“Carpet samples contribute an estimated 1 million pounds of waste to America’s landfills every year. They are also expensive to produce—$250-500 each, a cost mills are forced to swallow as a loss leader.” BusinessWeek
Tags: business, environment, statistics
“The averaged Baptist pastor stays in his church for only about 2.5 years. There is a reason for this. Although most Baptist churches are board led, they are for all intents and purposes congregational in their polity. Thus, in many churches, even the most inane proposal must be but through a relentless series of committees […]
“This is where MySpace Careers comes to the rescue. For a minimal fee you can get as many teenagers as you need to sit at your office, on your computers and abuse your bandwidth with a constant stream of IMs, chats, profile comments and YouTube videos. Imagine the look on that VC when he sees […]
“Cleaning toilets does not disgust me. I find it a thing of beauty. I get right into that toilet with my little scrubber and I scrub it. I never wear gloves.” Moby
Tags: celebrity, music, simplicity, sociology, work
“Rule Number 4: If you see something you like, put it in your cart. You can obsess over it and discard it before you cash out. I recall vacillating over a beautiful green Italian bag, which I ultimately rejected because the handles were too short to wear over the shoulder. I put it back on […]
“The tasks of housekeeping and child rearing [are] not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.” Linda Hirshman, self-described feminist philosopher
Tags: biology, business, sociology, work
“Male big horn sheep live in what are often called ‘homosexual societies.’ They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males ‘effeminate.’ Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose […]
“Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix. The ‘click’ of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances… The brain’s craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb […]
“Christianity as it exists among fundamentalists isn’t about behaving like Jesus. It’s all about faith—about believing the story. The underlying message seems to be: you can behave any way you want as long as you believe the story and say you’re sorry before you die. Following the teachings of Jesus is much too demanding, whereas […]
“Plato suggested that everything in our world is just an approximation of perfection. He also realized that we understand the concept of perfection even though we never encountered it. He came to conclusion that perfect mathematical forms must live in another world and that we somehow know about them by having a connection to that […]