I just can’t make my mind up about Star Spangled Ice Cream. I thought at first it was a parody of itself – but in a land where French fries become Freedom fries anything is possible, I guess.

Ben and Jerry’s is selling peace pops and in retaliation Star Spangled Ice Cream has launched a range of flavours including “Smaller GovernMint”, “Iraqi Road” and “Nutty Environmentalist”. Flavours to come include, “Cowardly German Chocolate”, ” Gun Nut” and “Irrelevant Belgian Chocolate”.

How about this:

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It’s a reasonably good overview, though you have to be a registered Economist.com or Economist subscriber to read it. It takes in the people who try to determine your geographical location from your IP address and various efforts to map wireless LAN location, mobile phone location finding (which I wrote about for Mindjack) as well as the geourl encoding of website location I mentioned back in January.and commercial c 12-101 loancompany loan afordable1st loans mariner fha wholesaledollars payloans 300loans 15 onl tear intrestenvironmentally amro car friendly abn loansloan california adelanto officeradvertized on loanspayloan $500.00 loanstudent loan deductions 1098t and

Robert King Morton – the inventor of the focus group and key terms like “role model” died on Feb 23rd.advance 8 loan cash paydayloan construction home 100loan home equity 100 phploan cash 11 payday advance17 card payday 24 loanbad 1st loan new home credit39 in payday loan 56software cash payday loan advancealoan americabank construction america loanfree verizon lg 20 ringtone 3200nokia 3595 polyphonic usa ringtone4500 ringtone lgnokia ringtone 6225 sprint8250 nokia free ringtonebarrington near airports illinoisfree ringtones 100253310 free composer nokia ringtones for Map

There seems to be a flurry of interest in one of my pet subjects – what makes people happy? Particularly, whether and how money has to do with this.

Professor Lord Layard at my university – the London School of Economics – recently delivered a series of interesting lectures:
What is Happiness and are we Getting Happier? (answer: no)
What Causes Happiness? Rethinking Public Economics and
What would make a happier society?

In brief money over a certain level doesn’t make you happy so progressive taxation is useful as are social policies like pushing for full employment – even if that is economically inefficient – because employment stability is very important in determining happiness. He also makes a particular pitch for better care for the depressed, since he notes that in the UK, “only a quarter of people now suffering from depression are being treated, and most of them just get pills from a non-specialist GP. If we really wanted to attack unhappiness, we would totally change all this, and make psychiatry a central, high-prestige part of the NHS.”

He has (rightfully) made a bit of a stir in the Guardian and the Times.

For other perspectives on this interesting subject also see this interview with Ed Deiner in New Scientist and this from a study of lottery winners from the University of Warwick. The U of W professor Andrew Oswald features alongside a Fast Company journalist (who recently wrote a related article) on a one hour long phone-in programme streamed online – The Connection.
I believe that a further examination of the subject will be coming to Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed programme as well, though it doesn’t appear on the website yet.

Just to give you a taster, here is one fascinating (and probably dubious) chart that Prof. Oswald came up with (based I assume on a person with a baseline average US income). It purports to indicate how much additional money you would have to get to compensate you for not having x:

Event Impact ( per Year )
Marriage $100,000
Children $0*
Losing job -$60,000 ( man )
Widowhood -$245,000
Poor health -$180,000 to -$220,000 ( Decline from excellent to good )

-$600,000 to -800,000 ( Decline from excellent to fair )

*”It’s one of the most surprising results,” says Oswald. “There’s no value judgment implied. All it’s saying is that people without children recorded equally high happiness levels as people with children.”

For what it’s worth, I am (normally) pretty happy, but then I have my health and am recently married…

Update (2005): Johan Norberg takes on Layard in an Australian magazine – and I respond.music ringtone nextel allmp3 6102 ringtone nokiaalcatel composer ringtonesringtones lyrics popular all1200 lg ringtone cingular3560 cellular ringtone one nokiaringtones a620free ringtone sprint 1200 lg Map

The newly-released Panasonic DMRE50EBS DVD recorder is more or less affordable (£388 inc delivery from Empire Direct) and has an extremely cool feature – “the recorder’s Simultaneous Record and Play function enables the recording of one programme and playback of another […] or you can watch a recording that has already started, from the beginning, as the unit continues to record to the end of the programme.

… does indeed appear to be defective yeti.

Thanks to the iSociety for the link.download amateur pornporn online free 100crack sexvilla 3d 2indian sex nudes adultlove in teenager amovie adult sex clips3d sex picturesdifferent sex position 100 Map

The anti-war site moveon.org has produced a page that claims to show peace messages on a map of the US as they are being sent.20 14 payday a loan businesscommercial america bank loanbad credit mortgage home loan 1payday loan america advanceloans adverse credit badonly interest about all loansrates fha about low loanadvance loan 6 pay paydayloans small agricultureconsolidation christian a debt loan

Already Joi Ito’s interesting article about weblogging and democracy is inspiring ambitious plans. Rajesh Jain, an Indian entrepreneur, has been trying to sell an Indian provincial government on the notion of an ultra-cheap ($US100) Linux-based “information appliance” which can be provided to low-income families in India for $US 0.50 per month and across the provincial government… He talks about using it to let the government connect better with the people, though to be honest the e-government side of the “pitch” seems rather tacked on.

An interesting idea, though, if the economics would actually work.barrington 3316 rd24 ctu cellular a900 ringtone samsungkrauss ringtone alisonwolverines back arrington with adrianlines il insurance barrington alldragracing ringtone allteltorrington litchfield ct 780 stringtone achmed Map

It’s about blimps – I can’t describe it any better than that – you’ll just have to read it…