HTNet

Have you heard about the Pareto principle? It is also known as the 80/20 rule. The Pareto principle states that 80% of your profits come from 20% of your actions. There are some analysis of the principle that concluded that it actually means 80% of your income comes from 20% of your customers.

My beef with the Pareto principle is that I believe that it is too general and scientifically borders on the impossible. By sheer definition, it means that you should focus on the 20% of your activities that brings 80% of your revenue. Right?

Now here’s the weird part. If you eliminate the 80% of activities that only bring in 20% of your revenue, you’d essentially be left with 100% of income that comes from 100% of your work. This means that applying the Pareto principle effectively negates the principle itself!

So does this mean that the Pareto principle is a paradox of itself? Or am I just reading too much into it?

1. Fact 1: Dyslexics are better business owners.
2. Fact 2: Managers are horrible business owners.
3. Fact 3: Only 1 percent of corporate managers in the USA are dyslexic.

Those are the facts that are implied in this well written article from the New York Times: Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia. Although I appreciate the wonderful research that author Brent Bowers has put into the article, I’m not really surprised by the findings.

Read the rest of How To Be A Successful Entrepreneur: Be Dyslexic »

If this research bears fruit; salt water could be the next generation of fuel:

Dr. Roy said the salt water isn’t burning per se, despite appearances. The radio frequency actually weakens bonds holding together the constituents of salt water — sodium chloride, hydrogen and oxygen — and releases the hydrogen, which, once ignited, burns continuously when exposed to the RF energy field. Mr. Kanzius said an independent source measured the flame’s temperature, which exceeds 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, reflecting an enormous energy output.

As such, Dr. Roy, a founding member of the Materials Research Laboratory and expert in water structure, said Mr. Kanzius’ discovery represents “the most remarkable in water science in 100 years.”

Amazing, isn’t it?!

Believe it or not, that was the conclusion drawn by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, in San Diego. Basically, they think that having a friend, sibling or spouse who is overweight raises a person’s risk of being obese as well. From the BBC article:

Author Professor Nicholas Christakis said: “It’s not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with.

“Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship. What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size.

“People come to think that it is OK to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads.”

Hmm, so it’s more of an acceptance thing rather than a dietary thing. Still, it’s a very interesting study on the subject of obesity.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have demonstrated that externally cultured neurons can be embedded with multiple simple memory imprints that literally lingers on for days without interfering with or erasing one another:

The results, Ben-Jacob says, set the stage for the creation of a neuromemory chip that could be paired with computer hardware to create cyborglike machines capable of such tasks as detecting dangerous toxins in the air, allowing the blind to see or helping someone who is paralyzed regain some if not all muscle use.

Ben-Jacob points out that previous attempts to develop memories on brain cell cultures (neurons along with their supporting and insulating glial cells) have often involved stimulating the synapses (nerve cell connections). So-called excitatory neurons, which amplify brain activity, account for nearly 80 percent of the neurons in the brain; inhibitory neurons, which dampen activity, make up the remaining 20 percent. Stimulating excitatory cells with chemicals or electric pulses causes them to fire, or send electrical signals of their own to neighboring neurons.