"laggards and obstructionists"

That, according to Andrew Weaver, climate expert, IPCC contributor and author of Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World, is Canadians’ international reputation is when it comes to climate change. Whether or not you care about our reputation, you should care about what our country is doing in reference to climate change. If you expect to live at least another decade, you will feel its effects economically, socially, and psychologically. Your children, if you have any, will suffer its direct impact, and the lives of your grandchildren will be nightmarish. If I could only write about one thing, it would be climate change/global warming.

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A human failure, seen at face value

Humans excel at recognising faces, but how we do this has been an abiding mystery in neuroscience and psychology. In an effort to explain our success in this area, researchers are taking a closer look at how and why we fail. A new study from MIT looks at a particularly striking instance of failure: our impaired ability to recognize faces in photographic negatives. The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, suggests that a large part of the answer might lie in the brain's reliance on a certain kind of image feature. The work could potentially lead to computer vision systems, for settings as diverse as industrial quality control or object and face detection. On a different front, the results and methodologies could help researchers probe face-perception skills in children with autism, who are often reported to experience difficulties analysing facial information.

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Back to school

Video artist Viola, winner of McDermott award, samples new technologies during weeklong residency at MIT Stephanie Schorow, MIT News Office March 19, 2009 More than 35 years ago, Bill Viola jolted the contemporary art world with a new kind of artistic expression: electronic images and sounds that explored themes of love, death and rebirth. Today, the title "video artist" could be claimed by any kid with a camera, but the label rightfully belongs to Viola, who harnessed the potential of high-definition technology to produce evocative and startling snippets of video for museums and installations. Like many artistic revolutionaries, Viola is now old school. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In 1997, theWhitney Museum of American Art staged: "Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey." His latest honor is the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, given by MIT's Council for the Arts, which brings a $75,000

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Intensifying your Initiative

Initiative Initiative is necessary both to allow innovation to work and also to ultimately implement the solution. Intensifying Your Initiative Without harnessing the power of initiative, the wheel of innovation comes to a screeching halt. We all have a desire to "make a difference" or to make improvements in our lives, but for a variety of reasons, many people face challenges in regard to taking initiative in one form or another. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to enhance your power of initiative, and the payoffs are huge. The power of initiative is a critical catalyst for personal brilliance. You need it to bring your dreams to life, but it's also necessary in order to start the innovation process. Without the motivation to amplify your awareness, explore your curiosities, or expand your focus, you probably won't even make it to the drawing board, let alone come up with a new idea or solution.

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Ralph Kerle interviews Danny Gilbert - co-founder and Managing Partner of Gilbert and Tobin

Ralph Kerle, executive chairman of The CLF recently interviewed Danny Gilbert, co-founder and Managing Partner of Gilbert and Tobin Legal Firm about his thoughts on creative leadership, creativity and business model innovation. The interview recognised a variety of changes that have occured over the 21 years since G&T commenced. View the interview here Filming and editing thanks to BNET Australia