How to get creative
Via Tobias Buckell's blog, this article on the pitfalls of brainstorming offers interesting evidence against traditional brainstorming techniques, and alternatives which seem to work better. (Working alone is one. At last, I am vindicated! All those poorly-constructed group projects in elementary school I had to suffer really did lead to fewer ideas...) Making sure everyone has to run into people working on other topics to promote unpredictable cross-fertilization of ideas is one that sounds obvious once you hear it. But what I found especially interesting was the modified brainstorming in which you debate and poke holes in each other's ideas: this means House does something right, using this technique. Who knew? (They still should crack open a reference book once in a while. And they still would have killed a lot more people in real life. Do not try this at home.)
Buckell also posted this interesting video on motivation. Turns out paying someone $800 million to be CEO probably doesn't motivate them better than paying them $200, and might be worse. Who knew? (Oh. Right. Everyone.)
And via Ferretbrain, Ekaterina Sedia has translated the titles some Russian LJ-ers have invented for an imaginary encyclopedia of feminism for Harry Potter. If this were a real thing, I would pay money for a physical book to put on my shelf. Some sample titles:
House Elves: Just Like Women, Only Ugly and Invisible
Pomona Sprout: Good Girls are Liked but not Noticed
Professor Vector, or Anonymity of Women in Mathematics
Poppy Pomfrey: a Subservient Suffragette, or the Outcome of Courses of Higher Women's Studies in St Petersburg
Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna Lovegood: Psychiatric Disabilities and Ableism in Hogwarts
Luna Lovegood, Tom Riddle, Harry Potter: Good Children Don't Get PTSD
Luna Lovegood: Forced Acceptance into the Family Strategies of Psychological Repression
Conventional Man is Allowed Anger but not Grief. Harry Potter: The Masculinity Trap
Remus Lupin and the "Good Cripple" Archetype
Rolanda Hooch: Professional Women's Athletics as Deviation
You know you'd read that. I know I'd rather read that than the essay in one of those Firefly collections about how the show is totally awesome because it lets you enjoy the Civil War and chivalrous southern heroes with all the icky "defending slavery" bits taken out. (It's been years, and I still can't believe that essay. Just... what? Whitewashing history to produce guilt-free entertainment is a positive good now?)
Buckell also posted this interesting video on motivation. Turns out paying someone $800 million to be CEO probably doesn't motivate them better than paying them $200, and might be worse. Who knew? (Oh. Right. Everyone.)
And via Ferretbrain, Ekaterina Sedia has translated the titles some Russian LJ-ers have invented for an imaginary encyclopedia of feminism for Harry Potter. If this were a real thing, I would pay money for a physical book to put on my shelf. Some sample titles:
House Elves: Just Like Women, Only Ugly and Invisible
Pomona Sprout: Good Girls are Liked but not Noticed
Professor Vector, or Anonymity of Women in Mathematics
Poppy Pomfrey: a Subservient Suffragette, or the Outcome of Courses of Higher Women's Studies in St Petersburg
Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna Lovegood: Psychiatric Disabilities and Ableism in Hogwarts
Luna Lovegood, Tom Riddle, Harry Potter: Good Children Don't Get PTSD
Luna Lovegood: Forced Acceptance into the Family Strategies of Psychological Repression
Conventional Man is Allowed Anger but not Grief. Harry Potter: The Masculinity Trap
Remus Lupin and the "Good Cripple" Archetype
Rolanda Hooch: Professional Women's Athletics as Deviation
You know you'd read that. I know I'd rather read that than the essay in one of those Firefly collections about how the show is totally awesome because it lets you enjoy the Civil War and chivalrous southern heroes with all the icky "defending slavery" bits taken out. (It's been years, and I still can't believe that essay. Just... what? Whitewashing history to produce guilt-free entertainment is a positive good now?)