Daniel H. Pink's Blog, page 34

The secret of making it until September

I'll be taking a hiatus from blogging for the rest of the month, as I gear up for a busy fall and winter.

If you're curious about what's in the works, and why I've been squirreled away in the boiler room of Pink, Inc., for much of the last six months, you can find a hint here .

Or here. Or here. Or even here.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Emotionally intelligent signage meets road rage

Here's one that's hard to categorize. In Durham, North Carolina, a few neighbors distressed at cars ripping through their traffic circle took signage duties into their own hands and posted the sign below.

Is this emotional intelligence ("Made you look!")? Or is this a threat from a bunch of vigilantes ("Slow your butt down 'cause I'm aiming a yellow pellet right at it.")? While it doesn't compare with my favorite sign this week, I do sorta dig it.

(HT: Chris Cavallerano)

Emotionally intelligent signage on the road

Carl Webber sends this terrific sign from Epping, New Hampshire and reported in the Manchester Union-Leader.

It's a classic example of emotionally intelligent signage: It aims to bring compliance with the rule (don't speed through construction sites) by encouraging empathy on the part of the sign viewer. Added bonus: Some of these signs replace "Dad" with "Mom."

Meantime, over at his always interesting site, Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, has an fascinating post about — get this — emotionally

Is a painting worth a thousand books?

While I'm absolutely, positively in favor of colleges that assign their incoming freshman class one book to read, I'm intrigued by what the University of Pennsylvania is doing this year.

As Real Clear Arts reports, "Instead of reading a common book, to be discussed on campus, freshmen have been asked to study and be ready to discuss a painting, The Gross Clinic, by Thomas Eakins.

"The goal, according to Penn's site, is to "introduce students from the start to the critical skill of interpreting vis

More emotionally intelligent speed limit signs

Nicolae Halmaghi sends, via Fubiz, these examples of emotionally intelligent signage, seen on the streets of Elm Grove, Wisconsin.

Big Ben

I'm a little late to this party, I fear, but Maira Kalman's paean to Ben Franklin and the power of invention is one of the best things I've read on the web in long time.

Sign from above

(via  John Wiseman ) 

Factoid of the day: Can this be true?

In 2008, "for the first time, consumers spent more time with media they paid for, like books or cable television, than with primarily ad-supported media, like newspapers and magazines."

(Source: NY Times, citing a Veronis Suhler Stevenson report)

Extrinsic motivators flop. Again.

I wish I were half as insightful and one-eighth as funny as Scott Adams.

(via Dilbert.com with a HT to Becky Blanton)

The Beer Summit gone awry

(Via the always brilliant xkcd)