I Hope You’re Happy Now
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 6, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Because it may be fleeting. Science is proving that giving makes you happy, and that real happiness is temporary, but sustainable.
Are you happy? I occasionally ask people this, and the ones who most emphatically say “yes” often strike me more as pleased, rather than what I’d call “happy”. Pleased with their accomplishments, pleased with their possessions, pleased with their social standing. Is that happiness? I’ve spent much of my life trying to be happy. I don’t know why it’s been such a struggle. I mean, it’s an “Inalienable Right” written into our constitution (“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”), isn’t it? Sometimes I feel the country I live in should actually be called Anhedonia. We talk about happiness all the time, but rarely seem to be experiencing it. Which is why I’m glad that science finally has it figured out. There’s even a How To Be Happy Wiki. I jest a bit (because I’m happy!) but I was recently inspired (ironically, while I was feeling a bit down) by an interview in the Sun Magazine with Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist in the relatively new field of Positive Psychology. Fredrickson’s research suggests that, as she puts it, “…positive emotions are by nature subtle and fleeting; the secret is not to deny their transience but to find ways to increase their quantity…”, adding that one of the challenges of being happy is to understand that it simply is not a stable, long-lasting state of being. I’m somehow not surprised that science is also proving that giving makes you happy (someone should tell JournalWatch about this, then they’d let us read this article for free!), and I personally try to remember this when I’m in a rut. It works. Which is why I’m also including the little “donate” button below. Trust me, it’ll make you feel better. By the way, are you happy? I’d love to know, and I’d love to know why. Read the rest of this entry »
Best & Worst Green Celebrities
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 5, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Popular Media
Aside from the Jolly Green Giant, which celebrities are really living green?
 Honourable Mention |
A friend of mine told me the other day about how U2 guitarist The Edge is putting celebrity residents of Malibu, CA in a tizzy by building five mansions on a local mountaintop for an estimated $15 million. Although The Edge claims the building project is taking a completely green approach, locals point out that this is irrelevant, as it will create a “permanently scarred mountainside” (I’m giving the “Best Headline of 2009 Award” to the Irish Tribune News for “Richest nimbys in US row with Edge over plans“). So this got me wondering: aside from the Jolly Green Giant and a few hot Sci-Fi chicks, which celebrities are really living green? Well, PETA has once again picked the sexiest vegetarians alive, Natalie Portman has a line of eco-friendly footwear, and a lot of celebs drive green cars. Let’s face it, it’s kind of a given that a celebity’s publicist will make sure that there a lots of green photo ops, like George Clooney posing with his Tango, but how green can you really be if you have to take jets, limos, and security teams with you everywhere you go? The Chicago Tribune has a slide show of not green celebrities, where we learn that Celine Dion, for instance, uses 18,000 gallons of water a day for a home she doesn’t live in, and Treehugger.com informs us that when Woody Harrelson forgets to pack his favorite vegan belt and shoes, he has them flown by jet to Cannes. Our pick for best green celebrity? Green Day’s partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council. You’ve gotta be a little punk to really be green.
Purrfectly Good Reasons To Miss Your Monday Meatings
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 4, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Our usual Monday morning Flash game distractions, with an especially daunting challenge for our American readers: GEOGRAPHY.
Our Monday Demotivators have previously explored the mystery of why there are so many Flash games in which you do mean things to helpless animals, but you seem to enjoy this stuff so much we’re back with more. First up: Meowcenaries. Like so many of these games, it takes so long to load you’ll be ready to kill by the time it’s ready to play. This game is a little different, by the way, in that the violence is all cat-on-cat. If you’re looking for completely pointless human-inflicted cruelty, you’ll have to go shoot a puppy or something. Don’t get the wrong impression here though, I personally love animals. That’s why this week we’ll give equal time to PETA’s Cooking Mama Kills Animals game, designed to protest Nintendo’s Cooking Mama
It’s Okay To Be A Twitter Quitter
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 3, 2009 by admin in Technology
The future of the social web? Real time search, recommendation tools, and better aggregation.
My head’s going to explode if one more person tells me why Twitter is the next big thing, or uses the term Google Killer or Facebook Killer. It’s just my opinion, of course, but anybody who claims to know where the web and social networks are headed on a granular level is just regurgitating what they read on tech blogs, or is someone you’d like to make friends with, because they will soon be very, very rich. All the same, this is a pretty interesting time for the web. The obvious trends right now are real time search, social networking, and recommendation tools. When someone makes the simplistic statement that Twitter’s the “next big thing” after Facebook, they’re missing three profoundly important points: 1.) The services are completely different in nature; one is a closed, user-defined network, the other is an outward-flowing stream of information available to anyone. 2.) An estimated 60% of users stop using twitter after one month, and 3). The “next big thing” is already happening. Most would agree that the next big thing is some version of the open web, and if you think about it, that’s what a lot of us are striving for: some kind of reintegration of all the services we’re using. That’s why one of the coolest short-term “Twitter Killers” is making such a splash right now; Seesmic Desktop just added Facebook feeds to the existing tools they had for Twitter. Between Seesmic Desktop and services like NutshellMail, you should at least be able to get your lifestreams under control. I’m personally considering a more effective alternative: unplugging
Too Big To Fail: Your Congressperson’s Expense Account
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on May 1, 2009 by admin in Politics
Take a moment to learn more about how your pork is gettin’ pulled.
As a one of the 86 million Americans without health insurance, I was reminded recently (as I prepare to shell out a few grand to pay for some dental work out of pocket*) of how our nation is basically running on a half-empty tank sloshing with greed, graft, and entitlement. When it comes to health care, the last thing I’m worried about is pork viruses, it’s pork barrels that concern me. As legislators prepare to leave our grandchildren an $11 Trillion legacy of fiscal irresponsibility , I feel pretty confident that none of the politicians that are “fixing” things have pondered cutting back their expenses. The next time you’re comparing prices to make a smart purchase at the supermarket, ponder the fact that your tax dollars are buying your congessman lunch at a place like Charlie Palmer’s, where he’ll start with with the Duo Of Hudson Valley Foie Gras ($22), move on to the Line Caught Wild Striped Bass ($29), and finish with the Meyer Lemon Tart ($8). I don’t know about you, but that’s about what I spend on groceries for a WEEK! Check out this list of perks members of congress receive on top of their $170,000 a year salary. It seems to me that while the government funnels money around to bail out businesses that are “too big to fail”, they would do well to reconsider the way they run the business they’re running, the government. Take for example the story of that $600 million dollar device that the Census Bureau won’t be using to count us so they can continue funding their lunches and limos by accurately taxing us. If you’d like to learn more about how your pork is being pulled, check out Citizens Against Government Waste’s 2009 Pig Book. Oink!
*For the record, it’s still costing me less than if I’d been paying for crappy dental insurance all along…