Various web links I found to be of interest recently:
The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. In June, 1997, a large oil and gas company in western Canada asked a group of psychologists at the University of Calgary to monitor workers as they transitioned from a traditional office arrangement to an open one. The psychologists assessed the employees' satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.
Time poverty is a problem partly of perception and partly of distribution
Leisure time is now the stuff of myth. Some are cursed with too
much. Others find it too costly to enjoy. Many spend their spare
moments staring at a screen of some kind, even though doing other
things (visiting friends, volunteering at a church) tends to make
people happier. Not a few presume they will cash in on all their
stored leisure time when they finally retire, whenever that may
be. In the meantime, being busy has its rewards. Otherwise why
would people go to such trouble?
Alas time, ultimately, is a strange and slippery resource, easily
traded, visible only when it passes and often most highly valued
when it is gone. No one has ever complained of having too much of
it. Instead, most people worry over how it flies, and wonder where
it goes. Cruelly, it runs away faster as people get older, as each
accumulating year grows less significant, proportionally, but also
less vivid. Experiences become less novel and more habitual. The
years soon bleed together and end up rushing past, with the most
vibrant memories tucked somewhere near the beginning. And of course
the more one tries to hold on to something, the swifter it seems
to go.
Never mind the headlines. We've never lived in such peaceful times. by Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack
The world is not falling apart. The kinds of violence to which most
people are vulnerable--homicide, rape, battering, child abuse--have
been in steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving
way to democracy. Wars between states--by far the most destructive
of all conflicts--are all but obsolete. The increase in the number
and deadliness of civil wars since 2010 is circumscribed, puny
in comparison with the decline that preceded it, and unlikely
to escalate.
... Why is the world always "more dangerous than it has ever
been"--even as a greater and greater majority of humanity lives
in peace and dies of old age?
Too much of our impression of the world comes from a misleading
formula of journalistic narration. Reporters give lavish coverage
to gun bursts, explosions, and viral videos, oblivious to how
representative they are and apparently innocent of the fact that
many were contrived as journalist bait. Then come sound bites from
"experts" with vested interests in maximizing the impression
of mayhem: generals, politicians, security officials, moral
activists. The talking heads on cable news filibuster about the
event, desperately hoping to avoid dead air. Newspaper columnists
instruct their readers on what emotions to feel.
A study from scientists at Lund University found that exercise induces genome-wide changes in DNA methylation in human adipose tissue, potentially affecting adipocyte metabolism.
Exercise, even in small doses, changes the expression of our innate DNA.
New research from Lund University in Sweden has described for the first
time what happens on an epigenetic level in fat cells when we undertake
physical activity.
"Our study shows the positive effects of exercise, because the epigenetic
pattern of genes that affect fat storage in the body changes", says
Charlotte Ling, Associate Professor at Lund University Diabetes Center.
It's also beyond dispute that we are approaching a social
consensus that wealth and income inequality in the United States
today now threatens to seriously damage our social fabric. That
fabric is grounded in two fundamental ideas: liberty, or the freedom
to determine our own destinies, and equality. The problem is that
over the past thirty years -- in tandem with rising inequality
-- we have favored liberty over equality.
...
The reality is different. The working poor are not like the
advantaged, superficial similarities aside. A very significant
component of success -- one that may even be more determinative
than hard work -- is luck. This is true, even if the advantaged
have worked hard to maximize the benefits of that luck. By luck I
mostly mean circumstances of birth and natural talents and abilities
(which might well include the propensity to work hard).
...
Why do the disadvantaged tolerate this situation? The American myth
of self-reliance. No matter the vagaries of fortune, we consistently
find that Americans at all levels believe in some variant of the
Horatio Alger myth -- the classic American rags to riches success
story -- despite strong empirical evidence that belies it. I think
that there is some evidence in recent years that belief in this
myth is eroding, a fact that will be dangerous for society if the
the system continues as it currently is now.
The great irony is that the trend convincing families that health
spending is out of control is the same trend that is holding health
spending down. Co-pays and deductibles hit families hard by forcing
them to spend out of pocket. But by hitting them hard, they help
to reduce hospital and doctor's visits and pull the headline
health-spending number lower.
...
Broaden the trend yet further and it is easy to see how many individuals do not believe in the recovery at all. More families have jobs, but they aren't getting wage increases. Many of the new jobs getting created are low-wage ones, after the recession wiped out middle-wage gigs. Families' wallets are getting squeezed with rising costs, while economists promise them that inflation is subdued. Families' health spending is rising, while economists promise them that overall health spending is remarkably flat.
Tyler Cowen
In the scenarios outlined here, though, growing inequality is highly contingent on particular technologies and the global conditions of the moment. Movements toward greater inequality often set countervailing forces in motion, even if those forces take a long time to come to fruition. From this perspective, rather than seeking to beat down capital, our attention should be directed to leaving open the future possibilities for innovation, change and dynamism. Even if income inequality continues to increase in the short run, as I believe is likely, there exists a plausible and more distant future in which we are mostly much better off and more equal. The history of technology suggests that new opportunities for better living and higher wages are being created, just not as quickly as we might like.
Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander
J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation
for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the
classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner's Dilemma,
they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could
persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game
over the long term.
But now they've come out with a somewhat less rosy view of
evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma played
in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more
flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more
successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view
of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature.