A recent paper Time, Money and Morality reviewed in The Economist (Time is not money) offered insight into human behaviour that could help make the world a better place. Authors Francesca Gino of Harvard and Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania report the results of studies that show that people primed to think about …
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Author:astraea
Ocean conditions are ripe for mass extinction
As the government of the richest country in the world bickers over whether or not to give basic healthcare to poor people, the world is dying. The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) warns of multiple threats the oceans are facing. Overfishing. Too much CO2. Fertiliser run-off coming from rivers. Basically too …
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We need more trees. Many more.
Interpretation of empirical data connecting weather patterns with forests has been met with scepticism and been largely ignored by meteorologists, climate change scientists and the media, but we ought to consider the proposal. Dr Anastassia Makarieva and Professor Victor Gorshkov of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute have proposed that it is not temperature differences …
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Does philanthropy work?
Yes, of course it does. But being an analyst, and one who must count the pennies too, it has always been a pertinent question. I’ve always found it difficult to give money to an organisation that has high paid, educated staff taking a third to half the donations in administrative overhead. I know that when …
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Deepak Chopra on putting together good teams.
Chopra on good teams. He hits all the right buttons: Since my life’s work has always focused on self-awareness and well being, I have made those two attributes the criterion for people I want to work with. In my course, The Soul of Leadership, I advise employers not only to get references and bios from …
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A healthy lifestyle can magically make you live longer.
OK, so that sounds a bit dramatic and the idea is not exactly novel: That healthy living – diet, exercise and stress management – helps you live longer. But emerging science suggests that there is a real rejuvenation at the cellular level. And it’s not induced by some chemical cream from a pharmachem cosmetics company. …
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Genuine Progress Indicator etc vs GDP, and the outlook for society.
Economic statistics are a critical tool for managing the complex world we live in. The principal indicator has been a measure of national income, “Gross Domestic Product” or “Gross National Product”, and both are reported as aggregate and per person data. There are complexities to GDP calculation, but it is the number politicians, investors and …
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The god and bad of not having enough …
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir was reviewed by The Economist here. People can succumb to a “scarcity mindset” when they feel they have too few friends, time or calories, as well as too little money. This mindset has benefits because it helps you focus on pressing …
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Global finance is creaking. Maybe it needs a few more women to prop it up.
The chart below (The unsteady march of diversity) from The Economist tells the story that finance made a brief move towards balance a couple of decades ago, but has since reverted to a masculine dominance. Coincidentally, there have been signs of increasing permissiveness, even corruption, and a backlash of patchy regulations which have harmed efficiency …
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Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum
It was difficult to decipher the actual lyrics when we were children singing along at the top of our voices to the scratchy single on the little record player. But maybe the chorus line influenced the idea that fighting is not a good idea. If you knew the reason for their fighting you would never …
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