in 2 hours
Last night I hosted a group of my business school friends for our first Think and Drink - a bi-weekly meetup for those of us involved in our own businesses or side projects (that’s right, not all MBA’s are bankers). It turned into less of a collaborative workshop and more into a discussion of.. well a lot. Here’s what I learned/pondered.
What percent of our peers know who Muhammad Yunus is?
Female infanticide in China and India.
The ant death spriral - a whole swarm or army ants, who are blind and follow the scent of the ants before them, get misdirected and march in a circle until exhaustion and ultimately death.
Fordlandia - In 1928, Henry Ford built a whole city in the rainforest of Brazil where he intended to source and create rubber tires. It failed. Basically, it was Ford against nature/the indigenous, and nature won. Must read Fordlandia. And watch Crude.
The cinnamon that we typically eat is not actually cinnamon. It is cassia.
The cantaloupe we know is not actually cantaloupe. It is muskmelon.
The rise of the alphabet may have been what led to an increase in misogyny and decrease in woman’s standing in society. This is because the alphabet requires use of masculine left-brain thinking, over the feminine right-brain thinking. Must read The Alphabet versus the Goddess.
Must read Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter. I can’t even begin to describe what it is about.
A city in Norway invited everyone to read the same book at one time. After researching, I discovered this is a thing — One City One Book — and has been attempted all over, including New York.
Can the brain actually create anything? Are we capable of pure creativity? Or do we just rearrange what already exists?
Being touched actually helps - when you are touched, the receptors under your skin called Pacinan corpuscles receive pressure stimulation and send a signal to the vagus nerve in the brain, which slows the heart and decreases blood pressure.
Weber! In the ancient world, people knew all knowledge that they thought was possible to know. We know so little of all the knowledge there is possible to know (however we have the notion that we could know everything). Because we know so little, we cannot make value judgments and that may be detrimental to us as a society.
The Red Sea may have actually parted, per new research.
