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on Money
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2427
An interesting article on how money buys happiness, or doesn't as the case may be. It's a review for the book 'Billionaires', I can offer no review of the book, but the review itself is excellent.
Quotes:
Maybe my favorite study done by the Berkeley team rigged a game with cash prizes in favor of one of the players, and then showed how that person, as he grows richer, becomes more likely to cheat. In his forthcoming book on power, Keltner contemplates his findings:
"If I have $100,000 in my bank account, winning $50 alters my personal wealth in trivial fashion. It just isn’t that big of a deal. If I have $84 in my bank account, winning $50 not only changes my personal wealth significantly, it matters in terms of the quality of my life—the extra $50 changes what bill I might be able to pay, what I might put in my refrigerator at the end of the month, the kind of date I would go out on, or whether or not I could buy a beer for a friend. The value of winning $50 is greater for the poor, and, by implication, the incentive for lying in our study greater. Yet it was our wealthy participants who were far more likely to lie for the chance of winning fifty bucks."
There is plenty more like this to be found, if you look for it. A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below twenty-five grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent. A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: if you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s.
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“As you move up the class ladder,” says Keltner, “you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others."
Link: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120092/billionaires-book-review-money-cant-buy-happiness
Wooden Birds in a Room
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2497
We're drawn into the room by the sight of eagles and seagulls trying to get into a birdhouse near the roof. It's a large room, painted blue like the sky, and the ceiling is perhaps 50 or 100 feet away. Staggered at different levels are all sorts of various apparatus, people working them, it's like a hands on science-museum of sorts, I'm guessing the people are somehow controlling the birds, and as I'm watching them flying everywhere about the room (surprisingly few collisions) one hits my elbow - ouch! - they have some weight, wooden, and a small bird, painted to resemble a hummingbird, comes and tugs at my sleeve, it has something to show me. And I begin to climb the various levels of the room, we'll get to the top and investigate things on the way down, but there aren't always stairs, or I've missed them, and as I'm standing on a short stool grabbing another stool to pull myself up a level the stool I'm grabbing onto begins to slide, I realize the bird has let go my sleeve and I've missed the easy stairs up, I get down to try again...
Peanut Gallery
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2076
Walking with the boy down 17 Ave, a gathering of homeless at Mt. Royal Park, one of the wits exclaims loudly: "Look, there go Dawson Creek and 91210".
Now this running commentary deserves a tip.
Liberal VS Conservative
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 2224
M--- has decided to talk to me. Finally, we've been out socially a few times, I know him through extended acquaintances, he's a larger built guy, mid 30's, dresses in a bad but expensive khaki linen blazer, hankie in the pocket, he's solvent, rumour has it it's from his brother who pays him a million dollars per year not to show any interest in the family business. He honours his word, takes his money, plays the big wheel himself, plays at real estate developer, financier, drives an expensive car and always seems to have a ready supply of party favours. I know this of him without speaking to him, merely listening, and I wonder what he knows of me. At the bar, a good natured ribbing about his resemblance to Don Johnson (give or take 80 pounds) and he decides to honour me with his conversation.
-"Your a journalist, I hear from my brother..."
I'm so-so, was, didn't work out, not at the moment...
"Tell me what you're working on now.."
I hum and haw, I don't like to discuss current projects, it dooms them...
"Tell me and I'll tell you. I write as well. I'm studying neuroscience..."
This is interesting. Tell me more...
"Well, there's lots to say, but I'm going to sum it up in 5 words..."
He doesn't. 200 words later and he's no closer. The conversation changes...
"So I'm guessing you're a liberal...?"
Yep. That's me.
"Define Liberal for me versus Conservative...."
I'm on the spot, an intuitive understanding doesn't seem to lend itself well to the 5 word limit. I think quick and badly..."It seems to me that a liberal is someone that accepts the way things are, where as a conservative wants things to be the way they used to..."
He's quick to pounce, so quick that I have to wonder if he didn't prepare this in advance..."2000 years ago the Romans used to sit at the table and eat on toilets so they could shit at the same time, and every man used to jack off his neighbor and then they had sex with a slave girl...It was conservatives that decided this had to stop!"
In the end I'm not sure if he's telling me he's liberal or conservative, but the conversation is allowed to drop, the bar is closing and the hunt for the party is on...
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