1. Business Insider: Meaningful Work — Not Money — Makes People Happy
... Decades of research have boiled human happiness down to just three factors: genes, events, and values. About half of how happy you feel is hardwired into your genetic make up, according to the article. Meanwhile, one-off events like getting married or landing a big promotion can contribute up to 40% of your happiness, but tend to offer just a temporary boost that lasts a few months. ...
2. Atlantic Cities: The Hidden Beauty of a Walmart Store
[4 minute video] A short documentary follows an artist as he paints the inside of the supermarket chain.
3. Atlantic Cities: The Paradox of Diverse Communities
... Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.” ...
... After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive. As they write, “The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community.” ...
4. Time: Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Only Just Beginning
Once upon a time, globalization simply meant the export of Western culture to the rest of the world. Now the world is turning the tables. ...
... In the past, globalization was to a great degree a one-way street — from the developed to the developing world. Money and technology flowed from the U.S. and Europe into China, India and other low-income countries, drawing them into the global trading system. The process was the same with ideas (democracy, capitalism, Marxism) and culture (popular music, social networking, fast food, Hollywood movies). Emerging nations had few connections between themselves, and limited influence over world politics and finance.
Now, though, the rise of China, India and other emerging economies is shifting that old, one-way globalization into a new, vibrant multilateral globalization, with major consequences for how our world works.
Look at what’s happening in the global economy these days. ...
5. The Interpreter: Unfriending: Japanese public opinion on China <http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/01/22/Unfriending-Japanese-public-opinion-on-China.aspx?>
6. Atlantic: Countries With Higher Math Scores Have Unhappier Kids
Is there be a relationship between math and misery? Economist Justin Wolfers runs the math. The variation is pretty large (Eastern Europe seems egregiously unhappy, while southeastern Asian students seem to be having a unduly good time in class), but the correlation is statistically significant.
7. BBC: Modern life 'turning people off sex'
A once-a-decade poll of 15,000 Britons found those aged 16-44 were having sex fewer than five times a month.
The figure compared with more than six times a month on the last two occasions when the official National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was carried out, in 1990-91 and 1999-2001.
The study's authors say modern life may be having an impact on libidos. ...
8. Atlantic Cities: Across Europe, a Growing Sense That Legalized Prostitution Isn't Working
... France is not alone in its fresh efforts to curb prostitution. The move follows similar bans in Sweden and Norway, while other European countries are also scaling back laissez-faire prostitution policies. Germany is poised to change its liberal sex trade laws, while Ireland is also debating a measure similar to France's. Is the end of legal prostitution in Europe in sight?
It may partly depend on how well France's new laws work. Unlike historical prostitution bans that penalize sex workers, the new laws target customers, making the purchase of sex illegal rather than its sale. Anyone caught paying for sexual services in France will be subject to a fine of €1,500, rising to a maximum of €3,750 for repeat offenders. This follows a model established in Sweden in 1999, but no country as large as France has yet tried anything similar. ...
9. Atlantic: Modern Moms Aren't as Busy as 1960s Moms Were
Moms now spend more time on activities like TV and the computer than on housework, playing with kids, and exercising combined.
10. NPR: Forget Golf Courses: Subdivisions Draw Residents With Farms
When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.
But now, there's a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.
It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together. ...
11. Gallup: Majority in U.S. Say Healthcare Not Gov't Responsibility
12. Business Insider: Americans Don't Trust Each Other Anymore
... These days, only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.
Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say "you can't be too careful" in dealing with people. ...
13. Atlantic: Homelessness Is Up in New York City, But It's Down Everywhere Else
14. Archaeology: Top 10 Discoveries of 2013
15. Business Insider: 25 Books That Changed The Course Of History
Every reader knows that a book can change your life.
But what about the lives of an entire generation? Can a book change the future?
Miriam Tuliao, assistant director of central collection development at the New York Public Library, helped us come up with a list of 25 books that changed the course of history.
From the Torah to Orwell's "1984," these 25 titles have had a major impact (listed here in alphabetical order).
16. Seth's Blog: What do we get when we give to a good cause?
Why on earth would a rational person give money to charity--particularly a charity that supports strangers? What do they get?
A story. ...
... If people aren't donating to your cause, it's because you're not telling a story, or telling the wrong story to the wrong people (in the wrong way). Non-profits make change, and the way they do this is by letting us tell ourselves stories that nurture our best selves.
17. Also on the topic of giving, here is some practical advice. Forbes: How To Give Away Money When It Feels Like You Don't Have Any
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