Colours and Humor

Your state of mind can be influenced through colour according to the geocromotherapy model.

Red is an exciting stimulus. It capacitates and can overexite. (Think of fire)
Yellow stimulates the memory, concentration and internal wisdom. (Publicity's favoured colour).
Green awakens a sense of serenity and self-healing. (Hospital colour)
Purple is antidepressive and stimulates creativity. (Cardinals' clothes)
Blue infuses security and protection against adverse circumstances. (The TV news background)
Orange is dynamic, cleans the emotions. (The Dali Lama's clothes.)

Don't believe or disbelieve. Try it out. If it works then it's good for you.

Tom

No pain, no gain.

George Soros, one of the most successful stock market players, revealed one of the clues to his knack for earning easy money in a BBC interview this week : his backache.

His son explained that his father knew when to invest because his back pain guided him. Soros gave a more interesting angle. He reckoned that when he was in a quandary about what shares to buy and sell this stress was reflected as backache. So the pain was actually psychosomatic.

So much for the mind / body division.

Tom

Modelling

David Gordon gave a workshop course on Modelling in Whally, Lancashire, UK. It was to complement his book on the subject. This was not an intellectual affair but based on experience, on the senses.

The aim of modelling is to study the beliefs, strategies and emotions of someone who performs well so as to be able to replicate their performance.

Imagine teachers were able to replicate the performance of the best students. They would quickly be able to really help struggling pupils by passing on this valuable experience.

Tom

The Third Culture

In 'The two cultures, a scientific revolution' C.P. Snow noted that Arts and Science provided equally important ideas. However, somehow the leading literary lights managed to define themselves as 'the' intellectuals, leaving scientists a second place.

In the second edition of book Snow suggested that the scientists would gradually gain merited recognition alongside the literary leaders. This was to be the 'third culture'.

However it turns out now that scientists are by-passing the middlemen and speaking directly to the public who are hungry for their ideas. This is the real third culture: literate scientists.

Tom

Two views

Humans have a tendency of trying to make sense of something by thinking of it from one of two basic viewpoints: detailed or general. At the level of detail we can't see the overall structure, and vice-versa. Glance at the two maps you can see here : one shows the outline; the other all the detail. The first represents top-down thinking ; the other is bottom-up thinking .
The deductive approach starts from an abstract level and works its way down to applications. However, if we think inductively then we have a preference for gathering details and building up the general picture from them.
Good thinking skills are inclusive and use both approaches.

Tom