O2 #1 15 Powerful Things Happy People Do Differently (via PurposeFairy)

What is the difference between happy people and unhappy people? Of course, it may be very obvious, happy people are happy while unhappy people are unhappy, right? Well, that is correct, but we want to know what are the things that these people do differently and that is why, I have put together a list of things that HAPPY people do differently than UNHAPPY people.

Acknowledge here the 15 things happy people do: 15Happy

CO2 #3 Patrimoine mondial (via Unesco)

Ce document contient des informations sur l’état de conservation de biens inscrits sur la Liste du patrimoine mondial. Il est demandé au Comité du patrimoine mondial d’examiner les rapports sur l’état de conservation des biens contenus dans ce document. Dans certains cas, le Comité du patrimoine mondial pourra souhaiter décider de discuter en détail les rapports sur l’état de conservation présentés pour adoption sans débat.

Décision requise: Le Comité du patrimoine mondial pourra souhaiter adopter les projets de décisions présentés à la fin de chaque rapport sur l’état de conservation.

Acknowledge here a Unesco list of the main Natural and Cultural Heritage sites in the World, and their most pressing threats: WorldHeritage

CO2 #2 The "Truth" About Why We Lie, Cheat and Steal (via NPR)

Chances are, you're a liar. Maybe not a big liar — but a liar nonetheless. That's the finding of Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He's run experiments with some 30,000 people and found that very few people lie a lot, but almost everyone lies a little.

Ariely describes these experiments and the results in a new book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie To Everyone — Especially Ourselves. He talks with NPR's Robert Siegel about how society's troubles aren't always caused by the really bad apples; they're caused by the scores of slightly rotting apples who are cheating just a little bit.

Interview Highlights

On the traditional, cost/benefit theory of dishonesty

"The standard view is a cost/benefit view. It says that every time we see something, we ask ourselves: What do I stand to gain from this and what do I stand to lose? Imagine it's a gas station: Going by a gas station, you ask yourself: How much money is in this gas station? If I steal it, what's the chance that somebody will catch me and how much time will I have in prison? And you basically look at the cost and benefit, and if it's a good deal, you go for it.

"On why the cost/benefit theory is flawed"

It's inaccurate, first of all. When we do experiments, when we try to tempt people to cheat, we don't find that these three elements — what do we stand to gain, probability of being caught and size of punishment — end up describing much of the result.

"Not only is it a bad descriptor of human behavior, it's also a bad input for policy. Think about it: When we try to curb dishonesty in the world, what do we do? We get more police force, we increase punishment in prison. If those are not the things that people consider when they think about committing a particular crime, then all of these efforts are going to be wasted."

Read the rest of this revealing Ariely's new book interview here: TruthLie

CO2 #1 Bad News (via AlGore)

"First the bad news from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Thanks to a huge jump in Chinese emissions, "global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011."

"The worse news is that, "The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2°C trajectory is about to close," according to IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol. Why does that matter? As Reuters reported:"

"Scientists say ensuring global average temperatures this century do not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is needed to limit devastating climate effects like crop failure and melting glaciers.""Darn you truth-telling scientists, always ruining the party (see "James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don't Act Now")."

"And the worst news, as Birol told Reuters, is that:"

"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius [11°F], which would have devastating consequences for the planet."

Here is the link to the Sadest Post of All: BadNews

CO2 #3 Red wine is "exercise in a bottle," study suggests (via CBSNews)

Can red wine offset the negative health effects of a sedentary lifestyle?

A new study suggests wine can be "exercise in a bottle." At least if you're a rat.

The goal of this study was to see if an ingredient in wine, resveratrol, might help astronauts who often experience bad health effects from all that zero gravity inactivity. Weightlessness in space makes physical activity almost impossible for astronauts, resulting in a decrease in muscle and bone mass.Cue the resveratrol. Earlier studies showed it can be good for health, because it lowers levels of "bad" cholesterol and protects the lining of heart blood vessels, according to the Mayo Clinic. For the study, scientists mimicked the inactivity astronauts experience by hanging rats by their back legs. Half the rats received a daily dose of resveratrol, and half did not. What happened? The rats not given resveratrol experienced reduced muscle mass and strength and bone density, and developed insulin resistance - which is considered a prelude to diabetes. The ones that took resveratol didn't experience any of these negative health effects.

Read another piece of evidence in favor of Red Wine qualities here: RedWine

O2 #2 How We Are Judged by Our Voice in Dating and the Workplace (via PsychologyToday)

Your voice exerts an unconscious influence on how others judge you.

People spend a lot of time talking and thinking about how members of the opposite sex look, but very little time paying attention to how they sound. To our unconscious minds, however, voice is very important. Our genus Homo has been evolving for a couple million years. Brain evolution happens over many thousands or millions of years, but we’ve lived in civilized society for less than 1 percent of that time. That means that though we may pack our heads full of 21st century knowledge, the organ inside our skull is still a Stone-Age brain. We think of ourselves as a civilized species, but our brains are designed to meet the challenges of an earlier era. Among birds and many other animals voice seems to play a great role in meeting one of those demands — reproduction — and it seems to be similarly important in humans.

Check this interesting article about the importance of voice here: Voice

O2 #1 Spiegel Interview with Daniel Kahneman (via Spiegel)

Debunking the Myth of Intuition

Can doctors and investment advisers be trusted? And do we live more for experiences or memories? In a SPIEGEL interview, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman discusses the innate weakness of human thought, deceptive memories and the misleading power of intuition.

SPIEGEL: Professor Kahneman, you've spent your entire professional life studying the snares in which human thought can become entrapped. For example, in your book, you describe how easy it is to increase a person's willingness to contribute money to the coffee fund.

Kahneman: You just have to make sure that the right picture is hanging above the cash box. If a pair of eyes is looking back at them from the wall, people will contribute twice as much as they do when the picture shows flowers. People who feel observed behave more morally.

SPIEGEL: And this also works if we don't even pay attention to the photo on the wall?

Kahneman: All the more if you don't notice it. The phenomenon is called "priming": We aren't aware that we have perceived a certain stimulus, but it can be proved that we still respond to it.

Read this complete interview to Daniel Kahneman here: SpiegelKahneman