"On Twitter, folks have started using the Slate-created hashtag #sadbook to tweet about how Facebook makes them sad."

And what am I supposed to tweet if that makes me sad?

Is your partner helping you with your "self-expansion"?

It's the secret to a happy marriage, according to some experts:

While the notion of self-expansion may sound inherently self-serving, it can lead to stronger, more sustainable relationships, [says Professor Gary W. Lewandowski Jr.,].

“If you’re seeking self-growth and obtain it from your partner, then that puts your partner in a pretty important position,” he explains. “And being able to help your partner’s self-expansion would be pretty pleasing to yourself.”

The concept explains why people are delighted when dates treat them to new experiences, like a weekend away. But self-expansion isn’t just about exotic experiences. Individuals experience personal growth through their partners in big and small ways. It happens when they introduce new friends, or casually talk about a new restaurant or a fascinating story in the news.

Introducing you to a fascinating story in the news? The secret to happiness is, perhaps, marrying a blogger!

Spooning with the robot pillow.

Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.

Is it sad? I mean... I'm not asking if the blob itself is sad. But is it sad that there is — if there is — a need for things like this?

"Normally when we think of happiness, we think of money and status, but Denmark teaches us the opposite lesson."

"There, you have a place where you are taxed to the mean. A cultural norm reminds everybody that they are no better than everybody else, so you're not going to choose your career path based on status. You're in a place where a garbage man makes as much as a lawyer. So what you have are 4 million people who excel at things like furniture design and architecture."

More from NPR.

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

"The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost."

A report of another one of those "happiness" studies. If unhappiness correlates with a wandering mind, is it because a wandering mind makes you unhappy or because it's when you're unhappy with what you're doing that you think about doing something else?

"The Flower Show may come back someday, but it’s not where people are these days... Food is an easier sell."

Botanical gardens are turning away from flowers! 

Botanical gardens are experiencing an identity crisis, with chrysanthemum contests, horticultural lectures and garden-club ladies, once their main constituency, going the way of manual lawn mowers. Among the long-term factors diminishing their traditional appeal are fewer women at home and less interest in flower-gardening among younger fickle, multitasking generations.

Oh, lord. We don't indulge a love of pure beauty anymore? Because of careers and multitasking?

Forced to rethink and rebrand, gardens are appealing to visitors’ interests in nature, sustainability, cooking, health, family and the arts. 

Cooking, health, family... that sounds older and more traditional than flowers. We're all working, working constantly now, so we can't stroll through a flower garden. Even our optional activities must have a sharp cutting edge of functionality and hygiene.

Some are emphasizing their social role, erecting model green buildings, promoting wellness and staying open at night so people can mingle over cocktails like the Pollinator (green tea liqueur, soda water and Sprite). 

Oh, it's all so damned good for you. Wellness. Greenness. Liqueur and Sprite.

In May, the Atlanta garden opened an attraction that would fit right in at a jungle park: a “canopy walk” that twists and turns for 600 feet at a height of up to 45 feet, allowing visitors to trek through the treetops. Not far away, food enthusiasts can stop in at a new edible garden, with an outdoor kitchen frequently staffed by guest chefs creating dishes with fresh, healthy ingredients. Edible gardens are the fastest-growing trend at botanical gardens, consistently increasing attendance, experts say, along with cooking classes.

Can't we just eat our vegetables in private and not make a godawful show of it? Everyone must be instructed. And yet this is conceived of as the way to be young and popular.

“There’s a generation that will be less interested in gardens,” says Daniel J. Stark, executive director of the public gardens association, “but that generation is incredibly interested in what’s happening with the planet. Recently, my own two daughters, and a friend, were reading me the riot act about cutting down some trees.”

Mr. Stark’s daughters are 4 and 8.

So dad proclaims what his little daughters will be interested in. Incredibly interested in. They'll be all about saving the planet. Greenness! Wellness! Save that tree, but not because it is beautiful, so it can absorb the nefarious CO₂.
Well, that's what Mr. Stark said. Here's hoping his little dears find some respite some day from the relentless pedantry of nutrition and ecology and, in some transformative, revelatory moment, stop and smell a rose.


(Photo taken on June 12th at Madison's beautiful botanic garden, Olbrich.)

Maybe the kids will rebel against the Puritans of the older generation who have misappropriated so much of their precious time with morality lessons. It could be a whole movement, returning to the hedonistic love of the beauty of nature. They might care about flowers again. I have a good name for this movement: Flower Children.

Portrait of an Italian worker.

This picture is hilarious. From an article about Fiat's efforts to instill a work ethic and the larger problem of the underperformance of the southern part of the euro zone.

“The less they work, the happier they are,” observed Vittorio di Giola, owner of the Caffetteria Vicky, a favorite haunt of Fiat workers on the Viale Alfa Romeo, Pomigliano’s main drag.

That view was acknowledged by some workers, union officials and even the town’s mayor, Raffaele Russo. “There are those who don’t miss a chance to miss work,” Mr. Russo said.

Just last month, Fiat erected large television screens inside the factory when Italy played in the World Cup to encourage employees to come to work, said Mr. Nacco, the longtime worker there. Still, some people did not show up. “And Fiat was paying us to watch the game,” he said.

"A few generations ago, people weren’t stopping to contemplate whether having a child would make them happy."

"Having children was simply what you did. And we are lucky, today, to have choices about these matters. But the abundance of choices — whether to have kids, when, how many — may be one of the reasons parents are less happy."

Another manifestation of that trendy liberal theme: Choice won't make you happy.

***

This post makes an interesting pairing with the 10:13 post, which noted that suddenly and strangely:

Liberals worry about constitutional rights getting in the way of legislation, and conservatives have cozied up to the notion of unwritten rights. For that to happen, everyone has to stop focusing on the right of privacy.

I rewatched "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

I saw this movie when it came out and wrote about it — using my random list blogging approach — on August 15, 2008. The movie is all about romantic love and sexual feeling, and when I saw if the first time, I hadn't been in love in a long while. So it was fun to see it again and to go back and read that old post about it. And it was really fun to dip into the comments and find my then-future-husband Meade, who said: "If only I had a nickel for every time someone has come up to me on the street and mistaken me for a lesbian Javier Barden..." Ha. Lord knows what I pictured back then, before Meade ever sent me his photograph. But did the movie affect me differently now that I have my dear Meade? I'd say it made a deeper impression when I was love-deprived, because it's about people trying to understand and get to the love they want.

Too much personal happiness may diminish one's appreciation of art!

In the movie, Javier Bardem — Meade typo'd his name — plays an artist who can't maintain a stable attachment to his wife. He passionately loves her, but it's all tempestuous and violent. And it makes his art fabulous, of course. He's splattering paint all over the canvas — as painters in movies usually do, because it's not sufficiently cinematic to be dabbing paint carefully. A great exception to the movie rule that every painter must fling paint like Jackson Pollock is the Catherine Keener character in "Synecdoche, New York." She paints pictures so extremely tiny they require magnifying glasses to view.

But painting in movies is always a metaphor for sex, is it not? It's different sex in Synecdoche and Barcelona. And that makes me wonder if, on rewatch today, "Synecdoche, New York" would make a deeper impression.

What are the works of art that become more profound when you are, in real life, experiencing great happiness?

"It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s."

"And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this."

"I kind of see myself as a man of God and being like Joseph."

"In a sense, I feel like a bear, coming out of hibernation. Like, they come out to eat, mine would be coming out to enjoy what I have missed."

CNN is clinging to women readers.

It's so pathetic and obvious. Here's a screen grab of the center of the home page at CNN:



What makes people happy? Engagement... unhappy? Baby sloths enjoy the sweet life... aw... A big fish is in trouble! Miss USA! The lighter side of Elena Kagan! The style of the First Lady! A sitcom! Dancing With the Stars!

Reading CNN to find out the latest about happiness... that's not going to make this woman happy.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian switches the captions around:

A poll about the way we feel about things.

I was just thinking about the way we feel about the things that belong to us. Picture all the personal and real property that you own and don't own — furniture, clothing, cars, houses, toys, gadgets, etc. etc. Now, let me set out 3 categories of how we might feel:

A. When I own something, it takes on special value and feels more precious to me than it did before I owned it or in comparison to similar things that I don't own.

B. When I own something, I'm more aware of its imperfections and problems, and I tend to feel that it's worse than it seemed before I owned it or in comparison to similar things that I don't own.

C. I have a pretty objective feeling about things, and they don't seem either better or worse when they  belong to me.

And here are 3 categories of how you might feel about acquiring more things.

D. I feel a fairly strong urge to acquire more things, not just what I'm sure I need, but additional things that will give me pleasure and satisfaction.

E. I am trying to resist acquiring more things.

F. I get what I need and maybe some extra things, but I don't put much mental energy into wanting to buy things or resisting.

Now, here's the poll, and please be honest:

Which of these combinations is closest to the way you feel?
	A and D
	A and E
	A and F
	B and D
	B and E
	B and F
	C and D
	C and E
	C and F
pollcode.com free polls

The unselfish husband.

"If a man were to invite a lady to marry him on the ground that he ardently desired her happiness and at the same time considered that she would afford him ideal opportunities of self-abnegation, I think it may be doubted whether she would be altogether pleased."

"My ideal state as a reader when I'm reading other people is feeling I'm vaguely wasting my time when I'm not reading that novel."

Ian McEwan on the feeling the writer should create in the reader.

Also, on what makes him able to write: "I suppose it just so happens that the woman I love happens to be my wife, and that is a piece of luck. That creates a sort of stability and a sort of endless interest. I know there are other writers who need the kind of spur of unhappiness to work, but not me. When I'm unhappy I can't work."

ADDED: (Via reader email.) "This is the nature of empathy, to think oneself into the minds of others. These are the mechanics of compassion: you are under the bedclothes, unable to sleep, and you are crouching in the brushed-steel lavatory at the rear of the plane, whispering a final message to your loved one. There is only that one thing to say, and you say it. All else is pointless."

People who have deep meaningful conversations are happier.

Assuming this is true...

“We found this so interesting, because it could have gone the other way — it could have been, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ — as long as you surf on the shallow level of life you’re happy, and if you go into the existential depths you’ll be unhappy,” [said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona].

... is it because deep meaningful conversations cause happiness or happiness causes deep meaning conversations?

[Mehl said that] substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.

“By engaging in meaningful conversations, we manage to impose meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world,” Dr. Mehl said. “And interpersonally, as you find this meaning, you bond with your interactive partner, and we know that interpersonal connection and integration is a core fundamental foundation of happiness.”...

“...Can we make people happier by asking them, for the next five days, to have one extra substantive conversation every day?”

I don't know if conversations in blog comments sections count, but go deep and report back in 5 days.

"The fact that Obama doesn't get a kick out of adoring throngs is one of the qualities that made him so appealing in the first place."

"Unlike with Clinton, we never felt as though he needed us; he's a secure, self-confident adult."

From a column by Fred Hiatt about the fact that Obama doesn't seem happy as President and why and whether we should want him to be.

"So everyone has pretty much agreed that I was right yesterday when I said the 'moderation' language about Obama’s alcohol consumption was just boilerplate."

Says Glenn Reynolds:

Still, to show my support for our President, I went out to the Downtown Grill & Brewery last night and hoisted a couple — moderately, of course — in his honor. Kinda like when some Obama fans changed their middle names to Hussein to show support, only more delicious . . . .

Ha ha. So, then, this is me, the other day at Brasserie V:



Ah, but look at the prudes — the killjoys — who freak out about drinking, who think that lifting one glass depicts degeneracy. These people call themselves "liberals," but they are not liberal at all. They despise your pleasure and revelry and want only to clamp down on any fun. Don't trust them with power, my friend!

The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy...

IN THE COMMENTS: Jim Treacher said:

Is there enough booze in the world to get those guys laid?

Sadly, no.

"John told me about why he left Hollywood just a few years earlier. He was terrified of the impact it was having on his sons..."

"... he was scared it was going to cause them to lose perspective on what was important and what happiness meant. And he told me a sad story about how, a big reason behind his decision to give it all up was that 'they' (Hollywood) had 'killed' his friend, John Candy, by greedily working him too hard."

Alison Byrne Fields was a high school student when she started writing to John Hughes. We were talking about Hughes's death, and Reader_Iam pointed us to Fields's blog post.

Women are unhappier than ever.

According to a new study.

That's what we get for being more in touch with how we feel — we notice it, we admit it to ourselves and others. And we get attention because of it. If men were/are sad, who would know? Who would care?

But the linked blog post, by Meghan O'Rourke, asks — assuming it's really true that women are less happy than men and less happy than they were 35 years ago — why would this be so?

[T]he drop in happiness is pegged to an anxiety caused by the plethora of choices available (Barry Schwarz's paradox of choice) and women's feeling that they have to perform well across more categories. This is not exactly the same as struggling to balance so-called work and life (i.e., children): The study's authors are quick to point out that the decline in happiness is consistent across many categories, irrespective of marital or employment status or whether you have young children....

Oh, how I loathe this liberal meme about choice and happiness! Though liberals believe fondly in "the right to choose," they also love to say that choice makes us sad — but they only seem to mean that choice in the economic sphere is bad. (Notice how it softens you up to accept the crappy car the government wants you to drive and the good-for-everybody health care system it would like to provide.)

Anyway, why are women so sad? I think it's because we think about our feelings so much and care so much about being happy.