Feynman is one of the brightest physicists of the 20th century who also happened to be a talented lecturer and an author of a book which is fun to read. Here are some excerpts from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” that I found interesting:

On freedom:

So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel heed by a need to maintain your position In the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

Isn’t it a modern luxury that very few of us can afford?

On pointless communication

When it came time to evaluate the conference at the end, the others told how much they got out of it, how successful it was, and so on. When they asked me, I said, “This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There’s a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!

On mindfulness and watching your thoughts become dreams:

I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don’t notice that they’re not logically connected until you ask yourself, “What made me think of that?” and you try to work your way back, and often you can’t remember what the hell did make you think of that!

So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they’re completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.

After four weeks of sleeping all the time, I wrote my theme, and explained the observations I had made. At the end of the theme I pointed out that all of these observations were made while I was watching myself fall asleep, and I don’t really know what it’s like to fall asleep when I’m not watching myself. I concluded the theme with a little verse I made up, which pointed out this problem of introspection:

I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!

…

One night, while I was having a dream, I realized I was observing myself in the dream. I had gotten all the way down into the sleep itself!

 

Interestingly enough, it eventually got him into a lucid dream.

On hypnosis:

All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, “Damn it, enough is enough! I’m gonna go straight to my seat.”
When it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t continue. I walked all the way around the hall.

I was hypnotized in another situation some time later by a woman. While I was hypnotized she said, “I’m going to light a match, blow it out, and immediately touch the back of your hand with it. You will feel no pain.” I thought, “Baloney!” She took a match, lit it, blew it out, and touched it to the back of my hand. It felt slightly warm. My eyes were closed throughout all of this, but I was thinking, “That’s easy. She lit one match, but touched a different match to my hand. There’s nothin’ to that; it’s a fake!”

When I came out of the hypnosis and looked at the back of my hand, I got the biggest surprise: There was a burn on the back of my hand. Soon a blister grew, and it never hurt at all, even when it broke. So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”–which is just another way of saying that you can’t.

Feynman is an interesting person to hear about hypnosis from. I don’t think it’s  easy to find somebody with a more skeptical mind. What I find intriguing is how one’s brain can theoretically become conditioned to be inclined to do or feel one thing over the other. And what would be awesome is to use it consciously to condition yourself.

On learning instead of memorizing

So I tell them that one of the first things to strike me when I came to Brazil was to see elementary school kids in bookstores, buying physics books. There are so many kids learning physics in Brazil, beginning much earlier than kids do in the United States, that it’s amazing you don’t find many physicists in Brazil–why is that? So many kids are working so hard, and nothing comes of it.

Then I gave the analogy of a Greek scholar who loves the Greek language, who knows that in his own country there aren’t many children studying Greek. But he comes to another country, where he is delighted to find everybody studying Greek–even the smaller kids in the elementary schools. He goes to the examination of a student who is coming to get his degree in Greek, and asks him, “What were Socrates’ ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?”–and the student can’t answer. Then he asks the student, What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?” the student lights up and goes, “Brrrrrrrrr-up”–he tells you everything, word for word, that Socrates said, in beautiful Greek.

But what Socrates was talking about in the Third Symposium was the relationship between Truth and Beauty! What this Greek scholar discovers is, the students in another country learn Greek by first learning to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then sentences and paragraphs. They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually mean something. To the student they are all artificial sounds. Nobody has ever translated them into words the students can understand. I said, “That’s how it looks to me, when I see you teaching the kids ‘science’ here in Brazil.” (Big blast, right?)

…

“I have discovered something else,” I continued. “By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter–how it’s not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance. Therefore I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you.”

So I did it. Brrrrrrrup–I stuck my finger in, and I started to read:  Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed.. I said, “And there, have  you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You  haven’t told anything about nature-what crystals produce light when you crush them, why  they produce light. Did you see any student go home and try it? He can’t.

“But if, instead, you  were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.”‘ Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.” I used that example to show them, but it didn’t make any difference where I would have put my finger in the book; it was like that everywhere.

Overall, it’s an amazing memoir with stories varying from building an atomic bomb to pickup up girls.

You might also like:

1. Superfreakonomics review

You might also like:

1. Recommendation of few smart books
2. Good books
3. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011

Things that I liked in October & November 2011:

1. In the UK, pop-up cinema runs on pedal power, cool!
2. Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S;
3. Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired;
4. Google Unwraps Ice Cream Sandwich, the Next-Generation Android OS;
5. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen;
6. Kevin Mitnick tells about his “pranks” at Google. The guy is unbelievable! ;
7. 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive;
8. Very interesting TED talk about connection betw income distribution in countries and their well-being;
9. “If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong” – interesting article about ways “elite players” study;
10. “THE TWEAKER“: Malcolm Gladwell writes about Steve Jobs in the New Yorker;
11. 6th grader iPhone developer @ TEDx 40-летней давности;
12. Brainstorming by Steve Jobs: several videos;
13. Inside McKinsey @ Financial Times;
14. ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Trigger Lasting Personality Change @ TIME.

All links are from my twitter.

You might also like:

1. Cool stuff digest: August & September 2011
2. Cool stuff digest: June & July 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011

You might also like:

1. Math brainteasers from GMAT, 1

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1. Hip-hop music on subject of evolutionary biology
2. Boost yourself: best music for weightlifting workout (TOP-15 tracks)

You might also like:

1. Best free international iPhone apps: only smart tools, no dull time eaters
2. Zen writing: best free minimalistic word processing apps
3. If this then that review: a new web 2.0 tool

You might also like:

1. Math brainteasers from GMAT, part 2

“You’re sitting in a chair… In the SKY!”

Louis C.K. makes you laugh while expressing his view that the world is as awesome as never before but over demanding generation is still annoyingly dissatisfied:

You might also like:

1. Review of awesome My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
2. Heart-to-heart talk: how to be happy – scientific and religious point of view

Things that I liked in August & September 2011:

1. History of English in 10 minutes, very insightful and fun!
2. Everything is a remix – documentary about copy&paste nature of culture;
3. Most epic pictures ever taken (Quora);
4. ‘Lucky’ woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD :)
5. Minimalist Portraits of Cultural Icons @ Brain Pickings;
6. Madonna feat. Gogol Bordello - La Isla Bonita;
7. New Apple office in Cupertino;
8. Very useful tool to convert e-books from various formats to .pdf and vice versa;
9. This link is probably going to be the most popular one: interactive infographics about sex;
10. The 50 Best Websites of 2011 @ TIME;
11. The best 100 opening lines from books;
12. Interview don’ts. Funny
13. Stanford Prison Experiment documentary;
14. How Music Works @ The Vibe;
15. Interesting case of using A/B testing to increase conversions on website @ 37 Signals;
16. Richard Branson’s iseland photos;
17. Useful catalogue of the best free web apps. Filtered by topics (business, music, etc) and # of likes;
18. Tweeted Times are quite good. My newspaper;
19. Glimpse into daily life in North Korea photo report @ the Atlantic;
20. Stanford Digital Photography course;
21. Google Fails To Hire The ‘GooglePleaseHire.Me’ Guy;
22. Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories. Obvious but smart & funny.
23. Was Marx Right? – Umair Haque @ Harvard Business Review;
24. Vintage ads for modern brands - rather amusing;
25. Ziggy Marley – True to Myself;
26. Google Wallet;
27. Culturomics: What We Can Learn from 5 Million Books - TED @ Brainpickings;
28. 15 Startups With $100 Million+ Valuations That Hardly Existed Last Year;
29. “Fuckarounditis” – very funny and true article about working out

All links are from my twitter and Google Reader.

You might also like:

1. Cool stuff digest: June & July 2011
2. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: August 2010

I recently spent some time thinking what ad campaigns I would call my favorite. I think it would be Nike, Intel & Apple. See yourself.

Nike

Nike probably create the most motivational and vital commercials. Not only they motivate you to engage in sport but to to act and compete life in general. One of the best ones: “Nike Courage“.

Few other Nike video ads: No excuses, Impossible is nothing, I can do this, My better is better than your better.

Intel

Intel’s snobbish humor is awesome. I think the favorite one is: “Intel jokes“.

Few other Intel video ads: Rockstar, Doodles. Then, just follow “similar videos” links.

Apple

Well, Apple is a kind of banal choice, but they really did a good job. It’s hard to pick a favorite one, but I think it would be classic “Think different“.

And then the whole “Mac vs. PC” series. For example, “Legal“. Yes, they do manipulate facts sometimes, but it’s so funny! Few other great videos: Viruses, Restarting, Security, Surgery. Then, just follow “similar videos” links.

Others

Few other great ads pop-up in my head.  This Jim Beam commercial is just great. “Bold choices“:

Also, guys from Barclays did a good job turning economic crisis situation to their advantage: “Fake“.  And Nissan made us smile and think with their “Gas-powered everything“.

What are your favorites?

No similar posts.

Despite pretentious title and correspond cover, “Suceed” fully met my expectations and appeared to be not an empty self-help “You can do it all” rant but more or less practical interpretation of scientific research in a field of psychology and motivation. Probably, the biggest compliment I can give a books is to say that I wrote down many notes in my Evernote while reading it. In this case notes were record-high long. Basically it’s my notes that I’d like to share here. Otherwise, how would I force myself to re-format and make them more structured?

Book is about setting your goals in a way that increases your chances to achieve them and enjoy the process. Percent of trivialities not as high as I expected it to be which is quite rare for self-help/self-development books. I personally found quite many ideas to be practically applicable and I hope so will you. So, what is my summary?

Difficult goals & self-control

• Usually, it pays off to set difficult goals. They usually bring much higher gratification than the ones you, honestly speaking, considered to be quite easy to achieve. For example, corporate departments that identified themselves with hard work usually appeared to be happier as well.
• Metaphorically speaking, self-control is a muscle. Immediately after its usage it gets temporarily weaker (you ability control yourself is lower) but in overall it grows and develops as you use it.
• Example of weakness: 2 groups of people were presented with 2 plates, one with a chocolate and another one with radishes. While 1 groups was allowed to eat as much chocolate as it wanted, another one could only eat radishes. Than, both groups were given a difficult (in fact, unsolvable) task and the 1 group performed much better (didn’t give up for longer time). Same effect after attempts to suppress laughter when watching comedy, etc.

1. First type of people (BE GOOD) think that our abilities and talents are somewhat given to us and we cannot get significantly better in things we weren’t born to and vice versa. For example, they think of themselves as being “smart” or “not good at math”. Usually this type of people chose tasks that help them highlight their own presupposition about their abilities. In other words, they will try to prove that they have the abilities (show others how “smart” they are) and not to get caught in their weakness (trying to solve a math problem that they “are not good at”).

2. Others (GET BETTER) think that everything can be changed if enough persistence is applied. When starting something you they naturally expect it not to be good at it from the very first minute (because the key believe is that mastery as the result of getting better). They usually study to get knowledge and not grades and are more likely to try harder on task they cannot solve (to get better) than to give up (because they “are not good at it” as the 1 type of people would do).

• Surprise-surprise! Contradictory goals can be a big problem.

IF THEN plans

• Plans should be actionable. Often people create plans like this: “Eat more. Exercise more”. (Author is a little obsessed with weight-management or maybe this is just a convenient example). Plans like this are useless.
• Recommended strategy is  ”if -> then” plans. For example, “if today is Thursday evening, I call my mom to talk to her” or “if today is Wednesday, than I go to gym after work”.
• Same strategy can be applied to obstacles. For example, “if my friends call me to join them for a movies the night before an exam, I will politely reject an offer” or “if I begin to doubt it, I will remind myself why it’s important to me”. This way you know in advance how to act instead of considering all the options when they present themselves.

• Visualization in a sense that it’s usually presented in self-help books & movies is total bollocks and has little scientific evidence.
• But visualization can work in the case if instead of imagining a final result and how great it would be if you achieve something, you actually imagine steps that you need to take and difficulties that you might face.

• Yes, sometimes it’s better to quit on goals. And ability to do is inherent characteristic of happy, integral people.
• When you should not quit: if you think that the reason is that you lack some skills or abilities to achieve a goal. In this case it’s more likely that you just weren’t persistent enough to get better.
• When you should quit: when you need to sacrifice too much (you cannot be successful in everything at the same time).

The book itself is available at Amazon, but you search really good, you’ll be able to find audio-version online.

You might also like:

1. How to win any negotiation: summary of “Getting to Yes” by William Ury
2. Heart-to-heart talk: how to be happy – scientific and religious point of view

Quite funny at times

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Yes, we all love TED. They probably have the best collection of video presentations online with most of them being either inspirational or insightful. But is it all there is?

Actually, there are few places where you can find some edutainment videos for you dinner watching. Here are the main alternatives to TED I stumbled upon and some introductory videos that I personally liked that can help you get started.

1. PopTech

According to the website:

PopTech is a unique innovation network – a global community of cutting-edge leaders, thinkers, and doers from many different disciplines, who come together to explore the social impact of new technologies, the forces of change shaping our future, and new approaches to solving the world’s most significant challenges. We are known for our thriving community of thought-leaders, breakthrough innovation programs, visionary annual conferences and deep media and storytelling capabilities.

A good video to start from: Sebastian Seung’s Connectome.

2. Learning Without Frontiers

According to the website:

Learning Without Frontiers is a global platform for disruptive thinkers and practitioners from the education, digital media, technology and entertainment sectors who come together to explore how new disruptive technologies can drive radical efficiencies and improvements in learning whilst providing equality of access.

A good video to start from: Gordon Brown’s Pirate’s Dilemma.

3. Singularity University

According to the website:

Singularity University  is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, Singularity University hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. Singularity University is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley.

A good video to start from: Aubrey de Grey In Pursuit of Longevity.

4. Open Culture

According to the website:

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content — it’s all here. Open Culture was founded in 2006.

Good videos to start from:

1. The Age of the Dictionary – The History of English in 10 minutes

2. 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God

5. Google Talks

According to the website:

Good luck finding other gems! And let me know if you found some!

You might also like another post of mine which concentrates a little more on education than entertainment part of edutainment: How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning.

You might also like:

1. How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning

Things that I liked in June & July 2011:

1. ASUS: Tablet + Smartphone
2. Nissan Leaf commercial: what if everything ran on gas;
3. Beautiful cinematographs (new trend in photography);
4. Listening to last.fm with Chrome Browser and no limitations;
5. Samovar seems to have a nice collection of videos with interesting people to watch while having a cup of tea;
6. Google Think Insights – research and insights to help marketers make smarter decision;
7. Financial Times – “Invasion of the Body Hackers”;
8. The hidden power of smiling TED Talk ;
9. Google Instant Pages and search by Image;
10. Airbus reveals transparent plane to revolutionize air travel;
11. “Innovation extravaganza” at trendwatching.com;
12. Very interesting opinion about capitalism, choice and social change: video, 10 mins;
13. Daniel Tammet @ TED about synesthesia;
14. Organizational structures of biggest IT companies;
15. Interesting talk by Dr. Daniel Siegel about meditation;
16. How to Import Your Facebook Friends to Google+;
17. Why You Need to Fail by Derek Sivers;
18. TED Global 2011, day one;
19. Interesting Q&A with Ken Wilber;
20. How Online Companies Get You to Share More and Spend More;
21. Martin Seligman on well-being;
22. Finally, great TED talks! How algorithms shape our world и Fighting viruses, protecting the net;
23. Best movies Wikipedia article. There are some that you might miss and that are worth watching.

All links are from my twitter and Google Reader.

You might also like:

1. Cool stuff digest: July 2010
2. Cool stuff digest: August & September 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011

Well, one might of course get an impression that I’m a fan of Conan O’Brien as this is the second video with him on this blog. But c’mon the man is charismatic and this commencement speech is probably the funniest one I’ve seen so far! And a little wise too

You might also like:

1. Conan O’Brien at Google
2. Cool stuff digest: October & November 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011

One of the best short movies I know, Validation:

Do you know of any similar short films?

You might also like:

1. Short funny video about things that really motivate us
2. The Century of the Self – great documentary

No similar posts.

Recently the list of most watched TED talks appeared in TED blog.  Very helpful to make sure you didn’t miss anything:

1. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 8,660,010 views
2. Jill Bolte Taylor‘s stroke of insight (2008): 8,087,935 views
3. Pranav Mistry on the thrilling potential of SixthSense (2009): 6,747,410 views
4. Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense (2009): 6,731,153 views
5. David Gallo‘s underwater astonishments (2007): 6,411,705 views
6. Tony Robbins asks Why we do what we do (2006): 4,909,505 views
7. Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen (2006): 3,954,776 views
8. Arthur Benjamin does mathemagic (2005): 3,664,705 views
9. Jeff Han demos his breakthrough multi-touchscreen (2006): 3,592,795 views
10. Johnny Lee shows Wii Remote hacks for educators (2008): 3,225,864 views
11. Blaise Aguera y Arcas runs through the Photosynth demo (2007): 3,007,440 views
12. Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing your genius (2009): 2,978,288 views
13. Dan Gilbert asks: Why are we happy? (2004): 2,903,993 views
14. Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe (2008): 2,629,230 views
15. Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation (2009): 2,616,363 views
16. Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice (2005): 2,263,065 views
17. Richard St. John shares 8 secrets of success (2005): 2,252,911 views
18. Mary Roach on the 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm (2009): 2,223,822 views
19. Simon Sinek on how great leaders inspire action (2010): 2,187,868 views
20. Chimamanda Adichie shares the danger of a single story (2009): 2,143,763 views

But I decided to take it one step further and create a list of the most highly-rated TED talks.
Which is not hard to do using their Youtube channel statistics. So, here it is. The list of most highly-rated TED talks:

1. Marcin Jakubowski‘s open-sourced blueprints for civilization (2011): 71,943 views
2. Mike Ebeling‘s invention that unlocked a locked-in artist (2011): 45,480 views
3. Khan Salman‘s video to reinvent education (2011): 196,153 views
4. Michael Pawlyn is using nature’s genius in architecture (2011): 63,910 views
5. Sugata Mitra‘s new experiments in self-teaching (2010): 124,703 views
6. Paul Nicklen‘s tales of ice-bound wonderlands (2011): 19,945 views
7. Dan Phillips‘ creative houses from reclaimed stuff (2010): 42,253 views
8. Eli Pariser bewares online “filter bubbles” (2011): 363,394 views
9. Anders Ynnerman visualizes the medical data explosion (2011): 21,781 views
10. Fiorenzo Omenetto talks about silk, the ancient material of the future (2011): 15,814 views
11. William Li asks if we can eat to starve cancer (2010): 86,675 views
12. Anthony Atala talks about printing a human kidney (2011): 69,525 views
13. Benjamin Zander‘s classical music with shining eyes (2008): 399,387 views
14. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 8,660,010 views
15. Charles Limb on how brain works during musical improvisation (2011): 36,419 views
16. Jack Horner on building a dinosaur from a chicken (2011): 56,213 views
17. Bart Weetjens on how he taught rats to sniff out land mines (2010): 27,730 views
18. Sir Ken Robinson on the learning revolution (2010): 233,000 views
19. Thomas Heatherwick on building the Seed Cathedral (2011): 35,022 views
20. Angela Belcher on using nature to grow batteries (2011): 26,899 views

Enjoy!

You might also like:

1. Cool stuff digest: June & July 2011
2. Heart-to-heart talk: how to be happy – scientific and religious point of view
3. TED-conference alternatives: best edutainment videos from PopTech conference, Singularity University, Learning Without Frontiers & OpenCulture

Looks like guys at Google feel that importance of posture for overall health. Here are 2 great lectures on the subject that aim to clarify what good posture is and how to improve yours.

No similar posts.

Things that I liked in April & May 2011:

1. Artificial intelligence at work: Google Scribe suggests a new word to type. I first thought that it’s April 1 joke… ;
2. As it turns out, you can set your Google ads interests to make them more relevant;
3. Honest Logos by Viktor Hertz;
4. Vintage photos of Moscow, taken with a Graflex box camera in 1909;
5. Brandz 2011
6. Very cool wiki-project: short book summaries;
7. Our digital life info-graphics;
8. Google Correlate.

All links are from my twitter and Google Reader.

You might also like:

1. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011
2. Cool stuff digest: December 2010 & January 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: August & September 2011

Just a couple of days ago I discovered a new promising Web 2.0 service called If this then that which is actually a new start-up project from San-Francisco.

Guys try to develop a kind of meta-tool which unites many others: Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Evernote, Delicious, Instagram, etc. Quite an interesting thing to play with, although it lies in a kind of geeky/nerdy field. But I actually believe that normal people can also find it useful for few things…

In short, the idea is to connect all those services through simple rules set-up by user. For example, “if somebody tags me in a photo at Facebook, send me an email about it” or “if I like a post in Google Reader, save it in my Evernote”.

The coolest thing about is that they also have SMS-service that can be used in the same manner as everything else.

Here are some usage ideas that I could come up with:

• Automatically save content from your blogs, Twitter & Delicious in Evernote for back-up purposes and to make it easier to find something in offline Evernote app;
• Getting notified by SMS when you receive a letter from somebody important or on important subject in Gmail;
• Adding a Rememberthemilk task (by sending email letter to their email-gate) via SMS. Can be useful to store those genius ideas that always come at the wrong time;
• Tweeting or updating Facebook status via SMS. Can be useful in emergency situations or just when no Internet is available but mobile network is there;
• Sending a letter to particular person via SMS. Same logic as in previous one;
• Various Email-notifications. For example, about Twitter-mentions;
• Just saving some Gmail correspondence in Evernote.

Video about the IFTT:

Currently, the number of rules is limited to 10 which can be a sign of potential monetization strategy through freemium). IFTT is invite-only. If interested, I can provide you with an invitation, but there are only 4 left.

You might also like:

1. Android apps: best and free on the market
2. Superfreakonomics review
3. How can online entrepreneur or a frequent traveler get the most of Evernote internet service (6 tips)

For a long time I wanted to write about savants, people whose intellectual capacities significantly exceed what we consider to be normal. Usually, they have one or two fields where they really shine, but more often than not other abilities, usually social skills are sacrificed. You all remember Rain Man, right?

For example, Matt Savage learned to play piano at the age of 7, gave his first concert at 9 and recorded his album later on. You see him playing here:

What I find interesting and amusing about these people is how vividly they show the the real width of our own abilities and how inefficiently we use our own brain. Of course, personal traits, genetics and sometimes even injuries all play role here. But still all these amazing abilities are somewhere in our heads… And I like to believe that we can find a key to unlock them.

One of the most widely known savants is Daniel Tammet who blows you away with his memory, mathematics & language abilities. Actually he even created one of his own. What is interesting and atypical is that he doesn’t suffer from any significant problems with social skills. If I got you interested you might want to watch the whole movie about him:

He also wrote 2 books: Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky which I haven’t read but they surely seem to be worth it.

By the way, if you think that there are only a couple of people like this out of 6 billions you might be slightly underestimating the number… There is even an article called list of child prodigies in Wikipedia that highlights dozens of kids and young guys and girls who can speak 10 languages, who finished university at the age of 10, etc. One should acknowledge that the list inspires and lower your self-esteem at the same time.

However, life often takes an unpredictable turn for people like this. For example, Christopher Langan who has the highest IQ score recorded for most part of his life worked as bouncer and fireman. Despite all the controversy of IQ-tests it’s still a very interesting story. Here is the documentary about Chris:

Another related topic is High-IQ societies that are only open for membership for those who have the highest IQ. I won’t cover it in detail, just browse through Wikipedia and the websites of these societies if you’re interested.

I don’t know about you but I find these people-fluctuations really inspirational and interesting to understand. I even think that the field is secondary. Whether it’s a science, sport, music or literature. What is interesting is the fact of abnormal abilities or achievements. Anyway, I would be more than grateful if you share some names, books or films on the topic with me!

Update, 29 June 2011:

Daniel Tammet gave his own TED talk win which he discussed a topic of synesthesia:

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I listened to Getting to Yes by William Ury who is probably the most recognized negotiations expert few months ago.

If you never heard about William Ury, short TED talk might be the best way to get to know about his impressive career:

And here are the notes that I wrote down while reading it. Probably they will be of some use for you as well:

1. Always set a goal of negotiation form the very beginning: “You want to sell at the higher price and I want to buy at the lower price. Let’s find the fair price that can both agree upon.”
2. Always try to understand interests behind a position. How did you arrive at that price? Why do you consider it just?
3. Always repeat the position of another side: “Correct me if I’m wrong. Do I understand correctly that you consider this price to be just because…”
4. Always set a principle, external standard to judge the agreement. E.g. fair solution.
5. Separate a person from a problem. “We are very grateful for everything you did for us but it’s very important for us to arrive at the fair solution.”

6. Ignore the irrelevant. “It is irrelevant whether we trust you or not. What relevant is whether our agreement is fair or not.”
7. All other things being equal the least interested side (the one with a better alternative) wins. Prior to negotiations one should think about action plan in case if negotiations fail.
8. Don’t make a decision under emotional pressure. If needed take time to think and postpone a decision. But suggest a reason for this, for example a need to consult with your partner.
9. When asking questions pause, don’t ask another question right away after another side stopped talking. Pause might force him or her to elaborate on issue better.

And a bonus. Very funny video of what can happen if you obsess about negotiating too much…

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After 10 days of relaxation in Thailand and quick run through Kuala Lumpur we finally arrived to the country I wanted to visit for many years. Singapore.

Travelers’ reviews of Singapore vary from “the whole city is just one huge shopping mall” to “a place where you can meet all the cultures of Southeast Asia better than in the countries of origin themselves”. As always, truth lies somewhere in the middle and depends on your initial attitude as well as a chosen route. I personally enjoyed Singapore a lot.

I’m not going to tell you a long story of what unique place Singapore is and how highly developed it is compared to the surrounding countries.

Instead, let’s better look at the pictures which I will briefly comment.

We mostly followed a kind of shortened version of great itinerary from Wikitravel called 3 days in Singapore.

Let’s start with official symbol of Singapore. Merlion is the strange animal which is half-lion and half-fish.

It’s located in one of the tourist attractions, Marina Bay. This is how this place looked on the New Year’s eve:

For some unclear reason Singapore officials decided to keep ages-old sign in front of one of the bridges nearby:

In fact, Singapore resembles Western world more than Asia, even English is the official language here.

However, most of the inhabitants are Asian and you can easily feel the authentic culture shining through although at first it might look as a city of shopping malls…

I generally like places where people like bicycles

Laws are very strict not only in terms of littering. When passing a border we were given a small nice guide informing us that we can get executed for importing drugs for example. Durians are famously forbidden everywhere.

Sometimes I feel that we would benefit from the same approach in Russia…

And you know… You actually can feel it that Singapore is one of the safest places in the world. Although, it would be fare to note that strictness of the laws compared to those of Iceland, Norway and Austria did play a role here.

That’s how you buy a subway ticket. As in Japan, Price depends on distance.

What makes Singapore really interesting is its ethnic neighborhoods: Chinatown & Little India.

And these are not just tourist attractions. Actually, I really felt like travelling to another country when visiting them.

Little India is an interesting place. I’m not sure whether it’s called after Little Italy in New York but it certainly has the same charm and make you feel as if you’re actually in India.

Or Chinatown:

Ironically, the most appealing Buddhist temple we visited in our trip to Southeast Asia was in Singaporean Chinatown.
Although, we didn’t really see that many and probably missed something. This one is called Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum.

An island of tranquility in a fast-paced city.

Protected by fierce Asian Hercules…

There are 10 000 Buddha statues in the place. Well, all religions are alike in some way…

It’s a working temple actively used by locals. Actually, I didn’t see all that many tourists there.

That’s where we stopped our days-long rush through the attractions for an hour to drink a cup of tea, listen to meditative music and read Encyclopedia of Buddhism and similar books.

And here is the Hindu temple:

Switching from spiritual to mundane…

Of course you cannot visit a place like Singapore without trying out different cuisines. Long walks also contribute to appetite.

This is the Chilli Crab that is so difficult to eat if you’re wearing a white shirt. Although, I guess I even managed to keep it clean.

In Little India we continued our introduction to Indian food that started in Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur.

Although Indian cuisine is kind of an opposite of what I normally eat, we really enjoyed food it.

Most indians eat rice with their hands, so we tried as well.

There is a local market on the subway station where our hotel was located.
We were impressed by the amount of seemingly strange and synthetic food over there:

We couldn’t stand the temptation and tried some green soy pancakes and few similar things. Still alive

Also, there is huge island resort next to Singapore called Sentosa. We’re not big fans of amusement parks but we found something interesting to visit there.

Underwater World is an oceanarium with many ancient and deep water sea creatures and… sometimes people!

I wonder whether we really look like a typical Russians and are easily detectable even through the glass or he is Russian himself…

And this is a really deep water creature that is called whether a devil or an angel I guess. Pretty interesting looking I should say.

To celebrate New Year 2011 we got to the New Asia bar in Swiss Hotel just a couple of seconds before 00:00. If we were just a little bit less lucky we would still be in a long queue on the first floor. But we got there just at the perfect time to hear the countdown and see the fireworks.

Whereas Chill Crab is a traditional Singaporean meal, then Singapore Sling is a traditional Singaporean cocktail. It’s not bad but I remain conservative preferring red dry wine and bourbon whiskey.

I realize, the post is quite chaotic and muddled but so was our 3-days visit to Singapore: from temples and museums to shopping malls and bars. Hope, these notes from different part of the world are at least a little bit interesting to read and see. Otherwise, your feedback is highly welcome!

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I’d like to share with you the most effective and universal way to lose one breath that I know of. And get a great workout with lost of positive health effects at the same time of course. It’s quick because only takes 4 minutes and universal because can be done anywhere and doesn’t require any equipment at all. I personally like to do it once in a while, especially at times when I don’t have enough time for my regular strength training at gym and yoga.

If you’re interetsed in sport, training & fitness you might have already heard about so-called high-intensity interval training that simply mean that you cycle peak intensity with rest. Periods of time vary but usually it’s 2:1. Today I want to tell you about method developed by Izumi Tabata in 1996 which is called after him Tabata protocol.

In short the idea is to cycle 20 seconds of maximum-effort workout with 10 seconds of rest and repeat as many times as you want or can. Usually it’s recommended to stick with 8 cycles giving us a workout of 4 minutes in total. Research shows that athletes’ adaptation after this kind of exercise was comparable to the one which happened after more conventional longer ~30 minutes workout sessions with lower intensity. The protocol itself was even used to train Olympic athletes.

The Tabata protocol can be applied to any kind of activity that can be intense enough for you. In case of running it would be 20 seconds of sprinting as fast as you possibly can & 10 seconds of rest repeated up to 8 times.

But most often Tabata protocol is applied to the exercise called burpee. It’s a very simple body-weight exercise that combines jump with a push-up.

Here is the real-life demonstration of Tabata burpees recorded by some guy on youtube:

If you still think that 4 minutes is a piece of cake, than I suggest you just give it a try.

To make time-tracking easier and more convenient, enthusiasts created so-called Tabata timers. There are even ones with music and the ones that are customizable. And here is the simple youtube one:

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