what I read today

More Universities Need to Teach Sales

Frank V. Cespedes

I know the methods, but I will still fall heart-first into the illusion. […]

They used to be rare, with plenty of space and time between them. Now, on Tumblr, on Instagram, on Pinterest, on Vine, on the network, they are consolidated and stacked on top of one another. It can easily become a habit to seek and collect these things, if only for the pangs they create.

Comparing the DNA of dogs and wolves shows that dogs' ability to easily digest carbohydrates, originally from starch in scraps left behind by humans, helped enable their domestication, a study finds.

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the findings served as a reminder that dogs don't eat like wolves. He said he and his colleagues were befuddled by the trend toward pricey low-carb dog foods and raw diets, which could stress dogs' kidneys with their extra protein load.

How important is smell to your business? Consider these examples:

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In one study, two identical pairs of shoes were placed in two identical rooms (one scented with a floral fragrance, the other not). By an 84% margin, customers preferred the shoes in the scented room, and estimated their value to be on average $10.33 higher than the identical shoes in the unscented room.

In the mid-90s, Dr. Alan R. Hirsch conducted an experiment with scented and unscented slot machine areas in a Las Vegas casino, and found that the amount gambled in the scented area increased by more than 45%.

A convenience store that started pumping the smell of coffee near the gas pumps saw coffee purchases increase 300%.

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According to another study, people can remember a scent and its related memory with 65% accuracy after 12 months, while visual recall was only 50% accurate after just four months.

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As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, "the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

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At this writing, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. Research has shown that having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency, enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research. "It is the very pursuit of happiness," Frankl knew, "that thwarts happiness."

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WSJ: Want to Be CEO? What's Your BMI?

While weight remains a taboo conversation topic in the workplace, it's hard to overlook. A heavy executive is judged to be less capable because of assumptions about how weight affects health and stamina, says Barry Posner, a leadership professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. He says he can't name a single overweight Fortune 500 CEO. "We have stereotypes about fat," he adds, "so when we see a senior executive who's overweight, our initial reaction isn't positive."

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Drugs might also cause transitions, not merely accompany them.  During a recent discussion, a gonzo futurist friend (the term is due to Justin Pickard) mentioned a speculative theory about one cause of the European renaissance: the gradual shift from beer and wine to coffee and tea as the main psychoactive substances in daily life. There is something very appealing about the idea of an “enlightenment” being caused by a shift from depressants to stimulants.

In other words, to understand any chapter in the story of humanity, it is not enough to ask, what is the plot? and what were the archetypes of the day? We must also ask, what were they smoking? 

But one U.S. software developer turned this nightmare on its head and actually benefited from outsourcing, a report says. That's because, unbeknownst to his bosses, he hired a Chinese developer to do his job, allowing him to take home impeccable performance reviews while actually spending the day watching cat videos and shopping on EBay.

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Bob had been paying the contractor $50,000 a year, while he himself made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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“It seems kind of crazy to us, but bonobos prefer to share with strangers,” says Brian Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. “They’re trying to extend their social network.” And they apparently value that more than maintaining the friendships they already have.

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Unspoken anxiety spread among those unfamiliar with the descent. [...] When it comes to the backcountry, there is usually not safety in large numbers.

That is not only because of the physical impact on the snow. It is because of the complicated dynamics that large groups create. Deadly avalanches are usually the product of bad decisions — human nature, not Mother Nature.

“If it was up to me, I would never have gone backcountry skiing with 12 people,” Michelson, the ESPN journalist, said. “That’s just way too many. But there were sort of the social dynamics of that — where I didn’t want to be the one to say, you know, ‘Hey, this is too big a group and we shouldn’t be doing this.’ I was invited by someone else, so I didn’t want to stand up and cause a fuss. And not to play the gender card, but there were 2 girls and 10 guys, and I didn’t want to be the whiny female figure, you know? So I just followed along.”

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Carlsen, Stifter’s Powder colleague, was uneasy. He tried to convince himself that it was a good idea. “There’s no way this entire group can make a decision that isn’t smart,” he said to himself. “Of course it’s fine, if we’re all going. It’s got to be fine.” After a few minutes, the small talk faded. Worries went unexpressed. “When you’re up on top of a peak like that, it’s usually hang out for a second, and then it’s momentum,”

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“That guy knows the conditions like an animal. He has instincts. It didn’t register, even for a second, that he might be bringing this group to Tunnel Creek. It wasn’t logical. I thought we were doing the front side.” She headed hard to the right, away from the others. The other snowboarders that she knew, Carlson and Wesley, were gone in the opposite direction. Some in the remaining group noticed Dessert heading away in the distance and dismissed her as an oblivious backcountry rookie. She dipped out of sight in a lonely panic. “I’ve been riding Stevens Pass since I was 3 years old,” Dessert said. “I can tell circumstances, and I just felt like something besides myself was in charge. They’re all so professional and intelligent and driven and powerful and riding with athletic prowess, yet everything in my mind was going off, wanting to tell them to stop.”

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“We found there was a paradox of control. People who felt more in control of their information took more privacy risks more often"

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Ask adults from the industrialized world what number is halfway between 1 and 9, and most will say 5. But pose the same question to small children, or people living in some traditional societies, and they're likely to answer 3. Cognitive scientists theorize that that's because it's actually more natural for humans to think logarithmically than linearly: 30 is 1, and 32 is 9, so logarithmically, the number halfway between them is 31, or 3. Neural circuits seem to bear out that theory

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