August 28, 2016



Lists of Things

I like lists. Not everything in these lists are things that I advocate. Some of them are just interesting for trivial or historical sake.


Entertainment

AFI's 1998 "100 Years...100 Movies"

  1. (1941) Citizen Kane
  2. (1942) Casablanca
  3. (1972) The Godfather
  4. (1939) Gone with the Wind
  5. (1962) Lawrence of Arabia
  6. (1939) The Wizard of Oz
  7. (1967) The Graduate
  8. (1954) On the Waterfront
  9. (1993) Schindler’s List
  10. (1952) Singin’ in the Rain
  11. (1946) It’s a Wonderful Life
  12. (1950) Sunset Boulevard
  13. (1957) The Bridge on the River Kwai
  14. (1959) Some Like It Hot
  15. (1977) Star Wars
  16. (1950) All About Eve
  17. (1951) The African Queen
  18. (1960) Psycho
  19. (1974) Chinatown
  20. (1975) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  21. (1940) The Grapes of Wrath
  22. (1968) 2001: A Space Odyssey
  23. (1941) The Maltese Falcon
  24. (1980) Raging Bull
  25. (1982) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
  26. (1964) Dr. Strangelove
  27. (1967) Bonnie and Clyde
  28. (1979) Apocalypse Now
  29. (1939) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
  30. (1948) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
  31. (1977) Annie Hall
  32. (1974) The Godfather Part II
  33. (1952) High Noon
  34. (1962) To Kill a Mockingbird
  35. (1934) It Happened One Night
  36. (1969) Midnight Cowboy
  37. (1946) The Best Years of Our Lives
  38. (1944) Double Indemnity
  39. (1965) Doctor Zhivago
  40. (1959) North by Northwest
  41. (1961) West Side Story
  42. (1954) Rear Window
  43. (1933) King Kong
  44. (1915) The Birth of a Nation
  45. (1951) A Streetcar Named Desire
  46. (1971) A Clockwork Orange
  47. (1976) Taxi Driver
  48. (1975) Jaws
  49. (1937) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
  50. (1969) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  51. (1940) The Philadelphia Story
  52. (1953) From Here to Eternity
  53. (1984) Amadeus
  54. (1930) All Quiet on the Western Front
  55. (1965) The Sound of Music
  56. (1970) MASH
  57. (1949) The Third Man
  58. (1940) Fantasia
  59. (1955) Rebel Without a Cause
  60. (1981) Raiders of the Lost Ark
  61. (1958) Vertigo
  62. (1982) Tootsie
  63. (1939) Stagecoach
  64. (1977) Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  65. (1991) The Silence of the Lambs
  66. (1976) Network
  67. (1962) The Manchurian Candidate
  68. (1951) An American in Paris
  69. (1953) Shane
  70. (1971) The French Connection
  71. (1994) Forrest Gump
  72. (1959) Ben-Hur
  73. (1939) Wuthering Heights
  74. (1925) The Gold Rush
  75. (1990) Dances with Wolves
  76. (1931) City Lights
  77. (1973) American Graffiti
  78. (1976) Rocky
  79. (1978) The Deer Hunter
  80. (1969) The Wild Bunch
  81. (1936) Modern Times
  82. (1956) Giant
  83. (1986) Platoon
  84. (1996) Fargo
  85. (1933) Duck Soup
  86. (1935) Mutiny on the Bounty
  87. (1931) Frankenstein
  88. (1969) Easy Rider
  89. (1970) Patton
  90. (1927) The Jazz Singer
  91. (1964) My Fair Lady
  92. (1951) A Place in the Sun
  93. (1960) The Apartment
  94. (1990) Goodfellas
  95. (1994) Pulp Fiction
  96. (1956) The Searchers
  97. (1938) Bringing Up Baby
  98. (1992) Unforgiven
  99. (1967) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
  100. (1942) Yankee Doodle Dandy

Source: wikipedia.org


Highest-grossing films, adjusted for inflation

  1. $3,440,000,000 (1939) Gone with the Wind
  2. $3,020,000,000 (2009) Avatar
  3. $2,825,000,000 (1977) Star Wars
  4. $2,516,000,000 (1997) Titanic
  5. $2,366,000,000 (1965) The Sound of Music
  6. $2,310,000,000 (1982) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
  7. $2,187,000,000 (1956) The Ten Commandments
  8. $2,073,000,000 (1965) Doctor Zhivago
  9. $2,027,000,000 (1975) Jaws
  10. $1,819,000,000 (1937) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Source: wikipedia.org


Academy Awards - Best Picture winners

  1. (1927) Wings
  2. (1929) The Broadway Melody
  3. (1930) All Quiet on the Western Front
  4. (1931) Cimarron
  5. (1932) Grand Hotel
  6. (1933) Cavalcade
  7. (1934) It Happened One Night
  8. (1935) Mutiny on the Bounty
  9. (1936) The Great Ziegfeld
  10. (1937) The Life of Emile Zola
  11. (1938) You Can't Take It with You
  12. (1939) Gone with the Wind
  13. (1940) Rebecca
  14. (1941) How Green Was My Valley
  15. (1942) Mrs. Miniver
  16. (1943) Casablanca
  17. (1944) Going My Way
  18. (1945) The Lost Weekend
  19. (1946) The Best Years of Our Lives
  20. (1947) Gentleman's Agreement
  21. (1948) Hamlet
  22. (1949) All the King's Men
  23. (1950) All About Eve
  24. (1951) An American in Paris
  25. (1952) The Greatest Show on Earth
  26. (1953) From Here to Eternity
  27. (1954) On the Waterfront
  28. (1955) Marty
  29. (1956) Around the World in Eighty Days
  30. (1957) The Bridge on the River Kwai
  31. (1958) Gigi
  32. (1959) Ben-Hur
  33. (1960) The Apartment
  34. (1961) West Side Story
  35. (1962) Lawrence of Arabia
  36. (1963) Tom Jones
  37. (1964) My Fair Lady
  38. (1965) The Sound of Music
  39. (1966) A Man for All Seasons
  40. (1967) In the Heat of the Night
  41. (1968) Oliver!
  42. (1969) Midnight Cowboy
  43. (1970) Patton
  44. (1971) The French Connection
  45. (1972) The Godfather
  46. (1973) The Sting
  47. (1974) The Godfather Part II
  48. (1975) One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
  49. (1976) Rocky
  50. (1977) Annie Hall
  51. (1978) The Deer Hunter
  52. (1979) Kramer vs. Kramer
  53. (1980) Ordinary People
  54. (1981) Chariots of Fire
  55. (1982) Gandhi
  56. (1983) Terms of Endearment
  57. (1984) Amadeus
  58. (1985) Out of Africa
  59. (1986) Platoon
  60. (1987) The Last Emperor
  61. (1988) Rain Man
  62. (1989) Driving Miss Daisy
  63. (1990) Dances with Wolves
  64. (1991) The Silence of the Lambs
  65. (1992) Unforgiven
  66. (1993) Schindler's List
  67. (1994) Forrest Gump
  68. (1995) Braveheart
  69. (1996) The English Patient
  70. (1997) Titanic
  71. (1998) Shakespeare in Love
  72. (1999) American Beauty
  73. (2000) Gladiator
  74. (2001) A Beautiful Mind
  75. (2002) Chicago
  76. (2003) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  77. (2004) Million Dollar Baby
  78. (2005) Crash
  79. (2006) The Departed
  80. (2007) No Country for Old Men
  81. (2008) Slumdog Millionaire
  82. (2009) The Hurt Locker
  83. (2010) The King's Speech
  84. (2011) The Artist
  85. (2012) Argo
  86. (2013) 12 Years a Slave
  87. (2014) Birdman
  88. (2015) Spotlight
Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most weeks at number one (song)

Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most number-one singles (artist)

Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most cumulative weeks at number one (artist)

Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most top 5 singles (artist)

Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most top 10 singles (artist)

Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most number-one singles (producer)

Source: wikipedia.org


Billboard Hot 100 - Most number-one singles (songwriter)

Source: wikipedia.org


Sports

FIFA World Cup Finals winners

Source: wikipedia.org


Travel & Culture

Japan World Heritage List

Source: unesco.org


National Treasure Castles of Japan

Source: wikipedia.org


Imperial Regalia of Japan

Three Sacred Treasures of Japan

Source: wikipedia.org


Science and Academia

Millenium Prize Problems

Source: wikipedia.org


2008 Global Catastrophic Risks survey

  1. Molecular nanotechnology weapons (5%)
  2. Superintelligent AI (5%)
  3. Non-nuclear wars (4%)
  4. Engineered pandemic (2%)
  5. Nuclear wars (1%)
  6. Nanotechnology accident (0.5%)
  7. Natural pandemic (0.05%)
  8. Nuclear terrorism (0.03%)

Sources: 1, 2


Social

How to Win Friends and Influence People

EDITOR’S NOTE: I don’t agree with all of the content here. There’s a lot of good advice for self-improvement and some interesting perspectives on psychology though.

Twelve Things This Book Will Do For You

  1. Get you out of a mental rut, give you new thoughts, new visions, new ambitions.
  2. Enable you to make friends quickly and easily.
  3. Increase your popularity.
  4. Help you to win people to your way of thinking.
  5. Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done.
  6. Enable you to win new clients, new customers.
  7. Increase your earning power.
  8. Make you a better salesman, a better executive.
  9. Help you to handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant.
  10. Make you a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist.
  11. Make the principles of psychology easy for you to apply in your daily contacts.
  12. Help you to arouse enthusiasm among your associates.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

  1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Human nature does not like to admit fault. When people are criticized or humiliated, they rarely respond well and will often become defensive and resent their critic. To handle people well, we must never criticize, condemn or complain because it will never result in the behavior we desire.
  2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Appreciation is one of the most powerful tools in the world. People will rarely work at their maximum potential under criticism, but honest appreciation brings out their best. Appreciation, though, is not simple flattery, it must be sincere, meaningful and with love.
  3. Arouse in the other person an eager want. To get what we want from another person, we must forget our own perspective and begin to see things from the point of view of others. When we can combine our desires with their wants, they become eager to work with us and we can mutually achieve our objectives.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

  1. Become genuinely interested in other people. “You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.” The only way to make quality, lasting friendships is to learn to be genuinely interested in them and their interests.
  2. Smile. Happiness does not depend on outside circumstances, but rather on inward attitudes. Smiles are free to give and have an amazing ability to make others feel wonderful. Smile in everything that you do.
  3. Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. “The average person is more interested in their own name than in all the other names in the world put together.” People love their names so much that they will often donate large amounts of money just to have a building named after themselves. We can make people feel extremely valued and important by remembering their name.
  4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. The easiest way to become a good conversationalist is to become a good listener. To be a good listener, we must actually care about what people have to say. Many times people don’t want an entertaining conversation partner; they just want someone who will listen to them.
  5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interest. The royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most. If we talk to people about what they are interested in, they will feel valued and value us in return.
  6. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely. The golden rule is to treat other people how we would like to be treated. We love to feel important and so does everyone else. People will talk to us for hours if we allow them to talk about themselves. If we can make people feel important in a sincere and appreciative way, then we will win all the friends we could ever dream of.

Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

  1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. Whenever we argue with someone, no matter if we win or lose the argument, we still lose. The other person will either feel humiliated or strengthened and will only seek to bolster their own position. We must try to avoid arguments whenever we can.
  2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say “You’re wrong.” We must never tell people flat out that they are wrong. It will only serve to offend them and insult their pride. No one likes to be humiliated, we must not be so blunt.
  3. If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Whenever we are wrong we should admit it immediately. When we fight we never get enough, but by yielding we often get more than we expected. When we admit that we are wrong people trust us and begin to sympathize with our way of thinking.
  4. Begin in a friendly way. “A drop of honey can catch more flies than a gallon of gall.” If we begin our interactions with others in a friendly way, people will be more receptive. Even if we are greatly upset, we must be friendly to influence people to our way of thinking.
  5. Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes. Do not begin by emphasizing the aspects in which we and the other person differ. Begin by emphasizing and continue emphasizing the things on which we agree. People must be started in the affirmative direction and they will often follow readily. Never tell someone they are wrong, but rather lead them where we would like them to go with questions that they will answer “yes” to.
  6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. People do not like listening to us boast, they enjoy doing the talking themselves. Let them rationalize and talk about the idea, because it will taste much sweeter to them in their own mouth.
  7. Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers. People inherently like ideas they come to on their own better than those that are handed to them on a platter. Ideas can best be carried out by allowing others to think they arrived at it themselves.
  8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. Other people may often be wrong, but we cannot condemn them. We must seek to understand them. Success in dealing with people requires a sympathetic grasp of the other person’s viewpoint.
  9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. People are hungering for sympathy. They want us to recognize all that they desire and feel. If we can sympathize with others, they will appreciate our side as well and will often come around to our way of thinking.
  10. Appeal to the nobler motives. Everyone likes to be glorious in their own eyes. People believe that they do things for noble and morally upright reasons. If we can appeal to others’ noble motives we can successfully convince them to follow our ideas.
  11. Dramatize your ideas. In this fast paced world, simply stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth must be made vivid, interesting, and dramatic. Television has been doing it for years. Sometimes ideas are not enough and we must dramatize them.
  12. Throw down a challenge. The thing that most motivates people is the game. Everyone desires to excel and prove their worth. If we want someone to do something, we must give them a challenge and they will often rise to meet it.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

  1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation. People will do things begrudgingly for criticism and an iron-fisted leader, but they will work wonders when they are praised and appreciated.
  2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly. No one likes to make mistakes, especially in front of others. Scolding and blaming only serves to humiliate. If we subtly and indirectly show people mistakes, they will appreciate us and be more likely to improve.
  3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. When something goes wrong, taking responsibility can help win others to your side. People do not like to shoulder all the blame and taking credit for mistakes helps to remove the sting from our critiques of others.
  4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. No one likes to take orders. If we offer suggestions, rather than orders, it will boost others confidence and allow them to learn quickly from their mistakes.
  5. Let the other person save face. Nothing diminishes the dignity of a man quite like an insult to his pride. If we don’t condemn our employees in front of others and allow them to save face, they will be motivated to do better in the future and confident that they can.
  6. Praise every improvement. People love to receive praise and admiration. If we truly want someone to improve at something, we must praise their every advance. “Abilities wither under criticism, they blossom under encouragement.”
  7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. If we give people a great reputation to live up to, they will desire to embody the characteristics with which we have described them. People will work with vigor and confidence if they believe they can be better.
  8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. If a desired outcome seems like a momentous task, people will give up and lose heart. But if a fault seems easy to correct, they will readily jump at the opportunity to improve. If we frame objectives as small and easy improvements, we will see dramatic increases in desire and success in our employees.
  9. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest. People will most often respond well when they desire to do the behavior put forth. If we want to influence people and become effective leaders, we must learn to frame our desires in terms of others’ desires.


Language & Literature

George Orwell's Remedy of Six Rules

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Source: wikipedia.org


Official languages of the United Nations

Source: wikipedia.org


Government

The Nuclear Club

Source: wikipedia.org


United Nations Security Council permanent members

Source: wikipedia.org


Technology

The Twelve-Factor App

  1. Codebase - One codebase tracked in revision control, many deploys
  2. Dependencies - Explicitly declare and isolate dependencies
  3. Config - Store config in the environment
  4. Backing services - Treat backing services as attached resources
  5. Build, release, run - Strictly separate build and run stages
  6. Processes - Execute the app as one or more stateless processes
  7. Port binding - Export services via port binding
  8. Concurrency - Scale out via the process model
  9. Disposability - Maximize robustness with fast startup and graceful shutdown
  10. Dev/prod parity - Keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible
  11. Logs - Treat logs as event streams
  12. Admin processes - Run admin/management tasks as one-off processes

Source: 12factor.net





Cheers,

Ben