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Talking to bureaucracies considered as a corporate fitness factor

Seth Godin eloquently describes the fitness factor that makes a restaurant suited to getting placement in an airport: they have to be run by corporations whose primary skill is dealing with bureaucracies. I wonder why this competency appears to exclude a comparable competency in preparing edible food? Have you noticed that most airports feature the same restaurants? It's not an accident. The people who run these chains have organized themselves to be good at dealing with municipal organizations. Same thing goes for design firms, creative firms, accountants etc. that deal with large corporations. The art and skill of working with bureaucrats...

Visualization of US consumer spending

Here's a nice dataviz of US consumer spending as of April 2009. How depressing is that minuscule slice labelled "reading"? How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck (via Sociological Images)...

Bletchley Park codebreakers recognized by British government

The codebreakers of Britain's Bletchley Park have finally been officially recognized by the UK government for their critical contributions winning WWII. Now, if we can only get the British government to put some money into preserving the shockingly decayed site itself... "These people made an enormous contribution to the outcome of World War Two, the 20th century and freedom in the West," said Simon Greenish, director of the Bletchley Park Trust. "After many years of having to keep their critical wartime work top secret, it is tremendous that this contribution has finally achieved recognition." Heroes of Bletchley included Tommy Flowers, who built one of the world's first programmable computers, Colossus, largely using his own funds, and Dr Alan Turing, who designed the bombe cryptanalysis machines. Flowers received an MBE and an award of £1,000 for his work while Turing was arrested for homosexuality in 1952 and committed suicide shortly afterwards, having received no official recognition for his work in his lifetime. Government honours veterans of Bletchley Park at last (via /.) Previously:Bletchley Park snubbed by Brit govt, no love for birthplace of ... Bletchley Park kicks so much ass - Boing Boing Brit academics call for Bletchley Park funding - Boing Boing Hams of Bletchley Park - Boing Boing PGP and others team up to renovate Bletchley Park - Boing Boing Bletchley Park's Colossus codebreaker to race modern PC in ... Pocket Enigma Machine in a CD jewel case - Boing Boing...

Wandering minds are active minds

UCSB brain researcher Jonathan Schooler has an intriguing theory about why our minds wander: The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks. One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain's activity toward important goals. The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future. The fact that both of these important brain networks become active together suggests that mind wandering is not useless mental static. Instead, Schooler proposes, mind wandering allows us to work through some important thinking. Our brains process information to reach goals, but some of those goals are immediate while others are distant. Somehow we have evolved a way to switch between handling the here and now and contemplating long-term objectives. It may be no coincidence that most of the thoughts that people have during mind wandering have to do with the future. The Brain Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State (via Kottke)...

In the eye of the beholder

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry. From "Eye of the Beholder" by Anton Kusters: I'm in the front seat, riding with Soichiro in his car on his way to Shinjuku. "One cuts off one's finger to make a point", Soichiro explains while driving. "Usually to show the sincerity of an apology after doing something wrong." "You cut off a single digit of your own finger in a ceremonial way, while facing your boss, and then you present the severed finger on a folded napkin to him. It reinforces the power of your apology. It shows that you're serious about what you're saying." Somehow, i don't feel like questioning that. "Eye of the Beholder," "Meet Soichiro," "As Light Shines on Thy Thigh." (Image credit: Anton Kusters. Via This Isn't Happiness.)...