Director Quentin Tarantino has an IQ of 160, which is comparable to people such as Albert Einstein. It takes a genius to come up with all of the intricate plots that Tarantino writes and directs. Tarantino claims he spent his childhood making up stories and using them to frighten his mother.

8 Celebrities Who Boast Incredibly High IQs

Stocks have surged 9 percent from their lows this quarter and are now within spitting distance of record highs. But for those looking for even more gains, one strategist says there are two areas where bulls will continue to rage: the dollar and technology stocks.

These markets are in 'pure bull' mode: Strategist

A staggering 71.8% of men smoke, against just 4% of women. Indonesia has taken some measures on tobacco control, including higher taxes and the implementation of pictorial warnings on cigarette packs, but is the only country in Asia not to have ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

OECD nations that smoke the most - Business Insider

The 3-fold increase in share buybacks in the past five years has been the key driver of corporate re-leveraging (Figure 5). In large part, buybacks have been the result of strong incentives provided to corporate managers by activists in particular and equity investors in general.  But there are signs that this may be changing. Recent conversations that we’ve had with equity PMs suggest that they have become far more focused on revenue growth, and are placing far less of a premium on any financially engineered EPS growth.

The Fly In The Buyback Ointment: Corporate Leverage Is At Record Levels | Zero Hedge

The EZ Crisis is a long way from finished. The latest VoxEU eBook presents a consensus view of what caused the Crisis and why. It argues that this was a classic ‘sudden stop’ crisis – not a public-debt crisis. Excessive, cross-border lending and borrowing among EZ members in the pre-Crisis years – much of which ended up in non-traded sectors – was why Greece’s deficit deceit in 2009 could trigger such a massive crisis. The ultimate causes were policy failures that allowed the imbalances to get so large, a lack of institutions to absorb shocks at the EZ level, and poor crisis management.

Towards a consensus on the causes of the EZ Crisis | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal

Kostin expects capex to remain lackluster as the energy sector, which accounts for 30% of capex, is expected to see spending fall 20% in 2016 due to low energy prices. This will be offset by an estimated 6% gain in non-energy capex.

S&P 500 Cash Usage - Business Insider

On Thursday, YouTube, which is part of Alphabet-owned Google, revealed the next phase in its plan for VR. You can now view the 360 videos in 3D. The site is also making every single video in YouTube's massive library viewable on Cardboard. Just open up YouTube's Android smartphone app, play a video and tap the Cardboard icon. For videos that weren't originally meant to be viewed through VR goggles, it will reformat them to look like you're watching in an Imax theater. (The feature will come to the YouTube app for Apple's iPhones soon, but YouTube didn't say when.)

YouTube bolts into next phase of virtual reality with 3D video - CNET

Continued improvements in the labor market and the pick-up in earnings give monetary policy makers more confidence that inflation will trend higher, especially as the impact of the plunge in crude prices begins to fade from the headline rate in the coming months. "This is just what the Dr. (Yellen) ordered," writes Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Harris outlined five reasons why "Fedexodus," the initial normalization of monetary policy, won't have a crippling effect on real economic activity.

Bank of America Has Five Reasons Why Fed Liftoff Won't Cause the Global Economy to Sputter - Bloomberg Business

Since Russia's Syria campaign began, Kremlin officials and the state media have been framing it as a painless war that was boosting Moscow's international prestige. All patriotic citizens needed to do was sit back and enjoy the grainy footage of terrorists being obliterated by Russia's shiny new military machine. The deaths of hundreds of Russian civilians threatened to change that, especially after Islamic State claimed responsibility and the evidence that a bomb — and not technical failure — destroyed the aircraft mounted. Suddenly the Syria campaign wasn't cost-free anymore. So Russian state media did what came naturally: they blamed the West.

Russian media is peddling anti-western conspiracy theories about the plane crash in Egypt

The data show that nearly all of the net increase in jobs since June 2009, when the recession officially ended, has come from full-time positions, not part-time. Through October, there were nearly nine million more full-time jobs than when the recession ended, while the number of part-time jobs is actually down by around 300,000.

Jobs Report: Full-Time Employment Now Above Where It Was Before the Recession - Real Time Economics - WSJ

the general trend in many countries is for more women to go to university than men. How great to have so many clever, educated young women spilling out every year, but there could be negative consequences, as a new book, Date-onomics, points out: there may not be enough educated men to go around.

The dating gap: why the odds are stacked against female graduates | Life and style | The Guardian

Every investor should analyze this case study to learn from Ackman's experience, as every last one of us has had (and will have) to deal with a major investment going south. How do you collect more information, filter out the noise, analyze the situation, control your emotions, and ultimately make the right decision among four choices: dump it all, trim, hold, or buy? It is almost never obvious what the right answer is — rather, every option feels really crappy when you've lost a lot of money on an investment, especially if you're in the hot glare of the public spotlight. I've been there and it's no fun.

Tilson explains what Ackman is going through - Business Insider

Children from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study. Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality.

Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds | World news | The Guardian

BBC Sport - Evander Holyfield: Boxing great who 'lost everything' smiling again

The European Commission, which is the EU’s executive arm, estimates that 60% of Portugal’s hotels and restaurants face a high risk of closing because revenue isn’t covering debt repayments.

Portugal on Road to Recovery Post-Bailout, But Scars Remain - WSJ

Smoking, according to absolutely everyone, is the biggest preventable cause of cancer in the world. It accounts for more than one in four cancer deaths, and four out of five lung cancer deaths, which has the lowest survival rate of any cancer. The WHO predicts that if smoking rates continue, tobacco will be responsible for for 1 billion deaths in the 21st century.

How do I ... avoid carcinogens? | UK news | The Guardian

People talk about ‘money is no object’ items, but most have nothing on the Sennheiser Orpheus HE1060. They cost €50,000, roughly £35,000. For most people, they exist only to prove headphones can be this pricey. And even if you can afford them, I doubt they’ll ever be that easy to get hold of. Sennheiser can only make 250 a year thanks to the painstaking way they’re put together.

Sennheiser Orpheus HE1060 hands-on review | Headphones

October’s jobs report shows that the number of Americans with full-time jobs has finally stabilized above where it was before the recession, one of the last employment indicators to hit that mark. More than 122 million Americans were employed in full-time positions at the end of October, above the 121.6 million full-time workers in December 2007, when the recession officially started.

Jobs Report: Full-Time Employment Now Above Where It Was Before the Recession - Real Time Economics - WSJ

A smartphone may be able to measure your heart and breathing rates, even if you’re not directly touching it, researchers say.

A Smartphone in Your Bag May Be Able to Track Your Heart | MIT Technology Review

A shelf-scanning bot called Tally will help make sure everything is in its place in supermarkets and other retail outlets.

Store Robot, Tally, Knows When the Supermarket Shelves Need Restocking | MIT Technology Review

The country’s openness to social and religious minorities (more than 500 million people) and regional differences is at serious risk. Of late, Modi’s regime has effectively tolerated – if not encouraged – a saffron-clad army of Hindu activists who monitor and violently discipline those suspected of eating beef, disobeying caste rules or betraying the “Hindu nation”.

India is being ruled by a Hindu Taliban | Anish Kapoor | Comment is free | The Guardian

Writing on his blog on Thursday, Damodaran says that there are three major red flags that, in hindsight, were obvious for the Theranos story and should've qualified as "things that make you go hmmm." And among these red flags is Holmes' well-known habit of wearing a black turtleneck.

Aswath Damodaran on Theranos - Business Insider

Overall, growth is seen declining in emerging economies for a fifth year in a row in 2015, before strengthening next year. Notably, Russia's economy is seen shrinking 3.8 percent this year and 0.6 percent next, while Brazil's economy is declining by 3.0 percent this year and 1.0 percent in 2016. Several international bodies and banks have issued anemic outlooks for global growth in recent weeks.

World risks ‘persistently’ weak growth: IMF - Yahoo Finance

Just as Jim Cramer was figuring out the direction of the overall market, the price of crude oil once again broke down and brought the whole market with it. And Cramer has known for months now that hedge funds will tend to sell stocks whenever oil breaks down, and that is just what happened on Thursday. The reason for this is because they think that whenever oil goes down, then that means the economy isn't strong enough to grow on its own. So if the Fed tightens, the stock market will be in trouble.

Cramer: Why this decline in oil is so frightening

Credit Suisse is out with its top 10 trades for 2016. Ric Deverell, global head of research, and the members of his fixed income and economics research team aren't mincing words about the year ahead.

CREDIT SUISSE: 2016 will be a 'watershed in global economic history' — these are our top 10 trades - Business Insider

An analyst at Gartner Inc. reckons that 6.4 billion things will be connected to the Internet and in use in 2016 up 30 percent from about 4.9 billion in 2015. At the same time the forecast is that 5.5 million things will be added to the Internet every day in 2016 and the total number of connected devices will hit 20.8 billion in 2020.

IoT will add 5.5 million things per day in 2016 - Electronics Eetimes

A string of freedom of information requests by the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Daily Mail showed that more than 7,500 staff at universities earned more than £100,000 last year, including several vice-chancellors and professors earning more than £600,000.

University vice-chancellors' earnings 'out of control' | Education | The Guardian

Sometimes called a Windsor knot or a surgeon's knot, it starts like a typical shoe knot, but you bring one lace over the other twice. Then, as you're finishing, you take the loop and bring it over the top before cinching the laces tight. The above video will show you what to do. The end result is a small knot that sits flat and won't come undone until you want it to.

How to Tie Your Shoes and Lace Your Shoes the Best Way - Bloomberg Business

Back in the 1999, the Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academies of Science) estimated in its report To Err is Human that in 1997 at least 44,000 and as many as 98,000 patients died in hospitals as the result of medical errors that could have been prevented. Current estimates are higher

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: How Many Deaths from Mistakes in US Health Care?

The researchers concluded that these changes in energy intake were independent from economic conditions or food prices, and public health efforts were likely to have helped. Soda consumption in the U.S. has also dropped dramatically.

5 reasons Americans are obese — that have nothing to do with food - MarketWatch