We're attempting to measure it not by asking people, but by actually trying to measure the quality of their daily lives. For example, we are studying one day in the lives of 1,000 working women in Texas. We have people reconstruct the day in successive episodes, as recalled a day later, and we have a technique that recovers the emotions and the feelings. We know who they were with and what they were doing. They also tell us how satisfied they are with various aspects of their lives. We know a lot about these ladies.

Q. What are you finding out?
A. I'll give you a striking finding. Divorced women, compared to married women, are less satisfied with their lives, which is not surprising. But they're actually more cheerful, when you look at the average mood they're in in the course of the day. The other thing is the huge importance of friends. People are really happier with friends than they are with their families or their spouse or their child.

Q. Why would divorced women be more cheerful?
A. So far, I don't understand it, but that's what the data says.

I'm at a loss to see why this is mysterious. Here's the syllogism:

1. People are happier with their friends than with their families.
2. Divorced women spend more time in the company of friends than married women.
Ergo:
3. Divorced women are more cheerful.

They also describe themselves as less satisfied. This doesn't surprise me either. Satisfaction is a very different matter from mood emotions (such as happiness or unhappiness, cheerfulness or gloom). Satisfaction is the sensation of having perceived meets met adequately. If you've been enculturated your entire life to believe that having a successful marriage is important, then of course you're going to be dissatisfied if your marriage fails. But the demise of your marriage might nonetheless significantly improve the quality your life on a day to day basis (even if you have a hard time perceiving it cognitively).
9:39:02 PM    please comment []

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it

It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

Be careful of fixed enmities or alliances:

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

Who said it?

George Washington, September 19, 1796
He was declining to run for re-election, and this was his Farewell Address.

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man, who views it in the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations; I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

Now go vote.
1:10:33 AM    please comment []

After the last call, which came to an unsatisfactory conclusion at 11:45 tonight, my restraint has been overwhelmed with peevitude.

I will, however, give a shout-out to my Earthlink tech man Gene in Harrisburg, PA who at least has a decent sense of humor and was sympathetic to my plight without being smarmy about it. Not that I feel somehow that this will lead to improved results or anything.

My line is apparently marvelously noiseless and swift, so if I do actually ever manage to hook up with the server, well, it should be all greased lightning after that. Perhaps I'll wake up tomorrow morning to a glorious steady green glow of connectivity. Hope springs eternal.

Yeah, right.
12:10:35 AM    please comment []