Category: Health

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Health History Life Meta Nature Social

Life

Last week there were two deaths, close together; one, a class mate of mine from my school and college days; the other, a senior colleague, recently retired. Both untimely and both sudden. When in the thick of work, with the hours rushing by, as I get engrossed in files and meetings, the thought of the fragility of life never enters my mind. And why should it, I wonder: there are certain duties assigned to each of us and performing these duties is at the core of the meaning of life, as I see it. And so I, living life from minute to minute, caught in the moment, ignore tomorrow, ignore the uncertain and the unknowable.

Read the article: Our precious lives

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Health Life Productivity

Procrastination: Thinking about thinking

Thinking about thinking, this is the key. In the struggle between should versus want, some people have figured out something crucial – want never goes away.

Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups.

Read this article: Procrastination [You are not so smart]

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Business Health Life Productivity Social

The ‘Busy’ Trap

“I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know… Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.”

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system. – Sir Arthur C. Clarke”

Read the article: The ‘Busy’ Trap [New york Times]

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Education Finance Health History Innovation Life Science Social Technology

The 7 Greatest Ideas in History

Just a few stand out above all the rest. They change the course of history and affect the lives of millions who aren’t even aware of them. Amazingly, they are often the work of a single person. Those ideas are truly great and seven really stand out. To make my selection, I applied three criteria: Longevity (i.e. they survive a long time without being amended or surpassed in any significant way), impact (i.e. they greatly affected the lives and work of others) and authorship (i.e. they can be traced to one person).

Read the article: The 7 Greatest Ideas in History

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China Health History India Life Nature Social

Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%. So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India. But it is likely to, as the economic factors that have driven it elsewhere in Asia sweep through those two countries as well; and its consequences will be exacerbated by the sex-selective abortion practised for a generation there. By 2050, there will be 60m more men of marriageable age than women in China and India.

Read the article: The decline of Asian marriage: Asia’s lonely hearts

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Business Education Finance Health History Life Meta Science Social

Life skills

[Our economy] demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns […] We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.

Read the article: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

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Art Business Education Health Life Meta Science Social

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working

For most of my adult life, I’ve accepted the incredibly durable myth that some people are born with special talents and gifts, and that the potential to truly excel in any given pursuit is largely determined by our genetic inheritance.

During the past year, I’ve read no fewer than five books — and a raft of scientific research — which powerfully challenge that assumption (see below for a list). I’ve also written one, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, which lays out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance, to systematically building your capacity physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Read the article: Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

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Education Finance Health History Life Social

Why are the East of Cities usually Poorer?

Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.

Read the article: Why are the East of Cities usually Poorer?

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Education Health Life Nature Science Social

Bilingual brain affects research

“The very act of being able to speak, listen, and think in two languages and of using two languages on a daily basis appears to sharpen people’s abilities to pay close attention to a aspects of tasks relevant to good performance,” she added. Research carried out already had also shown having two languages helped protect against the decline in the brain’s abilities when ageing,” she added. “We already know that language processing is one of the most complex activities that our brains carry out.

Read the article: Research to find effects on brain of bilingualism

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Health Life

‘Younger wife’ for marital bliss

The secret to a happy marriage is choosing a wife who is smarter and at least five years younger than the man, say Bath University (UK) experts.

The story lacks to report the reasons why this is so. Do you think its because it is believed that women are, in general, more mature than same aged men? But then why smarter AND younger?

Read the article: ‘Younger wife’ for marital bliss (BBC)