CRUNCH - All things crunched.

20 predictions for the next 25 years From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport, the Observer's team of experts prophesy how the world will change – for good or bad – in the next quarter of a century   Customers crowd into a department store in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. China will continue to rise in the coming decades. Photograph: Chinafotopress/Getty Images 1 Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US' No balance of power lasts forever. Just a century ago, London was the centre of the world. Britain bestrode the world like a colossus and only those with strong nerves (or weak judgment) dared challenge the Pax Britannica. That, of course, is a...

When a great cultural heritage has either been stripped, suppressed or forgotten, then men either emulate other cultural models to give them a sense of manhood or they make the sh!t up. Masculine ideals in Indian culture was between the giant and the soldier... a pristine divine. In cricket Tendulkar and Dravid seemed to be the last - Pujara seems like hope    

How we solve a problem says a lot more of the collective than individual  throw money at the problem  - bribe throw people at it - delegate scaret it - authority   ignore it - see it later hide it - conceal it   lie to the problem - all iz well  escalate it - go to seniority  influence it

TED / ADS WORTH SPREADING CHALLENGE 21 December 2010     TED's dialogue with the global advertising community TED   has thrown down the gauntlet to the global advertising community with a challenge to raise the bar. A free-to-enter competition will consider the best work in categories such as Infectiously Compelling, Social Good, Industry Impact and Talk. The deadline for entries is 7 February 2011 and all work must be entered as a video between 30 seconds and five minutes in length. See the full guidelines here .   Chris Anderson , curator at TED, explains the aim of showcasing advertising that evokes as much emotion, thought and action as a TED talk: 'This is the beginning of a dialogue with the global advertising community to nurture a new form of online advertising. In a nutshell, the slogan is: Instead of ambushing attention, a...

decoding the obvious is more challenging  -  facebook compels a way of life. It is visual. It is a series of likes. it rapidly disseminates ideas and notions. in a world that lacks shelves to put up the glory of lives - facebook provides the rack. it is dual in gender - while for women the past is the future and for men the future is the present - for facebook both tenses demand equal weight-age.    it is breathing dock of life as it unfolds. it forces minds to think in glib. while it provides a lot - it demands a bit.   is one of the most visual ideas to come to life is a platform that elevates - levitates and gravitates collapses the distance between the stars and loosers the voyeur seems like the aware is personality and perception management  digital footprinting - states the obvious  jogs memory both ways - past and future  organizes lives - a live flip-book with moving and connecting visuals (parallel albums - linking albums - who...

the elevator pitch has outgrown its original industrial-age metaphor and expanded into mass culture. Terms like biztweet , twitpitch , and twitch are fast replacing Otis’ creaky box-lift, but the idea is unchanged. Of course, some might claim this is a bad thing, that constant elevator-pitching is just another symptom of a sick, overstimulated, hopelessly sound-bitten society in which glibness rules. But an elevator pitch isn’t a sound bite. It’s an idea in miniature: a full three-master built to scale in a bottle. It’s got to be complete, logical, and watertight, stem to stern. A good elevator pitch is the antithesis of a sound bite—and the cure for the common cable-talking-head ramble. Bloviators and professional obscurantists can confuse the basic contours of reality by stringing daisy chains of selective facts into dark webs of bigotry and paranoia. Yet ask them to boil down their conspiracy theories, nebulous prejudices, and voodoo economics to an elevator pitch and ...