Business of Life

What is Good Character?

2008-10-07T16:15:12Z

A question of character. The idea of 'good character' sounds old-fashioned and patronizing, but it may be the answer to some of our most entrenched social problems writes Richard Reeves.

The first headmaster of Stowe school, JF Roxburgh, declared his goal to be turning out young men who would be "acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck." A mixture of courtesy and courage used to be essential to the idea of a British citizen's character. Brits were the sort of people who knew both how to survive a Blitz and queue politely. Similarly, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the scout movement, aimed to induce in his young charges "some of the spirit of self-negation, self-discipline, sense of humour, responsibility, helpfulness to others, loyalty and patriotism which go to make 'character.'" He described his movement as nothing less than a "character factory."

But in the postwar shift towards a less constrained and judgemental society—"character-talk" in Stefan Collini's phrase—dropped out of public discourse, except when considering someone's suitability for high office. The idea of good character came to sound old-fashioned and patronising.

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The three key ingredients of a good character are: a sense of personal agency or self-direction; an acceptance of personal responsibility; and effective regulation of one's own emotions, in particular the ability to resist temptation or at least defer gratification.
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inequality of character may now be as important as inequality of economic resources.

The Research Digest of the British Psychological Society hails The return of 'good character' and its importance for a successful society while our fave Sissy Willis writes It's the character, stupid.

ACORN "Uniquely militant organization... reinforced by contentious action"

2008-10-07T15:51:28Z

ACORN. First they intimidated banks, then they went after Congress with a combination of bullying, smooth talking lobbyists and campaign contributions to change the regulations at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,

Stanley Kurtz outlines how ACORN planted the seeds of disaster.

Swarts, a strong supporter of ACORN, has no qualms about stating that its members think of themselves as “militants unafraid to confront the powers that be.” “This identity as a uniquely militant organization,” says Swarts, “is reinforced by contentious action.” ACORN protesters will break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, or pour protesters into bank lobbies to scare away customers, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers. According to Swarts, long-term ACORN organizers “tend to see the organization as a solitary vanguard of principled leftists...the only truly radical community organization.”
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This sweeping debasement of credit standards was touted by Fannie Mae’s chairman, chief executive officer, and now prominent Obama adviser James A. Johnson. This is also the period when Fannie Mae ramped up its pilot programs and local partnerships with ACORN, all of which became precedents and models for the pattern of risky subprime mortgages at the root of today’s crisis. During these years, Obama’s Chicago ACORN ally, Madeline Talbott, was at the forefront of participation in those pilot programs, and her activities were consistently supported by Obama through both foundation funding and personal leadership training for her top organizers.
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Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts. The real problem, we’ve been told, lay with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess. ACORN used CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle Fannie and Freddie and the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard of the most basic financial standards. And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.

Elderspeak

2008-10-07T15:31:01Z

In 'Sweetie' and 'Dear', a Hurt for the Elderly

Professionals call it elderspeak, the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people: the doctor who talks to their child rather than to them about their health; the store clerk who assumes that an older person does not know how to work a computer, or needs to be addressed slowly or in a loud voice. Then there are those who address any elderly person as “dear.”
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Those little insults can lead to more negative images of aging,” Dr. Levy said. “And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.”

In a long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, Dr. Levy and her fellow researchers found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking. The findings held up even when the researchers controlled for differences in the participants’ health conditions.

The worst offenders are often health care workers.

Some seniors get livid, some think it bullying. The smartest shrug it off.

Personality Predictors of Longevity

2008-10-07T01:09:00Z

Activity, Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness are the personality predictors of longevity
according to a study conducted by the National Institute on Aging as reported in the July/August Psychosomatic Medicine

Those who stay active physically, are emotionally stable, and conscientious live about 2 or 3 years longer and no one knows why.

Personality counts says AARP

"Built on sand"

2008-10-06T19:27:29Z

Pope says world financial system 'built on sand

''He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand''.

We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God's words are a solid reality''.

The Anchoress notes in The Pope, the Word & the World that a greater battle is being played out just as the Pope began a week-long televised reading of all 73 books of the bible. You can see the live stream here.

The Word being breathed into the air, unabridged, and the Holy Spirit rides on the breath. This is very cool.

And then today, the whole world financial picture runs precarious, and Benedict steps up and says, essentially, “it is better to take refuge in the Lord, than to trust in princes…” (Psalm 118;9)

Prayer may be all we can do right now

"Who Lost Europe?"

2008-10-06T15:54:14Z

From the Dutch politician Geert Wilders who producted the film Fitna on Wisdom and Courage

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario form becoming a reality.
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Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

Acedia -the sin you never heard of and probably are guilty of

2008-10-02T23:07:04Z

Understood properly, the Christian doctrine of sin is a vision of wholeness, and Dante represents this tradition at its best. He does not label people as evil because they've fallen short of some ill-conceived perfectionist goal. Dante's understanding of sin is far more subtle than that, and more humane.

These days, we are likely to say to people struggling with addition or mental illness that their hope lies in a perpetual state of recovery. Imagine for a moment that this is much more severe than anything Dante, or the desert monks for that matter, had in mind.

Their ultimate concern was how, as we deepen our relationship with God, we become to free to love, and more free to choose the good.

The idea that one would be defined forever by one's sin or sickness would have seemed to them excessively cruel, more likely to engender hopelessness than hope.

Kathleen Norris in her new book, Acedia and Me.

The "noble power" of a free will partakes of something even greater than hope, and that is grace. The kingdom of God within us is not something we gain through training, wit or skill. It comes to us as pure gift, and we are free now, as in Dante's time, to curb it or ignore it.

Given the power and resilience of this grace, it is a terrible irony that the despairing so often feel rejected by a distant and uncaring God. We are convinced that we are beyond the reach of grace, acedia has don its work. John Cassian states that acedia's whole purpose is to "sever us from thoughts of God"...Thomas Acquinas describes acedia as a "wanton, willful, self-distressing that numbs all love and zeal for love" and makes us unable "to rest in God." Even worse, it divides us against ourselves and our better instincts...When so fierce an alienation has me its grip, I need something more powerful than affirmation and self-esteeem. I need that outcast word, sin.

"Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life" (Kathleen Norris)

The Giant Cosmic Bubble of Space-Time

2008-10-02T17:11:20Z

Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of space-time that is particularly void of matter. Scientists say this condition could account for the apparent acceleration of the universe's expansion, for which dark energy currently is the leading explanation.

The image is from NASA, a Chandra X-ray photograph showing Cassiopeia A, the youngest supernova remnant in the Milky Way.

Dark energy is the name given to the hypothetical force that could be drawing all the stuff in the universe outward at an ever-increasing rate. Current thinking is that 74% of the universe could be made up of this exotic dark energy, with another 21% being dark matter, and normal matter comprising the remaining 5%.

Until now, there has been no good way to choose between dark energy or the void explanation, but a new study outlines a potential test of the bubble scenario.

If we were in an unusually sparse area of the universe, then things could look farther away than they really are and there would be no need to rely on dark energy as an explanation for certain astronomical observations.

But there's a problem with this void idea. It means we live in a special place.

it negates a principle that has reigned in astronomy for more than 450 years: namely, that our place in the universe isn't special.
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"This idea that we live in a void would really be a statement that we live in a special place," Clifton told SPACE.com. "The regular cosmological model is based on the idea that where we live is a typical place in the universe. This would be a contradiction to the Copernican principle."

Kevin Kelly, co-founder and Editor-at-Large of Wired, takes a look at the Narrow Gates of Inevitability

I am a child of science fiction, so I have not come to these heretical notions easily. But I changed my mind looking at our results so fare. The more we investigate the conditions for life --- any life – to spontaneously organize itself, the more remarkably narrow those conditions appear. Life requires a goldilocks’ touch – not too hot not too cold; not too ordered, not too chaotic; not too strong, not too weak. Up and down the scale of reality, from cosmic constants like force of gravity, to the exact size of our planet, to the temperature that ice molecules melt – all these values and hundreds more turn out to hover around sweet spots that permit the dynamic balance of life as we know it to thrive. In fact the dynamic balance of life, persistently hovering between order and disorder requires sweet spots.

Outside of this very thin corridor of parameters, life-as-we-know-it is denied. The more science investigates extropic systems via models and simulations, the more sweet spots it discovers life depends on. When all these alignments are exposed and listed, the confinement of life becomes quite clear.

The opaque dark matter on the balance sheets

2008-09-30T23:21:39Z

I'm beginning to understand 'credit default swaps' , what Warren Buffett called 'financial weapons of mass destruction' after reading The Monster That Ate Wall Street.

What could possibly go wrong with freeing up all that money in capital reserves to cover loans outstanding when you could buy insurance to protect against that risk?

Since credit default swaps are privately negotiated contracts between two parties and aren't regulated by the government, there's no central reporting mechanism to determine their value. That has clouded up the markets with billions of dollars' worth of opaque "dark matter," as some economists like to say. Like rogue nukes, they've proliferated around the world and now lie hiding, waiting to blow up the balance sheets of countless other financial institutions.

"Cut everything"

2008-09-30T20:45:30Z

The one thing you can control right now is how much you spend.

Brent Arends in the Wall St Journal says Stash Your Cash.

Cut everything.

Drop your cable package and TiVo. Say goodbye to Applebee's and Starbucks. Cancel the ski trip.

Slash every single penny you possibly can from your household budgets and start building up cash.

Yes, I'm serious. The shocking collapse of the rescue package on Capitol Hill threatens a disaster on Main Street. Unless this gets reversed almost immediately, it could turn a slowdown into a slump, and a slump into a depression.

It's hardly possible to make any sensible recommendations about investments or other financial matters until we get a better sense of what will happen next.

Ordinarily in a panic like this I'd be urging people to invest. My usual approach is that the worse people are panicking, the more aggressively you should buy. And that might still be the right thing to do.

But the political and financial situations right now are chaotic.

So you need to get an iron grip at least on one thing you can actually control: Your own personal budget.

Even saving $10 a day by making your own sandwiches and taking your own Super Grande Latte to work is a small victory.

This is now a financial war: You versus the economy. And most Americans are badly prepared. They have far too little cash on hand to cope with a major downturn.

Prayer and Aspirin

2008-09-30T15:36:36Z

Scientists are beginning to show that faith and belief in God can relieve pain.

Researchers at the Oxford Centre For Science Of The Mind, in Oxford University, in a study published in the journal Pain, conducted an experiment with electric shocks on 12 Roman Catholics and 12 atheists as they studied a painting of the Virgin Mary.

The Catholics in the experiment seemed to be able to block out much of the pain as they were able to activate part of the brain associated with conditioning the experience of pain, reported the Mail on Sunday. The study also found that participants who had strong religious belief could moderate their pain by thinking about it more positively.
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The researchers found that the Catholics felt "safe," "taken care of" and "calmed down and peaceful," said that looking at the painting of the Virgin Mary.

Matthew Archbold adds his own personal testimony about one of the longest nights in his life in Prayer Might Work Better than Aspirin

Michael Gerson on the biological basis for spirituality, Faith Beyond the Frontal Lobes says
..the brain is more like a muscle than a computer. The spiritual facility can be developed -- and it changes over our lifetimes, as our brains age. In this narrow sense, prayer and meditation work in the same way that aerobic training works on the heart muscle.

The Formation of Young Women

2008-09-30T15:24:38Z

Parents who have young girls headed for college should read Lipstick Jungle and consider carefully what environment they want for the daughters.

23 portions of fruit in a single glass

2008-09-30T00:15:34Z

Cherry juice hailed as superfood

Drinking a glass of cherry juice a day offers the same health benefits as eating 23 portions of fruit and vegetables, research reveals.

It found 250ml of the juice contained more antioxidants than five portions of peas, tomatoes, water melon, carrots and banana.

Previous research has shown that antioxidants - which target harmful molecules in the body called free radicals - can help prevent cancer, heart disease, stroke and ageing.

"Laramans", Catholics in Hiding

2008-09-29T14:54:04Z

I'm familiar with the conversos, Jews in 14th and 15th century Spain who were compelled to convert to Christianity, many of whom, unwilling to abandon completely the tradition of their forefathers, continued to practice Judaism secretly, but this is the first I've heard of Catholics in hiding.

"We have been living a dual life. In our homes we were Catholics but in public we were good Muslims," said Ismet Sopi. "We don't call this converting. It is the continuity of the family's belief."
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The majority of ethnic Albanians were forcibly converted to Islam, mostly through the imposition of high taxes on Catholics, when the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans.

For centuries, many remembered their Christian roots and lived as what they call "Catholics in hiding". Some, nearly a century after the Ottomans left the Balkans, now see the chance to reveal their true beliefs.
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In staunchly Catholic families, often in villages with a strong social network, men converted publicly but continued to practice Christianity at home. Women and daughters often kept the faith, meaning it was transmitted to children.

Catholic priests administered the sacraments to these "crypto-Catholics" during house visits to the women.

The Catholic Church officially opposed this ministry to the converts, but local clergy often ignored that and maintained ties to the families.

The fact that there were "Catholics in hiding" was known during the Ottoman Empire: Albanians even had a word for them, "laraman", meaning piebald, or two-colored.

"They were tired of their parenting role"

2008-09-29T14:45:13Z

So a 34 year old widower dropped off his nine children at a Nebraska hospital.

The well-intentioned "safe haven" law has unintended consequences.

The Omaha World-Herald reported that the man had a “history of unemployment, eviction notices and unpaid bills – and a psychologist’s determination that he lacked common sense.”

The children’s grandmother told the World-Herald other family members planned to take care of the children, but the paper said their destination was still uncertain.

In USA Today, Landry said the children were “struggling to varying degrees with what’s happened to them.”