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The Shame of the Alcoholic
This month in Cleveland, a woman was caught swerving her car onto a sidewalk, illegally passing a school bus full of children. A judge sentenced her to stand on the street corner wearing a sign that read: “Only an idiot would drive around a school bus.” In Arlington, Texas, a billboard features mug shots of suspected johns, with the words: “This could be you.” Arlington is one of many American communities going out of their way to publicly humiliate men who buy sex, while other towns are similarly targeting shoplifters and drunk drivers. And it’s not just judges: Parents around the country are also forcing their kids to wear signs—like “I am a thief”—to shame them into moral action.
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I costi (finanziari) della tristezza (The financial costs of sadness)
Corriere Della Sera: La tristezza, come se non fosse sufficiente da sola, comporta anche una perdita monetaria. E non perché si cerca di curarla con sedute psicanalitiche (o almeno non solo), ma perché i momenti di costernazione sono spesso forieri di azioni sconsiderate in campo economico. Quando tutto sembra andare storto, quando si riescono a stento a ingoiare le lacrime e una profonda sensazione di desolazione ci avvolge, non è il momento di fare acquisti, perché l’unhappiness (tristezza) è nemica giurata dei giusti investimenti: lo sostiene uno studio americano e lo dimostra la vita. Jennifer Lerner dell’Harvard Kennedy School of Government e i colleghi Yi Le e Elke U.
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Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It
Nightly Business Report: We can’t be the alpha dog all of the time. Whatever our personality, most of us experience varying degrees of feeling in charge. Some situations take us down a notch while others build us up. New research shows that it’s possible to control those feelings a bit more, to be able to summon an extra surge of power and sense of well-being when it’s needed: for example, during a job interview or for a key presentation to a group of skeptical customers. “Our research has broad implications for people who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem due to their hierarchical rank or lack of resources,” says HBS assistant professor Amy J.C.
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Gratitude pays big dividends
The Boston Globe: The season to pause and give thanks is at hand. As we prepare to gather around hearth and table, some may hold a resigned sense that though they’ll go through the motions and say the right things — the things you’re supposed to say at Thanksgiving — they might not truly feel gratitude in their hearts. It’s like saying “I’m happy for you” to someone who just got the job you wanted. The words and the feelings just don’t match. This disconnect is unfortunate. It comes from a somewhat misguided view that gratitude is all about looking backward — back to what has already been. But in reality, that’s not how gratitude truly works.
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Teaching Lessons
The New York Times: How do we help students achieve academically and socially? As a teacher, I have lofty answers. But challenges — and questions — arise when I try to translate my ideas (and ideals) into concrete lessons, delivered in 90-minute increments to a very particular set of sixth graders, each as individual and evanescent as a snowflake. To help teachers succeed, schools offer “professional development,” universally known as P.D. Like a lot of teachers, I’ve come to regard such training with a mix of optimism and disappointment. Over the last 20 years, I’ve attended more education “workshops” than I care to remember.
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Does your pet have a costume yet?
MSN: Americans will spend a whopping $370 million on Halloween costumes for their pets this year, Time magazine reports. That's a massive $60 million jump over last year's projection by the National Retail Federation. In fact, the NRF says that of the 70% of Americans who plan to celebrate Halloween, 15.1% said their plans include a cute little outfit for their pet. Does that strike you as odd? Families will spend three times more to outfit their kids for Halloween, we've read, but still. My dogs would not be amused, and cats would be even less tolerant, one would think. Why do we do this?
