Rules for Civility, from a 14 year old [Article]

Maria Popova discovers the rules for civility that George Washington wrote for himself, when he was 14.
Written of course in the English of his times, here's an example, on listening:

When Another Speaks be attentive your Self and disturb not the Audience if any hesitate in his Words help him not nor Prompt him without desired, Interrupt him not, nor Answer him till his Speec[h] be ended.

The most dangerous thing, still and always, is an idea.[Video]

What does spying do to the people who do it?
That’s the question writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck asks in “The Lives of Others.” And he asks it in the simplest possible way. Georg Dreyman is a successful playwright, and not just in the theater. He’s respected by his peers and tolerated by the government: “the only non-subversive writer we have.” He lives with an actress, a great beauty who has the misfortune to come to the attention of a government official. He knows he couldn’t seduce her on the strength of his own charm --- but what if he got Georg Dreyman out of the way?
Problem: there’s no dirt on Dreyman.
But in the down-is-up world of dictatorships, that only proves he’s guilty of…. something. And so, in the way that officials use their power for personal gain, the Stasi assigns Capt. Gerd Wiesler to eavesdrop on Dreyman.

[via Headbutler]

Think the smallest action has very little impact? Look again [Video]

University of Toronto’s Professor Stephen Morris knock over a 1-meter tall domino that weighs over 100 pounds by starting with a 5mm high by 1mm thick domino. TINY.   There are 13 dominoes in this sequence. If Professor Morris used 29 dominoes in total, with the next one always being 1.5x larger, the last domino would be the height of the Empire State Building.

BS detectors [article]

Hate BS? James Altucher does too, & has five quotes that he reckons can make your BS detector better.

The boy who loved math [Book review]

Cory Doctorow has a review in Boing Boing of a book that he's read thrice already to his five year old daughter. The book is about mathematician Paulo Erdos, written by Deborah Heiligman, & illustrated by LeUyen Pham.

....with lively, fun illustrations of a young Erdős learning about negative numbers, becoming obsessed with prime numbers and leading his high-school chums on a mathematical tour of Budapest. They also go to great lengths to capture the upside and downside of Erdős's legendary eccentricity -- his inability to fend for himself and his helplessness when it came to everyday tasks like cooking and doing laundry; his amazing generosity and brilliance and empathy in his working and personal life.

A movie to watch this weekend

No.  A movie by Pablo Larraín.
A true story of the marketing campaign that led to a revolution.
As Mr. Headbutler said in his review, beware: "NO" may give you ideas that, ninety minutes earlier, would have struck you as ridiculous.

The octogenarian widow behind the DOMA case [article]

In a historic judgement, the US Supreme Court dismissed the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, thereby allowing same-sex couples in the US to be legally married. The reason it came to this? 84 year old Edith Windsor was ordered to pay a $363,000 estate tax when her partner of 40 years, Thea Spyer passed away, because the State did not recognise their marriage as legal. On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the US upheld their marriage.

Edith Wharton on Marriage [Short note]

I'm sticking to short notes for today - quotes or tweets or such stuff.. like this one..

I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them: children, duties, visits, bores, relations, the things that protect married people from each other. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937)

Read an exceprt from Eleven Rings: a book by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

Read an excerpt from a book on leadership, management or spirit, from an NBA coach, Zen Master Phil Jackson. He's the guy who  famously told Michael Jordan: “Players who win scoring championships never play on teams that win championships.” Jordan got the message, learned to pass and won both NBA rings and scoring championships.

Twitter humor: [Tweet]

Minutes after Julia Gillard was ousted as PM of Australia, a message on Twitter, from someone at www.seek.com

Hey @JuliaGillard, we can help you out! ;) #spill #auspol
— SEEK (@seekjobs) June 26, 2013

Please put your phone in the fridge [Article]

Cloak & dagger stuff, James Bond style, you say? No, Ed Snowden will be credited with making this famous.

Whining about wine: [Article]

This makes for interesting reading, if you are an oenophile (and if you don't know what that is, read here)

Mickey mouse in Vietnam: Anti-war propaganda [Video]

During WWII,  Disney put its creative force behind the US, persuading citizens to pay their taxes and support the war. However, during the Vietnam war. Disney’s most iconic character, Mickey Mouse, did appear in an animated underground  film created by two critics of the war, Lee Savage and the celebrated graphic designer Milton Glaser, demonstrating that protest can take many forms. Watch this.

Let us blaze new trails [Letters of note]

Another classic letter to the bosses: Bill Bernbach persuading his employers to stick to their strengths.

I’m worried that we’re going to fall into the trap of bigness, that we’re going to worship techniques instead of substance, that we’re going to follow history instead of making it, that we’re going to be drowned by superficialities instead of buoyed up by solid fundamentals.

How big is the ocean [Video]

Understanding the single largest part of our planet: the ocean. A TED ED lesson by Scott Gass, animation by Sandro Katamashvili.

How many people can play the piano at once? [Video]

CDZA, featuring Damian Sim, Erika Dohi, Michael Thurber, Allan Mednard, and Mark Johnson conceived, rehearsed & performed this Daft Punk cover on the piano in under one hour.
The Piano Guys play the piano differently!

Then watch this incredible duet on the guitar, performed at the Brazilian Music Institute, team playing at its exceptional best. Gets even better with this next quartet.

I went overboard there, didn't I?

Known flying objects in an MRI [Article, photos]

You may not think that the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner can be dangerous. How about you have a look at the documented evidence to prove otherwise?

Once you've been in the MRI field for any length of time, you start hearing all of the various horror stories about thing that have flown into a scanner. Often, newcomers don't take the real danger of flying objects seriously until they witness an oxygen tank or gurney flying into a magnet themselves.

Make your own line in the road [Video]

This brief video by Koki Tanaka shows one way to draw a line on a road :)

Ambient noise for productivity [Article]

I like to have some music on when doing any work. Right now, for example, I have Cesaria Evora playing. This research says that the right balance of ambient noise can actually help increase productivity. Also a few links thrown in there.

Cesaria Evora: Cape Verde's voice of hope [Music]

Listen to Sodade first. Then make up your mind if you want to listen to more (I promise you will!). A  HeadButler share (he interviewed her about 10 years ago)

It wasn't until her 50s that she became the darling of the world-music crowd. She still performed shoeless, to express her solidarity with her impoverished countrymen. She still stopped singing in mid-concert to sit at a small table and smoke a cigarette. And she never veered from the music she'd made for decades; the last thing on her mind, it seemed, was mass success