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Showing posts with the label society

What's Wrong with Society?

It's simple, really. Nothing is wrong with it. Society, like anything else created by our social behavior, has been following human evolution ever since we started living together within small and functionally organized communities. In the beginning there was a simple need for this—it was impossible for just one man to hunt down one, for example, mammoth or to defend a family from the herd of prehistoric saber-tooth tigers, and the only solution was to get together and organize a little for the mutual benefit. Not to mention the everlasting need for prolonging the species, which also required, sort of, well, socializing with a member of the opposite gender.

Mammoth hunt and prehistoric society*

We can only wish that things were as simple as they were millennia ago. If we disregard the fact that socializing in order to save the species didn't change much from the times when humans shared the habitat with mammoths, all other aspects of human society, due to the thousands of years of human evolution, changed a lot. We multiplied to enormous numbers, spread to the farthest corner of the Earth, used many different languages, started worshiping the divine and prominent members among us, created a money-based system of rewards, kept original differences between us and created new ones, built villages, cities, and countries to live inside, and ultimately developed a society as it is today with all its flaws and bright sides.

The question is "Did we do it wrong?"

Could we do it better, or was this the best we could do? Did we make wrong foundations in the first place, and is what we have now just a consequence of our ancestors's decisions and their poor vision of humanity as it is today? Or whatever they did, we would eventually evolve into this by its nature?

Let's not buzz our brains with "what if" questions too much. We can't change the past and explore different paths in human social evolution. Instead, what I want to write a little about in this post is just to "examine" some of the foundations we live in or use on a daily basis and take for granted as if they were always there. But before I just want to state something obvious—in this little mind experiment I am not trying to change something that needed thousands of years to emerge. That would be mission impossible. For example, we can try to advocate that living in big cities or dividing ourselves with borders and countries is not wise for many reasons, but in reality, efficient "canceling" of this way of life overnight is not possible. If we use the political metaphor, that would be similar to a revolution of some kind in order to change, for instance, an already established political system. We know from our history that all the revolutions didn't end without violent conflicts with lots of casualties and spilled blood. The less "bloody" disappointment, this time in the realm of information technologies, was felt by the mighty Google a couple of years ago when they tried to speed up the evolution of e-mail and tried to replace it with "Google Wave", an ambitious project with the power to bury email service forever with its sophisticated layers and new technology. I remember they advertised "The Wave" service as "how the e-mail would look if it were invented yesterday instead of twenty years ago". Like in the political arena, in a way, Wave was trying to revolutionize an already recognized system and expectedly failed big time.

Money, Money, Money**

No, social evolution is a very slow process, and just like the evolution of species, it is based on many tries and errors. Very few revolutionary methods succeeded in affecting it on a large scale, and I can't recall anything in the past that did it without turbulence.

But that doesn't stop us from using our imagination and trying to see one hypothetical future if we change some ground foundations a little. Just for fun.

So, for the very first ground property of our lives, let's think about how to improve the system behind the "money". Probably rudimentary trade in the form of simple barter was born with the very first societies long ago, but over time, when the amount of goods and services had risen to the point that simple exchange couldn't work anymore, it was natural that using a medium of exchange was something that was inevitably invented very soon. The history of the "medium of exchange" is very interesting, from the very beginning, when people in early civilized societies used barley grains to exchange things, through the times when different commodities were used as money, like shells, alcohol, cigarettes, and even cannabis. Today, after a long period of using gold, silver, and copper coins, we successfully created a system of banknotes that, by the beginning of the 20th century, all modern and industrialized countries accepted as the only means of use for all kinds of trades. However, even though an intermediary in the form of money was inevitable, it added other dimensions to the people's daily lives. I am sure greed existed long before money was invented in its rudimentary form, but in modern societies it received its pure meaning, or simple desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. Perhaps the only way to fix the basic problem with money, in which many people started to adore shiny banknotes more than the goods you can buy with them, is to remove one of its properties out of the equation. Cash. We need to ultimately stop using cash and replace it with a full electronic system. This way, "home money collectors" will be eliminated, and the system of individual wealth will become more transparent in many ways. I am sure "individual greed for money" would be significantly reduced, even though, as a psychological concept hidden deeply in our emotional brains, greed is simply impossible to remove.

Politics and Power***

On the other side, hypothetically speaking, removing worldwide banknotes and replacing them all with several or just one planetary electronic monetary value (let's call it credit or bitcoin?) could be possible, and that would efficiently remove so-called "corporate greed for money" and force worldwide stock markets to deal more with goods and services instead of dealing with money alone and their exchange rates. Not to mention the medical benefits of not using papers and coins that travel from one hand to another all the time. Payments in the future must be done completely without touching of any kind, preferably by wirelessly reading fingerprint-protected ID cards. Of course, there will still be people who will start worshiping 'credits' now instead of green banknotes, but hopefully their number will be significantly reduced due to a lack of physical connection in the hypothetical new system.

Ok, now that we fixed the money problem ;-), what else are we enjoying every day for granted? What is that thing that the average human being worships the same along with wealth and collecting treasures of any kind? Yes. The power. There is no society in nowadays planetary kingdoms, republics, states, provinces, or even the smallest municipalities with no rulers recognized and worshiped by the majority. No matter if they use simple dictatorship, communism, still live in African tribes, or live within highly evolved democracies, everything is organized within one or a couple "alpha" leader(s) in power, followed by the people designated in lower ranks ("betas" and "omegas" if we use the wolf herd analogy). These behaviors also came from our emotional inner beings, which we inherited from our animal origins. Fixing this problem is easy, and within current societies (evolutionary speaking), I can't see a better system than democracy. People are different in many aspects, and it is necessary that the majority select the rulers, and the only thing we need to do is improve democracy as it is in the current stage. In simple words, instead of voting for political parties that, if elected, govern the society for several years until the next elections, it became necessary to find a way to involve people and the voting system more frequently and for each and every agenda that requires important decisions to be made. Instead of voting for politicians, elections should be organized for each chairman, so to speak. Electronic voting is now possible, and counting the results can be done almost instantly, so we need a way to vote for the prime minister alone as well as for each member of the government. Also, voting should be selective, and it should not allow all members of the community to vote every time. For example, hypothetically speaking, why would I be involved in the election of the ministry of health when I committed and educated myself within the food and agriculture industry? I don't even know anybody from the medical institutions, so how would my vote be relevant? The same would be for the election of the ministry of agriculture, and only relevant people within this realm should participate in this election, and there is no need for doctors and nurses to bother voting for something that has so little in common. Anyway, a real democratic system requires many changes, and nowadays technologies allow the transformation. The only problem is that politicians would suffer the most and almost become extinct in the process, making this change as hard as the exchange of CRT television sets with flat screens. But it is inevitable, and in one way or another it will happen. Like in the case of "Cathode Ray Tube" TV sets, no matter how old technology spreads its roots, it is destined to die eventually.

Five Myths About Education****
So far we have encountered financial and political systems that actually create the rules responsible for one society's health. But what is even more important than these? Who is actually behind these systems? Yes. People. Individuals. But how did they come to be in the first place? Where did they learn all that they know? Yes. This is the final social link we need to improve. The Education. We all once were kids. No matter how talented we were, we needed to go through the educational system to become what we are today. This is where everything started and therefore the system that is the most responsible for the outcome of one society. What we have now in our societies, basically everything bad and good in our human existence, more or less, has to thank education. If one man or woman became a successful scientist responsible for some kind of breakthrough discovery that would change the world, the big portion of gratitude would go to the education institutions where he/she spent early days learning and acquiring knowledge and skills. The same amount of credit goes to the education institutions that actually provided installation of a mass murderer, serial killer, or lunatic war general, or at least didn't do enough to prevent their misfortune. The bottom line here is that the educational part of any society is something that must be the most important of them all. Sadly, there is no country in the world that prioritizes this part over anything else. Not even the highly evolved democracies and technocracies recognized the full potential and danger of one educational system. We now have mediocre politicians and bank employees that enjoy a wealthier life than highly educated teachers and university professors. Not to mention that military budgets in ALL countries are way bigger than their counterparts in educational and scientific systems, directly or indirectly funded by tax money taken from people. When I think of nowadays societies all over the world in relation to education and science, the title question, "What's Wrong with Society?" might not be accurate. Maybe the better question would be "Why is society turned upside down?"

Yes, education in private schools and universities is way better by the quality of given knowledge compared to tax funding and state institutions, but looking at it from the global scale, there are only a few of them, not to mention that the price of scholarships is way above the average income of the society they are located in, automatically excluding potentially extraordinary students from participating in the first place. The solution I have in mind is based on further fragmentation of class groups. Schools, especially elementary schools, are gathering kids away from their families every day, and it would be only fair to provide a family-like atmosphere inside the classroom. If we consider this, it seems reasonable that the number of students should not be bigger than 5 per group. These small selected groups would be enjoying classes in a more relaxing environment and over time get better results than a group of 15-30 pupils like today simply because each member of the smaller group would be more active on a daily basis. A family-like atmosphere would allow active tutoring of poor or lazy students as well as better acceptance of those who came from dysfunctional families. Furthermore, bright students and their interests would be spotted much earlier and therefore provided with more time in targeted education following their recognized talents and interests. The goal is also to get much better insight into the development of young people during their childhood and adolescent periods, when they are the most vulnerable and easy targets for various influences.

I will stop now and probably leave some more foundations and brainstorming about their improvements for some future posts (for example, dealing with social security with respect to medical and elderly insurance or demographic separations of different societies). The baseline here is that nothing is written in stone, and there is nothing wrong with thinking of how to change some social foundation, even though it has been in use for centuries. Times are passing fast, and sometimes we might be unaware that some technology already developed can help us live much better if we only try and dare to use it.

Without revolutionizing anything, of course.

Grisly find suggests humans inhabited Arctic 45,000 years ago*
http://www.sciencemag.org/grisly-find-suggests-humans-inhabited-arctic

Money, Money, Money**
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/holy-wow-you-can-actually-swim-like-scrooge-mcduck-in-1481547007

Politics and Power***
https://www.masonreport.com/donald-trumps-campaign-rhetoric

Five Myths About Education****
http://www.thepolisblog.org/2012/11/education.html
 

Who's Behind the Wheel?

Have you ever been in a situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really "Yes and no". And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is, of course, parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro- and microorganisms that can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life, which in most cases leads to the host's malfunction, to use a raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessness for parasitic survival or simply to follow the natural circle of life, i.e., to lay eggs outside the host environment.

Toxoplasma gondii—a single-celled protozoan*

This blog is not a medical source or place for studying biological entities of any kind, and I am surely not really qualified to provide any advanced knowledge about parasites and how to avoid contamination or heal after. But I am always interested in scientific edges and research that provide unusual results, to say the least, and this post is more about whether or not some parasitic species, like Toxoplasma gondii, are able to affect the human mind in a way that the personality of the host could be changed to the level of influencing their entire social life. However, some basic information can't hurt in order to better understand how biology works. For example, if we are talking about macroparasites or entire sexually developed tiny organisms with complex 'teen' and 'adult' lives with stages of infecting hosts, feeding, laying eggs, and contaminating surroundings, then we are talking more about different kinds of worms (shaped as round, tape, hook, whip, etc.) invading hosts through raw meat, contaminated water, or unclean food. This is the most common way of intrusion, but parasitic eggs can be spread everywhere and through the simple touch of infected handles, phones, appliances... anything at all. When inside, they eat your digested food or even your blood vessels and cells. And they spread a wide variety of diseases, even though they can stay dormant for months and years. They are truly microscopic monsters, very similar to those 'Alien' types in horror movies.

However, the bigger they are, the better they are studied and understood, and today, contrary to the Dark Ages, when parasitic infection was able to spread severely among huge numbers of people, treatments are very successful if detected as early as possible. The smaller they get, like the single-cell deadly microorganism known as Plasmodium (the malaria parasite), the tougher the fight is for knowledge and treatments for diseases they are causing. And for some parasites, disease, in the form we define it, is just the final stage of their complex life. As it seems, they are also very much able to force their hosts to do their bidding as well. In the most intelligent and cruel way. Let's see what Toxoplasma gondii is capable of. Sometimes it is hard to believe all the scientific facts. And believe me, 'believe' is the right word for this little alien and hostile invader of hosts' minds. Humans included.

Cats and Mice: It's Complicated*

All parasite species tend to complete their lives from the stage of being born till the end of their lives. Toxoplasma gondii's ultimate treat is the cat. This is what it is designed for, and this is where it wants to finally multiply and end its life. But it is hard to find a cat when you need it, right? So there are lots of potential intermediate hosts on the way. Before they ultimately end in the intestine of a cat-shaped animal, they find the drive in the cysts of the brain and other tissues of a warm-blooded species, including humans. If they move into rats or some other rodent animal, the parasite recognizes its intermediary and alters the host's behavior for one purpose only—to be an easy victim for cats. More precisely, they induce high levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter known to alter novelty-seeking and enhance the host's neuroticism. In other words, the mouse becomes a curious adventurer of its surroundings and loses fear of cats and everybody else. Uninfected rodents have built-in protection from their native predators and always try to avoid areas marked with cat urine or odor, but after the infection, the parasite brainwashes rodents to even go into craving cat urine and directly into the trap. Toxoplasma gondii can only sexually reproduce in the feline gut, and there you have the answer to why cats love mice and rats so much. Even more surprisingly, all the symptoms in infected lab rats stay after parasites die in the rodent, suggesting permanent changes in the host's neural system.

But what happens if T. gondii finds the way and invades the human body? And according to research, it is apparently capable of infecting us on large scales, and up to one-third of people around the world are estimated to be potential hosts. And we are sort of a dead end for their travel. If we exclude sporadic cases of tigers and lions attacking and eating humans, cats actually can't thrive on us. Well, yes, domestic cats don't eat human beings, but still, there are other ways of transferring parasites from humans to cats, and it seems that Toxoplasma gondii, like in rodents, is also trying to use its unprecedented ability to alter host behavior, all in favor of parasitic life fulfillment. For the simplicity of this blog post, we can make a difference in parasitic life inside an intermediate human host compared to rats and mice. In its acute form, I would say after the parasite realizes there is no way out, or due to some other reason in the mixture of the parasitic and host's life, the human host can go into severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, suicidal behavior, or the performance of slow mental activity and thinking. Within a large amount of time, in the parasite's latent form, the host is going through light personality changes that are very difficult to recognize as a disease. The latent toxoplasmosis might even be immune to treatments and antibiotics, and some hosts, like our distant rodent relatives, could even change their response to cat odor as well.

The Veneration and Worship of Felines in Ancient Egypt*

Perhaps a decade ago, one comprehensive study was finished at Charles University in Prague, in the Czech Republic, by Jaroslav Flegr, and numerous researchers ended with extremely interesting findings published in the paper "Induction of changes in human behavior by the parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii" (referenced below). Over the years, they tested many cases of infected men and women against 'Cattell's personality factors' (a sort of scientific personality test designed to reveal aspects of an individual's character) and compared them to those performed by non-infected people. Both infected men and women had significantly higher apprehension and levels of social fearfulness, with significant differences in results between the two groups. Infected men showed lower superego strength (rule consciousness), higher vigilance, were more likely to disregard rules, and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic. Women, on the other end, showed higher warmth and higher superego strength, suggesting that they were more warm-hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic. And all those human properties are not considered a disease of any sort. Remember that the latent stage of toxoplasmosis can be the case for one of three people you can meet on the street, including yourself and me. All those people would behave differently if they were not under the influence of small microorganisms only visible under the eye of an electronic microscope!

Now, it is very much close to all sorts of logic that human culture, isolated or widespread, can alter individual personality. In simple words, if you are a member of a herd of sheep, you are most likely a white sheep and behave like all the other members of society, well... the herd. However, the same logic goes for humans and the other way around—that cumulative personality might shape cultural dimensions through the collective behavior of individuals. And if you got yourself a society of humans, all or most of them infected with T. gondii (which is not far from the truth, especially in the early history of mankind ever since ancient Egypt and the domestication of cats), their cultural self would no doubt be shaped far from the case if they were all uninfected and healthy. And if you glimpse again the personality of diverted subjects above, with increased apprehension and decreased superego with men and highly sensitive women, if you ask me, the very own free will could be in question along with increased susceptibility to superstition and religiosity.

Well, I am not saying it, and surely there's lots more research to be done, but if one small society in the history of humanity should thank a small microorganism for, i.e., the rise of religion and everything that implies, you have to wonder...


...about a nice plot for a novel. And that is exactly what Tom Knox did with his thriller called "The Deceit", an amazingly wrapped plot that connects the origins of all religions, ancient Egypt, domesticated cats, Toxoplasma gondii, and everything that might come out of this twist glued together. True or partially true or not at all, this book inspired me to learn something that I didn't know before and, of course, pushed me for a little web research that ended with this blog post. This is actually a second time that Tom Knox, a.k.a. Sean Thomas, forced me to do some more reading about the background of his novel, and needless to say, I recommend both books and am looking forward to more of his work. I have already hinted at "The Marks of Cain", which apparently offers similar travel through the history of man. Stay tuned.

T. gondii refs:
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/1/1.short
https://web.natur.cuni.cz/flegr/pdf/induction.pdf
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1602/2749
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070403-cats-rats.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16PF_Questionnaire

* Image refs:
https://www.science.org/content/article/.../toxoplasmosis-parasite-lab
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history/veneration-and-worship-felines-ancient-egypt-003030
 

Do You Live to Work, Or Work to Live?

Do you ever wonder why we work like we work? Why does working time last those eight hours, and why does it take the best part of the day? Who made it this way? And why? It all started with the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, which culminated into a real nightmare for most of the workers, especially in large factories, where long working hours were mandatory and kept people outside their homes all day long. The working day was 10 to 16 hours, six days a week, and not only for adults. Use of children was cheap and preferable. Deaths and illnesses from exhaustion were common, and it was cruel and inhuman. Eventually, the nightmare spread from workers toward capitalists as well, in form of rise of social movement with Robert Owen's famous slogan, "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest".


Well, today, almost two centuries later, we now live, more or less, in Owen's vision, working around eight hours per day and enjoying our lives during or after work. Or both. Nobody today dies from the job. Well, not due to poor working conditions, anyways. Perhaps some of us are in danger ofdeath by boredom on some rainy days in the office, but, and again more or less, today we are in control of our professional careers. On the other end, if you ask me, even these eight hours are sometimes too long. Many times. They say that with age comes wisdom, but also comes a certain dosage of laziness, especially in the second part of the working hours. After 20 years of continuous work in my professional career, eight hours now seems too long. I passed that period in my life with idealistic thoughts and glimpses of the world as it is, waiting for me to make the difference. If you are in your forties, there are other variables that must be included in private and professional life. Middle-age crisis, for example. Not enough challenges like before. Too much routine in both lives. Too competitive an environment, to say the least, wherever you look. Generation gaps. Following faster ways of living. And you don't have to be in your forties anymore to feel the difference or experience injustice.

Perhaps it is time again for another Robert Owen to appear and try to shorten this eight hours to six or less. Or to try and modify the working habits and move everything possible to freelancing and outsourcing. To ban offices in those businesses that still insist on using them in old-fashioned ways, although the entire job can be done today from a kitchen table and home wifi. Before, when I was a teenager and later when I was trying to take the first step in my professional career, they used to say that major changes will come in the 21st century. The new millennium will change everything. Well, the 14th year now in the new spectacular century is about to expire in a few months, and I can't notice anything majorly different. More or less. But still, the major question from the old times is still there. Do you live to work, or do you work to live?


It would be unfair if I continued with this story without answering it first. And to be honest, from the beginning and my first employment, I always worked to live. For me, family and home was, is, and will always be number one. No exceptions. No matter how important the project I was involved in was. But to be completely honest, if I used a scale from minus ten to ten, where -10 means full commitment to the job, while +10 is the finest family time, I would not score the biggest number too often. I don't think I score it easily even today. It is impossible. Sometimes, if it comes into my life challenged and pure, the job can suck me in for days. Months, even. But always let me go. So my number is within a wide scale from -5 to the very high of 9, with more positive than negative values. Ten only sometimes. And I want to keep it that way. If I looked to all my half-a-dozen companies I was working with in my former professional life, the cruel truth is, with a couple of exceptions, that I didn't stay in touch with my former co-workers. We all moved along. Simply put, while our intelligence and education define us completely, our curriculum vitae is nothing more than a document only worthwhile during searching for a new job. Nobody cares what is written inside while you are having a steady job. Only in between two of them.

But enough with work; let's see the other side of the medal. The story I wanted to tell in the first place, and maybe unconsciously, I started with too long an introduction. What actually inspired me for today's story is Tony Parsons—British journalist and novel author. About a month ago, after I read three of Harlan Coben's thrillers in a row and two of James Patterson's Alex Cross series during the summer, I felt that I needed a break from tension and crime stories. But I can't really swallow those light readings with love stories in the foreground, so I went in search of something different—hoping to find a story based on ordinary life, family affairs, or one of those with "true story" written on the main cover. Tony Parsons, with his "Man and Boy" trilogy, gave me exactly what I wanted. And more.


If you didn't read it already, I recommend it warmly. It is about a typical family of the early 21st century, filled with both pain and love, surrounded by a tough life in one large city in which work and mortgage can destroy your life in a split second. Harry Silver, in the main role, shows us everything that might strike one modern family in one fast-forward world and where, no matter how he tries to maintain normal family life, this proves to be not entirely possible with all the mistakes and distractions from the job. It is also about conflicts between generations and what connects them. About the shallowness of business life. Friendships. This is the story that will force your eyes to let go of a tear or two too often, but also it will put a smile on your face every now and again as well.

I stumbled upon "Man and Boy" within Serbian Laguna, my favorite online bookshop, in their editor selection called "Laguna gems" or something like that, and after I reached the second cover, I felt hunger for more stories like this one. So I browsed the bookshop's online store again, secretly hoping for a sequel, and searched the author's page. To my surprise I found two more novels in the trilogy and also short news about the author visiting our town on the tour to promote his latest book. To cut the story short, I ordered the remaining novels, read them in record time, and yesterday Viktor and I grabbed the first book and went to the signing event to meet Tony in person. I knew that a person who was able to write Harry's adventures couldn't be much different than his main character, especially after I read somewhere that his personal life story has many connecting points with the novel itself. As it turned out, Tony Parsons was one great guy with nothing but the smile on his face despite the endless line of people waiting for the autographs. He was especially nice with Viktor and shared the fact that his middle name is also Victor, named after his father, so I can't resist not sharing the photo of two Viktors below. After the event, my son and I went to McDonald's for a Happy Meal to sort out our impressions, and later, the first thing he said to his mother when we came home was, "It was the best day!" I couldn't agree more.

Tony Victor Parsons & Viktor

Anyway, to resume the main story and in conclusion, my life outside work, in its current stage, is one huge place and full of wonders and challenges. No matter if I just read a book, watch a movie, do dishes, participate in a social occasion, play a game, travel, or enjoy precious family time, it is always far ahead of the most enjoyable project at work for which I, in the end, receive a paycheck. This always makes me feel that "work has this strange effect of zooming things larger than they really are".** Money is one great thing we can't live without, but sometimes, if not always, it manages to spoil the very essence of the work it is paid for. In the latest years, when I ask myself why I worked so hard on a project that gave me pleasurable time while it lasted, I always answer with "Oh yes, for the money'. And it wasn't my first thought when I asked myself the same question twenty years ago...

Image refs:
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/5-things-every-son-needs-to-hear-from-his-dad.html
https://vomitingdiamonds.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/boredom-at-the-office/

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
* http://connections.msn.com/articles/detail/256476535
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/05/typical-work-day-length/
** http://www.thehighcalling.org/work/work-life-balance
http://financecareers.about.com/od/careermanagement/a/LiveToWork.htm