In one recent study examining money’s effect on happiness, Kahneman, and others, have found that people with a relatively high income, although more satisfied with their lives, are barely happier at any given moment than those with a significantly lower income. The age-old myth that money buys happiness needs to be refined, as does the competing myth that wealth does not matter.What he’s found in comparative studies of nations is that both the level of corruption and the degree of trust in society are important predictors of well-being. “Corruption is a measure of trust in society, and trust, it turns out, should be essential to well-being.”
Countries where the level of trust in society is very low have a lot of difficulty thriving economically—so you need a certain level of trust to get moving.
“But even when you look at the Western world where GDP is more or less constant, you find large effects of trust, and that’s why Northern Europe always emerges as the best place to be in the world in terms of well-being research.”
Can this be applied in developing countries? “If there is a way of encouraging increasing trust in society—and that should probably start with trust in institutions—that is going to make a contribution to GDP through the rule of law, respect for property, and so on. It will have an extra contribution to human welfare because happier societies are ones where people trust each other and spend a fair amount of time catering to social needs.”
via Finance & Development, September 2009 – Questioning a Chastened Priesthood.
rePost::Palace to do repacking only; long lines irk Arroyo – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
Palace to do repacking only; long lines irk Arroyo
And they wonder why everyone who doesn’t benefit from their largess hate them. Didn’t they learn this in politician school. Plastic 101: how to convincingly show fake compassion. Although if this article wasn’t about the fake president I suspect that this would have been labeled a better press corp please. A Big FU ma’am. I have Nightmares just thinking about how you sleep at night (Do Vampires sleep?).
By Christian V. Esguerra, Gil C. Cabacungan Jr.
First Posted 03:17:00 09/30/2009
Filed Under: Ondoy, Flood, Disasters & Accidents, Government Aid
MANILA, Philippines—She ordered the Palace thrown open to the common folk, and was annoyed at what she saw.
A long stretch of impoverished Filipinos peeking through the gates of the Kalayaan compound under the intense afternoon heat was the sight that greeted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo a day after she issued her unprecedented order.
It was apparently the closest that her staff could get to the planned National Relief Operations Center on the Palace grounds to help victims of Tropical Storm “Ondoy” (international codename: Ketsana).
The President beheld the scene when she arrived at Kalayaan Hall at around 1:30 p.m. from a Cabinet meeting in Camp Aguinaldo. Her face turning sour, she ordered the Palace guards to immediately let the people in.
Hermogenes Esperon, Ms Arroyo’s chief of staff, tried to downplay his boss’ annoyance, saying: “She just didn’t want to see the people lined up outside.”
About an hour later, the number of people expecting relief goods swelled to around 500. Many of them were women and kids dressed in tattered clothes and slippers.
An old man in a wheelchair fell in line, at the end of which volunteers distributed nothing more than hamburger buns.
via Palace to do repacking only; long lines irk Arroyo – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
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rePost::Palace to do repacking only; long lines irk Arroyo – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
Palace to do repacking only; long lines irk Arroyo
And they wonder why everyone who doesn’t benefit from their largess hate them. Didn’t they learn this in politician school. Plastic 101: how to convincingly show fake compassion. Although if this article wasn’t about the fake president I suspect that this would have been labeled a better press corp please. A Big FU ma’am. I have Nightmares just thinking about how you sleep at night (Do Vampires sleep?).
By Christian V. Esguerra, Gil C. Cabacungan Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:17:00 09/30/2009
Filed Under: Ondoy, Flood, Disasters & Accidents, Government Aid
MANILA, Philippines—She ordered the Palace thrown open to the common folk, and was annoyed at what she saw.
A long stretch of impoverished Filipinos peeking through the gates of the Kalayaan compound under the intense afternoon heat was the sight that greeted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo a day after she issued her unprecedented order.
It was apparently the closest that her staff could get to the planned National Relief Operations Center on the Palace grounds to help victims of Tropical Storm “Ondoy” (international codename: Ketsana).
The President beheld the scene when she arrived at Kalayaan Hall at around 1:30 p.m. from a Cabinet meeting in Camp Aguinaldo. Her face turning sour, she ordered the Palace guards to immediately let the people in.
Hermogenes Esperon, Ms Arroyo’s chief of staff, tried to downplay his boss’ annoyance, saying: “She just didn’t want to see the people lined up outside.”
About an hour later, the number of people expecting relief goods swelled to around 500. Many of them were women and kids dressed in tattered clothes and slippers.
An old man in a wheelchair fell in line, at the end of which volunteers distributed nothing more than hamburger buns.
via Palace to do repacking only; long lines irk Arroyo – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
Looking Forward On Reading::Book Review – 'Logicomix' – A Comic Book About Logic, Math and Madness – Review – NYTimes.com
Written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou
Illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna
347 pp. Bloomsbury. $22.95
Multimedia
Excerpt: ‘Logicomix’
Well, this is unexpected — a comic book about the quest for logical certainty in mathematics. The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously debated. The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and Adolf Hitler.
Improbable material for comic-book treatment? Not really. The principals in this intellectual drama are superheroes of a sort. They go up against a powerful nemesis, who might be called Dark Antinomy. Each is haunted by an inner demon, the Specter of Madness. Their quest has a tragic arc, not unlike that of Superman or Donald Duck.
via Book Review – ‘Logicomix’ – A Comic Book About Logic, Math and Madness – Review – NYTimes.com.
rePost::XKCD
I feel this happens too often, and in the fantasy land of my mind, this happens to me (joke lang hehe)
Praise To Effort::Philippine man loses own life after saving dozens from floods
An 18-year-old construction worker braved rampaging floods in the Philippines to save more than 30 people, but ended up sacrificing his life in a last trip to rescue a baby girl and her mother who were being swept away on a styrofoam box.
Desperate relief effort amid rising death toll
Family members and people who Muelmar Magallanes saved have hailed the young man a hero, as his body lay in a coffin at a makeshift evacuation centre near their destroyed Manila riverside village.
via Philippine man loses own life after saving dozens from floods.
rePost::The Love Guru – Page 1 – The Daily Beast
In his books, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell has dissected many inspirational underdog victories, but his own triumph over the opposite sex could well be the most inspirational of all.
Eight years ago, on a balmy night in New York‘s West Village, a darkly beautiful history grad was having a date with a 38-year-old writer. He was a little goofy looking and gesticulated a lot, but he was sweet and had theories about a million things, especially her. He was particularly interested in what made her special. When she revealed a passion for acting, he had a theory about that, too, and how to make it more special.
They drank some wine. They talked some more. He fluttered his long, slender fingers. He seemed so comfortable in his own skin, so authentic. He had this eerie feline self-assurance, and it was hypnotic. Forty minutes later, they were back at his place.
via The Love Guru – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.
rePost::The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire – BusinessWeek
I have a lot of pessimistic tendencies, I wonder if someone can become develop this self-trust? when do you stop faking it and you become really confident on yourself?
It seems that the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful employees has as much to do with an employee’s beliefs about her ability as the reality of that ability. Considering that this difference is based as much on illusion as on reality, you might think the employee’s performance would take a serious nosedive under challenging circumstances.
After all, if you think you’re special, what happens when your superior or your board tells you about the areas in which you’re falling short? Worse yet, what happens when the self-described superstar finds himself laid off or responsible for a division with tanking revenues? In other words, what happens when people who believe they are capable of controlling the world find themselves in an economy that is out of control?
It turns out that this is when the true stars shine. Tough times weed out both those with low self-evaluations and those poseurs who only pretend to have a high self-evaluation—the narcissists. Judge finds that only about one in five people with a high core self-evaluation also scores high on measures of narcissism. That’s probably why researchers continually find that those with a high self-evaluation do so much better in turbulent times compared with those with a dimmer view of their abilities, and compared with those narcissists with fragile egos.
via The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire – BusinessWeek.
FYI::COMELEC | Election Automation 2010 | Press Releases
COMELEC fixes the deadline for the change and transfer of polling places to November 30
Date: 24 September 2009
back to Table of Contents
In compliance with Section 153 of the Omnibus Election Code, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has fixed the deadline for the filing of petitions/requests for transfer of polling places in connection with the 2010 polls to November 30, 2009.
The Omnibus Election Code explicitly provides that no location of polling places shall be changed within forty-five (45) days before a regular election and thirty (30) days before a special election, referendum or plebiscite except in case it is destroyed or it can not be used.
Saying that it foresees various petitions/requests from registered voters or political parties for the transfer of polling places; the COMELEC said “there is a need to fix the deadline for the filing of petition/request for transfer of polling places to jibe with the timelines prescribed by the Commission to perform pre-election activities and to give the Election and Barangay Affairs Department enough period to assess, evaluate and make recommendations to the Commission En Banc and the latter ample time to approve/disapprove such request.”
The COMELEC, in Resolution 8676, promulgated September 23, 2009; resolved to fix the deadline to November 30, 2009.
“No request/petition for transfer of polling place shall be entertained after the deadline except in case the existing polling place is destroyed or it can not be used,” the COMELEC ruled. ###
via COMELEC | Election Automation 2010 | Press Releases.
rePost::"There must be a reason" : Respectful Insolence
In other words, the stronger the emotion behind the belief, the more likely a person is to fall into the trap of using cognitive errors to justify that belief. The key phrase is in the title of the article and in the conclusion, and that phrase is “there must be a reason.” Think about it and how often we hear that sort of a statement in the context of topics relevant to SBM. For example, “there must be a reason” that:
via “There must be a reason” : Respectful Insolence.