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Are the rich more likely to be untrustworthy?

The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More is a good resource for creating and maintaining inclusive mutually beneficial relationships on both individual and societal levels. The author is Dr. David DeSteno, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group. He is also a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and editor in chief of the American Psychological Association’s journal Emotion. Below are key insights from his book.
A sense that you need others is what drives trustworthiness -- you are not invulnerable or able to achieve your desired ends all on your own.
Power is the ability to do or acquire what you want. But power is also a drug to beware of. The presence of ample resources in close proximity might function as a cue that everything you need is within reach. It makes you see yourself as special and often above the rules. And when it comes to trust, no resource is likely more sa…
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Feds crack down on e-liquid packaging that looks like candy, juice boxes

Federal regulators warned more than a dozen manufacturers, distributors and retailers Tuesday that they are endangering children by marketing e-cigarette liquids to resemble kid-friendly products such as juice boxes, candy and whipped cream.
Acting FTC chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen warned, “Nicotine is highly toxic, and these letters make clear that marketing methods that put kids at risk of nicotine poisoning are unacceptable.”
FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, in a telephone briefing with reporters, said . . . “they are deliberately being packaged and marketed in a way that is designed to not only be appealing to kids” but also to confuse them by mimicking items they frequently consume.
(What makes people do things like this? Is it just money, or something else? Trying to addict people to products isn’t anything new, but when the targets are kids that’s even worse!)
Read the complete article and see packages at – https://wapo.st/2jx9l2v
See list of warning letters sent at -- https://www.…
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Factors that drive and threaten economies.

Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist of The World Bank, wrote a very informative article Bangladesh's remarkable economic rise for the World Economic Forum. Below are summaries of some of the very interesting points.
Bangladesh has gone from being one of the poorest countries in South Asia to an aspiring "tiger" economy. It was once one of the poorest regions of Pakistan -- an economic basket case wracked by poverty and famine. Since 2006 Bangladesh’s annual GDP growth has exceeded Pakistan’s by roughly 2.5 percentage points per year. One factor seems to be the significant driver of Bangladesh’s economic transformation – it was driven in large part by social changes. One of those changes was the empowerment of women.
However, when a country’s economy takes off, history tells us that some serious threats to its continued growth spring up that left unchecked may stall or reverse the trend.
(1) Corruption, cronyism, and inequality tend to increase.
(2) An even deeper threat posed by…
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Passover 2018: We are Still Slaves

Growing up, I always loved Passover. In our house it was a family affair preparing -- changing dishes, making the food for the seders, setting the table, sitting around our large room sized table with everyone whom I loved, grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends and some strays and first timers. It was magical!!! Especially singing with my dad as he lead the seder!
I was very familiar with the entire story of the Exodus, Moses, Pharaoh and the 10 plagues, but the idea of “slavery” of the Israelites was kind of lost on a young child from South Orange, New Jersey in the 50’s and 60’s. Later study provided me with more facts, archaeological, historical, etc.
Over the last few decades, new evidence about the Exodus has emerged in the form of Egyptian scrolls and architectural discoveries that talk about a Semitic Expulsion by the native Egyptians, who were a North African people. Invading Semitic groups conquered Egypt and ruled for over 200 years and were driven out. In the Torah …
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Forgiveness -- One of The Strangest Things Humans Do!

Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. I have been reading (and studying) his latest book -- Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (pp. 640-642) – and wanted to share the insights with you. I added underlines to highlight certain points.
One of the strangest things humans do is we forgive. For starters, forgiving is not forgetting. If nothing else, that’s neurobiologically unlikely . . . Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten what he did.
There is a subset of victims who claim to have forgiven the perpetrator, to have relinquished their anger and desire for punishment. I include the word “claim” not to imply skepticism but to indicate that forgiveness is a self-reported state that can be claimed but not proven.
Forgiveness can occur as a religious imperative. In the June 2015 Charleston church massacre, white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine parishioners a…
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Rejection: Cain’s Dilemma! The Human Dilemma!

I woke up today to the radio’s report of the latest school shooting incident. It’s strange, at this point it is very upsetting, but not shocking anymore. The facts are: there have been 18 shootings in the first 45 days of 2018.
● Is it just a symptom of “our times”, the divisiveness, mean spiritedness, the self-absorbedness?
● Is it just another consequence of our Brain Hacked culture which feeds on constant personal pleasure at the expense of personal relationships and obligations to others?
● Are we now absolved of the responsibility to everything and everyone, including ourselves?
Only “ME” “NO WE?"
This is not anything new!!! The story of Cain and Able in Genesis is weird anyway. I mean, if everyone is supposedly vegetarian until after the flood, why is Able a shepherd? Further, this story parallels an ancient Egyptian story concerning a battle between a Farmer god and a Shepherd god. Further than that! In the previous story, Adam and Eve, Yahweh curses the ground and the serpe…
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