Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Buying Green Makes You Do Bad Things

Buying Green Makes You Do Bad Things
The market for “green,” environmentally-friendly products is big and getting bigger. Buying these products certainly seems to make a segment of the buying public feel good about itself. But even aside from the debate over whether green products are truly good for the environment, there’s something else about all this do-gooding that just feels… bad.

Do green products really make us better people? Does engaging in a virtuous act of consumption build on itself, making us more socially-conscious, in turn encouraging virtuous behavior in other areas of our lives? Or does buying these products make us feel better — but, in reality, make us act worse?

According to a new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, the answer is — unsurprisingly for those of us with a cynical disposition toward human nature — the latter. While mere exposure to green products may “prime” us to think about social consciousness and perhaps improve our behavior, if we actually buy a green product, we appear to take it as license to act like jerks.


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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Why Throw Away Money On A Mortgage When You Can Rent?

http://goo.gl/5hUC


Consumer attitudes are changing on the “rent vs. buy” debate. When Mr. Twist and I sold in 2005 and moved into a rental, the usual response when we told friends was “Are you guys doing O.K.?” Now the usual response is “You were so smart to get out when you did.”


There is a far-reaching change occurring now which threatens housing markets around the country. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive for the National Apartment Association in May 2010 found that 76% of those surveyed now believe that renting is a better option than buying in the current real estate market, up from 71% in 2008. Especially sobering was the fact that 78% of those surveyed were homeowners.
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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

physical attractiveness and a happy marriage

January 27, 2010

How important is physical attractiveness to a happy marriage?:

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Strip Mining the U.S. Economy :)

Guest Post: Strip Mining the U.S. Economy  naked capitalism




Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”
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BlindType - Touch typing the way it should be

BlindType - Touch typing the way it should be: " It is a revolutionary system that:

Eliminates touch typing frustrations

Allows for super sloppy typing

Constantly adjusts to the user's 'perceived' keyboard and typing style

Just type the way you are used to - no gestures, nothing new to learn!"

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Sunday, August 08, 2010

Lightening Kills Woman During Wedding Proposal Atop a NC Mountain




June 10th, 2010 - 8:47 pm ICT by Angela Kaye Mason -
After hiking to the top of North Carolina’s Max Patch Bald, Richard Butler took and engagement ring out of his pocket in preparation of asking Bethany Lott to marry him. Before the ring was out of his hand, however, a bolt of lightening zipped down from the skies, and instantly killed the bride to be.
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Saturday, August 07, 2010

Associated Press Interactive: AP Economic Stress Index



Associated Press Interactive: AP Economic Stress
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Thursday, August 05, 2010

ID-Ten-T Error

ID-Ten-T Error (also seen as ID10T and ID107) is a term often used by tech support operators and computer experts to describe a user error, a problem that is attributed to the user's ignorance instead of a software or hardware malfunction. It is a masked jab at the user: when ID-Ten-T is spelled out it becomes ID10T ("idiot").
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Monday, August 02, 2010

Free Audio Books Online

free-books-audio



Please check out the Gizmo site- http://www.techsupportalert.com/  - for quality free software and services on the web.
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Sunday, August 01, 2010

Noble Lie

In politics a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony, or the social position of that elite. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in The Republic. However, the concept has far greater scope and has been used by many commentators to talk about much more modern issues in politics (see Modern views, below). A noble lie, although it may benefit all parties, is different from a white lie since a white lie does not cause discord if uncovered whereas noble lies are usually of a nature such that they would do so.
The "noble lie" (also translated as "magnificent myth"[1]) is a fictional account that Plato gives for the origin of the three classes in his proposed republic. He talks of a stratified society, where the populace is told a tale of how all people are brothers born of the same mother-earth, but different kinds of people are constituted of different types of metal.[2]
Rulers have gold, auxiliaries have silver, and farmers have bronze and iron. Most children of rulers have gold, but some will have silver or bronze and would be demoted to lower classes, whereas some farmers or auxiliaries would be born with silver or gold and promoted.
Plato claimed that even though this tale would be literally false, if the people believed it, an orderly society would result as it would explain the origin and importance of the three classes. Thus it would serve the same function as other creation myths. This is his noble lie "gennaion pseudos" (although this two-word expression does not appear explicitly).[3]
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