| Vitruvian Mind |
| The Man will burn! |
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Posted on August 20th, 2008 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Uncategorized.
Many apologies for the long absence from posting. We have been juggling all of our IT around here, including hosting, moving over to new hardware platforms, a new web group, etc. Everything is working again, and more good things are on the way soon.
Thanks for your patience 
Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Travel & Leisure, Coming Events.
Today, we launched Vitruvian World, an ever-evolving list of global events that can be accessed at the top of Vitruvian Mind (or at its own URL). The purpose behind generating a schedule of happenings in culture, music, art, sports, and celebration is pretty obvious. We want this information ourselves. Seriously, if you want to know what’s cool in the world–where you gonna go?? NOWHERE (pls correct me if I’m wrong). Well, as they say, if you want something done right…so we did. VW is something that we have always wanted to create for ourselves, and have recently found the technology (Google) and the manpower (interns) to build and maintain it.
With that said, expect the calendar to be populated with most relevant world-wide events in the next few weeks. Think Running of the Bulls meets Grand Prix meets Ibiza opening parties meets Paris White Party meets the Olympics. THEN it’ll get interesting as we add regional and lesser known parties and festivals. Getting the low hanging fruit will force us to find all the gems that we don’t even know about yet. At the end of the day, it’s YOU who we want to clue us in on what’s happening and when.
Vitruvian World ought to broaden our horizons, get us on out travel game, and remind us that the world is a large and exciting place. As with VM, we have no idea where this will go but what the hell, we’ll have fun doing it.
Special props to Danny for getting this up.
Posted on April 8th, 2008 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Media & Entertainment, Sports & Health.
In the NYT is a really silly article about really imbalanced bloggers. Apparently, blogging is stressful and can lead to death. WHAT? Are they serious? Firstly, who really cares about the dangers of blogging? Secondly, writing articles from home offices, about topics that one is presumably fascinated with, is “stressful?” We beg to differ.
The VM team wants to reiterate that none of our writers stress over the contents of this blog. It’s about balance, right? We see something fun or relevant–we post. If we’re raging into the morning at some house on an island, come home and just need to sleep–we don’t post.
So excuse us our periodic multi-day dissapearances…it’s better than the alternative
Posted on March 9th, 2008 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Philanthropy & Environment.
In conjunction with several NGO’s, Vitruvian Mind is formally announcing its 2008 philanthropic cause, Math for Models and Others Who Can’t Count Good.
Statistics indicate that 4 out of 5 models are unable to compute the decimal approximation for the fraction 1/3 or to provide the first 5 multiples of 7 (7, 14, 21, 28, and 35). Says project co-Director Myk Likhov, “It’s just not fair for these girls to go through life handicapped. They deserve better. We have the power to make that difference. It’s a bold statement, I know, but it can be done.”
VM’s mandate in this endeavor is to help train these predominantly Slavic and South American women in basic math operations. Skilled instructors from fields as diverse as finance, hospitality, and talent management have been brought in to emphasize the following skills:
*Experts have agreed that models have little need for division so funding has not been allocated for that purpose.
A secondary focus is on raising awareness of the educational deficiencies imposed upon this group. Co-Director Philip Asquith states about VM’s mission:
Our goal at Vitruvian is to bring about change. Now, we aren’t saying that the situation in Darfur is unimportant, or that the outcome of the political process this year isn’t of paramount significance, it’s simply that we understand change comes incrementally. And we prefer to see the results of our efforts in workable 3 year plans. Math for Models is a project all of us can really get behind and at the end of the day embetter the world in a small way.
Visiting mentor from the London Business School Mayur Bhatnagar’s primary focus is to get models to better understand restaurant cheques. “We all know that models never pick up cheques, but what happens in the case of an emergency? What if a model, god forbid finds herself in a position where she needs to calculate a standard 15% tip. We need to provide her with the tools to make these decisions.”
To attain its goal of significantly improving math education for models by 2010, VM has partnered with top-tier modeling agecies (Trump, Balls, Red Square) and has enlisted the help of several non-profits and private donors.
Our M for M gala dinner this Spring will include a silent auction of assorted modeling goods and services, generously donated by modeling notaries. Also, please help us make a difference by purchasing a limited edition of our “Don’t Feed the Model” t-shirts (see below).
All proceeds will go entirely to the M for M fund. Of course, if you would like donate to or learn more about the project, please email us at mathformodels@vitruvianmind.com. We appreciate all your support. Thank you.
Posted on January 15th, 2008 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Uncategorized.
Our apologies if you were locked out of commenting on posts…you can now freely comment upon the site as a visitor.
Posted on January 12th, 2008 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Science & Technology.
We’ve been asked what the easiest way to have VM posts delivered so here are 2 quick options:
1. Sign up for the newsletter (duh!) through the little box in the top right of the website. When we write something, you’ll get it in your Inbox.
2. RSS Feed. This box (
) that is on most portals, blogs, and websites allows you to link to the site using an RSS reader. I recommend Google’s personalized homepage, which has a RSS feed in it. Directions to get link VM’s site are right click on and select copy shortcut then go to Google or other RSS reader and copy the shortcut into the URL.
Posted on September 9th, 2007 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Travel & Leisure, Business & Finance, Science & Technology, Humor & Pop Culture.
Well, not really. But aSW DID profile Phil & Myk for the site’s article on Burning Man, which is pretty interesting considering the NYT article of a few days ago: “A Facebook for the Few.” Please note how Phil sports the furry pink cowboy hat and Myk his Wharton cap…who’s the wild one, we wonder?A few excerpt of note from the article:
Users are mostly young — 32 on average. Many have graduate degrees and a taste for living extravagantly on more than one continent. Sixty-five percent are from Europe, 20 percent from the United States and the rest scattered around the globe.
“We have put together a platform where a definitive group of people are separated by only three degrees,” Erik Wachtmeister, aSmallWorld’s founder, says often and loudly.
Skeptics are not sure just who is getting the message. “For truly wealthy consumers, time is the ultimate luxury,” said Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing, which researches luxury brands. “These people are not going to waste it hanging about on a social networking site.”
In reply to a query from a comely young woman searching for a hairdresser in Singapore, a Procter & Gamble executive there responded with a thinly veiled proposition: “I have two bottles of Nice n’ Easy in the cupboard. I’ll do it for free.”
As pretentious as we know that it is…thx for the luv aSW :).
Posted on July 13th, 2007 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Philosophy & Spirituality, Philanthropy & Environment.
Sometimes, knowing how other people make decisions can help you find clarity in your own reality. The Toltecs believe that reality is mitote, or a fog. The warrior rigorously strives to disperse the fog in order to see the universe for what it is. To help you, our loyal readers, transcend your daily struggles, we offer one man’s simple yet profound process for making life changing decisions:
Step 1: Get hammered.
Step 2: Ask everyone on the planet what you should do.
Step 3: Disregard all advice. Plan on doing what you want anyways.
Step 4: Ask your girlfriend what you should do. In fact, ask her what you’ve decided.
Step 5: Do what she says–you’ve made decisions on worse information before. Steps 1-4 were a waste of time.
It’s just one method, but it’s effective. If this note affects a positive change on your life, feel free to email us at iloveyou@vitruvianmind.com.
Posted on May 31st, 2007 by Vitruvius.
Categories: History & Politics, Sports & Health.
Watch out Philip. All your ranting on projectile weapons has prompted a response from a vigilant reader; maybe even a member of the NRA. You’d think this was the Economist, with this level of detail taken to set you straight. Steven posted this comment under your 2nd Rant on Gun Control which we think deserves to be aired publicly. So the gauntlet has been thrown biotch! VM readers look forward to your response. Find the full critique below:
Whoa, Phil, time to change your brand of brainwash. Your rant, while I’m sure well meaning, is based on a lot of false assumptions. For example, “Now guns are used for crime more than for safety.” Wrong. According to research done by John Lott, Jr.*, firearms are used defensively to protect people and/or property approximately 2.5 million times annually in the US. That’s a fair amount more than they are used for criminal intent.
It’s not surprising that it’s a fact out of the view of the general public because defensive gun use doesn’t fit the popular media’s idea of sellable news (a 16 year old kid shooting up a school = news. Some chick with CCW permit using her pistol to scare off an attacker in a parking lot = not news).
Another assumption that you have, and one I’d urge you to rethink immediately, is that the cops will be there to protect you. Wrong again… A Supreme Court ruling in 2005 found that the police have basically no obligation to show up in time to save your ass from a bad guy (Castle Rock v. Gonzales, No. 04-278 ). Of course, you’re probably fortunate enough to be able to pick the neighborhood you live in and the areas that you visit, so the odds of you running into a situation where you needed to use (or threaten to use) deadly force to save your own posterior are pretty low. But, do you really think those less privileged than you “do not deserve the right” to posses the means to protect themselves?
You think more guns means more death? Check out the article titled “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence” in the latest issue of the Harvard Law Review (http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/) for some interesting insight on that assumption.
Also, in the 36+ states that have made it easier to obtain concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits many types of violent crime has gone down. You might conclude two things from that: apparently carrying a weapon doesn’t turn people into bad guys, and, bad guys change their behavior when the possibility exists that their intended victim might shoot them. So ask yourself, will banning the possession of firearms by law-abiding people do anything more than improve workplace safety for criminals? Want more proof? Consider that the places that have the worst crime rates in the US are those with the most restrictive laws on gun possession (Washington DC for example) and that after the UK and Australia banned guns the violent crime rates there have skyrocketed.
I won’t even start on your assumption that guys who wrote Constitution and Bill of Rights placed the Second Amendment there so we could protect ourselves from banditos… that’s a whole essay onto itself. *Lott’s book, “More Guns, Less Crime”, is an interesting read, especially if you like statistics. Also, check out http://www.johnrlott.com
Steven, Marin County May 29, 2007
Posted on May 20th, 2007 by Vitruvius.
Categories: Philosophy & Spirituality, Humor & Pop Culture.
1. Stimulate your ears differently. Try different music you haven’t tried before.
2. Stimulate your eyes in new ways. Go to an art gallery. Even if it’s not your favorite kind of art, it can still be stimulating and thought provoking.
3. Learn about different people and lifestyles. A great gateway into this is Wikipedia, where you can read articles on a wide variety of practices, such as Swinging, Wicca, the Green Party, Conservatism, Anarchism, Sunnis, Discordianism, Tutsis, and the Yakuza. Consider how many members they have worldwide.
4. Spend a day alone with your thoughts in the middle of nowhere - a desert, an empty beach, a secluded forest.
5. If you exercise by jogging, biking, or walking, find new routes. Find parks where you live.
6. Join clubs based on things you have no knowledge of, such as a Scrabble Club, an Investment Club, etc.
7. Watch movies in genres that you normally don’t partake in, such as Cyberpunk, scary, Anime, documentaries, stand up comedy…
8. Do crossword puzzles.
9. Be adventurous, and try wearing clothes which you would never wear otherwise.
10. Build ridiculous things like radios, legos, robots, trebuchets.
11. Have a discussion with someone much older than you about times before you were born.
12. Walk backwards through your whole house.
13. Face your fears! Are you computer-illiterate? Putz around on a computer for a while. Don’t be scared. You won’t break anything. Learn a programming language. Nothing is as hard as anyone makes it out to be.
14. Try skiing, snowboarding, jet skiing, Hang gliding, parasailing, surfing, and anything else that pushes the limits of your comfort zone.
15. Learn to juggle. A great workout for your brain, eyes and reflexes. Are three balls too easy? Try four, or better yet, five.
16. Learn to write with the hand you do not write with. Change your computer keyboard setting to Dvorak and type away. Or try to do other things with the wrong hand…
17. Try making something new in the kitchen. Home roasted coffee, bread, hummus, flavroed oils or vinegars, whatever you want.
18. Open your mind to other political points of view. You may find it hard to stomach at first, but in time you might find a grain of truth in what your nemesis has to say. Even if you don’t, you’ll be able to argue with one of “them” much more intelligently.
19. Try blocking out one of your senses. Do everyday things, like cleaning up your room or using your cell phone, with a blindfold. It puts things in perspective when you are forced to “create” new ways of doing things you’ve already figured how to do.
20. Play strategy games like Bridge, Checkers, Chess, Shogi and Go.
21. Try to see another person’s perspective. What is important to that person? What is he or she self-conscious about? Is that person as open minded as you?
22. Travel - becoming an outsider really exposes a mind to new things. You can even do this travel inside your country or state! How well do you know your own city? Have you tried using only a bike, or only using your own two feet and public transportation? (Ever considered what it’s like if that was the only means to get around, say if you were physically unable to drive around? Being a pedestrian once in a while will make you a better driver.) Go off the beaten path.
23. Learn to read and write any language that you don’t know.
24. Turn off the TV and have a short conversation with the person seated next to you. Just a few minutes and you will likely realize that this is way more interesting than that program on TV.
25. Train yourself to have Lucid Dreams, they can be extremely fun. You can learn to control your dreams and do whatever you want. There is also an excellent wikibook on this subject.
