what i learned today

Today I learned how turkey got its name, thanks to the newsletter to which I am newly subscribed, Now I Know. Now I Know was recommended to me by a w.i.l.t. reader who sends out a daily dose of something he finds interesting.

So turkey. It’s actually indigenous to the US and Mexico. The bird, considered a delicacy, was brought to Europe via merchants in the East. It wholesaled out of Turkey so the British referred to it as “turkey birds,” as everything sold out of Turkey, regardless of its origin, was named. Now I know..

A friend of mine is taking a sex class at Harvard. She told me about a study they read that found there are 237 reasons that people have sex. It was written up in the NYTimes a few years back. 

Per the abstract of the study, the first part used a  nomination procedure to identify “237 expressed reasons for having sex, ranging from the mundane (e.g., ‘I wanted to experience physical pleasure’) to the spiritual (e.g., ‘I wanted to get closer to God’), from altruistic (e.g., ‘I wanted the person to feel good about himself/herself’) to vengeful (e.g., ‘I wanted to get back at my partner for having cheated on me’).”

The second part of the study asked 1,549 participants (granted all undergraduates ages 18-22) to evaluate the degree to which each of the 237 reasons led them to have sex. Factor analyses yielded four large factors - Physical, Goal Attainment, Emotional, and Insecurity - and 13 subfactors within those. 

Some key findings:

• Men and women were remarkably similar in that 8 of the top 10 and 20 of the top 25 reasons given were identical for men and women.
• Men showed greater endorsement of having sex for physical reasons (“The person had a desirable body”) and because the opportunity presented itself (“The person was available”).
• Men exceeded women on items pertaining to physical pleasure (“I wanted to have an orgasm”), improving social status (“I wanted to brag about my conquests”), improving their sexual experience (“I wanted to improve my sexual skills”), and utiliatarian reasons (“I wanted to change the topic of conversation”).
• Women showed greater endorsement of having sex for loving reasons (“I wanted to express my love for the person” or “I realized that I was in love”).

Here’s the original paper!

Can we actually live forever? I’d always figured that, given historical increases in life expectancy over time, it likely would not be the case. 

But then I watched this TED Talk by Aubrey de Grey. He’s a British researcher on aging who claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. 

He believes we can identify what causes human tissue to age and design remedies for them. It’s not that we’re not going to just find some cure-all that will extend our lives forever, he says. But rather, we can develop tissue-repair therapies that will help extend our lives in small increments over time. So, we’ll create something that will extend life for 30-50 years, then another 30-50 years, and another. Basically, we’ll be able to fix things that 200 year olds die of before they turn 200, 300 years olds before they turn 300, etc. Forever!

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. 

The biblical story Moses and the Israelites escape across the parted Red Sea may actually be true. Researchers at National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder show that if the winds get to be 63 mph in the Eastern Nile Delta, they could push back the waters, exposing a mud flat about 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide for four hours. When the wind dies down, the waters would come rushing back in to drown anyone in the mud flat. 

1. 845 years - Sholam Weiss, 2000
   Crime: Wire fraud and money laundering, which led to failure of National Heritage Life Insurance company. Also fled the country but was apprehended. He was convicted of 78 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering.
   Amount: $450 million
2. 740 years - Keith Pound, 2000
   Crime: Weiss’ right hand man in the scheme to defraud National Heritage Life Insurance.
   Amount: $450 million
3. 330 years - Normal Schmidt, 2008
   Crime: Led fraudulent high yield investment scheme but actually used the money to buy a castle and eight NASCAR race cars.
   Amount:  $40 million
4. 150 years - Bernie Madoff, 2009
   Crime: Led a Ponzi scheme that was the largest investor fraud ever run. Convicted of 11 criminal charges including money laundering and fraud.
   Amount: $65 billion
5. 100 years - Will Hoover, 2005
   Crime: Fraudulent financial advisor. Convicted of 44 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, and theft.
   Amount: $15.4 million
6. ~10 years - Charles Ponzi, 1922
   Crime: The original Ponzi scheme. Charged with larceny by the state of Massachusetts for which he received 3.5 years of prison, was released, and then charged with 86 counts of mail fraud by the Supreme Court. Then he appealed, was freed, started a new scam, and was indicted again, appealed, was feed, started a new scam, and was caught again, finally returning to Massachusetts to serve out his time.
   Amount: millions