Are you really happy?

If you haven't visited Ted.com yet, you should do so immediately. A majority of the interesting innovations, groundbreaking theories and curious tidbits I've gathered over the last year have come from sitting in front of the computer and watching some of the best thinkers and do-ers in the world lecture on their projects and observations.
One of the best lectures I recently saw was Martin Seligman talking about happiness. He's definitely experienced enough to talk about the subject, having founded the field of positive psychology. After realizing that the human experience consists of more than suicide and depression, Dr. Seligman came to the conclusion that just helping people overcome negative mindsets might make them less unhappy but did not necessarily make them happy. This launched him on a campaign to understand healthy states of mind, of which happiness is obviously at the top of the list.
The real interesting, but relatively unsurprising finding that he came to is that real, lasting happiness has much less to do with filling your life with material goods than finding meaning and entrenching yourself in a positive social network. Very social people are very happy people and people that have meaning and purpose in their lives are happy people too. It's kind of sad that research needed to be done to realize what should be commonsense, but for a society that places a premium on scientific investigation it's good to know that empirical evidence backs up what anyone could have learned by watching a marathon of celebrity meltdowns on Behind The Music or E! True Hollywood Stories - money can make you happy at first, but more and more and more money doesn't make you more and more and more happy. In fact, it often seems to confuse us that more money doesn't equal more happiness and sadly it usually takes sliding into drug addiction or bankruptcy for the nouveau riche to figure that out.
Dr. Seligman has tried to apply the rigor of scientific testing to the study of happiness as much as possible and some of those tests are available online for your enjoyment and their research. While studying happiness this way can't hurt, I came away unconvinced that it could be very effective. Only time will tell I guess. If you are curious whether or not you are happy, take a couple minutes to check out the website for his positive psychology center at the University of Pennsylvania- Authentic Happiness. It's amusing at the least.

The Zen of Gotham

The latest installment of the Batman franchise has surpassed Spiderman 3 in opening weekend ticket sales and I'm glad to hear it. The Dark Knight is the only "superhero" movie I've ever seen that has kept me thinking for days afterwards and gave me hope that maybe popular entertainment can do the same for the public in general. After the initial awe of the sheer spectacle of explosions and violence had passed and my admiration for Heath Ledger's unbelievably visceral performance had settled down, I began to realize that The Dark Knight might be the first movie to truly capture the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 world we are living in.
Beyond being the typically overly-simplistic representations of good and evil found in comic book adaptations, the Joker and Batman are filled with confusion over their true purpose. At one point, the joker compares himself to a dog chasing a car and admits that he wouldn't even know what to do if he caught it. The Batman is equally confused about whether a hero is still a hero if those he saves no longer want him around. What Christopher Nolan ends up so masterfully proving in their confusion is that they need each other; their reason for being is totally dependent on the existence of the other. The movie's definition of good and evil becomes less black and white than it is yin and yang, with each opposing and yet also containing a bit of the other. If only George Bush had such a nuanced understanding of this dualism, perhaps he could wrap his head around why the world isn't so grateful for his ham-handed approach to forced freedom.

Matthew Simmons on Peak Oil

Click the link for an article in The Economist about Matt Simmons opinions on peak oil theory.

The Only Way Is Down

I've been interested in peak oil for over a year now. For a long time, I had no idea the concept even existed and then for a short while believed it must be pure fiction. The more I read the facts, however, the more I became convinced that the experts like Mr. Simmons and James Howard Kunstler are the Paul Reveres of our day. Ironically, they are being treated more like muckrakers.
Now that the price of oil is skyrocketing, just as these men predicted, people are beginning to pay attention slightly. It's amazing that every student in this country is taught that those who do not heed the lessons of history are forced to repeat them and yet here we are ignoring them nonetheless.
No one believed the Nazis were a threat until it was too late, many did not believe the depression would really continue until it put 25% of the nation out of work and we may find ourselves walking with our eyes closed into intense energy scarcity. The silver lining is that we are primed for another industrial revolution by investing all our efforts into renewable energy sources. But, we need to take the cautionary advice of people like Matt Simmons more seriously if we are to do that.

Malcolm Gladwell on "Mismatching"

Anyone who's ever been confused by why a highly drafted athlete falls flat on his face or why the most educated teacher isn't always the most effective one needs to watch this video.

Reinventing Invention

Oil, Oil, Trouble and Toil

James Howard Kunstler might be a little acerbic at times, but I often wonder if history will prove that he, among many others, turn out to be the canaries in the coal mine.  If you haven't heard of him before, he's the author of "The Long Emergency" and "Geography of Nowhere" and has become a prominent voice as of late among the peak oil crowd.  Here's an excerpt from his blog about the recent cries for more drilling to give you a taste of his style - Drill, Drill, Drill.