Happiness Is a Warm TV
A study using a new method to measure happiness (we've covered this field extensively, e.g. here) turned up some surprising findings, the New York Times and the NIH report. A team of psychologists and economists--led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton--used the so-called Day Reconstruction Method to study daily mood swings in 909 women from Texas. The women kept a diary of everything they did during the day, and then later rated how they felt during each activity.
Contrary to previous research on daily moods, the study found that the women rated TV-watching high on the list, ahead of shopping and talking on the phone, and ranked taking care of children low, below cooking and not far above housework.
Not surprisingly, commuting and spending time with one's boss anchored the low end of the pleasurability scale. And sleep affected everything: a night of poor sleep could make an activity as joyless as commuting.
California, Here We Come? III
Washington moved another step toward climate leadership, as legislation is drafted to sign on to California's clean-car agenda. " The Seattle Times reports.
If you're mystified, follow our trail back, starting here.
Sex-ed Hanky Panky
Today's Washington Post flags a Congressional study on the "facts" used in abstinence-only sex-ed classes. Among the doozies:
- HIV can be spread by tears and sweat;
- abortion leads to sterility as much as 10 percent of the time; and
- touching a person's genitals can result in pregnancy.
Among the actual factual facts that the abstinence-only folks don't seem to have room for is that tactics like "virginity pledges" don't work: "Nonpartisan researchers have been unable to document measurable benefits of the abstinence-only model."
