July 2010 – Page 17 – Public Intelligence Blog

The Creativity Crisis

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, July 10, 2010

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”

Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Full article here

2010/07/122010/07/12

Unhealthy “Aid” fr Industrial Food Giant’s Ship (a store on an actual ship) Peddled to Brazil’s Poor + Project Peanut Butter & Nutrients fr Moringa

01 Brazil, 01 Poverty, 07 Health, Academia, Corporations, Gift Intelligence, Government, International Aid, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Link to article (ship of junkfood to feed poor, helping them become more susceptible to illness?) Photo Credit: Marie Hippenmeyer, Nestle

AlterNet / By Michele Simon

Nestle Stoops to New Low, Launches Barge to Peddle Junk Food on the Amazon River to Brazil's Poor

Has Big Food already run out of customers in cities and other locales that are more readily accessible by land?

July 8, 2010 |

Last month Nestlé announced that it, the world's largest food company, would soon start delivering its products to the far reaches of Brazil. But not in the usual way, through a distributor, which in turn delivers products for sale in actual stores. Rather, the plan is to sell to customers directly from its own ship. Full article here

Comment: Although more related to malnutrition and not general eating habits of the poor, Project Peanut Butter's Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs) are of worthy mention. They work with USAID, Doctors Without Borders, The Clinton Foundation, UNICEF, Save the Children, and Concern Worldwide (all listed here). However, it is surprising how much of a somewhat low profile they have when they are associated with such a major global need. In 2009, the Earth Intelligence Network identified the connection-need between Project Peanut Butter and the Malnutrition Surveillance Project (plus the Moringa Tree leaves to be used in food aid) and contacted UNICEF and those associated with the Malnutrition Surveillance Project team but did not receive any clear feedback about these ideas. Another inquiry was sent to UNICEF today.

Related:
+ Report: The 2008 Copenhagen Consensus ranked micronutrient supplements as the top development priority out of more than 40 interventions considered.
+ Moringa tree leave nutrients and this recent report on its water filtration qualities
+ Review (Guest): The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick – And What We Can Do About It

2010/07/122010/07/12

Central America Becomes World’s First Landmine-Free Region

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 India, 04 Education, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Government, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Press Release — Embargoed until 18 June 2010, 9:00 am Managua Time (GMT-7)

Managua, 18 June 2010 — As Nicaragua celebrates completion of its mine clearance activities, Central America becomes the world's first landmine-free region, said the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) today. North and Central America, from the Arctic Circle to the Colombian border, are now free from the threat of landmines. This success demonstrates that with sustained efforts a mine-free world is possible.

“Communities in the region that suffered from conflict in recent history are now free from the threat of mines and can move on with rebuilding their lives,” said Yassir Chavarría Gutiérrez of the Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos y Políticas Públicas, the ICBL member in Nicaragua. “As Central America emerged from conflict, over a decade of mine clearance served as a regional confidence-building measure and embodied the Mine Ban Treaty's spirit of openness, transparency, and cooperation.”

Central American governments, the Organization of American States (OAS), and international donors showed significant political will and demonstrated the importance of international cooperation and assistance in mine action.

Of Central America's seven countries, five used to be mine-affected: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica (the other two being Belize and Panama). All have met their mine clearance obligations under the Mine Ban Treaty, which requires that all known mined areas be cleared within ten years. Nonetheless, residual mine clearance capacity will still be needed in the region, including in Nicaragua, as there are still likely mines in weapons caches or emplaced in unknown areas.

“The job is not done now that all the mines have been cleared. Landmine survivors, their families, and communities require lifelong assistance. Government funding that previously supported clearance should now be channeled to victim assistance initiatives,” said Jesús Martínez, Director of the Fundación Red de Sobrevivientes, the ICBL member in El Salvador, and a mine survivor himself.

//
Colombia is among the world's states most affected by antipersonnel mines and Chile will likely meet its 2012 treaty-mandatory mine clearance deadline. Ecuador and Peru have made slow progress despite the relatively small amount of land remaining to be cleared, and Venezuela has yet to clear a single mine from six contaminated military bases.

Production
In the past, more than 50 countries have produced antipersonnel mines, both for their own stocks and to supply others. Cheap and easy to make, it was said that producing one antipersonnel mine costs $1, yet once in the ground it can cost more than $1,000 to find and destroy.

As of 2008, 38 nations have stopped production, and global trade has almost halted completely. Unfortunately, 13 countries continue to produce (or have not foresworn the production of) antipersonnel mines. For the latest updates see Landmine Monitor.

Nine of the 13 mine producers are in Asia (Burma, China, India, Nepal, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, and Vietnam), one in the Middle East (Iran), two in the Americas (Cuba and United States), and one in Europe (Russia).

At the same time some non-state armed groups or rebel groups still produce home-made landmines such as improvised explosive devices.

Full article here

2010/07/122010/07/12

Event: 24-26, Oct 2010, Saratoga Springs, New York State Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Conference

Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization

The NYS GIS conference has a long standing tradition of providing attendees with an opportunity to meet fellow New Yorkers active in the GIS field, exchange information and real experience, and seek solutions to your geographic data management needs.

Comment: The following is not on the agenda of this conference but would be good to see it surface in some form. Open government + open data + data visualization + mobile + public interest feedback loops mapped at the local level (massively expanding the EveryBlock zipcode and Wikimapia models) to develop a democratic framework; giving more people a voice and to displace corruption. Using technology as community leadership tools that create better governance for stronger, more creative and smarter cities, where we clearly see collective intelligence for the collective good producing results. Also see this New York City Wiki listing all neighborhoods, Open311, and Do-It-Yourself City (and their Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg about Open311).

2010/07/11

Imagine A Pie Chart Stomping On An Infographic Forever

Analysis, info-graphics/data-visualization, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Worth A Look

According to statlit.org, statistical literacy is the ability to read and interpret summary statistics in the everyday media: in graphs, tables, statements, surveys and studies. Statistical literacy is needed by data consumers.

The importance of statistical literacy in the Internet age is clear, but the concept is not exclusive to designers. I’d like to focus on it because designers must consider it in a way that most people do not have to: statistical literacy is more than learning the laws of statistics; it is about representations that the human mind can understand and remember (source: Psychological Science in the Public Interest).

With data, though, careless designers all too readily sacrifice truth for the sake of aesthetics. Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors will rise only when the stars are right, but the preconditions for bad visual representations are already in place:

Demand for graphs, charts, maps and infographics has increased.
Increased data availability and more powerful tools have made it easier than ever to create them.
But you probably don’t have a solid understanding of how to interpret or process data.
Nor likely do your readers.
And there’s a good chance that neither of you know that.

Do you hear that fateful, fearsome ticking? You’ve given your audience a time bomb of misinformation, just waiting to blow up in their faces. Perhaps they will forget your inadvertent falsehood before they harm someone with it, but perhaps they will be Patient Zero in an outbreak of viral inaccuracy. Curing that disease can be excruciatingly difficult, and even impossible: one of the more depressing findings in psychology is that trying to set the record straight can muddle it further. The lesson is clear: provide the right story the first time. But the staggering variety of awful visualizations online makes it equally clear that designers haven’t learned that lesson yet. Let’s see just how bad it can get.

READ COMPLETE ITEM WITH DRAMATIC ILLUSTRATIONS

2010/07/112010/07/12

Search: gross national happiness (sic)

Searches

Here's what comes up on <gross national happiness>

Review: The Hidden Wealth of Nations

Review: The Politics of Happiness–What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being

Review: The Health of Nations–Society and Law beyond the State

Phi Beta Iota: The Founding Fathers of the United STATES of America included the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. This was not frivolous. Wikipedia provides a superb concise discussion of how to interpret happiness in “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our own interpretation, to which the below books have contributed, is that happiness is construed in two distinct aspects:

First, that each person find their fullest potential and live to that potential; and

Second, that each person be nurtured to their fullest potential within a harmonious community, or “fraternite.”

Happiness, like trust, lowers the cost to society of everything.

2010/07/112010/09/02

Reference: Mini-Atlas of Human Security

01 Poverty, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Cultural Intelligence, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Strategy-Holistic Coherence

berto small — Berto Jongman Recommends...

Phi Beta Iota: One day the World Map ofConflict & Human Rights pioneered by Berto Jongman will return–it is a travesty that his official duties do not allow him to continue this hugely significant endeavor. In the interim, he recommends, as do we, the below effort.

The miniAtlas of Human Security

An at-a-glance illustrated guide to global and regional trends in human insecurity, the miniAtlas provides a succinct introduction to today’s most pressing security challenges. It maps political violence, the links between poverty and conflict, assaults on human rights—including the use of child soldiers—and the causes of war and peace.

The miniAtlas is available in print and online in English, French and Spanish. The miniAtlas is also available in print in Russian and Japanese. It will be available online in these languages in the summer of 2010.