It is not length of life, but depth of life.Ralph Waldo Emerson

February 2016

  • Victims and Victimhood

    A NYT essay by Arthur C. Brooks made a distinction between being a victim and what he calls the culture of victimhood, meaning anyone being slighted or hurt by others or the system feeling victimized whether or not in his eyes it was deserved. He sees the practice as being so frequent and prevalent and as not having much merit. As much as I find the concept evocative, I am not sure about the examples he cites, for example those of students feeling hurt by the use of micro-aggression. I am sure there are exaggerations, no one is perfect, but micro-aggression which I have heard and seen is a real issue, and even if one makes a distinction between a racial slur and violent rape, (more…)

  • Spending on Others

    If you want to be happy spend money on others. Psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn and marketing professor Michael Norton document all this in their book Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. They’ve of course conducted research and experiments and on a recent PBS program Elizabeth Dunn even spoke of living what she has come to believe. She and a group of friends are engaged in a project pooling resources to sponsor a refugee family. To these authors happiness is not (more…)

  • About Syria

    The Guardian newspaper reports that the Syrian Centre for Policy Research (whose website has too much Arabic for Western readers) estimates that the war in Syria has resulted in 470,000 dead, 1.9 million wounded, and 45% of the population displaced. (The UN reported 250,000 dead, but they stopped counting in 2014 and the Centre has better access to local data). The staggering figures which are matched by the nightly reports on the refugee crisis in Greece, Turkey, Jordan and the whole area pound our conscience. A Los Angeles Times editorial February 11th asks (more…)

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