I’m a big fan of selling yourself instead of putting the other guy down. I agree with Seth Godin: John Kerry called George Bush dumb, but it didn’t matter, because Bush’s base didn’t care that Kerry thought he was dumb. The people who did care had already decided not to vote for Bush, so the […]
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According to How Cops Really Want to Police, cops would use money and shame to stop crime. They’d dish out punishment on the spot. Most of their suggestions were either financial or shame. On the financial side they’d do things like give drug money to the neighbors or make a shoplifter work for the shop
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From Scientific American, Why Things Cost $19.95: if we see a $20 toaster, we might wonder whether it is worth $19 or $18 or $21; we are thinking in round numbers. But if the starting point is $19.95, the mental measuring stick would look different. We might still think it is wrongly priced, but in
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Throughout history, information has been scarce – and important to staying alive. So we try to accumulate and learn as much as possible. Now what used to be a survival technique is now keeping us glued to our monitors. From the WSJ article Why We’re Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Web Data: new and
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There’s a really interesting article in the Washinton Post, Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach about how myths grow. As an example they used a CDC study that tried to dispel myths about the flu. After reading the flyer, many people remembered the false facts as true! It recited various commonly held views
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Yesterday I wrote about how one of the reasons people don’t give more to charities is because they don’t know the people personally. I think another very real reason is that it’s hard to give aid to people whose values don’t match yours. I know people that could very much use some help – or
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This quote from Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, really hit home for me. The obstacle is that poverty is often not personal. If your next-door neighbor’s child was dying and you could save her for $100, you wouldn’t think twice. But a child 10,000 miles away whom you have never met, that’s just different.
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This isn’t a post about how to make or keep friends. This is about an article that dives into the pyschology of friendship. So if you don’t like analyzing things, skip this post! What makes people friends? How do we choose who we are friends with? The bottom line according to Friendship: The Laws of
What makes people friends? Read More »