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July 20, 2009

Smart Incentives

In Denmark, a gym offers a membership program where you pay nothing as long as you show up at least once a week. But miss a week and you have to pay full price for the month. The psychology is brilliant. When you go every week, you feel great about yourself and the gym. But eventually you'll get busy and miss a week. You'll pay, but you'll blame yourself alone. Unlike the usual situation where you pay for a gym you're not going to, your instinct is not to cancel your membership; instead it's to redouble your commitment.

Src: KK's Cool Tools: How to use zero pricing

Posted by mctaylor at 5:14 PM | | Comments (0)

November 28, 2008

The social traveties that poverty, illiteracy can lead to

The 'Witch-Children' of Akwa Ibom
By Reuben Abati, Friday, November 28, 2008
from the Guardian (Nigerian newspaper)

original editorial

Posted by mctaylor at 10:55 AM | | Comments (0)

October 6, 2007

To be nobody-but-yourself

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
E E Cummings

Posted by mctaylor at 12:27 AM | | Comments (0)

July 30, 2006

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

Recently I've been watching "Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness" on PBS (KQED out of San Francisco, CA, USA).

In it Alain de Botton looks at six philosophers, Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and what they had to say about happiness and topics relating to happiness, such as love, pain, angry, thinking, and desire.

While not earth shattering, they are fairly well done episodes, cutting through the cruft of word-play that is annoying and makes philosophy concerned irrelevant in popular culture. At times the format gets in the way of the message, but in general I was happy with the five episodes I've seen.

Addendum: The ABC (Austrilian Broadcasting Corporation)'s DVD series includes the best description of the six episodes. Note the DVDs are PAL format DVD Region 4 (Aus), so will not play in most (99%) of DVDs players without region code hacking.

Posted by mctaylor at 10:54 AM | | Comments (0)