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Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone—Especially the Wealthy
New Republic: When I was fourteen I met a man with a talent for restoring a sense of fairness to a society with vast and growing inequalities in wealth. His name was Jack Kenney and he’d created a tennis camp, called Tamarack, in the mountains of northern New Hampshire. The kids who went to the Tamarack Tennis Camp mostly came from well-to-do East Coast families, but the camp itself didn’t feel like a rich person’s place: it wasn’t unusual for the local health inspectors to warn the camp about its conditions, or for the mother of some Boston Brahmin dropping her child off, and seeing where he would sleep and eat for the next month, to burst into tears.
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12 Ways to Stop Wasting Money and Take Control of Your Stuff
Time: In my work as a consumer psychologist and author, I’ve read countless studies about consumer behavior, and I’ve conducted plenty of research on my own, interviewing hundreds of shoppers about how, when, and why they shop. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to avoid piling up too much stuff and how to stop making unnecessary, excessive, and ultimately unsatisfying purchases.
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Walk This Way: Acting Happy Can Make It So
The Wall Street Journal: Happy people walk differently than others, and scientists are finding that putting on a happy walk may give your mood a boost. Research shows people’s mood affects how they walk. When people are happy, they tend to walk faster and more upright, swing their arms and move up and down more, and sway less side to side than sad or depressed people. A recent study found that deliberately walking like a happy person can lift one’s spirits. And adopting the gait of a depressed person can bring on sadness.
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Common Core Reading: The Struggle Over Struggle
NPR: Every set of academic standards has a soul. Yes, a soul. It's made of varied stuff: part research, part practice, part conviction of its authors. To find the soul, follow the words that turn up again and again in the winding backwaters and byways of the standards themselves. A search of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards turns up one remarkable word 105 times. It is "complex" (or "complexity"). Here's an early appearance: "Rather than focusing solely on the skills of reading and writing, the ELA/literacy standards highlight the growing complexity of the texts students must read to be ready for the demands of college, career, and life." Read the whole story: NPR
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Feeling — Not Being — Wealthy Drives Opposition to Wealth Redistribution
People’s views on income inequality and wealth distribution may have little to do with how much money they have in the bank and a lot to do with how wealthy they feel in comparison to Visit Page
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The Science of Laughing Through the Tears
The Atlantic: Oriana Aragón was watching Conan O’Brien’s late night show on TBS when she noticed something strange: The fashion model and actress Leslie Bibb—O’Brien’s guest for the evening—began describing “a thing where if people have babies, I’m like, ‘Oh, that baby’s so cute, I just want to punch it in the face. Like, ‘That dog is cute, I’m gonna kick it in the head.’ I don’t know, I just want tosqueeze something.” Aragón, a psychology researcher at Yale University, was intrigued, so she called her father the next day. “I told him about this actress that wanted to kick puppies, and he said, ‘Well, it’s not that different from grandma pinching your cheeks,’” Aragón explains.
