First Midterm Exam

Three very simple-yet-complicated, multi-layered questions:

1. What idea in Sachs do you find the most important and relevant?  Why? (1 page)
2. What idea in McKibben do you find the most important and relevant?  Why? (1 page)
3. Using your answers to #1 and #2, and whatever process suits you, invent YOUR ideal community. (2-3 pages) Compare that ideal to the reality you see every day. 
1. Need help with the thought and design processes?  See Wikipedia's entry on Design Thinking, for example.

How are brands related to religion?  Read the article from Fast Company.

Rethinking laundry in the 21st century, from the NY Times' "Room for Debate" blog.

This Week's Blog Post Assignment

If I've learned anything over the last several months, it's that many of you prefer (need? crave? depend on?) more assignment detail, as opposed to less. It's a good learning for me, as I tend to be a more 'free-spirited, big picture' kinda guy, making it up as I go.

Anyway, for Friday, after familiarizing yourself with Jacqueline Novogratz's & Acumen Fund's work, develop some personal thoughts about (a) what you learned from Novogratz's experience as one person having an impact - trying, failing, trying again, finding fellow believers, supporters, etc., and/or (b) the impact of creative problem-solving in your life's endeavours and how one can constantly find the new perspectives from which positive solutions flow, and/or (c) reaction to Seth Godin's video.

So address any OR all topics as you choose and are inspired. Sometimes learning is about what I want you to learn. Sometimes it's about what you CHOOSE to learn. Your grade is based on the former. Your life's long-term success is more about the latter. Enjoy!

By the way, here's Wikipedia's entry for Eric Hoffer. Yesterday's lecture was wrong in one respect: Hoffer worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco, not Brooklyn. Otherwise, a pretty fascinating and atypical life story. And, as we contemplate materialism, it's worth a moment to consider Hoffer's belief that "...a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life."

I dunno. I'll have to think about that for a while. Maybe an obsession with the outside world is born from a sense of empathy with those around us, or is that too idealistic?

(listening to "Drake" by Afro Celt Sound System, from "Anatomic.")

Seth Godin's Acumen Fund Talk

Mid-Term Status Report

OK all of you blog and bookmarking slackers, I'm preparing mid-term evaluations (a.k.a "grades") so get all your work up-to-date...unless you've talked to me about other arrangements....which most of you have not.

Sleep well. Get your H1N1 vaccination. And wash your hands.