Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Tests




For five hundred years the public has seen an image, the Mona Lisa, in one pose.

The artist Leonardo supposedly dyslexic, seeing images backwards, may have seen Mona Lisa completely different from the rest of humanity.

Which of these images is the accepted public pose? Which is the pose that the artist saw? Which do you prefer?

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Leonardo's Dyslexia - and the American Economy







There are many ways to look at things - things like the new economy that must rise out of the ashes of the recently clumsily made, deregulated and failed thing.

The most famous portrait in the world is the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci.

It occurred to me many years ago that if the great artist was truly dyslexic, that perhaps for five hundred years the whole world saw this portrait one way.

It also occurred to me that if you reverse the pose, you may see what the artist saw when he first started to paint this item five hundred years ago.

Just a thought.

Perhaps the way American business has looked at business for decades is not the quite correct way to look at the economy now or into the future.

Looking at the above photos can you tell for certain which is the correct pose and which one has a warmer, not enigmatic, smile?

Whose Point of View (POV) is better? Which is the best view? What did the artist see?

Did he know that he had a handicap or did he know that he had a great gift?

What do you see?

What is your perspective of the view - of this picture and the economy?

I hope you see a bright warm smile.

I hope you see the future as well.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

451 Disease - An American Affliction?

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Did you miss Tropicana Orange Juice when it went off the market? Did it go out of business? I hadn’t heard but then again I only occasionally drink orange juice and I have no addiction to brand names. I usually buy what is on sale or cheapest.

Well Tropicana did not go out of business. It changed its packaging to a bright new design above. Sales plummeted. The strange thing is that people apparently, like functional illiterates, do not read in a supermarket. They go for recognizable symbols.

Pepsico which owns Tropicana also came up with new packaging that the public did not recognize as “Pepsi” and are changing back to the old recognizable symbols of these two products. Perhaps the real reason “New Coke” got dissed by the public a generation ago was not because of the new taste but because of the new packaging.

It is scary. It reminds me of the novel and movie Fahrenheit 451 whereby the government bans all reading and writing. Symbols and memory are important and the screen in the living room feeds you all necessary information.
In human beings,"disease" is often used more broadly to refer to any condition that causes extreme pain, dysfunction, distress, social problems. Wikipedia

I define this laziness or disability to read in Americans as the new 451 Disease. I do not know if it is local or global and I have to wonder why we are wasting trillions in education if our children who can master tests, tests, tests (which by the way are nothing more than full of symbols, symbols, symbols) and they or their parents cannot read a carton of orange juice in a supermarket.

Common sense don't count no more. We are surely doomed as a civilization!

No doubt they will soon be advertising prescription drugs on TV commercials to cure this new disease that I have just discovered and labeled.

Have a nice day.