Category: Here & There

A list of 6 myths of creativity that were busted by a study held by Teresa Amabile, head of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School, and a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from various companies.

1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
5. Competition Beats Collaboration
6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

I totally agree with the results of this study and think that anyone running a company should really take them into consideration.

[Details: Fast Company]

He was a blond, blue-eyed Californian obsessed with a female rocker and going nowhere fast. Then he moved to New York, watched the horror of 9/11

Sixty-five percent of children say that by age seven, they’ve played with an imaginary companion.

Children interviewed for a study by psychologists at the University of Washington and University of Oregon were considered to have an imaginary companion if they were able to discuss its psychological traits, such as ‘She is nice to me.’

The study also showed that:

• While preschool girls were more likely to have an imaginary companion, by age 7 boys were just as likely as girls to have one.
• 27 percent of the children described an imaginary friend that their parents did not know about.
• 57 percent of the imaginary companions of school-age youngsters were humans and 41 percent were animals. One companion was a human capable of transforming herself into any animal the child wanted.
• Not all imaginary companions are friendly. A number were quite uncontrollable and some were a nuisance.

[Source: University of Washington News]

This is a very interesting study.
I knew a number of kids who had imaginary friends.

As for myself, I don’t remember ever having one when I was a kid, although I do now.
I don’t know his name, but he’s from Nigeria, and he pisses me off every night because that’s when he feels like turning the TV on loud to watch CNN or some African tribal videos.
Well, actually he’s not my imaginary friend, he’s my upstairs neighbour, but I try to convince myself he’s imaginary to keep myself from rushing up to kill the shithead.

Today, we watched the Miss World 2004 pageant live from China.
I don’t usually watch these kinds of shows and the last Miss World I ever saw was in 1994 maybe or even earlier, but well there was nothing more interesting to see on TV.

I kind of have an expert eye when it comes to stuff like this though :P, and after they showed the 107 ladies from all over the world, I immediately told my wife that Miss Peru would win, and well she did.

Maria Julia Mantilla Garcia is her name, she’s 20 years old and honestly she deserves it.

The show was even more boring than usual because of the change in how it works, as now people from all over the world vote for who they want to be Miss World instead of the judges choosing during the night.

Anyway, the video footage of the Chinese island of Sanya was great and the Chinese dances and music during the show were beautiful. I also enjoyed the performances by Lionel Richie and Il Divo.

Yesterday, I got to know another Muslim talent from the UK. A very talented poet, songwriter and singer by the name of Tahir Rashid.

“My style of writing might be very different to a lot of the poets and lyricists as I do not compromise on what subject I want to write and I try to convey my feelings as openly as possible.” He says.

The main influence for his poetry is this world in itself. World events, situation of the people and the different phases he has gone through in his life.

Other than his spiritually/religiously subjected poems he’s also working on a hip hop album on which he will be performing with some other fellow artists.

I’ve gone through a number of his poems, and I love the way they flow, the simplicity and the meanings in them.

I truly recommend stopping by his website to check out his works.

Bridges TV was finally launched today.

Bridges TV is a cable TV network that plans to focus on English-speaking American Muslim youth and celebrate the American Muslim lifestyle and culture as well as build bridges of friendship between Muslim Americans and mainstream America.

I wrote about Bridges TV last year when it was still being planned.

I think it’s great that they went on with this project, because it provides American Muslims with a TV network that they can feel comfortable watching and letting their children watch but also because it

It’s estimated that between one and four languages are lost every year, the result of the only remaining speakers dying off.

Linguists estimate that there are 6,809 “living” languages in the world today, but 90 per cent of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people, and some languages are even rarer

“I have a right to my anger, and I don’t want anybody telling me I shouldn’t be, that it’s not nice to be, and that something’s wrong with me because I get angry.”

— Maxine Waters, in Brian Lanker, I Dream a World, 1989

It seems McDonalds Japan have fired the dumb old clown Ronald McDonalds and brought in this chick instead.

She appears in the ad for a new burger they’re promoting there.

Check out the ad video here.
(Wait a little while for the video to load. It’s in WMV format btw.)

It’s about time someone dumped him. He’s been sticking to the same hairdo, makeup and clothes for decades now, lol…
Change is always good 😉

“Some of us