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Let Us Spray--Want to help people reason calmly together at your next public hearing or town-hall, board, or committee meeting? Try spraying the room with pleasant scents, because a recent study at BYU suggests that ethical behaviour can be regulated through cleanliness. Participants who sat in a room spritzed with citrus-scented Windex were less critical and judgmental and more likely to act fairly and charitably than those in an unscented room. Another option: become a terrorist in reverse by sneaking in to spray a bottle around the FOX news set.
Best Of Both Worlds--Feeling guilty about how relatively rich and fortunate you are but not quite willing to make a hair shirt your permanent upper garment? Try voluntourism, a concept introduced by luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton. Spend a night in a $500 room, then take the hotel shuttle to a local work site and spend half a day repairing hiking trails, removing invasive plants, working with the disabled, or assisting at recycling centers and food banks. At the end of the session, head back to the hotel for drinks and dinner and an untroubled, conscience-free snooze on a downy bed.
Encouraging Charity And Healthy Eating--On a somehwat related noted, if you plan to undertake a mass shooting--at a military base, say--do the right thing and give your unused frozen broccoli to a neighbor--as Nidal Malik Hasan did--before you strap on a couple of pistols and ammo cartridges, shout "Allahu Akbar," and commence firing.
GDP and GNI--In the midst of the current recession, companies seem to be finding ways to get more done with fewer workers. Productivity is increasing at its fastest pace in six years. GDP is up;employment is down. The country is getting richer, but individuals are getting poorer. What's the solution? Make-work jobs? Feather-bedding? Doubtful. Did someone just say "Guaranteed National Income?" I'm listening.
Oh, Those Cotton-Pickin', Cherry-Pickin' Insurance Companies--Some health insurance companies discount insurance premiums if policyholders meet benchmarks relating to smoking, weight, and blood pressure. Is that fair? All automobile insurance companies discount premiums if drivers have few or no moving violations or accidents. All companies that sell homeowners' insurance discount premiums if policyholders have smoke alarms and fire extinguishers and cancel policies if homeowners report too many burglaries. Is that fair?
Death In The Digital Age--Old-timer, it may be wise to re-write that will. Ten years ago it scarcely mattered, but now, before it's too late and your executors are left with a mess, it would be wise to decide what to do about your Facebook pages, profiles, and photos; your website and blog material; your online videos; your Twitter account and your e-mails. And what's going to happen to your PayPal account, your documents, your TiVoed TV programs? At the very least, make a neat list of the passwords and user names for all your on-line connections.
The Power Of Prayer--An armed gunman knelt and prayed with a store clerk in Indianapolis recently before taking her cell phone and $20. He had brandished the gun and the clerk had begun crying and talking about God. The robber said that he had a two-year-old child to support and asked for prayers. The moment of fellowship ended in a win-win: she kept her life, he got the phone and money.
Textual Relations--A recent Neilsen survey reveals that the average number of texts make per teenager has reached 2,900 a month, or almost 100 a day. Some physicians and psychiatrists fear that texting between friends is taking a toll--making them more obsessive about texting, distracting them from more important matters, impairing their ability to think for themselves, and leading them to mangle language by adopting abbreviations and simplistic syntax. Learning of the survey, two teen tweethearts texted it over:
EZ2CY
W8
Y?
RUX?
9. URAQT
UNI--T42?
OK
You're Only As Old As You Feel--An elderly man carrying an oxygen tank recently robbed a bank in La Jolla, presenting a note of demand to a teller and fleeing with an unknown amount of cash. We are fortunate that modern technology enables us to be active even late in life.
WT@#%*?--A recent survey reveals that Mexican adults curse an average of 20 times during their waking hours, a total of 1.3 billion swear words daily. Yet another reason to go easy on the consumption of jalapenos.
Patience, Patients--A long wait in the doctor's office, despite having a scheduled appointment, is the norm. Yesterday, while waiting for a consultation with my gastroenterologist prior to scheduling a colonoscopy, I spent 75 minutes in a cramped, vistaless room with nothing to read but pamphlets on Chrone's disesase, diverticulosis, acid reflux, and irritable bowel syndrome. Doctors defend long waiting times thus: acute problems that take longer than expected; emergencies; surprise discoveries; the need to console and advise. Fine. These things happen. But there's a simple solution to the problem: schedule fewer patients and build in a one-hour catch-up time in the middle of the day.
Ask Me What I Know--Arizona autodidacts, polymaths, and graduates of the School of Hard Knocks are delighted by the news that Arizona's three state universities are looking for ways to give students course credit for what they already know. Not only are the universities expanding the number of exam results they will accept that allow students to "test out" of introductory courses but they are also willing to grant credit for knowledge that people--especially adults returning to school after having worked--have gained through practical experience. "Why shouldn't they receive credit?" says AZ Board of Regents President Ernest Calderon. "For some reason, many people are caught up in the 50s mentality that you have to be in a seat in class to learn anything." As one who has read and studied a great deal on his own, and as one who has skipped his share of classes when he thought he could make better use of his time, I applaud AZ's approach. Students can move rapidly through the system, gaining more credits for less money, and universities can ease the pressure on their crowded classrooms. Still, I wonder how much cachet a degree from the SHK division of ASU will carry in academia.
The Oral Tradition--Giving new meaning to the phrase "swapping spit," some genetic-testing companies that provide data to dating services say that they can judge the compatibility of one person with another by a DNA testing of cheek swabs taken from each. They claim that a better biological match will mean better sex, less cheating, longer-lasting love, perhaps healthier children. "Match" may be the wrong word, however, because the companies say that people tend to be attracted to those who have immune system genes and natural body odor genes different from their own. Cheek swabs may be the way of the future. Certainly they are much less embarrassing than sniffing someone up and down and are much less time-consuming than talking and doing things together to find out if you're compatible. An investment in the companuy that makes Q-Tips would seem prudent.
An Itching For Etching--Ekkehart Malotki, a pre-eminent researcher into the history of rock art (as in petroglyphs, not the work of Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix) believes that ancient stone carvers had a "hard-wired" need to create art. Non-iconic abstract images preceded representations of humans and animals, he says. Humans everywhere make doodles ("phospenes"), including circles, zigzags, spirals, dots, boxes, and rows of lines. The act of doing so is more important to them than the final result. A cursory glance at the scribbles on this website would seem to support Malotki's theory.
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