‘If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving you don’t actually live longer, it just seems longer.’ Clement Freud Sometime today you’re going to get bored. And it won’t be pretty. You’re going to feel foggy. Anxious. Even scared. When we’re bored the clock doesn’t move. We feel trapped. We’ll do anything to… Continue Reading
Wit and wisdom for wordsmiths
Category Archives: Creativity
Writer’s Clinic Gets Liebster Award!
The Writer’s Clinic has been honored with the Liebster Blog Award! In case you haven’t heard of the Liebster, it’s an award given to blogs with fewer than 200 subscribers that are worthy of more recognition and link love. Which is why it’s called the Liebster Award — liebe is German for love. Google is… Continue Reading
What a dog bite says about Steve Jobs
Genius though he undoubtedly was, I’d bet Steve Jobs could be a tyrant to work for — and probably to live with. I say this because last week a dog bit me. A big, aggressive Boxer showing me who was the Alpha dude. Now I love big dogs — Golden Retrievers, Labs, German Shepards. I… Continue Reading
Perfection: Does It Take Practice or Talent?
Do you have a dream you’ve given up on? Something you’re convinced you don’t have the talent for and could never achieve? Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson says forget about talent. What it takes to become, say, a concert pianist, is not talent but 10,000 hours of practice. (10,000 hours of practice, by the way, would… Continue Reading
Fun with Physics: Pendulums at Play
From today’s BoingBoing comes a post too intriguing not to share. A demo of various lengths of pendulums (hmmmm … . wouldn’t that be pendula?), it’s on YouTube, followed by a series of similar demos. Some have music; others don’t. All of them are mesmerizing. Here’s the description of the apparatus: “The period of one… Continue Reading
The Crucial Element You Must Have in Science Writing
Most of us, at least initially, think our job as bloggers is to convey information. And of course it is, especially if we’re writing about science, where accuracy is essential. But conveying information like a teacher, or a scientist writing for a peer-reviewed journal, is a guarantee a general audience will ignore you. Counter-intuitive as… Continue Reading
The Surprising Secret to Success? Daydreams
What one ingredient does it take to hit the ball out of the park – not once in a while but time after time? What does it take to be the world’s best chess master? To play at Carnegie Hall? To write an epic novel? If you said talent, guess again. A high IQ? Wrong… Continue Reading
Actress, Oscar Winner . . . Scientist?
If you watched the Oscars Sunday night, you probably weren’t thinking of Hollywood as a hotbed of scientists. And you’d have been be right — with one exception. It seems that ten years ago, while a straight A student at Syosset High School on Long Island, Best Actress winner Natalie Portman made it all the… Continue Reading
Creativity: Who Has It; How Can We Develop It?
People believe funny things about creativity. That it’s the province of artists and geniuses. That you’re either born with it or you’re not. That creative people work alone. That creativity can’t be taught; only envied. One definition of creativity calls it “the awareness, observation, imagination, conceptualization, and rearrangement of existing elements to generate new ideas.”… Continue Reading