Who’s Got Your Back: Why You Need the “Lifeline Relationships” that Create Success and Won’t Let You Fail, Keith Ferrazzi

Lifeline Relationships Behind every great leader, at the base of every great tale of success, you will find an indispensable circle of trusted advisors, mentors, and colleagues. These groups come in all forms and sizes and can be found at every level and in nearly all spheres of both professional and personal life, but what they all have in common is a unique kind of connection with each other that I’ve come to call lifeline relationships. These relationships are, quite literally, why some people succeed far more than others. There’s a good chance that you’ve already experienced the power and potential of lifeline relationships at some point in your life. Imagine some of the attributes of the best bosses you’ve ever had— the kind of boss who encourages you, who gives you space to grow, who appreciates your efforts, who doesn’t micromanage but guides your development with wisdom, and who handles your slip-ups with firmness, understanding, and candor. Or think back to that good friend or family member who dropped everything to be there for you at a critical juncture in your life and didn’t let you fail. Picture that associate you had at work who took a risk for you, and whose influence still touches you today. If you’ve ever had an important person or group of people in your life who’ve shepherded you in the right direction—even if you’ve had just a taste of it—you know what I mean.

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View robotic penguins swim gracefully as the real creatures

Humanities more than just a word

JOHN Armstrong ("Transform into friends of society", HES, November26, 2008) says the humanities in Australia need to "transform themselves into friends of society" and to be "in the service of life", not just ofacademics. A return to "core concerns" with notions such as civilisation would dissolve that false dichotomy of value, between the intrinsic or noble and the instrumental or practical, that bedevils university and government resourcing of the sector. If such "important things buried within the disciplines" could re-emerge, our "economic anxieties would recede". Like Armstrong, I went along hopefully to the speech by federal Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr on why the humanities matter for innovation and was not disappointed by his reference to the"intrinsic value" of works such as PeterTemple's Broken Shore and John Bell's latest Hamlet.

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TED Talks to Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Here is a latest TED interview, very interesting Source: TED

Twitter with your brain

"GO BADGERS" isn't an unusual message to get from the University of Wisconsin at Madison - particularly when it's a status update from Twitter, the texting service that limits users to 140 characters at a time. The unusual thing about this message is how it got to Twitter in the first place:via brain waves. University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson's cheer for the hometown team is among the first direct brain-to-Twitter messages ever sent - and it points the way to better communication systems for paralyzed patients who have to cope with the conditions faced by physicist Stephen Hawking and the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, author of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."

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