livingbrands

10 things we didn't know before the 42nd week of 2009

1. Humpback whales' mating rituals can be deadly.
2. Galaxies that are 10.2 billion light-years away can be seen through telescopes.
3. Wine gums have the names of alcoholic drinks on them.
4. People spent £37m on cup cakes in the UK last year.
5. The spread of cupcake shops has been used to map urban gentrification in the US.
6. Bagged salad is photographed 4,000 times a second.
7. The most available time of week for a meeting is Tuesday at 3pm.
8. GPS locates the Prime Meridian 100m to the east of Greenwich Observatory.
9. Sales of Asterix books number 325 million.
10. The first watches appeared shortly after 1500 in Germany.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Up Your Viva!

We've been working with MTV on the rebrand of TMF, their Freeview offering.

The new station, Viva, is out next week, and our work broke earlier this week.

The brief: get Viva noticed, and establish a clear personality for the station which resonates with its 16-35 year old audience, so that they'll check it out in what is a cluttered market.

And if you can, use the strangest looking bloke in advertising (actually, that was our idea)...

Showing the power of polarisation, we're creating waves and even getting some trending action on Twitter already despite a low spend.

UP YOUR VIVA!!

Deletion isn't permanent

A while ago I wrote something online that I came to regret. It was meant as a silly, off the cuff comment…but one I hadn't expected to be seen in certain quarters. It was.

Apologies and deletions later, we have moved on.

And that is probably a typical strategy to a life lived on line - chuck it out there; delete later if necessary.

But is this actually a wise approach? Particularly when you read something that suggests deletion is no defence (probably in multiple senses of the word).

The article in question (in The Independent a few weeks ago) highlights the memory capacity of the net, and it's ability to never forget…despite our best efforts otherwise.

The experience of one person covered in the article dramatises this truth powerfully…

"In 2006, on his way to pick up a friend from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, [Feldmar - a well-respected Canadian psychotherapist] tried to cross the US/Canadian border, as he had done over 100 times before. This time, however, a border guard queried an internet search engine for “Feldmar”. Out popped an article Feldmar had written for an interdisciplinary journal in 2001, in which he mentioned that he had taken LSD in the 1960s. Feldmar was held for four hours, fingerprinted and, after signing a statement that he had taken drugs almost four decades ago, was barred from further entry into the United States."

So maybe it really is a case of publish and be damned, because it seems there is no going back.

Or maybe we simply need to start thinking just that little bit more careful before we hit those publish and upload buttons…even if that does take away some of the fun!

Things you most regret putting online - suggestions anyone?

(Thanks to Kester Brewin for the original link)

10 things we didn't know before the 41st week of 2009

1. Earth's warmest year was 1998
2. Morecambe and Wise nearly split up, before they had even got on television.
3. Sailors in Tudor times had man bags.
4. Some spiders are vegetarian.
5. Each person has 1.5kg of probiotic bacteria in their digestive system, on average.
6. The placebo effect is real.
7. Boyzone sold more singles than Take That in the 1990s.
8. Culled rabbits are used to heat homes in Sweden.
9. William Pitt's dying words were about House of Commons catering.
10. Jeremy Clarkson's father was friends with the Monty Python team.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

10 things we didn't know before the 40th week of 2009

1. Male life expectancy in the UK goes up by about three months every year.
2. Fidel Castro stopped smoking cigars in 1985.
3. In the early days of barcodes there was a plan for round ones.
4. In the UK, 26 million addresses get post.
5. Japan has a theme park where children pretend to be fast food workers.
6. Only two serving US presidents won the Nobel peace prize before Barack Obama - Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
7. The flash on David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album cover was inspired by the logo from a rice cooker.
8. Wild animals in zoos in Gaza have to be smuggled in tunnels under the border.
9. There was a royal blood disorder.
10. Low-quality females prefer low-quality males. In the world of zebra finches at least.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Say no to stuff

In Monday's Guardian, Charlie Brooker (as is his way) had a pop at 'stuff': "There's too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche. It's time for a cultural diet".

As he says at one point...

"Every day we humans gleefully churn out yet more books and films and TV shows and videogames and websites and magazine articles and blog posts and emails and text messages, all of it hanging around, competing for attention. Without leaving my seat I can access virtually any piece of music ever recorded, download any film ever made, order any book ever written. And the end result is that I hardly experience any of it. It's too much. I've had it with choice. It makes my head spin."

So have a read. And maybe it is time we said 'no more' to the stuff-a-lanche.

Don't call your son James

My son's school has done one of those 'snapshot' studies that can be of vague cultural interest: a breakdown of first names amongst the 1300 or so pupils (remembering that it's an all boys (state) grammar school in the South East). For the sake of brevity, I've drawn a line at 5 incidences...

66 x James
55 x Thomas
44 x Alexander
41 x Matthew
36 x Daniel
33 x Benjamin
33 x William
28 x Oliver
25 x Joshua
24 x Jack
23 x Samuel
22 x Christopher
22 x Joseph
19 x Edward
19 x Jonathan
17 x George
16 x Michael
15 x Nicholas
13 x Henry
13 x Robert
13 x Timothy
12 x Harry
11 x Adam
11 x Dominic
11 x Luke
10 x Andrew
10 x David
10 x Elliot
9 x Charles
9 x Mohammed
9 x Richard
8 x Cameron
8 x Jamie
8 x Lewis
8 x Sebastian
8 x Zachary
7 x Callum
7 x Jacob
7 x John
7 x Jordan
7 x Marcus
7 x Max
7 x Peter
6 x Ali
6 x Connor
6 x Simon
5 x Alastair
5 x Frederick
5 x Harrison
5 x Jake
5 x Mark
5 x Owen
5 x Ryan
5 x Tom

Changing behaviour

How great is this: give people something engaging to do and they’ll change their behaviour accordingly...

(Thanks to Charles for the spot)

10 things we didn't know before the 39th week of 2009

1. The UK produces 8% of the world's scientific papers, the third most behind the US and China.
2. Ken Livingstone was twice rejected for a cameo in EastEnders.
3. Colin Powell speaks Yiddish.
4. Tesco sells two sewing machines every minute.
5. Homes are 4C warmer, on average, than they were 50 years ago.
6. Turtles can swim 900km (559 miles) in a month.
7. Coffins can be made out of banana leaves. Keith Floyd was buried in one.
8. Michael Jackson had tattooed eyebrows and lips.
9. The most common names for swingers are Paul and Catherine.
10. There are about 100 million bubbles in a bottle of champagne.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Living by the Golden Rule

Much as there is truth in the claim that guns don't kill, people do, they same can be said of the many ills that are laid at the door of both religion (and rational atheism).

It's people who are the problem...whether misguided or pursuing their own ends 'in the name of...'

Which is maybe why all major religions have at their heart a common Golden Rule that no humanist could disagree with; a rule for life that recognises our intrinsic selfishness (whatever we might like to think of ourselves) and inability to do the right thing whatever our good intentions…

• Hinduism: 'never do to others what would pain you' (Panchatantra 3.140)
• Buddhism: 'hurt not others with that which hurts yourself' (Udana 5.18)
• Zoroastrianism: 'do not to others what is not well for oneself' (Shayast-na-shaysat 13.29)
• Jainism: 'one who neglects existence disregards their own existance' (Mahavira)
• Confucianism: 'do not impose on others what you do not yourself desire' (Analects 12.2)
• Taoism: 'regard your neighbour's loss or gain as your own loss or gain' (Tai Shang Kan Ying Pien)
• Baha'l: 'desire not for anyone the thing you would not for yourself' (Baha'Ullah 66)
• Judaism: 'what is hateful to you do not do to your neighbour' (Talmud, Shabbat, 31a)
• Christianity: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' (Matthew 7.12)
• Islam: 'do unto all people as you would they should do to you' (Mishkat-el-Masabih)
• Sikhism: 'treat others as you would be treated yourself' (Adi Granth)

So whether spiritual or rational in outlook, and in whatever we might be doing, how do we so embed the Golden Rule in our beliefs and behaviour that it overcomes our natural inclination to care only about our own needs?

Well that ended up all a bit 'thought for the day' ;o)