The Profit Prophet

Of course it is the end of yet another year. The sun still shines in the sky, the Earth still circles it and life goes on, but would it not be nice to know some fun facts about this beautiful blue planet we live on? In any case, here are a bunch of number one's that you might not have known about.   The world's hottest place: Death Valley National Park The highest air temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 degrees Fahrenheit, at Death Valley National Park on July 10, 1913. The world's coldest place: East Antarctic Plateau On the high ridge of the East Antarctic Plateau, the temperature can drop to as low as -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in August, 2010. World's most populated city: Shanghai At a whopping 24,150,000 permanent inhabitants, Shanghai is the single city that is home to the most people in the world. World's least populated city: Vatican City With a paltry population of 842, the city-state of Vatican City is the smallest city...

We all want to be more successful, or popular, or liked, or have a greater sense of belonging. As such there is a very robust self-help industry which includes seminars, webinars, books, tapes, videos…the list is endless? Why? Because deep down, we all want to feel important, and know we cannot do that by ourselves (hum, sounds like a quotation).. Nonetheless, I have posted what is now called life hacks that have been practiced by successful people for years. A lot of them have to do with ‘body language’ and Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ These small shifts in behavior or awareness will give you greater control of potentially important outcomes, from everyday situations to stressful job interviews. Of course, do not stop reading books on how to win friends and influence people, but at least this list gives you some sure fired tips to deploy now. 1. Primacy and recency: people most remember the first and last things to occur, and barely the ...

This ties into why Gen X is so despondent and explains to a great extent why GT kids really hate school. This unfortunately, is the future of our country. (The original article was published by Paul Graham . You'll find this and 14 others in Hackers and Painters .)   When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards." We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, incl...