Stephen Evans (Business Daily, BBC World Service)
Flash car, but are they happy? The unhappy answer to whether or not your happiness expands in line with your wealth is "yes, but -- no, but." Joy may be instant [reaction] if wealth arrives suddenly, but does it last? It seems it does if your riches rise relative to that of the Joneses but not if you all rise together. "What we actually care about is our income compared with other people," says Lord Layard, one of the founders of "happiness studies." "But if over time everybody is becoming richer then people don't on average feel any better than they did before." It is all relative: Lord Layard bases the conclusion on studies and surveys... More>>
WASHINGTON - Instead of seeing gray hair and wrinkles as signs of getting older, reports say you should see them as signs of getting happier. According to LiveScience, older generations of people have a more positive outlook on life and are more content with their roles in society. There is conflicting research on the topic, but experts say that attitude is a major factor in your level of happiness as you age. The study shows that...
Sex versus Successful Meditation
(HP) Tiger Woods updated the world on his spiritual development at yesterday's press conference in Augusta, Georgia, stating that he now "meditates religiously again." Woods claims to be going back to his roots in Buddhism, a practice that he believes will keep him "more centered, more balanced"... Video
How God rewards a female suicide bomber
Michelle Tsai (Slate.com)
(Female suicide bombers set off explosives during rush hour in a Moscow subway, killing themselves and more than three dozen people...In 2007, Michelle Tsai examined what rewards might await female martyrs in heaven). A female suicide bomber detonated a vest filled with explosives at a university in Baghdad Sunday, killing more than 40 people. If male martyrs can expect to find 72 virgin maidens in paradise when they die, what rewards can female suicide bombers expect? Their husbands. The Quran itself describes little about the specifics of the afterlife, but it does note that believers will find huris, or maidens "of modest gaze, whom neither man nor jinni will have touched before them." (Every believer can end up in heaven; martyrs just get there faster.) More>>
