Posts

Five oceans. Five dives. One planet.

More men have walked on the surface of the moon than have explored the depths of our oceans. Virgin Oceanic is a project to measure the boundaries of the last frontier of our little blue planet here, the very bottom of the seas. The idea is to take a submersible to the deepest part in each of the world’s five oceans. Amazing.

Have to admit my admiration for Sir Richard Branson simply continues to grow. Much like Steve Jobs, I think he’s the CEO all of us want to be when we grow up.

The always awesome Rick Mercer telling you if you’re young and Canadian, you need to vote. It’s not just about tuition, it’s about vision and the future of your country.

If anything will scare the complacent Canadian poligentsia into some real policy choices and action this 41st Parliament, it’s a mobilized and directed youth vote. So, get out there and cast em.

Meant to post this last week when I saw it, as I’m reading the Golden Compass right now so thinking about the Aurora (and why the hell haven’t I seen the Aurora Australis while I’ve been here?). I’ve seen the Aurora a bunch of times back in Canada and it’s always jaw-droppingly stunning. Love this week-long time-lapse from Norway showing it in its full glory.

via Neatorama

I’m not even a journo, but hell… I’d turn out for this ad. Love it, and think it’s an excellent example of the awesome type of ads you can write to attract precisely the type of people you want to be working with if you’re hiring for attitude rather than skills expertise (which to be honest is half the battle I find). Try to write my dev ads like this, but wow… this is great.

Sydney’s WWF and Leo Burnett Sydney bring you probably the best Earth Hour ad I’ve ever seen. If you needed any more reasons…

Please remember to turn off the lights (hell, everything) for Earth Hour 2011, 8.30pm, Saturday 26 March.

Love this blog post from the always quotable Seth Godin about the fact the first people to invent the electric guitar didn’t make the greatest music and the first person to come up with the snowboard probably never did stunts.

What’re you doing with the old big thing?

Only when an innovation is dead can the real work begin. That’s when people who are seeking leverage get to work, when we can focus on what we’re saying, not how (or where) we’re saying it.

I have to admit to being really impressed with the video work coming out of Amnesty’s French section in the last little while. Visceral and evocative they really bring home the struggle for human dignity that is still being fought in far too many places. So, signez.

Also, this year marks the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International . Please donate .

I’ve gushed over Information is Beautiful ’s work a few times here, and this is actually almost mind-readingly topical as I was looking for a few great novels to queue up in my reading list since it’s a little non-fiction heavy and one of my goals for the year is interspersing some good novels between the hard core stuff. I was actually looking at a Top 100 book list the other day.

National Geographic is doing a year long analysis of the world’s population and put together this fantastic animation reel on what it actually means to be a typical human being on our tiny little planet of seven billion souls. Really well done.

I know NatGeo gets a bad rap from anthropologists due to its exoticism of the Other, but I have to admit it was seminal to my childhood and sense of far off places when I was growing up. Looking forward to their series.

I totally ♥ the amazing data geekery that gets featured on Information is Beautiful and am usually blown away by just the sheer creativity of _how_some of the diagrams, so was thrilled to see a run down on the creative and draft process on their amazing Time Travel in TV and Film diagram. Wow. Respect.

Here’s the final diagram after 36 revisions if you wanted to see the meat.