Flowingly

Barry Schwartz: “And, perhaps most important, as teachers, we should strive to be the ordinary heroes, the moral exemplars, to the people we mentor. And there are a few things that we have to remember as teachers.

• One is that we are always teaching. Someone is always watching. The camera is always on.
• [...]they have come to the realization that the single most important thing kids need to learn is character.

1. They need to learn to respect themselves.
2. They need to learn to respect their schoolmates.
3. They need to learn to respect their teachers. And, most important,
4. they need to learn to respect learning.

That’s the principle objective. If you do that, the rest is just pretty much a coast downhill.
And the teachers: the way you teach these things to the kids is by having the teachers and all the other staff embody it every minute of every day. “

Book-a-minute on steroids, that’s how I think about this study.

In other words, read it and you’ll be more of a connoisseur (ahem :)

Here’s a glimpse:

1. I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted

disease (e.g., herpes, AIDS)

2. Someone offered me money to do it

3. I wanted to get a raise

4. It was an initiation rite to a club or organization

5. I wanted to get a job

6. I wanted to get a promotion

7. The person offered to give me drugs for doing it

8. I wanted to punish myself

9. I wanted to hurt/humiliate the person

10. I wanted to feel closer to God

11. I wanted to breakup my relationship

12. I wanted to breakup another’s relationship

13. I wanted to be used or degraded

14. I wanted to gain access to that person’s friend

15. I wanted to get a favor from someone

16. I wanted to enhance my reputation

17. It would get me gifts

18. I wanted to make money

19. I wanted to hurt an enemy

20. Because of a bet

21. It was a favor to someone

22. I wanted to end the relationship

For more like the above, you can download the pdf from here.

“This chapter offers a detailed glimpse into the economics of a drug-dealing street gang. The authors follow the research efforts of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, whose years conducting field studies in the housing projects of Chicago granted him unprecedented access to the inner workings of the gang. Venkatesh befriended many of his research subjects, one of whom gave him several years of financial records kept by the gang, which Venkatesh later provided to Levitt.

With extensive analysis of the data, Levitt was able to debunk the common perception that crack dealers are all very wealthy individuals. He found that although a few participants profit mightily from their involvement, these are usually the higher-ups who lead the organization, rather than the large numbers of street dealers who form the lower ranks of the group. Levitt compares the organizational structure of the gang to McDonalds, in which a comparatively few executives and managers prosper from the labor of thousands of low-wage workers. This comparison proved to be particularly apt when he found that most street dealers made less than minimum wage, while also bearing a 1-in-4 risk of death.” (from wikisummaries.org, Freakonomics entry)

Well, it seems like even a thief needs to do some competent work in order to achieve success, dear Watson… :)

Good Will Hunting
written by Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

You can see the text version here.

And if you haven’t seen the whole movie yet, I think you certainly should. Good fun, great quality. Enjoy.

Or 15 ways to have more money, if you will. :) Think it may be useful to be aware of how they try to scope in my (brain’s) pockets.

Fuel fear & war with oil. The electric car worked – 1996. No pollution, cheaper, fiable. So General Motors replaced it with… the Hummer. And put the poor PR guy make his job. Better check out what the guys at the end of the movie did: