EU Grand Strategy: Optimism is Mandatory. Egmont Security Policy Brief No. 36, July 2012

The Arab Spring, the American pivot, and the global crisis: these affect all of EU external action, but also present opportunities for EU action. A debate on grand strategy remains necessary.

Economists are not dismal, the world is not a Petri dish and other reasons for optimism

One of the recurrent themes in the debate around how to ensure global food security concerns the capacity of the planet to support its growing population. Neo-Malthusian thinking suggests that we are in a situation in which further expansion of the population cannot be supported and that the population checks, with their dismal consequences envisaged by Malthus, will lead to a new era of stagnant incomes and population. More sophisticated models of the link between population and income are less gloomy however. They see population growth as an integral component of the economic growth which is necessary to ensure that the poorest achieve food security. An undue focus on the difficulties of meeting the demands of the increasing population risks damaging this growth. Instead, attention should be focused on ensuring that the conditions to ensure that economic growth accompanies population growth are in place.

Optimism of Rural Nebraskans

Results from the 2008 Nebraska Rural Poll showed rural Nebraskans were more optimistic about their lives than they have been in previous years. More Nebraskans believed they were better off than they were five years ago, and more were optimistic about their futures. They had reason to be optimistic last year, the agricultural economy in 2007 was strong, especially for crop producers. The poll was taken between March and May, 2008, before the national economy began to falter in October. Thus the 2009 Nebraska Rural Poll will help clarify how rural Nebraskans are responding to the current economic times.

Fostering networking behavior, career planning and optimism, and subjective career success: An intervention study

The present study evaluated personal resource-oriented interventions supporting the career development of young academics, working at German universities within the STEM fields. The study sought to foster subjective career success by improving networking behavior, career planning, and career optimism. The study involved a quasi-experimental pre-post intervention with two intervention and two control groups (N = 81 research associates). Participants of the first intervention group received networking training; participants of the second intervention group received the same networking training plus individual career coaching. Participants of both intervention groups were female. Participants of the control groups (i.e., male vs. female group) did not participate in any intervention. As expected, path analyses, based on mean differences frompre-test to post-test, revealed an increase in career planning and career optimism within the networking plus career coaching intervention group, that was indirectly positively related to changes in subjective career success. Contrary to our expectations, the networking group training alone and in combination with the career coaching showed no effectiveness in fostering networking behavior. Results are discussed in the context of career counseling and intervention effectiveness studies.

Philosophic words, a study of style and meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson.

Appendices (p. [123] - 160: A. Index of philosophic words in the Rambler.--B. Some philosophic sources of Johnson's Dictionary.

Christiani Hugenii aliorumque seculi XVII virorum celebrium exercitationes mathematicæ et philosophicæ /

fasc. I., continens Chr. Hugenii, Leibnitii et Hospitalii epistolas mutuas.--fasc. II., continens additaments ad fasc. I., inter quae vausmeslii, Duilierii et Hub. Huighenii epistolas.

An estimate of the human mind. Being a philosophic inquiry into the legitimate application and extent of its leading faculties, as connected with ... principles and obligations of the Christian religion.

Mode of access: Internet.

Michael Angelo, considered as a philosophic poet.

Mode of access: Internet.

Philosophic grammar of the English language : in connection with the laws of matter and of thought ... designed for private students, foreigners, and the higher classes in schools /

Includes index.

Apostolic optimism and other sermons,

Mode of access: Internet.

Philosophic studies of the University of Chicago

Mode of access: Internet.