People more likely to ignore mobile phone calls from loved ones than strangers

People are more likely to ignore calls from close friends and family than they are colleagues and strangers, claims a new study.

The new research has revealed that nine out of 10 Britons deliberately ignore their mobile phone, and then lie about the reason why.

Surprisingly, scientists at the University of Salford have discovered it is close friends who are most likely to suffer from being ignored, while calls from work colleagues or the bank are nearly always answered.

Favourite excuses include "I didn't hear it ring" and "I was driving", but more wacky responses ranged from "feeding the cat" to "losing the power of speech".

Three per cent of respondents even claimed they were too busy "in the bedroom" to pick up the telephone.

The research suggests that best friends and loved ones are ignored more because they will involve more effort and a longer time to talk to.

But then people feel guilty and so make up an excuse to cover up their rudeness.
Dr Ashley Weinberg, a psychologist at the university, said: "It is natural for people to make excuses for not answering the phone, because they are actually breaching an unwritten psychological contract.

"In other words the caller expects to receive an answer and if they don't get one, whether we pick up or not, we have broken that bond.

"For the sake of our own self-image and the other person's perception of us we feel obliged to live up to that expectation. The rest is down to how plausible the excuse actually is."

The research was carried out for mobile phone recycling company Mopay.

A spokesman for the firm said: "We've all been there and told a white lie to let ourselves off the hook. Many people like the idea of being contactable all the time but can't deal with the consequences.

"Modern technology like Blackberrys and iPhones mean we are constantly in demand. This has its advantages and disadvantages and it seems that when it comes to answering a simple phone call from a friend many choose to ignore it.

"One respondent to our survey said, 'I sometimes use the excuse that I'm on a trampoline so can't pick up'.

"I'm not sure anyone can get away with that."

The Top 10 excuses for not answering a mobile phone are:

1. Didn't hear it ring

2. I was driving

3. Couldn't find my phone

4. Was in a meeting

5. Pressed the wrong button

6. Was in the bathroom when answering

7. Didn't recognise the number

8. Didn't feel like talking

9. Dislike people eavesdropping

10. Busy in the bedroom

Courtesy TELEGRAPH

TRUST ME, I'M A JOURNALIST

Trust in the media promotes health. A study of people from 29 Asian countries, reported in the open access journal BMC Medicine, has shown that individuals with high levels of trust in the mass media tend to be healthier.

A team of researchers led by Yasuharu Tokuda from St. Luke's International Hospital and Takashi Inoguchi from Chuo University, both in Tokyo, used data from a survey of 39,000 people to investigate the relationships between trust and self-reported health. Tokuda said, "This study is the first to analyze this relationship. Our findings suggest that mass media programs can contribute towards better health, especially among those people who have trust in mass media. The media need to recognize the importance of their important social role in terms of public health".

Slightly over 50% of the Asian participants reported that they 'trust a lot' or 'trust to a degree' in mass media. The group that reported being healthiest were young, married, high-income, and highly-educated women with a high trust in interpersonal relations as well as in the healthcare system and mass media.

People in Brunei reported the highest levels of health, while those in Turkmenistan had the lowest opinion of their own wellbeing. People in the Maldives reported the highest level of trust in mass media while Hong Kong residents were the most cynical.

According to Tokuda, "One potential pathway from high trust in mass media to better health is increased acceptance of health-related messages and the resultant dissemination of good behavior related to health throughout communities".

Article: The Relationship between Trust in Mass Media and the Healthcare System and Individual Health: Evidence from the AsiaBarometer Survey, Yasuharu Tokuda, Seiji Fujii, Masamine Jimba and Takashi Inoguchi, BMC Medicine (in press) http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcmed/
Source: BioMed Central

Excuse ME! How most people believe manners are unimportant in 21st century Britain

They say that good manners cost nothing. So you'd think that even in these credit-crunch times, we could still afford to be polite. Apparently not. For researchers have found that fewer than a quarter of us think that common courtesy is important today. Those simple acts of kindness, such as giving a stranger your place in the queue, or writing a thank-you letter to Auntie Jane, are also in decline.

According to the survey, which investigated attitudes towards courtesy, just one in three of those polled have ever given up their place in a queue.

Almost one in ten sometimes forget to say 'please' and 'thank you' - and one in 50 said they had 'too much on their minds to worry about other people's feelings'.

But although the majority thought that common courtesy just isn't a must these days, it seems that plenty of us appreciate it when someone takes the time to be kind.

Everyday acts that made us smile included paying a compliment - the gesture that made men and women happiest.

This was followed by sharing a chat with a stranger - and receiving good customer service.
For those feeling the pinch in the recession, it will be welcome news to find that flowers were further down the list.

Just eight per cent said being given a bunch was the act of kindness most likely to cheer them up.
And only 14 per cent liked it best when someone remembered a birthday or anniversary.
Courtesy isn't a trend that's necessarily helped by modern technology, it seems.

The carefully crafted thank-you letter has been overtaken by electronic mail for many, with 40 per cent admitting they preferred to use digital methods, such as social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, to send their appreciation.

On the other hand, there are those of us who want to show our thanks, but never quite manage to get that handwritten note in the post box.

And 20 per cent found new technology actually made it easier to be considerate to others, revealed the survey, from the bank First Direct.

But it seems that most of us think a recession is a good time to bring back traditionally British characteristics such as respect and honesty - something on which 64 per cent of those polled agreed.

Dr Gary Wood, a social psychologist and author, explained that manners are an easy way to make others feel better during the economic crisis.

'There's great power to be found in the fine detail. Good manners and social courtesy cost nothing and can have a profound effect on other people.

'We can literally make someone's day, and help to reduce their stress by paying attention to these little things, which then has a knock-on effect in our own lives.

'A smile or a kind word can actually set us up for the day, making it more likely that we focus on the good things rather than the doom and gloom.'

Courtesy MAIL

HOW THE MIGHTY FALL

BY ANDLEEB ABBAS

Organisations without a true purpose, mission and values are always in danger of losing their way in their fanatical obsession for more and more growth and profits

The lethal combination of money, power and sex are age-old recipes for failure. Nearly every fall from grace, be it individual or organisational, can be traced to their mad pursuit. Yet, history repeats itself repeatedly. From the corporate world to the world of politics and sports, human nature keeps on displaying its amazing ability to destroy those very foundational bases on which they launched their platform of growth and progress. From Tiger Woods to Shashi Tharoor and from IPL to Toyota, the sad story of individuals and organisations indulging in negligence, deception and arrogance, leading to their disgrace and downfall, keeps on reminding us that unbound success is perhaps more dangerous than limited failure.

Sustainable success is based on the basic principles of hard work and an honest pursuit of worthy goals. Tiger Woods was perhaps the classic example of this path to progress. With total perseverance and persistence, he did the undoable. Golf being for the rich, for the white and for the famous saw in Tiger a new hero who was neither white nor rich and famous, but through sheer hard work and single-minded focus he became a symbol of genuine success. This image of disciplined behaviour was what brought him the billion-dollar sponsorship deals from Nike, Gillette, Rolex and many more. As they say, the true test of a person’s character comes on two occasions: one when he is successful and the other when he is a failure. People without the foundational strength of character find it very difficult not to become slaves to their ego. They get so used to living an image that they forget who they really are. The Tiger image has now become more sheepish with story after story of his less than mortal flings with every woman in sight. With his image cracked, he is losing billions in sponsorship despite his PR team’s carefully crafted re-branding effort of the repentant family man and the rejuvenated sportsman.

Another type of star personality comprises those who use their urbane sophistication to climb the political and organisational ladder. These are people who apparently have a smooth demeanour, wonderful communication abilities and seemingly charming personalities. Shashi Tharoor, the Indian junior minister, fits this bill very well. Having worked for most of his career for the UN, he has perfected the art of saying the politically correct thing, yet committing a morally corrupt action with equal ease. At the UN he had climbed to the level of being an under-secretary-general of Kofi Annan and, at one time, was tipped to take over the secretary general’s role. However, his involvement in a sexual harassment case and the oil-for-food Iraq misappropriation led to the end of his career at the UN. Similarly, his tenure as a junior minister has been riddled with question marks. The recent scandal on his IPL commission dealings on money and favours to his girlfriend are familiar stories for those who have known about his chequered past.

IPL was expanding its range by bidding for new teams for the next year’s tournament. Kochi was one of two successful bidders to expand the immensely successful IPL to 10 city-based teams. Shashi Tharoor was dragged into a public spat when Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, revealed details of the Kochi franchise ownership via his Twitter account, saying a girlfriend of Tharoor had been given equity without paying for it. Tharoor had earlier been accused of receiving a hidden stake in the team. Meanwhile, Lalit Modi himself had been accused of trying to derail the Kochi group so that another group of bidders could take its place. Finally, the uproar was too much and Shashi Tharoor resigned, ending perhaps his last chance to make it big. With intelligence and charm oozing all over him, it is his lack of character and principles that have repeatedly brought about his downfall.

Similarly, organisations can only sustain themselves if their foundations based on principles and values are strong. Organisations without a true purpose, mission and values are always in danger of losing their way in their fanatical obsession for more and more growth and profits. IPL, with its spectacular rise, had become a global model of money spinning, star power and sheer entertainment. Organisations that experience fame and fortune with such lightning speed become so used to propelling growth that they develop this blind belief that their size and glamour will save them from any adverse reaction. IPL’s own blazing pace has burned its image.

IPL may be blamed for being a nouveau riche, upstart organisation. But how do you explain one of the world’s most legendary and reputed organisations involved in a serious compromise on product quality in pursuit of mindless growth. Yes, we are talking about the most quality-oriented organisation in the world, Toyota. The shocking revelation that most of the car models of Toyota have faulty accelerators, leading to life threatening accidents, has shaken the auto world. Despite warnings by its quality department on the lack of safety, Toyota was again carried away by its desire to occupy market share left open by tottering American giants like GM and Chrysler; in this race for being the biggest they forgot how to be the best. The result is that they had to recall eight million cars for replacement and repair of the faulty parts. The cars may be repaired in a few weeks but the dent to its reputation may take years to return to the level where people can swear by it once again.

When the truth becomes false and falsehood becomes true, the search for what is and should be becomes as vague and confusing as this sentence itself. A world which believes that anything and everything can be bought, where good looks or goodwill are just a cosmetic surgery away, where loyalty and sincerity have a price tag, where being big and famous at all costs is the real mantra, it is inevitable that success is only a matter of time and failure a consequential reality. It is an erosion of values at the individual and organisation level that has caused the mightiest to crumble and fall. The only sustainable recipe for enduring success is an almost religious adherence to the age-old fundamentals of integrity, fidelity, quality and humility. Without these values, individuals and organisations are bodies without a soul destined to lose their identity, self-esteem and dignity, and fall into the abyss of ignominy.

The writer is a consultant and CEO of FranklinCovey and can be reached at andleeb@franklincoveysouthasia.com

Courtesy DAILY TIMES May 2

'PRETTY WOMEN CAN BE BAD FOR HEALTH'

Meeting a beautiful woman can be bad for your health, scientists have found.

Just five minutes alone with an attractive female raise the levels of cortisol, the body's stress hormone, according to a study from the University of Valencia.

The effects are heightened in men who believe that the woman in question is "out of their league".

Cortisol is produced by the body under physical or psychological stress and has been linked to heart disease.

Researchers tested 84 male students by asking each one to sit in a room and solve a Sudoku puzzle. Two strangers, one male and one female, were also in the room.

When the female stranger left the room and the two men remained sitting together, the volunteer's stress levels did not rise. However, when the volunteer was left alone with the female stranger, his cortisol levels rose.

The researchers concluded: "In this study we considered that for most men the presence of an attractive woman may induce the perception that there is an opportunity for courtship.

"While some men might avoid attractive women since they think they are 'out of their league', the majority would respond with apprehension and a concurrent hormonal response.

"This study showed that male cortisol levels increased after exposure to a five-minute short social contact with a young, attractive woman."

Cortisol can have a positive effect in small doses, improving alertness and well-being. However, chronically elevated cortisol levels can worsen medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and impotency.

Courtesy TELEGRAPH

PM GILANI'S FLIP-FLOP

On the one hand Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani says that parliament is being disgraced by the issue of fake degrees of parliamentarians, on the other he feels no qualms about addressing an election rally on behalf of a proved cheater Jamshed Dasti, who had admitted before the Supreme Court of Pakistan that his degree was fake and had resigned from his seat in the National Assembly. What is even more regrettable is that the Pakistan People’s Party’s parliamentary board, which does not seems to care about its party members’ character, again decided to field Jamshed Dasti for a by-election.

While defending the PPP’s decision to award the ticket to Jamshed Dasti, Prime Minister Gilani called on other parties not to give tickets to those holding fake degrees. Can there be a better example of double speak? What high moral ground does Mr Gilani have to call upon others to do what his own party is not doing? Perhaps he had better set his own house in order first before lecturing others.

While one does not agree with the condition of a bachelor’s degree for contesting elections for national and provincial assemblies, which tends to limit universal franchise, it was incumbent upon the contestants to follow the election rules and not resort to unfair means. Also, the Election Commission (EC) was expected to verify the academic qualifications of all the candidates to ascertain their verity, given the ease with which forgeries are commonplace in Pakistan. Failure to do so has landed the EC in an unenviable situation, where it still has to deal with 46 election petitions pertaining to fake degrees, filed after the 2008 general election. Moreover, allowing madrassa degree-holders to contest elections further complicated the situation, because neither is the madrassa degree equivalent to the bachelor’s degree issued by our regular education system, nor is there any way to ascertain independently whether the concerned holder had indeed completed his education in a madrassa or not. Thus the ‘graduate assemblies’ plan of General Musharraf was highly flawed, conceptually, in principle, and in implementation.

Although the condition of academic qualification had been lifted in 2008, for future all the political parties, including the PPP, should at least ensure that their respective elected representatives do not have a proven fraudulent character.

Courtesy DAILY TIMES Saturday, May 15

BIG PLAYERS & HUMAN RIGHTS VALUES

BY ANUM RAZA HASAN

Acknowledging its structural loopholes, even if the international human rights regime were to be reformed to make it more applicable in the current political situation, the question remains if it will ever be able to enforce itself against a superpower like the US

The deterioration of the human rights situation in much of Asia can be termed as the most imminent outcome of the war on terror. Uncontested in truth and undeniable through evidence, human rights violations perpetuated by the US foreign policy stand as the central characteristic of the post-9/11 world order, which has further highlighted the need to question the credibility, efficacy and influence of the universal human rights regime. The blatant abuse of human rights can be seen through the widely reported incidents in the Bagram prison camp in Afghanistan, used as a torture facility by the US, which reflects not only the US hegemony and unilateral stance over international affairs but the inability of the universal human rights regime to serve under the current world order. It is, in effect, constrained by the notion of state sovereignty and the lack of an enforcement mechanism. Other dilemmas hindering the capacity of the international regime to function as per its original claims include the flexibility of choice to ratify crucial international conventions as well as the fact that the UN Security Council gives the most powerful states the veto power against decisions pertaining to the world.According to estimates by human rights organisations, the US is holding at the Bagram Air Force Base north of Kabul in Afghanistan more than twice the number of prisoners held at Guantánamo. The prisoners are compacted into wire cages, forced to sleep on the floor and only given plastic buckets for latrines.

According to Human Rights Watch, prisoners held at Bagram, which is being expanded to hold up to 1,000 detainees, have no right to a lawyer, no access to the courts and barely any right to challenge the grounds for their detention. The mistreatment of detainees violates the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which the US has ratified. Moreover, according to article five and nine of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Bill of Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights respectively, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

In the wake of 9/11, dominant voices in the Bush administration’s inner circles subscribed to the idea that if ‘coercively interrogating’ prisoners could provide intelligence to save American lives and win the war on terror, then ‘quaint’ laws should be no obstacle. The top advocates for torture and other extra legal policies were Vice President Dick Cheney and his brain trust. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) produced a series of secret memos stating that the president, as commander in chief, has unrestrained powers to wage war; any efforts to subject executive discretion over interrogation and detention policies to federal, military or treaty laws would be ‘unconstitutional’; prisoners designated as terrorists by presidential fiat (rather than status review by a tribunal) should have no habeas corpus right to contest their detention and no right not to be maltreated. Hence, making the world safe from terrorism quickly came to be seen as antithetical to strong international human rights institutions. It would be worthwhile to question whether human rights have irretrievably lost their status in international affairs and national policy making in the wake of the war on terrorism.

The Bush regime termed Afghanistan an ‘exceptional state’, under which circumstances the nature of its intervention and actions were justified, as if giving them the license to act independently and chart Afghanistan’s destiny. The US was thus able to chart its own path through a unilateralist policy with little regard to other states’ — even the United Nations’ — discontent over its intentions. It should be understood that international law has often been moulded more by the structural demands of the US than by the latter’s outright retreat. This is reflected in US reluctance to accept strong mechanisms which have been part of a general tendency to maintain international law in its traditional state, meaning in a primitive state, characterised by indeterminate primary rules, few and weak institutions for lawmaking and enforcement and a strong fragmentation without a defining centre. The most convincing example of maintaining the flexibility of international law is the US reluctance to subscribe to supervisory mechanisms or to accede to treaties that have such mechanisms at their core, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The US not only indulges in liberties and privileges in establishing a legal order it is not entitled to, enforcing law without having to conform to it, on several occasions it only considered accepting treaties if they mirror US domestic law. In other words, in the US view, international law is subject to US governmental powers and subject specifically to the US constitution. To this end, the US has been able to secure inequality in international law and retain flexibility to perpetuate US national interests. These characteristics have rendered international law as a tool for the powerful in their self-interest, who then take advantage of the lack of clarity in laws that should be equally applicable to all.

There is a precarious law and order, political and security situation in Afghanistan and the inability of the international human rights regime to deliver, coupled with the US’s hegemonic ambitions and unilateral foreign policy decisions, has further aggravated the situation. This has had made the grave human rights implications of the war on terror pretty much inevitable in Asia and beyond. Bush’s legacy of unilateralism and disregard for human rights is being closely followed by Obama, despite grand promises of positive ‘change’.

Even though Guantanamo Bay has been partially closed — even Bagram has become part of a handover plan to local authorities — but regular reports of US army abuse in foreign territories, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, are increasingly receiving condemnation from human rights organisations the world over, reaffirming global scepticism over the US desire to reverse its regime of abuse. It needs to be understood that upholding human rights values as defined in international conventions will serve the long-term interests of the US as well. Acknowledging its structural loopholes, even if the international human rights regime were to be reformed to make it more applicable in the current political situation, the question remains if it will ever be able to enforce itself against a superpower like the US. Would big power players ever feel compelled to uphold universal values at the cost of political self-interest?

Anum Raza Hasan is a freelance journalist and human rights activist with an academic background in International Development. She can be reached at anumhasan@dailytimes.com.pk

Courtesy DAILY TIMES April 30