Category: Current Affairs

Feel overwhelmed with all your money related tasks?  You’re not alone.  Everything from tracking your cell phone charges to 401K to your checking account seems to take more and more time these days.

Money Takes Up a Lot of Time – New York Times.

Children born via sperm donors are finding their brothers and sisters via web pages.  Nobody knows how many children are born to sperm donors each year, but one estimate puts it at 30,000 a year!
Hello, I’m Your Sister. Our Father Is Donor 150. – New York Times.

Want to know what the car seat laws are in each of the 50 states?  The only site I found that listed all 50 states and their laws was a UK site.  Child Car Seats : Other Countries : United States of America.

According to Warren Farrell in Exploiting the Gender Gap – New York Times women make less than men by choice.  According to Farrell, women choose to work fewer hours, travel less and occupy safer occupations.  Single, childless women make 177% of their childless male counterparts and "people who work 44 hours a week make, on average, more than twice the pay of someone working 34 hours a week."

More food for thought. 

P.S.  Take all his statistics with a grain of salt.  I don’t think he’s always comparing apples to apples.

They got the NY subway pervert whose picture was published online.

NY subway perv busted by mobe snap | The Register.

At least one person is predicting $4/gallon soon:

Consumers can expect retail gas prices to rise to $4 a gallon in the near future, Ben Brockwell, director of pricing at the Oil Price Information Service, said Wednesday. "There’s no question gas will hit $4 a gallon," he said. "The question is how high will it go and how long will it last?"

CNN.com – Conditions deteriorate in Katrina’s wake – Aug 31, 2005

I know it’s an editorial, but what are they trying to imply?  That President Bush shouldn’t take vacations?  Is the middle of an article about the New Orleans disaster the right place to put this type of commentary?

or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation.

New Orleans in Peril – New York Times

I read a really interesting article about Gregory Berns’s book, Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment, that says that humans really want satisfaction, not pleasure.  We want challenges and experiences that give us a feeling of satisfaction, not easy experiences that are just pleasurable.  It was interesting to think about.

If you do something at which you are highly practiced, then you have little opportunity to encounter something novel or unexpected, so dopamine and satisfaction may be low. But when you do something that takes you beyond what you have done before, you are in unknown territory and novel information will flow into your striatum, pumping out dopamine, which in turn forces you to act on the information. The release of dopamine in response to the novel information is the essence of a satisfying experience.

So what was his advice?

I would say stop pursuing happiness and pursue satisfaction. One should
be concentrating on things that give you a sense of commitment and
achievement. Seek new experiences.

That might explain why I like traveling, taking classes and trying different volunteer jobs!

Ever wondered about all those taxes on your phone bill that you’ve never heard of? Turns out they are not taxes at all.

"Property tax allotment" charge, for instance, is nothing more than the property taxes that the carrier pays. The "carrier cost recovery fee" is a catch-all for many kinds of operating expenses; the "single bill fee" charges subscribers who want a single bill for wireless and landline phone service.

A Monthly Mystery – New York Times

This article,  Experts Warn Debt May Threaten Economy – Yahoo! News, did a good job of explaining our current debt situation and how our attitude and habits contribute to it.   I particularly resonated with this quote:

"I see people younger than me with comparable jobs that drive new vehicles and have a boat and mortgage and things," says Canelon, who responded to the AP/Ipsos poll. "And I just wonder about their debt."

We were camping at the lake a few weeks ago and even with our truck, camper, convertible and boat, we were way outdone by the young couples all around us.  They had brand new trucks, 5th wheels that cost as much as houses and boats.  We just kept saying, "they are in debt!"