The Odd (And Effective) Routines of Famous Minds like Beethoven, Maya Angelou, and Francis Bacon. Wine is part of my creative process. How I use it has been influenced by other writers. Why reinvent the wheel? Sometimes, peculiar routines are the key to sanity… and productivity. For years, I wrote from 11pm-4am or so, fueled by carefully timed yerba mate tea, Malbec, and Casino Royale left on repeat in my peripheral vision.
But who am I? Here’s an appetizer, before we get to the full routines: Maya Angelou rented a “tiny, mean” hotel or motel room to do her writing;Francis Bacon preferred to work with a hangover;W.H. Enjoy the detailed profiles below. All were excerpted from one of my favorite books–Daily Rituals: How Artists Work–which contains nearly 200 routines of some of the greatest minds of the last four hundred years: famous novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians… Maya Angelou Angelou (b. 1928) is an American author and poet best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which began in 1969 with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Cyber Sherlocks face new Cicada mystery. After a 12-month hiatus, Cicada 3301 - a complex collection of anonymously set puzzles, without apparent purpose, that have nevertheless held thousands of amateur web sleuths rapt - has made a reappearance. The first set of puzzles, identified by images of the insect, appeared on January 5 2012. A message left anonymously on the notorious website 4Chan simply read: "We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test.
" After a series of increasingly complex riddles - ranging from cyberpunk literature to voicemail messages to posters affixed to streetlights around the globe - the mysterious organisation behind the tests went quiet. Only for another set of teasers to appear one year later, on January 4 2013. Again, solvers were faced with another formidably eclectic range of subjects - from ancient Hebrew code tables to Anglo-Saxon runes to Victoria occultist Aleister Crowley. Was it an elaborate PR campaign for a new Alternate Reality Game? Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time | Brain Imaging Advances | Neurons & Neuroscience.
1st Fully Bionic Man Walks, Talks and Breathes. He walks, he talks and he has a beating heart, but he's not human — he's the world's first fully bionic man. Like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from a hodgepodge of body parts, the bionic man is an amalgam of the most advanced human prostheses — from robotic limbs to artificial organs to a blood-pumping circulatory system. The creature "comes to life" in "The Incredible Bionic Man," premiering Sunday (Oct. 20) on the Smithsonian Channel at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT. [Watch Video of the Bionic Man] Million-dollar man Roboticists Rich Walker and Matthew Godden of Shadow Robot Co. in England led the assembly of the bionic man from prosthetic body parts and artificial organs donated by laboratories around the world. "Our job was to take the delivery of a large collection of body parts — organs, limbs, eyes, heads — and over a frantic six weeks, turn those parts into a bionic man," Walker told LiveScience during an interview.
"He's not the world's best bartender," Walker said. A neurocientista de plantão - Laboratory of Comparative Neuroanatomy. Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed. By: Bronnie Ware, inspirationandchai.com. For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality.
I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. 1. This was the most common regret of all. It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. 2. This came from every male patient that I nursed. By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. 3. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. We cannot control the reactions of others. 4.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. 5. Wits HIV breakthrough. Wits researchers Maria Papathanasopoulos and Dr Penny Moore will present a research lecture on their internationally recognised work at Wits University on Tuesday. Though condoms and male circumcision work to prevent HIV, about 1000 South Africans are still infected every day, said Papathanasopoulos. "That's why we need a vaccine. " Since 1988, there have been 218 trials worldwide for a potential HIV vaccine. Nearly all have failed. Two things are essential for an effective vaccine: Scientists need to know how to make broadly neutralising (special) antibodies. Broadly neutralising antibodies fight all the strains of the virus. Only some infected people produce these antibodies and it takes their bodies three years to do so. Moore, a virologist, was part of ground-breaking research last year that showed how two women's bodies changed and began producing the special antibodies.
Moore said: "If we give the body the right instructions [in a vaccine] it can create those antibodies. " You Are What You Read: 14 Thought Leaders Share Their Bookshelves. Photo: Ozyman The following is a guest post by Shane Snow, a frequent contributor to Wired and Fast Company. It includes photographs of some fun bookshelves, including yours truly (Tim Ferriss). CLICK ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE. Enter Shane They say a person’s eyes are “the window to the soul.” I am not very good at pupil-based soul-reading, but I’ve found that I can learn a lot about a person by the books on his or her shelf. Here’s what’s on mine: (click to enlarge any and all photos in this post) Storytelling is a powerful force, as I’m a fan of reminding people. A few weeks ago, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I emailed a few friends and people I admired and asked them if I could see photographs of their bookshelves (or book stacks or Kindle screens). Soon, I had more photos than I knew what to do with.
Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist at bit.ly and one of the smartest women in American tech He sent me this one: But I actually found this closeup in his Flickr photostream, too: Elon Musk. The_dimka: codex seraphinianus. In the late 70s italian architect, illustrator and industrial designer luigi serafini made a book, an encyclopedia of unknown, parallel world. it’s about 360-380 pages. it is written in an unknown language, using an unknown alphabet. it took him 30 month to complete that masterpiece that many might call “the strangest book on earth”. codex seraphinianus is divided to 11 chapters and two parts - first one is about nature and the second one is about people.btw five hundred years ago there was another book somewhat like that - voynich manuscript. take a look at some pages (click on image to see a bigger version) amazon sells those for 500 bucks or more you can read about it in wikipedia.i can’t even tell you how much i like stuff like that phat a?
Update 2 i ordered the book and it arrived. it is gigantic in size, thick and large. print, paper and binding quality is superb. they also insert a booklet - decodex, but it is in italian and i have not mastered that one yet. Facebook Study On Language And Personality. A group of University of Pennsylvania researchers who analyzed Facebook status updates of 75,000 volunteers have found an entirely different way to analyze human personality, according to a new study published in PLOS One. The volunteers completed a common personality questionnaire through a Facebook application and made their Facebook status updates available so that researchers could find linguistic patterns in their posts.
Drawing from more than 700 million words, phrases, and topics, the researchers built computer models that predicted the individuals’ age, gender, and their responses on the personality questionnaires with surprising accuracy. The “open-vocabulary approach” of analyzing all words was shown to be equally predictive (and in some cases moreso) than traditional methods used by psychologists, such as self-reported surveys and questionnaires, that use a predetermined set of words to analyze. Basically, it's big data meets psychology. PLOS One Here's the breakdown by age: Every Second on the Internet. Smart Questions That Will Super Charge Your Life. One of the most effective ways to achieve success is to ask yourself the right questions.
When we ask ourselves a question, we always come up with an answer. Ask yourself “Why does this always happen to me,” and you’ll get an answer. But if you ask yourself “How can I have a great day today,” you’ll also get an answer. Which answer is going to empower you more? You got it. So why not ask yourself smart questions that will make you happier, more confident, more powerful, and more successful? The world moves fast, our many interests are constantly being seduced by TV, the Web, and the omnipotent presence of marketing. My recommendation is to take your favorite 5-10 questions from this list, write them down and post them near your desk, your bathroom mirror, the visor in your car and on the back of your cellphone. The other way to use these questions is to take one question per day or per week.
Questions: What do I want to accomplish today? What are your favorite empowering questions? K. Wait but why: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy. Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story. So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Lucy’s kind of unhappy. To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion: Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers.
Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. GYPSYs Are Delusional. 6 Successors to the Elevator Pitch. Five whale carcasses wash up in Ghana, investigation to be launched. Speculation has circulated widely in local media that Ghana's offshore oil installations are to blame, but an environment group and Ghana's Fisheries Commission said there was no available evidence to support such theories. The fisheries commission is "sending a team to investigate what is going on because it's not normal", Emmanuel Ohene Marfo, a regional officer with the commission, told AFP. He confirmed that five whale carcasses had been spotted on various beaches since Friday. The Friends of the Nation environmental group said in a statement that 16 whales had died in Ghanaian waters since 2009, an unprecedented amount, and called for a formal investigation.
Ghana began oil production off its western coast in December of 2010, but Friends of the Nation Executive Director Donkris Movuta said the timing could be just a coincidence. "It could be anything in the marine environment," Movuta said. Two others were found on beaches near the capital Accra. Why Education is a Powerful Content Marketing Strategy: 17 Examples. I just finished reading this Richard Branson post about following your passions in life. In it, he restates this magnificent quote from Nelson Mandela: “ Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world. ” I truly believe in this.
I also believe that the brands that place a priority on educating their prospects and customers through the creation of remarkable content are wisely choosing the road less traveled. Think about this truth: Our customers don’t care about our products or services; they care about themselves. If we buy into this, then we must also accept that the majority of the information we produce for marketing purposes cannot be about ourselves. If you get a chance, take a look at this interview that CMI’s Chief Strategist, Robert Rose , conducted with Coca-Cola’s resident content marketing expert Jonathan Mildenhall . Isn’t that the key? Here are a few examples of companies that are successfully working this educational angle.
IBM’s “CityOne” Indium Intuit Intuit Labs. Trends every South African HR professional needs to know about in 2013 | knowledgeresources. At the end of January, Knowledge Resources held a Seminar focusing on the HR and Labour Market Trends for 2013. I’ve summarized some of the most important points raised at the conference and I know you will find them beneficial… South Africa’s Socio-Political EnvironmentPresentation by Justice Malala, Political Analyst Post Manguang – Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as deputy president of the ANC and the endorsement of the NDP is positive for the business sector. The same goes for the rejection of nationalisation of the mines as policy.Marikana and its consequences will lead to lower investment in the mining industry. Economic Conditions for 2013Sizwe Nxedlana, Chief Economist FNB The global economy is recovering. Wage and Salary TrendsPresentation by Dr Mark Bussin, Chairman, 21st Century Pay Solutions Group Survey results from 21 Century Pay Solutions indicated that the most important criteria for awarding pay increases are individual and company performance for executive management.
Social evolution: The ritual animal. Lifeispixels/Getty Images Members of large, stable groups such as religions, tribes and nations typically reinforce their commitment with routine rituals such as Buddhist prayers in Thailand. By July 2011, when Brian McQuinn made the 18-hour boat trip from Malta to the Libyan port of Misrata, the bloody uprising against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had already been under way for five months. “The whole city was under siege, with Gaddafi forces on all sides,” recalls Canadian-born McQuinn.
He was no stranger to such situations, having spent the previous decade working for peace-building organizations in countries including Rwanda and Bosnia. It worked: McQuinn stayed with the rebels for seven months, compiling a strikingly close and personal case study of how rituals evolved through combat and eventual victory. Nature Podcast Harvey Whitehouse talks about the project to catalogue the world’s rituals. Human rites Rebel yell The pursuit of such data sent McQuinn to Libya. The ritual mind. How to Handle Tears at Work - Video. Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Read the Full Text (PDF, HTML) Some students seem to breeze through their school years, whereas others struggle, putting them at risk for getting lost in our educational system and not reaching their full potential.
Parents and teachers want to help students succeed, but there is little guidance on which learning techniques are the most effective for improving educational outcomes. This leads students to implement studying strategies that are often ineffective, resulting in minimal gains in performance. What then are the best strategies to help struggling students learn? Fortunately for students, parents, and teachers, psychological scientists have developed and evaluated the effectiveness of a wide range of learning techniques meant to enhance academic performance. The authors describe each learning technique in detail and discuss the conditions under which each technique is most successful. Which learning techniques made the grade? About the Authors (PDF, HTML) By Henry L. Can You Learn Everything “On The Job”? Implicit Learning: Researchers Uncover How to Learn Without Trying.
Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Best, Worst Learning Tips: Flash Cards Are Good, Highlighting Is Bad. S Trend Briefing covering "10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2013"
Everything is a Remix. Stop Stealing Dreams. Hbrg-main/resources/pdfs/marketing/11-rules-for-creating-value-in-the-socialera.pdf. Articles et guides. Ethics MIT. Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right - George M. Piskurich. How to heal the nation in seven simple steps. Www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2012/09/13/parents-selling-out-children.