For whatever reason–plane crash, riptide, sailing misadventure, a bad case of Ocean Fury–you find yourself in the middle of the sea with nothing but miles of water around you. And, to your horror, here comes that heavy string music and a circling fin slicing through the water.

Luckily, from multiple websites and news stories about shark survival you remember the Shark’s Achilles Heel: Punches to the face. Specifically, the tender nose area. You wind up to belt that fishy bastard in the schnoz, and make your testicles proud.

The Result: First let’s look at a shark. Can you find his nose? Yep, it’s that incredibly narrow point in front that drops precipitously into a slimy, downward sloping ramp right into his 5,000,000-toothed mouth.

Take into account the fact that you’re bobbing around in the water like a buoy full of meat, facing off against a lightning-quick predator with several million years of practice in eating things that punch it in the nose, and you’ll see that chances are your fist will just deflect down into that aforementioned gaping hole of teeth like Boba Fett into a Sarlacc Pit. Now if your plan to defeat the shark is too feed yourself to him until he grows tired of the taste of you, you’re off to a great start.

But experts say that even if you hit the shark-nose punching lottery, you won’t have scared him off, just dazed him, giving you a minute or so tops. Now, if this particular shark is suffering from ADD, then great: You’re in the clear now. He’s off to chase a shiny thing or update his twitter feed 82 times an hour. But if not, all you’ve done is managed to piss the shark off and give him a minute to ponder how revenge is a dish best served in a blood-filled bag resembling you.

{ 7 common survival tactics (that will get you killed) | Cracked | Continue reading }

related { Can a book teach you how to survive? }

You’re in a crowded shopping mall when suddenly, without any warning, you feel light-headed. Just cross your legs, squeeze your muscles, and ah! You’ve prevented a fainting spell.
 
Half of us will faint at some time. And for as many as 500,000 Americans, mostly women ages 25 to 40, fainting is a regular experience brought on by simply standing up quickly.
 
If you’re someone who’s prone to fainting, and your doctor has ruled out an underlying medical condition as the cause, try this European swoon stopper. A recent study shows that the simple act of crossing your legs and tensing your muscles can stop fainting instantly.

{ Prevention | Continue reading }

photo { Matthew Taplinger }

{ Courtesy of my friend Glenn }

{ Hélio Oiticica, Sêco 14, 1957 | gouache on board | Galerie Lelong, 528 W. 26th Street, NYC | until February 6, 2010 }

So Wiseman has written a self-help book of his own, a collection of techniques built on findings from academic research in psychology.

Call it evidence-based self-help. The book is called 59 Seconds, for the time it’s supposed to take to practice each of the bits of advice Wiseman lays out within: Looking to seduce someone? Take your date to an amusement park or on a vigorous run, for research shows that attraction increases along with heart rate. Think someone’s prone to telling you white lies? Correspond more with them by e-mail, for research shows people are less likely to prevaricate when there’s a written record that could trip them up later.

{ Freakonomics | Continue reading | Interview }

I once tried setting my watch ahead a few minutes to help me make it to appointments on time. At first it worked, but not because I was fooled. I would glance at the watch, get worried that I was late, then remember that the watch is fast. But that brief flash acted as a sort of preview of how it feels to be late. And the feeling is a better motivator than the thought in the abstract.

But that didn’t last very long. The surprise wore off. I wonder if there are ways to maintain the surprise. For example, instead of setting the watch a fixed time ahead, I could set it to run too fast so that it gained an extra minute every week or month. Then if I have adaptive expectations I could consistently fool myself.

{ Cheap Talk | Continue reading }

{ Skimmer found Dec. 6, 2009, attached to the front of a Citibank ATM in Woodland Hills, Calif. A skimmer is a device made to be affixed to the mouth of an ATM and secretly swipe credit and debit card information when bank customers slip their cards into the machines to pull out money. | Krebs on Security | more }

How to make the world’s easiest $1 billion

STEP 1: Form a bank.

STEP 2: Round up a bunch of unemployed friends to be “bankers.”

STEP 3: Raise $1 billion of equity. (This is the only tricky step. And it’s not that tricky. See below.*)

STEP 4: Borrow $9 billion from the Fed at an annual cost of 0.25%.

STEP 5: Buy $10 billion of 30-year Treasuries paying 4.45%

STEP 6: Sit back and watch the cash flow in.

{ The Business Insider | Continue reading }

I believe there is a lot of fraud in high tech startups, 95 percent of which fail.  With only a five percent chance of surviving, startups face a gauntlet of risks as described in this quote from uber-VC John Doerr in my show Nerds 2.01: A Brief History of the Internet:

“There are four categories of risk to look for in every project:

1) “People risk: How the team will work together.  Because inevitably one of the founders does not work out and drops out.”

2) “Market risk: This is an incredibly expensive risk to remove.  It is about whether the dogs will eat the dog food.  Is there a market for this product? You do not want to be wrong about market risk.”

3) “Technical risk: This risk we are quite willing to take on.  Whether or not we can make a pen computer that works, be the first to commercialize a web browser, or split the atom if you will.  That technical risk is one we are comfortable trying to eliminate or take on.”

4) “Financial risk: If you have all of the preceding three risks right (people, market, and technical), can you then get the capital that you need to grow the business? Typically you can. There is plenty of capital to finance rapidly growing new technologies that are addressing large markets.”

Of course Doerr completely forgot to include fraud risk — that investors would simply have their money stolen.

Tech fraud happens all the time and those who are fooled include the most sophisticated investors (big shot VCs are not at all immune). (…)

Several years ago I lost what was for me a substantial amount of money investing in a financial patent startup.  It looked great on paper, the only problem being that the paper was forged, simply made up.  Nothing was as it seemed.  The company’s books literally didn’t exist. So I sued, spending a lot more money, only to have the founders declare bankruptcy and walk away.

{ Robert Cringely | Continue reading }

{ via ffffound }

{ via blondezombies }

Sounds played as you sleep can reinforce memories.

Ken Paller and his colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois asked people to memorise which images and their associated sounds – such as a picture of a cat and a miaow – were associated with a certain area on a computer screen and then to take a nap. They played half the group the sounds in their sleep, and these people were better at remembering the associations than the rest when they woke up.

How can you boost your sleep learning capacity?

As a rule, hit the hay after learning something new – late-night TV and Xbox marathons are a no-no.

That is, of course, unless the skill you hope to learn is a computer game: when Sidarta Ribeiro of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience in Natal, Brazil, got people to play shoot-’em-up video game Doom before bed, those who dreamed about the game during their sleep were better players the next day.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading | Cosmos magazine | Read more }

photo { Malerie Marder }

{ Meret Oppenheim, Object, 1936 | Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon, cup. | The Erotic Object: Surrealist Sculpture from the Collection | MoMA, until January 4, 2010 }

{ Trimming the bushes | via copyranter }

…some advice to help prevent you from offing yourself prematurely. Here goes.

1. Drive the biggest vehicle you can afford to drive. Your greatest risk of death comes from a motor vehicle accident. Despite all the data from the government on crash test safety, I can say unequivocally that in a 2-car accident, the person in the larger car always fairs better. (…)

4. Do not fly a plane or helicopter unless you are a full-time professional pilot. If you are a doctor, lawyer, actor, athlete, stockbroker or other well-to-do professional do not get a pilot’s license. Expertise in one area of life does not transfer to piloting, often with fatal results.

5. If you are walking down a sidewalk and are approaching a group of loud and apparently intoxicated males, cross to the other side of the street immediately. If anyone tries to start a fight with you, the first step should be “choke them with heel dust.” (…)

8. Never get on a ladder to clean your gutters, or on your roof to hang Christmas lights. Do not cut down trees with a chainsaw. I have seen too many middle age males die from these activities. In general, any house or lawn work that you can hire for an amount equal to or less than your own hourly wage is money well spent.

{ Doug McGuff | Continue reading }

related { Most people die in January, and no one knows why. }

{ Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1969 | Oil and crayon on canvas | Quote }

“I actually think that woman has a point,” said the first to reply. “Most guys are emotionally retarded, especially in their youth. So telling a guy you love him before he has figured out what’s going on in his own head does carry some risk.”

{ Salon | Continue reading }

{ We don’t bother to dry chives or parsley, since whatever tastes pleasantly herbaceous when fresh, intensifies into the flavor of sunburned grass clippings. Instead, we dry the oily herbs, like rosemary, sage, thyme, and lavender — and Thai basil, which is actually closer to mint than the Genovese variety and adds welcome floral notes to wintertime stir-fries. | Kerri Conan/NY Times | Continue reading }

When is the best time to stop renting and buy a house?
When it costs less to buy than to rent. And how do you figure that out? Find two similar houses — one for sale and one for rent — and divide the asking price by the annual rent. (…)

Which is the best day of the year to make an offer on a house?
Christmas Day. Huh? Not all real estate agents agree, but those who do offer three reasons. (…)

Which is the best day of the month to make an offer on a house?
The first Tuesday. Why early in the month? Because the homeowner just wrote a mortgage check for a house he no longer wants, and he doesn’t want to write another one.

When is the best time to buy life insurance?
As soon as you become a parent.

{ Excerpted from Mark Di Vincenzo’s Buy Ketchup In May And Fly At Noon | NPR | Continue reading }