Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe recently wrote an article on Happiness and its relationship to money, 'Happiness: A Buyer's Guide'.  Although several points he makes are accurate there are several failings in the article.  I try to document them below. First, he describes how paying for things for other people makes us happy (i.e. increases our reported, or subjective, well-being), but he does not extend the notion of purchasing things for other people to...

In his column Think Again in the NYT, Stanley Fish has a new Op-Ed 'What Should Colleges Teach?' The main subject of his piece is composition - the craft of writing.  He discusses the recent publication of a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, separating their criticisms into those that are useful and those that are simply political.  Regardless of whether you agree or not with his classification (I tend to), his essay deserves to be read. ...

I enjoyed this short personal article by Huda Akil 'In Person: The Pursuit of Happiness' where she examines the personal experience of happiness and joy when playing in a sandpit with her granddaughter & she comments on how we know so little, theoretically, about happiness, joy, contentment.  The article isn't comprehensive, but still worthwhile. Akil comments on the understanding that we have of 'negative' emotions, mainly through research into depression,...

Mike, at Ionian Enchantment, hosted the 117th Skeptic's Circle: The Chiropractic Edition. Though I have not yet managed to read or listen to everything that he linked to, of those I've read or listened to I can recommend the following posts on chiropractic: Ben Goldacre's 'We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine'; Harriet Hall in Chiropractic and Deafness: Back to 1895' assesses whether chiropractic can do anything for deafness - it can't; Sam Homola,...

Many apologies.  This post has been sitting in ScribeFire for some time awaiting final my final editing process and late editions before I published it.  The process was confounded by our travels to Florence, Rome, packing up house in Siena, and our trip to South Africa via London.  Anyway, here is Part 2: Fiction and Memoir, the second installment of my post on recent books I've read begun almost a month ago in Pt 1: Non-fiction. Fiction & MemoirJill...

Good times. I was nudged to watch the following two videos by 3quarksdaily a blog I've just recently begun to read. Homeopathy and Nutritionists vs Real Science Comment: Funny, funny, funny. Panel Discussion: Dawkins, Tyson, Druyan, Stenger & Grother on 'Science and the Public': Comment: I had not watched anything with Tyson in it before and I was incredibly happy to hear his views on things, his understanding of the methods of science education (as someone...

I thought that the news about Zambia's former president, Frederick Chiluba, going on trial for corruption was good.  Now, The Guardian reports, charged with theft of public resources, Chiluba  will likely be convicted tomorrow and probably face 5 years in jail. Assuming a fair trial and that every procedure was adhered to, this is really fantastic news.    An African country taking a former president to court, accepting that he was guilty, judging...

I arrived back in South Africa last week having travelled from Italy via London.  Ensconced in my parents' warm home, sheltered from the rain, my mum told me of the misfortune that has plagued the family of our domestic worker (later corroborated in discussions with Lettie herself).  Lettie, our family's domestic worker, works three times a week for my parents at their home.  My parents, through their business, employ Lettie's daughter.  My parents...