To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
- Chinese proverb

What if no one has been where you want to go?

The packaged-goods and fast-food industries spend billions each year on marketing to children, so all our children, rich and poor and everybody in between, need to learn what constitutes a healthy diet and to develop a taste for fresh, healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables.

- Janet Poppendieck, sociologist and author of "Free for All"

Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University, is convinced that the approach to matchmaking embodied by many dating sites represents a market failure. In a recent book, “The Upside of Irrationality”, he argues that the sites treat human beings as if they are goods that can be fully defined according to a set of standard attributes, in much the same way that, say, a digital camera can be described by the number of megapixels that it has and other characteristics. But this cold, drearily functional approach to assessing compatibility fails to capture the indefinable spark that triggers romance.

- The Economist

For as long as anyone can remember, millions of monarch butterflies have wintered in central Mexico after traveling south, but they were greeted by hail last March. In 3 of the last 10 winters, at least half of the population died as a result of the erratic weather.

- NY Times

"The metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet."

- Dave Barry

There will be 5,500 fewer CEOs by 2018, due to mergers and streamlining.

- (US) Bureau of Labor Statistics

It's more important to be useful than clever.

When you've been living out of one suitcase for about 3 weeks, you realize you don't need to own a lot of clothes.

Most milk is produced on factory farms. It contains traces of blood, pus and bacteria, which is why it's dangerous when it's not been boiled first. You're still ingesting that stuff! Quit dairy and find an alternative. Your actions will make restaurants and stores offer different options.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AO2GE20101125

When Singaporeans take foreigners out for a night on the town one activity is usually to make them try durian.

You see all those lights across the water? That's not Indonesia, those are all oil tankers.

- Marlon to me, while we were on a beach in Singapore at night, looking out at hundreds of lights along the horizon.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

- Teddy Roosevelt

We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities.

- Third Uncle from "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" (1955)

I have begun to view men wearing jackets/blazers with shoulder pads in the same way as women who wear padded bras or "cutlets" inside their bras.

For a long time men have been enhancing their masculinity and image with clothing and armor. It's the same as women wearing makeup and making other adjustments to their appearance.

These practices are baked into our culture. People who don't follow don't get the same level of treatment.

At a business trip earlier this year in Egypt a man was asked why he was wearing a suit and tie even though it was hot and we were by the sea. He said that he's English, and dressing casual just means not polishing your shoes. It's an extreme example, but illustrates how tied we are to visual enhancements.

Raise the bar, don't close the bar.

S.M.

A European engineering company is alleged to have paid over $1 billion in bribes to government officials in order to win infrastructure contracts. It has been reported that the company settled with the US Department of Justice and SEC at around $800million; a further €201 million fine was paid to the local government; and over €850million was paid to external consultants during the investigations.

The biggest slap in the face was probably what they paid to external consultants. They gained more than the governments!

Whatever you do there will always be people who don't like what you are doing. It's normal.

Two Princeton University professors found that in most of the US, people feel comfortably middle class if they earn $70,000 per year. In New York City, the figure is $165,000. The median income of New York City is $55,980, according to the Census Bureau.

Why do you need to earn three times the median income to feel middle class in New York? There's something inherently wrong with that. To me if one earns the median income, or 10% less, or 30% more, then they should feel middle class. It's a sorry state (or a situation which keeps you humble) when people need to earn 295% more than the median income to feel middle class.

Is it that the incomes at the upper end are skewed very high, and there's a lot of upward comparison? Or that there are too many ways to spend money in NY, and people can't afford to do that all the time? Or that the tax rates are higher in NY? Or that you get a lot less for your money here? Or that you have to pay a lot to avoid living in old buildings and having inconvenient commutes? Or remembering how much space and the other comforts you had when you were living in other places? It's likely a combination of all this and more.

I read an article that says to sell videogames well, the female lead characters need to be beautiful but not slutty, strong but not butch, and smart but not nerdy. It's interesting how they almost ALL comply with this description.

Imagine if we had this narrow a view of who we hired at our places of work. There would be an uproar. Will there be a movement towards a more normal range of female characters in games?

Barbie dolls have come under fire over the years for intensifying body-image issues in society. No one has pointed any fingers at the video game industry. Today almost 30% of console gamers, and about 40% of PC gamers are female. With people spending more time playing video games, it's only a matter of time that game developers will be pressured to create more normal characters.

What would happen if a tiger appeared in the office? I wonder what people would do. Hide under their desk and use the chair to blockade them in? Run out the emergency exit and hope they're not followed? Run into an office and lock the door, hoping the tiger won't break through the glass? Run to the bathroom, find a stall and lock themselves in? Ensure that there's someone else that's between them and the tiger?