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Gretchen Rubin, whose “The Happiness Project” is both a bestselling book and a popular blog, concedes that the title may be something of a misnomer. “Happiness,” she says, has a […]

After months of struggling with unending debt, the time has come for Germany to step in and help Greece. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, was less than happy about […]

I’m not in the habit of extensively revisiting strange maps already posted here, as there are so many more out there. But the map of the ‘US States Renamed For […]

Born for Love: WhyEmpathy is Essential and Endangered By Maia Szalavitz and Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Born for Love would make a great Mother’s Day gift. When it comes to […]

Carol Friedman always meets with her subjects before she photographs them. If she doesn’t, “then they’re just going to the dentist and they’re filled with fear.” But does the veteran […]

Readers have asked for more original photography at Focal Point. I’m happy to oblige. Here’s a fun photo for the weekend, taken during my recent trip to St. John’s, Newfoundland. […]

I’ve been critiquing the Tea Party since its first stirrings in 2009. I’ve blogged, tweeted, reported, and even given public lectures about its roots in the socially conservative New Right, […]

Irish author and actor Malachy McCourt’s memories of St. Patrick’s Day are gloomy, rainy and awful. That’s how it was in Limerick, Ireland, where he was raised. In the U.S., […]

Love. Sex. Space. Coke. (Coke?) Discretion. Indiscretion. Family. Fame. Privacy. Puppies. The Rolling Stones. One man’s happiness is, axiomatically, not another’s, and so the riddle of what brings us peace […]

As Churchill said of democracy (“the worst form of government excepting those already tried,” to paraphrase), so historians might say of marriage—or at least, marriage as conceived in the late […]

A new study conducted at Cornell University suggests that spending money on experiences (family vacation, massage, guitar lesson) rather than stuff (new flat screen TV, iPhone, set of china) actually […]

Several media and technology sources recently reported on The Huffington Post’s intentions to aggregate and curate Twitter entries (Tweets), categorizing them into the 19 sections The Huffington Post already covers, […]

Instead of reacting to the Sunday morning political shows, I figured I’d beat them to the punch. “Cheney’s Katrina” has a nice ring to it. All the guests seem to […]

In her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula Le Guin imagines an almost utopian society whose existence depends on a dark secret. The inhabitants of this […]

As the wake of destruction trailing the Gulf oil spill continues to look increasingly dark, I can’t help but think back to the speech that Interior Secretary Salazar made when […]

“I think I’m beginning to know something about painting,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir said on the day he died as he turned away from a still life he’d been working on and […]

Being happy means you are much less likely to develop heart disease a new study has revealed after finding an independent relationship between positivity and the condition.

It looks like it may finally be the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The policy, which dates back to 1993, was a Clintonian compromise meant to prevent […]

What can policy makers learn from the tons of research published each year telling us why or how people could become happier? The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert inquires.

Around the turn of the 20th century, if you were in the upper class in America, you’d have probably, at some point, sat down to a nice dinner of Diamond […]

The financial crisis threw a lot of us into a funk: either we lost our jobs or questioned what we were doing with our lives in the first place. Some literally packed their bags and went on 6 month trips around the world. If you can’t do the global adventure trip, but would love to ‘reset’ your thinking and career, start by living the kindergarten life!

In his piece in this week’s New Yorker on depression, and depression-related research, Louis Menand asks, “Is psychopharmacology evil, or is it useless?” Increasingly, skeptics say it’s the latter, and […]

It’s not all economics, with respect to (the aforementioned) Laureates Sen and Stiglitz. It can be as simple as finding daily rituals. Make the bed. Plant a garden. It’s a […]

At some point in her sophisticated, adult life, the “Happiness Project” author had to break down and confess her undying love of “Anne of Green Gables.”

When Mario Lavandeira, a.k.a. Perez Hilton, started his blog PageSixSixSix.com in 2004, he says he imagined that maybe a few of his friends would read his musings on tabloid gossip […]

By mid-century there will likely be 9 billion people on the planet, consuming ever more resources and leading ever more technologically complex lives.

“Happiness” is a mythical destination that remains permanently out of reach. So why not just improve your life one step at a time?

For one year, Gretchen Rubin tested the wisdom of some of history’s leading experts on happiness, including Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. Did their advice hold up?

We love our American President for his gift with words, and we learn from him in how he uses them—in articulating war, in assailing Wall Street, or even in making […]

I’m no TV critic. My best TV watching days were over twenty years ago. But a slot on my blog here might as well be reserved for my weekly thoughts […]