(토요모임) [22,Oct,2016] Saturday meeting topic

[Scarlet]

Howdy ! 

It's me Scarlett !   

This week we have 5 topics. 

◈ Art of Living : Answered! Life’s 25 Toughest Questions

◈ Women empowerment : Teach girls bravery, not perfection

◈ Technology : Your brain is a black box. 3 questions unravel the mystery

◈ Leadership : The Steve Jobs guide to manipulating people and getting what you want

◈ Innovation : Asia’s cities are increasingly competitive. Now it’s time to focus on liveability

Hope you enjoy the topics. 

With luv 

Scarlett

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Answered! Life’s 25 Toughest Questions

1. Can love really last a lifetime?

Absolutely — but only if you chuck the fairy tale of living happily ever after. A team of scientists recently found that romantic love involves chemical changes in the brain that last 12 to 18 months. After that, you and your partner are on your own. Relationships require maintenance. Pay a visit to a nursing home if you want to see proof of lasting love. Recently I spoke to a man whose wife of 60 years was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. He came to sit with her every day and hold her hand. “She’s been my best friend since high school,” he told me. “We made a promise to stick together.” Now, that’s a love story.

2. Why do married folks begin to look like one another? 

Watch any two people who like each other talking, and you’ll see a lot of mirroring. One smiles, and so does the other. One nods or raises her eyebrows, and so does the other. Faces are like melodies with a natural urge to stay in sync. Multiply those movements by several decades of marriage, all those years of simultaneous sagging and drooping, and it’s no wonder!

3. Can a marriage survive betrayal? 

Yes. It takes time and work, but experts are pretty unanimous on this one. In her book The Monogamy Myth, Peggy Vaughan estimates that 60 percent of husbands and 40 percent of wives will have an affair at some point in their marriages. That’s no advertisement for straying — but the news is good for couples hoping to recover from devastating breaches of trust. The offended partner needs to make the choice to forgive — and learn to live with a memory that can’t simply be erased. Infidelity is never forgotten, but it can gradually fade into the murky background of a strong, mature marriage.

4. Why does summer zoom by and winter drag on forever? 

Because context defines experience. As Albert Einstein once said: “When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour.”

5. Do animals really have a sixth sense? 

Or seventh or eighth! A box jellyfish has 24 eyes, an earthworm’s entire body is covered with taste receptors, a cockroach can detect movement 2,000 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom — and your dog’s sense of smell is up to 100,000 times greater than yours (some dogs have been known to smell human cancers). It’s safe to say that animals experience a much different world than we do.

6. Why does the line you’re in always move the slowest? 

Because you’re late for your kid’s band practice, and you curse your luck and envy those speeding by. Conversely, when you’re in the fast line, unfettered by stress, you don’t even notice the poor schlubs in the slow lane. Good luck rarely commands one’s attention like bad luck. (See answer on buttered toast, “The Ultimate Test,” below.)

7. By what age should you know what you want to do with your life? 

Any moment now. This used to be a question the young asked. Now it’s a quandary for baby boomers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that younger boomers have abandoned the American ideal of picking a job and sticking with it. Between the ages of 18 and 36, these boomers held an average of 9.6 jobs. That’s a lot of exploration. The wisdom of elders in all cultures seems to be this: There’s nothing to do with a life but live it. As Gandhi pointed out, “Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”

8. Where do traffic jams come from? 

Scientists are hard at work on this one, studying computer models of the physics of gridlock and inventing all new traffic-light algorithms. Some of them postulate that the rhythms of automobile traffic are influenced by the same cyclical forces that cause waves in the ocean. For the average commuter, though, it may be helpful to think of it this way: congestion. There are just too many darn people trying to do the same thing at once. (Flush every toilet in a single office building simultaneously, and see what happens.) All of this by way of saying: Buy a newspaper, load up some favorite tunes on your MP3 player, and take the bus.

9. When is your future behind you? 

When you stop chasing dreams. So don’t stop!

10. Do you have to love your job? 

No. Love your children, your spouse and your country. Love your parents, your neighbor and your dog. Loving is too important an emotion to attach to the way you make a living. But it’s OK to strive for satisfaction. According to a recent Harris Poll, across America 59% of workers say they are extremely, somewhat or slightly satisfied with their jobs, but a depressing 33% feel as if they’ve reached a career dead end. If you’re among the latter and thinking about a new job, consider the fact that employees in small firms said they felt more engaged in their work than did their corporate counterparts.

11. Can a man and a woman ever just be friends? 

For a short time perhaps. Making the friendship last requires that you find each other at least vaguely repulsive. Good luck!

12. When do you take away Grandpa’s car keys? 

Twenty-two states currently require frequent testing for senior drivers. The American Medical Association and the AARP, however, say safe driving has more to do with functional ability than age. True, seniors are more at risk for reduced vision, hearing loss and impairments associated with arthritis — but all of these conditions depend on the individual. So when it seems to you that Pop is becoming a danger to himself and a danger to others, tell him straight. Point out that his reactions have slowed or his judgment is losing its edge. Suggest he not drive anymore. Be firm, but at the same time, don’t treat him like a child. Allow him his dignity. Offer him

a ride.

13. Do siblings who fight really end up liking each other? 

I surveyed my older sisters, both of whom have vivid memories of how I tripped, pummeled, and whacked them with various large plastic dolls (hey, they started it — they teased me!), and both confirmed my suspicion that nowadays they like me just fine. I sure like them. All the experts will tell you that fighting among siblings is normal. The key is how parents handle it. Rule No 1: Don’t take sides. Never get into a discussion of who started what or what is more fair. Stop fights with a time-out for all offenders. My mother would send us to separate rooms. So we invented string phones and a pulley system to transport necessary treats and toys. And whatever we were fighting about was forgotten.

14. How do you know when to end a friendship? 

As soon as you get that sneaking suspicion that it never really began.

15. Why do we turn into our parents when we swore we wouldn’t? 

Because really, when all is said and done, we admire them.

16. Can a half-empty person become a half-full person? 

A current theory is that people have an “emotional set point.” Some folks are just made happier than others. Pessimists will see this as bad news, believing it really doesn’t matter what you do — they are never going to be any happier. But there is hope — as any optimist will see! Happiness has more to do with how you construe the events in your life than the actual events themselves.

17. When do kids become adults? 

Biologically, it’s happening earlier; emotionally, it seems to be happening later. Nowadays puberty occurs in females between ages 8 and 14, between 9 and 15 in males. A generation ago, when you turned 18, you were out the door and on your own. Now we see kids in the Boomerang Generation coming home to Mom and Dad after college, hoping for a hand with bills, laundry, meals and other responsibilities of adulthood. It’s cute for a while, less adorable the older the kid gets.

18. Can a mother be friends with her teenage daughter? 

No. Most teens aren’t ready for anything close to a mature friendship. According to current research, the brain continues to develop into a person’s 20s. Mothers often want to befriend their daughters; fathers, their sons. But this is not in anyone’s best interest. Teenagers need to form identities distinct from their parents. That means: lots of privacy, even some secrets. It’s usually easier for a teenage girl to befriend the friend of her mother, and it’s usually best for the mother to leave it at that.

19. Does money really buy happiness? 

No. Because happiness isn’t for sale. Many people get tripped up by this one, amassing wealth only to find themselves cycling into a bottomless pit of unsatisfiable yearning. Turns out, joy and misery are not that far apart when it comes to very big wads of cash. Consider the case of a Kentucky couple who won $34 million in 2000. Thrilled to be released from the demands of their boring old jobs, they frittered their fortune away on fancy cars, mansions, all the usual stuff — losing everything that mattered in the process. They divorced, he died of an alcohol-related illness, and she died alone in her new house just five years after cashing the winning ticket. When it comes to happiness, only people you love, and who love you, can bring it. If you have enough dough to buy yourself a luxurious yacht, but no real friends to sail with, you’re sunk.

20. Can spenders and savers stay married? 

Sure — and they won’t run out of things to talk about either. Disagreements over money are a leading cause of divorce, so experts advise lots of work around this issue if, financially speaking, you’ve found yourself married to your opposite. Tip: Always talk in terms of “ours” instead of “mine” or “yours,” and work your strengths. The saver should be allowed to draft the budget; the spender gets to be

in charge of vacations, celebrations and ordering extra toppings on the pizza.

21. Is money the root of all evil? 

No. Greed is. Elvis nailed this one when he said, “Sharing money is what gives it its value.”

22. What do you do if you see a parent berating a child? 

Cringe. Take a deep breath. If you truly believe you can help the situation, approach as someone showing sympathy — not as an accuser or member of the parent police. Empathize with the overstressed parent. Suggest that he take a deep breath. Tell him it worked for you.

23. Why is it so hard to say you’re wrong? 

Because it often involves saying, “I’m sorry,” which is even harder. Throughout history people have found it easier to stop speaking to one another, punch, slander, shoot and bomb rather than apologize. Tip: Next time just say, “Whoops,” and see what happens.

24. When should you reveal a secret you said you wouldn’t? 

It’s a matter of damage control. Is the person who asked you to keep the secret in danger of hurting himself or others? If so, intervene. Otherwise, mum’s the word.

25. Does the toast really always fall buttered-side down?

Scientists in the Ask Laskas Kitchen conducted a study for which they first toasted an entire loaf of bread, one slice at a time. They buttered each slice, and dropped it from a variety of heights ranging from tabletop to ceiling. Among their findings: A dropped piece of toast never lands on its edge; stomping your foot and yelling “Darn!” does not change a thing; and the floor in the Ask Laskas Kitchen is not nearly as clean as we’d like. Well, life’s like that. Never as neat as you’d like it to be. But keep buttering your toast. And savor every slice you’ve been given.

Article source : http://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/answers-to-lifes-toughest-25-questions/2/

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Teach girls bravery, not perfection

Posted Mar 2016/ Reshma Saujani

We're raising our girls to be perfect, and we're raising our boys to be brave, says Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code. Saujani has taken up the charge to socialize young girls to take risks and learn to program — two skills they need to move society forward. To truly innovate, we cannot leave behind half of our population, she says. "I need each of you to tell every young woman you know to be comfortable with imperfection."

<Teach girls bravery, not perfection Script>

So a few years ago, I did something really brave, or some would say really stupid. I ran for Congress.

For years, I had existed safely behind the scenes in politics as a fundraiser, as an organizer, but in my heart, I always wanted to run. The sitting congresswoman had been in my district since 1992. She had never lost a race, and no one had really even run against her in a Democratic primary. But in my mind, this was my way to make a difference, to disrupt the status quo. The polls, however, told a very different story. My pollsters told me that I was crazy to run, that there was no way that I could win.

But I ran anyway, and in 2012, I became an upstart in a New York City congressional race. I swore I was going to win. I had the endorsement from the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal snapped pictures of me on election day, and CNBC called it one of the hottest races in the country. I raised money from everyone I knew, including Indian aunties that were just so happy an Indian girl was running. But on election day, the polls were right, and I only got 19 percent of the vote, and the same papers that said I was a rising political star now said I wasted 1.3 million dollars on 6,321 votes. Don't do the math. It was humiliating.

Now, before you get the wrong idea, this is not a talk about the importance of failure. Nor is it about leaning in. I tell you the story of how I ran for Congress because I was 33 years old and it was the first time in my entire life that I had done something that was truly brave, where I didn't worry about being perfect.

And I'm not alone: so many women I talk to tell me that they gravitate towards careers and professions that they know they're going to be great in, that they know they're going to be perfect in, and it's no wonder why. Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We're taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A's. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars and then just jump off headfirst. And by the time they're adults, whether they're negotiating a raise or even asking someone out on a date, they're habituated to take risk after risk. They're rewarded for it. It's often said in Silicon Valley, no one even takes you seriously unless you've had two failed start-ups. In other words, we're raising our girls to be perfect, and we're raising our boys to be brave.

Some people worry about our federal deficit, but I, I worry about our bravery deficit. Our economy, our society, we're just losing out because we're not raising our girls to be brave. The bravery deficit is why women are underrepresented in STEM, in C-suites, in boardrooms, in Congress, and pretty much everywhere you look.

In the 1980s, psychologist Carol Dweck looked at how bright fifth graders handled an assignment that was too difficult for them. She found that bright girls were quick to give up. The higher the IQ, the more likely they were to give up. Bright boys, on the other hand, found the difficult material to be a challenge. They found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts.

What's going on? Well, at the fifth grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science, so it's not a question of ability. The difference is in how boys and girls approach a challenge. And it doesn't just end in fifth grade. An HP report found that men will apply for a job if they meet only 60 percent of the qualifications, but women, women will apply only if they meet 100 percent of the qualifications. 100 percent. This study is usually invoked as evidence that, well, women need a little more confidence. But I think it's evidence that women have been socialized to aspire to perfection, and they're overly cautious.

And even when we're ambitious, even when we're leaning in, that socialization of perfection has caused us to take less risks in our careers. And so those 600,000 jobs that are open right now in computing and tech, women are being left behind, and it means our economy is being left behind on all the innovation and problems women would solve if they were socialized to be brave instead of socialized to be perfect.

So in 2012, I started a company to teach girls to code, and what I found is that by teaching them to code I had socialized them to be brave. Coding, it's an endless process of trial and error, of trying to get the right command in the right place, with sometimes just a semicolon making the difference between success and failure. Code breaks and then it falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries until that magical moment when what you're trying to build comes to life. It requires perseverance. It requires imperfection.

We immediately see in our program our girls' fear of not getting it right, of not being perfect. Every Girls Who Code teacher tells me the same story. During the first week, when the girls are learning how to code, a student will call her over and she'll say, "I don't know what code to write." The teacher will look at her screen, and she'll see a blank text editor. If she didn't know any better, she'd think that her student spent the past 20 minutes just staring at the screen. But if she presses undo a few times, she'll see that her student wrote code and then deleted it. She tried, she came close, but she didn't get it exactly right. Instead of showing the progress that she made, she'd rather show nothing at all. Perfection or bust.

It turns out that our girls are really good at coding, but it's not enough just to teach them to code.

My friend Lev Brie, who is a professor at the University of Columbia and teaches intro to Java tells me about his office hours with computer science students. When the guys are struggling with an assignment, they'll come in and they'll say, "Professor, there's something wrong with my code." The girls will come in and say, "Professor, there's something wrong with me."

We have to begin to undo the socialization of perfection, but we've got to combine it with building a sisterhood that lets girls know that they are not alone. Because trying harder is not going to fix a broken system. I can't tell you how many women tell me,

"I'm afraid to raise my hand, I'm afraid to ask a question, because I don't want to be the only one who doesn't understand, the only one who is struggling. When we teach girls to be brave and we have a supportive network cheering them on, they will build incredible things, and I see this every day. Take, for instance, two of our high school students who built a game called Tampon Run -- yes, Tampon Run -- to fight against the menstruation taboo and sexism in gaming. Or the Syrian refugee who dared show her love for her new country by building an app to help Americans get to the polls. Or a 16-year-old girl who built an algorithm to help detect whether a cancer is benign or malignant in the off chance that she can save her daddy's life because he has cancer. These are just three examples of thousands, thousands of girls who have been socialized to be imperfect, who have learned to keep trying, who have learned perseverance. And whether they become coders or the next Hillary Clinton or Beyoncé, they will not defer their dreams.

And those dreams have never been more important for our country. For the American economy, for any economy to grow, to truly innovate, we cannot leave behind half our population. We have to socialize our girls to be comfortable with imperfection, and we've got to do it now. We cannot wait for them to learn how to be brave like I did when I was 33 years old. We have to teach them to be brave in schools and early in their careers, when it has the most potential to impact their lives and the lives of others, and we have to show them that they will be loved and accepted not for being perfect but for being courageous. And so I need each of you to tell every young woman you know -- your sister, your niece, your employee, your colleague -- to be comfortable with imperfection, because when we teach girls to be imperfect, and we help them leverage it, we will build a movement of young women who are brave and who will build a better world for themselves and for each and every one of us.

Thank you.

Chris Anderson: Reshma, thank you. It's such a powerful vision you have. You have a vision. Tell me how it's going. How many girls are involved now in your program?

Reshma Saujani: Yeah. So in 2012, we taught 20 girls. This year we'll teach 40,000 in all 50 states.

And that number is really powerful, because last year we only graduated 7,500 women in computer science. Like, the problem is so bad that we can make that type of change quickly.

CA: And you're working with some of the companies in this room even, who are welcoming graduates from your program?

RS: Yeah, we have about 80 partners, from Twitter to Facebook to Adobe to IBM to Microsoft to Pixar to Disney, I mean, every single company out there. And if you're not signed up, I'm going to find you, because we need every single tech company to embed a Girls Who Code classroom in their office.

CA: And you have some stories back from some of those companies that when you mix in more gender balance in the engineering teams, good things happen.

RS: Great things happen. I mean, I think that it's crazy to me to think about the fact that right now 85 percent of all consumer purchases are made by women. Women use social media at a rate of 600 percent more than men. We own the Internet, and we should be building the companies of tomorrow. And I think when companies have diverse teams, and they have incredible women that are part of their engineering teams, they build awesome things, and we see it every day.

CA: Reshma, you saw the reaction there. You're doing incredibly important work. This whole community is cheering you on. More power to you. Thank you.

RS: Thank you.

Article source : https://www.ted.com/talks/reshma_saujani_teach_girls_bravery_not_perfection?language=en

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<Questions>

Q1. Are you a bravery-oriented person or a perfection-oriented person? 

Q2. If you have a daughter, would you raise your kid as above article suggested? 

Q3. What is the most important factor to be a competitive person in this world? 

Q4. Are you involved in any community to share experience or wisdom with same gender? 

Q5. Do you find any difficulties or discrimination while you are working as a worker in your field? How do you tackle those troubles? 

Q6. What is the limitations of Confucianism-based society? 

Q7. What cause the discrimination in our society? Gender? Monetary condition? Social status? Religion? Race? Do you think what is the most critical factor? 

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Your brain is a black box. 3 questions unravel the mystery 

Written by Ceri Parker/ Commissioning Editor, Agenda, World Economic Forum

Published Monday 3 October 2016

We can build cities and robots, we can land a probe on a meteor and mull the colonization of Mars - but can we understand the kilogram or so of grey matter that sits between our ears?

In 2016, the human brain is a paradox. Science has made great strides in the last decade: “optogenetics” could let us stimulate the brain with light, paralysed patients can control machines with their minds, and the next generation of computers will increasingly mimic the biological processes of the human brain.

But despite many breakthroughs, the most complex organ in our bodies is still the final frontier: “a black box” in the words of the neuro-technology pioneer Ronen Gadot.

We are confronting the challenges of the 21st century with a primordial piece of kit that evolved over millennia to keep us safe from predators, and that we struggle to understand. One quarter of people around the world suffer from a mental illness, personal tragedies that take a toll on the global economy that is difficult to quantify but could amount to $2.5 trillion a year. Age-old instincts and biases still sap our potential and make us susceptible to the divisive politics of “us and them”.

The brain is a seething mass of billions of neurons, fizzing with connections, ideas and emotions, as ineffable as it is ingenious. How can we possibly get a grip on it? The World Economic Forum is launching a series of articles and videos that attempt to do just that, by tackling three key questions.

1. How can we rethink mental health?

“I have a serious mental illness. Specifically, I have bipolar disorder. I have been navigating how mental illness is treated for 18 years. And I strongly believe that how we treat mental illness is all wrong.”

These are strong words from Natasha Tracy, author of the book Lost Marbles: Insights into My Life with Depression and Bipolar. She pinpoints three main flaws in the US approach to mental health in her essay: the way mental illnesses are placed in a silo; paradoxically, a lack of specialist care; and a stigmatization that permeates everything from research dollars to social attitudes. We are long overdue an overhaul, she writes.

                

Mental illness is a scourge that afflicts rich and poor countries alike. As Thomas Insel, Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, writes:

“Even in the developed world, it is estimated that only about half of all people with depression are diagnosed and treated. In the developing world, WHO estimates that 85% of people with a mental illness are untreated.”

The consequences of this dearth of care could not be more stark.

“Suicide causes more deaths than homicide. Around 7% of people with major depressive disorder will take their own lives. Globally, more than 800,000 people kill themselves every year.”

However, there is some hope that a new generation of therapies will provide a more nuanced understanding - and targeted treatments - for those suffering from a range of brain disorders, from depression and schizophrenia to diseases like Alzheimer’s.

I-han Chou, neuroscience editor at Nature magazine, explains how the emerging field of optogenetics - using light to stimulate genetically modified cells in the brain - could offer new treatments, as well open up new ethical questions.

Meanwhile, two entrepreneurs discuss their game-changing inventions: Tan Le, Founder and CEO of EMOTIV, has created wearable head-sets that work a bit like a fitbit for our minds to gauge the activity of our brains, while Ronen Gadot’s company ElMinda uses machine learning to decipher data on brain health.

Together, such technologies offer potential for a more personalized approach to health, for those who can afford it. As Gadot explains:

“Consider a neuro-degenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s. It actually starts some 20-30 years before it’s diagnosed. Because the brain is so sophisticated, it can compensate for deterioration in some neural pathways – the diagnosis happens only when it can’t compensate any more. But if we could tell what’s normal for each individual, we could see at a much earlier stage where patterns were changing in a way that indicate disease.”

For those of us lucky enough to be well, the pace of modern life can still put our brains under strain: hence the burgeoning field of “mindfulness”, or learning to focus calmly on the present. For the sceptics, Chade-Meng Tan, a Google engineer who went on to lead the company’s mindfulness programme, explains why his new vocation is not just “hippy BS”. He cites three recent pieces of research supporting its benefits, including:

“A 2012 study shows that eight weeks of mindfulness training can reduce social anxiety, depression and stress even more effectively than aerobic exercise.”

2. How can brain science help us to reach our potential, and avoid our pitfalls?

The year 2016 has been marked by populism, polarization and a frankly xenophobic debate on immigration. Do we blame politicians, inequality, a mismanaged refugee crisis - or a small, primitive part of our brain called the amygdala?

In an essay on how our brains developed to detect threats, Nayef al-Rodhan, a neuroscientist and philosopher, explains what fear looks like in the brain, and why we’re so susceptible to the politics of “us and them”.

“The neurocircuitry for tribal behaviour has been studied … we normally distinguish someone as being an “outsider” or part of “our group” within 170 thousandths of a second from the moment we see them.”

And we judge them differently. A depressing picture of inevitable, in-built bias would emerge - were it not for a hopeful conclusion:

“While the human brain presents primordial predispositions, carried through millennia of evolution, it is also incredibly malleable and plastic. Rather than painting a grim picture, we should think of neuroscience as a discipline that can help us overcome roadblocks in our societies.”

What does “malleable and plastic” mean in this context? As this simple guide explains, plasticity means that our brains are literally shaped by our experiences. It’s a recent and quietly revolutionary concept. For one, it helps to debunk the lingering myth that men and women are born with very different brains that are predestined to develop along a certain path, as the neuroscientists Tara Swart and Murali Doraiswamy explain. Despite some biological differences, it turns out boys and girls are both competitive, and we’re all pretty bad at multi-tasking.       

Moreover, our brains are never more malleable than in the first years of our lives. That is why it’s so important to understand how factors like poverty impact the way very young children’s brains develop, something that Casey Lew Williams, an Assistant Professor of Psychology, has been studying at the Princeton Baby Lab.

In a follow-up interview, he explained that impoverished children in the United States hear one-third of the words wealthier children do, which can contribute to developmental lags.

It’s a nuanced, complex topic, with one deceptively simple solution: more play time. Messing about with sticks is actually better for a child’s cognitive development than poring over flashcards, according to Lew Williams, but there are still obstacles to overcome.

“It's exhausting to be a parent in any circumstance, but it's much more exhausting to be a parent when you don't have the resources that other families have. Often, they (poor families) are juggling multiple jobs, they may not have access to reliable transportation, banking, healthcare; and there is greater incidence of problems such as stress or depression.”

While the seeds of inequality are sown in childhood, unequal societies also skew the way adults behave. The psychologists Paul Piff and Angela Robinson report on a series of studies that show that the wealthy are guilty of a slew of offences, from failing to stop at pedestrian crossings to breaching the ultimate ethical final frontier: stealing from a children’s candy jar. The findings should not be over-simplified: it’s not that wealth in itself corrupts, but that wealth tends to be isolating, eroding our ability to empathize.

But before you write off your own brain as a selfish, jittery, judgmental confectionery thief, take heart. Tinna C. Nielsen, an anthropologist and World Economic Forum YGL, and Lisa Kepinski, founder of the Inclusion Institute, offer a range of exercises to outsmart your mind in the workplace, so you can be aware, for example, of the fact that women get interrupted 2.8 times more often than men, and plan your meetings accordingly.

3. What are the promises and perils of new brain technologies?

Few would object to a brain-monitoring smartcap that picked up the early signs of Alzheimer’s. A world where employers use such technology to invade the last bastion of privacy and track whether their workers are alert and productive, or liable to gaze out of the window, is a different prospect. We need to do a better job of grappling with the ethics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, argues Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University.

In some areas, of course, the benefits are clear-cut. Thanks to a pioneering programme, eight paralysed patients regained movement through a combination of virtual reality, a robotic walker and a brain-machine interface. This again reflects the brain’s adaptability: what’s exciting is not just that patients were able to control a computer using their minds, but that they experienced a partial neural recovery. As their brains believed they were causing their limbs to move, some fibres within the spinal cord were “woken up”, allowing patients to regain some voluntary movement. Richard Jones of Sheffield University explains how implants that transmit signals to the brain are already helping blind, deaf and severely disabled people to reconnect with the world.

The barrier between people and machines is getting thinner in more ways than one. Angeliki Pantazi explains her work within a team of scientists from IMB Research on “neuromorphic computing”, which draws inspiration from the inner workings of the biological brain to create a machine capable of more human-like leaps of creativity and insight.

While computers are excellent at some tasks, like complex calculations, they are notoriously bad at others; including football.

New discoveries in how “neural circuits” function will ultimately pave the way to more nimble computers, as Professor Michael Hausser of University College London explains. “We’re only just at the very beginning of our understanding of the human brain.”

The final frontier is less a fortress, more a fuzzy barrier that can be permeated by new ideas, offering us the hope to better understand ourselves and our societies.

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/human-brain-explored-in-3-questions?utm_content=buffer35560&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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<Questions>

Q1. According to an article, depression could be the one of the metal illness. Why people in current society have more social anxiety, depression and stress? 

Q2. Are you involved in any therapies or training to treat those mental illness like depression?

Q3. Did you watch the movie 'LUCY'? What was your impression on this movie? 

Lucy is a 2014 science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson and starring Scarlett Johansson as Lucy. Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) accidentally gets caught up in a drug deal, but she soon turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human comprehension.

Q4. If you can improve your potential and avoid your pitfalls like Lucy, would you apply brain science to yourself? 

Q5. According to an article, wealth tends to be isolating, eroding our ability to empathize. Do you agree with this sentence? 

Q6. Would you let your boss monitor your brain to improve your productivity? 

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The Steve Jobs guide to manipulating people 

and getting what you want

Dave Smith/ Oct. 5, 201

Steve Jobs died five years ago today, at the age of 56.

Jobs launched two of the most valuable and creative companies in modern times with Apple and Pixar — but he didn't reach those heights by following the rules all the time.

Jobs faced many obstacles to get Apple and Pixar off the ground. But he had a unique way of crafting his own reality, a “distortion field” he'd use to persuade people that his personal beliefs were actually facts, which is how he pushed his companies forward.

He also used a blend of manipulative tactics to ensure his victories, particularly in boardroom meetings with some of the most powerful company executives in the world.

Many consider Jobs a genius, and everyone can learn a thing or two from his tactics.

Here, we teach you how to get what you want — whether that’s in your career, or in your life in general — by using examples from Jobs’ life. Most of these stories were taken from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, which you can buy here.

Pitch with passion. People can be influenced by strong displays of emotion.

Pitching was a key part of Jobs’ repertoire, and it should be part of yours, too. The process of selling — yourself, or a product — is the key to getting others to buy into your ideas.

Before Apple launched iTunes in 2001, Jobs met with dozens of musicians in the hopes of corralling record labels into going along with the iTunes plan. One of the people Jobs pitched to was prominent trumpet player Wynton Marsalis.

Marsalis said Jobs talked for two hours straight. 

“He was a man possessed,” he said. “After awhile, I started looking at him and not the computer, because I was so fascinated with his passion.”

He also pitched ideas to his ad team with a similar passion to “ensure that almost every ad they produced was infused with his emotion.” The resulting commercials, like the "1984" ad and the iPod silhouette ads, helped Apple become much more than just a computer company.

Being brutally honest will help you build a strong following.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple for his second stint in 1997, he immediately got to work trying to invigorate the company he started, which was suffering from too many products and too little direction. Jobs summoned Apple’s top employees to the auditorium, and, wearing shorts and sneakers, got up on stage and asked everyone to tell him “what’s wrong with this place.”

After some murmurings and bland responses, Jobs cut everyone off. “It’s the products! So what’s wrong with the products?” Again, more murmurs. Jobs shouted, “The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”

People would buy into Jobs' ideas because he was always earnest about what he said. As he later told his biographer (emphasis ours): “I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest. I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right. That’s the culture I tried to create. We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I am full of s--t and I can tell them the same... That’s the ante for being in the room: You’ve got to be able to be super honest."

Work hard, and others will respect you. Respect is a crucial first step to getting what you want.

Steve Jobs had an incredible work ethic. Jobs told his biographer that when he returned to Apple in 1996, he worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, since he was still also leading Pixar's operations. He worked tirelessly, and suffered from kidney stones. But he insisted on motivating both companies by consistently showing up and pushing people to make the best products possible, and they respected him for it.

Disarm people with seduction and flattery.

Whether they’re working for you, or you’re working for them, people continually seek approval for their actions — so they respond very well to affection.

And if you keep giving it to them, they’ll eventually crave it from you. From Isaacson’s biography (emphasis ours):

“Jobs could seduce and charm people at will, and he liked to do so. People such as (former Apple CEOs) Amelio and Sculley allowed themselves to believe that because Jobs was charming them, it meant that he liked and respected them. It was an impression that he sometimes fostered by dishing out insincere flattery to those hungry for it. But Jobs could be charming to people he hated just as easily as he could be insulting to people he liked.”

Claim all the good ideas are yours — and if you’re reversing your position, get behind the new idea with full force. Memories of the past can be easily manipulated.

Steve Jobs wasn’t right all the time, but he was a master at convincing people he was. So how did he do it? He stood firmly in one position, and if your position was actually better than his, he wouldn’t just acknowledge it: He’d adopt your position as his own, which would throw you off balance.

Bud Tribble, a former Mac engineer, had this to say in Jobs’ biography (emphasis ours):

“Just because he tells you something that is awful or great, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll feel that way tomorrow. If you tell him a new idea, he’ll usually tell you that he thinks it’s stupid. But then, if he actually likes it, exactly one week later, he’ll come back to you and propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it.”

An example: When Apple decided to open retail stores for its products, Jobs’ retail SVP Ron Johnson came up with the idea of a “Genius Bar,” which would be staffed “with the smartest Mac people.” At first, Jobs called the idea crazy. “You can’t call them geniuses. They’re geeks,” he said. “They don’t have the people skills to deliver on something called the genius bar.” The next day, Apple’s general counsel was told to trademark the name “Genius Bar.”

Make decisions quickly and definitively. You can (usually) always change things later.

When it came to making new products, Apple rarely considered studies, surveys, and research. It was also rare for a major decision to take several months; Jobs tended to get bored easily and was quick to go with his gut. 

In the case of the first iMacs, Jobs immediately decided Apple would release the new computers in a rainbow of candy colors.

Jony Ive, Apple’s chief of design, said “in most places that decision would have taken months. Steve did it in a half hour.”

On the same computer, iMac engineer Jon Rubinstein tried to argue that the iMac should come with a CD tray; but Jobs detested CD trays and he really wanted a high-end slot drive. On that particular decision, Jobs was wrong — burning music could only be accomplished on CD trays, and as that trend took off, the first round of iMacs were left behind. But since Jobs was able to make quick decisions, the first iMacs shipped on time, and the second-generation desktops included the CD drive that could rip and burn music, which was the necessary peg Apple needed to launch iTunes and the iPod.

Don’t wait to fix problems. Fix them now.

When Jobs was working with Pixar on “Toy Story,” which would be the first feature-length film created entirely with 3D animation, the first iteration of Woody the cowboy had gradually turned into a jerk, mainly through script edits handed down by Disney. But Jobs refused to let Disney, one of the biggest companies in the world, ruin Pixar’s original story.

“If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later,” Jobs said. “That’s what other companies do.”

Jobs insisted that Disney give the reins back to Pixar, and in the end, Woody became a very likeable and thee-dimensional character (no pun intended) in "Toy Story," which went on to be a monumental success.

Another example: When Jobs was designing the first Apple Store, his retail VP Ron Johnson woke up in the middle of a night before a big meeting with an excruciating thought: They had organized the stores completely wrong. Apple had previously organized the stores by the types of products being sold, but Johnson realized Apple needed to organize the store based around what people might want to do with those products. 

Johnson told Jobs his epiphany the next morning, and after a brief eruption from Jobs, the Apple CEO told all who attended that day’s meeting that Johson was absolutely right, and they needed to redo the entire layout, which delayed the planned rollout by 3-4 months. “We’ve only got one chance to get it right,” Jobs said.

There are two ways to deal with problematic people: Either address them head on…

Jobs often saw the world through binary terms: “A person was either a hero or a bozo, a product was either amazing or s--t.” He wanted Apple to be a company of “A players,” which meant regularly cutting B and C players, or pushing them with great fervor — bullying them, to some extent — to become A players.

Before Apple launched the Macintosh, one of the engineers charged with building a mouse that could easily move the cursor in every direction — not just up/down and left/right — told Bill Atkinson, one of the early Apple employees who developed graphics for the Mac, that there was “no way to build such a mouse commercially.” After Jobs heard about the complaint over dinner, Atkinson arrived at work the next day only to discover Jobs had fired the engineer. The first words said by the engineer’s replacement were, “I can build the mouse.” 

...Or "follow the line of least involvement" and ignore them entirely.

Jobs did not like overly complex issues, especially if they required him to make accommodations. So on occasion, he would become totally aloof. As Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson said, “Jobs would go silent and ignore situations that made him uncomfortable.”

Jobs used this tactic, which was extremely effective, on several occasions: When Apple’s then-CEO Gil Amelio asked what role he wanted to play in the company after he rejoined via the NeXT acquisition — Jobs couldn’t say “I want your job,” after all — and when he wasn’t sure how to deal with his estranged daughter Lisa.

Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Jobs’ daughter Lisa, described this tactic to Jobs biographer (again, emphasis ours):

“There was a community of people who wanted to preserve his Woodside house due to its historical value, but Steve wanted to tear it down and build a home with an orchard. Steve let that house fall into so much disrepair and decay over a number of years that there was no way to save it. The strategy he used to get what he wanted was to simply follow the line of least involvement and resistance. So by his doing nothing on the house, and maybe even leaving the windows open for years, the house fell apart. Brilliant, no?"

Strike when the iron’s hot, and strike hard.

Success usually tricks people into thinking they can stop working; Jobs had a much different point of view. When his big bet on Pixar paid off, and the company’s first movie “Toy Story” was a huge success with critics and the box office, Jobs decided to take the company public. 

Investment bankers said it couldn’t happen, especially after Pixar had hemorrhaged money for five years prior. Even John Lasseter, Pixar’s creative head, told Jobs he should wait until after Pixar’s second film. But Jobs insisted.

“Steve overruled me and said we needed the cash so we could put up half the money for our films and renegotiate the Disney deal,” Lasseter told Jobs’ biographer.

And that’s exactly what happened. Pixar held its IPO one week after “Toy Story” opened in theaters, and it was a wild success: It exceeded Netscape as the biggest IPO of 1995, and more importantly, it meant Pixar no longer needed to be dependent on Disney to finance its movies. Suddenly, Disney, with its flailing animation department, needed Pixar, instead of the other way around. The Mickey Mouse company would later realize this fact, and pay $7.4 billion to acquire Pixar — effectively making Jobs the biggest shareholder of Disney, keeping Pixar independent, and also saving Disney's once-great animation department in the process.

When you have leverage, USE IT.

It was huge news when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped start but had since lost its “magic.” Jobs insisted he was only an “advisor” to Apple at the time, but those in and around Apple knew he was really in control. Apple's then-CEO Gil Amelio depended on Jobs for the company’s vision moving forward.

So, on his first Thursday back at Apple, Jobs used this newfound leverage to his advantage: He called a board meeting and demanded Apple reprice its stock options by lowering the exercise price to make them valuable again. It was legal at the time, but not considered good business, at least ethically. But even after the board of directors balked at the idea, saying a study would take at least two months, Jobs fired back.

“You brought me here to fix this thing, and people are the key… Guys, if you don’t want to do this, I’m not coming back on Monday. Because I’ve got thousands of key decisions to make that are far more difficult than this, and if you can’t throw your support behind this kind of decision, I will fail. So if you can’t do this, I'm out of here, and you can blame it on me, you can say, ‘Steve wasn’t up for the job.’”

The board gave Jobs what he wanted. But Jobs didn’t stop there: The next day, he demanded all the board members resign, “or else I’m going to resign and not come back on Monday.” He said all the board members had to go, except for Ed Woolard, and that’s exactly what happened. By being able to choose his own board members — and act independently from them — he had the power to control Apple's next projects, which made it possible for gadgets like the iPod to exist.

Demand perfection, and don’t settle for anything less.

Jobs detested anyone who was ready to make compromises to get a product out on time and on budget. He found adequacy to be “morally appalling.” Jobs' goal for Apple was never to simply beat competitors, or even to make money: it was to make the greatest product possible, “or even a little greater.”

He was demanding about everything:

• When the Macintosh booted up too slowly, he badgered the engineer responsible, equating the situation to a matter of life or death.

• He worked with countless artists and advertising agencies to make sure Apple's ads had the right feel, and that the imagery and the audio synced up perfectly.

• Of the iPod engineers, he demanded the ability to access any function on the music player with three button presses, and no more.

• He insisted the production process for all Apple computers be shaved down from four months to two. 

Each one of these individual decisions could be considered nitpicks, but when put all together, Apple created a cult-like following unlike any other. Unlike other tech companies that had come and gone, customers and loyal fans felt like Apple put their interests first, and they were, as a result, willing to pay high prices for those products.

“Steve created the only lifestyle brand in the tech industry,” Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison told Jobs’ biographer. “There are cars people are proud to have — Porsche, Ferrari, Prius — because what I drive says something about me. People feel the same way about an Apple product.”

Article source : http://uk.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-guide-to-getting-what-you-want-2016-10?utm_content=buffer150c1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer/#demand-perfection-and-dont-settle-for-anything-less-12

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<Questions>

Q1. What do you think of Steven jobs? 

Q2. Who is your role model? Why?

Q3. Do you think you are a workholc? 

Q4. What is you priority in your life? 

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Asia’s cities are increasingly competitive. 

Now it’s time to focus on liveability

Written by Anthony Couse/ CEO, JLL Asia Pacific

Published Wednesday 5 October 2016

As a real estate firm, JLL talks a lot about cities. For obvious reasons cities and the buildings they contain are at the centre of our business and, increasingly, cities represent the economic backbone of the world economy. This reality has led us into a new era of global competition where cities compete with each other for talent and capital. The winners will be those able to adapt to the changing world of work, answer new environmental challenges, and nurture the opportunities of new technologies. This battle will be won or lost on the basis of liveability as much as innovation.

So how do Asian cities measure up in this world of competition? Looking at the property sector as an indicator, our research tells us that a quarter of all real estate investment is attracted by just six cities: London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong. But looking beyond that core six, in order for more Asian cities to compete, they need to think hard about what kind of cities they are, and what they want to be in the future.

Large and well-connected Asian cities like Seoul and Shanghai, that aspire to join this global economic backbone, are not only jostling for capital and talent with the Big Six, they are competing with a rising generation of newly ambitious cities across the region.

Among these are cities that reflect the broader shift in economic power to China, India and Southeast Asia. Many have developed niches, such as Shenzhen, the poster child of the Chinese electronics industry, and Manila, whose educated English-speaking population can deliver back-office services such as call centres. Such cities act as magnets, attracting new people and a consequent need for office and residential space, along with better infrastructure.

Also in the mix is a challenger category of ‘New World Cities’ that are disrupting the ability of established cities to corner the global market in the most capable workers. As well as being hipper, younger and greener, these cities also provide fierce competition for the high-end talent and resources that traditionally head for the Big Six. They demonstrate the wider trend towards liveability as the key currency in that competition, in an increasingly globalized world where international boundaries are breaking down, and the best industry-moving talent is transnational.

 The most obvious New World City is San Francisco, bedrock of the tech industry and the embodiment of innovation. New technologies bring new industries, and this is an area where Asian cities have shown they are competitive. Bangalore and Manila have built industries around business process and IT outsourcing, and Seoul is reaping the rewards of its investment in connectivity.

Not to be outdone, however, established cities are working hard to stay ahead of the curve. As well as developing a 3D designed virtual Singapore, the city-state has promoted itself as a test-bed for high-tech innovations such as driverless cars. Meanwhile, both Hong Kong and Singapore are vying to be a ‘sandbox’ for disruptive fintech start-ups in order to stake their claims as financial centres of the future.

Competition, however, will not simply come down to internet speed and start-ups: there is no point building a financial centre or fostering innovation if your city is not liveable. To build industries, Asian cities need to be attractive to transnational talent, from experienced fund managers with their families to young fintech entrepreneurs.

This requires an intelligent understanding of the potential of real estate. Office space needs to be smart as well as cost-effective. It needs to stimulate the type of creative and collaborative thinking required to succeed in this changing world of work while also being flexible enough to meet the needs of an increasingly liquid workforce.

Enforcing green building standards, whether for new or retrofitted buildings, helps to attract talent, increase productivity and benefits the bottom line as well as the environment. Office space needs to link with transport, retail and leisure facilities, healthcare and education services, as well as people’s homes.

Meeting the liveability challenge will be difficult for some Asian cities, which have responded to rapid economic growth with rapid sprawl. In the cases of Jakarta and Manila, they must focus on solving their infrastructure problems if they are to avoid losing key workers to better organized cities. Equally, Chinese cities must address their environmental issues if they are to halt the flow of talent to places like Sydney and Auckland.

Going back to our research, climbing city rankings is certainly one measure of success. However, for smaller centres like Taipei and Hanoi this need not mean trying to go head-to-head with New York and London. They can aspire to be New World Cities that fill a regional or global niche with an eye on the industries that they can develop in the future. The most successful will be the ones that understand the importance of innovation and liveability to becoming a true 21st century city.

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/asia-s-cities-are-increasingly-competitive-now-it-s-time-to-focus-on-liveability

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<Questions>

Q1. What types of city do you want to live? Please select one type from below picture. 

Q2. Do you have any city you want to visit or live in the future? Why?