Driving ‘home’ has a different perspective.
Does getting home from a trip seem to take less time than getting there? There’s a scientific explanation for that!
NPR’s Morning Edition explains the psychological phenomenon called the “return trip effect”:
Here’s what van de Ven thinks is going on..
Is this what our future will look like?
John Schwartz has a nice piece in today’s New York Times on science fiction as a tool for predicting the future:
Barbed wire comes in many formats of poke.
Over at Collectors Weekly, BB pal Ben Marks lays out the fascinating history of barbed wire through the eyes of those who collect the stuff. Yes, there are barbed wire collectors. From Collectors Weekly…
Continue reading… “Collectors of barbed wire”
Brass Farthing is a barbershop harmony vocal group that performs in steampunk-style costumes, including aviator goggles and copious amounts of the color brown. Here they are performing a song about a rascally trombonist who seduces the narrator’s wife…
Continue reading… “Steampunk barbershop vocal group”
After all the boozing and barbecuing on America day off from labor, take a sec to look up. What you’ll hopefully see is A supernova burning bright more than 21 million light years away.
The type 1a supernova is actually an exploding White Dwarf that scientists discovered last in the Pinwheel Galaxy, and it’s the youngest of its kind ever to be discovered…
Continue reading… “Seeing a Supernova could be the best part of Labor Day Weekend”
Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything.
I’m a pretty good salesman, but I’m the worst negotiator. If I say, “buy my car for $10,000” and someone says “$8,000,” I’d just shrug my shoulders and say “ok”. In fact, that happened.
Some people could be good at both. But I think it’s very hard. By definition. When you’re a salesman you want the other guy to say “yes.” When you’re a negotiator you have to be willing to say “no”, regardless of what the other side says.
So although they aren’t total opposites, the goals are completely different. But big picture:
Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything…
Continue reading… “How to sell your company”
A New Wooly Rhino Discovery.
A new paper published in the journal Science reveals the discovery of a primitive woolly rhino fossil in the Himalayas, which suggests some giant mammals first evolved in present-day Tibet before the beginning of the Ice Age. The extinction of Ice Age giants such as woolly mammoths and rhinos, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats has been widely studied, but much less is known about where these giants came from, and how they acquired their adaptations for living in a cold environment…
Stress is an unpleasant fact of life. We all experience it for various reasons, and we all try to come up with ways of coping with it—some with more success than others. So what exactly is stress doing to your mind (and body) when you’re staring down a deadline? And what can you do to power through it?
Continue reading… “What stress actually does to you and what you can do about it”
Patents are a tricky thing these days.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman and former CEO, took the stage at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco today to talk about a host of topics, including the success of Google Apps, his feelings about Steve Jobs, Google’s recent acquisition of Motorola, with the conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff even ranging into Schmidt’s thoughts on the current landscape facing the U.S. patent market.
The executive chairman began by addressing the purchase of Nortel Networks’ roster of patents by a group of buyers that included some of Google’s rivals, including Microsoft and Apple. TechCruncher MG Siegler covered the back-and-forth between Google and Microsoft that unfolded in regard to the supposition that the group that bought the Nortel patents was effectively attempting to cut the legs out from underneath Android…
Continue reading… “Google Chairman Eric Schmidt weighs in on patent issues: They’re ‘Terrible’”
Scientists have identified a reason why some are underweight.
Scientists have discovered a genetic cause of extreme thinness for the first time, in a study published August 30 in the journal Nature. The research shows that people with extra copies of certain genes are much more likely to be very skinny. In one in 2000 people, part of chromosome 16 is duplicated, making men 23 times and women five times more likely to be underweight…
Continue reading… “‘Gene Overdose’ causes extreme thinness”
Scott Beale says: “Cornell Creative Machines Lab wanted to see what would happend if two Cleverbot AI ChatBots had a conversation with each other.”
I think I’ve just seen the beginning of the end…
Continue reading… “Two AI chatBots attempt to have a conversation with each other”
Marketing can make you or break you.
We’ve all heard a marketing campaign at some point and thought, “that is just stupid,” but most bad advertising strategies just result in a few less sales than a successful campaign would have brought in. Sometimes though, a company will run a campaign that’s so idiotic that the company ends up losing thousands, if not millions of dollars. Take, for example, the Silo marketing campaign that said customers could get a new stereo for only “299 bananas.” When customers started actually showing up with bundles of bananas, the store had no choice but to give them stereos in exchange for fruit…
Continue reading… “5 idiotic marketing disasters”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.