IT is great that along with economic prosperity is more happiness.

That’s what its all about, is it?

Survey Says: People Are Happier

What the survey found this year is that freedom of choice and social acceptance are the most powerful forces behind national moods. “Money’s pretty powerful, but it’s not the whole story,” says Inglehart, though he maintains that a strong correlation still exists between high standards of living and happiness measures.

What is the result of the ever increasing sophistication and fragmentation of the market?

It means people have more varied interests, and events are increasingly harder to fill up as people have a thousand things to do, and so little time. Moreover, because of so many other choices, more people are less likely to suffer the inconvenience to go to yours.

Even the attraction of the world’s premiere olympic event was not attractive enough for people to go — people decided not to when faced with hassles of getting a visa etc.

Many times, we are confronted with events that seemingly have more people interested as usual, and we try our best to avoid a fill-up or standing room situation. But more often than not, the problem is the other way around — increasingly more empty seats.

Empty Seats at China’s Sellout Olympics

On Aug. 11 there were 20 competitions in 18 stadiums throughout China attended by 40,000 spectators, according to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG). Only two of stadiums were more than 90% full. Six of the venues were more than 80% full. More than half had at least 30% of seats empty.

This is a big challenge.

It is easy to teach ( even if it is time consuming), but it is difficult to impart essential knowledge. As one philosopher says it, ” what is essential cannot be taught, but it can be learned.”

How to induce that learning — and impart or transfer essential knowledge I think, there is no fix formula. Every company will have to do it in a different way.

The Knowledge Handoff

“When people leave organizations today, they are potentially taking with them knowledge that’s critical to the future of the business,” says David DeLong, a business consultant and author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. Whether it’s a key client relationship, mastery of an outdated computer language, or simply knowledge about where certain files are saved on a company server, every business has stored up bits of information and knowhow that isn’t written in a manual or recorded in a training video.

This can be commendable…

After all, who says that God’s servants and missionaries should ignore beauty?

I’d always think that life should be lived not doing evil, but appreciating all the great and beautiful things around us.

However, as in all things, it is important that it not be misconstrued….

www.kansascity.com| Italian priest organizes beauty contest for nuns

An Italian priest and theologian said Sunday he is organizing an online beauty pageant for nuns to give them more visibility within the Catholic Church and to fight the stereotype that they are all old and dour.

The “Miss Sister 2008″ contest will start in September on a blog run by the Rev. Antonio Rungi and will give nuns from around the world a chance to showcase their work and their image.

There comes a time that when you are popular enough, your reputation does not rest solely in what you do.

It rests with what your partners and friends do in your name…

More than you ever wanted to know about Microsoft | guardian.co.uk

Some of Vista’s problems have been created by PC manufacturers shipping mediocre, crapware-infested installations, which they have every right to do, but Microsoft is trying to do something about it.

He was an inspiration.

Live your dreams. Live your life as if it is your last day.

That’s great advice, and we should always remember that.

but we should remember that it is also important the other way - plan long term. Live some of your days as if you have a hundred more years to live. Some dreams and really great things can only be achieve by painstaking and unremitting focus for a good amount of time — something you cannot have if you perpetually think you will go away very soon.

Prof whose ‘last lecture’ became a sensation dies - Yahoo! News

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose “last lecture” about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.

The article furher noted that there has been four left handed presidents since 1974… Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush, and Bill Clinton.

The following vice Presidents or presidential candidates were also left handers: al Gore, Bob Dole, John Edwards and Ross Perot.

It does seem that left handers are climbing the political ladders more considering that only 10-12% of Americans are left handed.

Harry Truman was also left handed.

Maybe people who use the right side of the brain more can visualize a problem, and can do better multi-tasking and creativity, they say.

Pablo Picasso and Benjamin Franklin were also left handers.

Next US president will be a lefty, whatever his party - Yahoo! News

Regardless of whether Americans elect the Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama president in November, the man who takes up residency in the White House will be a lefty — at least in terms of the hand he favors.

I thought it is important that this quote came from the world’s richest man, Bill Gates ( though not necessarily the world’s happiest or most successful person).

A degree of humility - the possibility to look at yourself,and maybe doubt for a little bit tat maybe we could be wrong, is important to be successful.

“So partly the reason the U.S. has the leadership we have today is that
about 20 years ago, we had a high degree of humility. That is, we
looked at Japan and sort of said, ‘Wow, is their model superior, is
there something about our model that could be strong.’ And all these
great things benefited from that approach. If during this period we
don’t retain at least some of that humility and look at what other
countries are doing and learn from them, then our relative dominance
will shrink faster than it should.” Digital Dividends Conference,
Seattle, Oct. 18, 2000.

I AM writing a book, and for somebody who thinks he can write ( maybe not really, but then sometimes we need to delude ourselves to keep moving forward), and finding it hard to find publishers and marketers, Seth Godin is an inspiration.

Well, for sure, he doesn’t have difficulty getting people to read or publish him.

Its just like taking this to the blogger, who after spending more time to get people to read him than writing great articles, is really frustrated.

By the way, we can all take a page from that entertaining movie ‘ Kung Fu Panda’.

The movie is simple, and follows the creed of the main character, ” I will blind you with my AWESOMENESS!” and ” There is NO PRICE for Awesomeness”.

In this day and age, it is not advertising that will get you there. It is simply AWESOMENESS. Be great, and people will flock and follow you. Isn’t that a comfort, or a letdown?

Seth’s Blog: What Dave just did

You should write a book, too. Publishing a book is easier than it appears (in some ways, like the typing, typesetting, printing, and distributing part) but more difficult in others (like the writing something worth reading part.) Writing a book forces you to be organized and passionate and persuasive. Isn’t that worth trying?

Many people nowadays, especially in affluent communities, have never endured hardships. They have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

I am not saying that they never have hardships. They do - although their hardships could well be imagined. What can you say about people who list as their most traumatic experience is being stranded in an airport for several hours because of bad weather?

The point is we all crave challenges, and in overturning these challenges, we gain self-esteem, a sense of importance, and meaning in our lives. And in the absence of real challenges, we create them. As in these pact of high school girls, who barely sixteen, wants to get pregnant and ‘raise’ the children together.

As a parent, there is nothing you can do to prevent such stupidity —- children will invent problems if they don’t face real ones.

wbztv.com - Gloucester High School Teens Had Pact To Get Pregnant

There’s a stunning twist to the sudden rise in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School. Seventeen students there are expecting and many of them became that way on purpose.

Time Magazine first reported that nearly half of the girls confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. None of them is older than 16.

Schools Superintendent Christopher Farmer told WBZ’s Bill Shields Thursday the girls had “an agreement to get pregnant.”

Farmer said these are generally “girls who lack self-esteem and have a lack of love in their life.”