'Magnetic emulsions' could clean up oil spills. The Discipline of Listening - Ram Charan. By Ram Charan | 1:17 PM June 21, 2012 As the up-and-coming vice president and CEO candidate for a Fortune 500 technology corporation sat before the CEO for his annual review, he was baffled to discover that the feedback from his peers, customers, direct reports, and particularly from board members placed unusual emphasis on one potentially devastating problem: his listening deficit. This executive was widely considered among the best and brightest in his company, but it was evident that this issue needed immediate attention if he ever hoped to advance to the top spot.
He wasn’t alone in that regard. My knowledge of corporate leaders’ 360-degree feedback indicates that one out of four of them has a listening deficit—the effects of which can paralyze cross-unit collaboration, sink careers, and if it’s the CEO with the deficit, derail the company. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Pan for the nuggets. Consider the Source. Prime the Pump. Slow Down. Keep Yourself Honest. Art of the Hobbit: Never-Before-Seen Drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
By Maria Popova A lively new look at one of the most beloved fantasy stories of all time. In October of 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien delivered to his publisher the manuscript of what would become one of the most celebrated fantasy books of all time. In September of the following year, The Hobbit made its debut, with 20 or so original drawings, two maps, and a cover painting by Tolkien himself.
But it turns out the author created more than 100 illustrations, recently uncovered amidst Tolkien’s papers, digitized by Oxford’s Bodleian Library, and freshly released in Art of the Hobbit — a magnificent volume celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Hobbit with 110 beautiful, many never-before-seen illustrations by Tolkien, ranging from pencil sketches to ink line drawings to watercolors.
It’s a fine addition to our favorite peeks inside the sketchbooks of great creators and digitization projects in the humanities, and a priceless piece of literary history. via The Guardian Donating = Loving. A Booklover's Map of Literary Geography circa 1933. By Maria Popova On the Bostoncentricity of literature, or what “our first man of letters” has to do with Poe. Two of my great loves — maps and books — converged on my friend Wendy‘s wall, where I spotted this stunning vintage map of “literary geography.”
Titled The Booklovers Map of America Showing Certain Landmarks of Literary Geography and created by pictorial cartographer Paul M. Paine in 1933, the map zooms in on the biggest literary cities and places “The Birthplace of American Literature” squarely in the Boston/Cambridge area. A few closeups: With its charmingly unpunctuated, almost stream-of-literary-consciousness text, the map is as much a cartographic treasure as it is an almanac of early twentieth century literary celebrity. For more unusual, creative, culturally sensitive maps, see these 7 fantastic books of and about maps.
Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. Share on Tumblr. Wide-Faced Men: Good Guys or Bad? Think of the stereotypical tough guy: broad-faced, square-jawed, uber-macho. Research even bears out this convention, linking wider, more masculine faces with characteristics like dishonesty, lack of cooperation and perceived lack of warmth. But a new study challenges the notion that wide-faced men are always the bad guys, finding that in certain situations, they’re actually the most self-sacrificing of the bunch.
For the study, researchers from the Perception Lab at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland gave 54 male students money to play a game in groups. Each man was given £3 to play with — they could either keep the endowment to themselves, or invest as much as they wished in the group. The participants were told that if the group as a whole invested more than £12, then each member would lose his initial investment, but receive a £5 return. (MORE: The Secret to Guys’ Sex Appeal: Low Stress, High Testosterone, Strong Immunity) (MORE: Why Fathers Have Lower Levels of Testosterone)