You’re So Self-Controlling; Is our sense of time, not our lack of willpower, the real issue?

November 16, 2013

You’re So Self-Controlling

By MARIA KONNIKOVA

WHAT do you do if, when you get to a subway platform, you see that it is already packed with people? Do you join the throngs to wait for the train, or do you shake your head and seek an alternative way to get where you’re going? If you go the first route, you probably think that the crowd means there must not have been a train for some time and that one is imminent. If you choose the second, you’ve come to the opposite conclusion: It’s crowded, a train hasn’t come in a while, so it’s likely there’s some sort of problem — and who knows how long you’ll end up waiting. Better cut your losses and split. Read more of this post

Real Men Go to Sleep

Real Men Go to Sleep

by Alan Derickson  |   8:00 AM November 11, 2013

The two largest time commitments for most adults on this planet — sleep and work — too often make uneasy bedfellows. The proliferation of nonstandard work schedules and, for many, the outright abandonment of schedules have made traditional daytime-weekday patterns less common. Approximately one in five American workers now functions under some variety of nonstandard schedule. Meanwhile, about half of the nation’s night-shift workers sleep six hours or less per day. The demands of other unconventional arrangements, such as multiple job-holding and independent contracting, have also contributed to the sleep deprivation that plagues much of the workforce. Read more of this post

What Do Investigative Reporters Do? Exposing truly scandalous conduct can often involve hard digging – in dark holes of digital data and even piles of litter from conference meetings

11.16.2013 13:19

What Do Investigative Reporters Do?

Exposing truly scandalous conduct can often involve hard digging – in dark holes of digital data and even piles of litter from conference meetings

By staff reporter Wang Xiaoqing

With the recent Chen Yongzhou scandal, many have called for an “investigation” into the investigative reporting business. I apply the term investigative reporters to those that often wade into the deeper, uncharted waters in the media terrain. I have a hard time thinking of myself as an investigative reporter and I’ve always felt like a more appropriate description would be a reporter that investigates cases from time to time. The first of my investigations was the Wenzhou high-speed train crash. Read more of this post

Burned once, angel takes on investments with caution

Burned once, angel takes on investments with caution

Armina Ligaya | 17/11/13 7:00 AM ET
Parm Gill can be forgiven for being incredibly particular about the projects he chooses as an angel investor. Why am I willing to jump in on pitches that others often snub? Here are eight principles I follow that can help increase the quality and quantity of angel investing opportunities in Canada. The Ottawa-based entrepreneur was forced to file for bankruptcy with his first startup, an Internet service provider called Cyberus Online. In 1999, he sold Cyberus to Dallas-based online computer manufacturer Eisa.com. But he soon discovered that Eisa.com had falsifed its financial statements during the sale process, and was swimming in debt. Read more of this post

What, me worry? How blind optimism benefits startup founders

What, me worry? How blind optimism benefits startup founders

BY HAYDEN WILLIAMS 
ON NOVEMBER 17, 2013

Building a startup is an emotional roller coaster. Look no further than Paul Graham’s startup curve. If you take as a given the parabolic trajectory, how does a founder handle the ups and more importantly the downs? I’ve developed a systematic strategy that has worked wonders in keeping me upbeat. What’s more, I’ve stumbled across research that shows I might not be (altogether) delusional. Read more of this post

Why We Still Talk About JFK; Peggy Noonan’s thoughts on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination

November 16, 2013, 7:12 PM

Why We Still Talk About JFK

I am on my way from Los Angeles to Dallas, where tomorrow I will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which will come live out of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. I can’t believe I’ll be inside that place, from which, 50 years ago next week, at a corner window on the sixth floor, Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed John F. Kennedy. One of the questions we’ll discuss: Why do we still talk about JFK? From my show notes: Read more of this post

76-year-old Yusnor Ef, the grandfather of Malay songs in Southeast Asia: “I always tell the youngsters that if they want to make music that lasts, it has to come from here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “You must be committed to your work.”

Yusnor Ef Waxes Eloquent on Life and Love

By Katrin Figge on 12:56 pm November 16, 2013.

The grandfather of Malay songs talks about love’s influence on his music. (Photo courtesy of Yusnor Ef)

Dubbed the grandfather of Malay songs in Southeast Asia, 76-year-old Yusnor Ef can look back at an illustrious career. Born Mohamed Noor Mohamed Yusofe, Yusnor grew up in Singapore as the son a single mother and discovered his love for the theater in the 1950s. However, it was the combination of music and words that would eventually become his true calling. Read more of this post

How to Be a Writer: Hemingway’s Advice to Aspiring Authors

How to Be a Writer: Hemingway’s Advice to Aspiring Authors

Ernest Hemingway has contributed a great deal to the collected advice of great writers, from his famous admonition against the dangers of ego to his short and stellar Nobel Prize acceptance speech. But some of his finest wisdom springs to life in this excerpt from his 1967 nonfiction piece By-Line, found in the altogether excellent Hemingway on Writing (public library) – a compilation of the celebrated author’s most insightful meditations on the craft, culled from his published works and his private letters. Writing as “Your Correspondent,” abbreviated to “Y.C.,” Hemingway addresses the archetypal aspiring author, nicknamed “Mice,” and offers this characteristically wise-in-a-no-bullshit-way advice on becoming a writer: Read more of this post

The Smarter You Are, The Stupider You Are

The Smarter You Are, The Stupider You Are

by ALVA NOË

November 01, 2013 1:13 PM

Education is necessary if democracy is to flourish. What good is the free flow of information if people can’t make sense of it? How can you vote your own interests if you don’t understand the consequences of policy choices? How can you know what’s best for you or your community? A recent study by Yale’s Dan M. Kahan and colleagues might be thought to call these truisms of democratic political culture into question. According to the finding, the better you are at reasoning numerically, the more likely you are to let your political bias skew your quantitative reasoning. Read more of this post

Lars Peter Hansen, the Nobel Laureate in the Middle, will not let himself be drawn into the debate between Fama and Shiller

November 16, 2013

Lars Peter Hansen, the Nobel Laureate in the Middle

By JEFF SOMMER

Lars Peter Hansen understands why he is being asked, but he isn’t comfortable with the question. “Are financial markets efficient or irrational?” repeats Professor Hansen, a University of Chicago economist. “I don’t really know how to answer that.” Yet since being named last month as one of three recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, he has been saddled with this question repeatedly. Read more of this post

Ex-Formula One and aerospace engineer Lawrence Marazzi has spent five years building the ultimate electric motorbike

Designer turned entrepreneur invents electric motorbike that ‘goes like stink’

Ex-Formula One and aerospace engineer Lawrence Marazzi has spent five years building the ultimate electric motorbike.

It’s been called the “Storm Trooper bike” and been likened to the kind of technology that could be found in science fiction series Red Dwarf. Meet the Saietta R.

By Rebecca Burn-Callander, Enterprise Editor

4:04PM GMT 13 Nov 2013

Saietta R is made by Agility Global, headquartered in the UK and founded in 2008 by Mr Marazzi with the sole purpose of shaking up the motorcycle market. It leaves other electric bikes behind, going from 0mph to 60mph in under four seconds, and is safer than traditional engines. Read more of this post

Story Power: Why Businesses Can’t Tell Them Right

Story Power: Why Businesses Can’t Tell Them Right

by Rich Karlgaard | Nov 15, 2013

It is a mystery why businesses don’t follow this eternally appealing plotline

The year’s surprise megahit movie is Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Warning: I’m about to spoil the plot. Stop reading if you want to see the movie with fresh eyes. While orbiting Earth in a space shuttle, Bullock and Clooney survive a collision with debris. Clooney, the veteran astronaut, and Bullock, a medical doctor and space rookie, now must find a way to get back to Earth. Read more of this post

Finns Pitch Frightful Weather as a Competitive Advantage

NOVEMBER 15, 2013, 9:02 AM

Finns Pitch Frightful Weather as a Competitive Advantage

By MARK SCOTT

Ilkka Paananen, founder and chief executive of Supercell, a Finnish company that last month had a 51 percent stake bought by SoftBank, a Japanese telecommunications giant, for $1.5 billion.

HELSINKI – In Europe’s crowded technology scene, cities are eager to differentiate themselves from local rivals. London has its connections with global finance. Berlin has a thriving local arts and music community. And Helsinki has its wintry weather. Read more of this post

Finding Strength in Humility

NOVEMBER 15, 2013, 2:05 PM

Finding Strength in Humility

By TONY SCHWARTZ

Humility doesn’t get much respect in the corporate world. How often do you hear a leader say publicly, “I’m sorry, I got that wrong,” or, “I didn’t do that very well,” or even something as simple as, “I don’t know.” Now think about a time – if you can remember one – in which your boss apologized for something, accepted responsibility for a misstep or admitted to simply not having an answer to a significant question. Did it make you respect that person less, or more? Read more of this post

The Cautionary Tale of an Investment Adviser Gone Astray; Mark Spangler, an investment adviser, preached the doctrine of acting in his clients’ best interest. But his actions put the lie to his beliefs

November 15, 2013

The Cautionary Tale of an Investment Adviser Gone Astray

By PAUL SULLIVAN

IN the world of Ponzi schemes, Mark Spangler was a small-time crook. But his early career, as a respected investment adviser in Seattle and onetime head of a national adviser organization that pushes its members to act in their clients’ best interest, gives his recent conviction on 32 criminal counts a twist. At its height, the Spangler Group — which consisted of him and later his wife — supposedly managed $106 million. It collapsed in 2011 for the reason that all Ponzi schemes collapse — clients wanted their money back and he didn’t have it. But it had been coming undone for years, ever since Mr. Spangler, 58, started to fashion himself a venture capitalist, a role he was ill suited to. Read more of this post

Why Billionaire Home Depot Founder Ken Langone Took A Secretary’s Salary At His First Wall Street Job

Why Billionaire Home Depot Founder Ken Langone Took A Secretary’s Salary At His First Wall Street Job

LINETTE LOPEZ AND SARANYA KAPUR NOV. 15, 2013, 12:16 PM 4,394 5

Some of the most successful people on Wall Street, have gotten where they are in ways you might not expect. Take the case of Home Depot founder, billionaire Ken Langone. In an interview with finance career site OneWire, he explains the winding road he took to finance, and it’s no standard story. His grades in college weren’t conventional: Read more of this post

The Risky Mentality That Made Jeff Bezos So Successful

The Risky Mentality That Made Jeff Bezos So Successful

JANET CHOI, IDONETHIS BLOG NOV. 15, 2013, 4:24 PM 2,587 2

Success often feels like a chase, especially in the startup world. You scrabble to gain ground, obsessing over features and metrics and competitors, and though you think you’re moving fast and hard, sometimes it feels like you’re running up a down escalator.

For Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, success isn’t a pursuit or a race to the top. It’s an adventure.

You don’t just buy The Washington Post when you think you’re in a race. Rather, his key to success is maintaining a mindset of exploration rather than conquest. Bezos told Charlie Rose in 2012: Read more of this post

A ‘Busy Day’ For This Corporate Lawyer Is Utterly Depressing

A ‘Busy Day’ For This Corporate Lawyer Is Utterly Depressing

ERIN FUCHS NOV. 15, 2013, 4:47 PM 2,629 6

We recently ran a depressing anonymous Quora post detailing typical days of a corporate law associate and how utterly pointless that work can seem. At best, on not-busy days, he spends 11.25 hours alone in his office proofreading and marking documents without any human interaction, except for the brief exchanges with workers in the coffee shop, the cafeteria, and document services. At worst, on busy days, the drudgery is never-ending. Read more of this post

Why Some Companies Are Ending Employee Performance Ratings

Why Some Companies Are Ending Employee Performance Ratings

MAX NISEN NOV. 15, 2013, 5:06 PM 1,871

Even though some major companies like Microsoft have decided to eliminate their stack ranking systems, the controversial employee review process will never go away entirely. Industries like defense and aerospace, for example, tend to value execution over creativity, so need a way to measure and compare employees. Ranking workers on a bell curve that features a set number of high, average, and poor performers meets that need.  Read more of this post

My Dad Will Never Come Home Because He Sold Drugs To Pay For My Brother’s Bone Marrow Transplant; Most pains dull with time. Unfortunately, having a loved one incarcerated is not one of those pains

My Dad Will Never Come Home Because He Sold Drugs To Pay For My Brother’s Bone Marrow Transplant

APRIL ANDERSON, ACLU NOV. 15, 2013, 12:24 PM 12,062

April Anderson with her father and family

Dad usually suggests we leave a little early because leaving is the “elephant in the room” that we’re all trying to avoid. “Ya’ll go on and head home and get some rest. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” It’s the same stuff every time. My dad is one of 3,278 people who will never come home. He’s one of the thousands who have been sentenced to prison until they die for nonviolent drug or property crimes. Read more of this post

Michael Bloomberg Shared The Reason Why He’s Rich On The Radio This Morning; “You have to like what you see in the mirror and you shouldn’t worry about what other people say”

Michael Bloomberg Shared The Reason Why He’s Rich On The Radio This Morning

LINETTE LOPEZ NOV. 15, 2013, 1:16 PM 7,337 11

For almost a decade Michael Bloomberg has gotten on the radio every Friday morning with John Gambling and told New Yorkers exactly whatever is on his mind, Politicker reports. No really, if you’ve ever listened, Hizzoner’s style is super blunt to the point of making some people uncomfortable. But he’s fine with it. In fact, he told Gambling this morning in one of both their final shows — Gambling is retiring and saying goodbye along with the Mayor — that being blunt is the reason why he’s so rich. Read more of this post

A Scientist Wants To Issue A Bond That Pays Big Once We Find Alien Life

A Scientist Wants To Issue A Bond That Pays Big Once We Find Alien Life

SARANYA KAPUR NOV. 16, 2013, 7:10 AM 462

In modern finance, you can hedge against anything. But the market for hedging against alien invasions is pretty thin. Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen pointed us to an interesting proposal addressing the matter. In an article for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science proposes a novel way to insure against the coming close encounter, while also helping fund the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.  Read more of this post

Why Clever And Lazy Leaders Are More Efficient

Why Clever And Lazy Leaders Are More Efficient

BELLE BETH COOPER, BUFFER NOV. 15, 2013, 9:47 PM 2,563 2

I don’t like to think of myself as lazy, but when I came across the ideas that inspired this post that suggested being lazy and clever could make you an excellent leader, I was a little less inclined to shrug off the label. This theory revolves around very broad, general behaviors, rather than labelling specific people, but it seems like an interesting way to classify what we’re good at and what kind of roles we fit into. Read more of this post

This Simple Icebreaker Will Improve Your Company’s Culture: Draw three cards from a deck which feature images and words like “love,” “forgiveness,” and “anger” and say what the words on those cards mean to you

This Simple Icebreaker Will Improve Your Company’s Culture

ALISON GRISWOLD NOV. 15, 2013, 3:55 PM 3,055 3

Amy Errett, the CEO of in-home hair color provider Madison Reed, says her company has a cocktail hour every Thursday. At the cocktail hour, the team regularly plays an ice-breaking game, Errett tells the New York Times. They take a deck of cards, place the cards — which feature images and words like “love,” “forgiveness,” and “anger” — face down on the table, and ask everyone to draw three cards. “Then we’ll go in a circle, and say what the words on those cards mean to you,” Errett explains. “And if it doesn’t work for you, just pass. That’s cool.” The exercise might sound simple, but Errett refers to it as “the biggest breakthrough thing we’ve done in terms of culture.” She says that people were initially hesitant to respond to their card and would ask to pick a different one, but now everyone participates. It’s a simple routine that any company could try as a way of building stronger teams and company culture. “I’ve had so many people come up and say, ‘Thank you,'” Errett says. 

Man Builds A Bomb With Materials Anyone Can Buy Inside An Airport Terminal: Coffee mug, battery, some water, and body spray and condom

Man Builds A Bomb With Materials Anyone Can Buy Inside An Airport Terminal

PAUL SZOLDRA NOV. 15, 2013, 8:51 PM 8,274 6

A potential hijacker doesn’t need to try sneaking a gun or knife on board an airplane, since an independent security researcher has just built a bomb using nothing but things that can be picked up at terminal gift shops. Evan Booth — who runs the website Terminal Cornucopia — built an improvised fragmentation grenade from little more than a coffee mug, battery, some water, and body spray that can be purchased after a TSA security check. Read more of this post

Why You Shouldn’t Copy The Habits Of Successful People

Why You Shouldn’t Copy The Habits Of Successful People

OLIVER EMBERTON, OLIVEREMBERTON.COM
NOV. 16, 2013, 6:22 AM 764 1

The problem with looking at the successful for inspiration is what they do now isn’t what got them there. You’re liable to copy the wrong things. Here are three commonly copied qualities of the prosperous, and why they’re so dangerous:

Scheduling: The cost of being in demand

A successful person usually adopts an insanely heavy schedule. It’s not hard to imagine Beyoncé, say, having 90% of her life booked up for months in advance. This is not a good thing. In reality people usually find such pressures debilitating; they have the perverse effect of compromising the very thing that made that person great in the first place, like the time to study and make music. Scheduling is actually what you want to avoid; the freedom to do what you want is one of the greatest assets a person can have in becoming successful. Long blocks of uninterrupted time are what allows you to develop your music / book / health / business in the first place. Don’t be in any hurry to regiment all your time. Read more of this post

Family retailer runs out of cash and luck; Founded with a single retail barrow in the Gateshead MetroCentre, Collectables grew for 27 years, surviving recessions.

November 14, 2013 7:29 pm

Family retailer runs out of cash and luck

By Chris Tighe

The run-up to Christmas should have been a prime time for Collectables to sell its ranges of gifts, cookware, handbags and jewellery. Instead the northeast retail chain’s 14 units are closed, its 200 employees redundant and the business in administration. Founded with a single retail barrow in the Gateshead MetroCentre, Collectables grew for 27 years, surviving recessions. But the retailer’s luck ran out in late September when it could not raise the money needed to gear up for Christmas. Its failure highlights concern that some fragile companies could finally succumb just as the economy starts to recover. Read more of this post