Distraction: the 21st Century Syndrome
There was a time, not so long ago, when, if you wanted a book or needed to research a topic, you had to go to a bookshop or library. Watching a movie meant booking tickets at the cinema and clearing your calendar to be there at the right time and date. You couldn’t do anything else at the time. Music came through radio station programmes which you waited for, patiently. At best, you could listen to a few cassettes containing a small mixtape which you made or scrounged off friends.
When we talk about placebos, we usually think of pills and tablets, maybe injections. But, surgery? That’s hard to swallow. Dr Ian Harris, an orthopedic surgeon of repute, claims that over 50% of all operations performed are only placebos. There is no proof of efficacy. Could his contention be upheld? Watch this video.
“Here’s my card. Can I have yours, please?”
Whatever else happens in a first-time business meeting, exchanging cards is a ritual that’s constant. You will tuck it into your pocket, or a card holder if you are the compulsive type. If in Japan, you will bow slightly, receive it reverently with both hands, read it carefully, then place it perfectly square on the desk in front of you and put it away only at the end of the meeting.
Anyways, the card will be tossed into your desk drawer or placed in a card file box. When you need it, it’s rare for you to be able to locate it quickly.
In the brief video that follows, I will show you a small “hack” that can vastly improve the value of your cards. Here it is.
Save your audience from “Death by Powerpoint”with these 4 tools.
Text-heavy, bullet list slides are a sure way to make your listeners lose interest in your presentation. Here are 4 methods for engaging your audience.
| More at: https://rescription.org |
#presentation #slideshow #attention #audience #deathbypowerpoint #skills #copywriting #storytelling #publicspeaking
World wide wanderings, in batches of five … or, “Cultural Learnings of the Internet for Make Benefit Glorious Readers of Medium” (with profound thanks and apologies to Sacha Baron Cohen and Borat).
1: If you are looking for a new idea, start at the edge of what is known
The hallmark of intelligence is the ability to learn new tasks. How does the human brain go about the task? The human brain, remarkable as it is, does not go about the task of learning in a very efficient manner. It uses a highly inefficient approach called “Reassociation.” We appear to learn new tasks simply by repeating the original neural activity patterns and swapping their assignments. Although “quick and dirty” it’s not the best way to learn.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
If modern medical research were to be held up to scrutiny on the basis of this popular quote (commonly, but erroneously, attributed to Einstein), it appears that it needs urgent help.
Reproducibility, a key tenet of Science, is the idea that when an experiment is repeated by other scientists, they will get the same result. There is a persistent buzz in the air of medical scientific research about a “reproducibility crisis”. …
Roughly ten items make up the list of leading causes of death in adult populations. A sizeable portion of medical research is targeted at establishing risk factors for them and using this knowledge to institute educational and public health measures for reducing their likelihood. Smoking, obesity, alcohol abuse, and sedentary life styles are some commonly cited risk factors. We now have a study that looked at intelligence in 11 year olds, as assessed by a standardised test, and correlated it over the long term cause of death. …
We are admonished, ad nauseam, that money can’t buy happiness. This advice has to be high on the list of hypocrisy promoted in aphorisms. As one wag added, “… but you can search for it in comfort.” There is a large body of evidence in support of poor people living less healthy, more depressed and shorter lives than the more affluent. We need money, maybe not in the range of the one percent, but certainly, some reasonable amount. We will have to stop mouthing this banal statement for ever.
Money, by itself, is neither good nor evil. Modern life is…
