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My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

My mom used to say it to me, and my wife says it now. There’s even a slogan that says it! “Approach all situations with a joyful mind.”

One December evening the cry of ‘Fire!’ echoed through the plant. Spontaneous combustion had broken out in the film room and within moments all the packing compounds, film and other flammable goods had gone up with a whoosh…

When I couldn’t find Father, I became concerned. Was he safe? With all his assets going up in smoke, would his spirit be broken? He was 67, no age to begin anew. Then I saw him in the plant yard, running toward me.

‘Where’s Mom?’ he shouted. ‘Go get her! Tell her to get her friends! They’ll never see a fire like this again!’

At 5:30 the next morning, when the fire was barely under control, father called his employees together and announced: ‘We’re rebuilding!’ One man was told to lease all the machine shops in the area. Another, to obtain a wrecking crane from the Erie Railroad Company. Then, almost as an afterthought he added, ‘Oh, by the way. Anybody know where we can get some money?”

Later on he explained, ‘You can always make capital out of disaster. We’ve just cleared out a bunch of old rubbish! We’ll build bigger and better on these ruins.’ With that he rolled up his coat for a pillow, curled up on a table and immediately fell asleep.

Charles Edison

It also brought me and Dad back together. Our relationship had virtually broken down when I first became ill. His best friend Bert was my doctor, and Bert had thought I was making it all up. Dad was caught between loyalties – me or Bert. And for a long time it looked as if he had chosen Bert. Eventually, he came back to me, but we needed to do a lot of bridge building. And this was where the Floyd came in.

It was summer 1974, and he would take afternoons off work (a massive sacrifice for him because he was a workaholic) and come into my bedroom and listen to the Floyd with me. There were two beds in my room. I lay on mine, he lay on the other, and we shut our eyes and concentrated.

My most significant discovery so far in my life was the result of one single decision, my decision to join Apple […] the best decision that I ever made […] I listened to my intuition, not the left side of my brain […]
I am where I am in life because my parents sacrificed more than they should have, because of teachers, professors, friends and mentors who cared more than they had to, and because of Steve Jobs and Apple.

One sheep who got a reward every time she recognized a human face correctly on a video screen scored a perfect 50 out of 50.

[…]

And it’s not just sheep.

Hamlet the pig is a computer wiz. He gets a reward every time he uses a joystick designed for a chimp to move a cursor into a blue area on a computer monitor. A Jack Russell terrier couldn’t achieve such a task after a year of trying.
In other words, pigs are smarter than dogs.
“They’re very curious, and they’ll charge off on their own,” said John Webster, a professor at the University of Bristol in England. “They will investigate the world with their noses down and batter through like a small boy.”

New research shows that chickens can be taught to run the thermostat of the chicken coop, and that even the lowly cow has a surprising inner life.

Cows have been known to form lifelong friendships, and one recent study found that they actually show excitement when they’ve learned something new “as if they’re saying, ‘Eureka, I found out how to solve the problem,’” said Donald Broom, a professor at the University of Cambridge.