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Why, Not What: Behind Apple’s Reality Distortion Field
May 12th
Simon Sinek’s TED talk, “How great leaders inspire action.” looks at why Apple succeeds in communicating with consumers where others fail. Instead of focusing on its products, Apple tells people why they design what they do. Once you understand Apple’s purpose — the underlying motivation behind everything they do — then you’ll be open to buying anything they make. You might buy a Dell PC because it’s cheap or has nice specs, but that doesn’t make you any more likely to buy a Dell MP3 player, whereas people convinced of Apple’s dedication to challenging the status quo or making some other statement would be likely to buy not just a Mac, but an iPod, iPad, and anything else.
As Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do- they buy why you do it.”
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Magnetic field can alter human sense of morality
Apr 1st
A new study by MIT researchers shows that people’s sense of morality can be altered significantly by strong magnets that interfere with neuron activity in a particular part of the brain. Prior studies have found great activity in right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) when people consider moral judgments like evaluating another person’s the intentions, so the researchers decided to disrupted right TPJ activity by “inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp.” This noticeably impaired subjects’ ability to make moral judgments based on others’ behavior (such as someone allowing his girlfriend to cross a bridge he knows is unsafe). The study shows that human morals are quite easily corruptible, but more importantly, it sheds light on how the brain compartmentalizes moral decision making.
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Game Over: Google shuts down its censored Chinese search engine, Google.cn
Mar 22nd
Google has finally closed down its censored Google.cn search engine. As we reported, the company announced in a January 12 blog post that following a series of intrusions into its systems by Chinese hackers, it would no longer cooperate with the Chinese government’s mandate that Google censor its Chinese site to remove results the government didn’t approve of, from the words “freedom” and “democracy” to the Tiananmen Square protests, Dalai Lama, and more. Over the last two months, the company has been in negotiations with the Chinese government, which is, unsurprisingly, not willing to budge.
Google just put up another blog post announcing that it has shut down Google.cn and is redirecting users to a simplified Chinese (the language used on the mainland) version of Google.com.hk (the Hong Kong site, normally uses the traditional Chinese script). As we mentioned in January, there is much speculation as to the reasoning behind Google’s decision. After all, while the company does claim “don’t be evil” as a motto, it’s been censoring Chinese search results for nearly four years now, so why the sudden change of heart?
Read on to find out.
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Odd Recipes of the Day: Steve Jobs Cheese Head, iPad Thai
Mar 20th
Some people clearly have too much time on their hands. Not that we mind though– here’s the dinner you’ve been waiting so long to make: an edible version of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ head, made of cheese and black pepper. The Cooks’ Den posted a tutorial on how to create your very own, along with recipes for iPad Thai (shown), Spicy Steve Nachos, and an Apple Cheese Plate. Glasses optional.
Source: The Cooks’ Den
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“Nano Trek”: World’s Smallest Model USS Enterprise Measures 8.8 Micrometers
Mar 15th
Presenting the world’s smallest model of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise-D! Measuring a whole 8.8 micrometers in length — or less than one-tenth the thickness of a human hair — “Nano Trek” was fabricated by Japanese scientists at one-billionth scale using a “30 kV Ga+ focused-ion-beam CVD using phenanthrene gas.”
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