People’s consumer behaviour is strongly influenced by their self-concept that is often quite distorted. This stems from an imbalance between their perception of who they really are and who they want to be- a contradiction between the actual and the ideal self. In most cases, the ideal self is an idea forced upon us by external factors (family, friends, media, religion etc) and is very hard to satisfy. As a result, people are “trapped” in a constant search for ways of self-improvement in order to reach their desired self. These ways are expressed in their consumer behaviour and life-style patterns (products, fashions, tastes, preferences etc). In other words, the more you buy, the closer you get to your desired ideal self. The most perfect scam ever created!
How to reduce the gap between actual and desired self? Desire your actual self!
(source: contemplation on Marketing Class study material)
woensdag 28 oktober 2009
dinsdag 20 oktober 2009
Fractals
Have you heard of fractals (Фрактали)? In general terms, a fractal is a geometric shape that when split into parts will produce reduced-sized copies of itself... all parts of the whole are similar to the whole. Fractals are found everywhere in nature and also in man-made elements... for example the dragon tail, Hindu and Muslim decorations, broccoli and colliflower, crystals and mountain ranges, fractals are used in the creation of screen savers and compuer landscapes. The picture above presents the Mandelbrot Set discovered by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1982. This set is believed to be one of the most perfect fractal systems found almost everywhere. The youtube video is a documentary (that could be seen online) made by Arthur C. Clarke (the author of the Odyssey sequel) and explores the characteristics of fractals, specifically the M-set, in nature and all around us. Enjoy, you may never see the world with the same eyes again after this film.
maandag 19 oktober 2009
Patterns in Nature
If next year I get accepted to the Unievrsity of Edinburgh (or may be I should say "when I get accepted at the University of Edinburgh" because according to The Secret in this way I am saying it is true, I am making a concrete statement to the universe that has no other choice but rearrange itself and make it true (:-D) (call it wishful thinking) I really hope this course will still be available. I will eat rice for a month if I'd have to, but I will enroll for this set of lectures.
Course Name: Patterns in Nature
Course Summary:
Why do trees look like trees and snowflakes like snowflakes? How do termites build elaborate structures without supervision? What can boiling porridge tell us about clouds? This fully illustrated course explains how patterns in nature can form through self-organisation, using examples and methods from a variety of scientific disciplines. Suitable for anyone who's ever wondered about the astonishing complexity of nature, you'll never look at the world in quite the same way again.
Course Details:
Pre-requisites for enrolment
No prior knowledge required.
Content of Course
Introduction: A tour through patterns in nature, outlining and structuring the topic, and brainstorming: which patterns have students observed in nature?
Waves and oscillations: We look at waves in the ocean, the atmosphere (cloud patterns!) etc., and why our heart beats.
Regularity and chaos: Using examples like population cycles or climate fluctuations, we introduce concepts like the logistic equation, bifurcations and attractors.
Animal Cooperation: How fish swarms communicate and how social insects cooperate.
Spatial patterns: Cracks in mud, paint, soil patterns in Arctic soils, and similar topics.
Aggregation and growth processes: Crystals, snowflakes, lichen, and the shells of snails.
Cellular automata: Recap of some of the earlier topics and how they can be modelled/described by simple discrete models.
Fractals: Leaves, trees, river systems and other fractal systems.
Miscellaneous topics: (Human) perception of randomness and patterns.
Concluding Session.
Sourse: https://www.course-bookings.lifelong.ed.ac.uk/courses/S/science-and-nature/C1861/patterns-in-nature/
Course Name: Patterns in Nature
Course Summary:
Why do trees look like trees and snowflakes like snowflakes? How do termites build elaborate structures without supervision? What can boiling porridge tell us about clouds? This fully illustrated course explains how patterns in nature can form through self-organisation, using examples and methods from a variety of scientific disciplines. Suitable for anyone who's ever wondered about the astonishing complexity of nature, you'll never look at the world in quite the same way again.
Course Details:
Pre-requisites for enrolment
No prior knowledge required.
Content of Course
Introduction: A tour through patterns in nature, outlining and structuring the topic, and brainstorming: which patterns have students observed in nature?
Waves and oscillations: We look at waves in the ocean, the atmosphere (cloud patterns!) etc., and why our heart beats.
Regularity and chaos: Using examples like population cycles or climate fluctuations, we introduce concepts like the logistic equation, bifurcations and attractors.
Animal Cooperation: How fish swarms communicate and how social insects cooperate.
Spatial patterns: Cracks in mud, paint, soil patterns in Arctic soils, and similar topics.
Aggregation and growth processes: Crystals, snowflakes, lichen, and the shells of snails.
Cellular automata: Recap of some of the earlier topics and how they can be modelled/described by simple discrete models.
Fractals: Leaves, trees, river systems and other fractal systems.
Miscellaneous topics: (Human) perception of randomness and patterns.
Concluding Session.
Sourse: https://www.course-bookings.lifelong.ed.ac.uk/courses/S/science-and-nature/C1861/patterns-in-nature/
zaterdag 17 oktober 2009
The age of stupid
And another one I have seen recently..it tells the story of a man living on the devastated planet Earth in the year 2050. He has been collecting all human knowledge, culture and art in a massive data base and saving it for.. well who/whatever finds it... as humanity has played its cards and commited a "suicide". Climate change from the point of view of the future generations looking back in history at the age that knew what's going to happen and still did nothing to save itself. The age of stupid.
The Earth has faced ice ages, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, continents falling apart because of emerging or submerging tectonic plates. Plastic bags and atmospheric pollution will not cause it much harm; it will rearrange its elements and continue existing undisturbed as it has done since the beginning of time. On the contrary, rearranging its elements will cause the change or the loss of climate - the climate that we know and that has made life on the planet the way it is. As we serve as a catalyst for these events, we are contributing consciously to our own extinction and will eventually murder ourselves. Just as many other civilizations have done before us. The difference is that we know we are doing it and we are still not trying to survive as hard as we are supposed to. Why? “May be because deep inside we know we are not worth saving””
The Earth has faced ice ages, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, continents falling apart because of emerging or submerging tectonic plates. Plastic bags and atmospheric pollution will not cause it much harm; it will rearrange its elements and continue existing undisturbed as it has done since the beginning of time. On the contrary, rearranging its elements will cause the change or the loss of climate - the climate that we know and that has made life on the planet the way it is. As we serve as a catalyst for these events, we are contributing consciously to our own extinction and will eventually murder ourselves. Just as many other civilizations have done before us. The difference is that we know we are doing it and we are still not trying to survive as hard as we are supposed to. Why? “May be because deep inside we know we are not worth saving””
zaterdag 10 oktober 2009
Taking it easy a.k.a бича айляк
Takin' it easy - PLOVDIV in HD from Teodor Stoyanov on Vimeo.
Браво на режисьора! Пренесе ме години назад във времето, когато Пловдид бе домът ми. Това видео представя истинското значение на израза “Бича айляк”. Пловдив е известен с уникалния си жаргон. Ето един типичен следобеден пловдивски разговор:
А: К’во стаа уе. (това не е въпрос и не изисква отговор)
Б: К’во стаа уе.
А: Как е хавата?
Б: Ми на уе, въртим мохабети тука с едни братлета. Айляк.
А: Ее.. Еваларка ви праскам, майна. Ае на тепе да врътнем една макина.
Б: Яка ли е уе?
А: Цъка, майна, харабия ти казвам. .
C: Къде уе братлета?
А: Ми ши ходим да бичим айляк на тепе.
C: Харабия ли уе. Ми ай и аз ши дойда.
A: Густо майна.
Ако някой нещо не схвана, знае къде да ме намери.
vrijdag 2 oktober 2009
Loud & Close
Some quotes from one of the best pieces of literature that has crossed my way. I cannot even begin to list all the wonderful and painful emotions that this book made me feel.
“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.”
“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog followed a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I cried over it…I spent my life learning to feel less.”
“He pointed at, Sometimes one simply wants to disappear.
I pointed at, There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.
He pointed at, How sad.
I pointed at, And I wouldn’t say no to something sweet.
He pointed at, Cried and cried and cried.
I pointed at, Don’t cry.
He pointed at, Broken and confused.
I pointed at, Something.
He pointed at, Nothing.
I pointed at, Something.
Nobody pointed at, I love you.”
“If I’d been somone else in a different world I’d've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.
"What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war."
"I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?"
"In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots."
"Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls “the National Geographic.” She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn’t take it with him when he left her. She said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.”
I said, “But I was negative-thirty years old.” She said, “Still.” Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!"
"I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want."
Anyway.
I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, “What you
have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back
of a giant tortoise.” So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing
on. And she said, “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.
"And the joys I've felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It as too big for me an would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler make that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. IF I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice."
Thank you Foer! Please keep up the work!
“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.”
“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog followed a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I cried over it…I spent my life learning to feel less.”
“He pointed at, Sometimes one simply wants to disappear.
I pointed at, There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.
He pointed at, How sad.
I pointed at, And I wouldn’t say no to something sweet.
He pointed at, Cried and cried and cried.
I pointed at, Don’t cry.
He pointed at, Broken and confused.
I pointed at, Something.
He pointed at, Nothing.
I pointed at, Something.
Nobody pointed at, I love you.”
“If I’d been somone else in a different world I’d've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.
"What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war."
"I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?"
"In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots."
"Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls “the National Geographic.” She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn’t take it with him when he left her. She said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.”
I said, “But I was negative-thirty years old.” She said, “Still.” Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!"
"I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want."
Anyway.
I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, “What you
have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back
of a giant tortoise.” So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing
on. And she said, “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.
"And the joys I've felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It as too big for me an would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler make that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. IF I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice."
Thank you Foer! Please keep up the work!
Fly less
Studing with Chinese is not that bad after all. That's the poster that we have created for the Consumer Behaviour class (e.g. mass-manipulation class - how can I ever buy a Cola again after I learn how they sell it.. no way no way, if yoU read my Marketing Books you will NEVER LET YOUR CHILDREN WATCH DISNEY MOVIES)
At least in this case the objective of the class manipulation campaign was decent: reduce carbon emissions! Fly less, organize carpools and eat less meat, ladies and gentlemen!
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