Category: interesting
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The Millionaire and the Squatter
Originally an idea for “professional philanthropic development”, Michael—a multi-millionaire who’s giving away $78m over a 10 year period—lived with a homeless Chicago man for one weekend. Freakonomics covers the story in Michael, Meet Curtis: Philanthropy Gets Personal. Curtis cooked another plate of chicken and beans. He was about to eat it, but once again he…
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Must Read Daily
Wondering what the hot topic of the day is? Wonder no more, with Must Read Daily: Wish you could get the one article everyone’s talking about e-mailed to you every morning? Welcome to Must Read Daily, a daily text-only e-mail list. Every weekday morning, we promise to send you the most important article in a…
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Uncruel and Unusual Punishment
When three young girls caused $30,000 worth of damage to Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy’s mansion, instead of involving the authorities he decided on his own unusual punishment. “I tried to be lenient with them but wanted to punish them,” Cathy said. “I wanted to show them there was a better way than the way they…
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Interview with a Self-Trepanner
Self-trepanation seems the realm of low budget horror films and historic medical literature. However Neurophilosophy has a transcript of an interview with a recent self-trepanner. M: How exactly did you perform the trepanation? HP: I used a hand trepan initially, but that wasn’t proving to be terribly successful. Then there was a problem with the…
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Top Intellectuals: A Round-Up
The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll, Thinkers 50, and Accenture’s Top 50 Business Intellectuals. Only one person has appeared on all three lists: Kenichi Ohmae. Twenty-four people (including Ohmae) appear on two of the lists. These people are: Bill Gates C. K. Prahalad Charles Handy Chris Argyris Clayton Christensen Edward De Bono Gary Hamel Henry Mintzberg…
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Thinkers 50 – More Influential Thinkers
Thinkers 50 is a biennial poll to find the 50 most influential business and management thinkers in the world. The following factors are used to rank the short-list: Originality of Ideas Practicality of Ideas Presentation Style Written Communication Loyalty of Followers Business Sense International Outlook Rigour of Research Impact of Ideas Guru Factor Since its…
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Top 50 Business Intellectuals
A list of the top 50 business intellectuals, as compiled by Accenture in 2002. Initially a list of 300, the top 50 were found using the following rankings: Google hits The LexisNexis media databases to 1997 Citations found in the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index to 1997 The top 5: Michael E.…
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Losing Your Sense of Smell
Three years ago Elizabeth Zierah caught a cold; a few weeks later she was back to normal… except that she had lost her sense of smell. In Slate, she writes about the miseries of losing the sense of smell (and in the process, taste). I lost normal function on the left side of my body…
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Umami: The Fifth Taste
Sweet, bitter, sour, salt… and umami. The fifth taste. Psychophysicists have long suggested the existence of four taste ‘primaries’, referred to as the basic tastes. Umami is now accepted as the fifth basic taste, exemplified by the non-salty sensations evoked by some free amino acids such as monosodium glutamate. Umami is a Japanese word meaning…
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Selling Hand-Washing to Africa
The New York Times on how Dr Val Curtis ‘sold’ hand-washing to Africa: Diseases and disorders caused by dirty hands — like diarrhoea — kill a child somewhere in the world about every 15 seconds, and about half those deaths could be prevented with the regular use of soap, studies indicate. But getting people into…