Perfectly Happy
Drake Bennett, Boston Globe, May 10, 2009

I am passionate about happiness. I find myself reading all I can on the subject. I think most people spent too much energy and resources trying to attain happiness in ways that are often counterproductive. Most people are terrible at relationships, take too few risks and work to stay within predefined social constructs to their detriment.

Science can help focus our energies on those things that are more likely to appreciably increase happiness. It seems a bit counterintuitive–especially to those of us who struggle financially–that winning the lottery doesn’t make people happy. The research also illuminates one reason long-term relationships often fail: the initial happiness surge of new love eventually wanes.

In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us. Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don’t see any long-term increase in happiness. By contrast, annoyances like noise or chronic pain bring down our happiness more than you’d think, and having friends or an extra hour of sleep every night can raise it dramatically.

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boston globe · happiness · lottery · poverty · research · Science · wealth

Inside the baby mind
Jonah Lehrer, Boston Globe, April 26, 2009

This fascinating article discusses recent discoveries scientists have made about the brains of babies. Babies–surprise, surprise–are easily distracted. What I did not know is that toddlers learn 10 new words every day and that, “it typically takes significantly higher concentrations of anesthesia to render babies unconscious, since there’s more cellular activity to silence.”

Adults, I learned, are not better than babies at paying attention. The opposite is true; adults are better able to ignore the periphery while children digest a broader spectrum of sensory inputs.

This new understanding of baby cognition, and the peculiar ways in which babies pay attention, is also giving scientists insights into improving the mental functioning of adults. The ability to direct attention, it turns out, doesn’t merely inhibit irrelevant facts and perceptions – it can also stifle the imagination. Sometimes, the mind performs best when we don’t try to control it.

If we could learn to temporarily shelve our focus and allow our minds to wander like a child, keenly attuned to the world around us, we might be able to reach a level of consciousness that would permit us to discover creative solutions to perplexing problems.

At such moments, she suggests, we need to think with the innocence of an infant – to release the reins of attention and look anew at a world we’re still trying to understand.

baby · boston globe · brain · child · development · intelligence · learning · neurology · psychology · toddler

Photograph ccdoh1

Residents of Maine town want to keep stars in their eyes
David Filipov, The Boston Globe, November 28, 2008

Good for you, Bar Harbor, Maine. I’d like to see the Milky Way some day. So turn those lights down and only point them where the light needs to be. Some of us enjoy gazing at the galaxies.

On the densely populated East Coast, Mount Desert Island is one of the last inhabited places where the naked eye can still clearly observe the heavenly wonders that have inspired religion, mythology, science, and culture.

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bar harbor · boston globe · cosmos · galaxy · jim richardson · light pollution · maine · milky way · national geographic · space · stars

Daniel Wasserman, Boston Globe, November 25, 2008

boston globe · capitalism · cartoon · economics · humor · obama