Might treating something as an art project sidestep political and personal issues?

In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model. – Steven Soderbergh

I find it fascinating that there are thousands of articles and books written on how to succeed and win, and so few on how to be a good person–even though the two are so intertwined.

This is a nice one:

So listen. Be attentive to what people say. Respond, without interruption. You always have time. You own the time in which you live. You grant it to others without obligation. That is the gift of being gracious. – Tom Chiarella

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.

And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it.

• Steve Jobs

I don’t mean to give you a Zen koan, but the work I did is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don’t know. That’s why I can’t tell you, I don’t know what I’m doing. And it’s the not knowing that makes it interesting.

• Philip Glass

Heard this one in a presentation today:

Q: How many product designers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Does it have to be a light bulb?

Heh.

…had its birth announcement today:

Glad to finally share more information about our design!

This comment has stuck in my head for years…and seems to become truer each day:

With Google branching into so many fields, one day you’ll drive your Google to the Google to buy some Google to eat while you watch Google on your Google. – TheGatekeeper on Slashdot, 2004

Guess we’ve got to get cracking on that edible Google.

Some beautiful images of what cities–and the sky–would look like without lights.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Russell Davies collected several good examples of how creative work is often not complicated, just hard.

More evidence piles up…