Blogger Philosophy

My Philosophy of Blogging



There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or to be the mirror that reflects it.
- Edith Wharton

Ms. Wharton sums up how I think of blogs. My desire is to reflect the articles and pictures that inspire me when surfing the Web by posting them on my blogs. Blogs create a scrapbook of events to review later inspiring me for a second time. This is a great pleasure and an educational activity providing me with learning missed when I was in school. The Web has demonstrated its great value in generating and spreading new ideas. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Occupy Wall Street and other revolutions have gained momentum on the Web.
If you have a favorite cause like animal rights, you can play a part in education the world by posting to your blog. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.


"To read means to borrow; to create out of one's reading is paying off one's debts."
- Charles Lillard

Communicating my worldview, as seen from my backwater home town situated on an island in the Pacific, is my way of staying engaged with current events.  Multiple Sclerosis has reduced my physical energy and keeps me close to home so I need to adapt and find new ways of relating to the world at large.

Happiness has an optimal price?

$75,000 Can Buy Happiness:
byJennifer Robison, 

Gallup Management Journal  

The search to define happiness has consumed a lot of human energy.  

Angus Deaton, Ph.D., a renowned economist, and Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D., a Nobel prize-winning psychologist, both from Princeton University....looked for happiness in numbers.  ...they analyzed responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (GHWBI), a daily survey that asks roughly 1,000 U.S. residents a battery of questions about their wellbeing.

After analyzing more than 450,000 GHWBI responses from 2008 and 2009, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Kahneman found that happiness is actually the result of the fulfillment of two abstract psychological states -- 

1.) emotional wellbeing and 

2.) life evaluation. 

The finding is important because it offered the researchers a new and more useful way of looking at happiness.

The difference between life evaluation and emotional wellbeing is vital, though the two are related.

Dr. Kahneman says, "They're clearly distinct dimensions that are correlated. But they have somewhat different determinants. What improves people's emotional wellbeing is different from what it takes to make them say that they're satisfied with their life."

In other words, life evaluation and emotional wellbeing refer to different feelings. 

Life evaluation requires a long view of a person's overall life. Though life evaluation is colored by the day's emotions, Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton's GHWBI research shows that people evaluate their lives based on a retrospective of their achievements. If they've accomplished the goals they've set, are financially secure, and are emotionally fulfilled, they're more likely to have a high evaluation of their life.

Emotional wellbeing reflects a much shorter view and refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience. If the day's experience is negative, emotional wellbeing will take a hit. That said, people with good emotional wellbeing seem to get it through social contact.

"Emotional happiness is primarily social," says Dr. Kahneman. "The very best thing that can happen to people is to spend time with other people they like. That is when they are happiest, and so, without question, this is a major story. 

We find loneliness is a terrible thing. So is extreme poverty. But loneliness, regardless of how rich you are, is a very bad thing."

But the research also indicates that you won't become happy merely by socializing with your best friends and achieving your goals. You also need $75,000.

The most reported finding is that people with an annual household income of $75,000 are about as happy as anyone gets. More specifically, those with annual household incomes below $75,000 give lower responses to both life evaluation and emotional wellbeing questions. But people with an annual household income of more than $75,000 don't have commensurately higher levels of emotional wellbeing, even though their life evaluation rating continues to increase.
 
Your emotional life depends primarily on your relationships with people.

Emotional wellbeing may not improve with additional money, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Kahneman think, because of several factors. One is that humans adapt quickly to the things money can buy. A mansion is a thrill the first month you live in it, but it's just a house the second.

Moreover, other research suggests that wealthy people don't take as much pleasure in actual pleasure as do poor people. In one test, social researchers primed some test subjects to feel rich and found that the "wealthy" subjects didn't enjoy luxury chocolate as much as the control group, the "non-wealthy," did.

And Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton believe that when it comes to the very wealthy with high life satisfaction, their evaluations may be influenced more by keeping score than by purchasing power. If life evaluation is based on reviewing how much progress people have made in their lives, money may become a marker of success.


So people who have achieved their goals, who spend a lot of time with friends, and who make a lot of money have the most life satisfaction, while those who earn at least $75,000 a year have the greatest emotional wellbeing. But that doesn't meant they aren't stressed. 

The GHWBI data show that college graduates report more stress than people without college degrees, and that stress levels are generally higher in wealthy countries.

Comparing the U.S. life evaluation scores with data available from about 150 other countries through the Gallup World Poll, the U.S. ranks fairly high. The only nations with higher scores are the Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and New Zealand.

However, while Americans come in near the top for life evaluation and do well on wellbeing, they're also among the most stressed. U.S. stress levels are the fifth highest when compared to data from other countries in the Gallup World Poll.

There is one thing, however, left to mention in this discussion of happiness -- individual temperament. Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton's research, and that of others, clearly indicates that some people are just born happier, or "sunnier," as Dr. Deaton calls them. Their emotional wellbeing will always be higher than everyone else's.

That's not to suggest that those who aren't "sunny" are doomed to lives of misery. Even the most pessimistic, grumpy-by-nature people can find solace in Dr. Deaton's statement: "It may be that we're not designed for happiness." And what is it we were designed for? "To avoid getting eaten by predators," says Dr. Deaton. "If nothing eats you today, you ought to be happy. At least it's a start."






Source:
This post originally appeared on Gallup Management Journal.

Warren Buffett Backs Estate Taxes

This business article puts a different twist on Warren Buffet's calls for the 'Rich' to be made to pay more taxes.  Mr. Buffett appears to be a most generous businessman but the article implies a certain level of spin is involved in his stellar reputation.


The Real Reason Warren Buffett Backs Estate Taxes:

Here’s the true reason why Buffett likes a tax code that is hard on billionaires like him, as explained by journalist Tim Carney in his book “The Big Ripoff: How Big Business And Big Government Steal Your Money”:

Warren Buffett’s business is buying businesses. Bill Gates makes software and Paul Newman makes movies and salad dressing, but Warren Buffett makes money. He runs Berkshire Hathaway as CEO and principle owner. Berkshire Hathaway used to make textiles, but now they simply own other companies. Some familiar Berkshire Hathaway properties are GEICO, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, and the Buffalo News.

While Buffett is clearly an unusually brilliant investor, what he has done with his company has been straightforward in some ways. He buys companies that are worth more than the selling price. He buys things that will go up in value.

One great way to buy something that is going up in value is to buy a company that is already very profitable, but whose owner(s) have to sell. One common way that happens is when the owner dies and the heirs cannot afford to pay the estate tax on the properties they stand to inherit. They are therefore forced to sell them to pay the taxes. Carney cites the case of the Buffalo News, a highly profitable family-owned newspaper that Buffett bought after the family matriarch died without doing proper estate planning. Dairy Queen was acquired in a similar manner.

When the estate tax forces an owner to sell his business, it provides an opportunity for a bargain, but that opportunity is not available to everyone ... When the estate tax puts a business on the market, it is a market that is only open to big business.

Beyond making it easier for Buffett to find bargains, the estate tax drives customers to his primary business interest, insurance, including life insurance. The estate tax has created an entire industry called “estate planning.” Anyone with a business or large assets sooner or later needs to engage in estate planning, which involves hiring tax specialists, attorneys, and accountants ... Two central elements of estate planning are life insurance and annuities.

Bear that in mind the next time a liberal writer extols Buffett’s selflessness.




'via Blog this'

Daily Must Do's

Five daily must-dos to keep your business humming - The Globe and Mail:

Here are some important, if not fundamental, things that should be part of your daily to-do list:

1. Keep the sales machine humming

Whether business is strong or struggling, you have to keep on selling. You can work on sales calls, cold calls, the creation of sales and marketing material, social media activity, or presentations. Whether it’s a hard sell or a soft sell, the funnel needs to be kept as full as possible.

2. Network, network and network some more

A strong network is among the most valuable assets that a business can have. It is the people and the companies within your network that can drive sales, generate new customers and opportunities.

3. Keep your books up to date

Too many business, particularly small ones, stuff receipts and invoices in a shoe box, and then spend hours wading through it every few weeks or months. A better approach is to spend time on your books every day. Even if it is only a few minutes, it can be enough to maintain control of your finances and, as important, avoid the dreaded shoebox pile.

4. Love your customers

While it is important to attract new customers, your existing customers should get a lot of TLC because they have already made the commitment to do business with you. If you meet their needs, there is a better chance they will give you more business.

5. Keep exploring ways to do business better or differently

Your business will change and evolve, customers will come and go, and the economy will rise and fall. All that means that you can’t be complacent or stick with the status quo, or your business could become stagnant.

Instead, you need to explore new tools, services and approaches to keep things in your business fresh and current.



Special to The Globe and Mail:
Mark Evans, ME Consulting (communications and marketing)

Join The Globe’s Small Business LinkedIn group to network with other entrepreneurs and to discuss topical issues: http://linkd.in/jWWdzT

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G. B. Shaw

THE GOLDEN RULE
by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)


Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.
Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Source:

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/14409/
 From: Maxims for Revolutionists

Author: George Bernard Shaw

California Reaches Solar Power Milestone | NBC Bay Area

California Reaches Solar Power Milestone | NBC Bay Area: "

The golden state has installed enough solar panels on rooftops of homes and businesses to produce one gigawatt of power, KQED's Climate Watch reports.

One gigawatt is equal to one thousand megawatts, or enough to power 600,000 homes. Only five other countries in the world can claim that, including Germany, which has reached 17 gigawatts.

“Getting to one gigawatt is a fantastic marker of the momentum towards California's clean energy future,” Sungevity President Danny Kennedy said in a report by Environment California. “Riding the exponential curve of growth, which is akin to the mass adoption of cell phones or satellite TVs, will create many more good jobs and great opportunity for the Golden State.”

One gigawatt is impressive, but California isn't stopping there. It's aiming for three gigawatts of rooftop solar by 2016 -- which was mandated by California's Million Solar Roofs Initiative five years ago."

'via Blog this'

Solar Energy is becoming competitive

The shrinking cost of solar energy: By the numbers - The Week:

BY THE NUMBERS

As harnessing the sun's energy becomes cheaper and more efficient, some analysts believe solar will overtake fossil fuels in a matter of decades



Photo: Michael DeYoung/Blend Images/Corbis
It takes the sun only 14.5 seconds to provide as
much energy to Earth as all of human civilization uses in a day.
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The shrinking cost of solar energy: By the numbers:

According to Moore's Law, the price of computing power is slashed in half every two years — which helps explain why personal computers become outdated so quickly. But now, as Paul Krugman at The New York Times notes, the solar energy industry is experiencing a similar trend. The price of producing solar power cr continues to fall — thanks to technological improvements and heavy subsidies in countries like China — and this onetime punchline of an energy sector continues to expand. Will solar power eventually overtake oil as Earth's primary energy source? Perhaps. In the meantime, a look at the shrinking cost of solar energy, by the numbers:

65 Percentage growth experienced by the solar energy industry in each of the past five years

7 Percentage decline in the annual price of solar energy, adjusted for inflation

17 Percentage drop in the price of installing solar panels in the U.S. in 2010, says the, says the Washington Post. "Solar companies are figuring out how to set up systems cheaply."


17 Gigawatts of solar power that were created or used in the United States in 2010. That's roughly equivalent to the output of 17 nuclear power plants.

700 Watts of power that the sun shines on every square meter of Earth

89 quadrillion Watts of power shining on the Earth at any given moment. One quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros.

15 trillion Watts of power used by "all of human civilization" each day. It may be a big number, but it's just "one six-thousandth" of the 89 quadrillion watts shining on Earth at any given moment, says Scientific American.

14.5 Seconds it takes for the sun to provide as much energy to Earth as humanity consumes in a day

88 Minutes it takes for the sun to provide as much energy to Earth as humanity consumes in a year

2018 The year that analysts expect solar power to become affordable enough to compete directly with fossil fuels

2060 The year that analysts expect solar power may satisfy more than half of the world's energy needs

$491 billion Amount that U.S. drivers are expected to spend on gasoline this year

Sources: Forbes, Los Angeles Times, NY Times, Scientific American,Washington Post

Krugman: It's time for solar power

Solar Power has been my pick for the future of alternative, sustainable energy for a while now - years not weeks.  China has weighed in on solar by with aggressive trade practices to kill competition, distorting pricing and otherwise upsetting the course of the industry built up around solar power. Its not a walk in the park to see how to invest in this area.  Lots of money has been lost already by investors and companies bankrupted....


Solar Power
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES
Updated Monday, November 7, 2011

For decades the story of technology has been dominated, in the popular mind and to a large extent in reality, by computing and the things you can do with it. Moore's Law - in which the price of computing power falls roughly 50 percent every 18 months - has powered an ever-expanding range of applications, from faxes to Facebook.

Our mastery of the material world, on the other hand, has advanced much more slowly. The sources of energy, the way we move stuff around, are much the same as they were a generation ago.


The success story you haven't heard about is Solar Energy

But that may be about to change. We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That's right, solar power.

If that surprises you, if you still think of solar power as some kind of hippie fantasy, blame our fossilized political system, in which fossil fuel producers have both powerful political allies and a powerful propaganda machine that denigrates alternatives.

These days, mention solar power and you'll probably hear cries of "Solyndra!" Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste - although claims of a major scandal are nonsense - and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.

But Solyndra's failure was actually caused by technological success: The price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn't keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, "there's now frequent talk of a 'Moore's law' in solar energy," with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues - and if anything it seems to be accelerating - we're just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it's likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

A large part of our political class, including essentially the entire GOP, is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers' money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.


So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we're willing to let it in.

 

Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times.

Source:
http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Krugman-It-s-time-for-solar-power-2257045.php

Mankind's Report Card

20 ways the world has changed since 1st Earth Summit - Politics - CBC News


The United Nations says humans are more concerned about damage done to the environment than we were 20 years ago — but we're still destroying it faster than we can fix it.

That's part of a snapshot prepared by the United Nations Environment Program in a report called Keeping Track that looks at a wide range of changes that have occurred since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

The report is designed to be used by legislators at the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio next May.

And far from being a thick report that will just gather dust, Keeping Track is actually a bit of a page-turner, filled with surprising and often encouraging news about our stewardship of the Earth.

The report uses a minimum of text and relies on colourful graphics, charts and satellite pictures to show the major environmental and social changes that have occurred on Earth since the early 1990s, from growing cities in China to the rapidly spreading footprint of Alberta's oil sands.



Changes in the world over the last 20 years.

1. The number of megacities has doubled.

2. The world is eating 26 per cent more meat.

3. Global temperatures continue to rise, with the last 10 years the warmest on record.

4. World industry is 23 per cent more energy efficient.

5. Plastic consumption has skyrocketed — with annual production reaching a record 265 million tonnes worldwide in 2010.

6. The 1990 Montreal Protocol to limit ozone-destroying chemicals is the world's most successful international agreement, producing a 93 per cent drop in the damaging emissions since 1992.

7. Cement production is the fastest-growing source of C02 emissions.

8. The Mesopotamian Marshlands, the largest in the Middle East, are recovering from deliberate draining by Iraq in the 1990s.

9. Saudi Arabia has transformed from an importer of food to an exporter due to irrigation.

10. Environmentally protected areas have increased worldwide by 42 per cent.

11. Fish stock depletion is now one of the most pressing environmental issues.

12. Renewable energy has skyrocketed, with solar energy leading the way — up 30,000 per cent since 1992.

13. Biofuel production — up 300,000 per cent — is converting more land from farming to production of fuel.

14. Organic farming is up 240 per cent since 1999.

15. The Amazon rainforest has been largely destroyed due to drought and farming.

16. Tourism and travel is the world's largest business sector — and ecotourism is the fastest-growing type of tourism, up 20-34 per cent per year.

17. Passenger trips by airplanes have doubled in the past two decades.

18. Clean drinking water access increased to 87 per cent, but widespread sanitation is still slow.

19. 30 per cent more private companies are adopting environmental standards every year.

20. Women's influence is rising with more 60 per cent more seats in national parliaments.

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Megacities:

Pop. in millions, 2010

1. Tokyo, Japan
36.7

2. Delhi, India
22.2

3. Sao Paulo, Brazil
20.3

4. Mumbai, India
20.0

5. Mexico City, Mexico
19.5

6. New York - Newark, USA
19.4

7. Shanghai, China
16.6

8. Kolkata, India
15.6

9. Dhaka, Bangladesh
14.6

10. Karachi, Pakistan
13.1
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