Sunday, September 8, 2013

229 ~on happiness

HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU KNOW WITHIN A FIFTEEN-MINUTE WALK OF YOUR HOUSE?






In The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World , Eric Weiner wonders: What if you lived in a country that was fabulously wealthy and no one paid taxes? What if you lived in a country where failure is an option? What if you lived in a country so democratic that you voted seven times a year? What if you lived in a country where excessive thinking is discouraged? Would you be happy then?

How can you measure happiness?

“Happiness is a feeling, a mood, an outlook on life. Happiness can’t be measured. Or can it?

Neuroscientists at the University of Iowa have identified the regions of the brain associated with good and bad moods. They do this by hooking up research subjects (college students in need of quick cash) to MRI machines and then showing them a series of pictures. When they show people pleasant pictures—bucolic landscapes, dolphins prefrontal lobe are playing—parts of the activated. When they show unpleasant images—a bird covered in oil, a dead soldier with parts of his face missing—the more primitive parts of the brain light up.

Happy feelings, in other words, register in the regions of the brain that have evolved most recently. It raises an intriguing question: Are we, in evolutionary if not personal terms, slouching toward happiness?”


Some people should be happier than others…for happiness researchers

WEINER: “It must be wonderful working in the field of happiness studies.”
VEENHOVEN: “What do you mean?”
WEINER: “Well, you must have an abiding faith in mankind’s capacity for happiness.”
VEENHOVEN: “No, not really.”
WEINER: “But you’ve been studying happiness, analyzing it your entire life.”
VEENHOVEN: “Yes, but it doesn’t matter to me if people are happy or not, as long as some people are happier than others. I can still crunch the numbers.”


The crime rate

“One study found that, of all the factors that affect the crime rate for a given area, the one that made the biggest difference was not the number of police patrols or anything like that but, rather, how many people you know within a fifteen-minute walk of your house.”


The happiest places don’t necessarily fit our preconceived notions

 “Extroverts are happier than introverts; optimists are happier than pessimists; married people are happier than singles, though people with children are no happier than childless couples; Republicans are happier than Democrats; people who attend religious services are happier than those who do not; people with college degrees are happier than those without, though people with advanced degrees are less happy than those with just a BA; people with an active sex life are happier than those without; women and men are equally happy, though women have a wider emotional range; having an affair will make you happy but will not compensate for the massive loss of happiness that you will incur when your spouse finds out and leaves you; people are least happy when they’re commuting to work; busy people are happier than those with too little to do; wealthy people are happier than poor ones, but only slightly. So what should we do with these findings? Get married but don’t have kids? Start going to church regularly? Drop out of that PhD program? Not so fast.

The happiest places, he explains, don’t necessarily fit our preconceived notions. Some of the happiest countries in the world—Iceland and Denmark, for instance—are homogeneous, shattering the American belief that there is strength, and happiness, in diversity. One finding, which Veenhoven just uncovered, has made him very unpopular with his fellow sociologists. He found that income distribution does not predict happiness. Countries with wide gaps between the rich and poor are no less happy than countries where the wealth is distributed more equally.”


Happiness and Democracy

“Another researcher, a Swiss economist named Bruno Frey, examined the relationship between democracy and happiness across Switzerland’s twenty-six cantons. He found that the cantons with the greatest number of referendums, the most democracy, were also the happiest. Even foreigners living in those cantons were happier, though they couldn’t vote.”





*****


Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order  Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Monday, July 29, 2013

228 ~on writing

WHO INVENTED WRITING?






“If you just draw what you mean, that’s art—not writing. In order for this to be writing, the symbol has to stand for the word..”




Mathew Winkler, author of The Bloomberg Way: A Guide for Reporters and Editors is an American businessman and journalist, currently Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Bloomberg News. Watch this short animation:






*****


 Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.





Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

227 ~on vulnerability

IF YOU’RE NOT IN THE ARENA ALSO GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED, I’M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR FEEDBACK





“Courage: To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”



Dr. BrenĂ© Brown, author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Leadis a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. 


Watch this video (one of the top ten most viewed Ted Talks):





*****

Note: The Goodreads Giveaway is over. A copy of I say Who, What, and Where! goes to Mexico! Congratulations! 



Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.


Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Friday, May 31, 2013

226 ~book news

FRIDAY LINKS: ON LOVE AND JOY











*****





Goodreads Book Giveaway

I say Who What and Where by Merce Cardus

I say Who What and Where

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends June 05, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved. 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

225 ~on writing

WRITING IS A WAY OF ORGANIZING EXPERIENCE AND LIFE ITSELF





In  Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction Patricia Highsmith shows us how there is no secret of success in writing except individuality, or call it personality.


Crucial questions

“Early in the development, the writer must ask these crucial questions:

Is the hero going to emerge from this victor or vanquished?

Is the atmosphere one of comedy, tragety, or both mixed?

Or it is a kind of flat reporting of events and cruel fate for the reader to make of what he wishes?”


As for life’s little difficulties, they are myriad.

“Once when I had everything settled about a new apartment in Manhattan—advance rent paid, the lease signed, the movers ready—I was informed that I could not have it because it was a professional apartment. Writers are not professionals, because ‘their clients do not come to them.’ I thought of writing to the Department of Housing or whoever made this law, ‘You have no idea how many characters ring my doorbell and come to me every day and I absolutely need them for my existence,’ but I never wrote this, only reflected that prostitutes could probably qualify, but writers couldn’t.”


Surprising yourself and the reader

“It is a cheap and trick merely to surprise and shock the reader, especially at the expense of logic. And a lack of invention on the writer’s part cannot be covered up by sensational action and clever prose. It is also a kind of laziness to write the obvious, which does not entertain really.

The ideal is an unexpected turn of the events, reasonably consistent with the characters of the protagonists. Stretch the reader’s credulity, his sense of logic, to the utmost—it is quite elastic—but don’t break it. In this way, you will write something new, surprising and entertaining both to yourself and the reader.”


Writing is a way of organizing experience and life itself

“I think the majority of writers, living a Robinson Crusoe existence with no hope of seeing another human being as long as they lived, would still write poems, short stories and books with whatever material there was at hand. Writing is a way of organizing experience and life itself, and the need of this is still present through an audience may not be.

However, I think most painters and writers like to think of their work being seen and read by lots of people, and emotionally this sense of contact is of great importance to their morale.”

*****


Goodreads Book Giveaway

I say Who What and Where by Merce Cardus

I say Who What and Where

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends June 05, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved. 

Monday, May 27, 2013

224 ~on success

DON'T BUY SOCIETY'S DEFINITION OF SUCCESS





“At the moment, our society’s notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. In fact, success, money and power have practically become synonymous.

But it’s time for a third metric, beyond money and power—one founded on well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back.”




Arianna Huffington, author of On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work, and Life shares her wisdom at Smith College’s 135th commencement ceremony. 

Watch this video:




*****





Goodreads Book Giveaway

I say Who What and Where by Merce Cardus

I say Who What and Where

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends June 05, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win


Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Friday, May 24, 2013

223 ~book news

FRIDAY LINKS: THE CRITICS














*****


Goodreads Book Giveaway

I say Who What and Where by Merce Cardus

I say Who What and Where

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends June 05, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win


Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.


Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

222 ~on writing

THE WIDER A NOVEL’S THEME, THE BETTER IT IS AS A WORK OF ART




The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers gives a private series of extemporaneous lectures, analyzing the four essential elements of fiction.


If you know where your inspiration really comes from, you will never run out of material.

“A rational writer can stoke his subconscious just as one puts fuel in a machine. If you keep on storing things in your mind for your future writing and keep integrating your choice of theme to your general knowledge, allowing the scope of your writing to grow as your knowledge widens, then you will always have something to say, and you will find ever better ways to say it. You will not coast downhill after one outbreak of something valuable.”


The wider a novel’s theme, the better it is as a work of art.

“If a novel presents a marvelous philosophical message but has no plot, miserable characterization, and a wooden style full of bromides, it is a bad work of art.

In today’s literature, many books do not have any abstract theme, which means that one cannot tell why they were written. An example is the kind of first novel that relates the writer’s childhood impressions and early struggle with life. If asked why the particular events are included, the author says: ‘It happened to me.’ I warn you to write such a novel. That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you (and you are now hearing it from the archapostle of selfishness). The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen—your values and choices.”


Never hang a gun on the wall in the first act if you don’t intend to have it go off in the third.

“Never resolve a smaller issue after the climax. In a story with multiple threads, the problems of the lesser characters, if not involved in the climax, have to be solved before the climax.

An annoying aspect of badly constructed novels is that the author poses minor problems and then leaves them hanging in the air, as if he has forgotten all about them. (Of course, in really bad novels, even the major issues are not resolved.)”


Concretize your abstractions

“A writer has to project his abstractions in specific concretes. That he knows something inwardly is not enough; he has to make the reader know it; and the reader can grasp it only from the outside, by some physical means. Concretize to yourself: If a man and a woman are in love, how do they act? What do they say? What do they seek? Why do they seek it? That is the concrete reality, for which ‘love’ is merely a wide abstraction.”





*****

Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved. 

Monday, May 20, 2013

221 ~on books

THE LAST BOOKSHOP







The Last Bookshop imagines a world in which only one bookstore survives. Watch this short film by Richard Dadd and Dan Fryer. 





*****




Goodreads Book Giveaway

I say Who What and Where by Merce Cardus

I say Who What and Where

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends June 05, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win


Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Friday, May 17, 2013

220 ~book news

FRIDAY LINKS: IT’S IN OUR NATURE TO NEED STORIES








  •  Gatsby, and other luxury consumers. NYTimes



*****





Goodreads Book Giveaway

I say Who What and Where by Merce Cardus

I say Who What and Where

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends June 05, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win



Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.


Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.