Forget swine flu - this is something you actually want to catch...

Like many others, psychology and trying to figure out why people do what they do fascinates me. I devoured Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point;" a lot of his points and case studies made an enormous amount of sense to me.

That book is referenced in a New York Times magazine article which discusses a recent theory that happiness is contagious. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler are the two social scientists behind a study which looked at the interconnectedness of people and how those links affected their behaviors in terms of obesity, smoking, mood, etc. They discovered people's behaviors can affect up to three others - people you may not associate as close friends.

One finding that caught my eye was better-connected people (ones who are connected to a lot of people with varying degrees of closeness) are actually happier than people with small, tight-knit clusters of friends. The idea being with lots of exposure to happ(ier) people, you become happier.

The Sydney Morning Herald takes a slightly different approach to cultivating happiness. The paper cites findings from several different researchers who, prompted by the recent rise in depression in the West, have looked into what makes people happy. Experts suggest the usual nuggets like being positive and kind to yourself, but a couple tips surprised me.

Daniel Gilbert, from Harvard University, says to be brave. Gilbert believes people rationalize an excess of courage more easily than an excess of cowardice, so it is better to risk it than sit idly by. Failing brings out our self-defense mechanism of saying "at least I learned X." That can promote a positive slant to the experience. And Julie Noreem of Wellesley College urges citizens to put their pessimism to work. She theorizes those who expect the worse and think out all the possible ways things can go wrong actually help themselves realize goals because they have thought of all the contingency plans needed for the situation.

When all else fails, break out the stress-busters. When I was in college, it was coloring books and crayons. There was something very soothing about using pretty colors in an ordered design. When I worked in a job that constantly thrust new, unexpected and usually unpleasant obstacles and issues at me, it was baking. The precision in amounts of ingredients needed and the strict order of recipe steps helped me regain control of something. Now it's reading. For me, there is nothing like having all my problems put on hold while I travel into someone else's world for a bit.

For Bob Wire, a presumably very self-possessed Colorado man, it's crocheting. Looking for an outlet for his stress which was also creative, constructive and not too complicated, Wire stumbled into a new yarn shop in his town and was swept into crocheting. His project choices - guitar case, cowboy hat band - definitely reflect his gender, but if it works for him, good on him. Because, in the end, being happy - even fleetingly - is the goal, no?

(Photo courtesy of The Quaker Agitator)

Today, we sailed on...

As I'm sure everyone is aware, today is the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks on September 11. Just like people can tell you where they were when the Challenger blew up or JFK was shot, anyone over the age of 18 can tell you where he or she was that day.

I myself was on the college shuttle back from a 9:30 a.m. American history class. Ironic, eh? That shuttle ride was the only time I can remember our rasta-reggae-loving bus driver did not have Bob Marley jamming on the radio. I remember the silence of my fellow students and the solemnity of the broadcaster's voice. I recall thinking it was some sick joke, like an edition of The Onion gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I distinctly remember looking at my watch at exactly 8:46 a.m. while waiting for the shuttle to class. Shortly after that glance to my wrist, I watched staff pulling a little plastic bus-wagon full of toddlers from the nearby university daycare center down the street and thought it was such a beautiful day and how adorable the children were.

A lot has happened since that day, much of it bad or worse. But as I put in my Facebook status for the day, I am choosing to remember the anniversary with hope rather than sadness.

Today's blog title came from an Examiner article about Christopher Columbus. He wrote that sentence in his diary every day of his voyage to America, to a land only he saw in his dreams (never mind he thought it was India...). The article by Mary Ann Maxwell-Hebbert reminds us nothing truly important is finished in a day, and we should just have courage we're heading in the right direction.

The photo for today's post (from referencelibrary.blogspot.com) is of a photo frame in the style known as "tramp art." Back in the Great Depression, the (mostly) men who criss-crossed the country as hobos created an entire genre of art which originated from their ingenuity and a lack of resources. They took what they had and made the best of it. That is an American ideal - to find hope through daily struggle and "making do."

One 9/11 widow did just that. Cathy Carilli found hope in her own pets after the loss of her husband and now works to make sure others find hope in animals. She founded The Tower of Hope in 2006 to train service animals for disabled veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Finally, on a much lighter note, Newsday recently posted a story on the continued success of Journey's touchstone song, "Don't Stop Believin'." While not even the band's biggest hit, it remains in the iTunes top 100 downloads (ahead of seven Michael Jackson songs, Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," and "Eye of the Tiger"). Former Journey lead singer Steve Perry puts it best, in his quote, "It's about having hope and not quitting when things get tough because I'm telling you things get tough for everybody."

(My favorite part of that YouTube video is the shot of the drummer at 0:50 in full '80s basketball regalia.)

Lost and found...

Hello, hello. I know I've been MIA for the last few days, and I apologise. A visit with the parents meant very little time (thankfully) for the Internet. But I'm back at work now and digging myself out from under my cascading inbox.

The articles I found this morning have theme of reclamation attached to them. In two cases species have been reclaimed from extinction and in the third, certain death. Cheery, eh?

Yahoo! News posted a story on the breeding of species of ladybugs found by amateur scientists in Colorado and Oregon. Entomologist John Losey launched The Ladybug Project last year to find out why once-plentiful native species of ladybug had all but disappeared. He recruited people all over the country, including a lot of children, to go out and look for nine-spotted, two-spotted and transverse ladybugs. The entomologists-in-training were instructed to take photos of these creatures and send the pics, along with where they were taken, back to Losey. He and his colleagues traveled to Colorado and Oregon to collect the ladybugs for breeding. Happily for fans of this particular insect (myself included), the ladybugs are thriving in captivity, and Losey hopes to conduct studies to sort out why they declined.

The AP, hosted on Google News, reported on the unexpected discovery of a specie of turtles thought to be extinct. Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society who braved torrential rain, leeches and the dictatorial government of Burma/Myanmar to examine the Rakine Yoma Elephant Sanctuary discovered five turtles from a breed declared extinct over 100 years ago due to extreme over-hunting. One of the scientific names for this specie is Arakan, but the way-more-fun name is Pyant Cheezar - a local moniker that translates to "turtle who eats rhinoceros feces."

Peachygreen.com posted on the bobcat and fawn who became fast friends after each was rescued from the Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara, Calif. The bobcat kitten, starved and very dehydrated, was found first and placed with the fawn only after the rescuers realized they didn't have a large enough cage for the little deer. Apparently the bob-kitten went straight over to the fawn, and the pair snuggled under a desk for hours. The photos on this post are flat-out ADORABLE.

(Photo courtesy of examiner.com)

Mankind's continual leaps forward...

Living with three physicists (and spending time with their equally science-y friends) definitely left a mark.

As outlined in a previous post, I am just not a left-brain person. I rely on gut feelings and intuition and have very little patience for having to examine every little fact before reaching a conclusion. Yes, occasionally this gets me into trouble (hello, my first apartment in Boston), but usually I make out okay.
Still, I suppose daily exposure to the squiggles and letters that make up physics has left with me a lingering attraction for the more technical side of life.

MSNBC reports on the MIT PhDs who created robotic fish, which can look for pollutants and inspect submerged things like pipelines by mimicking the swimming motions of real fish. These fake fish are sleek and easy to maneuver with just 10 parts and one motor; they are much more likely to be able to go places other, more bulky underwater vehicles can't.

Technological advances in healthcare are reported on both MSNBC and CNET; the US and Japan have created robot doctors and nurses, respectively. Last night, I saw a preview for a movie called "Surrogates" where robots take over and seem to basically replace humans in every day living. In the case of Robo-ER here, thankfully only the Japanese seem bent on professional domination.

The "Chungbot," named after Brooke Army Medical Center's Dr. Kevin Chung, has allowed the doctor to check on patients from as far away as Iraq. The doc-bot is a five-foot tall, motorized robot is controlled by a joystick and laptop and wirelessly transmits images between the screen mounted on its "body" and Chung's laptop. This technology allows Chung to be able to see his patients and instruct another medical staff member who is there with the patient to do the hands-on care.

The Japanese have created a robot nurse to lift elderly patients from wheelchairs and beds, and, as CNet's opening paragraph says best, "naturally, it looks like a teddy bear." The bear can lift up to 134 pounds and apparently has a cuddly face to make it look less scary to the patients. It was created to help combat the problem of the workforce shrinking in proportion to the population aging.

The story on Switched.com makes me chuckle just at the premise - six mice boarding the international space station as invited guests. The tone of the Switched blog post is so perfect, I'm not even going to try to compete.

Lastly, Newsweek's website has a photo gallery nearly 100 years in the making. Court photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii traveled all over Mother Russia taking photographs at Czar Nicholas II's behest. Prokudin-Gorskii took three consecutive photos of every subject - one each with separate red, green and blue filters - and melded them through a process of his own devising in a specially fitted railway car. The result were a wide range of photos of Russia's people, architecture, technology and environment in living color. But it took the advent of digital imaging to be able to restore them.

(Photo courtesy of CNET)

Bullies start playing nice?...

Ghengis Khan fascinates me. Awhile back I picked up a book called "Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" on a whim, and I've been hooked ever since. I learned a lot from that book about advances made by the Mongols and things that are still in place today that started with Ghengis Khan, like meritocracy in the military and diplomatic immunity. 

My point is people can surprise you. Yeah, the khans were known for their ferocity and violence, but they had their good points too.

The World blog on MSNBC's website featured a story on the "reindeer people" of Mongolia. The Tsaatan only number in the hundreds these days, but these herders rely their reindeer for all their basic needs except meat. They were on the edge of extinction after a bacterial infection began to render their animals sterile, but with the help of a then-college junior, the Tsaatan have not only bounced back but taken a leap forward into (some) technology and eco-tourism.

While the world no longer lives under the threat of hordes of Tatars, we do still have our fair share of scary people/nation-states. But even two members of the Axis of Evil have recently taken baby steps in a good direction. 

After a very bloody election which revealed a growing schism in the population, Iran has approved its first woman cabinet minister since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi will be the health minister, according to Bloomberg. She has a degree in obstetrics and gynecology and is currently an associate professor and member of the Medical Ethics Board Committee at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. 

North Korea has started committing random acts of kindness (well, as best it can). The Voice of America reported on the release of four South Korean fishermen who accidentally wandered into North Korean waters last month. This past Friday the rogue state agreed to resume reunions of separated families after a two-year ban and has started talking with the South about joint tourism efforts.

(Image courtesy of theblisspages.com)

Eat good food, drink good coffee...

The title of this blog has become my personal motto over the last few months. I might add "own good bedsheets" to it, but that is probably just me. 

I'm not sure if it is religion-based or philosophical or what, but it seems the prevailing wisdom has been doing without is more admirable and right than allowing yourself to sink into any type of pleasure. To fully appreciate anything more than the essentials is selfish and gluttonous, "they" say. 

To that, I say pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt. And stick my tongue out for good measure. Stoicism is all well and good for Spartans, but this is not Sparta. Give me liberty AND 600-count Egyptian cotton sheets! We only go around once (that I know of), and I intend to enjoy the ride. So what if my singleton monthly grocery bills exceed that of an average family of four? My chocolate chip cookies contain Valhrona chocolate feves, and I don't leave a crumb on the plate. I just bought a handmade Persian rug (granted, it was from Building 19), and I enjoy walking across my otherwise bare dining room every morning on the way to the kitchen. 

But I have never had a shred of evidence to back up my epicurean lifestyle to non-believers until now. The Daily Mail had a story on all the benefits of some of the things we've been told are bad for so long. The Mail extols the virtues of anger, swearing, lazing about, and fidgeting, among other things. 

In an article in the Ottawa Citizen, our dear neighbors to the North have published findings that say teetotalers may have more of a risk of depression than moderate drinkers. The study examined the drinking habits of 38,000 people and found that individuals who drank no alcohol over a two-week period were more likely than moderate drinkers to indicated symptoms of depression. So here's to that occasional glass of wine with your gourmet, locavore dinner!

And who could forget the favorite vice of 99 percent of people on the planet: chocolate? It is still somewhat puzzling to me there are people in the world who do not like sugar. I understand it empirically, but it just makes no sense in everyday life. I had to go off chocolate for a few months last year due to health reasons, and I went stir crazy. Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald, on the Huffington Post website, gives seven healthy reasons why chocolate should not only be included in your diet but celebrated!

The business (and benefits) of gardening...

Recently my friend and I were discussing the "joys" of working at a small company. We talked about the positives - getting a half day on the whim of the boss - and the negatives - suffering with slow servers and crappy Internet connections. Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book "The Tipping Point" that companies are best suited to top out at 150 employees. Anything larger becomes unwieldy and impersonal. I agree with this and definitely see more advantages in working for smaller organizations. One of those advantages is the ability to connect with your co-workers.

I'm a person who values relationships with people over those with things, and the Wall Street Journal had a story in the small business section on how vegetable gardens are boosting morale. Someone in the article mentions how the gardens are starting to leech the "water cooler effect" from the indoors, with employees bonding while working in the soil. There is also the added perk of getting fresh veggies.

School gardens do the exact same thing for the students. WHIOTV.com posted a local story about Ruskin PK-8 School in Dayton, Ohio which has started a school-based community garden. The kids raised money to start the garden by reading, and they and their parents and teachers pitch in to plant, weed and harvest the produce. Students there don't just learn about science while getting down and dirty with carrots and radishes, they also learn about the value of eating fresh foods and, since the harvest goes to a local ministry, they learn about the power of giving. 

This past week, Aug. 23-29, was National Organic Gardening week. And two English companies do not believe city-dwellers should be excluded from the fun. Omlet and Bidgiemire Pig Company have each adjusted traditional farming methods to allow urbanites to keep bees and pigs, respectively. Both hobbies are becoming all the rage since folks have been bitten with the desire to know where their food comes from. 

NYT's Green, Inc. blog highlights Omlet's Beehaus, an up-to-date hive which could produce up to 44 pounds of fresh honey each year and help stem the decline of bee populations. According to the Daily Mail, Bidgiemire constructs, for lack of a better term, pig coops for backyard keeping. The company has seen a 40 percent increase in orders in the last year. People in England apparently want to to return to self-sufficiency and see the benefit in home-raised meat. I am personally not sure I could raise pigs without getting attached. Chickens I would have an easier time with since I only want them for the eggs. I actually do want to have chickens, but I'm fairly certain my apartment complex is not zone for livestock...

(Photo courtesy of The Daily Mail)