Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

[nomad soul]

[Sashadroogie]

Mushkilla, I thought you had some connection with the Motherland, or at least the near abroad. Yet your comments seem very often at variance with the experience of anyone who had spent even more than a day in the transit lounge at an airport... Curiouser and curiouser...

[Mushkilla]

Mushkilla today is happy and with self-esteem.
I lived and worked in 6 countries located in 4 continents.

I think self-confidence is related to how a person is happy or not happy -(yes I know you might disagree with me!).

"Happiness" is an aspiration of every human being, and can be a measure of social progress.
Research has shown that people who are happy, who have more satisfied lives, and who live in happier communities/environment , are more likely to be healthy, productive, and socially connected.

Lets see what the world report on happiness says about happiness in the following countries:

RANK

1 = Denmark

2 = Norway

3 = Switzerland

4 = Netherlands (lucky you spiral! )

17 = USA

22 = UK

61 = Angola

68 = Russia

105 = Iraq

You see Russia is 68 in Happiness ranking!

So, what do you think, are Russian and Iraqis more happy and self-esteem than Americans or Albanians.?

Source:
http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/WorldHappinessReport2013_online.pdd

[johnslat]

Happiness is totally subjective, very short-lived, and much too overused a word. How many times in your life have you been truly "happy?"

Happiness is a relatively rare feeling, and that's what makes it so precious.

I think that, if anything, contentedness is really being measured in these surveys, not happiness.

But contentedness is also totally subjective and also can be fleeting.

"Surveys" like this one make nice "filler" for magazines, the Internet, etc. but they're about as scientific as those fb tests that tell you what animal you were in a past life.

(Full disclosure: I was an owl)

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

Totally agree with Johnslat. And John McGahern too. Have you read 'That They May Face the Rising Sun'? Known in the States as 'By the Lake', I beleive. He has great things to say about 'happiness'. Almost the same as your point of view. Strongly recommend this novel to you, John, if you итn't already read it.

Mushkilla, haven't you ever been to a collective farm? Or a tank factory? Lots of happy workers there! Boundless confidence and beleif in the future, guided by the loving hand of the great Lenin! Ura!!!

[nomad soul]

[Mushkilla]

[Mushkilla]

[spiral78]

Hijacked my thread. It's about over-confidence, not happiness and not faith.

[johnslat]

And "experts" from "prestigious universities" never indulge in stupid research projects, do they? Ever hear of the "Ig Nobel" Awards?



"The 2014 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
The 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday night, September 18th, 2014 at the 24th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. The ceremony was webcast live.
PHYSICS PRIZE [JAPAN]: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.
REFERENCE: "Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin," Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, Tribology Online 7, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147-151.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Kiyoshi Mabuchi

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA]: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, and Kang Lee, for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.
REFERENCE: "Seeing Jesus in Toast: Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Face Pareidolia," Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, Kang Lee, Cortex, vol. 53, April 2014, Pages 60–77. The authors are at School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Xidian University, the Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and the University of Toronto, Canada.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Kang Lee

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.
REFERENCE: "Creatures of the Night: Chronotypes and the Dark Triad Traits," Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 55, no. 5, 2013, pp. 538-541.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Peter Jonason

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, JAPAN, USA, INDIA]: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček and Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, and to David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.
REFERENCE: "Changes in personality profile of young women with latent toxoplasmosis," Jaroslav Flegr and Jan Havlicek, Folia Parasitologica, vol. 46, 1999, pp. 22-28.
REFERENCE: "Decreased level of psychobiological factor novelty seeking and lower intelligence in men latently infected with the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii Dopamine, a missing link between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis?" Jaroslav Flegr, Marek Preiss, Jiřı́ Klose, Jan Havlı́ček, Martina Vitáková, and Petr Kodym, Biological Psychology, vol. 63, 2003, pp. 253–268.
REFERENCE: "Describing the Relationship between Cat Bites and Human Depression Using Data from an Electronic Health Record," David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 2013, e70585. WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Jaroslav Flegr, David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan

BIOLOGY PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY, ZAMBIA]: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.
REFERENCE: "Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth's magnetic field," Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, Frontiers in Zoology, 10:80, 27 December 27, 2013.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Veronika Němcová, Hynek Burda

ART PRIZE [ITALY]: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.
REFERENCE: "Aesthetic value of paintings affects pain thresholds," Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 17, no. 4, 2008, pp. 1152-1162.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Marina de Tommaso

ECONOMICS PRIZE [ITALY]: ISTAT — the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.
REFERENCE: "Cambia il Sistema europeo dei conti nazionali e regionali - Sec2010", ISTAT, 2014.
REFERENCE: "European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA 2010)," Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2013.

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, INDIA]: Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.
REFERENCE: "Nasal Packing With Strips of Cured Pork as Treatment for Uncontrollable Epistaxis in a Patient with Glanzmann Thrombasthenia," Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, vol. 120, no. 11, November 2011, pp. 732-36.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Sonal Saraiya

ARCTIC SCIENCE PRIZE [NORWAY, GERMANY, USA, CANADA]: Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.
REFERENCE: "Response Behaviors of Svalbard Reindeer towards Humans and Humans Disguised as Polar Bears on Edgeøya," Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, vol. 44, no. 4, 2012, pp. 483-9.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Eigil Reimers, Sindre Eftestøl

NUTRITION PRIZE [SPAIN]: Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, and Margarita Garriga, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages."
REFERENCE: "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages," Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, Margarita Garriga, Food Microbiology, vol. 38, 2014, pp. 303-311.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: The winners were unable to attend the ceremony; they delivered their acceptance speech via video."

For the lists of winners (?) going back to 1991, please use the link below

http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/

Regards,
John

[spiral78]

Wow, my Czech colleagues are big winners in the Ig Nobels!

[johnslat]

Dear spiral78,

Say it LOUD; say it PROUD.

It should make you HAPPY, SELF-CONFIDENT and brimming with SELF-ESTEEM to work among such distinguished colleagues.

Regards,
John

[spiral78]

Hey, we know that dogs are useful compasses out in the wilderness. Can't get more practical than that!!

On a self-confidence high with that info:-) Heading out into uncharted wilderness tomorrow with the schnauzer; totally confident he'll keep me oriented.

We'll see if I ever show back up on Dave's.

[johnslat]

Dear spiral78,

Don't worry - if you fall into a well, the schnauzer will come get us.

Regards,
John