Historical Events for 5th January 2016

1914 – Ford Motor Co wages jump from $2.40/9-hr day to $5.00/8-hr day
1916 – Austria-Hungary offensive against Montenegro
1918 – British premier Lloyd George demand for unified peace
1919 – National Socialist Party (Nazi) forms as German Farmers’ Party
1929 – Coup by King Alexander in South Slavia
1930 – Mao Zedong writes “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”
1931 – 1st woman to purchase a baseball team Lucille Thomas purchases Topeka franchise in the Western League
1959 – “Bozo the Clown” live children’s show premieres on TV
1987 – Surrogate Baby M case begins in Hackensack, NJ
1996 – Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone.

More Historical Events »

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Today’s Daily Brain Teaser (Jan 05, 2016)

One Pair Out of Ten

A very mean king went to a nearby village. He wanted some more slaves to serve him at his royal palace. He decided that if any family in the village had more than five children, he would take them. A cobbler and his wife had ten children. When the king came to take them, the cobbler and his wife begged and begged. Finally the king said, “I see that you have ten pairs of shoes in a box. If you can give each of your children a pair and still leave one pair out of ten in the box, you can keep your children. The cobbler and his wife began to smile at each other. How did they keep all of their children?

Check Braingle.com for the answer.

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Today’s Daily Trivia Quiz (Jan 05, 2016)

Superhero Secret Identities
You may know your heroes well, but how well do you know your heroes’ not-so-super alter egos?

Take the Quiz at Braingle.com

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Vocabulary : Word of the Day : Astringent

as-trin-gent

adj :: Substance that shrinks.

“The lemon juice was so astringent that my lips were puckered up for hours.”

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Creativity : Groupthink

“Groupthink” is a term used to describe a process whereby a group can make bad decisions even though each individual in the group may realize that the result is going to be bad.

People have a strong need to feel accepted in a group. Whenever an individual participates in a group, it causes the other participants to react in some way. People want to be liked, so they tend to participate in a way that gains them acceptance. One way to gain acceptance is to be very agreeable and not rock the boat. When a bad or bland idea is introduced, very few people may challenge it. If nobody proposes a better idea, groupthink can result.

Proposing a creative idea that differs from the group exposes the person and puts them in a vulnerable position. Nobody wants to fail in front of their peers or superiors. As a result, wild ideas are frequently self-censored or toned down to a level that is easily assimilated by the group. Unless there is a process that encourages wild ideas, they will seldom be introduced and groupthink can result.

Groupthink can also occur if an idea comes from higher up in the corporate ladder. Nobody wants to disagree with their boss, even if they know that the boss’s idea will fail.

Brainstorming is a process that encourages wild ideas. This is one way to avoid groupthink.

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Memory : Eidetic Imagery

Eidetic imagery is the ability to retain an accurate visual image of a complex scene or pattern shortly after looking at it. The scene can then be described in detail for a short time. Eidetic imagery is a trait possessed by about 5% of children. The ability to form eidetic images is very rare past adolescence.

To produce an eidetic image, a person must study a scene for some time and must actively concentrate on this scene to retain it in memory. These images fade quickly when the attention is diverted to something else. Naming or identifying parts of the scene tend to interrupt the ability to form an eidetic image. Thus it is very difficult to form an eidetic memory of text.

Sometimes eidetic imagery is called photographic memory. This term is not exactly accurate because this type of memory is not formed like a photograph; eidetic images can be fragmentary and are not necessarily more accurate than normal memories. Additionally, photographic memory is a learned skill rather than a trait you are born with. For example, some people demonstrate impressive memory abilities, with feats like memorizing the number pi out to thousands of digits. Sometimes these people are described as having photographic memories. In reality, photographic memory is simply the successful application of effective memory techniques. In that respect, photographic memory is a learned skill that you can eventually acquire.

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