Category: Mind Space

Buy Your Thoughts

The Flow Market is a store where you buy what you believe in. Some highlights from the 2006 collection include:

-identity finders $5
-exploitation free produce $12
-100% GMO $8

So what is the Flow, well it’s “a brand and template that meets the rising demand for sustainable innovation.
Throughout the 20th century the pursuit for technological and economic progress has given the industrialized world great new possibilities but has also resulted in a wide range of imbalances and challenges.”

There are currently three locations of this consumption art in Copenhagen, Zurich, and New York.

UN World Food Programme is Blogging

After creating the fantastic and educational video game for kids, Food Force, the UN is providing a way for kids to talk to humanitarian workers on the front lines. From the UN press release:

“Fresh from the global success of the world’s first humanitarian video game designed to arouse children’s interests in the challenges of fighting hunger, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today announced the launch of a blog, an interactive internet chat site, that allows youngsters to talk directly to aid workers on the battle’s frontlines.

“In response to queries from Food Force players all over the world on how they could help, the new blog is a way to channel interest and a place to exchange ideas,” WFP said, referring to the educational video game which has now been played by at least 4 million people since its launch in April 2005 and is currently available in five languages.”

Dancing Therapy Helps Children with Mental Illness

A research project in Sweden, the first of it’s kind, has shown that dance therapy is effective in treating AD/HD in boys and depression in girls. For sullen teenagers who often refuse or are unable to talk about what is troubling them, dance therapy helps to loosen them up and shake off their mental shackles.

Boys affected with AD/HD start out with frenetic, high energy dancing, and then move on to slower, more methodical exercises which require them to pay attention and mimic.

Depressed and self-destructive teenage girls learn self-esteem, setting limits and saying ‘no’ through flamenco dancing.

The researchers are hoping that other countries will introduce dance therapy as a compliment to traditional psychotherapy.

Mapping the Planet in Different Ways

We’ve all seen maps of the planet Earth, but have you seen maps that display the state of internet censorship or the levels of debt? A few organizations are organizing information that is hard to visualize with just numbers onto maps of the world.

The best collection of these information maps is found at MapleCroft where you can view almost anything – including invest risk, corporate governance, and the prevalence Malaria.

Mapping the majority is about mapping the places where most people live using various demographic information.

The Open Net Initiative has a map that shows how open the internet is in each country.

Drink it Black

Coffee makes you more open minded. The New Scientist is reporting that a study has found that coffee actually makes you think clearer.

“Moderate doses of caffeine can also make you more easily convinced by arguments that go against your beliefs, say Pearl Martin of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues.

In 2005, her team published a paper suggesting that the compound primes people to agree with statements that go against their typical views because it improves their ability to understand the reasoning behind the statements.”

I think that politicians should be required to drink coffee before any debate.