Learning

BBC interviews Bob Richards and Naveen Jain and tour Moon Express #space

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom Thursday condemned a Dutch company's decision to delete million of files belonging to users of his defunct website, calling it "the largest data massacre in the history of the Internet".

Best Buy is recalling 5,100 replacement batteries for the MacBook Pro due to a fire risk.

You don’t learn how to be fascinating, you unlearn how to be boring. — Sally Hogshead 1. Charisma is contextual. Not everybody is charismatic to all of the people all of the time. A person can be charismatic in one area of her life and not so much in others. 2. Charisma is a process. It flows in the spaces between people. It’s like the Force, or an awesome conversation. A charismatic person can turn it up, or down, or off. It’s not a static inborn trait planted in a person by nature or God/dess (or Yoda). 3. Charisma is authentic. It emerges from the inside-out. You can put on the right body language, you can fake it til you make it, but that’s kind of like copying the symptoms of a cold without actually having a cold. Your imitation comes off as contrived, and maybe hollow, and people are quick to sniff that out. 4. Charisma emerges when you are centered and comfortable in your skin, when you put your focus on the other person instead of yourself. 5. Charisma is born and made. Charismatic people invent themselves in a way that leans into their talents and strengths. Before Marilyn Monroe became who she was, she was the girl next door. But she was the sexy girl next door. When Hollywood rejected Norma Jean, Marilyn saw that there was an opening for sex goddess, and who better to fill that position than herself? 6. Charisma creates a persona that is a distilled and heightened truth of the person behind it (see ‘charisma is authentic’, above). Charismatic people not only know who they are, they know how to perform themselves in the most compelling way possible. They are master communicators. They are always studying, learning, improving. 7. Charisma has a bold and compelling point of view that often polarizes people. Charisma gets beneath the skin of the culture in a way that inspires many – but provokes and disturbs others. Charisma can even get you killed. 8. Charisma is about being both fascinating and relevant. It’s not enough to hook a person’s attention, you have to have something to say to her that engages and inspires, that lifts her to a higher emotional state. 9. Charisma is not just about having a message. It’s about embodying that message in some way. You walk your talk. You live your brand. You own an idea, because you are that idea. When people see you, they also see what you stand for. 10. Charisma is about being tuned in: to other people, to yourself, to the soul of the culture, the call of the times, the mood of the room. Charisma knows how to read the signals and respond accordingly. 11. Charisma generates from an intuitive place deep inside. Charismatic leaders align themselves with the strong inner voice of their own psyche, which leads them to new and/or unexplored places. They trailblaze. 12. Charisma often says the things that other people won’t say, or can’t say, or don’t know how to say (see ‘bold and compelling point of view’, above). The truth is highly charismatic — which is why it’s dangerous, and has enemies. 13. Charisma is passion and confidence. That emerges naturally when you’re in your element: when you have discovered what you love to do and are a total badass at doing it. If you don’t know what that is yet, keep searching. Don’t ever quit. 14. Charisma doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with happiness. You can be highly charismatic and still want to kill yourself, or kill yourself slowly through various forms of self-abuse. 15. Charisma ultimately needs to be about something more than the self, because that can be lonely and isolating and just not that interesting for long. Charisma is at its most dynamic when it serves a larger purpose. 16. Charisma can be used for evil. Evil people suck, no matter how charismatic.

gurps_npc writes "Two radical pro-Israel terrorists were caught in upstate NY when they tried to solicit money from various honorable Jewish organizations to build a truck based x-ray weapon. They intended to drive the truck around and then turn on the x-ray machine, focusing on enemies of Israel. But the Jewish organizations they tried to solicit money from refused to participate. Instead they called the FBI, who promptly set up a sting. The men were arrested before the machine was in working order." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The plights of the world's threatened birds show the value of investing in conservation, according to an international report.

Jennifer Mnookin (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law) has posted Semi-Legibility and Visual Evidence: An Initial Exploration (Law, Culture and the Humanities (May, 2012)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay names and examines an...

From The New York Times: But if such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 “subjects” and wounded about 80 others — and every one of those...

Schoep, the dog who melted our hearts in a viral photo last summer, celebrated an incredible milestone last weekend.On June 15 this year, Schoep turned 20. The date also marked nearly two decades of friendship with his owner John Unger, the Wisconsin man who adopted him when he was 8 months old.More...