sure do love looking at them in my office!

What is this?  What I am seeing?  What does it mean? Ooooh.  For more information, see the Week 3 Sketchbook entry on this blog.

Time: 6 hours.  Paper:  Sennelier pastel card.  19 x 26″.  Media:  Black, white and gray pastel.  Actuals: a standard laptop run amok on MS Vista and a bonsai root trained on a circuit board:

Process: I love drawing on pastel card, basically like drawing on sand paper. It allows for many clean layers of pastel.  If only it came in 54″  x 10 yard rolls.  First layer:

Second layer.  Drawing from bonsai, overemphasizing the circuit board and linear perspective because I liked it that way:

Third layer.  Printed out bits of my Perl program (CTRL + PRTSC) graphically enhanced,  (Print Mask for GIMPs).  Pastel on back of print, then traced with ball point.

]]> http://charebo.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/coffees-gonna-have-to-go/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:34:32 +0000 charebo http://charebo.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/coffees-gonna-have-to-go/

It’s been a while – well, over a month – since I drank a coffee that wasn’t some kind of latte or three-quarters hot chocolate or some-such. During October I had a pretty hefty load and was consuming a good bit of the bitter brew whilst working – the campus library boasts a Starbucks which is really hard to ignore, and a regular coffee is about the cheapest thing you can get. Well, mid-to-end October coffee began to have adverse effects – my chest hurt, tummy was disgruntled, I was shaky and had a massive headaches behind the eyes after a few swallows – so I decided to give it up for a while, and to have decaf if I ever felt the need.

Well, tonight when I headed to the library I decided that it couldn’t hurt to get a cup of decaf while working on a paper – turns out I was wrong… Near instantaneous feel-badness – got maybe a few words done on the paper. Not a very bright outlook for me. And so, even though I do so very much enjoy the taste of coffee, I’m afraid it’s time to say goodbye for good. I suppose it’s just as well – I really don’t have the money to be buying coffee all the time, and I know that the next couple of weeks I will be practically living in Cook Library…

In related news – I am nearing the end to my next-to-last semester of my undergraduate career! In a few weeks I will be one semester away from graduation! I am rather excited, especially as next semester promises to be a very good one. I’m taking fun classes, only one of which I will have to write critical essays for – poetry writing 2, fiction writing 2, beginning acting for non-majors, and survey of modern poetry will be my course load for my final semester at USM – it’s gonna be great!

Other than the courses, the spring semester will also have some rather fun/interesting extra-curriculars. I am organizing a benefit concert to support CLOI – Community Literacy Outreach Initiative, the English Department’s charity – for Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society of which I am the current secretary. This is super exciting seeing as I have never organized anything like this before, but I think I’m actually doing a decent job of it – nearly all the details are settled and I believe I’ve taken everything I need to into account (well, I surely hope so, but knowing me I’ve probably forgotten really important stuff…). I have also submitted several poems to the Sigma Tau Delta National Conference – if I’m accepted than I will get to read my poems before the conference over Spring Break. This is both terrifying and really exciting and I hope hope hope I’m accepted!

Well, I’m gonna get off and see if I can get some sleep, then get up and try to crank out this paper even though I have little to no motivation. Pthh.

I have been away too long, the product of some faulty keys. But I’m back now. -TW

Truth be told
Offering my name would have no impact;
Peace gained from knowledge is ephemeral at best.
However…
Everyone enjoys a good
Riddle, and I refuse to be so easy to divulge information.
Will many think that
I come to antagonize? I come in
Love! Though I
Suspect some may
Opine that
Nefarious things are afoot!

Written: 10.20.09 | Photographed: 10.27.09

Last week’s winter workshop at Parcel had each guest designing and embellishing a French-inspired papier-mache doll. The cost included a wide variety of new and vintage materials, yummy sweets and savories, as well as prosecco and French lemonade. A few special vintage Christmas ornaments found their way home with me too, sweetened by a shopping discount. It was one one of the best “girls’ nights” I’ve ever been to.

My completed doll, above and below.