Seth Godin on Vulnerability, Creative Courage, and How to Dance with the Fear: A Children’s Book for Grownups

Seth Godin on Vulnerability, Creative Courage, and How to Dance with the Fear: A Children’s Book for Grownups

At the 2014 HOW conference, Debbie Millman, host of the excellent interview show Design Matters and a remarkable mind, sat down with the prolific Seth Godin to discuss courage, anxiety, change, creative integrity, and why he got thrown out of Milton Glaser’s class. She used an unusual book of Godin’s as the springboard for their wide-ranging conversation: V is for Vulnerable: Life Outside the Comfort Zone (public library) – an alphabet book for grownups illustrated by Hugh MacLeod with a serious and rather urgent message about what it means and what it takes to dream, to live with joy, to find our purpose and do fulfilling work. Read more of this post

7 reasons why the future of sleep could be wilder than your wildest dreams

7 reasons why the future of sleep could be wilder than your wildest dreams

By Dominic Basulto Updated: May 20 at 9:04 am

In a hyper-busy world, it seems like sleep is a luxury at times. How many times have you heard your cubicle mate or family member complain that there just aren’t enough hours in the day? But what if the key is not in optimizing your day-to-day routine or in trying to squeeze more hours out of a day, but rather, in minimizing – or at least optimizing – your sleep time? Read more of this post

Harvey Norman co-founder Ian Norman dies

Harvey Norman co-founder Ian Norman dies

May 29, 2014 – 6:22PM

Eli Greenblat

Ian Norman, who teamed up with Gerry Harvey in 1982 to create the Harvey Norman retail chain that carries his name, has died. He was aged 75. Read more of this post

Entrepreneurs to venture capitalists: We’re looking for 5 traits

Entrepreneurs to venture capitalists: We’re looking for 5 traits

May 23, 2014 3:30 PM
Ryan Caldbeck, CircleUp

I’ve met with dozens and dozens of VC investors over the years, both formally and informally. Some passed on my company. Others we passed on. I’ve also had hundreds of conversations with other entrepreneurs about their experiences with venture investors. These opportunities have given me a good understanding as to what makes a great (and not-so-great) venture capitalist. I also worked in private equity for years before starting CircleUp, and this experience has given me the added perspective of having sat on both sides of the table. Read more of this post

A Dozen Things I’ve Learned About Marketing, Distribution and Sales

A Dozen Things I’ve Learned About Marketing, Distribution and Sales

25iq

1. “Most businesses actually get zero distribution channels to work. Poor distribution—not product—is the number one cause of failure.”  (Peter Thiel)  Legions of businesses fail every day because the people involved in the company do not know how to market, distribute and sell their goods and services. The right training can help a person understand that while potential customers don’t like salespeople, they do like to buy products and services. Knowing how to present a situation as an opportunity to buy and not an unpleasant experience with a salesperson requires skill.  While a lot of this post is about sales, physical distribution systems should not be forgotten. There are companies like McDonalds which owe their success more to their distribution systems than anything else. Great distribution systems can be a substantial part of a company’s moat, as is the case with Starbucks, Amazon and Costco. Read more of this post

Israeli violinist maestro Ivry Gitlis explains origin of Israeli musical prowess

Updated : 2014-05-23 19:03

Gitlis explains origin of Israeli musical prowess

By Choi Hyun-soo

Israeli violinist maestro Ivry Gitlis saidFriday that the turbulence of Jewishhistory has helped produce many ofhis compatriot musical virtuosos.  Read more of this post

The extraordinary, depressing power of failing upwards; If you’ve noticed (and who hasn’t?) that less diligent, less dependable employees often get ahead faster than their peers, here’s why

The extraordinary, depressing power of failing upwards

By Anne Fisher, contributor May 23, 2014: 5:00 AM ET

If you’ve noticed (and who hasn’t?) that less diligent, less dependable employees often get ahead faster than their peers, here’s why. Read more of this post

28 Years Of Psychology Shows That “Expressive Writing” Makes You Way Happier

28 Years Of Psychology Shows That “Expressive Writing” Makes You Way Happier

DRAKE BAER STRATEGY  MAY. 24, 2014, 4:22 AM

If writing about the difficult parts of your life were a drug — called “expressive writing” in the literature — it would be making bank for some faceless pharmaceutical company.

The British journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment reports that health outcomes include:  Read more of this post

Buffett Too Rich for Buffett Is Sign Bargains Are Gone

Buffett Too Rich for Buffett Is Sign Bargains Are Gone

Warren Buffett gave a nice, simple explanation for why Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) didn’t buy back any of its own shares in 2013: The stock just wasn’t cheap enough.

Read more of this post

2 Things Successful People Do Over 3-Day Weekends

12 Things Successful People Do Over 3-Day Weekends

JACQUELYN SMITH CAREERS  MAY. 24, 2014, 9:00 AM

Successful people spend time with family and friends over long weekends.

We’re heading into a holiday weekend — and most successful people have planned out (or at least thought about) what they’ll do over the next three days.  Read more of this post

7 Stupid Ways Smart People Sabotage Their Success

7 Stupid Ways Smart People Sabotage Their Success

RICHARD FELONI STRATEGY  MAY. 24, 2014, 9:45 AM

Sometimes the smartest people do things that seem to make no sense at all.

A group of Quora users drew from their experiences to address the question “What are some stupid things that smart people do?” The answers provide ways to overcome some of the common ways intelligent people unknowingly undermine themselves.

We’ve highlighted a few below.

1. They spend too much time thinking and not enough time doing. Read more of this post

Gerald M. Edelman, Nobel Laureate and ‘Neural Darwinist,’ Dies at 84

Gerald M. Edelman, Nobel Laureate and ‘Neural Darwinist,’ Dies at 84

By BRUCE WEBERMAY 22, 2014

Dr. Gerald M. Edelman at Rockefeller University in 1972, in front of a gamma globulin model.CreditDon Hogan Charles/The New York Times

Read more of this post

Even Fruit Flies Need a Moment to Think It Over; Researchers have found that when faced with hard choices, fruit flies take more time to make a decision

Even Fruit Flies Need a Moment to Think It Over

By DOUGLAS QUENQUAMAY 22, 2014

Researchers have found that when faced with hard choices, fruit flies take more time to make a decision. CreditAmy Xinyang Hong and Cedric Tan Read more of this post

A Creationist’s Influence on Darwin

A Creationist’s Influence on Darwin

MAY 23, 2014

George Johnson

In my last column, about the eerie machine-like nature of the AIDS virus, I mentioned William Paley, the 19th-century theologian best known today for his argument supporting creationism: Something as complex as a mechanical watch clearly would not exist without a creator. Thus we can infer that the intricacy of our bodies — and those of all creatures — is the work of God. Read more of this post

A Theory on How Flightless Birds Spread Across the World: They Flew There

A Theory on How Flightless Birds Spread Across the World: They Flew There

MAY 22, 2014

An artist’s depiction of the elephant bird, now extinct, which lived on Madagascar and could grow to a height of nine feet. CreditBrian Choo Read more of this post

A Revolutionary Approach to Treating PTSD: Bessel van der Kolk wants to change the way we heal a traumatized mind – by starting with the body. CreditIllustration by Matthew Woodson

A Revolutionary Approach to Treating PTSD

By JENEEN INTERLANDIMAY 22, 2014

Bessel van der Kolk wants to change the way we heal a traumatized mind — by starting with the body.

Bessel van der Kolk sat cross-legged on an oversize pillow in the center of a smallish room overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur. He wore khaki pants, a blue fleece zip-up and square wire-rimmed glasses. His feet were bare. It was the third day of his workshop, “Trauma Memory and Recovery of the Self,” and 30 or so workshop participants — all of them trauma victims or trauma therapists — lined the room’s perimeter. They, too, sat barefoot on cushy pillows, eyeing van der Kolk, notebooks in hand. For two days, they had listened to his lectures on the social history, neurobiology and clinical realities of post-traumatic stress disorder and its lesser-known sibling, complex trauma. Now, finally, he was about to demonstrate an actual therapeutic technique, and his gaze was fixed on the subject of his experiment: a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran named Eugene, who sat directly across from van der Kolk, looking mournful and expectant. Read more of this post

Can the Nervous System Be Hacked?

Can the Nervous System Be Hacked?

By MICHAEL BEHARMAY 23, 2014

Mirela Mustacevic, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, had a nerve stimulator implanted as part of a medical trial. Her symptoms have lessened significantly.CreditSarah Wong for The New York Times

Read more of this post

Class Field Trip Stops at a Local Pawnshop to learn about personal finance, economics and predatory lending

Class Field Trip Stops at a Local Pawnshop

MAY 23, 2014

By RON LIEBER

READING, Ohio — The last time Brian Page had to file the paperwork to evict a tenant from a rental property he and his wife own, he noticed all the check-cashing services and pawn shops on his drive home from the courthouse. A clerk tipped him off to what was going on: Every day, lots of people leave court with checks they’ve received in legal settlements. They often stop to cash their checks right away, paying a big fee for the privilege, and then go shopping with the money. Read more of this post

Piketty findings undercut by errors; The FT found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those which last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff

May 23, 2014 7:00 pm

Piketty findings undercut by errors

By Chris Giles in London

Thomas Piketty’s book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, has been the publishing sensation of the year. Its thesis of rising inequality tapped into the zeitgeist and electrified the post-financial crisis public policy debate. Read more of this post

In a world where reviews can be bought and writer’s reputations are shredded by “sock puppet reviews”, how does a reader chose a book to read?

Updated: Thursday May 22, 2014 MYT 4:04:30 PM

Discerning readers

BY ELIZABETH TAI

In a world where reviews can be bought and writer’s reputations are shredded by “sock puppet reviews”, how does a reader chose a book to read?
IN a post few weeks ago, I wrote about the online petition requesting Amazon to remove anonymous reviews and allow only verified purchases. This was allowing unethical people write fake reviews to bring down competitors. Read more of this post

The irrepressible Teo Soo Cheng, the patriach of the See Hoy Chan Holdings Group (SHCHG) who passed away on May 15 after living to a ripe old age of 93

Updated: Saturday May 24, 2014 MYT 11:13:28 AM

The irrepressible Teo Soo Cheng

BY THEAN LEE CHENG

The late Tan Sri Teo Soo Cheng

MORE than 20 years ago, as one drives towards Sg Buloh on what is the Lebuhraya Damansara-Puchong (LDP) today, the landscape was mainly oil palm plantation, orang asli settlement and small factories after leaving Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI). Read more of this post

Five brain challenges we can overcome in the next decade

16 May 2014, 3.17pm AEST

Five brain challenges we can overcome in the next decade

Barbara Sahakian

Just prior to him leaving office, I was asked by John Beddington, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, to scope the future of neuroscience over the next ten years. It seemed to me that the best way to consider this was to determine how we could improve brain health for a flourishing society. Clearly, mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease are becoming overwhelming. Read more of this post

Few collectors buy art with the single-minded focus of Leslie Wexner, a Columbus, Ohio, retailing billionaire who has over the past four decades whittled his once-varied art holdings down to primarily works by a single artist: Pablo Picasso

A Mogul Shrinks His Art Focus

KELLY CROW

May 23, 2014 9:45 p.m. ET

Few collectors buy art with the single-minded focus of Leslie Wexner, a Columbus, Ohio, retailing billionaire who has over the past four decades whittled his once-varied art holdings down to primarily works by a single artist: Pablo Picasso. Read more of this post

Book Review: ‘Stalin’ by Paul Johnson; Lenin was impressed by the young Stalin’s hard work, intelligence and willingness to resort to violence.

Book Review: ‘Stalin’ by Paul Johnson

Lenin was impressed by the young Stalin’s hard work, intelligence and willingness to resort to violence.

ANDREW STUTTAFORD

May 23, 2014 5:11 p.m. ET

In the months leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution, Joseph Stalin was, recalled one fellow revolutionary, no more than a “gray blur.” The quiet inscrutability of this controlled, taciturn figure eventually helped ease his path to some murky place in the West’s understanding of the past, a place where memory of the horror he unleashed was quick to fade. Pete Seeger sang for Stalin? Was that so bad? Read more of this post

Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a commencement address last week that graduates, and their parents, won’t soon forget

Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training

Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a commencement address last week that graduates, and their parents, won’t soon forget.

WILLIAM H. MCRAVEN

May 23, 2014 6:40 p.m. ET

The following is adapted from the commencement address by Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University of Texas at Austin on May 17.

The University of Texas slogan is “What starts here changes the world.” Read more of this post

Genworth CFO: Managing Costs and Risks in a Turnaround

May 23, 2014, 2:51 AM ET

Genworth CFO: Managing Costs and Risks in a Turnaround

EMILY CHASAN

Senior Editor

Marty Klein is the chief financial officer of Richmond, Va.-based insurer Genworth Financial Inc.GNW +0.29% He spoke with CFO Journal about how the company has renewed its focus on metrics like cost of capital and leverage as it works to affect a post-financial crisis turnaround. Read more of this post

Humans Aren’t The Only Animals Stuck on Status

Humans Aren’t The Only Animals Stuck on Status

ROBERT M. SAPOLSKY

May 23, 2014 7:32 p.m. ET

As a species, we crave status, endlessly keeping track of who’s more important. This is challenging, given that we participate in so many realms of comparison simultaneously. Who’s richest, smartest, best-looking? Who’s got the newer car, house or spouse? Who can drink everyone under the table, who’s the most pious at church? Read more of this post

A Hedge Fund Highflier Comes Back to Earth; That Crispin Odey built an elaborate chicken coop on the back of Europe’s economic slump has only added to the vitriol for what some feel is an ostentatious display at a time of economic suffering

A Hedge Fund Highflier Comes Back to Earth

By DANNY HAKIM

MAY 22, 2014 8:49 PM 16 Comments

Crispin Odey plans for an elaborate chicken coop brought attacks in the news media.

ENGLISH BICKNOR, England — The chickens of the one percent could roost comfortably here. Read more of this post

Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect

Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect

Peter Temin 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
May 2014
NBER Working Paper No. w20107

Abstract: 
I argue in this paper for more interaction between economic history and economic development. Both subfields study economic development; the difference is that economic history focuses on high-wage countries while economic development focuses on low-wage economies. My argument is based on recent research by Robert Allen, Joachim Voth and their colleagues. Voth demonstrated that Western Europe became a high-wage economy in the 14th century, using the European Marriage Pattern stimulated by the effects of the Black Death. This created economic conditions that led eventually to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Allen found that the Industrial Revolution resulted from high wages and low power costs. He showed that the technology of industrialization was adapted to these factor prices and is not profitable in low-wage economies. The cross-over to economic development suggests that demography affects destiny now as in the past, and that lessons from economic history can inform current policy decisions. This argument is framed by a description of the origins of the New Economic History, also known as Cliometrics, and a non-random survey of recent research emphasizing the emerging methodology of the New Economic History.

The Transformative Power of Transparency

The Transformative Power of Transparency

By DOV SEIDMAN

MAY 23, 2014 10:42 AM Comment

Doctors don’t traditionally apologize for medical errors; in fact, they usually don’t even disclose them. That is why I have long been interested in how the University of Michigan Health Systems has bucked tradition with its Michigan Model, a collaborative and transparent approach to patient safety and medical mistakes. Read more of this post