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3 Public Speaking Tips From The Most Popular TED Talk Ever

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TED talk Ken Robinson

Eight years ago, British educator Ken Robinson gave a TED Talk on how schools stifle creativity by way of an education-industrial complex that manufactures university professors and shames the inventiveness out of children.

The talk is now at 27 million views — a full 8 million more than the next

Let's pull apart Robinson's talk to see how he's been able to pull heartstrings, open eyes, and stir souls at such a massive scale, revealing a handful of techniques that you can apply to your next presentation.

1. Understand your audience's emotions — and speak to them.

In "Talk Like Ted," his book that distills the secrets of the best TED Talks, Carmine Gallo says that you can't just rely on a logical argument to be an engaging speaker. Rather, the way to a listener's ear is through the heart, which is why the most effective public speakers — from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Adolph Hitler — had ridiculous levels of emotional intelligence

Knowing this, Robinson grabs the listener by sketching out the unspoken tragedy of our education system: Kids lose their creativity because they're scared out of being wrong. 

Here's Robinson:

What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original — if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity.

They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes.

And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. 

In a few seconds, Robinson has shown the scale of the problem — and gives a hint to how we might address it. Education is broken because it shames kids out of their creativity. 

Here are the highlights in five minutes. The full talk is below.

2. Give the audience something they haven't heard before. 

Research into how the brain produces memories reveals that new events serve as 'anchors' for memory — when something surprises you, you remember it most. 

Some speakers rely on props to be novel and thus memorable: Bill Gates released mosquitoes into a crowd when he wanted them to look up from the smartphones and pay attention to malaria. 

But Robinson, the understated Englishman, relies on wit. He talks about how he grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, home of William Shakespeare. And the Bard, too, was once a kid in danger of having the artist educated out of him. 

Here's Robinson: 

Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was seven at some point. He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? How annoying would that be? (Laughter) "Must try harder." Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now," to William Shakespeare, "and put the pencil down. And stop speaking like that. It's confusing everybody."

This works because we all know Shakespeare, even if we never made it through Macbeth. Robinson takes that familiarity and turns it on its head, yielding a surprising and memorable revelation. The greatest writer in the history of the English language had to navigate the obstacle course of the education system in order to find his craft — and then employ it, which is the message of "The Element," a book of Robinson's. 

kids classroom ipads

3. Tell a story.

At the close of his talk, Robinson tells the story of "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera" choreographer of Gillian Lynne, who provides a case study in the way most education systems hold children back — and how finding a pedagogical fit allows kids to become their most fully-formed adult selves. 

Here's the story Lynne told him over lunch one day: When she was in school in the '30s, her school wrote to her saying that "We think Gillian has a learning disorder."

She couldn't sit still; she distracted other kids. 

Heeding this, Lynne's parents took her to see a specialist. Her mother told the doctor about all the things that were going wrong in school: her fidgeting, her always being late. So the doc tells Gillian that he needs to speak with mom privately — and before going out of the room, he turns the radio on. 

"When they got out the room, he said to her mother, 'Just stand and watch her,'" Robinson says. "And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, 'Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school.'"

They did.

"I can't tell you how wonderful it was," Lynne said to Robinson. "We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think."

After that, Lynne went onto the Royal Ballet — and onwards.

"Lynne's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history; she's given pleasure to millions; and she's a multi-millionaire," Robinson says. "Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down."

While he doesn't say it explicitly, Robinson's point is clear: The major problem with our education system is that we don't allow for different kinds of learners. 

By now, Robinson's perspective has been related to many millions. All because he understood his audience's emotions, gave them something new, and told them a killer story.

Watch the full talk below.

SEE ALSO: 3 Public Speaking Secrets From The Most Successful TED Talks

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Tour The Offices Of Music Video Giant Vevo, Where Employees Enjoy Private Concerts Every Week

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vevo office tourMusic and video streaming service Vevo is one of the biggest sites out there.

According to ComScore data for July, Vevo is the fifth most popular destination on the Internet, behind only Google, Facebook, AOL, and Yahoo. Vevo's artist channels are also among the most subscribed-to on YouTube.

Vevo is an amazing place to work, too. Major artists are constantly stopping by the company's New York City headquarters for interviews and in-office performances, and employees often get to meet and take pictures with them. 

We recently paid a visit to Vevo to check out the facilities for ourselves. 

Vevo's offices take up the entire 25th floor of the Condé Nast building, located in New York City's Times Square.



As you exit the elevators, you'll find a wall covered in titles of popular songs from the last few decades.



There are lots of places to watch music videos all over the office, including this area by the entrance. When we visited, singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson was scheduled to perform.



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10 Strategies That Will Help You Triumph Over Adversity

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horse race mud challenge

Although the difficulties we'll face in life are inevitable, there are habits you can develop that will allow you to better overcome adversity when it strikes.

Italian psychotherapist and philosopher Piero Ferrucci explains some of these strategies in his forthcoming book, "Your Inner Will: Finding Personal Strength in Critical Times."

We've summarized the book's key points below:

1. Do not turn your current beliefs and habits into dogma.

"We may feel captive to our own [automatic behaviors], obligations, and fears. Pressure from others may also oppress us," Ferrucci writes.

He says that keeping yourself free to embrace new ideas is essential to remaining happy and able to adapt to change.

2. Learn to find peace within yourself.

"When our emotions threaten to overwhelm and devastate us, we can find the center of our being," Ferrucci says.

The practice of quieting the chaos of one's mind through meditation has been practiced from Wall Street executives to the ancient Roman "philosopher king" Marcus Aurelius, who wrote that he would occasionally retreat into himself the same way people took breaks in the mountains or the beach.

3. Be deliberate in your actions.

When we put forth just enough effort to make it to the end of each day, life becomes tiring, and it makes us bitter and vulnerable.

Instead of wasting away your career acting like a robot, accomplish things with energy and focus. This way of approaching your work will keep you sharp and confident.

4. Starve your anxieties.

Ferrucci says that it is easy to underestimate the power of directing our attention toward something. Often, we gradually shift focus to a worry lingering in the background of our mind until it overwhelms us.

Bring these worries to the forefront of your mind, settle on a way to address the root of each, and then determine that you will ignore these same negative thoughts the next time they pop into your consciousness.

Piero Ferrucci

5. Be autonomous.

A strong support network of people who care for us is essential for dealing with life's challenges, but that does not mean that we should be dependent on others.

"Finding autonomy means fending for ourselves. It is to discover in ourselves the source of our interests, tastes, and motivations," Ferrucci writes.

6. Practice self-control.

The first step to gaining mastery over yourself is to refrain from making decisions when you become overtaken with a particular emotion, whether it's good or bad.

The goal is to learn to separate your emotion from a situation and see it objectively. If you lose your job, for example, your emotional impulses could tell you that you're worthless; if you were to look at the reality of the situation, you could proceed with a steady mind and do whatever necessary to secure a new job.

7. Practice integrity.

Setting aside our values to take the easy way out can have long-term effects.

"Coherence within ourselves allows us to feel more solid," Ferrucci says, and if we start redefining ourselves in a negative way, we will not have a foundation of values to help us get through setbacks and challenges.

8. Develop in-depth relationships and interests.

Today more than ever before, we jump from distraction to distraction without investing ourselves in much at all, Ferrucci says.

He thinks that giving depth to our most important relationships and passions can allow us to become more able to bounce back from life's difficulties.

9. Venture outside your comfort zone.

Fear is what keeps us from doing what is necessary to progress in every aspect of our lives.

"Risk, on the other hand, helps us grow and renew ourselves," Ferrucci writes.

10. Take lessons from every failure and setback.

The most resilient people understand that every one of their defeats offers the chance to become wiser and better suited for meeting similar challenges in the future.

SEE ALSO: The Mistake Everybody Makes With Emotional Intelligence

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We Spent A Night On The Town With Yelp's 'Elite' Reviewer Squad

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yelp elite eventFrom an outsider's perspective, becoming a Yelp Elite is akin to joining a secret society. 

Elite members bear special badges on their Yelp profiles, and they're invited to private events where up-and-coming restaurants and bars provide food and drinks for free.

The idea is that Yelp Elites will get these new local businesses on their radar, then create high-quality, reliable reviews and direct traffic to the site.

Anyone can nominate themselves or their friends on Yelp's site. Nominations are sent to the San Francisco-based Elite Council, a mysterious group that's responsible for making sure the applicant is a real person writing real, reasonable reviews of businesses. 

But according to Yelp, there isn't really a specific benchmark a reviewer has to meet to be considered an Elite, and each member has to be reapproved by the Council each year.

"There’s no magic number that unlocks it," Ruggy Joesten, community director for Manhattan Yelpers, told Business Insider. "Elite status is only reserved for the best of the best, the people who are making quality content."

We recently attended a Yelp Elite event at Analogue, a cocktail and jazz bar in New York City's West Village. When we arrived, guests were enjoying small bites and spritzer cocktails made with Casoni 1814 and Prosecco. We were told everything was on the house.yelp elite event

"The application process itself is easy, but you have to be vetted. You have to be very proactive in Yelp, and really candid," Yelp Elite member Gigi Angelis told Business Insider during the event.

As of this week, Angelis has written 129 reviews, given 306 tips, uploaded 136 photos, and checked in close to 1,500 times.

"I'm a serious Yelper, but it's my sole form of social media," she said. 

yelp elite event

Since there's no specific guideline as far as the number of reviews you must have written, most Elites agree that when it comes to being chosen for this exclusive group of reviewers, quality always trumps quantity. Some said they had only written dozens of reviews when they applied and were accepted, while other people they knew had written hundreds and were denied.

"It’s the quality of reviews that makes it," Elite member Amanda Stoneall told us.

She has written about 120 reviews, and her goal is to do a few a month.

"We take it really seriously," she said. "They should be middle-of-the-bar, fair reviews."

The event at Analogue filled up fairly quickly. The bar's owner is said to have some 10,000 vinyl records in his collection, and the bar is decorated to fit a vintage music aesthetic.  

The theme of the party, then, was a "record swap," and some Yelpers brought in vinyls to trade. People seemed to have their hands on a little bit of everything, from Kenny Loggins and Ted Nugent to Sisqo and the Beach Boys.yelp elite eventA jazz band played by the front entrance.

yelp elite eventThis Elite event seemed pretty low-key, but it was hard to say if it was typical or not.

"Every event is a mixed bag. It’s all about exposing businesses that aren’t on the radar yet," Stoneall said. 

That could mean everything from flea-market parties with free Franzia wine to extravagant bashes in Brooklyn warehouses with liquor sponsors. The Holiday Hangover, for example, is an annual event that brings 500 Yelpers aboard a Hornblower yacht.

"Some are really small and intimate, where it's nice to see people you hadn't seen in awhile," Yelp Elite member Mitch Einhorn said. "Some are amazing events where you're thinking, 'I have to go back.'"

Regardless of the venue and theme, what really matters to Yelp Elites is the sense of community they get from events. It's a tight-knit community of people who are passionate about going out, exploring, and sharing their opinions about local businesses. 

After awhile, they get to know each other pretty well, too. Einhorn said that he recently attended a wedding of two Elite members who had met through the business-review site. The community director for Brooklyn presided over the ceremony.

yelp elite event

Still, the Yelp Elite program has admittedly gotten some bad press in recent years. 

Some have criticized the program for unfairly bestowing a kind of celebrity status upon certain Yelpers, rewarding prolific reviewers with free food and perks and threatening to take their status away if they can't keep up the pace. 

In 2012, the owners of New York City's Big Gay Ice Cream Shop claimed they were contacted by a group of Elites who asked that the shop be opened early just for them.

And severallawsuits have been filed by Elite members who claim that Yelp should be paying them for writing reviews for the site. Yelp says the suits are frivolous.

Though it's ultimately up to the San Francisco-based Elite Council to decide who gets to be designated as Elite, the community director for each particular region is responsible for welcoming new members, reaching out to local businesses, and planning events like this one. There are dozens of communities across the U.S. and the world, including four in the New York metropolitan area alone.

Joesten, who's in charge of Manhattan, says that he intentionally plans events at times that wouldn't interfere with a business's usual customers — weeknights, for example, or before brunch on Sundays. 

"I'm always out educating local businesses on how to make Yelp work for them," Joesten said. "News in the business-owner community spreads fast, and having an event like this makes sense for them. We're taking advantage of a night that would be slow for them anyway." 

Joesten compares Elites' review contributions to the most popular creators on huge social media platforms like YouTube. 

"It's a small group of people making a large impact that a lot of people can enjoy," he said. "Lots of people like to explore the city. It’s just a small minority of people who broadcast it. And it’s making people’s lives easier around town."

SEE ALSO: Inside The Wacky World Of Epic Rap Battles Of History, YouTube's Biggest Comedy Duo

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The 20 Best US Cities For Culture

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museum painting photograph

Living in a city that values recreation, art, and culture is important.

Property Shark, a property research website, put together a list of the 20 U.S. cities with the most activities dedicated to culture and recreation, including museums, libraries, theaters parks, and stadiums.

The team then factored in how many attractions there were per capita to create the final ranked list.

Keep reading to see which major U.S. cities have the most culture (and can lord it over the rest of us).

#20 Chicago, IL

One cultural attraction for every 7,438 people

365 properties in the Windy City are dedicated to cultural and recreational activities.

The most famous are the legendary Chicago Theater, which dates back to 1920, historical Wrigley Field, built in 1914, and Millennium Park in the Loo, home to the city's iconic reflective Bean.



#19 San Jose, CA

One cultural attraction for every 6,873 people

San Jose has 143 cultural destinations for its 980,000 residents.

Its most famous attractions are the Tech Museum of Innovation, filled with robots and virtual technology, as well as the walkable Japanese Friendship Garden in Kelley Park.



#18 Memphis, TN

One cultural attraction for every 5,697 people

Memphis has a total of 115 properties for cultural purposes. A lot of them are related to Elvis Presley, including Sun Studio, where he recorded his first song, and Graceland, his famous mansion.

Memphis also is home to the National Civil Rights Museum, located where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider






This Summer's Best New Death-Defying Ride

Airbnb: 124 New York Airbnb Hosts 'May Be Flagrantly Misusing Our Platform'

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brian chesky

In his ongoing tussle with Airbnb, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has asked for detailed records on 124 hosts in the New York area. And Airbnb has agreed to give them to him.

Airbnb has about 16,000 hosts in New York. In a post explaining the news, Airbnb's David Hantman writes:

"This request represents an incredibly small fraction of our New York hosting community – far less than 1 percent.

... nothing about these hosting profiles suggests he is after anyone but individuals who may be flagrantly misusing our platform."

The NY AG wants to locate people it believes are running "illegal hotels," an AG spokesperson told Business Insider in April. In documents to compel the AG to turn over data about its users in April, it says that New York law forbids people to sublet their apartment for less than a month or more.

"It is illegal for residents of Class A buildings to rent out their apartments for any period of time less than 30 days unless they are also present in the apartment," the documents say.

The AG's office told us it is not trying to stop people in New York from using the site to rent out a spare room now and then. It's trying to find hosts with multiple New York listings who are perhaps running a room-renting business without complying with all hotel laws, the spokesperson said.

Airbnb negotiated with the AG and agreed to turn over only anonymous data on its New York hosts. The AG has a year to request details on specific hosts.

Here's the full post from Airbnb:

I want to provide you the latest update on the New York Attorney General’s investigation into our community here in New York.

As you remember, the New York Attorney General originally requested a full set of data on most of our hosts in New York, and we were concerned that this request was too broad. After some legal wrangling, we agreed to provide the Attorney General anonymized data about approximately 16,000 hosts in New York. This data did not include names, apartment numbers, or other personally-identifiable information, and was designed to present the Attorney General with a full picture of who our community is, and how it operates in New York. Under the agreement, the Attorney General’s Office has one year to review the anonymized data and receive information from us about individual hosts who may be subject to further investigation. You can read more about this agreement here.

Before we reached this agreement, we reviewed our community in New York and removed some bad actors who were providing a low-quality experience or failing to live up to the standards we set for our community.

After we reached this agreement and as this process continued, we became increasingly confident that the Attorney General was truly concerned about a relatively small number of hosts he considered to be “bad actors,” and that the vast majority of our community was never a target of his inquiries. As a result, we came to expect that we would start receiving requests for individual data at a relatively modest level.

This week, that confidence was reinforced as the Attorney General requested unredacted, personal information on 124 individual past and present hosts. The vast majority of these hosts were no longer on our site. The remainder of records requested are all for hosts with multiple listings, and without knowing more about why the Attorney General is interested in those hosts specifically, it is hard to know why they have been targeted.

But two things are clear.

First, this request represents an incredibly small fraction of our New York hosting community – far less than 1 percent. The vast majority of our hosts are simply renting out their own homes on an occasional basis. The law was never meant to target them, and we now believe the Attorney General did not mean to target regular New Yorkers either.

Second, while the Attorney General’s Office may request additional information in the coming months, nothing about these hosting profiles suggests he is after anyone but individuals who may be flagrantly misusing our platform.

We have notified each of the 124 hosts subject to this request individually, so if you have not heard from us this week, your information was not requested. As this process progresses, we will continue to strive to be as transparent as possible. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

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Punching A Shark In The Nose Is Not Your Best Defense


The Definitive Answers To 20 Of Your Biggest Health Questions

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Cough Syrup

Health and medical advice can change frustratingly frequently. Is coffee good for us or bad for us these days? (Good.)

That's why, when it comes to your general health, it's hard to know what information is right, wrong, or somewhere in between.

To find some of the most common health questions that people have, we turned to a book called "Your Health: What Works, What Doesn't" published by Reader's Digest in June 2010.

The book consulted dozens of experts and culled through hundreds of studies to bring readers a definitive answer to controversial questions about diet, fitness, disease, and medicine.

We've supplemented these answers with our own research to present a bottom line.

Keep in mind that new research continuously changes our understanding of "good and bad" health advice. We've done our best to provide answers based on the most current scientific evidence.

Does olive oil prevent heart disease?

Short answer: Yes

The health benefits of olive oil come from the presence of polyphenols, antioxidants that reduce the risk of heart diseases and cancers.

But to get these healthy compounds, consumers should buy good-quality, fresh "extra-virgin" olive oil, which has the highest polyphenol content. Most commercially available olive oils have low levels of polyphenols associated with poor harvesting methods, improper storage, and heavy processing. 



Do cough syrups work?

Short answer: No

In 2006, the nation's chest physicians agreed that the majority of over-the-counter cough medicines don't actually work. These colorful syrups typically contain doses of codeine and dextromethorphan that are too small to be effective.

Only cough suppressants that contain older antihistamines seem to relieve coughs. That includes brompheniramine, an active ingredient in Dimetapp.



Does sugar cause hyperactivity?

Short answer: No

Following a review of 23 studies, a 1996 report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that sugar "does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children."

The age-old myth that kids misbehave when they eat large amounts of candy, cookies, and other junk food, could be related to the type of events where these foods are typically served. For example, kids are more wound-up at birthday parties and during Halloween when sweet treats tend to flow freely.



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16 Mahatma Gandhi Quotes That Will Make You Want To Change The World

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Mahatma Gandhi laughing

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India, in 1869.

He was assassinated in 1948. 

Though in school he was rated as only "good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography," he would go on to become a lawyer and spend twenty years in South Africa before returning to a still-colonial India. 

There he led the Indian independence movement, which culminated to the Indian Independence Act of 1947

His philosophy of satyagraha— or mass nonviolent protest — would become a tool of oppressed people around the world, inspiring the likes of Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

For this we call him Mahatma, or great soul. 

On nonviolence

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."

["Satyagraha Leaflet No. 11," 1919]



On religion

"In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals."

["Hind Swaraj," 1908]



On practicing law

"I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder."

["Gandhi's Experiments With Truth", 2006]



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A Master Chef Explains How To Cook The Perfect Burger

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Monday through Thursday at the Monarch Room in New York City, executive chef Michael Citarella prepares his off-the-menu burger, the Monarch Burger. It's 8 ounces of all-natural, ultra-premium beef ground from a single steer with a 20% fat ratio. It's served on a toasted caraway-seeded bun with aged cheddar, bibb lettuce, beefsteak tomatoes, and Monarch's special sauce.

We visited Michael's kitchen, where he showed us how to make the juiciest burger right in your own home. 

Produced by Sam Rega. Additional camera by Justin Gmoser.

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SEE ALSO: How To Supercharge Your Coffee To Give You Even More Energy In The Morning

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19 Striking Photos Show What Nevada Brothels Are Really Like

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099_MMA_BR509GirlsTopgether_flat

Before traveling to Nevada, photographer Marc McAndrews had never been to a strip club, let alone a brothel. Now, he’s been to every single one in the state. 

Over the course of five years, McAndrews made regular trips to Nevada’s legal brothels, staying anywhere from a week to a month each time. He stayed in bedrooms in the houses, shared a bathroom with the working girls, and saw the world that no one — except those who work at the brothels — see. 

“It’s a different experience when you wake up in the morning and have to pass the cereal and the milk to your subject. It changes the relationship,” explains McAndrews. “People’s guards go down and they become more at ease. They start to let you see their world.”

McAndrews shared some photos from his trips inside the brothels with us (you can see more photos and amazing stories in his book, "Nevada Rose").

When McAndrews began shooting Nevada's brothels, he expected to find a seedy place, filled with drugs. What he found, at places like the Wild Horse Ranch (shown here from afar), was something completely different.



He started by going to Moonlite Bunny Ranch, which was made famous by HBO's "Cathouse" series. When he first asked about photographing, the women didn't believe him, thinking that he was just a nervous customer. He was eventually turned down.



After being turned down by several other brothels in the Carson City area, one of the prostitutes recommended that he try a smaller town like Elko or Ely, where proprietors might be more friendly.



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These Charts Show How The World Feels About 8 Moral Issues

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What people find morally acceptable and unacceptable depends on where they live in the world.

The charts below from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project show people's views on eight topics, often considered moral issues: extramarital affairs, gambling, homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, alcohol consumption, divorce, and contraceptives.

Pew surveyed 40,117 respondents in 40 different countries in 2013 to obtain the data.

The first graphic below gives the median response across the world. People were the most disapproving of extramarital affairs, with 78% calling them morally "unacceptable," while 14% of respondents, the lowest in the survey, felt contraceptive use was "unacceptable." Topics like premarital sex and alcohol use were most the polarizing.

Pew morality

The rest of the charts, ordered from least-accepted topic to the most, show a breakdown of how various countries responded. The colors correspond to specific regions: green represents Asia/the Pacific; mauve, Europe; light blue, Latin America; peach, the Middle East, bright blue, North America; brown, Sub-Saharan Africa.

As Pew noted:

"Generally, African and predominantly Muslim countries tend to find most of these activities morally unacceptable, while in advanced economies, such as those in Western Europe, Japan, and North America, people tend to be more accepting or to not consider these moral issues at all."

Extramarital affairs

More than half of people in all but one country — France — consider having an affair immoral.

Pew extramarital affairs

Gambling

In Africa and the Middle East, large majorities label gambling "unacceptable." In France, Canada, and the U.S., however, fewer than one quarter feel that way.

Pew gambling

Homosexuality

More than 90% of respondents in seven countries (Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Palestinian territories, Tunisia, and Uganda) say homosexuality is unacceptable. Europeans, however, are much less likely to say the same.

homosexuality Pew

Abortion

Half or more of respondents in 26 of the 40 countries believe abortions are morally unacceptable. People in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and mostly Muslim countries in Asia and the Middle East lean more toward calling it immoral, whereas Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and Japan feel the opposite or indifferent.

Pew abortion

Premarital Sex

Muslim countries largely believe that sex before marriage is unacceptable, while about 10% or fewer respondents in Germany, France, and Spain say the same.

Pew premarital sex

Alcohol

Opinions on alcohol use vary across the 40 countries, but predominantly respondents in Muslim countries find it problematic. Fewer than 10% of respondents feel drinking is morally unacceptable in Britain, Canada, and Japan. 

Pew alcohol use

Divorce

Even in conservative Middle Eastern countries, few consider divorce morally "unacceptable." The highest percentages of those who feel it is, however, come from African countries, such as Ghana (80%), Uganda (76%), and Nigeria (61%).

Pew divorce

Contraception

Contraceptive use is the most widely accepted of all the topics included in the survey. In 17 countries, the percentage of people saying it's morally "unacceptable" is in the single digits, and only in Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ghana did more than half of respondents feel that way.

contraception Pew

SEE ALSO: This Charts Explains Every Culture In The World

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This Guy Outsmarted A 'Burning Man' Ticket Scalper In The Most Hilarious And Awesome Way Possible

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Ben Feibleman

No one likes ticket scalpers.

Instead of wanting to enjoy a concert or sporting event, they often buy up a bunch of cheap tickets, then sell them at insanely marked-up prices, with little negotiation.

But in the case of Burning Man— a giant one-week art and cultural festival in the middle of Nevada's Black Rock Desert — one man was able to get a ticket from a scalper at a reasonable price by turning the negotiation on its head and completely outsmarting him.

It all started with an ad on Craiglist:

burn

Ben Feibleman, a tech investor/entrepreneur who had been searching for the coveted tickets, spotted the ad and immediately noticed the ticket price was double its original price (Disclosure: I'm a personal friend of Ben).

What's more, ticket speculation is completely against what the festival is all about, and the organization cancels tickets they find were sold above face value. The event has grown so large and tickets sell out so quickly, the organizers work hard to ensure no real fans of the event end up getting screwed by an exorbitant ticket price.

"Whenever we could undeniably prove that someone was selling their tickets for a markup, we cancelled their tickets and notified them that they were no longer valid (since they had breached the terms of sale)," it reads on the organization's website.

So Feibleman came up with a plan: Confront the scalper, gather the evidence — but give him a chance to redeem himself. He emailed him to tell him he had cash on hand, and could meet in Palo Alto immediately. They exchanged numbers, and the scalper gave him a call.

"I didn’t answer the call so I could get records," Feibleman told Business Insider. He responded via text message.

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At Starbucks, they met face-to-face and had friendly small talk in the corner. The scalper explained that some of his friends were going but he could no longer go, so he had to sell his ticket.

"Are you a veteran burner?" Feibleman asked (People who attend the festival call themselves "burners" and it's rare that one would scalp a ticket). The scalper said no. Meanwhile on the table, the car pass and ticket were visible so the QR code could be scanned to verify the ticket was legitimate. Instead of scanning the code, Feibleman snuck a photo instead.

Since he couldn't go anymore, the scalper said he was covering his losses, telling Feibleman the price of $950 was "supply and demand."

That's when Feibleman confronted him: "I'm gonna offer you $450 here," he said. The scalper told him he wouldn't negotiate and started to get up, as other Starbucks patrons began to look over at the confrontation.

"As soon as you leave here, I'm going to send all this information to the Burning Man office," Feibleman told him, while he began to walk out. "You've got an hour. You better sell those things in an hour, otherwise they'll be worth nothing."

Soon after, Feibleman began texting him to explain he had more than enough evidence to send in, and his tickets would be canceled if he didn't do the right thing.

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The scalper was angry, and not very happy about where this was going.

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Then, Feibleman decided to up the ante. He would post his own Craiglist ad.

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"Go ahead and do it," the scalper texted him back. So Feibleman did:

Ben's ad

As this drama was playing out on the pages of Craiglist, Feibleman started getting fan mail from fellow burners.

"Amen brother! Thank you for doing what I wish I had time to!" read an email he received. Another told him: "Major thumbs up!"

He even received invites to come by fellow burner's camps, once he finally made it to Black Rock. Now realizing his name was on the line — blasted all over Craiglist — the scalper angrily called Feibleman upset about what he could potentially be doing to his reputation.

"I feel bad, but I feel for worse for everybody else," Feibleman told him of his fellow burners. "Ask your burner friends how they feel about this."

The scalper finally realized he was defeated, although he was still very angry. He agreed to meet again a short distance from the Starbucks.

"Once I realized he was shifting his tone and ready to do the deal," Feibleman told BI. "I stopped being aggressive."

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The scalper finally accepted he wasn't going to win this one: "I'm giving it to you cause of your burner explanation."

They met again, where Feibleman told an angry scalper that a "convenience fee" was more than fair, putting the price to $450. The scalper tried to get a little more, but he said, "Look dude, the negotiation is over."

They finally settled. The initial contact to sales close took no more than one hour, with a true burner headed to the desert, ticket in hand, and a scalper begrudgingly accepting a fair final price of $450.

"If he really cares about karma, and he really wants to go to Burning Man, and he cares about it," Feibleman told BI. "I feel like I saved him from being an a--hole scalper."

NOW: I Went To Burning Man And It Was Even Crazier Than I Expected

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Tour The Beautiful Cemetery Where New York's Rich And Powerful Were Laid To Rest

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Deep in Brooklyn’s interior lies Green-Wood Cemetery, one of the largest and most prominent burial grounds in the United States.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Green-Wood was a premier final destination, housing the remains of New York City’s elite in fields as varied as business, art, industry, and politics.

Among the most notable eternal residents are corrupt politician William “Boss” Tweed, toy store founder F.A.O. Schwarz, piano manufacturer Henry Steinway, and business magnates Charles Pfizer and William Colgate. More recent arrivals include famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and composer Leonard Bernstein. 

The 400-acre grounds, built in 1838, are a stunning example of the rural cemetery movement, with Green-Wood often looking more like a beautiful city park than a graveyard. 

We took a tour of the grounds with Green-Wood historian Jeff Richman, who let us in on all the stories hidden behind the monuments and gravestones.

This is the entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery, which lies at the edge of Park Slope. The gates were designed in a Gothic Revival style.



The cemetery occupies 478 acres of rolling hills, dales, ponds, chapels, and crypts. The cemetery was part of the rural cemetery movement, which believed in creating park-like cemeteries, as opposed to small plots attached to churches.

Source: Wikipedia



It lies on the last of the terminal moraines (debris formed from Ice Age glaciers) that form the hills in Brooklyn and Queens.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider







Sweatpants Are The Hottest New Trend In Menswear

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Jogger pantsTapered sweatpants called "jogger pants" are one of the hottest new trends in menswear, according to industry experts. 

The legs of the sweatpants, which feature elastic at the feet, are designed to fall just above the ankle.

Unlike sweatpants of the past, their primary utility isn't in jogging, but in showing off expensive basketball shoes, writes Sara Germano for the Wall Street Journal

"They’re the hottest trend in bottoms in men’s," SportsOneSource analyst Matt Powell told the Journal. 

According to men's site Complex.com, "The pants have not only become synonymous with sneaker culture, but it's also found its way into its boutiques."

Now retailers including Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, Zumiez and Pacific Sunwear of California are pushing the trend.

Urban Outfitters has dozens of styles in a variety of fabrics including denim, cotton and leather. The prices range from $39 to $365

Here's a selection of the styles Urban is selling:

Jogger pantsNordstrom is selling more than two dozen styles of joggers for up to $299 a pair. 

Nordstrom jogger pantLike Nordstrom, Pacific Sunwear of California has an entire category on its website devoted to jogger pants. Their styles range from $49 to $99.

Pac Sun Jogger Pants

SEE ALSO: This Hoodie Is So Insanely Popular You Have To Wait Months To Get It

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This Is The Heartbreaking ALS Ice Bucket Challenge That May Finally Quiet All The Haters

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There has been a lot of debate since the ALS ice bucket challenge started a few weeks ago. Many are debating its worth if so many people are simply dumping water over their heads and not making meaningful donations.

But many, also, can't put a face to ALS and what it means to people dealing with it.

Until now.

Anthony Carbajal may be changing everything with his video on YouTube.

The video starts off silly as he wears a bikini and seductively washes a car for no apparent reason.

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Then finally dumping the bucket of water over his head.

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But that's where things take a turn.

After breaking down in front of the camera, he confesses that ALS runs in his family and he himself just learned he had the disease. Saying plainly and seriously, "ALS is so f------ scary you have no idea."

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He then shows footage of him taking care of his mother, who has the disease. She can't move on her own, and he describes the sadness and terror.

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Finally, he says he is glad people are talking about the worth of the challenge because for the first time, people are talking about it, and ALS is finally in the public eye.

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You can watch the whole video here:

 


NOW WATCH: 5 Timeless Philosophy Tips For A Happy, Successful Life

 

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