Lottery Vs. Work
Lottery winners, trust-fund babies and others who get their money without working for it do not get as much satisfaction from their cash as those who earn it, a study of the pleasure center in people's brains suggests. Emory University researchers also noted that "there's substantial evidence that people who win the lottery are not happier a year after they win the lottery."... posted on May 28 2004, 2,537 reads

Super Size Me
Last year, Morgan Spurlock decided to eat all his meals at McDonald's for a month. For 30 straight days, everything he took in—breakfast, lunch, dinner, even his bottled water—came from McDonald's. Spurlock recorded the results on camera for his film Super Size Me, which won the Best Director prize for documentaries at this year's Sundance Film Festival. In one month on the fast-food regime, ... posted on May 25 2004, 1,543 reads

Tasaday
Some call it the greatest discovery of the last century. A tribe of 26 hunter-gatherers in the Philippines rain forest, discovered for the first time in 1971 after having been isolated geographically and culturally for over 2,000 years!... posted on May 12 2004, 1,354 reads

Same Dough, Different Oven
One in every three people in the world will live in slums within 30 years unless governments control unprecedented urban growth, according to a UN report. The largest study ever made of global urban conditions has found that 940 million people - almost one-sixth of the world's population - already live in squalid, unhealthy areas, mostly without water, sanitation, public services or legal security... posted on Apr 20 2004, 1,340 reads

Addicted to Luxury
Addicted to luxury, even when we can't afford it? In "Trading Up," Michael Silverstein says yes, citing many examples: the size of the average house has more than doubled in the past 50 years. One in 10 homes now have dual dishwashers. Some 12 million Americans traveled to Europe in 2000 — 12 times the number who traveled there in 1970. About 500,000 mostly wealthy Americans took a cruise in 19... posted on Apr 14 2004, 1,317 reads

Ten Thousand Photographs
Southwest Airlines is a little different than other airlines. Aside from being three times more profitable than all others in North America and aside from keeping all of its employees working when others laid off by the 1,000’s in the aftermath of 9/11, the walls of their head office have more than 10,000 (no, that is not a typo) photographs of employees (at work and at play), their families, th... posted on Mar 24 2004, 1,190 reads

A Pop Quiz
Here's a pop quiz. Rank the following in order of the number of American lives they claim in a typical year: food, guns, terrorists, flu and cars. Ready? The most deadly are automobiles, which kill 117 Americans a day, or nearly 43,000 a year. Then comes flu, which (along with pneumonia, its associated disease) kills 36,000 people. Third is guns: 26,000 deaths. Fourth, food-borne illness: 5,000. ... posted on Mar 19 2004, 1,377 reads

Happiest Man in America
As Charlie Brown and the "Peanuts" gang told us, happiness could be a warm puppy, pizza with sausage, five different crayons -- or anyone, or anything, that's loved by you. And, although it's true that many special moments are inspired by such happenstance, scientific research contends that people actually can condition themselves for genuine happiness, much as occasional joggers condition themsel... posted on Mar 12 2004, 1,510 reads

Acupuncture
Researchers know that acupuncture works but they can't figure out why. Recent research at Harvard Medical school provides the clearest explanation to date for how the ancient technique might relieve pain and treat addictions: Acupuncture on pain-relief points cuts blood flow to key areas of the brain within seconds, quieting down key regions of the brain.... posted on Mar 06 2004, 1,271 reads

Pace of Our Lives
To physicists, the duration of a "second" is precise and unambiguous: ~1.2 billion cycles of frequency associated with the energy levels of the isotope cesium 133. But then there's psychological time, the tempo of life. After measuring walking speed, postal speed, and clock accuracy in 31 countries, psychologist Robert Levine came up with an index for "the overall pace of life" -- Switzerland i... posted on Feb 25 2004, 1,642 reads