When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never raise his voice. This was National Junior Basketball—the Little League of basketball. The team was made up mostly of twelve-year-olds, and twelve-year-olds, he knew from experience, did not respond well to shouting. He would conduct business on the basketball court, he decided, the same way he conducted business at his software firm. He would speak calmly and softly, and convince the girls of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense.

The second principle was more important. Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans played basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would inbound the ball and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A basketball court was ninety-four feet long. But most of the time a team defended only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet. Occasionally, teams would play a full-court press—that is, they would contest their opponent’s attempt to advance the ball up the court. But they would do it for only a few minutes at a time. It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, and Ranadivé thought that that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent’s end. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that made them so good?

Ranadivé looked at his girls. Morgan and Julia were serious basketball players. But Nicky, Angela, Dani, Holly, Annika, and his own daughter, Anjali, had never played the game before. They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening. Most of them were, as Ranadivé says, “little blond girls” from Menlo Park and Redwood City, the heart of Silicon Valley. These were the daughters of computer programmers and people with graduate degrees. They worked on science projects, and read books, and went on ski vacations with their parents, and dreamed about growing up to be marine biologists. Ranadivé knew that if they played the conventional way—if they let their opponents dribble the ball up the court without opposition—they would almost certainly lose to the girls for whom basketball was a passion. Ranadivé came to America as a seventeen-year-old, with fifty dollars in his pocket. He was not one to accept losing easily. His second principle, then, was that his team would play a real full-court press, every game, all the time. The team ended up at the national championships. “It was really random,” Anjali Ranadivé said. “I mean, my father had never played basketball before.”

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David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”

Consider the way T. E. Lawrence (or, as he is better known, Lawrence of Arabia) led the revolt against the Ottoman Army occupying Arabia near the end of the First World War. The British were helping the Arabs in their uprising, and the initial focus was Medina, the city at the end of a long railroad that the Turks had built, running south from Damascus and down through the Hejaz desert. The Turks had amassed a large force in Medina, and the British leadership wanted Lawrence to gather the Arabs and destroy the Turkish garrison there, before the Turks could threaten the entire region.

But when Lawrence looked at his ragtag band of Bedouin fighters he realized that a direct attack on Medina would never succeed. And why did taking the city matter, anyway? The Turks sat in Medina “on the defensive, immobile.” There were so many of them, consuming so much food and fuel and water, that they could hardly make a major move across the desert. Instead of attacking the Turks at their point of strength, Lawrence reasoned, he ought to attack them where they were weak—along the vast, largely unguarded length of railway line that was their connection to Damascus. Instead of focussing his attention on Medina, he should wage war over the broadest territory possible.

The Bedouins under Lawrence’s command were not, in conventional terms, skilled troops. They were nomads. Sir Reginald Wingate, one of the British commanders in the region, called them “an untrained rabble, most of whom have never fired a rifle.” But they were tough and they were mobile. The typical Bedouin soldier carried no more than a rifle, a hundred rounds of ammunition, forty-five pounds of flour, and a pint of drinking water, which meant that he could travel as much as a hundred and ten miles a day across the desert, even in summer. “Our cards were speed and time, not hitting power,” Lawrence wrote. “Our largest available resources were the tribesmen, men quite unused to formal warfare, whose assets were movement, endurance, individual intelligence, knowledge of the country, courage.” The eighteenth-century general Maurice de Saxe famously said that the art of war was about legs, not arms, and Lawrence’s troops were all legs. In one typical stretch, in the spring of 1917, his men dynamited sixty rails and cut a telegraph line at Buair on March 24th, sabotaged a train and twenty-five rails at Abu al-Naam on March 25th, dynamited fifteen rails and cut a telegraph line at Istabl Antar on March 27th, raided a Turkish garrison and derailed a train on March 29th, returned to Buair and sabotaged the railway line again on March 31st, dynamited eleven rails at Hediah on April 3rd, raided the train line in the area of Wadi Dhaiji on April 4th and 5th, and attacked twice on April 6th.

Lawrence’s masterstroke was an assault on the port town of Aqaba. The Turks expected an attack from British ships patrolling the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. Lawrence decided to attack from the east instead, coming at the city from the unprotected desert, and to do that he led his men on an audacious, six-hundred-mile loop—up from the Hejaz, north into the Syrian desert, and then back down toward Aqaba. This was in summer, through some of the most inhospitable land in the Middle East, and Lawrence tacked on a side trip to the outskirts of Damascus, in order to mislead the Turks about his intentions. “This year the valley seemed creeping with horned vipers and puff-adders, cobras and black snakes,” Lawrence writes in “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” of one stage in the journey:

We could not lightly draw water after dark, for there were snakes swimming in the pools or clustering in knots around their brinks. Twice puff-adders came twisting into the alert ring of our debating coffee-circle. Three of our men died of bites; four recovered after great fear and pain, and a swelling of the poisoned limb. Howeitat treatment was to bind up the part with snake-skin plaster and read chapters of the Koran to the sufferer until he died.

When they finally arrived at Aqaba, Lawrence’s band of several hundred warriors killed or captured twelve hundred Turks, and lost only two men. The Turks simply did not think that their opponent would be mad enough to come at them from the desert. This was Lawrence’s great insight. David can beat Goliath by substituting effort for ability—and substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life, including little blond-haired girls on the basketball court.

Vivek Ranadivé is an elegant man, slender and fine-boned, with impeccable manners and a languorous walk. His father was a pilot who was jailed by Indira Gandhi, he says, because he wouldn’t stop challenging the safety of India’s planes. Ranadivé went to M.I.T., because he saw a documentary on the school and decided that it was perfect for him. This was in the nineteen-seventies, when going abroad for undergraduate study required the Indian government to authorize the release of foreign currency, and Ranadivé camped outside the office of the governor of the Reserve Bank of India until he got his way. The Ranadivés are relentless.

In 1985, Ranadivé founded a software company in Silicon Valley devoted to what in the computer world is known as “real time” processing. If a businessman waits until the end of the month to collect and count his receipts, he’s “batch processing.” There is a gap between the events in the company—sales—and his understanding of those events. Wall Street used to be the same way. The information on which a trader based his decisions was scattered across a number of databases. The trader would collect information from here and there, collate and analyze it, and then make a trade. What Ranadivé’s company, TIBCO, did was to consolidate those databases into one stream, so that the trader could collect all the data he wanted instantaneously. Batch processing was replaced by real-time processing. Today, TIBCO’s software powers most of the trading floors on Wall Street.

Ranadivé views this move from batch to real time as a sort of holy mission. The shift, to his mind, is one of kind, not just of degree. “We’ve been working with some airlines,” he said. “You know, when you get on a plane and your bag doesn’t, they actually know right away that it’s not there. But no one tells you, and a big part of that is that they don’t have all their information in one place. There are passenger systems that know where the passenger is. There are aircraft and maintenance systems that track where the plane is and what kind of shape it’s in. Then, there are baggage systems and ticketing systems—and they’re all separate. So you land, you wait at the baggage terminal, and it doesn’t show up.” Everything bad that happens in that scenario, Ranadivé maintains, happens because of the lag between the event (the luggage doesn’t make it onto the plane) and the response (the airline tells you that your luggage didn’t make the plane). The lag is why you’re angry. The lag is why you had to wait, fruitlessly, at baggage claim. The lag is why you vow never to fly that airline again. Put all the databases together, and there’s no lag. “What we can do is send you a text message the moment we know your bag didn’t make it,” Ranadivé said, “telling you we’ll ship it to your house.”

A few years ago, Ranadivé wrote a paper arguing that even the Federal Reserve ought to make its decisions in real time—not once every month or two. “Everything in the world is now real time,” he said. “So when a certain type of shoe isn’t selling at your corner shop, it’s not six months before the guy in China finds out. It’s almost instantaneous, thanks to my software. The world runs in real time, but government runs in batch. Every few months, it adjusts. Its mission is to keep the temperature comfortable in the economy, and, if you were to do things the government’s way in your house, then every few months you’d turn the heater either on or off, overheating or underheating your house.” Ranadivé argued that we ought to put the economic data that the Fed uses into a big stream, and write a computer program that sifts through those data, the moment they are collected, and make immediate, incremental adjustments to interest rates and the money supply. “It can all be automated,” he said. “Look, we’ve had only one soft landing since the Second World War. Basically, we’ve got it wrong every single time.”

You can imagine what someone like Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke might say about that idea. Such people are powerfully invested in the notion of the Fed as a Solomonic body: that pause of five or eight weeks between economic adjustments seems central to the process of deliberation. To Ranadivé, though, “deliberation” just prettifies the difficulties created by lag. The Fed has to deliberate because it’s several weeks behind, the same way the airline has to bow and scrape and apologize because it waited forty-five minutes to tell you something that it could have told you the instant you stepped off the plane.

Is it any wonder that Ranadivé looked at the way basketball was played and found it mindless? A professional basketball game was forty-eight minutes long, divided up into alternating possessions of roughly twenty seconds: back and forth, back and forth. But a good half of each twenty-second increment was typically taken up with preliminaries and formalities. The point guard dribbled the ball up the court. He stood above the top of the key, about twenty-four feet from the opposing team’s basket. He called out a play that the team had choreographed a hundred times in practice. It was only then that the defending team sprang into action, actively contesting each pass and shot. Actual basketball took up only half of that twenty-second interval, so that a game’s real length was not forty-eight minutes but something closer to twenty-four minutes—and that twenty-four minutes of activity took place within a narrowly circumscribed area. It was as formal and as convention-bound as an eighteenth-century quadrille. The supporters of that dance said that the defensive players had to run back to their own end, in order to compose themselves for the arrival of the other team. But the reason they had to compose themselves, surely, was that by retreating they allowed the offense to execute a play that it had practiced to perfection. Basketball was batch!

Insurgents, though, operate in real time. Lawrence hit the Turks, in that stretch in the spring of 1917, nearly every day, because he knew that the more he accelerated the pace of combat the more the war became a battle of endurance—and endurance battles favor the insurgent. “And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.

Ranadivé’s basketball team played in the National Junior Basketball seventh-and-eighth-grade division, representing Redwood City. The girls practiced at Paye’s Place, a gym in nearby San Carlos. Because Ranadivé had never played basketball, he recruited a series of experts to help him. The first was Roger Craig, the former all-pro running back for the San Francisco 49ers, who is also TIBCO’s director of business development. As a football player, Craig was legendary for the off-season hill workouts he put himself through. Most of his N.F.L. teammates are now hobbling around golf courses. He has run seven marathons. After Craig signed on, he recruited his daughter Rometra, who played Division I basketball at Duke and U.S.C. Rometra was the kind of person you assigned to guard your opponent’s best player in order to shut her down. The girls loved Rometra. “She has always been like my big sister,” Anjali Ranadivé said. “It was so awesome to have her along.”

Redwood City’s strategy was built around the two deadlines that all basketball teams must meet in order to advance the ball. The first is the inbounds pass. When one team scores, a player from the other team takes the ball out of bounds and has five seconds to pass it to a teammate on the court. If that deadline is missed, the ball goes to the other team. Usually, that’s not an issue, because teams don’t contest the inbounds pass. They run back to their own end. Redwood City did not. Each girl on the team closely shadowed her counterpart. When some teams play the press, the defender plays behind the offensive player she’s guarding, to impede her once she catches the ball. The Redwood City girls, by contrast, played in front of their opponents, to prevent them from catching the inbounds pass in the first place. And they didn’t guard the player throwing the ball in. Why bother? Ranadivé used that extra player as a floater, who could serve as a second defender against the other team’s best player. “Think about football,” Ranadivé said. “The quarterback can run with the ball. He has the whole field to throw to, and it’s still damned difficult to complete a pass.” Basketball was harder. A smaller court. A five-second deadline. A heavier, bigger ball. As often as not, the teams Redwood City was playing against simply couldn’t make the inbounds pass within the five-second limit. Or the inbounding player, panicked by the thought that her five seconds were about to be up, would throw the ball away. Or her pass would be intercepted by one of the Redwood City players. Ranadivé’s girls were maniacal.

The second deadline requires a team to advance the ball across mid-court, into its opponent’s end, within ten seconds, and if Redwood City’s opponents met the first deadline the girls would turn their attention to the second. They would descend on the girl who caught the inbounds pass and “trap” her. Anjali was the designated trapper. She’d sprint over and double-team the dribbler, stretching her long arms high and wide. Maybe she’d steal the ball. Maybe the other player would throw it away in a panic—or get bottled up and stalled, so that the ref would end up blowing the whistle. “When we first started out, no one knew how to play defense or anything,” Anjali said. “So my dad said the whole game long, ‘Your job is to guard someone and make sure they never get the ball on inbounds plays.’ It’s the best feeling in the world to steal the ball from someone. We would press and steal, and do that over and over again. It made people so nervous. There were teams that were a lot better than us, that had been playing a long time, and we would beat them.”

The Redwood City players would jump ahead 4–0, 6–0, 8–0, 12–0. One time, they led 25–0. Because they typically got the ball underneath their opponent’s basket, they rarely had to take low-percentage, long-range shots that required skill and practice. They shot layups. In one of the few games that Redwood City lost that year, only four of the team’s players showed up. They pressed anyway. Why not? They lost by three points.

“What that defense did for us is that we could hide our weaknesses,” Rometra Craig said. She helped out once Redwood City advanced to the regional championships. “We could hide the fact that we didn’t have good outside shooters. We could hide the fact that we didn’t have the tallest lineup, because as long as we played hard on defense we were getting steals and getting easy layups. I was honest with the girls. I told them, ‘We’re not the best basketball team out there.’ But they understood their roles.” A twelve-year-old girl would go to war for Rometra. “They were awesome,” she said.

Lawrence attacked the Turks where they were weak—the railroad—and not where they were strong, Medina. Redwood City attacked the inbounds pass, the point in a game where a great team is as vulnerable as a weak one. Lawrence extended the battlefield over as large an area as possible. So did the girls of Redwood City. They defended all ninety-four feet. The full-court press is legs, not arms. It supplants ability with effort. It is basketball for those “quite unused to formal warfare, whose assets were movement, endurance, individual intelligence . . . courage.”

“It’s an exhausting strategy,” Roger Craig said. He and Ranadivé were in a TIBCO conference room, reminiscing about their dream season. Ranadivé was at the whiteboard, diagramming the intricacies of the Redwood City press. Craig was sitting at the table.

“My girls had to be more fit than the others,” Ranadivé said.

“He used to make them run,” Craig said, nodding approvingly.

“We followed soccer strategy in practice,” Ranadivé said. “I would make them run and run and run. I couldn’t teach them skills in that short period of time, and so all we did was make sure they were fit and had some basic understanding of the game. That’s why attitude plays such a big role in this, because you’re going to get tired.” He turned to Craig. “What was our cheer again?”

The two men thought for a moment, then shouted out happily, in unison, “One, two, three, ATTITUDE!”

That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.

“One time, some new girls joined the team,” Ranadivé said, “and so in the first practice I had I was telling them, ‘Look, this is what we’re going to do,’ and I showed them. I said, ‘It’s all about attitude.’ And there was this one new girl on the team, and I was worried that she wouldn’t get the whole attitude thing. Then we did the cheer and she said, ‘No, no, it’s not One, two three, ATTITUDE. It’s One, two, three, attitude HAH ’ ”—at which point Ranadivé and Craig burst out laughing.

In January of 1971, the Fordham University Rams played a basketball game against the University of Massachusetts Redmen. The game was in Amherst, at the legendary arena known as the Cage, where the Redmen hadn’t lost since December of 1969. Their record was 11–1. The Redmen’s star was none other than Julius Erving—Dr. J. The UMass team was very, very good. Fordham, by contrast, was a team of scrappy kids from the Bronx and Brooklyn. Their center had torn up his knee the first week of the season, which meant that their tallest player was six feet five. Their starting forward—and forwards are typically almost as tall as centers—was Charlie Yelverton, who was six feet two. But from the opening buzzer the Rams launched a full-court press, and never let up. “We jumped out to a thirteen-to-six lead, and it was a war the rest of the way,” Digger Phelps, the Fordham coach at the time, recalls. “These were tough city kids. We played you ninety-four feet. We knew that sooner or later we were going to make you crack.” Phelps sent in one indefatigable Irish or Italian kid from the Bronx after another to guard Erving, and, one by one, the indefatigable Irish and Italian kids fouled out. None of them were as good as Erving. It didn’t matter. Fordham won, 87–79.

In the world of basketball, there is one story after another like this about legendary games where David used the full-court press to beat Goliath. Yet the puzzle of the press is that it has never become popular. People look at upsets like Fordham over UMass and call them flukes. Basketball sages point out that the press can be beaten by a well-coached team with adept ball handlers and astute passers—and that is true. Ranadivé readily admitted that all an opposing team had to do to beat Redwood City was press back: the girls were not good enough to handle their own medicine. Playing insurgent basketball did not guarantee victory. It was simply the best chance an underdog had of beating Goliath. If Fordham had played UMass the conventional way, it would have lost by thirty points. And yet somehow that lesson has escaped the basketball establishment.

What did Digger Phelps do, the season after his stunning upset of UMass? He never used the full-court press the same way again. The UMass coach, Jack Leaman, was humbled in his own gym by a bunch of street kids. Did he learn from his defeat and use the press himself the next time he had a team of underdogs? He did not.

The only person who seemed to have absorbed the lessons of that game was a skinny little guard on the UMass freshman team named Rick Pitino. He didn’t play that day. He watched, and his eyes grew wide. Even now, thirty-eight years later, he can name, from memory, nearly every player on the Fordham team: Yelverton, Sullivan, Mainor, Charles, Zambetti. “They came in with the most unbelievable pressing team I’d ever seen,” Pitino said. “Five guys between six feet five and six feet. It was unbelievable how they covered ground. I studied it. There is no way they should have beaten us. Nobody beat us at the Cage.”

Pitino became the head coach at Boston University in 1978, when he was twenty-five years old, and used the press to take the school to its first N.C.A.A. tournament appearance in twenty-four years. At his next head-coaching stop, Providence College, Pitino took over a team that had gone 11–20 the year before. The players were short and almost entirely devoid of talent—a carbon copy of the Fordham Rams. They pressed, and ended up one game away from playing for the national championship. At the University of Kentucky, in the mid-nineteen-nineties, Pitino took his team to the Final Four three times—and won a national championship—with full-court pressure, and then rode the full-court press back to the Final Four in 2005, as the coach at the University of Louisville. This year, his Louisville team entered the N.C.A.A. tournament ranked No. 1 in the land. College coaches of Pitino’s calibre typically have had numerous players who have gone on to be bona-fide all-stars at the professional level. In his many years of coaching, Pitino has had one, Antoine Walker. It doesn’t matter. Every year, he racks up more and more victories.

“The greatest example of the press I’ve ever coached was my Kentucky team in ’96, when we played L.S.U.,” Pitino said. He was at the athletic building at the University of Louisville, in a small room filled with television screens, where he watches tapes of opponents’ games. “Do we have that tape?” Pitino called out to an assistant. He pulled a chair up close to one of the monitors. The game began with Kentucky stealing the ball from L.S.U., deep in L.S.U.’s end. Immediately, the ball was passed to Antoine Walker, who cut to the basket for a layup. L.S.U. got the ball back. Kentucky stole it again. Another easy basket by Walker. “Walker had almost thirty points at halftime,” Pitino said. “He dunked it almost every time. When we steal, he just runs to the basket.” The Kentucky players were lightning quick and long-armed, and swarmed around the L.S.U. players, arms flailing. It was mayhem. Five minutes in, it was clear that L.S.U. was panicking.

Pitino trains his players to look for what he calls the “rush state” in their opponents—that moment when the player with the ball is shaken out of his tempo—and L.S.U. could not find a way to get out of the rush state. “See if you find one play that L.S.U. managed to run,” Pitino said. You couldn’t. The L.S.U. players struggled to get the ball inbounds, and, if they did that, they struggled to get the ball over mid-court, and on those occasions when they managed both those things they were too overwhelmed and exhausted to execute their offense the way they had been trained to. “We had eighty-six points at halftime,” Pitino went on—eighty-six points being, of course, what college basketball teams typically score in an entire game. “And I think we’d forced twenty-three turnovers at halftime,” twenty-three turnovers being what college basketball teams might force in two games. “I love watching this,” Pitino said. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “Every day, you dream about getting a team like this again.” So why are there no more than a handful of college teams who use the full-court press the way Pitino does?

Arreguín-Toft found the same puzzling pattern. When an underdog fought like David, he usually won. But most of the time underdogs didn’t fight like David. Of the two hundred and two lopsided conflicts in Arreguín-Toft’s database, the underdog chose to go toe to toe with Goliath the conventional way a hundred and fifty-two times—and lost a hundred and nineteen times. In 1809, the Peruvians fought the Spanish straight up and lost; in 1816, the Georgians fought the Russians straight up and lost; in 1817, the Pindaris fought the British straight up and lost; in the Kandyan rebellion of 1817, the Sri Lankans fought the British straight up and lost; in 1823, the Burmese chose to fight the British straight up and lost. The list of failures was endless. In the nineteen-forties, the Communist insurgency in Vietnam bedevilled the French until, in 1951, the Viet Minh strategist Vo Nguyen Giap switched to conventional warfare—and promptly suffered a series of defeats. George Washington did the same in the American Revolution, abandoning the guerrilla tactics that had served the colonists so well in the conflict’s early stages. “As quickly as he could,” William Polk writes in “Violent Politics,” a history of unconventional warfare, Washington “devoted his energies to creating a British-type army, the Continental Line. As a result, he was defeated time after time and almost lost the war.”

It makes no sense, unless you think back to that Kentucky-L.S.U. game and to Lawrence’s long march across the desert to Aqaba. It is easier to dress soldiers in bright uniforms and have them march to the sound of a fife-and-drum corps than it is to have them ride six hundred miles through the desert on the back of a camel. It is easier to retreat and compose yourself after every score than swarm about, arms flailing. We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability—legs, in Saxe’s formulation, can overpower arms—because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coördination.

“I have so many coaches come in every year to learn the press,” Pitino said. Louisville was the Mecca for all those Davids trying to learn how to beat Goliaths. “Then they e-mail me. They tell me they can’t do it. They don’t know if they have the bench. They don’t know if the players can last.” Pitino shook his head. “We practice every day for two hours straight,” he went on. “The players are moving almost ninety-eight per cent of the practice. We spend very little time talking. When we make our corrections”—that is, when Pitino and his coaches stop play to give instruction—“they are seven-second corrections, so that our heart rate never rests. We are always working.” Seven seconds! The coaches who came to Louisville sat in the stands and watched that ceaseless activity and despaired. The prospect of playing by David’s rules was too daunting. They would rather lose.

In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California. It was a war game. The contestants had been given several volumes of rules, well beforehand, and had been asked to design their own fleet of warships with a mythical budget of a trillion dollars. The fleets then squared off against one another in the course of a weekend. “Imagine this enormous auditorium area with tables, and at each table people are paired off,” Lenat said. “The winners go on and advance. The losers get eliminated, and the field gets smaller and smaller, and the audience gets larger and larger.”

Lenat had developed an artificial-intelligence program that he called Eurisko, and he decided to feed his program the rules of the tournament. Lenat did not give Eurisko any advice or steer the program in any particular strategic direction. He was not a war-gamer. He simply let Eurisko figure things out for itself. For about a month, for ten hours every night on a hundred computers at Xerox PARC, in Palo Alto, Eurisko ground away at the problem, until it came out with an answer. Most teams fielded some version of a traditional naval fleet—an array of ships of various sizes, each well defended against enemy attack. Eurisko thought differently. “The program came up with a strategy of spending the trillion on an astronomical number of small ships like P.T. boats, with powerful weapons but absolutely no defense and no mobility,” Lenat said. “They just sat there. Basically, if they were hit once they would sink. And what happened is that the enemy would take its shots, and every one of those shots would sink our ships. But it didn’t matter, because we had so many.” Lenat won the tournament in a runaway.

The next year, Lenat entered once more, only this time the rules had changed. Fleets could no longer just sit there. Now one of the criteria of success in battle was fleet “agility.” Eurisko went back to work. “What Eurisko did was say that if any of our ships got damaged it would sink itself—and that would raise fleet agility back up again,” Lenat said. Eurisko won again.

Eurisko was an underdog. The other gamers were people steeped in military strategy and history. They were the sort who could tell you how Wellington had outfoxed Napoleon at Waterloo, or what exactly happened at Antietam. They had been raised on Dungeons and Dragons. They were insiders. Eurisko, on the other hand, knew nothing but the rule book. It had no common sense. As Lenat points out, a human being understands the meaning of the sentences “Johnny robbed a bank. He is now serving twenty years in prison,” but Eurisko could not, because as a computer it was perfectly literal; it could not fill in the missing step—“Johnny was caught, tried, and convicted.” Eurisko was an outsider. But it was precisely that outsiderness that led to Eurisko’s victory: not knowing the conventions of the game turned out to be an advantage.

“Eurisko was exposing the fact that any finite set of rules is going to be a very incomplete approximation of reality,” Lenat explained. “What the other entrants were doing was filling in the holes in the rules with real-world, realistic answers. But Eurisko didn’t have that kind of preconception, partly because it didn’t know enough about the world.” So it found solutions that were, as Lenat freely admits, “socially horrifying”: send a thousand defenseless and immobile ships into battle; sink your own ships the moment they get damaged.

This is the second half of the insurgent’s creed. Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought. All the things that distinguish the ideal basketball player are acts of skill and coördination. When the game becomes about effort over ability, it becomes unrecognizable—a shocking mixture of broken plays and flailing limbs and usually competent players panicking and throwing the ball out of bounds. You have to be outside the establishment—a foreigner new to the game or a skinny kid from New York at the end of the bench—to have the audacity to play it that way. George Washington couldn’t do it. His dream, before the war, was to be a British Army officer, finely turned out in a red coat and brass buttons. He found the guerrillas who had served the American Revolution so well to be “an exceeding dirty and nasty people.” He couldn’t fight the establishment, because he was the establishment.

T. E. Lawrence, by contrast, was the farthest thing from a proper British Army officer. He did not graduate with honors from Sandhurst. He was an archeologist by trade, a dreamy poet. He wore sandals and full Bedouin dress when he went to see his military superiors. He spoke Arabic like a native, and handled a camel as if he had been riding one all his life. And David, let’s not forget, was a shepherd. He came at Goliath with a slingshot and staff because those were the tools of his trade. He didn’t know that duels with Philistines were supposed to proceed formally, with the crossing of swords. “When the lion or the bear would come and carry off a sheep from the herd, I would go out after him and strike him down and rescue it from his clutches,” David explained to Saul. He brought a shepherd’s rules to the battlefield.

The price that the outsider pays for being so heedless of custom is, of course, the disapproval of the insider. Why did the Ivy League schools of the nineteen-twenties limit the admission of Jewish immigrants? Because they were the establishment and the Jews were the insurgents, scrambling and pressing and playing by immigrant rules that must have seemed to the Wasp élite of the time to be socially horrifying. “Their accomplishment is well over a hundred per cent of their ability on account of their tremendous energy and ambition,” the dean of Columbia College said of the insurgents from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the Lower East Side. He wasn’t being complimentary. Goliath does not simply dwarf David. He brings the full force of social convention against him; he has contempt for David.

“In the beginning, everyone laughed at our fleet,” Lenat said. “It was really embarrassing. People felt sorry for us. But somewhere around the third round they stopped laughing, and some time around the fourth round they started complaining to the judges. When we won again, some people got very angry, and the tournament directors basically said that it was not really in the spirit of the tournament to have these weird computer-designed fleets winning. They said that if we entered again they would stop having the tournament. I decided the best thing to do was to graciously bow out.”

It isn’t surprising that the tournament directors found Eurisko’s strategies beyond the pale. It’s wrong to sink your own ships, they believed. And they were right. But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.

The trouble for Redwood City started early in the regular season. The opposing coaches began to get angry. There was a sense that Redwood City wasn’t playing fair—that it wasn’t right to use the full-court press against twelve-year-old girls, who were just beginning to grasp the rudiments of the game. The point of basketball, the dissenting chorus said, was to learn basketball skills. Of course, you could as easily argue that in playing the press a twelve-year-old girl learned something much more valuable—that effort can trump ability and that conventions are made to be challenged. But the coaches on the other side of Redwood City’s lopsided scores were disinclined to be so philosophical.

“There was one guy who wanted to have a fight with me in the parking lot,” Ranadivé said. “He was this big guy. He obviously played football and basketball himself, and he saw that skinny, foreign guy beating him at his own game. He wanted to beat me up.”

Roger Craig says that he was sometimes startled by what he saw. “The other coaches would be screaming at their girls, humiliating them, shouting at them. They would say to the refs—‘That’s a foul! That’s a foul!’ But we weren’t fouling. We were just playing aggressive defense.”

“My girls were all blond-haired white girls,” Ranadivé said. “My daughter is the closest we have to a black girl, because she’s half-Indian. One time, we were playing this all-black team from East San Jose. They had been playing for years. These were born-with-a-basketball girls. We were just crushing them. We were up something like twenty to zero. We wouldn’t even let them inbound the ball, and the coach got so mad that he took a chair and threw it. He started screaming at his girls, and of course the more you scream at girls that age the more nervous they get.” Ranadivé shook his head: never, ever raise your voice. “Finally, the ref physically threw him out of the building. I was afraid. I think he couldn’t stand it because here were all these blond-haired girls who were clearly inferior players, and we were killing them.”

At the nationals, the Redwood City girls won their first two games. In the third round, their opponents were from somewhere deep in Orange County. Redwood City had to play them on their own court, and the opponents supplied their own referee as well. The game was at eight o’clock in the morning. The Redwood City players left their hotel at six, to beat the traffic. It was downhill from there. The referee did not believe in “One, two, three, attitude HAH.” He didn’t think that playing to deny the inbounds pass was basketball. He began calling one foul after another.

“They were touch fouls,” Craig said. Ticky-tacky stuff. The memory was painful.

“My girls didn’t understand,” Ranadivé said. “The ref called something like four times as many fouls on us as on the other team.”

“People were booing,” Craig said. “It was bad.”

“A two-to-one ratio is understandable, but a ratio of four to one?” Ranadivé shook his head.

“One girl fouled out.”

“We didn’t get blown out. There was still a chance to win. But . . .”

Ranadivé called the press off. He had to. The Redwood City players retreated to their own end, and passively watched as their opponents advanced down the court. They did not run. They paused and deliberated between each possession. They played basketball the way basketball is supposed to be played, and they lost—but not before making Goliath wonder whether he was a giant, after all. ♦

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How Good Are You at Loving?

By Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D. on January, 25, 2012 in What Would Aristotle Do?

You can get better (or worse) at loving someone. It is also possible to rank how well you are doing at loving someone. In fact, I will provide a “love inventory” that will help you to determine just how good you (or your significant others) really are at loving. Read More

Relationships

Falling in Love with a Culture and a Language

By Francois Grosjean, Ph.D. on January, 25, 2012 in Life as a Bilingual

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90 Minute Checkup – A Doctor’s Discovery of Health

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A Dream That Leads To A Nightmare

By Lynne Soraya on January, 24, 2012 in Asperger’s Diary

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Gender

Breaking A Glass Ceiling With a Bat and a Ball: How Women Influence Sports

By Vivian Diller, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Face It

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Eating Disorders

The Curious Incident of the Fish Sticks in the Nighttime

By Carrie Arnold on January, 24, 2012 in Body of Evidence

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Philosophy

The Jews and Capitalism

By Walter E. Block on January, 24, 2012 in Defending the Undefendable

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Relationships

Time is the currency of self-esteem

By Lynne Griffin on January, 24, 2012 in Field Guide to Families

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Ethics and Morality

Life Lessons From a Poodle

By Jory Goodman, M.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Attention, Please

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Ethics and Morality

Powerful Psychiatrists Push False Theory on Unknowing Souls

By Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Science Isn’t Golden

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Self-Help

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Parenting

What Your Five Year-Old Needs To Know About Sex

By Fred Kaeser, Ed.D. on January, 24, 2012 in What Your Child Needs To Know About Sex (And When)

When our kids are infants, many of us really don’t think a whole lot about what we’re going to say to them about sex when they get older. For the most part the stuff we’re going to discuss with them later on is not even on our radar screen as yet. And even if it is, it is all so far off in the future that we think we have a bunch of time to prepare for it, correct? Read More

Work

Listen Your Way Up the Ladder

By Nancy Ancowitz on January, 24, 2012 in Self-Promotion for Introverts

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Neuroscience

Reality Check

By Susan R. Barry, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Eyes on the Brain

We may mistake a change in our bodies for a change in the outside world. Read More

Relationships

Top 10 Wrecking Balls Of Love

By John R. Buri, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Love Bytes

Love doesn’t simply die for no reason…just as a building doesn’t fall for no reason. Here are the Top 10 Wrecking Balls of Love. Read More

Integrative Medicine

Mind and Heart: The Doorways to Existence

By Marilyn Mitchell, M.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Heart and Soul Healing

We get into trouble when we listen to the voice of our mind and identify it as who we are. We are not our minds, but a much greater consciousness. Read More

Stress

The Biggest Myth in Time Management

By Peter Bregman on January, 24, 2012 in How We Work

The truth is, we can’t ever really get away from it. There is no escaping the nonstop surge of email, text, voicemail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — and that’s just the technology-based stream. How can we ever catch up? We can’t. Read More

Creativity

Commitment to the Creative Life

By Dennis Palumbo on January, 24, 2012 in Hollywood on the Couch

As a psychotherapist, one of the themes that often emerges in my work with patients is commitment. In dealing with relationship issues, for example, the depth of a commitment is tested by fears about the future, questions about trust and fidelity, and concerns about the tension between dependence and independence. Read More

Happiness

Am I worthy? Lesson 1 in Vulnerability

By Jaime Booth Cundy, BSW, MAPP on January, 24, 2012 in The Beauty in the Beast

When you finally allow people to see who you are they may reject you and you can’t protect your ego by saying that they didn’t really know you. That thought alone terrifies me. Read More

Child Development

Evaluate Yourself as a Coach

By Catherine McCall, MS, LMFT on January, 24, 2012 in Overcoming Child Abuse

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Addiction

A Possible Cure for Sexual Addiction—In an Essay

By Ravi Chandra, M.D. on January, 24, 2012 in The Pacific Heart

David Mura’s classic essay is an absolute must read for anyone interested in how male sexuality interacts with pornography and other sexual addictions. The essay goes right to the heart, and makes it possible to “cure” pornography addiction in about 10,000 words that stimulate deep reflection and maturation. Read More

Self-Help

Why Leaders Have More Willpower, and More Willpower Failures

By Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in The Science of Willpower

In my Science of Willpower course, we talk about willpower as a strength that can be trained. I encourage people to think of themselves as willpower athletes. Try doing something harder than you’re used to; dig in to your determination and motivation; trust that by training, the difficult will become easier. Read More

Relationships

See Beings Not Bodies

By Rick Hanson, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Your Wise Brain

When we encounter someone, the mind summarizes & simplifies tons of details. Though fast and efficient this process has lots of problems Read More

Animal Behavior

Cat Killed and Defaced As a Political Statement

By Marc Bekoff on January, 24, 2012 in Animal Emotions

Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out why some people do what they do to other animals. Our relationships with animals are often challenging, frustrating, complicated, and ambiguous, and this incident should surely make everyone reflect on how we interact with other animals and why some people do the heinous things they do to innocent beings. Read More

Parenting

Training Family Court Judges About Parental Alienation: A Lot to Think About

By Amy J.L. Baker, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Caught Between Parents

I have been asked to develop and give a one-hour training to family court judges and I am thrilled at the prospect of have an opportunity to speak directly to them about this issue that is near and dear to my and their hearts. Read More

Stress

The Association Between Violence and PTSD

By Tracy Stecker, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Survivors

“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness” Confuscius. The worst part for him was standing there watching, not being able to do anything to help as he watched an Afghan man whip an innocent 8-year old Afghan boy at his captain’s urging. Read More

Parenting

The Minds of Abused and Alienated Children

By Amy J.L. Baker, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Caught Between Parents

As I continue to read first-hand accounts of individuals who have been abducted, I gain increasing insight into the mind of abused and alienated children. Read More

Psychiatry

Defenses From DSM 5 Get ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’

By Allen J. Frances, M.D. on January, 24, 2012 in DSM5 in Distress

Elizabeth Lopatto has written an excellent piece in today’s Bloomberg News summarizing concerns that DSM 5 will expand the boundaries of psychiatry, increase the already existing diagnostic inflation, and promote the excessive use of medications to treat life problems that don’t really require them. Read More

Parenting

Occupying the Toy Aisle One Pink Lego at a Time

By Polly Palumbo, Ph.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Momma Data

A drama has settled over Lego’s new Heartlake City, a pink and purple village with girly figures sporting hearts and butterfies. The feminized, pre-assembled play sets that include a beauty shop, bakery and stage have been accused of promoting gender roles, sexualizing girls and stunting spatial abilities. Are toys marketed towards girls really so harmful? Read More

Work

Why Ask “So, What Do You Do?”

By Lissa Rankin, M.D. on January, 24, 2012 in Owning Pink

The 15 minutes of fame garnered by my blog, my books, and my social media success lead strangers to reach out and ask to meet me from time to time. Read More

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Any entrepreneur or community-building connector worth their salt should know when to crowdsource, and when to listen to their inner voice.READ»

Can Google’s Thrun Create The First Real Online College Degree?

After helping to pioneer a selection of online courses at Stanford, the man behind the driverless car is leaving the ivory tower to do something potentially more groundbreaking: start a high-quality online university. READ»

Philadelphia News Change location

• Premier Research Appoints Etienne Drouet Executive Director, …citybizlist Philadelphia – 21 hrs ago
• BluPanda Raises $702K – cblcitybizlist Philadelphia – Sun, Jan 22, 2012

Race and Ethnicity

The Culture of Race

W.E.B. DuBois once said that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. As the twenty-first century enters its second decade the color line is sitll a problem. But now there are fancier names than racism; names like racial disproportionality and racial disparities.  What is Race?Race is what we see and how we feel but race is not who we are. Read More

Relationships

The Malignant Divorce: Has NASA Gone Postal?

Heaven has no rage like love betrayed   We owe the term “going postal” to a series of killing sprees instigated by postal workers. It would seem that, sadly, a new term “going NASA” is in the works. On January 13th 2012, Shannon O’Roark Griffin become the second former NASA employee to commit a crime of vengeful rage. Read More

Relationships

What Matters to You and Why?

If you want to truly connect with someone, talk about what matters…what really matters! Too often we interact with others (and make judgments about them as well) based on very superficial information such as appearances. Or we don’t feel that we really connect with someone partially because our conversation is about something that isn’t very fulfilling or satisfying. Read More

Politics

Fighting Fire With Fire: Psychology Lessons From Newt

The debate exchange between Newt Gingrich and John King highlights the psychopath’s gift for climbing into power and how, to beat it we need to be able to join it as necessary. Read More

Personality

Quiet Excitement

Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, comes out January 24th. In honor of the book’s release, I’ve compiled a list of famous quotes that point to the value of quiet. Read More

Relationships

My College Friend Suddenly Cut Off Our Friendship

While I was in college I decided to room with one of my really good friends that I had made at school. Things seemed to go great that year and I felt that we had become really close. However, near the end of that school year she suddenly left for home and refused to take my calls. Read More

Social Life

The Secret of Credit

Self-Help

Carry Your Brain in Your Pocket

Whether your musical taste is Bono, Billie Holiday or Celine Dion, you can customize playlists (a combination of your favorite songs) to keep you in an optimized mindset throughout the day. Read More

Diet

The Amazing Technicolor Synesthesia Coat

The synesthete and artist Carrie C. Firman is leading the way in the current synesthesia arts renaissance. Read More

Autism

How Will the DSM V Changes in Autism Affect People?

Addiction

Understanding the Dynamics of Workaholism—Perfectionism

Social Life

Requiem for the Banal Business Book

How much can be learned from the success of business organizations? Are there universally valid principles to be extracted? A popular genre of business books says the answer is ‘Yes.’ Scientists with a background in psychometrics, judgment and decision-making, however, curb their enthusiasm. Welcome to the Larry David School of Business. Read More

Self-Help

Personal Growth: Five Building Blocks of Positive Life Change

Philosophy

Life Lists and Happiness

Does pursuing a life list make you happy? Or does it make you a dilettante? Why have traditional ethicists held up the life of a dilettante as a formula for failure? Read More

Politics

Perceiving and Politics

Relationships

Perfect Love in the Twilight Saga: Real Love or a Fantasy Bond?

Perfect loves and addictive bonds, like that depicted so intensely in Twilight, are not always based on the qualities and realities that would lead to lasting relationships. Instead, they may be based on a draw toward fantasy, a false sense of being completed, or an innate desire to merge one’s identity with another. Read More

Self-Help

Tips for Starting Over and Rebooting Your Life

It’s never too late for a life reboot. If you’re reading this on the first New Moon of the New Year, you’ll discover the essential recipe for creating resolutions. If you’re reading this at another time, try it out on any other special day (like a first day of the week, a birthday, anniversary, or any special day that you declare as your life reboot day). Read More

Health

An Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Considering Bariatric Surgery

As the population of the U.S. grows heavier and heavier, obese patients have turned to major abdominal surgery as an alternative treatment when they have been unsuccessful at losing significant weight (and maintaining that weight loss over time) by a combination of diet, exercise, and even medication alone. Read More

Addiction

Do Not Suppress Addictive Thoughts!

Psychiatry

DSM 5 and Diagnostic Inflation

Spirituality

Why Are There So Many Songs About Rainbows?

It’s time to come out of the closet. I’m a Muppet-lover and I don’t care who knows it. I’m gonna shout it from the mountaintops, consequences be dammed. I’ve been a Muppet-lover since forever. I just never had the courage to tell anyone. Read More

Neuroscience

Can You Prime Your Brain to Get Rich?

Thanks to millions of years of evolution, we are highly intelligent biological organisms, but when it comes to making financial decisions, we can be unduly influenced by ancient brain skills, such as hair-trigger responses to perceived fear. Read More

Media

My Week with Marilyn: A Portrait of Mental Illness

Marilyn Monroe is synonymous with sexy blonde bombshell. She was at times a controversial figure, both for the scandals that followed her, and the objectification she brought to womanhood. But what was she like behind the scenes? A new film shares an intimate portrait of illness and self-doubt that shines a new light on the film star. Read More

Relationships

Are You Addicted to Doomed Relationships?

Given the variety and diversity of people in the world, one is often left to wonder: So why do I keep winding up with the same type of partner? Why, no matter how many new criteria I mentally create, do I seem to be addicted to the same not-so-great relationship? Read More

Relationships

Are Great Expectations Dooming Our Relationships? Humble and Fred Weigh In!

Child Development

The Highly Sensitive Boy

Does your boy cry often? Has he ever been bullied? Does he enjoy his time alone and quiet space? Is he deeply affected by violence? Or keenly perceptive to how you are feeling or thinking? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be raising a highly sensitive boy. Read More

Sex

Sexual Distancers Want to Satisfy Their Partners

Sexual distancers like sex. Truly, they do. They like sex to happen when they are ready for it, when they are expecting it, when they want it. Seduction is often the elixir that awakens their sexual desire. They’d like to be tempted, coaxed, reassured, charmed and sweet-talked toward this precipice that feels slightly dangerous and out of control. Feeling safe emotionally is a prerequisite. Read More

Procrastination

What Will You Do? What Would We Predict?

The honest answer to this question is, “it depends.” However, far too often we’re led to believe, or we’d like to believe, that someone can actually predict what we’ll do. Although it’s true we’re like all other people in some respects, we’re also like no other person. Read More

 

RapidShare Attorney: If We’re Shut Down Like Megaupload, Then YouTube, Dropbox, Apple’s iCloud Are Next

CO.CREATE

More Than Luck: David Milch and Michael Mann On Their HBO Collaboration

BY Susan KarlinToday

Powerhouse producers David Milch and Michael Mann ensured a smooth production process by staking out clear territories in HBO’s new horse-racing drama, “Luck.” But that didn’t mean they weren’t open to a little give and take … READ»

CO.EXIST

A New Service For Africa Gets Rid Of Pain At The Panel

BY Ben SchillerToday

Much of Africa is lit and powered by polluting and unhealthy kerosene. But plans to leapfrog the country to renewables often come up against the lack of funds to purchase panels. But Eight19 has a model to get solar power into African … READ»

CO.DESIGN

A Seat Made From Hand-Folded Sheets Of Paper

BY Belinda LanksToday

Cecilie Manz is a demi-goddess of product design: She may lack the name recognition of Patricia Urquiola or Hella Jongerius, but the Dane’s varied output is consistently (and understatedly) first rate. Take, for instance, her design … READ»

MICROSOFT |  Comment

Apple CEO Tim Cook Touches On Kindle Fire, Android, Windows Phone

BY Austin CarrToday

Offering a rare peek inside the famously secretive company, Apple’s earnings are watched by every industry analyst and news outlet–and even live blogged in some instances, like a worldwide sporting event.READ»

CO.DESIGN

12 Famous Chairs Designed By Famous Architects

BY Suzanne LaBarreToday

You can tell a lot about architects by the furniture they design. Take Zaha Hadid, who whips up sleek, liquidy tables that look every bit as futuristic as her buildings. Or Frank Gehry, whose cardboard Wiggle chair summons the same … READ»

CO.DESIGN

An Ecosystem For Growing Your Own Veggies At Home And Indoors

BY Belinda LanksToday

Food accounts for about 13 percent of trash in the United States, the third-largest component behind paper and yard trimmings. Although composting may be the natural extension of recycling paper, metal, and plastic, many urbanites … READ»

CO.DESIGN

Sign Of The Times: Safety Maps Help You Plan For Catastrophe

BY Tim MalyToday

Most of us live in places saturated with comms signals. We carry phones in our pockets and we’ve come to rely on them for coordinating our movements. As Clay Shirky points out, we’ve basically replaced planning with coordination. We … READ»

E. COIL

Tricking Stomach Microbes To Convert Seaweed To Fuel

BY Scientific AmericanToday

Seaweed grows fast and naturally without fertilizer and is a better source of biofuel than most land-based plants. And with a little alteration, our good friend E. coli loves to eat it and spit out fuel. READ»

APPLE |  Comment

Apple Beats Estimates Again: $46.33 Billion In Revenues, $13.06 Billion In Profit

BY Kit EatonToday

Apple’s just reported its first quarter finances for this year, and they’re astonishing. Again. READ»

MEGAUPLOAD |  Comment

RapidShare Attorney: If We’re Shut Down Like Megaupload, Then YouTube, Dropbox, Apple’s iCloud Are Next

BY Austin CarrToday

RapidShare is one of the world’s most popular file-hosting sites, and many have wondered whether the site could be next on the feds’ list of targets after Megaupload.READ»

CO.DESIGN

Leo Burnett’s Short, Sweet Guide To Creative Satisfaction (And Making Money) [Video]

BY John PavlusToday

Whether you believe it or not, Google’s (in)famous motto, “Don’t be evil,” is one of the most unambiguous value statements by a major company. Leo Burnett, the legendary ad executive and founder of an eponymous agency, delivered a … READ»

CO.DESIGN

Two Porsche Cayennes Made Entirely of Wood And Smashed

BY James GaddyToday

The German duo Köbberling and Kaltwasser are obsessed with wood, but only as an anachronistic take on contemporary modes of transportation. In the past two years, they’ve built a bulldozer made from discarded panels of the Olympic … READ»

LEADERSHIP |  Comment

Leadership Lessons From Community Maven Tara Hunt: When Not To Listen To The Crowd

BY Lydia DishmanToday

Any entrepreneur or community-building connector worth their salt should know when to crowdsource, and when to listen to their inner voice.READ»

CO.EXIST

Can Google’s Thrun Create The First Real Online College Degree?

BY EdSurgeToday

After helping to pioneer a selection of online courses at Stanford, the man behind the driverless car is leaving the ivory tower to do something potentially more groundbreaking: start a high-quality online university. READ»

LEADERSHIP |  Comment

To Be A Better Leader, Learn How To Referee Work Relationships

BY Ken Blanchard and Scott BlanchardToday

When you are able to put on the striped black-and-white referee shirt and mediate conflict–when you take responsibility for fostering cooperation, collaboration, and collegiality between coworkers–you’ve taken a large step toward becoming a more productive and valuable leader.READ»

CO.EXIST

Is It Time To Stop Constructing New Green Buildings?

BY Ariel SchwartzToday

Making a new building is notably worse for the environment than fixing an old one–no matter how many solar panels you put on it. READ»

CO.EXIST

I Saw The Sign … And It Made Me Take The Stairs

BY Andrew PriceToday

A simple health intervention–a sign that tells people to skip the elevator for the stairs–is having dramatic effects on the health of New Yorkers. READ»

LEADERSHIP |  Comment

The Weigh-In: What’s The Best Way To Motivate Your Employees?

BY Erin SchulteToday

Motivation is a hot topic year-round, but particularly in January, the month of fresh starts, checklists, and lofty goals. We try to figure out how to prod our employees to excel, to hit and surpass ambitious targets. So what’s the best way to get it done? Fast Company experts have weighed in–now tell us what’s worked for you. READ»

CO.DESIGN

How Helvetica Conquered The World With Its Cool, Comforting Logic

BY Simon GarfieldToday

This is the second excerpt from Just My Type. To read the first, “The 8 Worst Fonts in the World,” go here. What is it about the Swiss? Or, to be precise: what is it about the Swiss and their sans serif typefaces? Helvetica and … READ»

Happiness

45 Quotes on Dreams

Ever been ridiculed for your dreams? Ever feel like your dreams are just that — dreams? See what well-known people know about dreams. They are essential to your life. Read More

Neuroscience

What Exactly Is the Self? Insights from Neuroscience

What is the self? Although my stock answer to this question of “the self is memory” may be correct, recent neuroscience evidence suggests that our self-concept is the product of multiple, complex memory systems. Evidence from patients ranging from amnesiacs to those suffering from Alzheimer’s dementia is shedding new, important light on this age-old question. Read More

Philadelphia News Change location

• Foundation honors 10 black men for leadershipPhiladelphia Inquirer – 2 hrs 0 mins ago
• Pa. dog-protection fund may be broke by 2013Philadelphia Inquirer – 2 hrs 0 mins ago
• Bonner-Prendergast raises $1 million the same day as appeals …Philly.com – 2 hrs 9 mins ago
• Ronnie Polaneczky: This is what I call ‘manning up’Philly.com – 2 hrs 9 mins ago
• ‘SECOND BANANA’ TO KALAS DIESPhiladelphia Daily News – 31 mins ago
• Ronnie Polaneczky: This is what I call ‘manning up’Philadelphia Daily News – 31 mins ago

• Top Stories
• Weather
• Space Astronomy
• Animals
• Dinosaurs

Every brain seeks rewards and avoids pain, but no one likes to think of themselves as a reward-seeking, pain-avoiding creep. So we edit our stories, sometimes gutting our true core out of them. Here are some strategies for honoring your primal self. Read More

Neck pain is a common condition, with almost 75% of the population experiencing such pain at some time in their lives. The prevalence is higher in women and urban areas; and the onset and course of neck pain is influenced by exposure to tobacco and poor psychological health. It contributes to health care costs, and negatively affects work productivity and quality of life. Read More

Last weekend, a friend mentioned that one of my long-time favorite yoga teachers had returned to teaching. Although I’ve been happily taking classes at another studio for the past couple of years since my former teacher took a break from teaching to be with her children, I was excited to hear that she’d started holding classes again. Read More

Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple Computer, died October 5, and the animal rights organization PETA quickly lifted a tall glass of carrot juice to his memory.   That’s what Jobs gave out to trick or treaters one Halloween, and PETA reminded us not only of that, but of other positive steps Jobs took for health and the environment. Read More

Real lust requires real food, and it’s no accident that people all over the world use the word “appetite” when talking about food and sex.  Yes, familial, psychological and relationship issues underlie a lot of sexual dysfunction. Read More

Surprisingly few marriage therapists inquire in sufficient detail about the frequency and satisfaction levels of their couples’ sexual activity, or focus enough on sexual issues during treatment. Read More

Dear Dr. Alasko: Our twenty year old son dropped out of college a couple of months ago-he was an English/philosophy major-because he wants to work at something “meaningful.” He said that studying was pointless and doesn’t truly “help” people. We, of course, would support him in anything he wants to do.  But now he’s just living at home, hanging out with friends and playing video games. Read More

Train your brain to think in a way that will increase your chances of landing your dream job. Read More

As I began to read “Enlightenment Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I realized that the author, Robert K.C. Forman, and I have a lot in common. As I continued to read, however, that thought shifted, and shifted again. Read More

Networking is increasingly being promoted as both a business and personal social skill. There’s no doubt that both the social media form of networking and personal face-to-face networking has become a fundamental part of the modern landscape. Read More

A recent New York Times op-ed argued that we are “well-medicated” in our anxiety. Is that actually true? Read More

You may not be the expert, but you need to know the evidence for the advice of experts. Advice doesn’t help if you don’ take it. That’s why you need to know the reasons to take it. Read More

If you think sound bites are just for movie stars, politicians and the pundits you see on TV, think again. In today’s get-to-the-point-centric world, your small business spin has power.I was reminded of the importance of this during a coaching session I had last week with a group of women entrepreneurs. Read More

Many factors of our modern day existence make it difficult for us to feel a sense of control. (For starters: family, work, desire, dreams, health, the economy, the media, and the multitude of distractions that are a part of our everyday existence.) Small wonder that we surround ourselves with rituals, beliefs and habits that insulate us. Read More

In an article published several years ago in The Economist, the pursuit of a Ph.D. degree was assessed as a waste of time. Whether or not you agree with this perspective, it is important to consider the points being made. If you are, or have been, a graduate student, you probably learned much of this during your time in grad school. Read More

Each week the Emmy-winning show Modern Family brings into our homes the comic interactions of three families’ genders blending and clashing. In the ’80s-for the older crowd’s memory-Dustin Hoffman chose to take his kids as a single dad in an act of male liberation in the movie Kramer vs. Kramer. Read More

Shakespeare knew it. Seventeenth-century poet John Donne wrote about it. Country and Western stars sing about it. And anybody who has experienced the pain of deep loss or the joy of unconditional love has felt it. Read More

The fifth joint point is the singularity that leads to the next dimension of complexity and a higher state of being. Read More

A noted specialist has come out with a simple prescription for what to do (and not to do) in the bedroom. Read More

Gentlemen: You want to become irresistible to the ladies. Become a successful artist. A recent study validates the adage that women have a weakness for the achieving artistic types. Even Robert Pattinson’s wax replica is intoxicating to his legion of female fans! Read More

From deaths of infants to a litany of zoological diseases, who knew that co-sleeping could be so perilous? Is there anyone you can sleep with safely? Read More

Parents should strive to provide growth experiences for their children that stretch them. Summer camp can be a great opportunity to do this. Also, parents should embrace their role as emotional leaders with their children. Read More

We all complain many times a day to our families, friends, co-workers, customer service representatives, and even strangers in the elevator. But what many of us don’t realize is that how we voice our complaints can have huge implications for our mental health Read More

Amid smiles and optimism they boarded the Costa Concordia for a luxurious Mediterranean cruise, eating and drinking and planning their upcoming visits at various ports of call with little or no concern for the unimaginable risk that the massive modern ship could sink. Read More

I’ve just started trying to come up with a list of the bare minimum of things we should do every day to be happy and healthy. Read More

An actor uses his/her theory of mind, empathy, and emotion-regulation skills to create a realistic portrayal of a character for our enjoyment. Read More

It is generally agreed that we should always try to do the best we can. Yet, if we really examine this assumption we find that it may lead to an unhealthy compulsion. When taken to the extreme, the need to be your very best can derail your ability to live a more balanced life. Read More

Many times I have been asked how responsible living can possibly replace the excitement that is the oxygen of the criminal’s life. First, there is nothing wrong with “excitement.” Most people want to do more than work, pay bills, and have their car repaired. Read More

Along with half the world, it seems, I picked up Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs this winter break. I never expected him to talk about Turkey, where I happen to be stationed for the next seven months. An unexpected chance to think about his impressions of Istanbul, in Istanbul, emerged. Read More

The Swap-O-Matic: A Vending Machine Based On The Barter Economy

Normal vending machines are so … boring. You put money in, candy comes out. But a new project aims to reconsider what a vending machine is and how we exchange good and services. READ»

Microsoft Designs Great Things. Here’s Why It Seldom Helps The Brand

I can’t find Joe Belfiore. It’s November, and I’m at a Windows Phone event in New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, where the lobby walls are caked in banners of pink and blue, colorful hues that Microsoft’s mobile software has become … READ»

Category Creation: Building Businesses That Turn Entire Industries On Their Heads

New Enterprise Associates general partner Krishna “Kittu” Koluri, on what breakout companies, the ones that thrive and ultimately define an entire business category, do differently. READ»

Apple’s iBooks Update, New Apps Power Textbook Reinvention

At its New York event, Apple’s Phil Schiller just revealed that the tech giant has big plans to reinvent the educational textbook market and the technology that underpins their use in lessons.READ»

The Way Kodak Died

Is it possible for a company with legacy holdings and a history of owning a narrow sales channel to evolve into a thriving digital enterprise? Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy protection today, isn’t alone in trying to navigate an analog to digital transition. READ»

5 Innovation Lessons From A Breakthrough Brand Aimed At Aging Americans

Most entrepreneurs embark down that path with a mix of luck, circumstance, and insight: They’re futzing with some clunky gadget, and then boom! They realize how to fix it. Or they’ve worked so long at something that they simply know … READ»

Work Your Proper Hours: A Campaign Against Unpaid Overtime

Chances are, you worked more than eight hours yesterday, and ate lunch at your desk. A new campaign would like you to stop doing that, please (and to stop your boss expecting it). It’s killing you and it’s ruining the economy. READ»

Does This Patent Reveal Secrets Of Apple Television?

Apple was just granted 22 fresh patents. Among ideas for smart clothing and new iPhone headsets is a patent relating to the Apple TV. It contains elements previously unseen–and that may contain important clues to the long-rumored Apple device.READ»

7 Ways Daring Brands Walk The Line

How do brands straddle that fine line between engaging and offending? What happens when the unreasonable objections of rampant political correctness threaten to stifle their best ideas and creative content? Here are a few guideposts to successfully pushing boundaries–without turning people off. READ»

Follow-Up: How France’s “Free” Cell Phones Really Did Disrupt The Industry

Last week a new French effort to shake up the cell phone industry began when Free.fr launched an all-but-free, unlimited cell phone service. It was expected to wake up the bigger industry players–and now we know it has.READ»

DC Entertainment Reveals Its New Identity

DC Entertainment serves up a sneak peak at the next step in its evolution as a multimedia entertainment company, with a new brand and interactive logo that celebrate its long history of secret identities, superpowers, and storytelling. READ»

What’s The Most Important Thing You Can Do In Preparation For A Board Meeting?

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook, answers this business question at 30SecondMBA.com. READ»

Some Mobbing Behavior Of Birds With Your Popcorn? Rebranding Science At The Movies

Want to hear a Harvard professor hold forth on the neuropsychology of zombies? Then attend an event at the newly expanded “Science on Screen” series, where films are followed by scientific discourse.READ»

SOPA: A Mega, Meta Mashup Of News

We sifted through the news covering the SOPA protests to bring you the mother of all news roundups, with virtually every line gleaned from somewhere else.READ»

Facebook’s Open Graph: Boons For Business, Perils For Privacy

Integration with Facebook lets apps build their businesses. But users might not be ready to go full open kimono right away.READ»

Reconsideration Of The Month: Versace’s H&M Collaboration

On January 19, Versace will launch an exclusive pre-spring collection for fast-fashion brand H&M–much to the chagrin of 2008’s Donatella Versace.READ»

Apple Announces iTunes U, Free E-Book Creator App, iBooks 2 For The iPad

Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day.READ»

Tablet Users Spend 50% More Per Purchase Than Smartphone Owners

Tablet users spend over 50% more per purchase at online retailers when compared with smartphone visitors, and 20% more when compared with traditional laptop and desktop visitors, according to a study that Adobe released today.READ»

• Top Stories
• Weather
• Space Astronomy
• Animals
• Dinosaurs

Should prison inmates have the right to masturbate? I was interviewed about this on Public Radio last week. To prepare, I read up on the subject just a bit. And I was shocked.It’s actually against the law to touch yourself sexually–in private–if you’re in jail. Sounds barbaric, doesn’t it? OK, you’re behind bars, your body is no longer your own. Read More

Whether withholding loving words through the silent treatment or withholding sex as punishment each is a game that is detrimental to relationships. In the sexless marriage oftentimes couples need to step back, put their priorities in order, and learn the art of kissing and making up. Read More

So I am left wondering, “What exactly needs to happen to our children with autism before America says enough is enough?” In order to get this bill passed, exactly how many kids need to be traumatized? How many kids need to die? I am pleading for America to wake up and end the civil rights injustices that happen to disabled children in the name of education. Read More

With the help of correlations from neuroscience research, you can use best brain practices, like evaluating similarities and differences, to help your children build the learning habits for durable memory and strong test taking skills. As these strengths grow they will sustain or restore positive attitudes about school and their own potentials. Read More

I not only have to cope with my circumstantial infertility, but I have to defend my desire to be married to someone I’m crazy about before conceiving. I have to defend why I’m not a mother when it’s all I ever wanted to be. Read More

2nd story physician’s office; construction began in 1915 Read More

“I’m sick and tired of being good.”Dana is a 35 year old, and by all accounts, successful woman. Good family, great kids, high level job, attractive, in good health. What brings her into counseling, however, is a recent scare where she found herself really attracted to and sexually tempted by a work colleague. Read More

Linda Jones (a former head of an organ procurement organization) and I (professor, liver post-transplant patient) started “Live Worth Saving” at the Ohio State University Medcial Center to address the national issue of organ transplantation and intellectual disabilities. Here are my thoughts on this topic. . Read More

“All healthy persons are alike; each unhealthy person is unhealthy in his own way.” If Tolstoy were a diet-and-health blogger, this might be how he would begin.All healthy persons are alikeEvolutionary biology tells us that cells have had a consistent composition since the origin of complex multi-cellular life about 500 million years. Read More

Recovery with no shame usually involves understanding. That’s why I’ve put together my Rubber-band recovery framework, which explain all the ups and downs. Read More

A few weeks ago, a woman named Marianne came to therapy distraught with worry. Marianne told me that she had been having an affair for the past eight months, and was in the process of deciding whether to leave her husband. She had two daughters, ages 15 and 19, and she had taken great pains to conceal her affair from them as well as her husband. Read More

Like a kid with fingers crossed behind his back, you fell through on all your promises while feeling fine. Read More

Early last year, social psychologist and Psychology Today blogger, Heidi Grant Halvorson articulated reasons why men and women judge their abilities differently. More recently, the Washington Post published an article arguing that the prevailing wisdom in schools is finally changing—that awards ceremonies and daily affirmations lead to few, if any, academic gains (Chandler, 2012). Read More

Want to be more focused and intentional at work? Follow these four productivity boosting tips. Read More

If you want to know about living a peaceful life, just knock on your inner doors—your real self, your innocent mind, your pure emotions, your soul. The knowledge is there, waiting to be tapped: a full, simple, and joyful life awaits you. If you pay attention to commercials, television shows, and movies, you would believe that “having it all” is what makes life full. Read More

Why do we procrastinate and better yet, how can we overcome it? Read More

I encourage my undergraduates to begin their research with Wikipedia Read More

Human beings have remarkably inventive ways to rid themselves from painful feelings. The more agonizing the emotion, the more resourceful one has to be. People with borderline and narcissistic disorders experience may experience a great deal of pain, so they get pretty savvy. Read More

The third week of January is a crossroads for habit-changers. Read More

Have you ever gone without sleep for any long period of time? Read More

Writing about guilt feelings can open the floodgates to readers’ own painful and unresolved guilt, but also to outrage at those who should feel guilt, but don’t. Read More

In addition to psychology (and noimetic psychology) my interests include creativity, meaning, and activism. Read More

“To thine own self be true” is one of the underlying tenets of recovery. But how do we honor this wise sentiment by Shakespeare? One way is to check in with the “me” that I’m trying to be true to. Checking in can involve slowing down, writing, meditating, and noticing what we are experiencing rather than running on autopilot. Read More

Whether or not we are employed as actors on television or the silver screen, all of us have pre-programmed “scripts” that guide our actions in many situations. Read More

Sometimes the hardest part of writing is getting started. Here’s a highly effective launch strategy. If it works well for you, you can use it to begin each chapter as well. Read More

The American “can do” spirit is being replaced with a “spirit of helplessness” as we become more and more dependent on government entitlements and bounties. Read More

Though it can seem like we are stumbling blindly through the web of challenges parenting presents, there are ways to better understand our child’s rapidly developing mind and strategies to help our children through their own personal challenges and emotional lows Read More

This is the title of a disturbing commentary written by the leaders of the DSM 5 Task Force and published in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry. The contents suggest that we must lower our expectations and be satisfied with levels of unreliability in DSM 5 that historically have been clearly unacceptable. Read More

Is a healthy, happy, and sustainable relationship between a man and a woman even farther out of reach than ever before? Read More

Last week, I wrote about one of the challenges of preventing suicide among college students: Parental notification. Since campuses as institutions take on responsibility for students in loco parentis, in the place of a parent, they act in what they deem to be the best interest of students. In the case of notifying parents about their child’s suicidal risk, the actions of a campus may vary. Read More