I’m usually quite sceptical about similar lists, but The Independent’s 20 Things Everyone Needs to Know struck me as actually useful as each list item is authored by a professional who works in that field.
And when you’ve got an article co-authored by the likes of Donald Trump, Jennifer Capriati and Larry King, how can you possibly resist?
- How to change a tyre
- How to sleep
- How to build a fire
- How to shine shoes
- How to make a Martini
- How to apply lipstick
- How to negotiate
- How to scramble eggs
- How to hang a picture
- How to ask for a rise or promotion
- How to use chopsticks
- How to iron a shirt
- How to shave
- How to hit a tennis ball
- How to listen
- How to ask someone out
- How to learn a foreign language
- How to shake hands
- How to buy a diamond
- How to conduct a background investigation
This interview between Tim Ferriss and Derek Sivers—the entrepreneur who founded CD Baby—concentrates on The 4-Hour Workweek and provides a good recap and overview of the concepts. The following quote, however, feels more relevant to me now as it was when I originally read the book:
To learn anything quickly, I approach people who did it correctly and say, “I have an idea, but I don’t know anything, so can I buy you a beer and pick your brain? I’m really ambitious but kind of ignorant.” Whether it’s language learning or tango or kickboxing. That’s how I did all of it. That’s how I identified the rules of engagements, so I could deconstruct them.
Voting America consists of a series of animated and interactive maps (with commentary) visualising how Americans have used their votes since 1840.
Voting America examines the evolution of presidential politics in the United States across the span of American history. The project offers a wide spectrum of cinematic visualizations of how Americans voted in the presidential election at the county level, from the beginning of the American party system though the modern day. Here you can see historical developments in American voting patterns as they moved across the landscape of the United States.
via MeFi
Can the placebo effect work with exercise and fitness? Two Harvard psychologists decided to find out, and the results were startling.
84 maids at seven carefully matched hotels [were quizzed on] how much exercise they got. Fully a third of the women said they got no exercise at all, while two-thirds said they did not work out regularly. Langer and Crum took several measures of the women’s basic fitness levels, which indicated that they, indeed, had the poor health of basically sedentary people. Then just over half the women were told an unfamiliar truth: cleaning 15 rooms daily — pushing recalcitrant vacuum cleaners, scrubbing tubs, pulling sheets — constitutes more than enough activity to meet the surgeon general’s recommendation of a half-hour of physical activity daily. [The] control group was left in the dark.
A month later, Langer and Crum checked back with the women to find, as they reported in the February issue of Psychological Science, remarkable results. The average study-group maid had lost 2 pounds, while her systolic blood pressure had dropped by 10 points; by all measures the 44 women “were significantly healthier.” Yet there were no reported changes in behavior, only in mind-set.
The accompanying graphic highlights the findings, and the story was also covered by Ben Goldacre in his Guardian column, Bad Science.
via MeFi