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With Valentines approaching I thought I'd post some links of relevant interest.
#1 - NY Times - To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This
#2 - Building Epic Relationships in 1 Hour (Via Superhero Experiments)
#3 - The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness - A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings (Dr. Aron & Ass) (Original Experiment Paper)
To sum it up briefly, an accelerated program to build intimacy, which relies on the participants TRUTHFULLY asking and answering a series of questions of one another. The original study resulted in the 2 strangers/participants getting married, the NY Times article takes a similar slant. I've taken the liberty of pasting the questions below, should any of the links above die...
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a perfect day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell you partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you've dreamt of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "we are both in this room feeling…"
26. Complete this sentence "I wish I had someone with whom I could share…"
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them: be honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
Variations
37. If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon-to-be-born child, would you do it?
38. Would you be willing to have horrible nightmares for a year if you would be rewarded with extraordinary wealth?
39. While on a trip to another city, your spouse/lover meets and spends a night with an exciting stranger. Given they will never meet again, and you will not otherwise learn of the incident, would you want your partner to tell you about it?
Note: While the questions are an excellent springboard towards building intimacy, don't forget that 90% of communication is non-verbal and be sure to choose your targets wisely...you could end up living with them the rest of your ilfe!
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A fine list of some of last years more noteworthy media errors and corrections, many of the "corrections" are far more interesting and amusing than the articles that prompted them.
Link: http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/306801/the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections-2014/
On a related note, searching youtube for news bloopers yields some humorous results.
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And, offering worthwhile content on the web for quite some while now, and probably worth no where near $100 Million dollars, we have Vi Hart.
Accessible and curious thoughts regarding math, music, and whatever else tickles her fancy. Worthwhile.
Link: The Parable of the Polygons, her website, and her YouTube Channel (The one on HexaFlexagons is a favorite).
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A collection of surreal collages created by Jim Kazanjian:
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View more of his collages here: http://www.kostuikgallery.com/?section=Artists&page=Artworks&a=30&artist=Jim%20+Kazanjian
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An interesting article on how money buys happiness, or doesn't as the case may be. It's a review for the book 'Billionaires', I can offer no review of the book, but the review itself is excellent.
Quotes:
Maybe my favorite study done by the Berkeley team rigged a game with cash prizes in favor of one of the players, and then showed how that person, as he grows richer, becomes more likely to cheat. In his forthcoming book on power, Keltner contemplates his findings:
"If I have $100,000 in my bank account, winning $50 alters my personal wealth in trivial fashion. It just isn’t that big of a deal. If I have $84 in my bank account, winning $50 not only changes my personal wealth significantly, it matters in terms of the quality of my life—the extra $50 changes what bill I might be able to pay, what I might put in my refrigerator at the end of the month, the kind of date I would go out on, or whether or not I could buy a beer for a friend. The value of winning $50 is greater for the poor, and, by implication, the incentive for lying in our study greater. Yet it was our wealthy participants who were far more likely to lie for the chance of winning fifty bucks."
There is plenty more like this to be found, if you look for it. A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below twenty-five grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent. A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: if you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s.
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“As you move up the class ladder,” says Keltner, “you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others."
Link: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120092/billionaires-book-review-money-cant-buy-happiness