Bran and endosperm contains enzymes that lead to deterioration of texture and might also affect shelf life.
Also the fiber content in both of them affects the texture and taste which to most people for whom taste takes greater priority over nutrition is a strict no no.
Sun Dried Apricot (Unsulphured)
I’ve always liked dried apricots, but the texture of them is, admittedly, kind of disturbing to me.
Đại gia Trung Quốc "thi nhau" mua yến sào 300 triệu đồng/kg của Việt Nam.
Not to mention their color — that neon-tinged ocher was never meant to be seen in nature.
Yến sào thường chỉ được sử dụng để tẩm bổ cho vua chúa hoặc sử dụng làm nguyên liệu nấu ăn ở những yến tiệc quan trọng. Yến sào đã trở thành 1 trong 8 món ăn (bất trân) gắn liền với những buổi hậu đãi xa xỉ của các bậc vua chúa. Tương truyền rằng, đế Tần Thủy Hoàng (Trung Quốc) và vua Minh Mạng (Việt Nam) tin rằng yến sào là thứ thuốc cải lão hoàn đồng nên hai vị vua này đã dùng yến sào thay cơm ăn hằng ngày. Từ thời vua Tự Đức trở về trước thì quốc yến triều đình chỉ toàn đàn ông. Bắt đầu dưới thời Khải Định, khi Pháp đến do ảnh hưởng văn hóa phương Tây, trong các buổi tiệc chiêu đãi các ông chánh sứ, toàn quyền, khâm sứ, v..vv và họ đều đi cùng phu nhân. Vì vậy, vua Khải Định cho chọn bà Ân phi cùng dự đại yến triều đình theo phong cách phương Tây. Cho đến dưới thời Bảo Đại thì cũng chỉ có một mình Nam Phương hoàng hậu được cùng nhà vua tham dự quốc yến của triều đình. https://thuongyen.com/mon-an-tu-yen-sao-cung-dinh/
But they make for excellent trail mix and they taste pretty okay, so I’ve learned to ignore the unsettling chewy texture and bulbous appearance.
Jabuticaba Fruit Tree
And then last week I was introduced to sulfur-free dried apricots.
And I am never going back.
As it turns out, the dried apricots that are commonly available in stores get their Frankenstein-like attributes from being treated with sulfur dioxide.
Unfortunately, this treatment has the mild side effect of completely ruining the flavor.
The plight of the pangolin: One of the planet's most extraordinary and intelligent animals is being hunted to extinction. The pangolin – unique among mammals because of its reptilian scales – is considered a delicacy in parts of Asia. Its scales are also used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat conditions that include inward-growing eyelashes, boils and poor circulation. Pangolins, largely nocturnal ant-eaters, roll up in a ball when threatened and their scales are so tough that a lion cannot bite through them. But this defence mechanism makes it easy prey for poachers. The pangolin population in China is thought to have fallen by up to 94 per cent since the 1960s. This has driven traffickers to raid populations in India, Pakistan and Africa. Mr Challender said the four species in Asia could be extinct in as little as 20 years. The four African species may last longer. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-plight-of-the-pangolin-one-of-the-planets-most-extraordinary-and-intelligent-animals-is-being-8876471.html
In contrast, sulfur-free dried apricots look kind of like flattened and freeze-dried termites, but they are approximately a hundred times tastier.
As a friend of mine put it, “organic dried apricots are nature’s Sour Patch Kids.” They really are.
https://viewfromll2.com/2010/09/15/market-failures-and-dried-apricots/
Phytoestrogens are estrogen hormone-like chemicals found in plants.
A male kobudai (right) and smaller female (left). Many species of fish, like the kobudai, are known as “sequential hermaphrodites”: they can switch sex permanently at a specific point in their lives. The majority of “sequential hermaphrodites” are known as “protogynous” (Greek for “female first”): they switch from female to male. This includes the kobudai, other wrasses, many species of parrotfish, and a wide variety of reef fish. In most protogynous fish, some fish will start out lives as male, some will switch from female to male at some point, and some will remain as females for the full duration of their lives. However in other species, the sex skew can be more extreme: in the Potter Angelfish, Centropyge potteri, for example, all fish start out lives as females, and all males were at one point female. Other sequential hermaphrodites are known as “protandrous” (“male first”): males can switch to female at a certain point in their lives, under the right circumstances. Though less common than protogyny, male-to-female sex changes are found in a wide variety of fish, including the Australian barramundi (Lates calcarifer), gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) and the black porgy (Acanthopagrus schlegeli). In the clownfish Clark's anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii) for example, females are larger than males (the opposite of the situation for the kobudai). They live in small groups within protective sea anemones, with one breeding male and female pair and a number of subordinate non-breeding fish. There is seldom more than two breeding fish, due simply to space constraints. When the dominant female dies, the largest male transforms into a female. How do fish accomplish this sex-switching mastery? For one, the sex of most fish is not determined by chromosomes: birds and mammals in fact are unusual in having the sex of offspring almost universally determined in this way. Amphibians, reptiles and fish employ a variety of methods to determine the sex of the offspring. Frequently, temperature determines sex – most fish will preferentially develop as male in warmer water, for example. “It comes down to a very important enzyme called ‘aromatase’,” explains Professor Stefano Mariani of the University of Salford, who studies the evolutionary origins of sex changes in fish. “It is a bit of a molecular wizard: it can change ‘androgen’ hormones into the estrogenic hormones that can transform gonads into ovaries.” Because fish gonads contain the precursor cells for both ovarian and testicular tissue, a rapid flood of either estrogen or testosterone-like hormones can flip a switch and cause new tissue to develop. Moreover, the change can be far more rapid than the long transformation of a kobudai – in the bluehead wrasse, the female-to-male transition is complete within just eight days. https://ourblueplanet.bbcearth.com/blog/?article=incredible-sex-changing-fish-from-blue-planet
Examples of phytoestrogens are isoflavones (genistein, daidzein), flavones, coumestans and lignans.
What makes this group of estrogen-like chemicals of medical and nutritional interest is that their chemical structure is similar to that of estrogen in human body.
And when consumed, depending on their concentration in the diet and concentration of sex hormones in the body, life stage and gender, they can have estrogenic effects (have the same effects as estrogen) or anti-estrogenic effects (inhibit or suppress the effects of estrogen).
As was mentioned, the study ranked 9 specific food groups for phytoestrogen contents based on micrograms per serving and amount per 100 grams.
The rough estimates are listed next to each of the foods within the overarching “group.”
Keep in mind that the groupings were created by researchers and were likely used for easier organization rather than creating one giant list.
Flaxseed (163,133)
Soybeans (45,724)
Soy nuts (21,306)
Textured veggie protein (8,923)
Tofu (8,688)
Soy milk (7,422)
Soy yogurt (6,576)
Tempeh (6,407)
Flax bread (3,770)
Sesame seed (2,722)
Miso Paste (2,463)
Multigrain bread (2,207)
Miso Soup (1,691)
Soy protein powder (1,591)
Doughnuts (1,568)
Soy protein bar (1,525)
Black bean sauce (1,119)
Hummus (605)
Veggie burger (484)
Soy bacon bits (482)
https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/04/08/20-foods-high-in-estrogen-phytoestrogens/
https://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/phytoestrogen/phytoestrogen-food-sources.php
Imagine being able to plant things in your garden that would normally never grow in that climate, outdoors and without any electricity.
Architects and urban designers often factor thermal mass into their designs, employing materials that absorb heat by day and release it at night to help warm human occupants.
And though we rarely see it today, that same strategy has been used in agriculture for centuries. Given how much energy it takes to operate greenhouses, designers and engineers could learn a lesson or two from this inventive tradition.
Heated garden wall in England
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As early as 1561, a Swiss botanist named Conrad Gessner observed the effects of heated walls on fruit growth.
Walled plots not only gained shelter from wind and animals but also heat from the sun, creating more stable local micro-climates and fending off frost.
This was useful to farmers seeking to grow sensitive crops further north.
Fish Has Human-Like Lips. This fish named Mr. Kissable got his name for his big, human-like lips. Mr. Kissable is a carnivorousfish (Placidochromis Phenochilus Mdoka) that was originally from Lake Malawi in Africa.
In hindsight, it was also helpful in light of what has since become known as the Little Ice Age, a period of cooler global temperatures starting in the 1600s.
Curved fruit wall in the Netherlands
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Thermal “fruit walls” grew increasingly popular in the 1600s, enabling urban farmers to grow “Mediterranean fruits and vegetables as far north as England and the Netherlands, using only renewable energy,” reports Kris De Decker of Low Tech Magazine.
Absorbing solar heat by day, these masonry walls were able to raise temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at night.
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/fruit-walls-before-greenhouses-walled-gardens-created-urban-micro-climates/
U Minh Thuong National park
The park has a rich and varied mammalian population, totaling an impressive 32 species, including hairy-nosed otters and fishing cats.
U Minh Thuong National Park is a haven for rare and endangered birds.
Owing to the successful conservation efforts, world’s tallest flying omnivorous bird, Sarus Crane’s population has been increasing since 2013 in Uttar Pradesh. According to the U.P. State Forest and Wildlife department, the population of the Sarus crane has jumped 5.2% from 2017 to 2018. The Sarus Crane Conservation Project has been running across 10 districts of Purvanchal by Wildlife Trust of India. The Uttar Pradesh’s state bird is India’s only resident breeding crane. With an average height of over 5 feet, Sarus Crane is non-migratory crane found in parts of the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia. Consisting of natural wetlands with low water depth, marshy and fallow areas and agricultural fields, the agricultural fields and wetlands of eastern Uttar Pradesh are home to largest number of Sarus Crane in India. These social creatures, found mostly in pairs or small groups of three or four, mainly constitute on the lowlands along the Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh and in larger wetlands of Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Assam and are known to mate with only a single partner for their entire lives. https://inkcue.com/up-beholds-rise-in-population-of-sarus-cranes/
A total of 187 species of birds has been recorded here, including the oriental darter, spot-billed pelican, black-headed ibis, glossy ibis, greater spotted eagle and Asian golden weaver.
There are also a total of 39 amphibian species and 34 species of fish in the park.
Mollusca is one of the most diverse groups of animals on the planet, with at least 50,000 living species (and more likely around 200,000). It includes such familiar organisms as snails, octopuses, squid, clams, scallops, oysters, and chitons.
During the First Indochina War the U Minh Forest was a Viet Minh stronghold.
In 1952, 500 French paratroopers dropped into the U Ming forest to attack Viet Minh and were never heard from again.
During the Vietnam War it was a Vietcong base area.
U Minh Thuong National Park is located in An Minh district and Vinh Thuan district, Kien Giang province, 365 kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.
It is situated in an area of freshwater wetlands, comprising peat swamp forest, seasonally inundated grassland and open swamp.
With wild beauty and prominent
biodiversity of a special wetland, the U Minh Thuong National Park in
Kien Giang Province was recognized as the 2,228th Ramsar site in the
world.
The soil layer is covered by a layer of peat, 1 to 3 m thick.
The unique animals of U Minh
The core zone of U Minh Thuong National Park is surrounded by perimeter canal and dike system, with a series of gates, which are used to manage the water level.
Water is released during the rainy season, but at are other time of the year, water is retained to support production and daily activities of the local communities surrounding the Park.
U Minh Thuong National Park is also one of the last remnants of climax peat swamp forest in the biographies region, dominated by mixed forests and Melaleuca forests on peat that covers around 3,000 ha ( approximately 37%) of the Park.
Mollusc anatomy
The site is recognized as one of the three highest priority sites for wetlands conservation in the Mekong Delta.
Flooding season not only bring people at the Mekong Delta the fisheries resources, but also put on the mangrove forests in the Western Vietnam a green color scene.
It is home to distinctive flora and fauna including 32 mammal species, 187 bird species, 34 reptile and amphibian species, 37 fish species and 203 insect species.
Purple Swamphen eating mollusca
Many of these are globally threatened, including in the endangered yellow-breasted bunting (Emberiza aureola), yellow-headed temple turtle (Heosemys annadalii), Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus).
It is also one of the only three sites in the world to know support a population of the endangered hairy-nosed otter (Lutra sumatrana).
Leave Ho Chi Minh City from the early morning head to Tram Chim national park 155 km – 3.5 hours away, you will have chance to enjoy the wetlands peaceful life of Mekong delta and learn more about the rare birds in this reserve. During the day, you will discover Tram Chim national park – a large sanctuary for birds, was recognized as the fourth Ramsar site in Vietnam and the 2,000th in the world. https://vnstour.com/tours/experience-tram-chim-national-park/
The site regularly hosts more than 20,000 waterbirds.
Most of the bird species observed are native and the distribution of eight of these is restricted to the lower Mekong Basin.
Malayanan pangolin is one of eight species of pangolins—the world’s most trafficked mammals. Pangolins are sought after for their meat, considered a delicacy in Vietnam and China, and for their scales, which are valued by some traditional medicine practitioners. The animals are often smuggled through ports hidden in shipping containers.
In addition to, the site is of significant spiritual, historical, archaeological, educational and scientific value.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Minh_Th%C6%B0%E1%BB%A3ng_National_Park
https://www.vietnamtourism.org.vn/travel-guide/destination-in-vietnam//discover-u-minh-thuong-national-park-vietnams-new-attractive-destination.html
I was surprised. It might be possible with other investments besides BB. Remember his books and clothes have been for sale for almost 40 years for example.
With a pounding heart and rapid breath, Laika rode a rocket into Earth orbit, 2,000 miles above Moscow streets she knew. Overheated, cramped, frightened, and probably hungry, the space dog gave her life for her country, involuntarily fulfilling a canine suicide mission.
Sad as this tale is, the stray husky-spitz mix became a part of history as the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Over the decades, the petite pioneer has repeatedly found new life in popular culture long after her death and the fiery demise of her Soviet ship, Sputnik 2, which smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere 60 years ago this month.
O Devi [Lakshmi], whose heart is full of mercy, who is worshipped throughout the three worlds and who is the giver of all fortune and the mother of Creation. All glories to You, o shelter of all living entities. O fulfiller of all desires, You are the wonderful energy of Lord Achyuta [Vishnu], who is maintaining the three worlds. You are the Supreme Goddess... - Bhagavad Gita.
Soviet engineers planned Sputnik 2 hastily after Premier Nikita Khrushchev requested a flight to coincide with November 7, 1957, the 40th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. Using what they had learned from the unmanned and undogged Sputnik 1 and often working without blueprints, teams labored quickly to build a ship that included a pressurized compartment for a flying dog.
Sputnik 1 had made history, becoming the first man-made object in Earth orbit October 4, 1957. Sputnik 2 would go into orbit with the final stage of the rocket attached, and engineers believed the ship’s 1,120-pound payload, six times as heavy as Sputnik 1, could be kept within limits by feeding its passenger only once.
Lakshmi also spelled Laksmi, (Sanskrit: लक्ष्मी lakṣmī, Hindi pronunciation: [ˈləkʃmi]) is the Hindu goddess of wealth, love, prosperity (both material and spiritual), fortune, and the embodiment of beauty. She is the wife and active energy of Vishnu. Her four hands represent the four goals of human life considered proper in Hindu way of life – dharma, kama, artha, and moksha. Representations of Lakshmi are also found in Jain monuments. In Buddhist sects of Tibet, Nepal and southeast Asia, goddess Vasundhara mirrors the characteristics and attributes of Hindu goddess Lakshmi, with minor iconographic differences. Lakshmi is also called Sri or Thirumagal because she is endowed with six auspicious and divine qualities, or Gunas, and also because she is the source of strength even to Vishnu. Lakshmi is commonly portrayed as a beautiful woman with four arms, standing on a lotus flower. There is usually one, or sometimes two elephants behind her, anointing her with water. She is often depicted sitting beneath Vishnu. One of the most compelling stories in Hindu mythology is that of the Churning of the Milky Ocean. It is the story of the gods versus the demons and their fight to gain immortality. It also tells of the rebirth of Lakshmi... This story highlights the good fortune and success that Lakshmi bestows upon those who work hard and seek help sincerely. It also demonstrates that during times of success, one must never become complacent or arrogant, as success has a way of getting away from people. Hindus believe that anybody who worships Lakshmi sincerely, and not in greed, will be blessed with fortune and success. It is said that Lakshmi resides in places of hard work, virtue and bravery, but leaves whenever these qualities are not apparent any more. In India Hindus will leave the windows and doors of their houses open so that Lakshmi can come in. Rangoli are drawn on the floors - Rangoli are patterns and the most popular subject is the lotus flower. The name [Divali] is derived from the Sanskrit term Dipavali meaning “row of lights,” which are lit on the new-moon night to bid the presence of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. In Bengal, however, the goddess Kali is worshiped, and in north India the festival also celebrates the return of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, and Hanuman to the city of Ayodhya, where Rama’s rule of righteousness would commence. Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, comes of Her own accord where fools are not respected, grain is well stored up, and the husband and wife do not quarrel. The Goddess of wealth is unsteady, and so is the life breath. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lakshmi
They expected Laika to die from oxygen deprivation—a painless death within 15 seconds—after seven days in space. Cathleen Lewis, the curator of international space programs and spacesuits at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum doubts that a few ounces of food would have made a difference, and she recalls reports that a female physician broke protocol by feeding Laika before liftoff.
Lakshmi (or Shri) is the Hindu goddess of wealth, good fortune and the lotus flower, as well as the goddess of luck, beauty, courage and fertility. This information and photo are excerpted from www.vishnarupa.com, a rich resource of information on Hindu gods and goddesses. “Lakshmi governs all forms of wealth and success and the paths, means and results of all forms of prosperity…. As the the consort of Lord Vishnu (Narayana), who is the God of Preservation, Lakshmi Devi is the goddess of health and beauty. Sri Lakshmi, the Mother of the Universe, embodies sublime beauty, siddhi (supernatural powers), peace, strength, balance, auspiciousness, opulence and wisdom. Because Lakshmi possesses all of these good and noble qualities, she embodies infinite wealth~ symbolizing that good and noble qualities are the only wealth we can keep. Lakshmi Devi is always depicted sitting or standing on a lotus with golden coins flowing in an endless stream from one of her hands~ symbolic of when the lotus of wisdom blossoms, the wealth of good and noble qualities appears and Lakshmi’s blessings are present.” May you enjoy the good fortune of Lakshmi’s blessings. https://www.yogalife.net/lakshmi-goddess-beauty-luxury-wealth/
The Soviet canine recruiters began their quest with a herd of female stray dogs because females were smaller and apparently more docile. Initial tests determined obedience and passivity. Eventually, canine finalists lived in tiny pressurized capsules for days and then weeks at a time.
The doctors also checked their reactions to changes in air pressure and to loud noises that would accompany liftoff. Testers fitted candidates with a sanitation device connected to the pelvic area. The dogs did not like the devices, and to avoid using them, some retained bodily waste, even after consuming laxatives. However, some adapted.
Eventually, the team chose the placid Kudryavka (Little Curly) as Sputnik 2’s dog cosmonaut and Albina (White) as backup. Introduced to the public via radio, Kudryavka barked and later became known as Laika, “barker” in Russian.
Rumors emerged that Albina had out-performed Laika, but because she had recently given birth to puppies and because she had apparently won the affections of her keepers, Albina did not face a fatal flight. Doctors performed surgery on both dogs, embedding medical devices in their bodies to monitor heart impulses, breathing rates, blood pressure and physical movement.
Soviet physicians chose Laika to die, but they were not entirely heartless. One of her keepers, Vladimir Yazdovsky, took 3-year-old Laika to his home shortly before the flight because “I wanted to do something nice for the dog,” he later recalled.
Three days before the scheduled liftoff, Laika entered her constricted travel space that allowed for only a few inches of movement. Newly cleaned, armed with sensors, and fitted with a sanitation device, she wore a spacesuit with metal restraints built-in. On November 3 at 5:30 a.m., the ship lifted off with G-forces reaching five times normal gravity levels.
The noises and pressures of flight terrified Laika: Her heartbeat rocketed to triple the normal rate, and her breath rate quadrupled. The National Air and Space Museum holds declassified printouts showing Laika’s respiration during the flight. She reached orbit alive, circling the Earth in about 103 minutes.
Unfortunately, loss of the heat shield made the temperature in the capsule rise unexpectedly, taking its toll on Laika. She died “soon after launch,” Russian medical doctor and space dog trainer Oleg Gazenko revealed in 1993. “The temperature inside the spacecraft after the fourth orbit registered over 90 degrees,” Lewis says. “There’s really no expectation that she made it beyond an orbit or two after that.” Without its passenger, Sputnik 2 continued to orbit for five months.
During and after the flight, the Soviet Union kept up the fiction that Laika survived for several days. “The official documents were falsified,” Lewis says. Soviet broadcasts claimed that Laika was alive until November 12. The New York Times even reported that she might be saved; however, Soviet communiqués made it clear after nine days that Laika had died.
While concerns about animal rights had not reached early 21st century levels, some protested the deliberate decision to let Laika die because the Soviet Union lacked the technology to return her safely to Earth. In Great Britain, where opposition to hunting was growing, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the British Society for Happy Dogs opposed the launch.
A pack of dog lovers attached protest signs to their pets and marched outside the United Nations in New York. “The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it,” said Gazenko more than 30 years later.
The humane use of animal testing spaceflight was essential to preparation for manned spaceflight, Lewis believes. “There were things that we could not determine by the limits of human experience in high altitude flight,” Lewis says. Scientists “really didn’t know how disorienting spaceflight would be on the humans or whether an astronaut or cosmonaut could continue to function rationally.”
Alas, for Laika, even if everything had worked perfectly, and if she had been lucky enough to have plenty of food, water and oxygen, she would have died when the spaceship re-entered the atmosphere after 2,570 orbits. Ironically, a flight that promised Laika's certain death also offered proof that space was livable.
The story of Laika lives on today in websites, YouTube videos, poems and children’s books, at least one of which provides a happy ending for the doomed dog. Laika’s cultural impact has been spread across the years since her death.
The Portland, Oregon, Art Museum is currently featuring an exhibition on the stop-motion animation studio LAIKA, which was named after the dog. The show "Animating Life" is on view through May 20, 2018. There is also a “vegan lifestyle and animal rights magazine” called LAIKA Magazine, published in the United States.
The 1985 Swedish film, My Life as a Dog, portrayed a young man’s fears that Laika had starved. Several folk and rock singers around the globe have dedicated songs to her. An English indie-pop group took her name, and a Finnish band called itself Laika and the Cosmonauts. Novelists Victor Pelevin of Russia, Haruki Murakami of Japan, and Jeannette Winterson of Great Britain have featured Laika in books, as has British graphic novelist Nick Abadzis.
In 2015, Russia unveiled a new memorial statue of Laika atop a rocket at a Moscow military research facility, and when the nation honored fallen cosmonauts in 1997 with a statue at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Star City, Moscow, Laika’s image could be seen in one corner. During the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity mission in March 2005, NASA unofficially named a spot within a Martian crater “Laika.”
Space dog biographer Amy Nelson compares Laika to other animal celebrities like the Barnum and Bailey Circus’s late 19th-century elephant Jumbo and champion thoroughbred racehorse Seabiscuit, who lifted American spirits during the Great Depression. She argues in Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans and the Study of History that the Soviet Union transformed Laika into “an enduring symbol of sacrifice and human achievement.”
Soon after the flight, the Soviet mint created an enamel pin to celebrate “The First Passenger in Space.” Soviet allies, such as Romania, Albania, Poland and North Korea, issued Laika stamps over the years between 1957 and 1987.
Laika was not the first space dog: Some had soared in the Soviet military’s sub-orbital rocket tests of updated German V-2 rockets after World War II, and they had returned to Earth via parachuted craft—alive or dead.
She also would not be the last dog to take flight. Others returned from orbit alive. After the successful 1960 joint flight of Strelka and Belka, Strelka later produced puppies, and Khrushchev gave one to President John F. Kennedy.
During the days before manned flight, the United States primarily looked to members of the ape family as test subjects. The reason for the Soviet choice of dogs over apes is unclear except perhaps that Ivan Pavlov’s pioneering work on dog physiology in the late 19th and early 20th century may have provided a strong background for the use of canines, Lewis says. Also, stray dogs were plentiful in the streets of the Soviet Union—easy to find and unlikely to be missed.
According to Animals In Space by Colin Burgess and Chris Dubbs, the Soviet Union launched dogs into flight 71 times between 1951 and 1966, with 17 deaths. The Russian space program continues to use animals in space tests, but in every case except Laika’s, there has been some hope that the animal would survive.
Ed Note 4/15/2018: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the postage stamp at the top of this article, stating it was from a Soviet bloc country. It is from the Emirate of Ajman, now part of the UAE. This story also now includes updated information about the Portland Oregon Museum's exhibition "Animating Life." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/
John D. Rockefeller: American oil tycoon, philanthropist, and billionaire. Considered the wealthiest American of all time and a self-made man, he formed the Standard Oil Company in 1870—the world’s largest oil refinery of the time—just fifteen years after he landed a job as an assistant bookkeeper at age sixteen. Rockefeller was born to a family with just enough to get by, but by the time he died he was the richest man in the world, with a net worth over $330 billion in today’s money.
For Rockefeller, though, money did not equate to success; success was measured by forming a company that created jobs while reducing gas prices, by building a name for himself, despite a deck that was seemingly stacked against him. Along the way he set the example, showing what traits one needs to master in order to achieve personal success.
1) Persistence
Rockefeller’s upbringing was anything but an easy ride. His mother was a devout churchgoer, while his father was a salesman who was gone for weeks, even months at a time. In truth, “Devil Bill” was a secret bigamist with a second family, and as such his wife and children were forced to live in uncertain frugality, never sure when he’d return with his earnings. To counteract this, John Rockefeller worked hard and watched over his siblings.
john_d-_rockefellers_birthplace_at_richford_new_yorkHe dropped out of high school at age 16 and enrolled in a 3-month business school to build his foundation before moving to Cleveland, Ohio. With no job experience and no connections, a young Rockefeller set out to land a job. He diligently compiled a list of banks, merchants, and railroads with the highest credit rating.
Dressing for the job he wanted, so to speak, he tirelessly shaved, put on a dark suit, and shined his shoes each day before going through his list of hopeful employers and requesting to speak to the man in charge. Rockefeller would go through this list more than once, visiting some businesses twice and even three times, never disheartened by rejection.
Finally, after working to find a job six days a week for six weeks, his persistence was rewarded and on September 26, 1855 he was hired by Hewitt & Tuttle as an assistant bookkeeper.
This day would come to be known as “Job Day,” a celebration more important to Rockefeller than his own birthday, as it commemorated his never failing perseverance in attaining his goals.
2) Poise and Reserve
As a boy, Rockefeller had a bit of a temper. Upon meeting an adult Rockefeller, though, one would have never known it; he was extremely reserved, always keeping to himself and listening more than he spoke.
“Control of self wins the battle, for it means control of others.”
–Eliza Davison, Mother of John D. Rockefeller
This silent reserve created a forceful air about the man that demanded control of every room and any conflict. He developed an almost Prince-like mystique, albeit far less extravagant; his thoughts were impenetrable, which was a very real source of power for Rockefeller.
Rockefeller heard what his partners and even subordinates had to say. He absorbed information and used it to improve his business. In dealing with opposition, his reserve proved to be extremely disarming to his adversaries. His long silences confused others in negotiations and his cool responses in reply to hotheaded interrogators left them even more frustrated.
In one instance, an infuriated contractor was said to have stormed into Rockefeller’s office, unleashing a verbal berating to the man, whose back was turned and hunched over paperwork. When the tirade came to an end, Rockefeller swiveled in his chair and calmly asked, “I didn’t catch what you were saying. Would you repeat that?”
3) Under-Inflated Ego
While his increasing wealth and potentially misinterpreted reserve would possibly seem to suggest otherwise, Rockefeller was grounded in a controlled ego. As his success mounted, he made a conscious effort to exercise modesty. He even recited admonishments to himself to keep his ego in check.
“Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head—go steady. Are you going to let this money puff you up? Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose your balance.”
Rockefeller mastery of self took real shape. He regularly attended Eerie Street Baptist Church, the parish that baptized him as a teenager, leading prayers and teaching Sunday school in addition to working as the church’s volunteer clerk and even janitor.
When his wealth steadily climbed to record breaking levels, he remained faithful to this same church, as opposed to joining a more “high status” parish. He reveled in the opportunity that his church gave him to stay connected with everyday people.
Rockefeller would visit his oil fields, genuinely inquiring with supervisors on their views and opinions on how the company could be improved. Not only that, but he also spoke to the men that were actually doing the drilling. He took notes from these visits in a pocketbook, and earned the nickname “The Sponge.”
In the boardroom, Rockefeller was not imposing. He chose not to sit at the head of the table and instead listened to all other opinions before offering his own. John Rockefeller spoke in terms of “we,” not “I” to elicit ideas, plans, and action.
Over the course of his life, Rockefeller donated nearly $540 million, asking that buildings specifically not be named after him (though not always with success) and generally remained a silent donator. Rarely did he visit a project to which he had donated, as he didn’t want to detract from the good work being done.
4) Purpose Beyond Wealth
Wealth was not the sole driving force for John Rockefeller. While he certainly wanted to make money, he found genuine enjoyment in his work.
“I know not nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.” –John D. Rockefeller
Rockefeller was intent on a few things. Firstly, he wanted to create a new model for business. Instead of thinking short-term and hoping to hit a gusher and instant wealth like others in the oil business, Rockefeller built a vision on long-term success. In so doing, he hoped to grow not only a revolutionary company, but economic growth for his country as well.
As the company became increasingly successful and profitable, Rockefeller was able to put his money back into charity and other philanthropies. This added a great sense of purpose to Rockefeller’s overarching work and story. This was not a new concept for Rockefeller, though.
As a bookkeeper making end’s meet, he donated about 6% of his income to charity and by the time he was 20, 10%. This was engrained in Rockefeller by his mother, who always encouraged him to donate even pocket change at church collections. Again, by the time he died he had donated close to $540 million.
Wealth is often a consequence of the pursuit of other goals and for Rockefeller, it was a means to an end.
5) Detail-Oriented
Rockefeller was an extremely detail-oriented man. His appearance was always kept impeccable, he was tenaciously punctual, and he stuck to a very strict schedule. Before writing letters to his secretaries, he would write 5-6 drafts with a hawk eye, and when signing letters he did so with master artistry. As noted by an aide:
“I have seen him sign his name to hundred of papers at a sitting. He did each signature carefully as if this particular one was to be the only one by which he was to be remembered for all time. Each signature became in his mind a work of art.”
After visiting one of his plants, Rockefeller noted that 40 drops of solder were being used to seal kerosene cans. He tested whether 38 drops would be enough to seal the cans, but found that some leaked.
However, 39 drops still sealed the kerosene cans without any leaking. While this may seem minute, the single drop saved $2,500 the first year the change was enacted and as the business grew, ended up saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
6) Frugality
Finally, while John D. Rockefeller by no means needed to live frugally, he still chose to. He continued to keep a strict accounting of his finances in “Ledger A,” his small, red pocket notebook. Additionally, even after becoming wildly successful (and wealthy), Rockefeller continued to go through ledgers himself, correcting even the smallest errors to save the cents or dollars that were owed to him.
Rockefeller’s homes were large, though not excessively so compared to other wealthy individuals; he didn’t build and decorate his homes to please anyone but himself and his family. He lived in a manner (and manor) that did not divulge the extent of his wealth, mirroring his personal reserve.
To ensure that his children, and eventual grandchildren, didn’t fail to learn the same principles he had, Rockefeller made certain that they did not live a privileged life. Rockefeller and his wife did their best to shield the children from understanding just how wealthy they were.
They never visited his father’s office or refineries, and just as Rockefeller had years before, they were required to keep track of their own accounts. The Rockefeller children could earn money through hard work and chores.
As the Rockefeller lineage continued, he imparted this wisdom on his grandchildren as well. When he visited the grandkids, he gave them each a nickel, a kiss, and this anecdote:
“Do you know what would hurt grandfather a great deal? To know that any of you boys should become wasteful, extravagant, careless with his money […] Be careful, boys, and then you’ll always be able to help unfortunate people. That is your duty, and you must never forget it.”
https://beardedcolonel.co.uk/blog/rockefellers-6-personal-traits-success/
“A prince should earnestly endeavor to gain the reputation of kindness, clemency, piety, justice, and fidelity to his engagements. He ought to possess all these good qualities BUT STILL RETAIN SUCH POWER OVER HIMSELF AS TO DISPLAY THEIR OPPOSITES WHENEVER IT MAY BE EXPEDIENT. . .
He should make it a rule, above all things, never to utter anything which does not breathe of kindness, justice, good faith, and piety; this last quality it is most important for him to appear to possess as men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes but few have the gift of penetration. Every one sees your exterior, but few can discern what you have in your heart.” — Machiavelli — The Prince. Chap. xviii.
John D. Rockefeller is without question the most conspicuous type of our present dominating commercial man. “The most important man in the world” a great and serious newspaper passionately devoted to democracy calls him, and unquestionably this is the popular measure of him.
His importance lies not so much in the fact that he is the richest individual in the world, with the control of property which that entails; it lies in the fact that his wealth, and the power springing from it, appeal to the most universal and powerful passion in this country — the passion for money.
John D. Rockefeller, measured by our national ambition, is the most successful man in the world — the man who has got the most of what men most want. How did he get it, the eager youth asks, and asking, strives to imitate him as nearly as ability and patience permit. Thus he has become an inspirer of American ideals, and his methods have been crystallized into a great national commercial code.
Nor is this all. Mr. Rockefeller distributes money in charity and in endowments. If not our first, he is certainly our second philanthropist; the amount of the money given being the standard. All over the land those who direct great educational, charitable and religious institutions are asking, “Can we not get something from him?”
Receiving his bequests they become at least the tacit supporters of the thing for which he stands — that is, John D. Rockefeller exercises a powerful control over the very sources of American intellectual and religious inspiration.
Now a man who possesses this kind of influence cannot be allowed to live in the dark. The public not only has the right to know what sort of a man he is; it is the duty of the public to know. How else can the public discharge the most solemn obligation it owes to itself and to the future, to keep the springs of its higher life clean? Who then is this John D. Rockefeller? Whence did he come? By what qualities did he grow to such power? Has he proved his right to the power?
Does he give to the public whence he has drawn his wealth a just return in ideas, in patriotism, in devotion to social betterment, in generous living, in inspiring personal character? Has John D. Rockefeller made good? From time immemorial men who have risen to power have had to face this question.
Kings, tyrants, chieftains, since the world began have stood or have fallen as they have convinced the public that they were giving or not giving a just return for the power allowed them. The time is here when Mr. Rockefeller must face the verdict of the public by which he lives.
As to Mr. Rockefeller’s origin it is typically American. He sprang from one of those migrating families which, coming to this country in the seventeenth century, has moved westward with each generation seeking a betterment of condition.
He and his brothers were the first great product of a restless family searching a firm footing on new soil. The first word heard of the Rockefeller family in Richford, Tioga County, New York, where John D. Rockefeller was born, was in the early ’30’s when his grandfather, Godfrey Rockefeller, moved to that community from Mud Creek, Massachusetts.
There are still alive in Tioga County many men and women who remember Godfrey Rockefeller. It is not a pleasant description they give of him — a shiftless tippler, stunted in stature and mean in spirit, but held to a certain decency by a wife of such strong intellect and determined character that she impressed herself unforgettably on the community.
Godfrey Rockefeller had not been long in Richford when he was followed by his eldest son — William A. Rockefeller — a man of twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. There seem to have been other Rockefellers, for the family was sufficiently numerous and conspicuous to cause the farm in West Hill near Richford, where they settled, to be dubbed “Rockefeller settlement” — a name it still bears.
It is with William A. Rockefeller, father of John, that we have to do here. There is enough which is authentic to be gleaned about him to form a picture of a striking character. William A. Rockefeller was a tall and powerful man with keen straightforward eyes, a man in whom strength, and fearlessness, and joy in life, unfettered by education or love of decency, ran riot.
The type is familiar enough in every farming settlement, the type of the country sport, who hunts, fishes, gambles, races horses and carouses in the low and mean ways which the country alone affords. He owned a costly rifle, and was famous as a shot. He was a dare-devil with horses.
He had no trade — spurned the farm. Indeed he had all the vices save one — he never drank. He was a famous trickster, too; thus, when he first reached Richford he is said to have called himself a peddler — a deaf and dumb peddler, and for some time he actually succeeded in making his acquaintances in Richford write out their remarks to him on a slate.
Why he wished to deceive them no one knows. Perhaps sheer mischief, perhaps a desire to hear things which would hardly be talked before a stranger with good ears.
It was not long after he came to Richford that he began to go off on long trips — peddling trips some said. Later he became known as a quack doctor, and his absences were supposed to be spent selling a medicine he concocted himself.
Irregular and wild as his life undoubtedly was, his strength and skill and daring, his frankness, his careful dress, for he paid great attention to his clothes, as well as the mystery surrounding the occupation which kept him looking so prosperous, made him a favorite with the young and reckless and, unhappily, with women.
On one of his trips he met in Moravia, New York, the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Eliza Davison. It is said that the girl married him in the face of strong opposition of her family. However that may be, it is certain that about 1837, William A. Rockefeller brought Eliza Davison to the Rockefeller settlement as his wife, and here three children were born, the second of whom — the record of his birth is dated July 8, 1839 — was named John Davison.
In 1843 William A Rockefeller moved his family to a farm near Moravia, Cayuga County. The reputation he had built up in Richford as a “sporting man” was duplicated in Moravia. He soon became the leader in all that was reckless and wild in the community, and was classed by the respectable and steady-going as a dangerous character on whom no doubt much was fastened that did not belong.
It may be for this reason, as well as because of his frequent long and unaccounted for absences, that he is still classed popularly in Moravia as one of the gang who operated the “underground horse railroad” — and ran off horses from various parts of the country.
There is absolutely no proof of this, but the conviction and sentence to the State prison, in 1850, of three of his closest pals for horse-stealing coupled with his bad reputation made many of his disapproving neighbors fix the crime equally on him, and to-day old men in Moravia nod their heads sagely and say, “He was too smart to be caught.”
There is an indictment against William A. Rockefeller for a more serious crime than horse-stealing in the records of the County, for 1849, and it is quite probable that he left Moravia under compulsion. At all events, about 1850 he again moved his family, which now consisted of his wife and five children, to Owego, New York.
The family remained in Owego but three years, and then moved to Strongsville, Ohio, twelve or fifteen miles southwest of Cleveland. A year later they left Strongsville for a country settlement, about seven miles south of Cleveland, called Parma; and from there they went, in 1857, to Cleveland, moving into a comfortable brick house, which William A. Rockefeller had built for them.
In the Ohio communities where he lived the legends of “Old Bill,” as he is popularly spoken of to-day by his former acquaintances, are identical with those in Richford, Moravia, and Owego. They all remember him as a man who came home but rarely, who was supposed to sell some kind of medicine — a “cancer doctor,” is the opinion of one, a “quack doctor,” of another, and there are those who declare he was a gambler.
In Ohio, as in New York, he always created a profound impression on his visits home, by his clothes, his good horse, and his crack shooting. “He was a rippin’ good one,” an old associate in Parma declares. “How he would shoot — bang-e-tee-bang — you’d thought there was a whole army around!” There are many sly winks at the occupations and morals of William A. Rockefeller by his old neighbors, but there is a universal verdict that he was a “good fellow,” jolly, generous, and kindly.
When William A. Rockefeller took his family to Ohio, his oldest son, John Davison, was a lad of fourteen years. A quiet, grave boy by all accounts, doing steadily and well the thing he was set at. Up to this time his training had been that of the ordinary country boy.
He had gone to a district school a few months of the year, and the rest of the time had worked and played as a boy ordinarily does in a country settlement, chopping wood, caring for a horse, milking cows, weeding garden, raising chickens and turkeys.
Nowhere does he seem to have made an impression, save by his silence and gravity. “He never mixed much with the rest of us,” one old man tells you. “He seemed to be always thinking,” says another. “He was different from his brothers and different from the rest of us,” says a third.
No doubt his mother had had much to do in shaping the boy’s mind to serious living. Dominated as this daughter of a prosperous farmer probably was by a spirit of narrow and stern New England conventionality, she must have come to hate the lawless and suspicious ways of this likeable sinner, this quack-doctor horse-jockey, this loose-tongued rake she had married, and all the arrogant respectability within her must have risen in a fierce effort to save appearances, and to force these children of his into good and regular standing.
There is a something in the fine, keen face of John D. Rockefeller’s mother which recalls the face of Lætitia Ramolino, mother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and convinces one that she could not but have been a power with her boys, though there is little enough to go on in trustworthy tradition and records. That she kept her children in school and church is certain.
Old friends of hers at Strongsville and Parma, Ohio, speak of her with profound respect — a good woman who made her boys do right, who did not allow them to read novels on Sunday, who “worried over saloons” in her vicinity. It is quite probable that it was her influence which persuaded her husband to send John to school in Cleveland soon after the family moved to Ohio.
The boy spent a quiet year in the town studying diligently, so his former schoolmaster has testified, his only outside interest being in the Baptist Church and Sunday-school — to which he had been directed by a wise landlady. In 1855, after a year of study, young Rockefeller left school and began to look for work.
It was a hard time in the West, the year of 1855, and it is quite possible that William A. Rockefeller had not been so successful as formerly in his wandering trade or trades, whatever they may have been, and that he felt it time for his son John to do something for himself. At all events, in the summer of that year, John D. Rockefeller made his first attempt to get a footing in business.
The struggle and discouragement of the days he spent walking the streets of Cleveland looking for work made a deep impression on Mr. Rockefeller. Again and again in his later years he has referred to the experience in the little talks he has given at Sunday-school and church gatherings. Again and again he has expressed his lasting gratitude that finally he did find a position. It was a modest enough one, that of a clerk in a warehouse on the Cleveland docks.
How modest, Mr. Rockefeller has frequently explained using as authority one of the few “documents” of his early life which he has seen fit to reveal to the public. This document is his first account book, “Ledger A” he calls it. It is not too much to say that this book has been more conspicuous than the Bible itself in the religious instruction which John D. Rockefeller has given for years to Baptist Sunday-schools.
This is not strange, for in Mr. Rockefeller’s own judgment its brief entries explain his success. The little book is most significant. No wonder, as he once told his Sunday-school class, holding up “Ledger A” to their attentive eyes: “You could not get that book from me for all the modern ledgers in New York, nor for all that they would bring. It almost brings tears to my eyes when I read over this little book, and it fills me with a sense of gratitude I cannot express.”
https://sites.allegheny.edu/tarbell/fromtarbell/rockefeller/
By age 25 John D. Rockefeller controlled one of the largest oil refineries in the nation.
By age 31 he had become the world’s largest oil refiner.
By age 38 he commanded 90% of the oil refined in the U.S.
By the time of his retirement at age 58, he was the richest man in the country.
By the time he died, he had become the richest man in the world.
The methodology by which Rockefeller gained dominance of the oil industry and amassed his wealth has long been the subject of debate. He has been alternately lionized and pilloried, according to the temper of the times and the side of his character being examined.
To critics, Rockefeller was a ruthless and greedy capitalist, who unfairly crushed his competition and created a malevolent monopoly. To champions, he was a business genius (he never had a year where he didn’t make a profit, flourishing even in recessions) who embodied the ideal of the self-made man, stabilized a volatile industry, created jobs, brought down the price of oil (it dropped 80% during the life of Standard Oil), and became history’s greatest philanthropist.
Indeed, as Rockefeller’s preeminent biographer Ron Chernow puts it, “Seldom has history produced such a contradictory figure.” In studying his life, one finds evidence for both portraits of the man, and of a character far more nuanced than those fond of either apologetics or polemics acknowledge. As Chernow concludes, “his good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad.”
Fortunately, one need not agree with his bad side to learn from his good. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a man would be well served in learning the set of what were essentially Rockefeller’s morally neutral tactics, and deciding for himself to which use to put them. For many of the fundamental principles this industrial titan employed to build his empire can be applied towards attaining success in any endeavor.
Today we will delve into just what those principles are.
The Rockefellian Key to Success: Be Your Own Tyrant
If there was one overarching principle to Rockefeller’s success, it is contained within this maxim of his:
“I would rather be my own tyrant than have some one else tyrannize me.”
Rockefeller’s most striking quality was what Chernow calls his almost “eerie self-control.” He relentlessly honed his will, training himself to be master of his emotions, desires, and schedule, so that he could direct all his impulses towards his aims. He set big goals for himself, and then attacked them with a disciplined, workaday ethic.
Rockefeller understood that if you wish to be your own boss, you have to learn how to boss yourself. Here’s exactly how he did so:
Practice Relentless Persistence
“Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things … fail because we lack concentration — the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?” –John D. Rockefeller
There was little in Rockefeller’s upbringing that would portend his meteoric rise.
He was born in a clapboard house in New York in 1839. His mother was a solid, religious woman, but his father, William Avery Rockefeller, was essentially a snake oil salesman, who was gone from home for weeks and sometimes months at a time, selling his “botanical” cures and living as a secret bigamist with another family. The Rockefellers had enough money to get by on, but their finances were perennially uncertain, dependent on when “Devil Bill” would show up, and how much money he would bring upon his return.
Young John grew up helping work the family farm and tending to his younger siblings. But he had his eye set on greater things, and earnestly desired to rise in the world. How he would do so was not immediately clear. In school, he was considered dim-witted and slow at his studies, and made little impression on his classmates, who, after his ascent to fame, struggled to remember much about him.
As one recalled, “I have no recollection of John excelling at anything…There was nothing about him to make anybody pay especial attention to him or speculate about his future.”
Yet the same former classmate did make this addendum: “I do remember he worked hard at everything; not talking much, and studying with great industry.” Here we find what would be one of the secrets to Rockefeller’s success; in his own words, while he wasn’t “brilliant,” he was “reliable.” He went about his schoolwork with patient persistence. “I was not an easy student,” he said, “and I had to apply myself diligently to prepare my lessons.”
Rockefeller did find he had a knack for numbers, and he dropped out of high school to become better acquainted with their management. Enrolling in a 3-month business course at a commercial college, he learned the basics of bookkeeping, penmanship, and banking, and then graduated at age 16 ready to move up in the world.
Eager to escape the orbit of his disreputable father and become an autonomous and self-reliant young man, Rockefeller left his rural home in Ohio (where his family had moved) to start his own life in Cleveland and find his very first job.
Rockefeller attacked this goal with the same patient persistence he had applied to his schoolwork. Wanting to find a position with a large and reputable establishment in which he’d have the greatest opportunities for learning and advancement, he made a list of the merchants, banks, and railroads with the highest credit ratings.
Each day Rockefeller put on a dark suit, shaved, shined his shoes, and hit the pavement making inquires about town. “At each firm,” Chernow writes, “he asked to speak to the top man — who was usually unavailable — then got straight to the point with an assistant: ‘I understand bookkeeping, and I’d like to get work.’”
As Rockefeller remembered, the job market was tight, and the response was not encouraging: “No one wanted a boy, and very few showed any overwhelming anxiety to talk with me on the subject.” Yet young John D. was not at all discouraged.
A return to his home, and to dependence, was unthinkable. When he had gone through his whole list without an offer, he simply started at the top, and visited every establishment again, sometimes dropping into the same business three times. He treated his job search just like his job: “I was working every day at my business — the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.”
Thus from morning until later afternoon, six days a week, for six weeks — sweating through Cleveland’s hot summer, walking its streets ‘til his feet ached — Rockefeller continued to seek a position. Finally, on September 26, 1855, he heard the words he’d been waiting for: “We’ll give you a chance.” The small produce firm of Hewitt & Tuttle was in urgent need of an assistant bookkeeper, and told Rockefeller to take off his coat and get to work right away.
Ever after, Rockefeller referred to this date as “Job Day” and celebrated its anniversary with more gusto than his own birthday. For this was the great turning point in his life. Through singular focus on a goal, and patient persistence in its attainment, he had obtained a toehold in the world of business, and would use it as a springboard in making his improbable climb from lowly bookkeeper to corporate titan.
Cultivate Unassailable Poise and Reserve
“His usual attitude towards all men was one of deep reserve, concealed beneath commonplaces and humorous anecdotes. He had the art with friends and guests of chatting freely, of calling out others, but of revealing little or nothing of his own innermost thoughts.” –Frederick T. Gates, Rockefeller’s financial advisor
As a boy, John D.’s mother taught him: “Control of self wins the battle, for it means control of others.”
He took that maxim to heart, adopting a far different leadership style than the stereotypical corporate tycoon, cultivating a power that relied not on loud, blustering displays and belligerent table-pounding, but quiet authority and a sphinx-like demeanor.
As a young man he had struggled with his temper, but he had trained himself to control it, and moved through the rest of life with exceptional equanimity, remaining poised and unruffled no matter the circumstances. “Even as a teenager,” Chernow notes, “Rockefeller was extremely composed in a crisis…The more agitated others became, the calmer he grew.”
This unflappability was accompanied by a studied reserve; though he was far warmer and genial than often pictured in the public imagination, he typically revealed little of his thoughts, even to close associates, and secreted himself in a shroud of privacy.
Such a stance was not simply a matter of preference or personality, but a deliberate tactical strategy; mastering his moods, reactions, and expressions and living another of his favorite maxims — “Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” — gave Rockefeller an incomparable edge.
In dealing with employees, no matter how far down the ladder, he never lost his cool, even when they presented him with grievances. As one refinery worker recalled:
“He always had a nod and a kind word for everybody. He never forgot anyone. We had some trying times in the business in those early years, but I’ve never seen Mr. Rockefeller when he was not friendly and kind and unruffled. Nothing excited him.”
Chernow notes that many of his other subordinates corroborated this description of their boss, saying that he never “raised his voice, uttered a profane or slang word, or acted discourteously.” Such behavior won Rockefeller “excellent reviews from employees who regarded him as fair and benevolent, free of petty temper and dictatorial airs.”
Believing there was strength in silence, Rockefeller listened far more than he talked in his meetings with the men at the top as well, and this air of almost supernatural calm only heightened his influence in the boardroom.
As Chernow explains, “The quieter he was, the more forceful his presence seemed, and he played on his mystique as the resident genius immune to petty concerns.” Rockefeller in fact sometimes napped, or seemed to, on a couch in the directors’ conference room, only opening his eyes from time to time to add a comment to the proceedings.
Even when his associates engaged in heated debate, the chairman of Standard Oil maintained his composure. As one director recalled, “I have seen board meetings, when excited men shouted profanity and made menacing gestures, but Mr. Rockefeller, maintaining the utmost courtesy, continued to dominate the room.”
When dealing with adversaries, Rockefeller’s reserve worked to upset their balance. His long silences while negotiating deals often threw members of the other party off their game, tying them up in self-defeating knots.
Virtually immune to intimidation, he answered the questions of hostile interrogators in a slow, cool, dignified way that frustrated their purposes. Rockefeller loved to tell the story of the time an irate contractor burst into his office and laid into him with an angry tirade. Rockefeller sat with back turned, hunched over a writing desk until the tongue-lashing ran its course. Then he spun around in his swivel chair, faced the scold, and coolly asked, “I didn’t catch what you were saying. Would you mind repeating that?”
Colleagues and rivals alike found him hard to read — for one thing he had practiced the ability to maintain a perfect poker face when receiving a letter or telegram to conceal the kind of news it contained — and equally hard to reach. He wouldn’t see unsolicited visitors in his office, and those who wished to meet with him had to make their approach by letter. As Chernow observes, “His remoteness frustrated opponents, who felt they were boxing with a ghost.”
Rockefeller also vigilantly maintained his privacy when it came to the press, routinely turning down interview requests, especially early in his career. Not only did he simply dislike anyone prying into his business, but he believed that familiarity bred contempt, and that the less access you gave the media, the more you preserved the public’s fascination. Plus, he felt that speaking with journalists was an easy way to unintentionally share a trade secret that was best kept close to the vest.
Even when the press criticized him, as famous muckrakers like Ida Tarbell did to great acclaim and attention, Rockefeller chose to keep silent. He rarely even read these critiques, not because he couldn’t take feedback — he actively solicited it up and down the Standard Oil ladder — but because he disdained criticism from those he felt lacked sufficient skin in the game.
“It is one thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction and put forth words of cynical wisdom,” he said, “and another to plunge into the work itself and through strenuous experience earn the right to express strong conclusions.”
Though critiques he felt were misguided or outright wrong did get under his skin, he controlled his urge to react, leading one of his partners to exclaim: “John, you have a hide like a rhinoceros!” This ironclad restraint came from his inner-directed nature – he simply didn’t crave the approval of others, especially those he didn’t respect.
His membership in the “never complain, never explain” school of response is perhaps best explained by an anecdote recalled by a friend. The two men were walking around Rockefeller’s estate, with his companion urging him to respond to his critics. By way of an answer, Rockefeller pointed to a caterpillar crossing their path: “If I step on that worm I will call attention to it,” he said. “If I ignore it, it will disappear.”
Check Your Ego
“Only fools get swelled up over money.” –John D. Rockefeller
From the above description, it may seem like Rockefeller was a prideful man. But this was far from the case. Throughout his life he assiduously cultivated his humility. From the very start of his career, he keenly understood the way that power and wealth could lead to hubris, and intentionally trained himself not to be guided by ego.
As his net worth began to steadily increase as a young man, he repeated proverbs like “Pride goeth before a fall” to himself throughout the day. And at night, he would engage in an introspective examination of the state of his soul and his ego. Lying in bed, he would meditate on the volatility of the oil industry and the potential transience of his success, giving himself admonishments like:
“You’ve got a fair fortune. You have a good property — now. But suppose the oil fields gave out!” And:
“Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head — go steady. Are you going to let this money puff you up? Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose your balance.”
Such self-scrutiny, Rockefeller believed, helped him keep his head on straight: “These intimate conversations with myself, I’m sure, had a great influence on my life. I was afraid I could not stand my prosperity, and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions.”
Rockefeller’s membership in a faith community also aided him in keeping a level head. As a teenager, he had been baptized into the Erie Street Baptist Church (later the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church), a small mission church attended by largely lower middle-class congregants.
Rockefeller diligently attended its Friday night prayer services, as well as two Sabbath day services, and sought to serve the church however he could. He not only led prayers and taught Sunday school, but functioned as the church’s volunteer clerk and even janitor. As a fellow congregant remembered, no work was beneath him and he took care of whatever was needed:
“In those years…Rockefeller might have been found there any Sunday sweeping out the halls, building a fire, lighting the lamps, cleaning the walks, ushering the people to their seats, studying the bible, praying, singing, performing all the duties of an unselfish and thorough going church member…He was nothing but a clerk, and had little money, and yet he gave something to every organization in the little, old church.”
Even as he grew into the richest man in the country, Rockefeller didn’t defect to a more “high-status” mainline denomination or switch to attending one of the more well-to-do churches frequented by his tony peers. Instead, he prized the chance to rub shoulders with folks “in the most humble of circumstances” all the more, and never wanted to lose his connection with common people.
Inside and outside the church, Rockefeller was perennially interested in and curious about other people — no matter their walk of life. Wherever he went he asked those he met about themselves, and he listened attentively to what they had to say.
At work, this interest in others extended both up and down the corporate ladder.
His visits to the oil fields earned him the nickname “the Sponge” for the way in which he keenly observed and absorbed all the information he could about how things were running. He conversed not only with those overseeing the operation, but with the rough wildcatters who were actually doing the drilling.
When touring Standard Oil’s refining facilities, he consistently asked supervisors how things could be improved, made a note of their suggestions in the pocket notebook he always carried with him, and then unfailingly followed-up on their ideas.
Such exchanges were motivated by Rockefeller’s bedrock belief that “It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.”
At the meetings of Standard Oil’s directors, Rockefeller sat not at the head of the conference table (a chair he in fact ceded to the director with whom he had the most conflict), but amongst his colleagues. He solicited everyone else’s opinions before offering his own, and even when he did, he framed his ideas as suggestions or questions. Rather than trying to unilaterally enforce his will, he always talked in terms of “we” rather than “I,” encouraged compromise, and required all decisions to be made by consensus.
As Chernow observes, far from this management style chafing his ego, Rockefeller happily delegated responsibilities and “applauded the committee system as relegating him to a fifth wheel.” Indeed, he liked to manage every level of Standard Oil with a light touch that allowed for the maximum autonomy of all his colleagues and subordinates.
Even in his philanthropy, Rockefeller submerged his ego. Unlike many charitable patrons who wanted their name plastered on everything, Rockefeller typically preferred to be a silent, invisible partner in the projects he funded. He specifically asked that buildings not be named after him (though benefactors sometimes insisted), and rarely visited the facilities he brought to life, not wishing to draw attention away from the good work being done, and towards himself.
To Get Wealthy, Have a Purpose Beyond Getting Wealthy
“I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.” –John D. Rockefeller
“The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won’t succeed; you must have a larger ambition.” –JDR
From the time he was a young man, Rockefeller wanted to become wealthy, and he was certainly driven at times in his career by simple avarice. But importantly, his motivation in building his empire did not rest solely on the desire to be rich, but was rather undergirded by satisfactions and purposes outside the acquisitive.
First, he simply enjoyed his work — enjoyed the identity, autonomy, and challenge (no matter how seemingly mundane) it presented. In his first job as a bookkeeper, he toiled from dawn ‘til late in the evening not only to impress his superiors but because the work “was delightful to me — all the method and system of the office.”
While others found ledger books dreary and dry, John D. found them inexhaustibly interesting. He loved poring over the figures — putting them in order, ferreting out errors, making sense of the data.
In all his positions throughout his career, he always found something new to learn, and to seek to improve. “The zest of the work,” he said, “is maintained by something better than the mere accumulation of money.”
As Rockefeller moved up in the world, he worked not just for the sake of its inherent satisfactions, nor only to make more money, but rather had his eye on two larger purposes.
Hirsutism (HUR-soot-iz-um) is a condition of unwanted, male-pattern hair growth in women. Hirsutism results in excessive amounts of dark, course hair on body areas where men typically grow hair — face, chest and back.
First, he wanted to pioneer a new way of doing business. The oil industry was full of investors seeking immediate results — speculators who hoped to hit a gusher and become instantly wealthy. These start-ups had a short-term perspective that created a path of destruction — both in the economy and the natural landscape they gutted in search of black gold.
Rockefeller had a different vision for what the oil industry could become, one built on a long-term perspective, and the desire to create something sustainable and lasting.
In helping to develop the principles of vertical and horizontal integration, and the structure of the trust, he sought to bring organization and stability to the chaotic industry, and in so doing, created the mold of the modern corporation. His goal was nothing less than an economic revolution, one he believed would benefit the nation as a whole. As Rockefeller explained his aim:
“I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money making has never been my goal. I saw a marvelous future for our country, and I wanted to participate in the work of making our country great. I had an ambition to build.”
Of course, not everyone felt that this new way of doing business was a good thing, but Rockefeller himself earnestly believed it was a benevolent pursuit — he saw his life’s greatest work as stabilizing industry, creating jobs, and bringing down the price of kerosene, and then gasoline, thus making it affordable and accessible to the masses.
What added to Rockefeller’s sense of purpose in building his industrial empire, was that the more money he made, the more he could give away. As a boy, his mother had always encouraged him to put some of his pocket change in a collection plate at church, and the philanthropic impulse never left him, and only grew along with his wealth.
In his first year as a bookkeeper, while earning a salary that barely allowed him to get by, Rockefeller gave around 6%, and sometimes more, of his income to charity. By time he was 20, he was consistently giving over 10%.
Young Rockefeller was ecumenical in his giving, donating not just to his church, and to individual congregants in need, but to a mission in the notorious Five Points district of NYC, a Catholic church, and, in a move that was fairly unusual for the time, to charities that aided African-Americans.
In later life, he funded great, ambitious undertakings, including universities, medical research institutes, black schools in the South, and health campaigns around the globe. By the time of his death, he had given away almost $540 million dollars.
Rockefeller saw wealth accumulation like any other vocation or calling, saying:
“I believe the power to make money is a gift from God — just as are the instincts for art, music, literature, the doctor’s talent, the nurse’s, yours — to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.”
Paradoxically enough, wealth often comes as a kind of by-product of the pursuit of other goals, rather than from the pursuit of it itself, and having purposes over and above the mere attainment of money is arguably part of what facilitated Rockefeller’s success. His greater goals fostered a deeper motivation, and a more long-term perspective; rather than myopically chasing immediate results, he was able to focus on building something lasting.
Pay Attention to the Details
Chernow writes that “Rockefeller seemed destined to succeed as much from his fastidious work habits as from innate intelligence,” and the man himself admitted to having “a passion for detail.”
If anything, this was an understatement.
In his personal appearance, Rockefeller always presented himself well-groomed and neatly dressed. His face was always shaved, and his shoes were perennially shined.
When it came to appointments, he was religiously punctual, believing that “A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily.”
He kept his own personal routine to a T — allotting a certain time for business, family, faith, and hobbies, and sticking to that planned schedule down to the second.
In business deals, he always paid his debts and fulfilled his contracts on time.
In dictating letters to his secretaries, he would work his way through 5-6 drafts, refining the wording in each round until he felt it was just right and best conveyed his intent.
Signing these letters was a precise process in and of itself. As an aide remembered, “I have seen him sign his name to hundreds of papers at a sitting. He did each signature carefully as if this particular one was to be the only one by which he was to be remembered for all time. Each signature became in his mind a work of art.”
And of course, when it came to bookkeeping, Rockefeller’s zeal knew no bounds. Early in his career, he “learned to have great respect for figures and facts, no matter how small they were.” If there was a tiny error on an invoice, Rockefeller noticed it. If he was due a few cents more than he was paid, he requested the oversight remedied.
As the chairman of Standard Oil, he was consistently on top of all the numbers being generated by his sprawling empire, as they allowed him to objectively track the health of its various sectors, and to know when the data didn’t match what he was hearing from his subordinates.
Ocean air contains a high percentage of ions which a surfer will inevitably encounter in their quest to find the perfect wave. These mainly come from ions of sodium, magnesium, chloride and sulphate present in sea water. Sodium, the main positive ion found in sea water, is also found in extra-cellular fluids in our bodies. These fluids, such as blood plasma, bathe cells and carry out important transport functions for nutrients and waste. Positive magnesium ions are also used by the body and are an ingredient of some medicines like Epsom salts, which are commonly used to treat aches and pains. Negative chloride ions also play an important physiological role in the central nervous system and in transporting protein around the body. But do these ions actually change the way we feel? The theories advocating the medicinal properties of ions tend to focus on the effects of breathing them in. It is thought that the extra charge helps our bodies take in oxygen and thus increases oxygen flow to the brain. Ocean air contains a high percentage of ions which a surfer will inevitably encounter in their quest to find the perfect wave. These mainly come from ions of sodium, magnesium, chloride and sulphate present in sea water. Sodium, the main positive ion found in sea water, is also found in extra-cellular fluids in our bodies. These fluids, such as blood plasma, bathe cells and carry out important transport functions for nutrients and waste. Positive magnesium ions are also used by the body and are an ingredient of some medicines like Epsom salts, which are commonly used to treat aches and pains. Negative chloride ions also play an important physiological role in the central nervous system and in transporting protein around the body. But do these ions actually change the way we feel? The theories advocating the medicinal properties of ions tend to focus on the effects of breathing them in. It is thought that the extra charge helps our bodies take in oxygen and thus increases oxygen flow to the brain. Opinions on the physiological effects of ions seem to be incredibly polarised between the ardent skeptic and the avid believer. Research seems to be centered around the effect of ionizers, which create a negatively charged atmosphere similar to the relaxing natural environments near waterfalls, on mountains, in forests or by the sea. It is widely accepted that negative ion generators remove dust particles from the air, which can help alleviate the symptoms of patients with respiratory difficulties. Similarly, scientists at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds managed to entirely eliminate common bacterial infections by installing ionizers in their intensive care unit. The team explained that the ions collided with the suspended particles and gave them a charge. The charged particles then clustered together and fell out of the air, disinfecting the atmosphere. At the New York State Psychiatric Institute, researchers found that negative ion therapy helped to alleviate the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of winter depression. During a trial, people were exposed to high and low rate flows of negative ions while they slept. Many of the patients that were exposed to a higher density of negative ions showed an improvement in their symptoms. Negative ions are thought to alleviate depression because of their effect on serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain believed to play an important role in regulating mood. Studies in the 1970s reported that levels of serotonin could be affected by the type and concentration of ions breathed from air. The recent study at the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that devices emitting negatively charged oxygen particles had a similar effect to sunlight, which helps the body produce serotonin and ease seasonal depression. The general consensus in the homeopathic community seems to be that negative ions have beneficial effects whereas positive ions are harmful. It is thought that positive ions cause a massive overproduction of serotonin in the blood which triggers the release of adrenaline into the brain. Although this should not cause any short term problems, if the body produces too much serotonin for long durations then it will not be able to keep up with the production of adrenaline. The sudden rush of adrenaline can cause anxiety and nervousness followed by a tired low as the body struggles to keep up. Ionizer manufacturers often state that their products are emulating the negatively charged atmosphere found in forests and by the sea. However, there is no hard evidence that the therapeutic effect of nature is caused by negative ions and skeptics claim that there could be other factors at work. Scientists at the University of East Anglia have put the distinctive seashore smell down to dimethyl sulphide (DMS), a strong-smelling gas that is emitted by marine microbes. Their research also stresses that inhaling DMS, which is an irritant, is not necessarily healthy, although it is usually present in such low concentrations that it isnt particularly harmful either. In Japan, many people seem to believe that ionizers provide health benefits. Many personal products like toothbrushes, washing machines and refrigerators have been adapted to emit ions. Forest bathing, or shinrinyoku, is a popular Japanese therapy and involves being guided through a forest and taking deep breaths of the air, which is rich with particles emitted by the trees. However, forest bathers mostly agree that the improvement in their wellbeing is caused by breathing in phytoncides released by the trees. Phytoncides are organic compounds that are emitted from some plants to prevent them from rotting or being eaten by certain animals or insects. Although the effect of ions on human health is still being debated, most people would agree that breathing fresh, clean air is good for ones health. Polluted city air and dusty indoor locations are unpleasant for most people, especially those with asthma and other respiratory conditions. Whether this has to do with ions in the air or not, there is no doubt that spending time out in nature contributes to a healthy lifestyle. https://www.earthriversup.com/healing-qualities-of-ocean-air/
As Chernow writes, “It was the way that he extended rationality from the top of his organization down to the lowest rung: Every cost in the Standard Oil universe was computed to several decimal places.” Or in other words, Rockefeller was a big believer in the maxim, “What gets measured gets managed.”
His left hand always knew what his right hand was doing, and he scoffed at rivals who lacked such knowledge: “Many of the brightest kept their books in such a way that they did not actually know when they were making money on a certain operation and when they were losing.”
Some found this obsession with the details overly methodical and exacting, but Rockefeller knew that tiny corrections could end up making a large, lasting impact. For example, while touring a plant he saw that 40 drops of solder were being used to seal kerosene cans destined for export. He asked the foreman to try sealing them with 38 drops; some leaked with 38, but none with 39, and so the switch was made.
Rockefeller recalled:
“That one drop of solder saved $2,500 the first year: but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled — became immensely greater than it was then: and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Live Frugally (Even When You Don’t Have To)
In looking back on the factors that most shaped the trajectory of his success, Rockefeller believed that one of the most important was his decision to track all of his spending and saving. Starting as a young man, John D. had kept a strict accounting of his finances in a small, red pocket notebook he dubbed “Ledger A.”
Pheromones work. But perhaps not eliciting the exact response you might wish. I used several pure pheromones in the past-- androstenol, androstenone, pure castoreum tincture. They do indeed get noticed subliminally by people, and yes, especially females. My observation is that they tend to make people nervous and hyper... they make people agitated, confused, and make them talk endlessly and mindlessly. It makes people suddenly lose their train of thought and go into a kind of blankness, for which they have no explanation. In an office, say, people will come up to you, invade your personal space, and blather and chatter at you about nothing in particular, and they do not seem to want to stop talking or leave your presence, even though the conversation has essentially ended. I think it’s because a pheromone literally creates a challenge or provocation, if only at the subliminal level; People feel they “have a bone to pick” with you, but for the life of them, they cannot imagine what it would be about. It's happened enough times to me to know that the scent must be being perceived and registered, if subliminally. Romantic? Not exactly. And some people--- females, invariably-- actually can register the smell consciously; once a woman told me I smelled "like pee". She was not an urbanite or sophisticate at all... and I believed her. It’s a marketing gimmick. If you read online reviews, there are probably more reviews that say they don’t work at all. And the ones that say they work are probably written by the seller - or they pay or give free product to people to write positive reviews. I’ve seen two articles by journalists about their experiments with pheromone fragrances. One article was written by a young woman, and the other by a young man. They were both under the placebo effect, of course. The man just used one popular and well-priced pheromone fragrance (given to him by his friend to promote the fragrance, I suppose). The woman supposedly bought a few high-priced, more prestigious pheromone perfumes, and some cheaper ones from Amazon. The high-priced placebo effect worked on her, since they helped her attract men, while the lower-priced ones didn’t. I’ve always thought placebo effect was good effect - any effect is good, right? But pheromone fragrances, as well as most things that are supposed to give placebo effect - don’t even seem to give any positive effect. In fact, more negative things seem to happen. I’ve bought some pheromone perfumes online. None worked in the least. One smelled great at first, then quickly turned to a gross “cat piss” smell. It made things go incredibly bad for me - probably because the other people and I were turned off by the revolting smell. The other two pheromone perfumes smelled very pleasant, but people didn’t treat me any differently than usual. Pure marketing gimmick. I think pheromone fragrance manufacturers should feel guilty for promoting something that doesn’t really work. Pheromone fragrances might work for some people - those who are more susceptible to the placebo effect, those who really like the smell and therefore makes them more cheery and outgoing, or a variety of other factors. And then there are people who just really, really want to believe, so confirmation bias is at play there - they take any event that would happen anyway and attribute it to the pheromone fragrance’s power. For most people, no pheromone fragrances are really going to do much of anything. In fact, in reviews, people often write that their usual perfumes get them more compliments and attention. https://www.quora.com/Does-pheromone-perfume-work-for-real-or-is-it-just-a-marketing-gimmick
Even as an old man, he kept it in a safety deposit vault like a sacred relic — which to him it was — a device which had taught him the value of a dollar, or a cent, and thus influenced the outcome of his whole life.
During his lean days as an assistant bookkeeper in Cleveland, making sure his income outpaced his expenditures was a matter of necessity, and he lived as spartanly as possible. As he remembered of the time: “I wore a thin overcoat and thought how comfortable I should be when I could afford a long, thick Ulster. I carried a lunch in my pocket until I was a rich man. I trained myself in the school of self-control and self-denial.”
Even after he accumulated massive wealth, and his personal account books became far denser and more complicated than when he was a boy, rather than outsourcing their auditing to a professional, he pored over the ledgers himself, correcting the tiniest of errors, and, just like in his business life, disputed bills that were inaccurate by a cent or two.
And though he now could afford just about any conceivable entry in the expenditures column, Rockefeller continued to live frugally — relative to his vaunted station in life, of course. He bought and built large houses, but they were always relatively modest compared to what he could have afforded, and what his fellow robber barons constructed.
Inner-directed as he was, he designed and decorated his homes not to impress others, but merely to please himself and his family, and chose a style that eschewed ostentation. This discretion was not only related to his frugality, but also to his aforementioned reserve — he liked to live in a way that masked the true size of his fortune.
Rockefeller kept up his thrifty habits throughout his life as well. He would save the paper and string from packages that arrived in the mail, wear out his suits until they had become almost threadbare, and go though the house at night turning off gas lamps that had been left on. When playing golf, he always used old balls around tricky traps, since they had a good chance of becoming lost. When he saw others using new balls, he’d exclaim in surprise, “They must be very rich!” At the holidays, he and his wife exchanged practical gifts like pens or gloves, and then wrote each other effusive thank you notes, extolling how much they appreciated the present.
The Rockefellers were eager to pass on their frugal ways to their four children, who they understandably worried would grow up to be spoiled adults.
In an attempt to combat this, and impress upon their children an appreciation for what they had, the Rockefellers tried to keep them from grasping the extent of their wealth. They never visited their father’s refineries and offices, and Rockefeller ran his household like a mini, merit-based economy.
Following in his footsteps, each child was required to keep their own accounting books, and they could earn pocket money by doing things like repairing vases, killing flies, pulling weeds, chopping wood, and abstaining from candy. The children wore hand-me-down clothing, and received only a modest number of gifts and toys.
For example, when they all asked for bicycles, Rockefeller decided against getting a bike for each, and instead opted to buy only one they would need to learn to share. “Amazingly enough,” Chernow notes, “the four children probably grew up with a level of creature comforts not that far above what Rockefeller had known as a boy.”
Rockefeller not only tried to impart the value of money to his children, but later to his grandchildren as well. When he visited them, he would give each a nickel, accompanied by a kiss and this admonishment:
“Do you know what would hurt grandfather a great deal? To know that any of you boys should become wasteful, extravagant, careless with his money…Be careful, boys, and then you’ll always be able to help unfortunate people. That is your duty, and you must never forget it.”
Rockefeller’s frugality for frugality’s sake represented a commitment to a life principle — a stance, an attitude — that he wished to maintain even when thrift no longer served a “practical” purpose. It served as a check to ego and a continual reorientation towards wealth — a reminder not to take it for granted, an acknowledgement of its potential transience, and a reaffirmation of the ability to go without.
In a way, Rockefeller’s frugality wasn’t about money at all — but rather a way to exercise the muscle that had generated his success in the first place and continued to hold it all together: self-mastery.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/john-rockefellers-keys-to-success/
Mystery man convinces Founding Fathers to sign Declaration of Independence - the myth goes that on July 4, 1776, while sequestered behind locked doors, the Continental Congress of the 13 British Colonies (our Founding Fathers) were in hot debate on whether or not to sign the Declaration of Independence and break from Great Britain.
Most of the men feared for their lives and their family’s lives, for if they were to sign such a document, they would be traitors to the crown, and would almost certainly be put to death if found. As these men were debating the issue, and leaning toward NOT signing, a mysterious man arises from out of nowhere.
“Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment he said, ‘Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines—freedom.’
And he added, ‘If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever.’
And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be.
They were a couple of guys from Europe with buff bods and shoulder-length dreadlocks who sold millions of albums without singing a note. They performed as Milli Vanilli until November 1990, when their deep, dark secret was revealed. They were frauds. It was not Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus who sang ``Girl, You Know It's True,'' and other songs on albums with their faces on the cover. The voices belonged to anonymous studio singers hired by record producer Frank Farian. In music videos, Rob and Fab danced in that puppet-on-a-string style of theirs while pretending to sing. They took part in a grand deception. ``We were stupid, naive kids,'' said Morvan the other day from Los Angeles where he is working to revive his singing career. The rise and fall of Milli Vanilli is for all to see tonight at 9 on VH-1 in the launch of a new series, ``Behind the Music.'' VH-1 has two extraordinary tales here. There is the sad story of Milli Vanilli - Morvan and Pilatus - who sold their souls to the devil. Then there is the no less depressing focus on rapper M.C. Hammer and how he let $50 million get away from him. That happens when you buy 17 automobiles, 21 racehorses, build a $10 million mansion, spend $60,000 a month on baubles, and hire people for $500 a week to do nothing but stand around. Of the two stories, the Milli Vanilli expose is more compelling. VH-1 shows how Morvan and Pilatus were easily swayed by Farian to take part in a deceit that brought in millions. ``They wanted fame, money and women, and would do anything to have it all,'' say Jeff Gaspin and George Moll, who produce ``Behind the Music.'' Farian found willing partners in Morvan and Pilatus. Morvan had been a homeless person living in a train station in Munich when he met Pilatus, a male model who couldn't find work. ``We had no money. We had nothing. We wanted to be stars, wanted to be on stage. We were driven to be stars,'' said Pilatus in the VH-1 interview. When Farian saw the men singing and dancing together in Munich nightclubs, he invited them to his recording studio for an audition. They flunked it. ``They were . . . very bad,'' he says on VH-1. But the no-name singers who recorded ``Girl'' were great. Trouble is, they didn't have any sex appeal. They were in their 40s and hardly MTV material. But what if Farian made a music video in which Fab and Rob lip-synched to their voices? The collaboration was born in Munich nine years ago. ``Basically, we made it all up,'' said Pilatus of the act known as Milli Vanilli. ``We were actors posing as singers.'' To borrow a line from VH-1, Morvan and Pilatus lived a ``fabulous lie'' for about two years - and might still be living that lie if not for one totally unexpected development. Milli Vanilli won two American Music awards and the Grammy for best new artists in 1989. ``It was the last thing we wanted,'' said Pilatus. ``The Grammy for us became a nightmare. The clock began ticking on our careers the night we won.'' While it wasn't general knowledge that Farian's studio singers were doing the vocals for Milli Vanilli, there was some buzz. It started when a tape got stuck as Morvan and Pilatus were appearing in concert. In the VH-1 special, there is a marvelous shot of Pilatus rushing offstage to locate the tape player and make it right again. When the Grammys were announced, Farian knew the masquerade would soon end. On Nov. 20, 1990, he called a press conference to say Milli Vanilli was finished. He said it was time to stop the music, end what he called ``this crazy idea.'' Morvan and Pilatus naively expected other producers to call. The phone didn't ring. ``From that point, they were outcasts in the music business,'' says VH-1. At the age of 31, Morvan appears to be doing better than Pilatus, who has been in and out of 10 drug rehabilitation programs since 1990. He's considered suicide at least once. The men last met in 1995. ``We've grown apart. We've gone our different ways,'' said Morvan, who was more than happy to cooperate with the VH-1 producers. ``I'm grateful for the chance to tell my side of the story. We were stupid and naive, but at the same time we were used by an industry that never shared in the blame.'' Why did the world come down so hard on these two selfish innocents, Morvan and Pilatus? Was Jennifer Beals ostracized when it was revealed she did not do all her steps in ``Flashdance''? Did the fact that Audrey Hepburn lip-synched her way through ``My Fair Lady'' damage her film career? Fans turned on Milli Vanilli, says VH-1. Some burned and steamrolled their albums. Morvan and Pilatus wanted to sing, make records with no phantom voices. No major record label was interested. ``We were thrown to the wolves,'' said Morvan from Los Angeles where today he sings solo in small clubs, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. ``We were made the scapegoats.'' https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1997/vp970824/08220109.htm
And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.” (CPAC. “1974 Speech by Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA).” Available fromhttp://ww.cpac.org/pressroom/reagan/reagan1974.asp Internet; accessed 25 June 2009.)
The casual reader may not see the significance but many Latter-day Saints know exactly who the mystery man is. Of course, it’s either Moroni, John the Revalator, or one of the Three Nephites.
This story was presented by then Governor Ronald Reagan to CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) on January 25, 1974. To his credit, he prefaced the story by saying, “I confess, I never researched or made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. (Ibid.)” However well intended, this myth is not true simply because the events described never happened. The Founding Fathers never met to discuss the option of signing the Declaration.
They did meet to discuss adopting the “Lee Resolution” which called for the drafting of a Declaration of Independence. There were parties for and against the resolution, but none of these men were cowering before the document and pen before them.
The Lee Resolution was presented on June 7, 1776, and adopted by 12 of the 13 colonies (New York abstaining from vote) on July 2, 1776.
The Declaration itself had already been drafted by Thomas Jefferson, but had undergone edits in a committee before it was presented to the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and the ONLY names to appear on the printed copy were John Hancock (who was the President of the Continental Congress) and Charles Thomson (John Hancock’s secretary).
When the document reached King George III of England, these were the only two names he would have seen. The document we so honor and cherish and put on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. is actually a copy of the original engrossed copy, that is handwritten on animal skin, and was signed by various delegates over the next several months, and not all at one time.
Perhaps the perpetuation of this myth is aided by a painting by John Trumbull, entitled “Declaration of Independence.” You have seen it on the back of the $2 bill. It depicts the Founding Fathers presumably signing the document in the events described by Gov. Reagan.
However, John Trumbull was a portrait painter for most of the Founding Fathers. This painting, not completed until 1821, was to be a kind of “greatest hits” where he could place all of his portraits in one place. There are noticeably not 56 men in the painting. If this event did transpire, it was merely the committee in charge of drafting the Declaration presenting it to John Hancock for approval…no mass signing ever took place, so the mystery man could not have appeared.
http://holyfetch.com/mystery-man-convinces-signing-declaration-independence/
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye --
when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties.
To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.
Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.
During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.
We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others;
possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter -- with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration.
I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people --
a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them;
the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs.
I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.
https://speakola.com/political/thomas-jefferson-inaugural-address-1801
Marked "Hawkins & Peale's Patent Polygraph No. 57," this machine was used by Jefferson from 1806 until his death. Jefferson first acquired the letter-copying device he called "the finest invention of the present age" in March of 1804.
Invented and named by Englishman John Isaac Hawkins, the polygraph used the principles of the pantograph, a draftsman's tool for reducing and enlarging drawings.2 The writer's hand moves one pen whose action is duplicated by the second one, producing a copy strikingly like the original. Before he returned to England in 1803, Hawkins assigned his American patent rights to Charles Willson Peale, who developed and marketed the invention.3 Jefferson was one of his most eager clients, purchasing one for the President's House and one for Monticello.
He soon exchanged these machines for new ones, as Peale continued to perfect the design — often according to Jefferson's suggestions. By 1809 Jefferson wrote that "the use of the polygraph has spoiled me for the old copying press the copies of which are hardly ever legible . . . . I could not, now therefore, live without the Polygraph.
A second Jefferson polygraph, made in England for Hawkins, survives at the American Philosophical Society. It was given by Jefferson's grandson-in-law and last secretary, Nicholas P. Trist.
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/polygraph
The average human lifespan is around 80 years, but the cells in our bodies live, die, and grow again along much shorter lifespans. Cells turnover at different rates and for different reasons. Consider the skin: it’s constantly exposed to hazards including both physical abrasions, and harmful UV rays that cause mutations.
Because of these hazards, our skin cells replace themselves about every month to make sure that our skin stays strong and mutation free. This is starkly different from neural tissue, the infrastructure for sending electrical signals throughout the body. Some neurons never turnover, because many neurons are large, branched cells that are very difficult to replace without disrupting their important functions.
Then there’s the Merkel cell, which helps detect the sense of touch. We have several types of cells in our skin that detect different types of touch, like pressure, vibrations, or temperature. Merkel cells are the closest to the skin’s surface, allowing us to detect the gentlest sensations. If you close your eyes, you can easily detect the subtle difference between a hard granite or a relatively soft marble countertop, and you have the Merkel cell to thank.
But the Merkel cell presents a conundrum when we think about lifespan. It’s a skin cell, so we would expect it to turnover frequently; however, it functions like a neuron, forming synapses with sensory neurons, so we would also expect a slow turnover rate. For this reason, scientists still debate turnover rate of Merkel cells.
Why do we care about Merkel cell turnover? For one, we want to understand more about how Merkel cells repair after injury, a question that matters enormously to burn victims and the elderly, who have a diminished sense of touch.
Understanding more about how Merkel cells develop may result in therapies to help restore the sense of touch in these individuals. But cell turnover matters most for understanding cancer, which is often driven by mutations in genes that regulate turnover. A rare but deadly cancer called Merkel Cell Carcinoma is caused by skin cells that appear to change in part into Merkel cells.
Many scientists believe that Merkel cells turnover frequently as most skin cells do; however, our lab thought this didn’t make sense, so we set out to test if this was true. To test this hypothesis, we used a technique called lineage tracing, a method created by developmental biologists to ask what happens to a cell over time.
To make lineage tracing work, scientists take genes that are expressed in specific cells and reprogram them to produce a marker that we can see. This allows us to track a cell like GPS tracks your location. We used this technique to put a marker on all of the Merkel cells in a mouse, then we came back nine months later to see what happened to them. Surprisingly, we saw that all the Merkel cells still had the marker. The Merkel cells did not turnover at all.
But we weren’t finished yet. We knew that other scientists would have a hard time believing us, so we wanted to bolster our hypothesis with a different model, and perhaps simply use a microscope to look at Merkel cells in living mice.
Luckily, we had a strain of transgenic mice, animals with foreign genes introduced, which produce a fluorescent protein in their Merkel cells. We took these mice, shaved off their hair to get as close to the skin as possible, then placed them directly under a microscope. To our surprise, through all the layers of skin, we saw clusters of bright green Merkel cells – the experiment worked!
But we still wanted to know whether Merkel cell numbers changed overtime, so we went to the CVS down the street and bought some Barbasol. Every week, we brought the same group of mice to my lab bench, covered their abdomens with shaving cream, and shaved their bellies with a disposable razor.
Then we carried them to the microscope and measured the number of Merkel cells in their skin. After a few weeks, we noticed a few new Merkel cells arising in different parts of the skin. We were seeing turnover.
We were baffled. In our first experiments, we measured no turnover of Merkel cells. It seemed that Merkel cells lived forever. But in this new experiment, we were seeing new Merkel cells produced every few weeks. The difference couldn’t be due to error, so what else could it be? We laid out the experiments and wondered what had caused the discrepancy. Only one difference stood out: in the second experiment we were shaving the mice.
A tiny Etruscan shrew’s impressive array of whiskers helps satisfy its
enormous appetite for food. The shrews can flick their whiskers 20 times
a second when searching for their favorite snack — a juicy cricket.
Could shaving cause Merkel cell turnover? We think it could. When you shave, you don’t just cut the hair, you scrape the top layers of skin, creating a skin abrasion. Human skin is thick, so we may not notice. Mouse skin, however, is only a few cell layers deep, so removing a layer of cells could cause a wound response. We believe that wound response is causing Merkel cell turnover.
From these experiments, we concluded that Merkel cells almost never turnover. Under normal conditions, they rest in your skin and help you detect physical stimuli around you, and don’t usually turnover, because this would disrupt your sense of touch. However, since they sit in an area of the body that receives frequent skin injury, it makes sense that a repair mechanism exists. It seems that injury increases Merkel cell turnover.
We still have more to discover about what causes the production of Merkel cells. Some scientists don’t agree with us. Their experiments show that Merkel cells turnover quite frequently, so we will first need to repeat a few experiments to determine if an error was made.
Still, our experiments tell us that skin shaving seems to cause Merkel cell production, but what’s happening under the skin? After shaving, a wound response causes a release of many molecules to promote regrowth of the tissue, and we would like to look at these specific molecules to see which ones promote Merkel cell growth. Could these same molecules cause progression of Merkel cell carcinoma?
I am curious about the correlation between the two mouse models used. It does seem possible that the shaving is inducing the Merkel Cell turnover in the transgenic mice, but would the same effect be visible if you regularly shaved the initial lineage-tracing mice?
I.e., when you take the tracing mice down, those who had been shaved regularly would have more non-tagged Merkel Cells since there would be new generations of cells in response to the skin manipulation. In the same vein, could the transgenic line be crossed into a hairless background, and then you could see if the fluorescent cells change without any shaving at all?
If both are true, then I would completely agree that shaving is the culprit. But otherwise, how much of this effect could be based more on the mouse used than the skin manipulation?
I had a question about the marker you use to identify Merkel cells (keratin 8). Is there any possibility it’s expressed in other cell types closely associated with the Merkel cells? Maybe there are two populations: one “true” set of Merkel cells that are long-lived, and another set of damage-responsive accessory cells that also happen express keratin 8?
This is supported by the fact that the new GFP-positive cells you find in shaved mice are innervated at lower rates. Maybe you’ve identified a new cell type! I also wonder about the effects of the anesthesia used on the shaved mice on cell production – did you do anesthetize a control without shaving?
It’s true that keratin 8 is expressed by a few types of cells, but we also know that our newly created cells express Atoh1 (another Merkel cell marker), so we’re pretty sure they are Merkel cells. And good point about the anesthesia! We did a proliferation assay where we gave mice EdU water to label dividing Merkel cells. These mice we shaved without administering anesthesia (very difficult), and we saw the same results.
This, to me, is exactly what working in a cell biology lab is like. Looking at fluorescent proteins under the scope? Check. Trips to CVS for low-tech supplies absolutely essential to your experiments? Check. Conflicting data that make you want to pull out your own hair and measure your Merkel cell regeneration? A million checks.
This is a really important question, so I hope you get to the bottom of it. Why do you think some types of sensory neuron regenerate and others don’t? For instance the neurons we use to smell turn over for most of our lives, but a bad virus can do damage we don’t recover from. This is hand-wavey, but maybe at a certain point, there just aren’t enough axons left for new ones to find their way to the spinal cord or brain?
https://massivesci.com/articles/shaving-mice-for-a-living/
Have you ever looked across the breakfast table at the stubble on your dad's unshaven face and thought, "Whiskers are weird"?
Well, whiskers are unusual, but not uncommon. In fact, almost all mammals, from walruses to wombats, have whiskers. For many animals, the special hairs that scientists call vibrissae (vi-BRI-see) serve important purposes.
Vibrissae differ from regular hair or fur. First, whiskers are thicker and often longer. You probably noticed that if you ever stroked the face of a cat or dog. Second, the follicles that anchor vibrissae in the skin have many more nerve and blood vessel connections than do the follicles that hold regular hair. The specialized nerves, called mechanoreceptors (me-KAN-oh-reh-SEP-terz), make whiskers sensitive to touch, just like your fingertips.
Since whiskers stick so far out, they extend an animal’s sense of touch. Moving them can help too. Fortunately, your dad can’t move his whiskers. Horses and cows can’t either. Many mammals, including seals and cats, can sweep their vibrissae back and forth. Others animals, like rats, mice and shrews, swish their whiskers in all directions, just like a cook’s whisk.
The motion and sensitivity of whiskers provide these animals with valuable information about whatever they touch. Many scientists have been probing that information. Their research has uncovered some big surprises — including in one of the world’s smallest mammals.
Shrews whisk - Etruscan (ee-TRUSK-kan) shrews are tiny, whisker-faced mammals. An adult weighs about 1.8 grams (six hundredths of an ounce), or less than a half-teaspoon of sugar. These tiny shrews have huge appetites. To stay alive, they need to eat more than their bodyweight each day.
Unfortunately, the crickets that shrews love to eat are tricky to capture. Crickets are speedy, springy and nocturnal, or active only at night. So how do Etruscan shrews catch enough crickets to stay alive? A team of scientists led by neurobiologist Michael Brecht at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands wanted to find out. (A neurobiologist studies features of nerves and their functions.)
In 2006, the team used a high-speed video camera to film Etruscan shrews hunting. An infrared light, invisible to the shrews, illuminated the scene.
The team first noticed that the shrews caught crickets just as easily if the insects were still or moving. This meant the shrews didn't rely on movement to detect prey. The scientists then noticed the shrews almost always bit the crickets in the very same spot, right behind the head. This precision impressed the scientists. How did the shrews do it?
To learn more, the scientists watched shrew videos in slow motion. The team determined the shrews flicked their whiskers back and forth about 20 times per second when attacking. The shrews moved their heads too, adding to the movement of their whiskers. Over and over, the shrews used their whiskers to brush the crickets. That repeated contact suggested vibrissae helped the shrews find crickets in the dark.
To test the importance of whiskers, the scientists trimmed them. First, the team cut the microvibrissae, or smaller whiskers, around the shrews’ mouths. How did the shrews cope? Not so well: They went from catching nearly every cricket to catching roughly half. However, trimmed shrews still aimed their teeth accurately. Most of their bites continued to land right on target, just behind the head.
Next, the scientists shaved the larger whiskers, or macrovibrissae, off a new set of shrews. Before the shave, these shrews had successfully captured nearly every cricket. After the shave, their success rate also dropped to half. Furthermore, losing the macrovibrissae also reduced the animals’ biting accuracy. These shrews landed bites all over the crickets, not just behind their heads.
Scientists concluded that without their long and short whiskers, wild shrews might not be able to capture enough prey. "They survive whisker trimming in captivity," says Brecht, "but this might be because we supply them with lots of easy prey."
Other whiskered animals use their vibrissae to locate prey without even touching it directly. Among them is the harbor seal, which has highly sensitive vibrissae. How sensitive? Ten times more nerve endings surround a seal whisker than a rat whisker.
Sensory biologist Wolfe Hanke of the University of Rostock in Germany and his colleagues worked with a trained harbor seal named Henry to study whisker sensitivity. In 2000, the team discovered that Henry’s whiskers allowed him to detect a fake fish’s watery trail 35 seconds after it had swum past.
Hanke suspected Henry’s whiskers could do even more. The scientist knew different fish created different trails in the water, depending on their size, motion and speed. Hanke hypothesized that Henry could use his whiskers to “read” this information in deciding whether a passing fish was worth chasing.
To test this hypothesis, the scientists set up an experiment. Instead of fake fish, the team used paddles of different sizes and shapes attached to a motorized device. Each paddle stirred the water in a particular way — just as different fish would. Could Henry tell apart the different paddles, just from the way they moved water? First, the seal had to cooperate.
"Henry most of the time has fun participating in the experiments, especially when the tasks are not too hard to solve," says Hanke. "But as the experiment becomes more difficult, he becomes frustrated, sometimes refusing to take part. After a break, he usually agrees to go back to work."
To begin, scientists put a blindfold and earmuffs on the seal. Henry then waited while the scientists used the device to move a paddle through the water. The scientists then turned off the motor, removed Henry's earmuffs and allowed the seal to stick his face in the water.
There, the seal could feel the paddle’s wake with his whiskers. The scientists had trained Henry to touch a yellow ball with his nose for each new and different paddle he sensed. Correct choices earned Henry a herring snack.
When scientists moved two different paddles at the same speed, Henry could easily tell them apart, just by their wake. In fact, the seal could detect size differences down to 3.6 centimeters (1.4 inches). When scientists moved the paddles at different speeds, Henry still did a pretty good job, detecting size differences down to 4.3 centimeters.
Henry had the easiest time with flat paddles, distinguishing their wake eight out of every 10 tries. The seal did almost as well with wavy and cylindrical paddles, identifying them six in every 10 tries.
Henry’s ability to distinguish among paddles of different sizes and shapes, even when they moved at different speeds, led the scientists to believe whiskers help seals make smart choices when hunting in the wild.
"The perception of water movements by the whiskers is the most important source of information for harbor seals," Hanke says. "The water is dark and turbid. They see with their whiskers, not with their eyes."
Why have whisking whiskers? Not all animals use their whiskers to find food. Some use whiskers to "see" in the dark. Clues regarding the usefulness of whiskers for navigation come from research on why some creatures whisk.
Robyn Grant, at the University of Sheffield's Active Touch Laboratory, studies how different rodents and other small animals use their whiskers. She and her team have studied at least three species of mice and voles, along with brown rats, hazel dormice and water shrews.
"I myself really like to find out why animals do what they do. So why they have evolved certain strategies for survival is really interesting to me," explains Grant.
Like Brecht, the Etruscan-shrew researcher, Grant also uses a high-speed video camera to capture and later watch in slow-mo what different animals do with their whiskers. The cameras can capture 500 frames, or individual pictures, per second.
Grant’s experiments reveal that dormice whisk their whiskers up to 25 times per second, moving them up, out and straight ahead. Since these nocturnal rodents spend summer nights scurrying in trees, whisking their vibrissae against branches allows them to feel their way around when darkness falls.
"Dormice push their whiskers very far forward. We think this may be really useful when they climb, so they can scan the area in front of their feet and inspect gaps and branch crossings," Grant explains.
Another rodent, the rat, also uses its whiskers to sense its surroundings in fine detail. While humans stroke to determine textures, press to judge shapes and squeeze to assess hardness, rats whisk.
About 30 vibrissae flank either side of a rat’s nose. Years of research by scientists around the world have revealed some amazing things about those whiskers. With just one to three touches, and in just one-tenth of a second, rats can use their whiskers to determine the texture of a surface.
And that's not all. Rats also can distinguish between openings that differ by only 0.3 centimeter (a little over a tenth of an inch). They can tell the difference between posts set 24 hundredths of a centimeter apart. And a rat’s whiskers can tell a smooth surface from one with grooves as shallow as three thousandths of a centimeter. So whiskers make navigating in the dark a snap for rats.
That impressive skill has challenged some scientists to create robots that can do the same.
One international team has spent more than four years building robotic devices equipped with sensors that mimic the shape, spread and movement of rat whiskers. The BIOmimetic Technology for vibrissal ACtive Touch (BIOTACT) team’s G2 sensor attaches to a robot arm that sweeps over objects below it. Meanwhile, its Shrewbot pursues moving prey across the floor, using only touch.
The G2 sensor and Shrewbot both use artificial whiskers to distinguish between objects of different shapes and textures. "They actively move their whiskers back and forward to explore their world," explains team member Charlie Sullivan, an engineer in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the United Kingdom. "Shrewbot can also find its way around in the dark, using only this sense of touch. It can even detect and follow other moving robots using just the tactile sensations from its whiskers."
One day, whiskered robots may dart about in dark, dusty or smoky environments. For now, these machines still can't touch the skill many whiskered animals have when it comes to feeling their way around.
"Within the controlled conditions in our lab the robots work very well. However, there is still a lot of work to do before they are ready to work in the real world," explains Sullivan. "Most robots that work in the real world use lots of other kinds of sensors, like laser rangefinders and vision systems. We're attempting to create robots that can work effectively with just the sense of touch."
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/whisker
Hair is a conductor, although such a poor one that hair is usually called an isolator. According to this study the conductivity of a single hair is 0.006 picosiemens, so the resistance is 200 teraohm (tera=10^12), when the relative humidity of the air is 40%.
Scientists consider hair as a proton semiconductor. You have to know that static electricity appears when moisture is unable to penetrate into your hair. It’s due to the build up of substances like silicon or other hair products.
Sukiyabashi Jiro, the sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza area that has had three stars since the first edition of the Tokyo Michelin Guide, has been dropped from the 2020 edition — and news expectedly flew around the world. So much so that the UK paper, The Guardian, reported that the best sushi restaurant in the world had been “stripped of its three Michelin stars.” That’s farthest from the truth — in fact, according to AFP, the Michelin Guide denies that this is the case, as they are reported to have said that the restaurant lost stars as Michelin’s policy is to introduce restaurants where everybody can go to eat. And that is an important point in understanding the guide’s 2020 edition. According to the spokeswoman, the guide’s decision has nothing to do with the quality of food and service at Sukiyabashi Jiro, but rather everything to do with the fact that it is very difficult to get a reservation to eat there. It’s true that it is difficult to reserve a seat at Jiro’s restaurant, at least in my personal experience. However, when I went there with a friend of mine, I had a great time eating the best sushi in my life. The bigger picture in the 2020 Michelin Guide is actually Tokyo once again being the most starred city in the world, with 226 Michelin-starred restaurants, 11 of them with three stars. “Taking full advantage of its position as a center for high-quality food, and highly skilled domestic and international chefs who prepare it, Tokyo is likely to continue to lead the world as a city of gastronomy,” said CEO of Nihon Michelin Tire Co., Ltd., Paul Perriniaux. However, Tokyo has held the record for some years now as the city with the most stars, so this information is not actually news. The shocking news for 2020 was Michelin’s exclusion of not just one but two excellent restaurants: Sukiyabashi Jiro and Sushi Saito, both 3-star restaurants in the previous edition. In fact, Sushi Saito in Tokyo’s Roppongi neighborhood was awarded three stars just last year. Restaurants around the world covet ratings in the Michelin Guide. The 2020 edition on Tokyo also adds many new restaurants to its list, including one new 3-star, three new 2-star, and 19 new 1-star restaurants. Among those on the list is the first and only 2-star Italian restaurant in the city, Prisma, which ironically is not managed by Italians. (It had 1-star in 2018.) This choice, too, left many people quite astonished, but not as shocked as the news that Sukiyabashi Jiro and Sushi Saito were dropped completely. This quick change of mind should make us think. Since the goal of guides — including Michelin — is to help readers who are members of the general public to find the best places for them to eat, some restaurants must necessarily be left out. This may be especially true in Japan. Even those who know only a little about Japan will quickly notice that there are some places where it is not easy to get in to eat. One reason is structural: throughout Tokyo you can find many places like Sukiyabashi Jiro with only 10 seats. The city is huge, there are millions of people, but they have only 10 seats and two seating per night, for a total of 20 customers. It’s natural that they cannot accommodate everybody, and understandable that it can take time to get a reservation there — sometimes it already seems impossible. Another reason is cultural and historical. In the past, many Japanese restaurants had been exclusive places. Ochiya, for example, are tea houses that you can’t even locate since they are absolutely not in any guide. Even if you pass by one, you will unlikely recognize it because these tea houses appear to be normal traditional house. Simply speaking, the best places in Japan are hidden. It is the place described by Junichiro Tanizaki in his masterpiece, In Praise of Shadow — a place that appreciates the unveiled, the untold, the charm of secrets. How can this be told in a guide? Perhaps, instead of ignoring these tiny gems and removing top Japanese restaurants like Sukiyabashi Jiro and Sushi Saito from its list, the Michelin Guide should create a new section for the top restaurants that are difficult to book, giving them something like four stars. Because, on the other side, can a top guide like Michelin afford to miss out on having the top sushi restaurants in the world on its list? https://japan--forward-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/japan-forward.com/what-can-michelin-guide-do-instead-of-dropping-top-rank-sushi-restaurant-sukibayashi-jiro/amp/?amp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&prerenderSize=1&visibilityState=visible&paddingTop=32&p2r=0&horizontalScrolling=0&csi=1&aoh=15757803740521&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fjapan-forward.com%2Fwhat-can-michelin-guide-do-instead-of-dropping-top-rank-sushi-restaurant-sukibayashi-jiro%2Famp%2F&history=1&storage=1&cid=1&cap=navigateTo%2Ccid%2CfullReplaceHistory%2Cfragment%2CreplaceUrl
Well, it really depends on what kind of electricity is being talked about. Static Electricity? Well yes it does, and that's why your hair might “stand up or straighten” when they come in contact with a charged body.
However, when we talk about continuously flowing electric charges, dry hair are insulators and do not conduct electricity. However, wet hair are much better at conducting the electricity, although they are also proton semiconductors at best.
I'd say that hair is an insulator. Here is the reason why :
First of all, when some charge is transferred to a conductor, it readily gets distributed over the entire surface of the conductor. In contrast, if some charge is put on an insulator, it stays at the same place. This is why a plastic comb gets electrified on combing dry hair, but a metal article does not.
Let's see what happens on the other side - hair. If we consider hair to be a conductor then it behaves just like how a metal does by distributing the charge over the entire surface (or to put in simpler terms, it simply allows the passage of charge) and Now, our body being a conductor it does the same and passes it to the earth. And all of us know this does not happen!
Therefore, HAIR is a poor conductor or simply an insulator!
https://www.quora.com/Is-hair-a-conductor-of-electricity
Thomas Jefferson was an astute observer of the natural world. The daily activities of sowing seeds, manuring asparagus, and harvesting peas between 1809 and 1826 are precisely recorded in his "Garden Kalendar," a part of his famous Garden Book. Jefferson was often the detached scientist in the Kalendar as he recorded that his Hotspur peas were "killed by frost Oct. 23," or that his yellow squash "came to nothing" in 1809.
He could also record remarkable detail as in 1811 when he noted of his Asparagus beans that "2/3 pint sow a large square, rows 2 1/2 feet apart and 1 f. and 18 I. apart in the row, one half at each distance."
For Jefferson, the vegetable garden was a kind of laboratory where he could experiment with imported squashes and broccoli from Italy, beans and salsify collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, figs from France, and peppers from Mexico.
Although he would grow as many as twenty varieties of bean and fifteen types of English pea, his use of the scientific method selectively eliminated inferior types: "I am curious to select one or two of the best species or variety of every garden vegetable, and to reject all others from the garden to avoid the dangers of mixing or degeneracy."
Although the garden was essentially a functional part of the plantation, Jefferson occasionally considered other ornamental features aside from the garden pavilion.
He discussed planting an arbor of different flowering shades of the scarlet runner bean (shown at left), arranged adjacent rows of purple, white, and green sprouting broccoli, or even white and purple eggplant, and he bordered his tomato square with sesame or okra, a rather unusual juxtaposition of plant textures. Cherry trees were also planted along the "long, grass walk" of the garden to provide shade.
"I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that . . . as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet."
Salads were an important part of Jefferson's diet. He would note the planting of lettuce and radishes every two weeks through the growing season, grow interesting greens such as orach, corn salad, endive, and nasturtiums, and yearly plant sesame in order to manufacture a palatable salad oil.
Although the English pea is considered his favorite vegetable, he also cherished figs, asparagus, French artichokes, and such "new" vegetables as tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli, and cauliflower.
While Jefferson cultivated more common vegetables such as cucumbers, beans (both "snaps" for fresh use and "haricots" that were dried), and cabbages, he also prized his sea kale (Crambe maritima, shown above right), a perennial cabbage-like vegetable whose spring sprouts were blanched with clay pots, then cut and prepared like asparagus."
https://www.monticello.org/house-gardens/farms-gardens/vegetable-garden/jefferson-the-scientist-and-gardener/
With a pounding heart and rapid breath, Laika rode a rocket into Earth orbit, 2,000 miles above Moscow streets she knew. Overheated, cramped, frightened, and probably hungry, the space dog gave her life for her country, involuntarily fulfilling a canine suicide mission.
Sad as this tale is, the stray husky-spitz mix became a part of history as the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Over the decades, the petite pioneer has repeatedly found new life in popular culture long after her death and the fiery demise of her Soviet ship, Sputnik 2, which smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere 60 years ago this month.
Soviet engineers planned Sputnik 2 hastily after Premier Nikita Khrushchev requested a flight to coincide with November 7, 1957, the 40th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. Using what they had learned from the unmanned and undogged Sputnik 1 and often working without blueprints, teams labored quickly to build a ship that included a pressurized compartment for a flying dog.
Sputnik 1 had made history, becoming the first man-made object in Earth orbit October 4, 1957. Sputnik 2 would go into orbit with the final stage of the rocket attached, and engineers believed the ship’s 1,120-pound payload, six times as heavy as Sputnik 1, could be kept within limits by feeding its passenger only once.
They expected Laika to die from oxygen deprivation—a painless death within 15 seconds—after seven days in space. Cathleen Lewis, the curator of international space programs and spacesuits at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum doubts that a few ounces of food would have made a difference, and she recalls reports that a female physician broke protocol by feeding Laika before liftoff.
The Soviet canine recruiters began their quest with a herd of female stray dogs because females were smaller and apparently more docile. Initial tests determined obedience and passivity. Eventually, canine finalists lived in tiny pressurized capsules for days and then weeks at a time.
The doctors also checked their reactions to changes in air pressure and to loud noises that would accompany liftoff. Testers fitted candidates with a sanitation device connected to the pelvic area. The dogs did not like the devices, and to avoid using them, some retained bodily waste, even after consuming laxatives. However, some adapted.
Eventually, the team chose the placid Kudryavka (Little Curly) as Sputnik 2’s dog cosmonaut and Albina (White) as backup. Introduced to the public via radio, Kudryavka barked and later became known as Laika, “barker” in Russian.
Rumors emerged that Albina had out-performed Laika, but because she had recently given birth to puppies and because she had apparently won the affections of her keepers, Albina did not face a fatal flight. Doctors performed surgery on both dogs, embedding medical devices in their bodies to monitor heart impulses, breathing rates, blood pressure and physical movement.
Soviet physicians chose Laika to die, but they were not entirely heartless. One of her keepers, Vladimir Yazdovsky, took 3-year-old Laika to his home shortly before the flight because “I wanted to do something nice for the dog,” he later recalled.
Three days before the scheduled liftoff, Laika entered her constricted travel space that allowed for only a few inches of movement. Newly cleaned, armed with sensors, and fitted with a sanitation device, she wore a spacesuit with metal restraints built-in. On November 3 at 5:30 a.m., the ship lifted off with G-forces reaching five times normal gravity levels.
The noises and pressures of flight terrified Laika: Her heartbeat rocketed to triple the normal rate, and her breath rate quadrupled. The National Air and Space Museum holds declassified printouts showing Laika’s respiration during the flight. She reached orbit alive, circling the Earth in about 103 minutes.
Unfortunately, loss of the heat shield made the temperature in the capsule rise unexpectedly, taking its toll on Laika. She died “soon after launch,” Russian medical doctor and space dog trainer Oleg Gazenko revealed in 1993. “The temperature inside the spacecraft after the fourth orbit registered over 90 degrees,” Lewis says. “There’s really no expectation that she made it beyond an orbit or two after that.” Without its passenger, Sputnik 2 continued to orbit for five months.
During and after the flight, the Soviet Union kept up the fiction that Laika survived for several days. “The official documents were falsified,” Lewis says. Soviet broadcasts claimed that Laika was alive until November 12. The New York Times even reported that she might be saved; however, Soviet communiqués made it clear after nine days that Laika had died.
While concerns about animal rights had not reached early 21st century levels, some protested the deliberate decision to let Laika die because the Soviet Union lacked the technology to return her safely to Earth. In Great Britain, where opposition to hunting was growing, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the British Society for Happy Dogs opposed the launch.
A pack of dog lovers attached protest signs to their pets and marched outside the United Nations in New York. “The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it,” said Gazenko more than 30 years later.
The humane use of animal testing spaceflight was essential to preparation for manned spaceflight, Lewis believes. “There were things that we could not determine by the limits of human experience in high altitude flight,” Lewis says. Scientists “really didn’t know how disorienting spaceflight would be on the humans or whether an astronaut or cosmonaut could continue to function rationally.”
Alas, for Laika, even if everything had worked perfectly, and if she had been lucky enough to have plenty of food, water and oxygen, she would have died when the spaceship re-entered the atmosphere after 2,570 orbits. Ironically, a flight that promised Laika's certain death also offered proof that space was livable.
The story of Laika lives on today in websites, YouTube videos, poems and children’s books, at least one of which provides a happy ending for the doomed dog. Laika’s cultural impact has been spread across the years since her death.
The Portland, Oregon, Art Museum is currently featuring an exhibition on the stop-motion animation studio LAIKA, which was named after the dog. The show "Animating Life" is on view through May 20, 2018. There is also a “vegan lifestyle and animal rights magazine” called LAIKA Magazine, published in the United States.
The 1985 Swedish film, My Life as a Dog, portrayed a young man’s fears that Laika had starved. Several folk and rock singers around the globe have dedicated songs to her. An English indie-pop group took her name, and a Finnish band called itself Laika and the Cosmonauts. Novelists Victor Pelevin of Russia, Haruki Murakami of Japan, and Jeannette Winterson of Great Britain have featured Laika in books, as has British graphic novelist Nick Abadzis.
In 2015, Russia unveiled a new memorial statue of Laika atop a rocket at a Moscow military research facility, and when the nation honored fallen cosmonauts in 1997 with a statue at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Star City, Moscow, Laika’s image could be seen in one corner. During the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity mission in March 2005, NASA unofficially named a spot within a Martian crater “Laika.”
Space dog biographer Amy Nelson compares Laika to other animal celebrities like the Barnum and Bailey Circus’s late 19th-century elephant Jumbo and champion thoroughbred racehorse Seabiscuit, who lifted American spirits during the Great Depression. She argues in Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans and the Study of History that the Soviet Union transformed Laika into “an enduring symbol of sacrifice and human achievement.”
Soon after the flight, the Soviet mint created an enamel pin to celebrate “The First Passenger in Space.” Soviet allies, such as Romania, Albania, Poland and North Korea, issued Laika stamps over the years between 1957 and 1987.
Laika was not the first space dog: Some had soared in the Soviet military’s sub-orbital rocket tests of updated German V-2 rockets after World War II, and they had returned to Earth via parachuted craft—alive or dead.
She also would not be the last dog to take flight. Others returned from orbit alive. After the successful 1960 joint flight of Strelka and Belka, Strelka later produced puppies, and Khrushchev gave one to President John F. Kennedy.
During the days before manned flight, the United States primarily looked to members of the ape family as test subjects. The reason for the Soviet choice of dogs over apes is unclear except perhaps that Ivan Pavlov’s pioneering work on dog physiology in the late 19th and early 20th century may have provided a strong background for the use of canines, Lewis says. Also, stray dogs were plentiful in the streets of the Soviet Union—easy to find and unlikely to be missed.
According to Animals In Space by Colin Burgess and Chris Dubbs, the Soviet Union launched dogs into flight 71 times between 1951 and 1966, with 17 deaths. The Russian space program continues to use animals in space tests, but in every case except Laika’s, there has been some hope that the animal would survive.
Ed Note 4/15/2018: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the postage stamp at the top of this article, stating it was from a Soviet bloc country. It is from the Emirate of Ajman, now part of the UAE. This story also now includes updated information about the Portland Oregon Museum's exhibition "Animating Life." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/
John D. Rockefeller: American oil tycoon, philanthropist, and billionaire. Considered the wealthiest American of all time and a self-made man, he formed the Standard Oil Company in 1870—the world’s largest oil refinery of the time—just fifteen years after he landed a job as an assistant bookkeeper at age sixteen. Rockefeller was born to a family with just enough to get by, but by the time he died he was the richest man in the world, with a net worth over $330 billion in today’s money.
For Rockefeller, though, money did not equate to success; success was measured by forming a company that created jobs while reducing gas prices, by building a name for himself, despite a deck that was seemingly stacked against him. Along the way he set the example, showing what traits one needs to master in order to achieve personal success.
1) Persistence
Rockefeller’s upbringing was anything but an easy ride. His mother was a devout churchgoer, while his father was a salesman who was gone for weeks, even months at a time. In truth, “Devil Bill” was a secret bigamist with a second family, and as such his wife and children were forced to live in uncertain frugality, never sure when he’d return with his earnings. To counteract this, John Rockefeller worked hard and watched over his siblings.
john_d-_rockefellers_birthplace_at_richford_new_yorkHe dropped out of high school at age 16 and enrolled in a 3-month business school to build his foundation before moving to Cleveland, Ohio. With no job experience and no connections, a young Rockefeller set out to land a job. He diligently compiled a list of banks, merchants, and railroads with the highest credit rating.
Dressing for the job he wanted, so to speak, he tirelessly shaved, put on a dark suit, and shined his shoes each day before going through his list of hopeful employers and requesting to speak to the man in charge. Rockefeller would go through this list more than once, visiting some businesses twice and even three times, never disheartened by rejection.
Finally, after working to find a job six days a week for six weeks, his persistence was rewarded and on September 26, 1855 he was hired by Hewitt & Tuttle as an assistant bookkeeper.
This day would come to be known as “Job Day,” a celebration more important to Rockefeller than his own birthday, as it commemorated his never failing perseverance in attaining his goals.
2) Poise and Reserve
As a boy, Rockefeller had a bit of a temper. Upon meeting an adult Rockefeller, though, one would have never known it; he was extremely reserved, always keeping to himself and listening more than he spoke.
“Control of self wins the battle, for it means control of others.”
–Eliza Davison, Mother of John D. Rockefeller
This silent reserve created a forceful air about the man that demanded control of every room and any conflict. He developed an almost Prince-like mystique, albeit far less extravagant; his thoughts were impenetrable, which was a very real source of power for Rockefeller.
Rockefeller heard what his partners and even subordinates had to say. He absorbed information and used it to improve his business. In dealing with opposition, his reserve proved to be extremely disarming to his adversaries. His long silences confused others in negotiations and his cool responses in reply to hotheaded interrogators left them even more frustrated.
In one instance, an infuriated contractor was said to have stormed into Rockefeller’s office, unleashing a verbal berating to the man, whose back was turned and hunched over paperwork. When the tirade came to an end, Rockefeller swiveled in his chair and calmly asked, “I didn’t catch what you were saying. Would you repeat that?”
3) Under-Inflated Ego
While his increasing wealth and potentially misinterpreted reserve would possibly seem to suggest otherwise, Rockefeller was grounded in a controlled ego. As his success mounted, he made a conscious effort to exercise modesty. He even recited admonishments to himself to keep his ego in check.
“Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head—go steady. Are you going to let this money puff you up? Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose your balance.”
Rockefeller mastery of self took real shape. He regularly attended Eerie Street Baptist Church, the parish that baptized him as a teenager, leading prayers and teaching Sunday school in addition to working as the church’s volunteer clerk and even janitor.
When his wealth steadily climbed to record breaking levels, he remained faithful to this same church, as opposed to joining a more “high status” parish. He reveled in the opportunity that his church gave him to stay connected with everyday people.
Rockefeller would visit his oil fields, genuinely inquiring with supervisors on their views and opinions on how the company could be improved. Not only that, but he also spoke to the men that were actually doing the drilling. He took notes from these visits in a pocketbook, and earned the nickname “The Sponge.”
In the boardroom, Rockefeller was not imposing. He chose not to sit at the head of the table and instead listened to all other opinions before offering his own. John Rockefeller spoke in terms of “we,” not “I” to elicit ideas, plans, and action.
Over the course of his life, Rockefeller donated nearly $540 million, asking that buildings specifically not be named after him (though not always with success) and generally remained a silent donator. Rarely did he visit a project to which he had donated, as he didn’t want to detract from the good work being done.
4) Purpose Beyond Wealth
Wealth was not the sole driving force for John Rockefeller. While he certainly wanted to make money, he found genuine enjoyment in his work.
“I know not nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.” –John D. Rockefeller
Rockefeller was intent on a few things. Firstly, he wanted to create a new model for business. Instead of thinking short-term and hoping to hit a gusher and instant wealth like others in the oil business, Rockefeller built a vision on long-term success. In so doing, he hoped to grow not only a revolutionary company, but economic growth for his country as well.
As the company became increasingly successful and profitable, Rockefeller was able to put his money back into charity and other philanthropies. This added a great sense of purpose to Rockefeller’s overarching work and story. This was not a new concept for Rockefeller, though.
As a bookkeeper making end’s meet, he donated about 6% of his income to charity and by the time he was 20, 10%. This was engrained in Rockefeller by his mother, who always encouraged him to donate even pocket change at church collections. Again, by the time he died he had donated close to $540 million.
Wealth is often a consequence of the pursuit of other goals and for Rockefeller, it was a means to an end.
5) Detail-Oriented
Rockefeller was an extremely detail-oriented man. His appearance was always kept impeccable, he was tenaciously punctual, and he stuck to a very strict schedule. Before writing letters to his secretaries, he would write 5-6 drafts with a hawk eye, and when signing letters he did so with master artistry. As noted by an aide:
“I have seen him sign his name to hundred of papers at a sitting. He did each signature carefully as if this particular one was to be the only one by which he was to be remembered for all time. Each signature became in his mind a work of art.”
After visiting one of his plants, Rockefeller noted that 40 drops of solder were being used to seal kerosene cans. He tested whether 38 drops would be enough to seal the cans, but found that some leaked.
However, 39 drops still sealed the kerosene cans without any leaking. While this may seem minute, the single drop saved $2,500 the first year the change was enacted and as the business grew, ended up saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
6) Frugality
Finally, while John D. Rockefeller by no means needed to live frugally, he still chose to. He continued to keep a strict accounting of his finances in “Ledger A,” his small, red pocket notebook. Additionally, even after becoming wildly successful (and wealthy), Rockefeller continued to go through ledgers himself, correcting even the smallest errors to save the cents or dollars that were owed to him.
Rockefeller’s homes were large, though not excessively so compared to other wealthy individuals; he didn’t build and decorate his homes to please anyone but himself and his family. He lived in a manner (and manor) that did not divulge the extent of his wealth, mirroring his personal reserve.
To ensure that his children, and eventual grandchildren, didn’t fail to learn the same principles he had, Rockefeller made certain that they did not live a privileged life. Rockefeller and his wife did their best to shield the children from understanding just how wealthy they were.
They never visited his father’s office or refineries, and just as Rockefeller had years before, they were required to keep track of their own accounts. The Rockefeller children could earn money through hard work and chores.
As the Rockefeller lineage continued, he imparted this wisdom on his grandchildren as well. When he visited the grandkids, he gave them each a nickel, a kiss, and this anecdote:
“Do you know what would hurt grandfather a great deal? To know that any of you boys should become wasteful, extravagant, careless with his money […] Be careful, boys, and then you’ll always be able to help unfortunate people. That is your duty, and you must never forget it.”
https://beardedcolonel.co.uk/blog/rockefellers-6-personal-traits-success/
“A prince should earnestly endeavor to gain the reputation of kindness, clemency, piety, justice, and fidelity to his engagements. He ought to possess all these good qualities BUT STILL RETAIN SUCH POWER OVER HIMSELF AS TO DISPLAY THEIR OPPOSITES WHENEVER IT MAY BE EXPEDIENT. . .
He should make it a rule, above all things, never to utter anything which does not breathe of kindness, justice, good faith, and piety; this last quality it is most important for him to appear to possess as men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes but few have the gift of penetration. Every one sees your exterior, but few can discern what you have in your heart.” — Machiavelli — The Prince. Chap. xviii.
John D. Rockefeller is without question the most conspicuous type of our present dominating commercial man. “The most important man in the world” a great and serious newspaper passionately devoted to democracy calls him, and unquestionably this is the popular measure of him.
His importance lies not so much in the fact that he is the richest individual in the world, with the control of property which that entails; it lies in the fact that his wealth, and the power springing from it, appeal to the most universal and powerful passion in this country — the passion for money.
John D. Rockefeller, measured by our national ambition, is the most successful man in the world — the man who has got the most of what men most want. How did he get it, the eager youth asks, and asking, strives to imitate him as nearly as ability and patience permit. Thus he has become an inspirer of American ideals, and his methods have been crystallized into a great national commercial code.
Nor is this all. Mr. Rockefeller distributes money in charity and in endowments. If not our first, he is certainly our second philanthropist; the amount of the money given being the standard. All over the land those who direct great educational, charitable and religious institutions are asking, “Can we not get something from him?”
Receiving his bequests they become at least the tacit supporters of the thing for which he stands — that is, John D. Rockefeller exercises a powerful control over the very sources of American intellectual and religious inspiration.
Now a man who possesses this kind of influence cannot be allowed to live in the dark. The public not only has the right to know what sort of a man he is; it is the duty of the public to know. How else can the public discharge the most solemn obligation it owes to itself and to the future, to keep the springs of its higher life clean? Who then is this John D. Rockefeller? Whence did he come? By what qualities did he grow to such power? Has he proved his right to the power?
Does he give to the public whence he has drawn his wealth a just return in ideas, in patriotism, in devotion to social betterment, in generous living, in inspiring personal character? Has John D. Rockefeller made good? From time immemorial men who have risen to power have had to face this question.
Kings, tyrants, chieftains, since the world began have stood or have fallen as they have convinced the public that they were giving or not giving a just return for the power allowed them. The time is here when Mr. Rockefeller must face the verdict of the public by which he lives.
As to Mr. Rockefeller’s origin it is typically American. He sprang from one of those migrating families which, coming to this country in the seventeenth century, has moved westward with each generation seeking a betterment of condition.
He and his brothers were the first great product of a restless family searching a firm footing on new soil. The first word heard of the Rockefeller family in Richford, Tioga County, New York, where John D. Rockefeller was born, was in the early ’30’s when his grandfather, Godfrey Rockefeller, moved to that community from Mud Creek, Massachusetts.
There are still alive in Tioga County many men and women who remember Godfrey Rockefeller. It is not a pleasant description they give of him — a shiftless tippler, stunted in stature and mean in spirit, but held to a certain decency by a wife of such strong intellect and determined character that she impressed herself unforgettably on the community.
Godfrey Rockefeller had not been long in Richford when he was followed by his eldest son — William A. Rockefeller — a man of twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. There seem to have been other Rockefellers, for the family was sufficiently numerous and conspicuous to cause the farm in West Hill near Richford, where they settled, to be dubbed “Rockefeller settlement” — a name it still bears.
It is with William A. Rockefeller, father of John, that we have to do here. There is enough which is authentic to be gleaned about him to form a picture of a striking character. William A. Rockefeller was a tall and powerful man with keen straightforward eyes, a man in whom strength, and fearlessness, and joy in life, unfettered by education or love of decency, ran riot.
The type is familiar enough in every farming settlement, the type of the country sport, who hunts, fishes, gambles, races horses and carouses in the low and mean ways which the country alone affords. He owned a costly rifle, and was famous as a shot. He was a dare-devil with horses.
He had no trade — spurned the farm. Indeed he had all the vices save one — he never drank. He was a famous trickster, too; thus, when he first reached Richford he is said to have called himself a peddler — a deaf and dumb peddler, and for some time he actually succeeded in making his acquaintances in Richford write out their remarks to him on a slate.
Why he wished to deceive them no one knows. Perhaps sheer mischief, perhaps a desire to hear things which would hardly be talked before a stranger with good ears.
It was not long after he came to Richford that he began to go off on long trips — peddling trips some said. Later he became known as a quack doctor, and his absences were supposed to be spent selling a medicine he concocted himself.
Irregular and wild as his life undoubtedly was, his strength and skill and daring, his frankness, his careful dress, for he paid great attention to his clothes, as well as the mystery surrounding the occupation which kept him looking so prosperous, made him a favorite with the young and reckless and, unhappily, with women.
On one of his trips he met in Moravia, New York, the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Eliza Davison. It is said that the girl married him in the face of strong opposition of her family. However that may be, it is certain that about 1837, William A. Rockefeller brought Eliza Davison to the Rockefeller settlement as his wife, and here three children were born, the second of whom — the record of his birth is dated July 8, 1839 — was named John Davison.
In 1843 William A Rockefeller moved his family to a farm near Moravia, Cayuga County. The reputation he had built up in Richford as a “sporting man” was duplicated in Moravia. He soon became the leader in all that was reckless and wild in the community, and was classed by the respectable and steady-going as a dangerous character on whom no doubt much was fastened that did not belong.
It may be for this reason, as well as because of his frequent long and unaccounted for absences, that he is still classed popularly in Moravia as one of the gang who operated the “underground horse railroad” — and ran off horses from various parts of the country.
There is absolutely no proof of this, but the conviction and sentence to the State prison, in 1850, of three of his closest pals for horse-stealing coupled with his bad reputation made many of his disapproving neighbors fix the crime equally on him, and to-day old men in Moravia nod their heads sagely and say, “He was too smart to be caught.”
There is an indictment against William A. Rockefeller for a more serious crime than horse-stealing in the records of the County, for 1849, and it is quite probable that he left Moravia under compulsion. At all events, about 1850 he again moved his family, which now consisted of his wife and five children, to Owego, New York.
The family remained in Owego but three years, and then moved to Strongsville, Ohio, twelve or fifteen miles southwest of Cleveland. A year later they left Strongsville for a country settlement, about seven miles south of Cleveland, called Parma; and from there they went, in 1857, to Cleveland, moving into a comfortable brick house, which William A. Rockefeller had built for them.
In the Ohio communities where he lived the legends of “Old Bill,” as he is popularly spoken of to-day by his former acquaintances, are identical with those in Richford, Moravia, and Owego. They all remember him as a man who came home but rarely, who was supposed to sell some kind of medicine — a “cancer doctor,” is the opinion of one, a “quack doctor,” of another, and there are those who declare he was a gambler.
In Ohio, as in New York, he always created a profound impression on his visits home, by his clothes, his good horse, and his crack shooting. “He was a rippin’ good one,” an old associate in Parma declares. “How he would shoot — bang-e-tee-bang — you’d thought there was a whole army around!” There are many sly winks at the occupations and morals of William A. Rockefeller by his old neighbors, but there is a universal verdict that he was a “good fellow,” jolly, generous, and kindly.
When William A. Rockefeller took his family to Ohio, his oldest son, John Davison, was a lad of fourteen years. A quiet, grave boy by all accounts, doing steadily and well the thing he was set at. Up to this time his training had been that of the ordinary country boy.
He had gone to a district school a few months of the year, and the rest of the time had worked and played as a boy ordinarily does in a country settlement, chopping wood, caring for a horse, milking cows, weeding garden, raising chickens and turkeys.
Nowhere does he seem to have made an impression, save by his silence and gravity. “He never mixed much with the rest of us,” one old man tells you. “He seemed to be always thinking,” says another. “He was different from his brothers and different from the rest of us,” says a third.
No doubt his mother had had much to do in shaping the boy’s mind to serious living. Dominated as this daughter of a prosperous farmer probably was by a spirit of narrow and stern New England conventionality, she must have come to hate the lawless and suspicious ways of this likeable sinner, this quack-doctor horse-jockey, this loose-tongued rake she had married, and all the arrogant respectability within her must have risen in a fierce effort to save appearances, and to force these children of his into good and regular standing.
There is a something in the fine, keen face of John D. Rockefeller’s mother which recalls the face of Lætitia Ramolino, mother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and convinces one that she could not but have been a power with her boys, though there is little enough to go on in trustworthy tradition and records. That she kept her children in school and church is certain.
Old friends of hers at Strongsville and Parma, Ohio, speak of her with profound respect — a good woman who made her boys do right, who did not allow them to read novels on Sunday, who “worried over saloons” in her vicinity. It is quite probable that it was her influence which persuaded her husband to send John to school in Cleveland soon after the family moved to Ohio.
The boy spent a quiet year in the town studying diligently, so his former schoolmaster has testified, his only outside interest being in the Baptist Church and Sunday-school — to which he had been directed by a wise landlady. In 1855, after a year of study, young Rockefeller left school and began to look for work.
It was a hard time in the West, the year of 1855, and it is quite possible that William A. Rockefeller had not been so successful as formerly in his wandering trade or trades, whatever they may have been, and that he felt it time for his son John to do something for himself. At all events, in the summer of that year, John D. Rockefeller made his first attempt to get a footing in business.
The struggle and discouragement of the days he spent walking the streets of Cleveland looking for work made a deep impression on Mr. Rockefeller. Again and again in his later years he has referred to the experience in the little talks he has given at Sunday-school and church gatherings. Again and again he has expressed his lasting gratitude that finally he did find a position. It was a modest enough one, that of a clerk in a warehouse on the Cleveland docks.
How modest, Mr. Rockefeller has frequently explained using as authority one of the few “documents” of his early life which he has seen fit to reveal to the public. This document is his first account book, “Ledger A” he calls it. It is not too much to say that this book has been more conspicuous than the Bible itself in the religious instruction which John D. Rockefeller has given for years to Baptist Sunday-schools.
This is not strange, for in Mr. Rockefeller’s own judgment its brief entries explain his success. The little book is most significant. No wonder, as he once told his Sunday-school class, holding up “Ledger A” to their attentive eyes: “You could not get that book from me for all the modern ledgers in New York, nor for all that they would bring. It almost brings tears to my eyes when I read over this little book, and it fills me with a sense of gratitude I cannot express.”
https://sites.allegheny.edu/tarbell/fromtarbell/rockefeller/
By age 25 John D. Rockefeller controlled one of the largest oil refineries in the nation.
By age 31 he had become the world’s largest oil refiner.
By age 38 he commanded 90% of the oil refined in the U.S.
By the time of his retirement at age 58, he was the richest man in the country.
By the time he died, he had become the richest man in the world.
The methodology by which Rockefeller gained dominance of the oil industry and amassed his wealth has long been the subject of debate. He has been alternately lionized and pilloried, according to the temper of the times and the side of his character being examined.
To critics, Rockefeller was a ruthless and greedy capitalist, who unfairly crushed his competition and created a malevolent monopoly. To champions, he was a business genius (he never had a year where he didn’t make a profit, flourishing even in recessions) who embodied the ideal of the self-made man, stabilized a volatile industry, created jobs, brought down the price of oil (it dropped 80% during the life of Standard Oil), and became history’s greatest philanthropist.
Indeed, as Rockefeller’s preeminent biographer Ron Chernow puts it, “Seldom has history produced such a contradictory figure.” In studying his life, one finds evidence for both portraits of the man, and of a character far more nuanced than those fond of either apologetics or polemics acknowledge. As Chernow concludes, “his good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad.”
Fortunately, one need not agree with his bad side to learn from his good. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a man would be well served in learning the set of what were essentially Rockefeller’s morally neutral tactics, and deciding for himself to which use to put them. For many of the fundamental principles this industrial titan employed to build his empire can be applied towards attaining success in any endeavor.
Today we will delve into just what those principles are.
The Rockefellian Key to Success: Be Your Own Tyrant
If there was one overarching principle to Rockefeller’s success, it is contained within this maxim of his:
“I would rather be my own tyrant than have some one else tyrannize me.”
Rockefeller’s most striking quality was what Chernow calls his almost “eerie self-control.” He relentlessly honed his will, training himself to be master of his emotions, desires, and schedule, so that he could direct all his impulses towards his aims. He set big goals for himself, and then attacked them with a disciplined, workaday ethic.
Rockefeller understood that if you wish to be your own boss, you have to learn how to boss yourself. Here’s exactly how he did so:
Practice Relentless Persistence
“Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things … fail because we lack concentration — the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?” –John D. Rockefeller
There was little in Rockefeller’s upbringing that would portend his meteoric rise.
He was born in a clapboard house in New York in 1839. His mother was a solid, religious woman, but his father, William Avery Rockefeller, was essentially a snake oil salesman, who was gone from home for weeks and sometimes months at a time, selling his “botanical” cures and living as a secret bigamist with another family. The Rockefellers had enough money to get by on, but their finances were perennially uncertain, dependent on when “Devil Bill” would show up, and how much money he would bring upon his return.
Young John grew up helping work the family farm and tending to his younger siblings. But he had his eye set on greater things, and earnestly desired to rise in the world. How he would do so was not immediately clear. In school, he was considered dim-witted and slow at his studies, and made little impression on his classmates, who, after his ascent to fame, struggled to remember much about him.
As one recalled, “I have no recollection of John excelling at anything…There was nothing about him to make anybody pay especial attention to him or speculate about his future.”
Yet the same former classmate did make this addendum: “I do remember he worked hard at everything; not talking much, and studying with great industry.” Here we find what would be one of the secrets to Rockefeller’s success; in his own words, while he wasn’t “brilliant,” he was “reliable.” He went about his schoolwork with patient persistence. “I was not an easy student,” he said, “and I had to apply myself diligently to prepare my lessons.”
Rockefeller did find he had a knack for numbers, and he dropped out of high school to become better acquainted with their management. Enrolling in a 3-month business course at a commercial college, he learned the basics of bookkeeping, penmanship, and banking, and then graduated at age 16 ready to move up in the world.
Eager to escape the orbit of his disreputable father and become an autonomous and self-reliant young man, Rockefeller left his rural home in Ohio (where his family had moved) to start his own life in Cleveland and find his very first job.
Rockefeller attacked this goal with the same patient persistence he had applied to his schoolwork. Wanting to find a position with a large and reputable establishment in which he’d have the greatest opportunities for learning and advancement, he made a list of the merchants, banks, and railroads with the highest credit ratings.
Each day Rockefeller put on a dark suit, shaved, shined his shoes, and hit the pavement making inquires about town. “At each firm,” Chernow writes, “he asked to speak to the top man — who was usually unavailable — then got straight to the point with an assistant: ‘I understand bookkeeping, and I’d like to get work.’”
As Rockefeller remembered, the job market was tight, and the response was not encouraging: “No one wanted a boy, and very few showed any overwhelming anxiety to talk with me on the subject.” Yet young John D. was not at all discouraged.
A return to his home, and to dependence, was unthinkable. When he had gone through his whole list without an offer, he simply started at the top, and visited every establishment again, sometimes dropping into the same business three times. He treated his job search just like his job: “I was working every day at my business — the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.”
Thus from morning until later afternoon, six days a week, for six weeks — sweating through Cleveland’s hot summer, walking its streets ‘til his feet ached — Rockefeller continued to seek a position. Finally, on September 26, 1855, he heard the words he’d been waiting for: “We’ll give you a chance.” The small produce firm of Hewitt & Tuttle was in urgent need of an assistant bookkeeper, and told Rockefeller to take off his coat and get to work right away.
Ever after, Rockefeller referred to this date as “Job Day” and celebrated its anniversary with more gusto than his own birthday. For this was the great turning point in his life. Through singular focus on a goal, and patient persistence in its attainment, he had obtained a toehold in the world of business, and would use it as a springboard in making his improbable climb from lowly bookkeeper to corporate titan.
Cultivate Unassailable Poise and Reserve
“His usual attitude towards all men was one of deep reserve, concealed beneath commonplaces and humorous anecdotes. He had the art with friends and guests of chatting freely, of calling out others, but of revealing little or nothing of his own innermost thoughts.” –Frederick T. Gates, Rockefeller’s financial advisor
As a boy, John D.’s mother taught him: “Control of self wins the battle, for it means control of others.”
He took that maxim to heart, adopting a far different leadership style than the stereotypical corporate tycoon, cultivating a power that relied not on loud, blustering displays and belligerent table-pounding, but quiet authority and a sphinx-like demeanor.
As a young man he had struggled with his temper, but he had trained himself to control it, and moved through the rest of life with exceptional equanimity, remaining poised and unruffled no matter the circumstances. “Even as a teenager,” Chernow notes, “Rockefeller was extremely composed in a crisis…The more agitated others became, the calmer he grew.”
This unflappability was accompanied by a studied reserve; though he was far warmer and genial than often pictured in the public imagination, he typically revealed little of his thoughts, even to close associates, and secreted himself in a shroud of privacy.
Such a stance was not simply a matter of preference or personality, but a deliberate tactical strategy; mastering his moods, reactions, and expressions and living another of his favorite maxims — “Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” — gave Rockefeller an incomparable edge.
In dealing with employees, no matter how far down the ladder, he never lost his cool, even when they presented him with grievances. As one refinery worker recalled:
“He always had a nod and a kind word for everybody. He never forgot anyone. We had some trying times in the business in those early years, but I’ve never seen Mr. Rockefeller when he was not friendly and kind and unruffled. Nothing excited him.”
Chernow notes that many of his other subordinates corroborated this description of their boss, saying that he never “raised his voice, uttered a profane or slang word, or acted discourteously.” Such behavior won Rockefeller “excellent reviews from employees who regarded him as fair and benevolent, free of petty temper and dictatorial airs.”
Believing there was strength in silence, Rockefeller listened far more than he talked in his meetings with the men at the top as well, and this air of almost supernatural calm only heightened his influence in the boardroom.
As Chernow explains, “The quieter he was, the more forceful his presence seemed, and he played on his mystique as the resident genius immune to petty concerns.” Rockefeller in fact sometimes napped, or seemed to, on a couch in the directors’ conference room, only opening his eyes from time to time to add a comment to the proceedings.
Even when his associates engaged in heated debate, the chairman of Standard Oil maintained his composure. As one director recalled, “I have seen board meetings, when excited men shouted profanity and made menacing gestures, but Mr. Rockefeller, maintaining the utmost courtesy, continued to dominate the room.”
When dealing with adversaries, Rockefeller’s reserve worked to upset their balance. His long silences while negotiating deals often threw members of the other party off their game, tying them up in self-defeating knots.
Virtually immune to intimidation, he answered the questions of hostile interrogators in a slow, cool, dignified way that frustrated their purposes. Rockefeller loved to tell the story of the time an irate contractor burst into his office and laid into him with an angry tirade. Rockefeller sat with back turned, hunched over a writing desk until the tongue-lashing ran its course. Then he spun around in his swivel chair, faced the scold, and coolly asked, “I didn’t catch what you were saying. Would you mind repeating that?”
Colleagues and rivals alike found him hard to read — for one thing he had practiced the ability to maintain a perfect poker face when receiving a letter or telegram to conceal the kind of news it contained — and equally hard to reach. He wouldn’t see unsolicited visitors in his office, and those who wished to meet with him had to make their approach by letter. As Chernow observes, “His remoteness frustrated opponents, who felt they were boxing with a ghost.”
Rockefeller also vigilantly maintained his privacy when it came to the press, routinely turning down interview requests, especially early in his career. Not only did he simply dislike anyone prying into his business, but he believed that familiarity bred contempt, and that the less access you gave the media, the more you preserved the public’s fascination. Plus, he felt that speaking with journalists was an easy way to unintentionally share a trade secret that was best kept close to the vest.
Even when the press criticized him, as famous muckrakers like Ida Tarbell did to great acclaim and attention, Rockefeller chose to keep silent. He rarely even read these critiques, not because he couldn’t take feedback — he actively solicited it up and down the Standard Oil ladder — but because he disdained criticism from those he felt lacked sufficient skin in the game.
“It is one thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction and put forth words of cynical wisdom,” he said, “and another to plunge into the work itself and through strenuous experience earn the right to express strong conclusions.”
Though critiques he felt were misguided or outright wrong did get under his skin, he controlled his urge to react, leading one of his partners to exclaim: “John, you have a hide like a rhinoceros!” This ironclad restraint came from his inner-directed nature – he simply didn’t crave the approval of others, especially those he didn’t respect.
His membership in the “never complain, never explain” school of response is perhaps best explained by an anecdote recalled by a friend. The two men were walking around Rockefeller’s estate, with his companion urging him to respond to his critics. By way of an answer, Rockefeller pointed to a caterpillar crossing their path: “If I step on that worm I will call attention to it,” he said. “If I ignore it, it will disappear.”
Check Your Ego
“Only fools get swelled up over money.” –John D. Rockefeller
From the above description, it may seem like Rockefeller was a prideful man. But this was far from the case. Throughout his life he assiduously cultivated his humility. From the very start of his career, he keenly understood the way that power and wealth could lead to hubris, and intentionally trained himself not to be guided by ego.
As his net worth began to steadily increase as a young man, he repeated proverbs like “Pride goeth before a fall” to himself throughout the day. And at night, he would engage in an introspective examination of the state of his soul and his ego. Lying in bed, he would meditate on the volatility of the oil industry and the potential transience of his success, giving himself admonishments like:
“You’ve got a fair fortune. You have a good property — now. But suppose the oil fields gave out!” And:
“Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head — go steady. Are you going to let this money puff you up? Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose your balance.”
Such self-scrutiny, Rockefeller believed, helped him keep his head on straight: “These intimate conversations with myself, I’m sure, had a great influence on my life. I was afraid I could not stand my prosperity, and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions.”
Rockefeller’s membership in a faith community also aided him in keeping a level head. As a teenager, he had been baptized into the Erie Street Baptist Church (later the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church), a small mission church attended by largely lower middle-class congregants.
Rockefeller diligently attended its Friday night prayer services, as well as two Sabbath day services, and sought to serve the church however he could. He not only led prayers and taught Sunday school, but functioned as the church’s volunteer clerk and even janitor. As a fellow congregant remembered, no work was beneath him and he took care of whatever was needed:
“In those years…Rockefeller might have been found there any Sunday sweeping out the halls, building a fire, lighting the lamps, cleaning the walks, ushering the people to their seats, studying the bible, praying, singing, performing all the duties of an unselfish and thorough going church member…He was nothing but a clerk, and had little money, and yet he gave something to every organization in the little, old church.”
Even as he grew into the richest man in the country, Rockefeller didn’t defect to a more “high-status” mainline denomination or switch to attending one of the more well-to-do churches frequented by his tony peers. Instead, he prized the chance to rub shoulders with folks “in the most humble of circumstances” all the more, and never wanted to lose his connection with common people.
Inside and outside the church, Rockefeller was perennially interested in and curious about other people — no matter their walk of life. Wherever he went he asked those he met about themselves, and he listened attentively to what they had to say.
At work, this interest in others extended both up and down the corporate ladder.
His visits to the oil fields earned him the nickname “the Sponge” for the way in which he keenly observed and absorbed all the information he could about how things were running. He conversed not only with those overseeing the operation, but with the rough wildcatters who were actually doing the drilling.
When touring Standard Oil’s refining facilities, he consistently asked supervisors how things could be improved, made a note of their suggestions in the pocket notebook he always carried with him, and then unfailingly followed-up on their ideas.
Such exchanges were motivated by Rockefeller’s bedrock belief that “It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.”
At the meetings of Standard Oil’s directors, Rockefeller sat not at the head of the conference table (a chair he in fact ceded to the director with whom he had the most conflict), but amongst his colleagues. He solicited everyone else’s opinions before offering his own, and even when he did, he framed his ideas as suggestions or questions. Rather than trying to unilaterally enforce his will, he always talked in terms of “we” rather than “I,” encouraged compromise, and required all decisions to be made by consensus.
As Chernow observes, far from this management style chafing his ego, Rockefeller happily delegated responsibilities and “applauded the committee system as relegating him to a fifth wheel.” Indeed, he liked to manage every level of Standard Oil with a light touch that allowed for the maximum autonomy of all his colleagues and subordinates.
Even in his philanthropy, Rockefeller submerged his ego. Unlike many charitable patrons who wanted their name plastered on everything, Rockefeller typically preferred to be a silent, invisible partner in the projects he funded. He specifically asked that buildings not be named after him (though benefactors sometimes insisted), and rarely visited the facilities he brought to life, not wishing to draw attention away from the good work being done, and towards himself.
To Get Wealthy, Have a Purpose Beyond Getting Wealthy
“I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.” –John D. Rockefeller
“The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won’t succeed; you must have a larger ambition.” –JDR
From the time he was a young man, Rockefeller wanted to become wealthy, and he was certainly driven at times in his career by simple avarice. But importantly, his motivation in building his empire did not rest solely on the desire to be rich, but was rather undergirded by satisfactions and purposes outside the acquisitive.
First, he simply enjoyed his work — enjoyed the identity, autonomy, and challenge (no matter how seemingly mundane) it presented. In his first job as a bookkeeper, he toiled from dawn ‘til late in the evening not only to impress his superiors but because the work “was delightful to me — all the method and system of the office.”
While others found ledger books dreary and dry, John D. found them inexhaustibly interesting. He loved poring over the figures — putting them in order, ferreting out errors, making sense of the data.
In all his positions throughout his career, he always found something new to learn, and to seek to improve. “The zest of the work,” he said, “is maintained by something better than the mere accumulation of money.”
As Rockefeller moved up in the world, he worked not just for the sake of its inherent satisfactions, nor only to make more money, but rather had his eye on two larger purposes.
First, he wanted to pioneer a new way of doing business. The oil industry was full of investors seeking immediate results — speculators who hoped to hit a gusher and become instantly wealthy. These start-ups had a short-term perspective that created a path of destruction — both in the economy and the natural landscape they gutted in search of black gold.
Rockefeller had a different vision for what the oil industry could become, one built on a long-term perspective, and the desire to create something sustainable and lasting.
In helping to develop the principles of vertical and horizontal integration, and the structure of the trust, he sought to bring organization and stability to the chaotic industry, and in so doing, created the mold of the modern corporation. His goal was nothing less than an economic revolution, one he believed would benefit the nation as a whole. As Rockefeller explained his aim:
“I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money making has never been my goal. I saw a marvelous future for our country, and I wanted to participate in the work of making our country great. I had an ambition to build.”
Of course, not everyone felt that this new way of doing business was a good thing, but Rockefeller himself earnestly believed it was a benevolent pursuit — he saw his life’s greatest work as stabilizing industry, creating jobs, and bringing down the price of kerosene, and then gasoline, thus making it affordable and accessible to the masses.
What added to Rockefeller’s sense of purpose in building his industrial empire, was that the more money he made, the more he could give away. As a boy, his mother had always encouraged him to put some of his pocket change in a collection plate at church, and the philanthropic impulse never left him, and only grew along with his wealth.
In his first year as a bookkeeper, while earning a salary that barely allowed him to get by, Rockefeller gave around 6%, and sometimes more, of his income to charity. By time he was 20, he was consistently giving over 10%.
Young Rockefeller was ecumenical in his giving, donating not just to his church, and to individual congregants in need, but to a mission in the notorious Five Points district of NYC, a Catholic church, and, in a move that was fairly unusual for the time, to charities that aided African-Americans.
In later life, he funded great, ambitious undertakings, including universities, medical research institutes, black schools in the South, and health campaigns around the globe. By the time of his death, he had given away almost $540 million dollars.
Rockefeller saw wealth accumulation like any other vocation or calling, saying:
“I believe the power to make money is a gift from God — just as are the instincts for art, music, literature, the doctor’s talent, the nurse’s, yours — to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.”
Paradoxically enough, wealth often comes as a kind of by-product of the pursuit of other goals, rather than from the pursuit of it itself, and having purposes over and above the mere attainment of money is arguably part of what facilitated Rockefeller’s success. His greater goals fostered a deeper motivation, and a more long-term perspective; rather than myopically chasing immediate results, he was able to focus on building something lasting.
Pay Attention to the Details
Chernow writes that “Rockefeller seemed destined to succeed as much from his fastidious work habits as from innate intelligence,” and the man himself admitted to having “a passion for detail.”
If anything, this was an understatement.
In his personal appearance, Rockefeller always presented himself well-groomed and neatly dressed. His face was always shaved, and his shoes were perennially shined.
When it came to appointments, he was religiously punctual, believing that “A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily.”
He kept his own personal routine to a T — allotting a certain time for business, family, faith, and hobbies, and sticking to that planned schedule down to the second.
In business deals, he always paid his debts and fulfilled his contracts on time.
In dictating letters to his secretaries, he would work his way through 5-6 drafts, refining the wording in each round until he felt it was just right and best conveyed his intent.
Signing these letters was a precise process in and of itself. As an aide remembered, “I have seen him sign his name to hundreds of papers at a sitting. He did each signature carefully as if this particular one was to be the only one by which he was to be remembered for all time. Each signature became in his mind a work of art.”
And of course, when it came to bookkeeping, Rockefeller’s zeal knew no bounds. Early in his career, he “learned to have great respect for figures and facts, no matter how small they were.” If there was a tiny error on an invoice, Rockefeller noticed it. If he was due a few cents more than he was paid, he requested the oversight remedied.
As the chairman of Standard Oil, he was consistently on top of all the numbers being generated by his sprawling empire, as they allowed him to objectively track the health of its various sectors, and to know when the data didn’t match what he was hearing from his subordinates.
As Chernow writes, “It was the way that he extended rationality from the top of his organization down to the lowest rung: Every cost in the Standard Oil universe was computed to several decimal places.” Or in other words, Rockefeller was a big believer in the maxim, “What gets measured gets managed.”
His left hand always knew what his right hand was doing, and he scoffed at rivals who lacked such knowledge: “Many of the brightest kept their books in such a way that they did not actually know when they were making money on a certain operation and when they were losing.”
Some found this obsession with the details overly methodical and exacting, but Rockefeller knew that tiny corrections could end up making a large, lasting impact. For example, while touring a plant he saw that 40 drops of solder were being used to seal kerosene cans destined for export. He asked the foreman to try sealing them with 38 drops; some leaked with 38, but none with 39, and so the switch was made.
Rockefeller recalled:
“That one drop of solder saved $2,500 the first year: but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled — became immensely greater than it was then: and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Live Frugally (Even When You Don’t Have To)
In looking back on the factors that most shaped the trajectory of his success, Rockefeller believed that one of the most important was his decision to track all of his spending and saving. Starting as a young man, John D. had kept a strict accounting of his finances in a small, red pocket notebook he dubbed “Ledger A.”
Pheromones work. But perhaps not eliciting the exact response you might wish. I used several pure pheromones in the past-- androstenol, androstenone, pure castoreum tincture. They do indeed get noticed subliminally by people, and yes, especially females. My observation is that they tend to make people nervous and hyper... they make people agitated, confused, and make them talk endlessly and mindlessly. It makes people suddenly lose their train of thought and go into a kind of blankness, for which they have no explanation. In an office, say, people will come up to you, invade your personal space, and blather and chatter at you about nothing in particular, and they do not seem to want to stop talking or leave your presence, even though the conversation has essentially ended. I think it’s because a pheromone literally creates a challenge or provocation, if only at the subliminal level; People feel they “have a bone to pick” with you, but for the life of them, they cannot imagine what it would be about. It's happened enough times to me to know that the scent must be being perceived and registered, if subliminally. Romantic? Not exactly. And some people--- females, invariably-- actually can register the smell consciously; once a woman told me I smelled "like pee". She was not an urbanite or sophisticate at all... and I believed her. It’s a marketing gimmick. If you read online reviews, there are probably more reviews that say they don’t work at all. And the ones that say they work are probably written by the seller - or they pay or give free product to people to write positive reviews. I’ve seen two articles by journalists about their experiments with pheromone fragrances. One article was written by a young woman, and the other by a young man. They were both under the placebo effect, of course. The man just used one popular and well-priced pheromone fragrance (given to him by his friend to promote the fragrance, I suppose). The woman supposedly bought a few high-priced, more prestigious pheromone perfumes, and some cheaper ones from Amazon. The high-priced placebo effect worked on her, since they helped her attract men, while the lower-priced ones didn’t. I’ve always thought placebo effect was good effect - any effect is good, right? But pheromone fragrances, as well as most things that are supposed to give placebo effect - don’t even seem to give any positive effect. In fact, more negative things seem to happen. I’ve bought some pheromone perfumes online. None worked in the least. One smelled great at first, then quickly turned to a gross “cat piss” smell. It made things go incredibly bad for me - probably because the other people and I were turned off by the revolting smell. The other two pheromone perfumes smelled very pleasant, but people didn’t treat me any differently than usual. Pure marketing gimmick. I think pheromone fragrance manufacturers should feel guilty for promoting something that doesn’t really work. Pheromone fragrances might work for some people - those who are more susceptible to the placebo effect, those who really like the smell and therefore makes them more cheery and outgoing, or a variety of other factors. And then there are people who just really, really want to believe, so confirmation bias is at play there - they take any event that would happen anyway and attribute it to the pheromone fragrance’s power. For most people, no pheromone fragrances are really going to do much of anything. In fact, in reviews, people often write that their usual perfumes get them more compliments and attention. https://www.quora.com/Does-pheromone-perfume-work-for-real-or-is-it-just-a-marketing-gimmick
Even as an old man, he kept it in a safety deposit vault like a sacred relic — which to him it was — a device which had taught him the value of a dollar, or a cent, and thus influenced the outcome of his whole life.
During his lean days as an assistant bookkeeper in Cleveland, making sure his income outpaced his expenditures was a matter of necessity, and he lived as spartanly as possible. As he remembered of the time: “I wore a thin overcoat and thought how comfortable I should be when I could afford a long, thick Ulster. I carried a lunch in my pocket until I was a rich man. I trained myself in the school of self-control and self-denial.”
Even after he accumulated massive wealth, and his personal account books became far denser and more complicated than when he was a boy, rather than outsourcing their auditing to a professional, he pored over the ledgers himself, correcting the tiniest of errors, and, just like in his business life, disputed bills that were inaccurate by a cent or two.
And though he now could afford just about any conceivable entry in the expenditures column, Rockefeller continued to live frugally — relative to his vaunted station in life, of course. He bought and built large houses, but they were always relatively modest compared to what he could have afforded, and what his fellow robber barons constructed.
Inner-directed as he was, he designed and decorated his homes not to impress others, but merely to please himself and his family, and chose a style that eschewed ostentation. This discretion was not only related to his frugality, but also to his aforementioned reserve — he liked to live in a way that masked the true size of his fortune.
Rockefeller kept up his thrifty habits throughout his life as well. He would save the paper and string from packages that arrived in the mail, wear out his suits until they had become almost threadbare, and go though the house at night turning off gas lamps that had been left on. When playing golf, he always used old balls around tricky traps, since they had a good chance of becoming lost. When he saw others using new balls, he’d exclaim in surprise, “They must be very rich!” At the holidays, he and his wife exchanged practical gifts like pens or gloves, and then wrote each other effusive thank you notes, extolling how much they appreciated the present.
The Rockefellers were eager to pass on their frugal ways to their four children, who they understandably worried would grow up to be spoiled adults.
In an attempt to combat this, and impress upon their children an appreciation for what they had, the Rockefellers tried to keep them from grasping the extent of their wealth. They never visited their father’s refineries and offices, and Rockefeller ran his household like a mini, merit-based economy.
Following in his footsteps, each child was required to keep their own accounting books, and they could earn pocket money by doing things like repairing vases, killing flies, pulling weeds, chopping wood, and abstaining from candy. The children wore hand-me-down clothing, and received only a modest number of gifts and toys.
For example, when they all asked for bicycles, Rockefeller decided against getting a bike for each, and instead opted to buy only one they would need to learn to share. “Amazingly enough,” Chernow notes, “the four children probably grew up with a level of creature comforts not that far above what Rockefeller had known as a boy.”
Rockefeller not only tried to impart the value of money to his children, but later to his grandchildren as well. When he visited them, he would give each a nickel, accompanied by a kiss and this admonishment:
“Do you know what would hurt grandfather a great deal? To know that any of you boys should become wasteful, extravagant, careless with his money…Be careful, boys, and then you’ll always be able to help unfortunate people. That is your duty, and you must never forget it.”
Rockefeller’s frugality for frugality’s sake represented a commitment to a life principle — a stance, an attitude — that he wished to maintain even when thrift no longer served a “practical” purpose. It served as a check to ego and a continual reorientation towards wealth — a reminder not to take it for granted, an acknowledgement of its potential transience, and a reaffirmation of the ability to go without.
In a way, Rockefeller’s frugality wasn’t about money at all — but rather a way to exercise the muscle that had generated his success in the first place and continued to hold it all together: self-mastery.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/john-rockefellers-keys-to-success/
Mystery man convinces Founding Fathers to sign Declaration of Independence - the myth goes that on July 4, 1776, while sequestered behind locked doors, the Continental Congress of the 13 British Colonies (our Founding Fathers) were in hot debate on whether or not to sign the Declaration of Independence and break from Great Britain.
Most of the men feared for their lives and their family’s lives, for if they were to sign such a document, they would be traitors to the crown, and would almost certainly be put to death if found. As these men were debating the issue, and leaning toward NOT signing, a mysterious man arises from out of nowhere.
“Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment he said, ‘Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines—freedom.’
And he added, ‘If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever.’
And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be.
And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.” (CPAC. “1974 Speech by Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA).” Available fromhttp://ww.cpac.org/pressroom/reagan/reagan1974.asp Internet; accessed 25 June 2009.)
The casual reader may not see the significance but many Latter-day Saints know exactly who the mystery man is. Of course, it’s either Moroni, John the Revalator, or one of the Three Nephites.
This story was presented by then Governor Ronald Reagan to CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) on January 25, 1974. To his credit, he prefaced the story by saying, “I confess, I never researched or made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. (Ibid.)” However well intended, this myth is not true simply because the events described never happened. The Founding Fathers never met to discuss the option of signing the Declaration.
They did meet to discuss adopting the “Lee Resolution” which called for the drafting of a Declaration of Independence. There were parties for and against the resolution, but none of these men were cowering before the document and pen before them.
The Lee Resolution was presented on June 7, 1776, and adopted by 12 of the 13 colonies (New York abstaining from vote) on July 2, 1776.
The Declaration itself had already been drafted by Thomas Jefferson, but had undergone edits in a committee before it was presented to the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and the ONLY names to appear on the printed copy were John Hancock (who was the President of the Continental Congress) and Charles Thomson (John Hancock’s secretary).
When the document reached King George III of England, these were the only two names he would have seen. The document we so honor and cherish and put on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. is actually a copy of the original engrossed copy, that is handwritten on animal skin, and was signed by various delegates over the next several months, and not all at one time.
Perhaps the perpetuation of this myth is aided by a painting by John Trumbull, entitled “Declaration of Independence.” You have seen it on the back of the $2 bill. It depicts the Founding Fathers presumably signing the document in the events described by Gov. Reagan.
However, John Trumbull was a portrait painter for most of the Founding Fathers. This painting, not completed until 1821, was to be a kind of “greatest hits” where he could place all of his portraits in one place. There are noticeably not 56 men in the painting. If this event did transpire, it was merely the committee in charge of drafting the Declaration presenting it to John Hancock for approval…no mass signing ever took place, so the mystery man could not have appeared.
http://holyfetch.com/mystery-man-convinces-signing-declaration-independence/
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye --
when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties.
To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.
Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.
During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.
We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others;
possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter -- with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration.
I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people --
a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them;
the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs.
I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.
https://speakola.com/political/thomas-jefferson-inaugural-address-1801
Marked "Hawkins & Peale's Patent Polygraph No. 57," this machine was used by Jefferson from 1806 until his death. Jefferson first acquired the letter-copying device he called "the finest invention of the present age" in March of 1804.
Invented and named by Englishman John Isaac Hawkins, the polygraph used the principles of the pantograph, a draftsman's tool for reducing and enlarging drawings.2 The writer's hand moves one pen whose action is duplicated by the second one, producing a copy strikingly like the original. Before he returned to England in 1803, Hawkins assigned his American patent rights to Charles Willson Peale, who developed and marketed the invention.3 Jefferson was one of his most eager clients, purchasing one for the President's House and one for Monticello.
He soon exchanged these machines for new ones, as Peale continued to perfect the design — often according to Jefferson's suggestions. By 1809 Jefferson wrote that "the use of the polygraph has spoiled me for the old copying press the copies of which are hardly ever legible . . . . I could not, now therefore, live without the Polygraph.
A second Jefferson polygraph, made in England for Hawkins, survives at the American Philosophical Society. It was given by Jefferson's grandson-in-law and last secretary, Nicholas P. Trist.
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/polygraph
The average human lifespan is around 80 years, but the cells in our bodies live, die, and grow again along much shorter lifespans. Cells turnover at different rates and for different reasons. Consider the skin: it’s constantly exposed to hazards including both physical abrasions, and harmful UV rays that cause mutations.
Because of these hazards, our skin cells replace themselves about every month to make sure that our skin stays strong and mutation free. This is starkly different from neural tissue, the infrastructure for sending electrical signals throughout the body. Some neurons never turnover, because many neurons are large, branched cells that are very difficult to replace without disrupting their important functions.
Then there’s the Merkel cell, which helps detect the sense of touch. We have several types of cells in our skin that detect different types of touch, like pressure, vibrations, or temperature. Merkel cells are the closest to the skin’s surface, allowing us to detect the gentlest sensations. If you close your eyes, you can easily detect the subtle difference between a hard granite or a relatively soft marble countertop, and you have the Merkel cell to thank.
But the Merkel cell presents a conundrum when we think about lifespan. It’s a skin cell, so we would expect it to turnover frequently; however, it functions like a neuron, forming synapses with sensory neurons, so we would also expect a slow turnover rate. For this reason, scientists still debate turnover rate of Merkel cells.
Why do we care about Merkel cell turnover? For one, we want to understand more about how Merkel cells repair after injury, a question that matters enormously to burn victims and the elderly, who have a diminished sense of touch.
Understanding more about how Merkel cells develop may result in therapies to help restore the sense of touch in these individuals. But cell turnover matters most for understanding cancer, which is often driven by mutations in genes that regulate turnover. A rare but deadly cancer called Merkel Cell Carcinoma is caused by skin cells that appear to change in part into Merkel cells.
Many scientists believe that Merkel cells turnover frequently as most skin cells do; however, our lab thought this didn’t make sense, so we set out to test if this was true. To test this hypothesis, we used a technique called lineage tracing, a method created by developmental biologists to ask what happens to a cell over time.
To make lineage tracing work, scientists take genes that are expressed in specific cells and reprogram them to produce a marker that we can see. This allows us to track a cell like GPS tracks your location. We used this technique to put a marker on all of the Merkel cells in a mouse, then we came back nine months later to see what happened to them. Surprisingly, we saw that all the Merkel cells still had the marker. The Merkel cells did not turnover at all.
But we weren’t finished yet. We knew that other scientists would have a hard time believing us, so we wanted to bolster our hypothesis with a different model, and perhaps simply use a microscope to look at Merkel cells in living mice.
Luckily, we had a strain of transgenic mice, animals with foreign genes introduced, which produce a fluorescent protein in their Merkel cells. We took these mice, shaved off their hair to get as close to the skin as possible, then placed them directly under a microscope. To our surprise, through all the layers of skin, we saw clusters of bright green Merkel cells – the experiment worked!
But we still wanted to know whether Merkel cell numbers changed overtime, so we went to the CVS down the street and bought some Barbasol. Every week, we brought the same group of mice to my lab bench, covered their abdomens with shaving cream, and shaved their bellies with a disposable razor.
Sarah Stephanie Landry
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY6_zUajG2jsIfghOB_YNkA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY6_zUajG2jsIfghOB_YNkA
Then we carried them to the microscope and measured the number of Merkel cells in their skin. After a few weeks, we noticed a few new Merkel cells arising in different parts of the skin. We were seeing turnover.
We were baffled. In our first experiments, we measured no turnover of Merkel cells. It seemed that Merkel cells lived forever. But in this new experiment, we were seeing new Merkel cells produced every few weeks. The difference couldn’t be due to error, so what else could it be? We laid out the experiments and wondered what had caused the discrepancy. Only one difference stood out: in the second experiment we were shaving the mice.
Could shaving cause Merkel cell turnover? We think it could. When you shave, you don’t just cut the hair, you scrape the top layers of skin, creating a skin abrasion. Human skin is thick, so we may not notice. Mouse skin, however, is only a few cell layers deep, so removing a layer of cells could cause a wound response. We believe that wound response is causing Merkel cell turnover.
From these experiments, we concluded that Merkel cells almost never turnover. Under normal conditions, they rest in your skin and help you detect physical stimuli around you, and don’t usually turnover, because this would disrupt your sense of touch. However, since they sit in an area of the body that receives frequent skin injury, it makes sense that a repair mechanism exists. It seems that injury increases Merkel cell turnover.
We still have more to discover about what causes the production of Merkel cells. Some scientists don’t agree with us. Their experiments show that Merkel cells turnover quite frequently, so we will first need to repeat a few experiments to determine if an error was made.
Still, our experiments tell us that skin shaving seems to cause Merkel cell production, but what’s happening under the skin? After shaving, a wound response causes a release of many molecules to promote regrowth of the tissue, and we would like to look at these specific molecules to see which ones promote Merkel cell growth. Could these same molecules cause progression of Merkel cell carcinoma?
I am curious about the correlation between the two mouse models used. It does seem possible that the shaving is inducing the Merkel Cell turnover in the transgenic mice, but would the same effect be visible if you regularly shaved the initial lineage-tracing mice?
I.e., when you take the tracing mice down, those who had been shaved regularly would have more non-tagged Merkel Cells since there would be new generations of cells in response to the skin manipulation. In the same vein, could the transgenic line be crossed into a hairless background, and then you could see if the fluorescent cells change without any shaving at all?
If both are true, then I would completely agree that shaving is the culprit. But otherwise, how much of this effect could be based more on the mouse used than the skin manipulation?
I had a question about the marker you use to identify Merkel cells (keratin 8). Is there any possibility it’s expressed in other cell types closely associated with the Merkel cells? Maybe there are two populations: one “true” set of Merkel cells that are long-lived, and another set of damage-responsive accessory cells that also happen express keratin 8?
This is supported by the fact that the new GFP-positive cells you find in shaved mice are innervated at lower rates. Maybe you’ve identified a new cell type! I also wonder about the effects of the anesthesia used on the shaved mice on cell production – did you do anesthetize a control without shaving?
It’s true that keratin 8 is expressed by a few types of cells, but we also know that our newly created cells express Atoh1 (another Merkel cell marker), so we’re pretty sure they are Merkel cells. And good point about the anesthesia! We did a proliferation assay where we gave mice EdU water to label dividing Merkel cells. These mice we shaved without administering anesthesia (very difficult), and we saw the same results.
This, to me, is exactly what working in a cell biology lab is like. Looking at fluorescent proteins under the scope? Check. Trips to CVS for low-tech supplies absolutely essential to your experiments? Check. Conflicting data that make you want to pull out your own hair and measure your Merkel cell regeneration? A million checks.
This is a really important question, so I hope you get to the bottom of it. Why do you think some types of sensory neuron regenerate and others don’t? For instance the neurons we use to smell turn over for most of our lives, but a bad virus can do damage we don’t recover from. This is hand-wavey, but maybe at a certain point, there just aren’t enough axons left for new ones to find their way to the spinal cord or brain?
https://massivesci.com/articles/shaving-mice-for-a-living/
Have you ever looked across the breakfast table at the stubble on your dad's unshaven face and thought, "Whiskers are weird"?
Well, whiskers are unusual, but not uncommon. In fact, almost all mammals, from walruses to wombats, have whiskers. For many animals, the special hairs that scientists call vibrissae (vi-BRI-see) serve important purposes.
Vibrissae differ from regular hair or fur. First, whiskers are thicker and often longer. You probably noticed that if you ever stroked the face of a cat or dog. Second, the follicles that anchor vibrissae in the skin have many more nerve and blood vessel connections than do the follicles that hold regular hair. The specialized nerves, called mechanoreceptors (me-KAN-oh-reh-SEP-terz), make whiskers sensitive to touch, just like your fingertips.
Since whiskers stick so far out, they extend an animal’s sense of touch. Moving them can help too. Fortunately, your dad can’t move his whiskers. Horses and cows can’t either. Many mammals, including seals and cats, can sweep their vibrissae back and forth. Others animals, like rats, mice and shrews, swish their whiskers in all directions, just like a cook’s whisk.
The motion and sensitivity of whiskers provide these animals with valuable information about whatever they touch. Many scientists have been probing that information. Their research has uncovered some big surprises — including in one of the world’s smallest mammals.
Shrews whisk - Etruscan (ee-TRUSK-kan) shrews are tiny, whisker-faced mammals. An adult weighs about 1.8 grams (six hundredths of an ounce), or less than a half-teaspoon of sugar. These tiny shrews have huge appetites. To stay alive, they need to eat more than their bodyweight each day.
Unfortunately, the crickets that shrews love to eat are tricky to capture. Crickets are speedy, springy and nocturnal, or active only at night. So how do Etruscan shrews catch enough crickets to stay alive? A team of scientists led by neurobiologist Michael Brecht at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands wanted to find out. (A neurobiologist studies features of nerves and their functions.)
In 2006, the team used a high-speed video camera to film Etruscan shrews hunting. An infrared light, invisible to the shrews, illuminated the scene.
The team first noticed that the shrews caught crickets just as easily if the insects were still or moving. This meant the shrews didn't rely on movement to detect prey. The scientists then noticed the shrews almost always bit the crickets in the very same spot, right behind the head. This precision impressed the scientists. How did the shrews do it?
To learn more, the scientists watched shrew videos in slow motion. The team determined the shrews flicked their whiskers back and forth about 20 times per second when attacking. The shrews moved their heads too, adding to the movement of their whiskers. Over and over, the shrews used their whiskers to brush the crickets. That repeated contact suggested vibrissae helped the shrews find crickets in the dark.
To test the importance of whiskers, the scientists trimmed them. First, the team cut the microvibrissae, or smaller whiskers, around the shrews’ mouths. How did the shrews cope? Not so well: They went from catching nearly every cricket to catching roughly half. However, trimmed shrews still aimed their teeth accurately. Most of their bites continued to land right on target, just behind the head.
Next, the scientists shaved the larger whiskers, or macrovibrissae, off a new set of shrews. Before the shave, these shrews had successfully captured nearly every cricket. After the shave, their success rate also dropped to half. Furthermore, losing the macrovibrissae also reduced the animals’ biting accuracy. These shrews landed bites all over the crickets, not just behind their heads.
Scientists concluded that without their long and short whiskers, wild shrews might not be able to capture enough prey. "They survive whisker trimming in captivity," says Brecht, "but this might be because we supply them with lots of easy prey."
Other whiskered animals use their vibrissae to locate prey without even touching it directly. Among them is the harbor seal, which has highly sensitive vibrissae. How sensitive? Ten times more nerve endings surround a seal whisker than a rat whisker.
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Sensory biologist Wolfe Hanke of the University of Rostock in Germany and his colleagues worked with a trained harbor seal named Henry to study whisker sensitivity. In 2000, the team discovered that Henry’s whiskers allowed him to detect a fake fish’s watery trail 35 seconds after it had swum past.
Hanke suspected Henry’s whiskers could do even more. The scientist knew different fish created different trails in the water, depending on their size, motion and speed. Hanke hypothesized that Henry could use his whiskers to “read” this information in deciding whether a passing fish was worth chasing.
To test this hypothesis, the scientists set up an experiment. Instead of fake fish, the team used paddles of different sizes and shapes attached to a motorized device. Each paddle stirred the water in a particular way — just as different fish would. Could Henry tell apart the different paddles, just from the way they moved water? First, the seal had to cooperate.
"Henry most of the time has fun participating in the experiments, especially when the tasks are not too hard to solve," says Hanke. "But as the experiment becomes more difficult, he becomes frustrated, sometimes refusing to take part. After a break, he usually agrees to go back to work."
To begin, scientists put a blindfold and earmuffs on the seal. Henry then waited while the scientists used the device to move a paddle through the water. The scientists then turned off the motor, removed Henry's earmuffs and allowed the seal to stick his face in the water.
There, the seal could feel the paddle’s wake with his whiskers. The scientists had trained Henry to touch a yellow ball with his nose for each new and different paddle he sensed. Correct choices earned Henry a herring snack.
When scientists moved two different paddles at the same speed, Henry could easily tell them apart, just by their wake. In fact, the seal could detect size differences down to 3.6 centimeters (1.4 inches). When scientists moved the paddles at different speeds, Henry still did a pretty good job, detecting size differences down to 4.3 centimeters.
Henry had the easiest time with flat paddles, distinguishing their wake eight out of every 10 tries. The seal did almost as well with wavy and cylindrical paddles, identifying them six in every 10 tries.
Henry’s ability to distinguish among paddles of different sizes and shapes, even when they moved at different speeds, led the scientists to believe whiskers help seals make smart choices when hunting in the wild.
"The perception of water movements by the whiskers is the most important source of information for harbor seals," Hanke says. "The water is dark and turbid. They see with their whiskers, not with their eyes."
Why have whisking whiskers? Not all animals use their whiskers to find food. Some use whiskers to "see" in the dark. Clues regarding the usefulness of whiskers for navigation come from research on why some creatures whisk.
Robyn Grant, at the University of Sheffield's Active Touch Laboratory, studies how different rodents and other small animals use their whiskers. She and her team have studied at least three species of mice and voles, along with brown rats, hazel dormice and water shrews.
"I myself really like to find out why animals do what they do. So why they have evolved certain strategies for survival is really interesting to me," explains Grant.
Like Brecht, the Etruscan-shrew researcher, Grant also uses a high-speed video camera to capture and later watch in slow-mo what different animals do with their whiskers. The cameras can capture 500 frames, or individual pictures, per second.
Grant’s experiments reveal that dormice whisk their whiskers up to 25 times per second, moving them up, out and straight ahead. Since these nocturnal rodents spend summer nights scurrying in trees, whisking their vibrissae against branches allows them to feel their way around when darkness falls.
"Dormice push their whiskers very far forward. We think this may be really useful when they climb, so they can scan the area in front of their feet and inspect gaps and branch crossings," Grant explains.
Another rodent, the rat, also uses its whiskers to sense its surroundings in fine detail. While humans stroke to determine textures, press to judge shapes and squeeze to assess hardness, rats whisk.
About 30 vibrissae flank either side of a rat’s nose. Years of research by scientists around the world have revealed some amazing things about those whiskers. With just one to three touches, and in just one-tenth of a second, rats can use their whiskers to determine the texture of a surface.
And that's not all. Rats also can distinguish between openings that differ by only 0.3 centimeter (a little over a tenth of an inch). They can tell the difference between posts set 24 hundredths of a centimeter apart. And a rat’s whiskers can tell a smooth surface from one with grooves as shallow as three thousandths of a centimeter. So whiskers make navigating in the dark a snap for rats.
That impressive skill has challenged some scientists to create robots that can do the same.
One international team has spent more than four years building robotic devices equipped with sensors that mimic the shape, spread and movement of rat whiskers. The BIOmimetic Technology for vibrissal ACtive Touch (BIOTACT) team’s G2 sensor attaches to a robot arm that sweeps over objects below it. Meanwhile, its Shrewbot pursues moving prey across the floor, using only touch.
The G2 sensor and Shrewbot both use artificial whiskers to distinguish between objects of different shapes and textures. "They actively move their whiskers back and forward to explore their world," explains team member Charlie Sullivan, an engineer in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the United Kingdom. "Shrewbot can also find its way around in the dark, using only this sense of touch. It can even detect and follow other moving robots using just the tactile sensations from its whiskers."
One day, whiskered robots may dart about in dark, dusty or smoky environments. For now, these machines still can't touch the skill many whiskered animals have when it comes to feeling their way around.
"Within the controlled conditions in our lab the robots work very well. However, there is still a lot of work to do before they are ready to work in the real world," explains Sullivan. "Most robots that work in the real world use lots of other kinds of sensors, like laser rangefinders and vision systems. We're attempting to create robots that can work effectively with just the sense of touch."
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/whisker
Hair is a conductor, although such a poor one that hair is usually called an isolator. According to this study the conductivity of a single hair is 0.006 picosiemens, so the resistance is 200 teraohm (tera=10^12), when the relative humidity of the air is 40%.
Scientists consider hair as a proton semiconductor. You have to know that static electricity appears when moisture is unable to penetrate into your hair. It’s due to the build up of substances like silicon or other hair products.
Well, it really depends on what kind of electricity is being talked about. Static Electricity? Well yes it does, and that's why your hair might “stand up or straighten” when they come in contact with a charged body.
However, when we talk about continuously flowing electric charges, dry hair are insulators and do not conduct electricity. However, wet hair are much better at conducting the electricity, although they are also proton semiconductors at best.
I'd say that hair is an insulator. Here is the reason why :
First of all, when some charge is transferred to a conductor, it readily gets distributed over the entire surface of the conductor. In contrast, if some charge is put on an insulator, it stays at the same place. This is why a plastic comb gets electrified on combing dry hair, but a metal article does not.
Let's see what happens on the other side - hair. If we consider hair to be a conductor then it behaves just like how a metal does by distributing the charge over the entire surface (or to put in simpler terms, it simply allows the passage of charge) and Now, our body being a conductor it does the same and passes it to the earth. And all of us know this does not happen!
Therefore, HAIR is a poor conductor or simply an insulator!
https://www.quora.com/Is-hair-a-conductor-of-electricity
Thomas Jefferson was an astute observer of the natural world. The daily activities of sowing seeds, manuring asparagus, and harvesting peas between 1809 and 1826 are precisely recorded in his "Garden Kalendar," a part of his famous Garden Book. Jefferson was often the detached scientist in the Kalendar as he recorded that his Hotspur peas were "killed by frost Oct. 23," or that his yellow squash "came to nothing" in 1809.
He could also record remarkable detail as in 1811 when he noted of his Asparagus beans that "2/3 pint sow a large square, rows 2 1/2 feet apart and 1 f. and 18 I. apart in the row, one half at each distance."
For Jefferson, the vegetable garden was a kind of laboratory where he could experiment with imported squashes and broccoli from Italy, beans and salsify collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, figs from France, and peppers from Mexico.
Although he would grow as many as twenty varieties of bean and fifteen types of English pea, his use of the scientific method selectively eliminated inferior types: "I am curious to select one or two of the best species or variety of every garden vegetable, and to reject all others from the garden to avoid the dangers of mixing or degeneracy."
Although the garden was essentially a functional part of the plantation, Jefferson occasionally considered other ornamental features aside from the garden pavilion.
He discussed planting an arbor of different flowering shades of the scarlet runner bean (shown at left), arranged adjacent rows of purple, white, and green sprouting broccoli, or even white and purple eggplant, and he bordered his tomato square with sesame or okra, a rather unusual juxtaposition of plant textures. Cherry trees were also planted along the "long, grass walk" of the garden to provide shade.
"I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that . . . as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet."
Salads were an important part of Jefferson's diet. He would note the planting of lettuce and radishes every two weeks through the growing season, grow interesting greens such as orach, corn salad, endive, and nasturtiums, and yearly plant sesame in order to manufacture a palatable salad oil.
Although the English pea is considered his favorite vegetable, he also cherished figs, asparagus, French artichokes, and such "new" vegetables as tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli, and cauliflower.
While Jefferson cultivated more common vegetables such as cucumbers, beans (both "snaps" for fresh use and "haricots" that were dried), and cabbages, he also prized his sea kale (Crambe maritima, shown above right), a perennial cabbage-like vegetable whose spring sprouts were blanched with clay pots, then cut and prepared like asparagus."
https://www.monticello.org/house-gardens/farms-gardens/vegetable-garden/jefferson-the-scientist-and-gardener/
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