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101). Narcissistic Personality Disorder - An Introduction NARCISSISM (n. sing.)A pattern of traits and behaviours which signify infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of all other 102). Narcissists, Sex and Fidelity Question: Are narcissists mostly hyperactive or hypoactive sexually and to what extent are they likely to be unfaithful in marriage? Answer: Broadly speaking, there are two types of narcissists, loosely corresponding to the two categories mentioned in the question. Sex for the narcissist is an ins... 103). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - I. The Marketing Plan In the decades since World War II, economics prowess replaced military power as the crucial geopolitical determinant. The resilience of a country is measured by its inflows of foreign investment and by the balance of its current account - not by the number of its tanks and brigades. Inevitably, polities the world over - regions, state... 104). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - II. The Product II. The Product What products do countries offer and market and how are they tailored to the needs of specific market segments? In a marketing mix, the first and foremost element is the product. No amount of savvy promotion and blitz advertising can disguise the shortcomings of an inferior offering. Contrary... 105). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - III. The Price III. The Price A product's price reflects the shifting balance between supply and demand (scarcity) as well as the value of inputs, the product's quality, and its image as conveyed and fostered by marketing and advertising campaigns (positioning). Price is, therefore, a packet of compressed information exchanged between prospective buy... 106). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - IV. The Place IV. The Place Some countries are geographically disadvantaged. Recent studies have demonstrated how being landlocked or having a tropical climate carry a hefty price tag in terms of reduced economic growth. These unfavorable circumstances can be described as "natural discounts" to a country's price. What can be done to ove... 107). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - V. Promotion, Sales, Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising V. Promotion, Sales, Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising Advantages have to be communicated to potential customers if they are not to remain unrealized potentials. Moreover, communication alone - the exchange of information - is not enough. Clients have to be influenced and motivated to visit a country, invest in it, or trade ... 108). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - VI. The Sales Force and Marketing Implementation Oversight VI. The Sales Force and Marketing Implementation Oversight How should a country translate its intangible assets into dollars and cents (or euros)? Enter its Sales force and marketing intermediaries. Even poor countries should allocate funds to train and maintain a skilled sales force and pay its wages, expense... 109). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - VII. Marketing Implementation, Evaluation, and Control VII. Marketing Implementation, Evaluation, and Control How can a country (region, state, city, municipality, or other polity) judge the efficacy of its attempts to brand or re-brand itself and, consequently, to attract customers (investors, tourism operators, bankers, traders, and so on)? Marketing is not a controlled proc... 110). Nation Branding and Place Marketing - VIII. The Psychology and Demographics of the Consumer VIII. The Psychology and Demographics of the Consumer The country's "customers" are its investors, tourists, traders, market intermediaries, NGOs, and office-holders in other countries and in multilateral institutions. Understanding their psychology and demographics is crucial. Their interactions with one another take place in a comple... 111). Nature vs. Mankind The Second Law of Thermodynamics predicts the gradual energetic decay of physical closed systems ("entropy"). Arguably, the Universe as a whole is precisely such a system. Locally, though, order is often fighting disorder for dominance. In other words, in localized, open systems, order sometimes tends to increase and, by definition, statisti... 112). NGOs - The Self-Appointed Altruists Their arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV's, sport $3000 laptops and PDA's. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies, preachers, critics, do-gooders, and professional altruists. Always self-appointed, they a... 113). Nokia - From Start to Finnish Some companies have at least nine lives, it would seem. Nokia was founded in southwestern Finland, in 1865, by a mining engineer, one, Frederik Idestam, as a wood-pulp mill. An eponymous town formed around it. Independently, the Finnish Rubber Works took on the town name in the 1920s, having been established there in 1898. The Nokia r... 114). Old Reference Works Revived There is no source of reference remotely as authoritative as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There is no brand as venerable and as veteran as this mammoth labour of knowledge and ideas established in 1768. It numbered the likes of Einstein and Freud among its authors. Dozens of classic articles written by such luminaries are available on the Britanni... 115). On Being Human Are we human because of unique traits and attributes not shared with either animal or machine? The definition of "human" is circular: we are human by virtue of the properties that make us human (i.e., distinct from animal and machine). It is a definition by negation: that which separates us from animal and machine is our "human-ness". ... 116). On Dis-ease We are all terminally ill. It is a matter of time before we all die. Aging and death remain almost as mysterious as ever. We feel awed and uncomfortable when we contemplate these twin afflictions. Indeed, the very word denoting illness contains its own best definition: dis-ease. A mental component of lack of well being must exist SUBJECTIVELY. The ... 117). On Empathy The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1999 edition) defines empathy as: "The ability to imagine oneself in anther's place and understand the other's feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. It is a term coined in the early 20th century, equivalent to the German Einfühlung and modelled on "sympathy." The term is used with special (but not exclusi... 118). On Empathy - Part I The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1999 edition) defines empathy as:"The ability to imagine oneself in anther's place and understand the other's fe 119). On Empathy - Part II Alas, such an agreement is meaningless. We cannot (yet) measure sadness, quantify it, crystallize it, access it in any way from the outside. We are to 120). On the Incest Taboo "...An experience with an adult may seem merely a curious and pointless game, or it may be a hideous trauma leaving lifelong psychic scars. In many cases the reaction of parents and society determines the child's interpretation of the event. What would have been a trivial and soon-forgotten act becomes traumatic if the mother cries, the father rage... 121). On the Soundness of Our Banks Banks are institutions where miracles happen regularly. We rarely entrust our money to anyone but ourselves – and our banks. Despite a very chequer 122). On Volatility and Risk Volatility is considered the most accurate measure of risk and, by extension, of return, its flip side. The higher the volatility, the higher the risk - and the reward. That volatility increases in the transition from bull to bear markets seems to support this pet theory. But how to account for surging volatility in plummeting bourses? At the depth... 123). Organ Trafficking in Eastern Europe A kidney fetches $2700 in Turkey. According to last month's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, this is a high price. An Indian 124). Parenting - The Irrational Vocation The advent of cloning, surrogate motherhood, and the donation of gametes and sperm have shaken the traditional biological definition of parenthood to its foundations. The social roles of parents have similarly been recast by the decline of the nuclear family and the surge of alternative household formats. Why do people become parents i... 125). Pathological Narcissism, Psychosis, and Delusions One of the most important symptoms of pathological narcissism (the Narcissistic Personality Disorder) is grandiosity. Grandiose fantasies (megalomaniac delusions of grandeur) permeate every aspect of the narcissist's personality. They are the reason that the narcissist feels entitled to special treatment which is typically incommensurate with his r... 126). Personality Disorders Question: Many of the symptoms and signs that you describe apply to other personality disorders as well (for instance, the histrionic, the antisocial and the borderline personality disorders). Are we to think that all personality disorders are interrelated? Answer: The classification of Axis II personality dis... 127). Psychology as Storytelling - Part I Storytelling has been with us since the days of campfire and besieging wild animals. It served a number of important functions: amelioration of fears, 128). Psychology as Storytelling - Part II To qualify as a "psychological" plot, it must be:All-inclusive (anamnetic) – It must encompass, integrate and incorporate all the facts known 129). Public Procurement and Very Private Benefits In every national budget, there is a part called "Public Procurement". This is the portion of the budget allocated to purchasing services and goods for the various ministries, authorities and other arms of the executive branch. It was the famous management consultant, Parkinson, who once wrote that government officials are likely to approve a multi... 130). Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Izetbegovic, the late nominal president of the nominal Bosnian state, the darling of the gullible western media, denied that he and his cronies and his cronies' cronies stole 40% of all civilian aid targeted at Bosnia - a minor matter of 1 billion US dollars and change, in less than 4 years. The tribes of the Balkans stop bleeding each other to dea... 131). Reconditioning the Narcissist Question: You seem to be very sceptical that someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder can be treated successfully. Answer: The Narcissistic Personality Disorder has been recognised as a distinct mental health diagnosis a little more than two decades ago. There are few who can honestly claim expertise ... 132). Religion and Science There are many kinds of narratives and organizing principles. Science is driven by evidence gathered in experiments, and by the falsification of extant theories and their replacement with newer, asymptotically truer, ones. Other systems - religion, nationalism, paranoid ideation, or art - are based on personal experiences (faith, inspiration, paran... 133). Revolt of the Scholars http://www.realsci.com/Scindex's Instant Publishing Service is about empowerment. The price of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals has skyrocket 134). Russia's Idled Spies On November 11, 2002, Sweden expelled two Russian diplomats for spying on radar and missile guidance technologies for the JAS 39 British-Swedish Gripen fighter jet developed by Telefon AB LM Ericsson, the telecommunications multinational. The Russians threatened to reciprocate. Five current and former employees of the corporate giant are being inve... 135). Russia's Vodka Wars Vodka is a crucial component in Russian life. And in Russian death. Alcohol-related accidents and cardiac arrests have already decimated Russian life expectancy by well over a decade during the last decade alone. Vodka is also big business. The brand "Stolichnaya" sells $2 billion a year worldwide. Hence the interminable and inordinate... 136). Serial Killers Countess Erszebet Bathory was a breathtakingly beautiful, unusually well-educated woman, married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame. In 1611, she was tried - though, being a noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 young girls. The true figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess recorded in her diary more t... 137). Sex or Gender "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949) In nature, male and female are distinct. She-elephants are gregarious, he-elephants solitary. Male zebra finches are loquacious - the females mute. Female green spoon worms are 200,000 times larger than their male mates. These strik... 138). Sex or Gender - Part I Alan Pease, author of a book titled "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps", believes that women are spatially-challenged compared to men. Th 139). Sex or Gender - Part II The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition describes the formation of ovaries and testes thus:"In the young embryo a pair of gonads develop that 140). Skopje - Where Time Stood Still Frozen at an early morning hour, the stony hands of the giant, cracked clock commemorate the horror. The earthquake that struck Skopje in 1963 has shattered not only its Byzantine decor, has demolished not merely the narrow passageways of its Ottoman past, has transformed not only its Habsburgian waterfront with its baroque National Theatre. The di... 141). Slavery in the USA Spanish settlements in the territory of the current-day USA owned slaves as early as 1526. Twenty one African chattel slaves were first brought to British North America ( to Jamestown, Virginia) in 1619. They joined white indentured laborers (servants) from all over Europe as well as Indian (Native-American) and Caribbean slaves. All the colonies l... 142). Slush Funds According to David McClintick ("Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal"), in the late 1980's, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset seizures. The idea was to infiltrate global crime networks but a lot of the money in "Oper... 143). Switzerland's Cheesy Economy In a series of referenda in 2003-5, Swiss citizens transformed their country forever, economically aligning it with the European Union and opening it up to work migration. It was an uncharacteristic response to increasingly worrisome times. In March 2003, Switzerland's annual rate of inflation dipped to 1.3 percent. Once a cause for ce... 144). Taming the Beast: Pathological Narcissism and the Quality of Question:You seem to be very sceptical that someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder can be treated successfully. Answ 145). Terrorists and Freedom Fighters "'Unbounded' morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality." Thomas Sowell There's a story about Robespierre that has the preeminent rabble-rouser of the French Revolution leaping up from his chair as soon as he saw a mob a... 146). The Abdication Crisis Revisited The love affair of Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson in 1936 is the stuff of romantic dramas. Alas, reality was a lot less inspiring. Even as she was being wooed by her regal paramour - and while still being married to Ernest Aldrich Simpson, who knew of the Prince's attentions and even discussed the adulterous relationship w... 147). The Affair of the Vanishing Content http://www.archive.org/ "Digitized information, especially on the Internet, has such rapid turnover these days that total loss is the norm. Civili 148). The American Revolution The American Revolution was a civil war between Loyalists to the British crown (aka Tories, about one fifth of the population), supported by British expeditionary forces, and Patriots (or Whigs) in the 13 colonies that constituted British North America. About 20-25% of the populace in the colonies - c. 600,000 - were blacks. About one... 149). The Argument for Torture I. Practical ConsiderationsThe problem of the "ticking bomb" - rediscovered after September 11 by Alan Dershowitz, a renowned criminal defense 150). The Armenian Genocide The Armenian massacres in Turkey started in the 19th century and continued well after the Armenian genocide of 1915 in which some 600,000 Armenians perished. The Armenians were also raided by Kurdish tribesmen on a regular basis. An Ottoman military tribunal, convened between 1919-21, even convicted for the crimes members of the administration of t... Browse Pages: [1] [2] 3 [4] [5] [6]