First, the vast majority of people who become famous don’t start famous. Unless you’re born into a royal family, or to a celebrity mother they start life like the rest of us buying Creme Eggs by the dozen and wondering why nobody sits next to each other on the bus.

Second, in this technological age, normal people (like our pre-celebrity persons) sign up to all manner of online services.

If you think about both of these things, you suddenly realise something. JLS probably all have MSN accounts. Wayne Rooney probably tinkered on Bebo. And everyone and anyone probably uses eBay and Amazon.

Which leads to things likes this. Which is lovely. And it means if you want to, and if you use a little lateral thinking, you can probably find a minor celebrity’s ‘@hotmail.com’ email address without too much effort…

The number missing, to be exact, is 52 according to current research. 52 villages across England and Wales where no memorial is needed, because not one individual from that village died in the Great War, every man who went off to fight thankfully coming back alive. 14 of these villages were thankful enough to have the same happen once WW2 had ceased. No men dead. All returned safe.

It’s an oddity maybe, but a wonderful one. And it shines a light on those less fortunate in as much as it brings hope in even the darkest moments.

It may be more sobering however, to note that there are no Thankful Villages in Scotland, or Northern Ireland. At all.

Last Wednesday however, they deviated slightly from the normal format (five talks of 15 minutes each) to have a special 90 minute talk from the biographer of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson. You’ve probably read about the book, and heard plenty about the subject.

The pop-up menu gives away this was being run on a PC

Amongst all the anecdotes however, what struck me from listening to what Walter had to say about Steve Jobs was this: when he pushed people he pushed them to do impossible things with all the resource and support of a world class team.

“We need to create a phone that makes people fall in love with it“, for example.

Which is different from what most of us experience.

When most leaders (bosses) push people, they push people to do easy things in ridiculous circumstances.
“I know it’s 5pm now, but we need to get this report to the client tonight” (even though they probably won’t look at it).

Who cares about reports when you’re producing world changing products?

And more tellingly, Steve Jobs pushed people to do things they could be proud of. Forever.
Most leaders push people to do things just because they need to be done at that point in time.

Steve Jobs knew what motivated people, and what makes it worth working hard in this crazy world.

If only more people could work that out, imagine what could be achieved…

Check it out. (Via Swiss Miss)

As a Philosophy graduate, this makes me smile muchly.

(Via the awesome XKCD …)

(Via @jameswickham)

This weekend, I went to the TEDxObserver event at Sadler’s Wells, one of the many independent offshoots of TED.com that are organised by individuals, associations, collectives and bodies all across the world. If you don’t know about TED or TEDx, stop reading. Click on the link above, and enjoy. It’s a window into some of the most inspiring and amazing stories from the people of this dear, green planet. If you know TED, and TEDx, then here’s three things I took from the day…

1. “You can only obey the rules of society if you (feel like) you belong to it” Plan B, AKA Ben Drew, talking about the actions of society’s forgotten youth across London during the riots and, by extension, beyond. A take on things I personally hadn’t considered before, and a beautifully complex insight that asks as much as it answers. Great food for thought. In addition, Plan B made the assertion that out there, in the world, there is someone who can turn everyone’s life around. He’s doing it through music and film, working with kids from South London, and he reached out to the audience and the world to think about who each of them could offer support to. I didn’t know what to expect from a guy who I only knew as a track on the radio, but I was impressed.

Plan B on stage @ TEDxObserver (edited stylistically to make iPhone shot look remotely passable)

2. Talia Sharot talked about her book ‘The Optimism Bias’ that, simply put, outlines the human trait of overestimating the likelihood of positive things happening in their life and underestimate the negatives (a great example being that newlyweds think there’s a 0% chance they will get divorced, despite divorce rates being around 40%). This got me thinking. Those newlyweds are wrong – and probably know it. They’re giving wrong answers to a question blinded by emotion and circumstance. The chances are clearly not 0%, even giving overriding circumstances such as some godly being threatening to kill all dolphins if you separate, the chances might be low (we all love dolphins), but still 2 or 3%. Normally, they’d be much higher. People change, circumstances change, the world changes. Even being perfectly suited and perfectly lovely, it’s difficult to drop below a 20% chance. If asked a year beforehand, away from the clouding context of honeymoons and who got what from the wedding list, I’d wager the answer wouldn’t be 0% (I guess Talia Sharot probably has stats on this). Which begs the question, does success rely on realism? Or to take it even further, do we need to be cynical to be successful? (Talia may tackle these thoughts in the book. I guess I’ll have to buy it to find out. The one curse of bite-size talks).

3. Daniel Kish. The man is a marvel. He clicks like a dolphin (and we’ve already established how great they are) and can trace the echoes of that sound to ‘see’ the world around him. He literally used sonar. Being completely blind, this let’s him navigate the world. It’s truly astonishing to see him riding a bike, along a road, with no support. And more astonishing still, is seeing a small boy who he has trained to use the same techniques, throw baskets on a basketball court. Daniel’s point however, beyond this seemingly supernatural power, is that blind people (and those with other disabilities) are systematically taught dependency to survive. Whether it’s people helping you day-to-day, or long term modifications of the environment and this, he contends, doesn’t help anyone. He shares his techniques as a way for blind people to be more independent and offer an alternative, or an addition to a cane or guide dog. My take away? It’s amazing the different solutions there are to problems. In many ways I view this as a resounding triumph of creativity, something innovative and disruptive that is beginning to make a real difference to the world. And that’s something we should all strive for.

This is a video of Daniel giving another TEDx talk:

As a bonus, there was a beautiful end to the day when Goldie, a speaker at last years TEDxObserver who had returned to introduce Plan B, helped give out flowers to the various back room staff who had helped pull the day together. There was something quaint, warm and beautiful about seeing a man who had played Fabric a few hours earlier and a Bond villain once upon a time taking the role of the Assistant Head of English after a school play. There was something about the perspective of that moment that made me smile.And that’s a great end to an inspiring day.

(Via Whatleydude)

Towards the end of the 19th Century Almon B. Strowger was an undertaker in Kansas. He’d fought in the American Civil War and had settled into his new career, and his new life. But one day he noticed something odd: he was getting a lot less work. People hadn’t stopped expiring, so what else could be happening? He pointed to a new invention called the telephone.

At the time, all calls made on the telephone were directed through an operator. You picked up the handset and simply told them who you wanted to speak to. But this caused one, unforeseen issue: what if the operator had ulterior motives? In this case, the operator was married to the other undertaker in the vicinity and so, whenever anyone called up asking for ole Almon, they would instead be put through to his competitor. And given the circumstances, nobody was likely to argue, one undertaker is as good as the next, no?

Not if undertaking is your business of course, and hence why Almon had to step in. He wanted to put the power for making a phone call with the individual and not a third party. So he invented, essentially, the automated telephone exchange that allowed people to dial a number and get straight to whoever they wanted to get to. It’s known as a Strowger Switch by those in the know.

(It’s worth noting that the first time I came across this story was on the island of Guernsey at their very lovely telephone museum.)

To illustrate this fact, I’ve chosen some choice names from everyone’s favourite maritime disaster film, Titanic:

• Conrad Buff IV
• Kathleen ‘Bo’ Bobak
• Doreen Austria

See? Wonderful. Never rue your bad film choices again.