Social sciences
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It doesn’t matter what color your roofing is or the shape of your lawn. Snow covers them all. In a blanket of white. Wet and white. Crushing underneath your feet, leaving foot prints and tire marks. The power of (snow flakes) accumulation and its compounding effect. Nature’s lesson to men: there is a season for everything. Time to…
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The subconscious. The collective angst. It surfaces on stormy nights. For no reason at all. It’s unscripted. Just a sketch. With us as unwilling actors. Understood only in looking backward from the future. Dreams. Stuff that evolves with time, and stand the human species up straight. Homo Erectus. Time lapses. Standing tall to see better…
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Nothing goes to waste. Neither a minute nor an experience, good or bad. This is not pre-destination. It is how our brain stores and evolves. Millions of calculation, prediction, reflection and reinvention. Like technology which evolves, so do we. We made a mistake. We did it again. Then we learned. Both David Brooks and Jeremy…
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American Dream has undergone a makeover of late (maybe because the Chinese economy itself was heading for a cliff, so it needed to apply a break on lending). Whatever the underlying reason, America middle class is contracting not because of shrinking population , but mostly because of declining income and consumption. In short, the good old time…
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She came back today to visit the school, accompanied by her Dad. Forthcoming, confident and spoke her mind. After all, to her, “time is money”. Up to 19 AUD per hour, doing what natives wouldn’t otherwise do: taking care of old folks. Another day at work. Another day of plugging away, but not without occasional…
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My neighbor got off his cast today. I congratulated him, and told him, me too, had a broken arm after my first month of Kung Fu. “It’s itchy and hairy”. I got a chuckle out of him (who would otherwise looked so mean). A few minutes later, I walked past a man with only one arm.…
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We seem to have lost touch with the play aspect in life and work. I am thinking of John Lennon and Steve Jobs at the moment. Both pursued their passion, and both were dead. One married interracially, the other just loved all things simple (even foods). They were famous, and still are, although they could not…
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According to social scientists, any two people are only separated by 6 to 7 degrees of connection. Last week I put it to test. Surely enough, the quake victims in Japan somehow are separated from me by only three degrees. My niece’s friend had relatives who fled Japan and came to stay with them. Two short introductions and a short…
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Studies show an inverse relationship between socio-economic background and emotional intelligence. http://geronimarion.posterous.com/emotional-intelligence-linked-to-socio-econom In short, those privileged kids don’t give a damn how you feel, at work, that is. Kids whose fathers fell from grace (Madoff, Skilling) committed suicide (former) or died a mysterious death (later). And we all knew what happened with Hearst and Getty‘s.…
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When you see population growth which doesn’t equate with starvation, it’s a testimony to our human ingenuity. The US has less than 2 percent of its labor force in agriculture, yet no one is without a hamburger (even when it’s thrown out by McDonald). From Malthus to Moore, we have moved up the value chain.…
Thang Nguyen 555 