Sensitive!

When some one tells you sensitive, they are not describing themselves. Most often, they are trying to make you obligated to take more care for them than they deserve!

Hilarious :)

I just searched for a quote on the internet, the result was my own blog! :D I didn't know my not so properly maintained blog is so SEOed! ;)

Who is easily manipulated?

Sometimes (and too often) marketers work to manipulate people. I define manipulation as working to spread an idea or generate an action that is not in a person's long-term best interest. 

The easiest people to manipulate are those that don't demand a lot of information, are open to messages from authority figures and are willing to make decisions on a hunch, particularly if there's a promise of short-term gains.

If you want to focus on the short run and sell something, get a vote or gather a mob, the easiest place to start is with populations that leave themselves open to manipulation.

There are habits and activities that leave people open to manipulation. I'm not saying they are wrong or right, just pointing out that these behaviors make you open to being manipulated... Here are a few general categories of behaviors that manipulators seek out:

    * Believing something because you heard someone say it on a news show on cable TV.

    * Being a child (or acting like one).

    * Buying penny stocks.

    * Repeating a mantra heard from a figurehead or leader of a tribe without considering whether it's true.

    * Trying to find a short cut to lose weight, make money or achieve some other long-term goal.

    * Ignoring the scientific method and embracing unexamined traditional methods instead.

    * Focusing on (and believing) easily gamed bestseller lists or crowds.

    * Inability to tolerate fear and uncertainty.

    * Focus on now at the expense of the long term.

    * Allowing the clothes of the messenger (a uniform, a suit and tie, a hat) to influence your perception of the information he delivers (add gender, fame, age and race to this too).

    * Reliance on repetition and frequency to decide what's true.

    * Desire to stick with previously made decisions because cognitive dissonance is strong.

    * Inability to ignore sunk costs.

    * Problem saying 'no' in social situations.

Interesting to note that AM radio used to be filled with ads for second mortgages. And now? Gold.

Manipulating people using modern techniques is astonishingly easy (if the marketer has few morals). You only make it easier when you permit people and organizations that want to take advantage of you to do so by allowing them to use your good nature and your natural instincts against you. It happens every day in Washington DC, online, on TV and in your local community institutions.

source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/are-you-easily-manipulated.html

Hot water!

In these hectic days, not having Hot water and only having hell freezing water!!! is really annoying! I actually have to boil water to have some hot water in the bath! like freaking old days that I have only seen in movies!!!!

I remember years ago a smoker once said that the worst part of smoking is when you finish you're cigar... didn't really get what he was saying.... but today, when I was in the bath and as a complement I was enjoying the remaining hot water remaining in the pot; I totally got him as the water in the pot was coming to an end!

N900

Imagine having all Debian applications available on you're mobile! :)

http://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian

If you establish a democracy

Economic Commentary

Cracks In The Foundation

Daryl G. Jones, 01.07.10, 10:15 AM EST

The skyrocketing U.S. debt has implications for all asset classes.

"If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete." --Benjamin Disraeli

Keith McCullough has tightened up his hockey hair this morning and will be appearing on Bloomberg TV as co-anchor; as a result I've been handed duties as lead author of the Early Look.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/07/national-debt-us-markets-economy-costs.html?feed=rss_popstories

==== My Point on this ====

The guy has a point there; but as well there is a hole in this quote. The problem is, if democracy is not there the decision will be based on reason as claimed by Benjamin; however, it would only concern the benefit of the decision maker or whom ever has the power over the profit of the decision maker. Basically the term "you get what you measure" applies for the governing team as well. If they have to satisfy the mass, they have to reason towards the benefit of the mass! This directs them to think more in utilitarian terms. A close, non-democratic governing body is doomed to be followers of "Duty of care" ethics. I believe the bigger and prior question is not if the decisions are based on reason or passion. The main question is who's benefit is the concern of the decisions being made.