Www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs Writing/2012/World Happiness Report.pdf. How Happy Is Seattle? - Arts & Lifestyle. Last week The Happiness Initiative, a Seattle-based organization determined to determine the city's well-being, presented the results of its first survey. During the first half of 2011 more than 2,600 Seattle residents took the survey, which examines nine happiness domains, including health, community, and psychological well-being. The initiative's measurement pairs broad questions with more objective indicators; the health domain, for instance, looks at self reports of general physical fitness as well as documented obesity rates. On overall well-being, Seattle residents received a rather rainy score of 66 out of 100. (Abbreviated results here; much more useful full report here [PDF].) They scored particularly low on measures of "time balance" and environmental well-being: roughly 43 and 46, respectively.
They don't appear happy with government, either — though who is these days — scoring a 58 on that domain. Exactly what the council plans to do is unclear. How Can We Be Happy? Two Designers Create a Film to Find Out - Steven Heller - Life. The Happy Film examines what happens when we follow psychologists' advice—and when we do things that scare us Designer/filmmaker Hillman Curtis and designer Stefan Sagmeister have collaborated on a feature-length film for well over a year. However, it is unfinished and they won't be truly happy until it is complete. Money, which cannot buy said happiness, is the root of their woes, so on August 4 they had a fundraiser at the SVA Theater in New York, with a screening of the work-in-progress, which given these hard economic times is prophetically titled The Happy Film.
The Happy Film was conceived as a documentary that looks at the strategies serious psychologists recommend to improve personal well-being and overall happiness. As Curtis puts it, "I always say the film is about a guy holding a flower (a scene in the first section of the film where Stefan tries to give a flower to a stranger). But why happiness? Point taken. This is still a serious movie with a direct, pragmatic goal. Elements of Happiness. The 'I'm-happy-I'm-green' consensus won't placate our lust for novelty | Pat Kane. To see the deep roots of hyper-consumerism in our lives, take the average broadsheet paper (let's say, one dearest to both our hearts) and read the whole of each page – editorial and ads. In elegantly typeset prose, we enjoy its cosmopolitan and concerned world-view: all points are weighed and considered. Yet inserted into these spaces are messages from a much narrower domain. I did a basic ad count on this very title over the last week.
Consumer electronics of all kinds tops the list; next come holidays, financial services, furniture and cars. The story this tells about our consumer economy is stark: it's about discarding familiar arrangements of metal, fabric and plastic and buying new ones. It's about stretching towards the financial liquidity needed to attain or house the stuff, and softening the blow with brief overseas escapes from the treadmill of acquisition.
The "big society" immediately politicises all this. Norman is half right, at entirely the wrong moment. Happiness becomes a hot topic, from governments on down. The Happynomics of Life.