View robotic penguins swim gracefully as the real creatures

Humanities more than just a word

JOHN Armstrong ("Transform into friends of society", HES, November26, 2008) says the humanities in Australia need to "transform themselves into friends of society" and to be "in the service of life", not just ofacademics. A return to "core concerns" with notions such as civilisation would dissolve that false dichotomy of value, between the intrinsic or noble and the instrumental or practical, that bedevils university and government resourcing of the sector. If such "important things buried within the disciplines" could re-emerge, our "economic anxieties would recede". Like Armstrong, I went along hopefully to the speech by federal Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr on why the humanities matter for innovation and was not disappointed by his reference to the"intrinsic value" of works such as PeterTemple's Broken Shore and John Bell's latest Hamlet.

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Creative Leadership - AGSM interview Ralph Kerle

Creative Leadership: leading your staff out of the box Innovation – in 2009 it’s not just a word to be bandied about. The economy is forcing us to get creative. Innovation could be just what we need and it could be very good for business. What exactly is creative leadership? It’s not an easy question to answer, but Ralph Kerle is one person who is well qualified to offer an answer. Ralph is the Program Director of the AGSM Executive Programs Leading for Creativity and Innovation program. He is also the Executive Chairman of the Creative Leadership Forum and Founder of the Creative Skills Training Council, Asia Pacific. If asked to define creative leadership, Ralph can conjure 1001 different definitions off the cuff. When asked to pick just one, he chose the following: Creative leadership is the ability to lead others into a new, innovative and unknown future. Ralph compares creative leadership to the process of sculpting or playwriting.

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TED Talks to Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Here is a latest TED interview, very interesting Source: TED

Twitter with your brain

"GO BADGERS" isn't an unusual message to get from the University of Wisconsin at Madison - particularly when it's a status update from Twitter, the texting service that limits users to 140 characters at a time. The unusual thing about this message is how it got to Twitter in the first place:via brain waves. University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson's cheer for the hometown team is among the first direct brain-to-Twitter messages ever sent - and it points the way to better communication systems for paralyzed patients who have to cope with the conditions faced by physicist Stephen Hawking and the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, author of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."

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