G as in Good H as in Happy

Causality

December 22, 2005

Report of a study that looks at the directional arrow between happiness and success.

...Segues into Resilience

The happiness studies (post above) always have room for more refinement, particularly as to definitions. And a sceptical commenter at Will Wilkinson's Happiness Shop has a good suggestion for further work, which he suggests might moderate his cynicism about the whole matter (he thinks people may be happy because they have never faced serious setback).

...examine how the chronically happy rebound from failure, and contrast it with the rebounds of the less happy?

Politics and the Paperboy

Is it as simple as density? Square footage? Sightlines to the horizon? Can these elements toward which we gravitate determine so much more (and is the preference even genetic, almost certainly neurological?) Then, leading to the economics of newspaper reporting and delivery...

Change rings again via telephones, and more recently the Internet. The next change is just beginning, including off-site employment: The author of the TCS column, Patrick Cox, is an economist and editorial columnist in Central Florida where he lives on an island in a remnant of original everglades. Where until recently only weird Carl Hiaasen heroes lived.

Though Dilys lived in Orlando for the part of the 20th Century she most wants to forget.

Root Causes

December 21, 2005

Will Wilkinson praises Anthony de Jasay’s (born 1925) The State (read online) as a book he calls "smartifying" -- readers're smarter after reading it than they were before.

Wholesale Idolatry

December 20, 2005

Chocolate deities, for those who have exhausted the curiosities of the local candy counter.

The remainder of the post has been removed. On second thought, Christmas mirth may be better served otherwise. Williams-Sonoma has a catalogue of diversely edible character. We suspect it's possible to sculpt just about anything out of an adequate stash of caviar. Dagon, if you must...

Epic Poetic Justice

December 16, 2005

Robert Avrech's cinematic mind, and fierce ancestral loyalty that fires his imagination, pull it together as he contemplates this worrying and historic moment.

In 1979, [the Ayatollah Khomeini] and his mad mullah buddies eventually expelled several thousand Jews from Iran.

Apologies...

...as a Typepad user. The two posts from December 15 rather lose their point without the associated images. If the pictures, of a purple fingerprint and a cyber-lovely, respectively, are not restored, we will re-post. Without a riposte.

Our Favorite...

...response (from "chuck," Dec. 16, 2005, 5:35 p.m.) to a simian troll that we've ever seen. Of course, ignoring him thereafter is also recommended.

Iraqi Election

December 15, 2005

Graven on the Air