Tag: happiness
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To give great gifts, think like a behavioral economist
13 December 2012For Jak’s last birthday, I gave him peace of mind. Also, sushi. Our mutual favorite restaurant in the area is Mashiko Sushi, way down in West Seattle. These days we eat out very rarely — a bit less than once per month — but we spend more time at Mashiko than anywhere else, in no […]
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Now Read This — what you really want, house happiness, and the fiscal cliff
30 November 2012Erica Strauss on getting what you really want Remember ‘miswanting’? Erica at Northwest Edible Life offers a another way to rethink your tangible purchases with Occupy Your Brain (Why You Don’t Really Want What You Want). She lays out a nice little chart to help you dig down past the initial desire-reflex and examine the […]
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How American culture is causing widespread misery
19 September 2012One of the fun things about reading extensively in different disciplines — psychology, history, sociology, economics — is that I sometimes encounter essentially identical motifs in unrelated sources. For example, I recently ran across a striking quote from President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “Crisis of Confidence†speech, in which he acknowledged the declining trust in government, […]
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1 June 2012
Our month in Mexico was all the travel we planned for this year. But then we were invited to attend a wedding in Jak’s family. In Texas and … Costa Rica. With round-trip airfare generously paid. Well, gosh. Touring a Costa Rican rainforest has been high on my bucket list for nearly two decades, ever […]