Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is all over the news thanks to her controversial new book, a feminist manifesto called "Lean In."

In it, Sandberg says that one reason women do not hold as many positions of power in the world as men do is that they do not allow themselves to aspire to those positions.

But maybe you're wondering who the heck Sandberg is, and why anyone cares what she has to say.

If so…

Sandberg is second-in-command at Facebook, a ~$60 billion company with a product that a billion people use. But where does she come from?

Sandberg is the oldest of three kids. Growing up, people called her "bossy." She wishes they'd said she had "leadership potential."

She went to high school at North Miami Beach Senior High, there…

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There's no question Pixar dominates the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.

Year after year, the animation studio churns out award season gold (save perhaps "Cars 2").

One of the biggest questions is how Pixar continues to stay fresh year in and year out.

If you've ever wanted some advice from a Pixar employee, this is for you.

Former Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats tweeted out 22 tips for aspiring writers.

Since then, her list started going viral on Reddit.

1. "You admire a character for trying more than for their successes."

2. "You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different."

3. "Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite."

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Every generation has its college dropout heroes.

The Baby Boom had Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Michael Dell.

Generation X had people like Digg founder Kevin Rose, Napster's Shawn Fanning, and Blogger creator and former Twitter CEO Evan Williams.

Generation Y (i.e. people under 30) has plenty of stars too, including that guy who started Facebook.

High profile people like Peter Thiel are starting programs to encourage them, offering money and support for those who want to skip higher education and get right down to business. Nonetheless, most dropouts actually end up worse off, earning 80 percent less than a college grad and significantly more likely to be unemployed.

In the end it takes an special breed of person to make it big without a degree (and some of these "dropouts" never even made it to college.)

Matt Mullenweg started WordPress, which now powers 16 percent of the web.

Mullenweg dropped out of the University of Houston in 2004. Even then, he was so precocious that he didn't bother with their computer classes. At 20, he had already developed the beginnings of WordPress and was fielding job offers from tech companies. He dropped out to work for CNET in San Francisco, with a promise that he could continue developing his side project 15 percent of the time. 

He left to found Automattic, the company behind WordPress. WordPress alone gets 140 million visits a year with a staff of just 140, and all of Automattic’s sites see nearly half a billion visitors.

Arash Ferdowsi is a co-founder of DropBox, which is now worth an estimated $4 billion.

Ferdowski dropped out of MIT in 2007 after three years at the school. He left to found DropBox, which quickly grew from a tiny startup to a service used by hundreds of millions of people.

He's currently the company's Chief Technology Officer, and became a multimillionaire at the age of 27.

Aaron Levie started enterprise software company Box, and the company could IPO at a $3 billion valuation.

When Levie was a sophomore at USC, he was bouncing ideas back and forth with Dylan Smith, a friend at Duke. A marketing class helped Levie come up with the idea that became Box.net, a cloud content management system.

An unsolicited email to Mark Cuban got them $350,000 in funding, and they haven't looked back since. The company has its eye on an IPO some time this year. 

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Unlike the rest of Singapore, which primarily consists of carefully planned high-rises, the neighborhood of Tiong Bahru is a historic community that still retains some of its ramshackle charm.

With its Art Deco-style architecture and its small quiet, lanes, Tiong Bahru feels like a quiet respite from the dizzying skyscrapers and frenetic pace of city life.

It was built in the 1930s as the first housing estate in Singapore, but recently it has become the hottest neighborhood in the city.

Today, yuppies, designers, expats, and creative types linger over cappuccinos at hip cafes or peruse boutiques for one-of-a-kind jewelry, clothing, or furnishings.

Meanwhile, vestiges of the old neighborhood persist. There are a few traditional coffee shops where older people gather over kopi (coffee in Malay). And on Sunday mornings, the Tiong Bahru wet market is the place to be. 

It's a study in contrasts, and a combination that adds up to one of the most dynamic and vibrant neighborhoods in the city.

Disclosure: Our trip to Singapore, including travel and lodging expenses, was sponsored by the Singapore Tourism Board.

Tiong Bahru is defined by its curved Art Deco-style architecture. Most buildings here date back to the 1930s.

Over the last few years, there's been an explosion in hip Western-style cafes, like Drips.

The cafes aren't cheap. At Drips, a cup of coffee costs S$5 (about US$4).

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There's owning a steakhouse, and then there's perfecting steak.

There's choosing cuts of meat, and then there's innovating meat with new cuts no one has ever had before.

New York's Old Homestead Steakhouse specializes in perfection and innovation.

Owners Greg and Marc Sherry have gone farther than just keeping a classic steakhouse feel in their restaurant, they're basically American steak ambassadors. Thanks to their efforts, Wagyu (more commonly known as Kobe beef) was brought to America from Japan in the early 1990s.

Now the restaurant serves the most expensive cut of steak in the city. A $350 piece of Wagyu beef carefully sliced and imported from Kobe.

"It's become a cult [thing] to come here and get a steak for $350 and a great bottle of wine," Greg Sherry told Business Insider.

Just ask the guy who once had two cuts prepared and taken to his private plane. Or any of the parade of celebrities who have come in to the restaurant to try the cut of meat that Sherry describes as "the 4th of July in your mouth."

The brothers found Wagyu when they went to Japan in the 1990s, tried the meat and immediately fell in love. Wagyu beef is fed on barley and bathed with beer. The cows are not allowed to graze so they don't develop muscles. Instead, their meat is full of fat (as you can see from all the white marbling on the left).

Sherry told Business Insider that to get American food regulators to allow Wagyu into the country, he and his brother had to work with Japanese farmers to bring their facilities up to American health code.

And so Old Homestead was first to bring the beef to America.

But back to the place. Old Homestead has been around since 1868, when it was called the Tidewater Trading Post because the Hudson River crept right along the restaurant's West 14th and 9th Avenue location.

The river has since receded, and what was once a neighborhood of meat purveyors and dock workers is now home to some of the most glamorous hotels and nightclubs in the world. Google's New York office is right around the corner.

The Sherry family has owned the restaurant since the 1940s, when Harry Sherry, who started out there as a dishwasher, bought it from its former owner.

"This was my favorite," Greg, Harry's grandson, told Business Insider. "I was groomed here, I was weened here."

The relationships Harry established, and that his grandsons maintained, secured that Old Homestead gets the best, freshest cuts regardless of what's going on in the meat market. The restaurant has expanded too, with locations at Caesars in Las Vegas and The Borgata in Atlantic City.

"I've been doing this for 40 years, you can't fake me out... I'm obsessed with quality control," Greg Sherry said, adding "We specialize in the four food groups, beef, beef, beef, and beef."

When you walk into Old Homestead, you see simplicity. The Sherry brothers have kept the decor warm and traditional through three renovations.

The downstairs dining room is the first to fill up. It was packed by 6:30 on a Thursday evening.

The restaurant has three floors.

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True to form, iFixIt has dismantled the Pebble smartwatch.

Here's what the beloved Kickstarter project looks like when you break it open on purpose.

Here it is, beautifully assembled. Let's crack it open.

The watch presents an interesting challenge to dismantle because there aren't even any screws to undo.

The only thing to do is to pry the top open.

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“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” –– Susan Heller

It’s ridiculous.

You work hard, track expenses, monitor budgets and count the days until you’ve earned enough.

And when you do…You blow all your hard-earned money on a two-week vacation, making countless and costly mistakes along the way.

Unfortunately, those were probably mistakes that could have been easily be avoided. Fortunately, the buck does NOT stop here.

Below are seven costly mistakes travelers make and how you can avoid them…

Traveling during peak season.

People choose to travel during peak seasons for ideal weather, holidays or school breaks.

However, if you travel during the shoulder season – a couple weeks before or after peak season – you can save big on flights and hotels without compromising on quality.

Being inflexible with travel dates.

Have you ever made travel plans before checking the price of flights? Big mistake! Before you submit your vacation request, be sure you research the lowest priced flight.

Airline sites such as Hotwire.com, Orbitz.com, Travelocity.com, and Cheapflightsfinder.com offer a “Flexible Date” search to help you find the lowest fare.

Airfarewatchdog.com sends travel fares to your inbox for city-to-city alerts or anything that’s cheap from your local airport.

Also, weigh the cost of flying non-stop versus multiple stops. For single travelers, saving a hundred bucks might be worth an additional layover.

However, for parents traveling with children a direct flight might be worth the extra money. One excellent site that measures savings versus agony is HipMunk.com.

Paying full price for hotels.

Some hotels such as Choice Hotels and Hotel Indigo offer up to twenty percent off your hotel if you book an advance purchase rate, which means you pay for the hotel in advance, not at check in.

Bookings need to be made in advance and are non-cancellable, non-changeable and non-refundable.

You can score great hotel deals at Hotwire.com which helps hotels book their unsold rooms. The only catch is you won’t know the exact hotel until a couple days before your trip.

An alternative is to name your own hotel price at Priceline.com.

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Gala season is upon us, and while our eyes will be on ladies in towering heels and glamorous gowns, their eyes will be on the most suave guys in the room.

In order to stay on top of your game, you'll need that perfect suit: slim but not tight, pants that just graze the top of your shoes, no more than an inch of cuff showing.

Finding that suit can be tricky, but we've made it easier by rounding up the best places to get finely tailored garments in NYC. Look through our slideshow to see where you can get the only suit and shirt you'll ever need.

Martin Greenfield Clothiers

For over 60 years, Martin Greenfield has been serving the most sartorially inclined with some of the finest tailored clothing.

Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, and Paul Newman, as well as brands like Band of Outsiders and Rag & Bone have all commissioned Mr. Greenfield to make suits for them, indicating his true mastery of the process.

Martin Greenfield Clothers
239 Varet St., Brooklyn

Seize sur Vingt

Founded in 1998 by James Jurney, Seize sur Vingt quickly became the go-to alternative to Turnbull & Asser for the downtown crowd.

The Soho boutique offers suits, sportswear, shoes, and accessories for men and women, but the finely crafted shirts, worn by stylish guys like Robert Pattinson and Waris Ahluwalia, are the main attraction here.

Seize sur Vingt
78 Greene St., New York

Lanvin

Last month, luxury Parisian label Lanvin opened its first men's flagship on Madison Avenue. Here, you can buy the brands coveted, ready-to-wear pieces, but the new suiting section is what grabbed our attention.

A whole floor dedicated to made-to-measure and bespoke suiting, with some of the best fabrics and detailing, has us pinching pennies and skipping a few meals in pursuit of one.

Lanvin
807 Madison Ave., New York

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The first thing new Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio will undoubtedly want to do is take this baby out for a night in Rome.

Based on the Mercedes M-Class, built in 2012, with a tricked out bullet-proof Pope display — this ride is the cutting-edge tip of the spear in Papal transportation.

The pope's ride is modified from a Mercedes Benz M-Class SUV, and costs about half a million dollars to manufacture.

The vehicle, presented in 2012, is traditionally a gift from Mercedes.

Powered by a V-8 ML430 engine: operational speed of 6 mph, capable of a blistering 100, just in case he needs to skedaddle.

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London's One Hyde Park is one of the wealthiest and most secretive residences in the world.

Apartments in the Knightsbridge complex cost more than $11,000 a square foot, nearly three times the typical price of luxury London real estate.

But relatively little is known about the people who own homes there. Of the 76 apartments sold in the 86-unit building, 64 are registered to corporations and just 17 are listed as primary residences, according to Nicholas Shaxson, who wrote a great exposé of the building in this month's Vanity Fair.

Even so, Shaxson and others have found out who some of One Hyde Park's owners are. Get to know some of the sheikhs, oligarchs, and global rich who own apartments at the world's most expensive apartment building.

One Hyde Park, located in Knightsbridge, is adjacent to Hyde Park and the Mandarin Oriental hotel.

The per-square-foot price of a unit at One Hyde Park is 10 TIMES the price of average residential real estate in London, and nearly three times more than luxury real estate in the city.

Among other perks, there's a stainless steel ozone pool, an entertainment suite, a golf simulator, and a spa run by the Mandarin Oriental.

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Comets that are visible to the naked eye only happen once in every five to 10 years, according to NASA.

That's why skywatchers around the world are lucky to see Comet Pan-STARRS dazzling at its brightest before it starts to get fainter in the night sky throughout the next few weeks. 

Comet Pan-STARRS was discovered in June 2011 by a telescope in Hawaii.

The clump of ice and rocks has been visible to those in the Southern Hemisphere for several weeks, but people in the Northern Hemisphere were able to see it for the first time on Monday, March 11.

For those who have not had the opportunity to see the comet, we have collected some pictures on Flickr, taken by photographers from all parts of the globe.

Here is the comet, tail and all, over Burns Beach, Perth, Australia, on March 3, 2013

Pan-STARRS hangs above the shimmering city of Bariloche, Argentina, on March 3.

Gabriel Brammer took this shot of the comet over the coast of Chile at sunset on March 4.

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South by Southwest is a big interactive, music and film conference that's going on right now in Austin, Texas.

Over the course of the week, more than 120,000 people are flying south to learn what the next big things are and, of course, to party.

Aside from famous Internet stars that flooded SXSW such as Foursquare's Dennis Crowley and Tesla Motors' Elon Musk, a number of Hollywood stars spent a few days in Austin.

One was even on our plane home.

Actor Paul Rudd was in Austin with fellow actor Emile Hirsch.

Basketball star Shaq was spotted in Austin being very friendly.

Shaq kissed Brian Solis at SXSW - twitter.com/AndySplatz/sta…

— Andy Splatz (@AndySplatz) March 12, 2013

Al Gore gave a keynote at the conference, but this Internet meme may have gotten more attention in Austin.

Forget Elon Musk or Al Gore. Here's the real star of #SXSW, whose fans are now lined up around the block #GrumpyCattwitter.com/cnntech/status…

— cnntech (@cnntech) March 10, 2013

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Google's first laptop, the Chromebook Pixel, is an impressive device. 

It runs Chrome OS, a desktop operating system based on the Chrome Web browser. Unlike traditional laptops, Chrome OS makes you perform most tasks on the Web.

You can read our full review of the Chromebook Pixel here. It's a really good!

Now check out some photos of the Pixel in the gallery below.

Google Chromebook Pixel has a gorgeous high-resolution touchscreen. It's actually sharper than the Retina display on the MacBook Pro.

And the hardware itself is gorgeous.

Chromebook branding. This is Google's first time making its own computer.

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On Tuesday we heard about the Ukrainian marine mammal program, which trains dolphins to not only find mines in the water and track down divers, but supposedly these dolphins are also outfitted with weapons that they can be used to kill people and even put a bomb on a submarine.

We started wondering, how would one go about training these dolphins?

Here's your step-by-step guide, inspired by this History Channel clip about the Soviet training program used in the 60s.  

First, you have to find a dolphin. You can get one on the black market, but the 1973 Marine Mammal Protection Act may get in your way if anyone finds out.

Place the wild or captive dolphin in a pen and separate it from its social group.

Create a strong bond with the dolphin by spending a lot of time with it.

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The Museum Hotel, in Cappadocia a historic region in Turkey, was created out of thousand-year-old cave dwellings.

It took four years of excavating and renovating before the hotel was operational.

The visually stunning hotel is now filled with antiques and artifacts, many of which are registered with museums.

It has outstanding accommodations, unique rooms, and views fit for a king.

Click through to see how ancient cave dwellings became a five-star hotel.

The Museum Hotel is a luxury hotel in Cappadocia, Turkey that opened in 2002.

However, the hotel isn't exactly new. It is built into ancient cave and stone dwellings, some that date back thousands of years.

Before the hotel was ready for guests, the site had to be excavated and renovated.

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It's hard to believe, but "The Bachelor" has now been on the air for more than a decade. 

ABC's hit reality series just wrapped up its 17th season earlier this week when entrepreneur Sean Lowe asked graphic designer Catherine Giudici to be his wife.

When "The Bachelor" launched in 2002 it was a hot watercooler discussion, critiqued for putting personal relationships so openly into the public eye and for allowing one man to date multiple women at once to find his "one true love."

Despite that, the show has become one of ABC's best-performing shows producing multiple spinoffs—"The Bachelorette" and "Bachelor Pad"—and, serving as fodder for other network series.

After 17 seasons, what has come of the many bachelors? 

Shocker: the majority aren't with the winner they fell in love with over the course of a short few months. 

While Lowe and Giudici are still together—for now—the show's track record for successful relationships is 3 for 24.

Rather, most have found love elsewhere, one tried love twice on "The Bachelor," and another went on to make a fake sex tape.

Season 1: Management consultant Alex Michel picked Amanda Marsh, but didn't propose. Instead, the two dated for a nearly a year before Marsh broke up with him after reportedly learning he was keeping in touch with runner-up Trista Rehn.

(Source: EW)

Michel later became a spokesperson for Match.com and produced and starred in YouTube video, "Our Very First Sex Tape."

(Source: PRnewswire) Watch the NSFW video here.

Trista was then featured on the first season of spinoff "The Bachelorette" and married firefighter Ryan Sutter.

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Optimism for the U.S. economy has been coming back in a big way as the surprisingly positive data flows in.

Yesterday, Morgan Stanley's Vincent Reinhart published a big report titled "US Economics: An Inflection Point Ahead."

"The severe financial crisis of 2008-09 necessitated significant downward adjustments by the private sector to the levels of aggregate demand and efficient supply," he wrote. "As the event recedes further into history, however, the drag on growth from these ongoing level adjustments plays out."

Click Here To See The Presentation >

Reinhart expects to the economy to accelerate in a major way within the next few months.

"In the Morgan Stanley forecast for the US, the trajectory of economic activity marks an inflection point midway through 2013," he wrote. "Economic activity is currently held down by fiscal consolidation. However, the expansion of real GDP steps up to around 2-3/4 percent in the second half of this year and beyond."

In a 22-slide presentation accompanying the report, Morgan Stanley's U.S. economics team points to an array of bright spots including the rebounding housing market, the resilient consumer, and the improving labor market.

They also point to major issues that will continue to hinder growth.  However, the overall message is an extremely positive one.

NOTE: Thanks to Morgan Stanley for allowing us to feature Mr. Reinhart's presentation.

The private sector is helping pull the economy out of the slow post-crisis environment.

After the crisis, banks and households deleveraged, which was a huge drag on growth.

Housing is now a much smaller part of the economy, but it's improving quickly.

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Though it seems like baseball just ended, we're already back in full swing with spring training and the World Baseball Classic.

The New York Public Library has a treasure trove of really old baseball pictures.

As it turns out, the ones from the 1800s are strangely captivating.

The blog Ptak Science Books first uncovered them, and then io9 picked it up.

We pulled out a mix of action shots, team photos, and portraits with floating baseballs (they're actually dangling from strings) that we simply couldn't stop looking at.

We can't tell exactly what makes them so awesome.

Maybe it's the silly uniforms. Maybe it's the mustaches. Or maybe it's the old-school photography.

But they're great.

Deacon McGuire of the Philadelphia Quakers (1800s)

Charlie Bastian and Denny Lyons (unknown)

George Wood (1800s)

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A website called the Silk Road appears to enable you to buy drugs as easily as you would buy an item on eBay.

(We didn't actually complete a purchase.)

We've previously reported on the Tor network, an anonymous collection of sites that exist in semi-secrecy, outside of the scope of Google, Facebook, and even conventional web browsers.

This network is designed in such a way that all your activity on it is kept completely anonymous and untraceable.

When you pair this with Bitcoin, an anonymous digital currency that can be converted into real money, it opens a Pandora's box of sorts. eCommerce companies on Tor purport to allow people to buy a wide variety of drugs and even hire assassins.

Using a Tor browser, you can access Silk Road at http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion – but first you need to either create an account or log in.

Then you're greeted by the main homepage. Let's browse the psychedelics.

With one Bitcoin currently worth $47.15, we can buy 10 hits of LSD for $74.50.

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The 2013 Conservative Political Action Committee kicks off this week amid a post-election identity crisis for Republicans, as party leaders and activists look back on what went wrong in 2012, and try to reshape the GOP for 2016.  

This year marks the 40th anniversary for the conference, and offers some big names in Republican circles. Former Presidential contender Mitt Romney will emerge from his post-election hibernation, along with other fan favorites like Sarah Palin and Allen West. 

But the theme of this year's conference is the "next generation of conservatives," so the focus will be on newcomers who represent the way forward for the Republican Party going into the next election cycles. Here's who to keep your eye on at this week's conference. 

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)

A Tea Party favorite, Scott was appointed to his seat after Jim DeMint announced his resignation in December 2012. At the time he walked onto the Senate floor, he was the only black member of the Senate, and the first African American to represent South Carolina.

The ACU certainly likes Scott — who holds a rating of 96 with the group — and backed him wholeheartedly, urging S.C. Governor Nikki Haley to award him the seat, according to National Review.

Al Cardenas, the ACU Chairman, said Scott "represents a new generation of conservative leaders and the future of the conservative movement."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

Rubio's star has risen rapidly since his speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention propelled him into the national spotlight.

The darling of both Establishment Republicans and the Tea Party movement, Rubio has been at the forefront of the Republican Party's efforts to appeal to youth and Latino voters, taking the lead on immigration reform and frequently showing off his knowledge of '90s gangsta rap on social media. He even managed to turn his awkward water-lunge moment during the GOP's State of the Union response into a meme.

 With a 100 percent legislative rating from the ACU, Rubio has conservative bona fides, as well as charisma and a compelling personal story. Should he decide to run in 2016, Rubio would already be counted among the top contenders.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)

The libertarian firebrand spoke at CPAC last year, but this week he'll be riding a wave of popular support after last week's 13-hour talking filibuster in defense of civil liberties.

The filibuster spectacle has elevated Paul up the GOP "food chain," revealing him to be an innovative leader within the party and a formidable contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. 

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