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POPSThe Sad Illusion Of Happy Customers Best Buy is not being picked on here, it could be them or anyone else. As a regular part of my work I have to trudge through large retail stores all the time and my biggest complaint is the lack of help. If you want us to buy, then have enough informed sales people to help us and get us through the lines quicker! "It's not rocket science. To make customers happy, all you need to do is offer high-quality goods at competitive prices and staff your stores with a sufficient number of well-trained personnel to ensure a smooth shopping experience."
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POPSRepublicans Need to Dump the Neoconservatives The republicans need a "tea party" within their own camp! The Bush and present GOP "conservatives" are pushing big government Statism as much as Democrats, with only a different slant. Wars for democracy are a key element of both parties now. There is an insidious philosophy underlying this acceptance of the "natural" growth of statism. Neoconservative columnist David Brooks wrote ... we need "a vigorous One Nation Conservatism ... by making the nation great, individuals are able to join their narrow concerns to a larger national project." Actually, it was originally the Democrats that used to believe in curtailing the powers of the Federal government. (This was after the Civil War where they were called Dixie-crats). See this related Clipmark: Danger--America Becoming Statist, First Bush Now Obama
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POPS Repaving Slave Street
Demanding unquestioning submission, Obama has set about using liberal principles laid as a horsewhip to the back of freedom. Obama offers the false promise of free honey " beckoning Americans inside the gates of the plantation herding them into the field to work with the goal of collecting sweat to “redistribute” for the common good. In an effort to retain power through, “leveling the social and economic playing field” Obama’s slave owner policy initiatives tether Americans to a ball and chain style of socialistic governance that is realized by enslaving those who would otherwise be free. The President’s utopian aspiration is on track to transform Americans into chattel trapped within a restrictive dependency, robbing us of God-given liberty, preventing the acquisition of property and thwarting individual pursuit of happiness. Obama refuses to appreciate that the type of collectivist schema he campaigns for fosters a shadow of the slavery his wife’s ancestors struggled
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POPSTom defends Scientology "Lies", said Tom flatly. "L. Ron Hubbard was a great man, the inventor of atomic power, the discoverer of seven continents - previously only inhabited by pre-clears - and he's not actually dead, he's on another planet, introducing Dianetics and The Way to Happiness to them. At least those with usable currency." Oprah then thanked him for clearing all that up, and moved on to her next guest, Suzanne Somers and her new book, "How I Kicked Cancer's Ass with the Power of the ThighMaster".
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POPSWe are all multiple personalities: or, Why "I" don't know what's good for "me" More: Such contradictions arise all the time. If you ask people which makes them happier, work or vacation, they will remind you that they work for money and spend the money on vacations. But if you give them a beeper that goes off at random times, and ask them to record their activity and mood each time they hear a beep, you’ll likely find that they are happier at work. Work is often engaging and social; vacations are often boring and stressful. Similarly, if you ask people about their greatest happiness in life, more than a third mention their children or grandchildren, but when they use a diary to record their happiness, it turns out that taking care of the kids is a downer—parenting ranks just a bit higher than housework, and falls below sex, socializing with friends, watching TV, praying, eating, and cooking.
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POPSDoes a nation's mood lurk in its songs and blogs?
“And it’s going to change the social sciences; that to me is very clear.” ... From another site, http://wefeelfine.org/ , they pulled more than nine million sentences that used some form of the verb feel — as in “I feel relieved” — from 2.3 million blogs from 2005 to 2009.They then rated the psychological charge, or “valence,” of a significant subset of the words on a 10-point scale: from triumphant (8.82) and love (8.72) down to disgusted (2.45) and suicide (1.25). Some of the findings were expected. Sept. 11, 2001, was rock bottom, for instance. Others were less so: the day that Michael Jackson died also lowered people’s mood significantly. Christmas and Valentine’s Day regularly popped as positive times, although words like “guilty” were associated with Christmas and “waste” and “lonely” with Valentine’s Day. “Now, these are bloggers, and they certainly are not representative of everyone,” Dr. Dodds said. “But the pattern is very pronounced.”
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POPSBarbara Ehrenreich: Are women getting sadder? Not necessarily
More: So why all the sudden fuss…? Mostly because it's become a launching pad for a new book by the prolific management consultant Marcus Buckingham…a cookie-cutter classic of the positive-thinking self-help genre…all bookended with an ad for the many related products you can buy, including a "video introduction" from Buckingham, a "participant's guide" containing "exercises" to get you to happiness, and a handsome set of "Eight Strong Life Plans" to pick from… It's an old story: If you want to sell something, first find the terrible affliction that it cures. In the 1980s, as silicone implants were taking off, the doctors discovered "micromastia" -- the "disease" of small-breastedness. More recently, as big pharma searches furiously for a female Viagra, an amazingly high 43% of women have been found to suffer from "Female Sexual Dysfunction," or FSD. Now, it's unhappiness, and the range of potential "cures" is dazzling: Seagrams, Godiva, and Harlequin, take note.
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POPSCertain foods can help women of all ages stay fit, healthy Something for the ladies. "Just as your lifestyle changes in each decade, so do your nutritional needs," said Melina B. Jampolis, M.D., an internist and author of "The Busy Person's Guide to Permanent Weight Loss." "For example, a 20-something needs to take calcium and vitamin D for strong bones, while a woman in her 40s should eat plenty of lean protein to help maintain muscle mass."
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POPS21 Habits for Happiness You can tell the unhappy by the inverse. It is a funny thing that it is usually the unhappy who want to tell the happy how to live.
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POPSConditional parenting In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci, a leading American expert on the psychology of motivation, in asking more than 100 college students whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear. It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.
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