Does Money Make You Unhappy?

Our poor intuitions about the pursuit of happiness are a genuine paradox. We could summarize decades of happiness research this way: “It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.” The problem, of course, is that we don’t spend our money in accordance with this psychological principle.

The End Of Big Agriculture: The Future Of Food Is Local And Sustainable.

Joel Salatin, proprietor of Polyface Farms and highly-visible champion of sustainable farming, thinks modern humans have become so far removed from a natural connection to the food they eat, that we no longer have a true understanding of what “normal” food is.

The truth about social smoking

Surely just one or two cigarettes a day can’t do us much harm – can they? Jeremy Laurance stubs out some medical myths.

Kids mimic us …

Chosen as the best video of the year.

Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters.

The End of the Middle Manager.

The technology revolution has brought us a lot—dramatic improvement in what we know about customers and how we interact with them, markedly better information for making decisions, the ability to work through virtual teams scattered around the globe. But its unseen legacy might be something much more fundamental: It has changed the very nature of how people work.

Suffering From Facebook Fatigue?

It started innocently enough: last month a friend sent me a virtual lily plant on Facebook and invited me to create a (Lil) Green Patch, a digital garden that would grow on my profile page, and that any of my friends could help water, weed and plant. Sounds cute, right? Not if you’ve recently suffered through an overwhelming slew of requests to give a grain of rice, send good karma and rate your friends on everything including their hotness, creativity, fashion sense and intelligence.

Most impressive pictures of the month.

Attenberg, Dogtooth and the weird wave of Greek cinema .

Are the brilliantly strange films of Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari a product of Greece’s economic turmoil? And will they continue to make films in the troubled country?

Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes.

Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple, the company he founded and turned into the largest technology company in the world. Although his tenure as CEO will be remembered for ushering in fundamental changes in the way people interact with technology, he has also been known for his salesmanship, his ability to turn a phrase – and a knack for taking complicated ideas and making them easy to understand. Below, a compendium of some of the best Steve Jobs quotes.

Jogging Fights Beer Belly Fat, Better Than Weights.

Weight training is touted as the cure for many ills. But if the goal is to lose belly fat, aerobic exercise is the only way to go, exercise scientists say.

Twenty Years After Independence, Russia Is in No Mood to Party.

Alexander Smirnov has never gotten over the euphoria of August 1991. He was a college student in Leningrad at the time, lanky and pale with Coke-bottle glasses, and on the morning of Aug. 20, 1991, he walked out onto the central square of the city to find a sea of people taking part in one of the largest demonstrations Russia had ever seen. The day before, a military coup had begun.

Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men?

Last year’s tax returns may already be signed, sealed and delivered, but April 20 is the day the average American woman will finally finish earning her 2009 salary — at least, the one she would have received if she were a man. That’s because U.S. women still earned only 77 cents on the male dollar in 2008, according to the latest census statistics. (That number drops to 68% for African-American women and 58% for Latinas.)

11 Unusual Ways Steve Jobs Made Apple The World’s Most Admired Tech Company

Partner with the enemy

Can you imagine Pepsi and Coca-Cola getting together? Or Verizon and AT&T? That’s how strange it was when Apple and Microsoft announced their partnership at the 1997 Macworld Expo. After 12 years of financial loss, Jobs needed to get Apple money, and quickly. So he turned to Bill Gates, who made a $150 million investment in Apple.

Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says

Don’t feel guilty about browsing the Internet at work—turns out it may actually improve your performance.

According to a new study, Web browsing can actually refresh tired workers and enhance their productivity, compared to other activities such as making personal calls, texts or emails, let alone working straight through with no rest at all.

Profit on Wall Street, recession on Main Street

In America’s deeply dysfunctional economy, unemployment is stuck at 9%, while corporate profits race ahead . In the past few weeks alone, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Cisco Systems and Borders have all announced massive layoffs. Borders is closing its retail stores, auctioning off its holdings and letting go 10,000 employees as, due to online competition, the company is no longer profitable and filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. In contrast

How cities, and governments, fall.

With Libya on the brink of deposing Gaddafi, a look at the unpredictable final moments of other regimes. When armies close in on a capital city in which a beleaguered regime is trying to hold out, the only thing that is predictable is that there will be surprises. Events move faster than expected, or they move more slowly. The regime going down may have rather more life left in it than expected, or it may put up far less resistance than was thought likely.The least likely outcome is a street-by-street fight through the city – usually there is either a collapse of will by the defenders or a final political fix, which gives some of them a way out. A few examples from recent history:

Trying To Unravel The Mysteries Of Arctic Warming

The Arctic is heating up faster than anyplace on Earth. And as it heats, the ice is growing thinner and melting faster. Scientists say that sometime this century, the Arctic Ocean could be free of ice during the summers. And that transition is likely to be chaotic.

The U.K. Riots And The Coming Global Class War

The riots that hit London and other English cities last week have the potential to spread beyond the British Isles. Class rage isn’t unique to England; in fact, it represents part of a growing global class chasm that threatens to undermine capitalism itself.

As the dream of economic growth dies, a new plan awaits testing .

Even when times are supposedly good, neither society nor the environment can take the strain of an ever-expanding economyHow much of this is real? How much of the economic growth of the past 60 years? Of the wealth and comfort, the salaries and pensions that older people accept as normal, even necessary? How much of it is an illusion, created by levels of borrowing – financial and ecological – that cannot be sustained? Go to Ireland and you’ll see that even bricks and mortar are a mirage: the marvels of the new economy, built on debt, stand empty and worthless.

Nine Companies That Destroyed Their Largest Competitors.

Most companies want to be number one in their markets. Once there, however, they have trouble keeping the top spot for long. They are flanked by smaller, nimbler companies that have better products or make innovations that change the industry and how its serves its customers. Wall St. reviewed several industries in which the number one company was recently toppled from its position.

The Kids Are Not All Right.

WHEN I sit with my two teenagers, and they are a million miles away, absorbed by the titillating roil of online social life, the addictive pull of video games and virtual worlds, as they stare endlessly at video clips and digital pictures of themselves and their friends, it feels like something is wrong.