10 Rejection Letters Sent to Famous People

10 Rejection Letters Sent to Famous People

Jennifer M Wood

We’ve all heard that the road to success is paved with failure. But that doesn’t make rejection any easier to swallow. What does help? Knowing that the world’s most talented people have been there, too. Here are 10 actual rejection letters that prove it.

1. U2 Read more of this post

Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview; “In his view, the world is a giant operating system that just needs to be debugged”

Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview

The richest man in the world explains how to save the planet

by JEFF GOODELL

MARCH 13, 2014

At 58, Bill Gates is not only the richest man in the world, with a fortune that now exceeds $76 billion, but he may also be the most optimistic. In his view, the world is a giant operating system that just needs to be debugged. Gates’ driving idea – the idea that animates his life, that guides his philanthropy, that keeps him late in his sleek book-lined office overlooking Lake Washington, outside Seattle – is the hacker’s notion that the code for these problems can be rewritten, that errors can be fixed, that huge systems – whether it’s Windows 8, global poverty or climate change – can be improved if you have the right tools and the right skills. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization with a $36 billion endowment that he runs with his wife, is like a giant startup whose target market is human civilization. Read more of this post

Lessons From Pixar President Ed Catmull: Your Ideas Are “Ugly Babies,” You Are Their Champion

LESSONS FROM PIXAR PRESIDENT ED CATMULL: YOUR IDEAS ARE “UGLY BABIES,” YOU ARE THEIR CHAMPION

PIXAR PRESIDENT ED CATMULL INSISTS THAT EVERY MOVIE THE COMPANY MAKES STARTS OUT “UGLY”–AND THAT EARLY, ILL-DEFINED IDEAS NEED PROTECTION THE MOST, LEST THEY DIE TOO YOUNG.

BY ED CATMULL

After the original leaders of animation left Disney in the 1990s, the new people running things were from production. And they brought their values, which were to keep the production people busy and productive with one movie after another. So story development was organized in the same way they organized production. As a consequence of this “feed the beast” mentality, a balance was lost at Disney. Read more of this post

The Only 8 Numbers You Need To Do Math

The Only 8 Numbers You Need To Do Math

ANDY KIERSZ MARKETS  MAR. 14, 2014, 6:25 PM

Happy Pi Day!

It’s March 13, or 3/14. Those are the first three digits of Pi, the ratio that enables us to compute the circumference of a circle. Read more of this post

March 14, 2015 Will Be A Once-In-A-Century Thrill For Math Geeks

March 14, 2015 Will Be A Once-In-A-Century Thrill For Math Geeks

SAM RO FINANCE  MAR. 14, 2014, 6:00 AM

Anyone who remembers middle school geometry knows at least a little bit about Pi, the ratio that allows us to compute the circumference, area, and volume of round things. Read more of this post

People make commitments – to a nation, faith, calling or loved ones – and endure the sacrifices those commitments demand. Often this depth is built by fighting against natural evolutionary predispositions

The Deepest Self

MARCH 13, 2014

David Brooks

There is, by now, a large literature on the chemistry and biology of love and sex. If you dive into that literature, you learn pretty quickly that our love lives are biased by all sorts of deep unconscious processes. When men become fathers, their testosterone levels drop, thus reducing their sex drive. There’s some evidence that it’s the smell of their own infants (but not other people’s infants) that sets this off. Read more of this post

Pick gene pool with care on family concerns; Sir Henry Keswick maintains that shares in Jardine Matheson have outperformed those in Berkshire Hathaway

March 14, 2014 8:12 am

Pick gene pool with care on family concerns

By Neil Collins

While Keswicks nurture, newer families piggy-bank raid

Sir Henry Keswick maintains that shares in Jardine Matheson have outperformed those in Berkshire Hathaway, the stock widely considered about the best long-term investment on the planet. Well, it depends where you start, but Jardine shares have multiplied 10 times in 12 years, never mind the dividends. Read more of this post

“Rocky,” directed with immense panache and soaring physicality, is an unpretentious slice of honest entertainment that will set the snobbiest of theatergoers to cheering in spite of themselves

Yo, Broadway, It’s Rocky!

TERRY TEACHOUT

March 13, 2014 10:00 p.m. ET

Rocky

Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway ($79-$143)

212-239-6200/800-432-7250

New York

It’s been four decades since Sylvester Stallone turned himself into the unlikeliest of screen superstars by playing a small-time Philadelphia boxer who longs to be a contender. Now “Rocky,” a no-budget quickie that grossed $225 million, won the best-picture Oscar and spawned five sequels, has become a big-budget Broadway musical with a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime”) and a book co-written by Mr. Stallone and Thomas Meehan (“Annie,” “The Producers”). That’s a high-toned pedigree, especially for a musical based on a movie that the cognoscenti long ago wrote off as a lowbrow joke. Read more of this post

Robert Rickel, who along with two brothers founded a chain of home improvement stores that were precursors to retail giants like Home Depot and Lowe’s, died at 90

Robert Rickel, a Founder of Hardware Supermarkets, Dies at 90

By KATIE THOMASMARCH 13, 2014

Robert Rickel, who along with two brothers founded a chain of home improvement stores that were precursors to retail giants like Home Depot and Lowe’s, died on Sunday at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 90. Read more of this post