falkenbergs folly: Avoiding the retirement blues

falkenbergs folly: Avoiding the retirement blues: I always thought that a beautiful environment such as Greyton (where I am lucky to live) usually enhances one’s happiness. But now I’m not so sure. Recently someone mentioned that, in her opinion, Greyton has an unnervingly high number of depressed people, many who have struggled to adjust to retirement. I would never have thought so, but then I don’t belong to any of the informal networks that gather and distribute such information.

The Myth That Everyone Naturally Prefers Trains to Buses - CityLab

The Myth That Everyone Naturally Prefers Trains to Buses - CityLab: there's no reason to suspect these two rides—modern BRT or modern light rail—would be noticeably different experiences. And yet when transport scholars David Hensher and Corinne Mulley of the University of Sydney Business School showed these images to about 1,370 people in six Australian capital cities, the difference in preference was enormous.

Famous Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary | Brain Pickings

Famous Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary | Brain Pickings

The great internet swindle: ever get the feeling you've been cheated? | Technology | The Guardian

The great internet swindle: ever get the feeling you've been cheated? | Technology | The Guardian: During every minute of every day of 2014, according to Andrew Keen’s new book, the world’s internet users – all three billion of them – sent 204m emails, uploaded 72 hours of YouTube video, undertook 4m Google searches, shared 2.46m pieces of Facebook content, published 277,000 tweets, posted 216,000 new photos on Instagram and spent $83,000 on Amazon.

By any measure, for a network that has existed recognisably for barely 20 years (the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, was released in 1993), those are astonishing numbers: the internet, plainly, has transformed all our lives, making so much of what we do every day – communicating, shopping, finding, watching, booking – unimaginably easier than it was. A Pew survey in the United States found last year that 90% of Americans believed the internet had been good for them

Uruguay's Jose Mujica Was Liberal's Dream, But Too Good to Be True | The New Republic

Uruguay's José Mujica Was Liberal's Dream, But Too Good to Be True | The New Republic:

There’s something wrong with the way we respond to figures like Mujica. We place our faith in them—fall in love with them—for what they say and the incorporeal impact they have on our national consciousness. But then, not only do we judge their performance on entirely different metrics, we also stop listening to them. Inspirational leaders issue a call to us, not a promise for us. They invite us to see ourselves differently, to open ourselves to a new way of being. If, after casting our ballots, we don’t buy books instead of new cell phones, don’t use less gas, don’t do more to stitch back together the social fabric of our own neighborhoods—if, rather than answer the call, we retreat safely back to our old cynicism—then whose fault is that?

The Shepherding Movement ::: Subversive Influence

� The Shepherding Movement ::: Subversive Influence:

In the early 1970s, four well-known charismatic leaders responded to a moral failure among charismatics in south Florida. Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Don Basham, and Charles Simpson felt a need for personal accountability and covenanted together for this purpose, submitting their lives and ministries to one another. Ern Baxter, who had ministered with William Branham, was later added to the group and they became known as the “Ft. Lauderdale Five.” They formed Christian Growth Ministries in 1974, and in the movement that they began, the accountability they shared became an emphasis that all believers should submit to a “shepherd” in order to be discipled in the Christian life. Their prominence helped gain wide acceptance for their teaching, which included what was felt to be correctives to the charismatic movement at the time. Other charismatic leaders began submitting to the authority of the Ft. Lauderdale Five in what was known as “covenant relationships.”