Two English professors have created the Action for Happiness movement which, by following a simple list of activities, aims to increase the amount of happiness in the lives of individuals.
Search Results
You searched for: happiness
A recently-tested anti-depressed, which looked very good on paper, has failed to reduce depression rates. Our understanding of the brain still doesn’t suffice to make good drugs.
Happy 2012! By now, you’re probably still in the earnest stage of your New Year’s resolutions. If one of those is about your determination to cut back on drink, this […]
Editors’ Note: It’s too late to heed Mark Card’s advice (below) for Valentine’s 2012. But you’ve got a whole year to save up for two bottles of Tokaji Eszencia for Valentine’s 2013 […]
“The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist—that it’s a godlike thing,” performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson says in […]
You’ve forgiven an affair. You’ve put up with violations of the marriage’s budget. You’ve been bored, irked, and ignored. But if he mentions picking up a goddamned wet towel off […]
So this post is, first of all, a piece of shameless self-promotion. I’m the editor of the best journal in political philosophy and the related fields—Perspectives on Political Science. The most […]
Like a superhero masking their “real” identity, Cindy Sherman may be the most photographed person in history whose “real” face (whatever that means) remains a mystery. Since the 1970s Sherman’s […]
Some days, I hate writing about atheism. I want to tell you why. Two weeks ago, I was watching a PBS show called Inside Nature’s Giants, about a team of […]
In this portion of his Floating University lecture, activist investor William Ackman talks about investing in the kind of company that you can own forever. In other words, what is […]
▸
3 min
—
with
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that Mitt Romney remains the likely Republican nominee in spite Newt Gingrich’s recent surge in the polls. The smart money over at the […]
Could Rush Limbaugh finally be on his way to joining Glenn Beck in right wing wacko purgatory? I don’t know how to tell Rush Limbaugh this, but after his three […]
I always say, there is nothing sexier than a man with a lot of credit card debt. Let the other ladies have the husbands who have made smart financial decisions, […]
Welcome to What Not to Think About. On this blog, Big Think’s editors will pick the stories that are making headlines elsewhere but which we encourage you to ignore. Why? […]
Over at Republican Narrative Central the high priests of political mischief need to take Frank Luntz off speaker this afternoon and spend some time on Twitter instead. #40dollars, the hashtag […]
We’ve been discussing Islam a lot on this blog in the past few days, and much to my amusement, I’ve seen two different commenters promoting diametrically opposite distortions of my […]
While countries in North America and Europe suffer through a downturn that has people questioning the very foundations of their economies, something far more positive is happening in South America. […]
Peter Hitchens has written two furthercomments on my previous post, in one of which he states that he’ll be bowing out of the debate from this point on. So be […]
The rapid proliferation of mobile devices is making it possible for not just communities, but also entire nations, to narrow the digital divide between society’s have’s and have-not’s. Not only […]
When it comes to reproductive health in America, progress often seems like a one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of situation. But let’s start with some rare good news: in January, the Obama administration […]
“Americans are happier when national wealth is distributed more evenly than when it is distributed unevenly,” says a recent study examining current and past wealth inequality.
Yesterday was Constitution Day. Let’s face it. It’s a commemoration that hasn’t caught on. A few years ago Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia snuck through some legislation requiring that every […]
This essay was previously published on AlterNet. The death of Christopher Hitchens in December sparked an outpouring of tributes. Most of them praised his best qualities: his ferocious courage, his […]
Two simple pieces of brain-training software have successfully been used to stave off depression before it starts by showing individuals how to recognize positive mental states.
Digital communication, such as via Tweets, worsens the unhealthy popularity of curt, rapid opinions. Is comment, like a strangler-fig, getting stronger than the politics on which it feeds?
In the car, I listen to country music. Country has an ideology. Not to say country has a position on abortion, exactly. But country music, taken as a whole, has […]
“There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast,” said Herman Melville. He meant that the lives we think we’d love, lacking contrast, would be miserable.
I’ve previously written about the case of Jessica Ahlquist, an incredibly brave young atheist from Rhode Island who’s the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional “School Prayer” banner […]
Are utilitarians bad people? Probably not. But is there nevertheless something wrong with them? This study, summarized in The Economist, seems to be getting around, and seems to suggest as […]
I was going to update my previous post, but this got long, so I’m spinning it off into a separate post. Read the other one first if you need more […]