Arguably the most important finding from the emerging economics of happiness has been the Easterlin Paradox.

What is this paradox? It is the juxtaposition of three observations:

1) Within a society, rich people tend to be much happier than poor people.
2) But, rich societies tend not to be happier than poor societies (or not by much).
3) As countries get richer, they do not get happier.

Easterlin offered an appealing resolution to his paradox, arguing that only relative income matters to happiness. Other explanations suggest a “hedonic treadmill,” in which we must keep consuming more just to stay at the same level of happiness.

Either way, the policy implications of the Paradox are huge, as they suggest that economic growth may not raise well-being by much.

Given the stakes in this debate, Betsey Stevenson and I thought it worth reassessing the evidence.

The Economics of Happiness, Part 1: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

The economy appears to be in recession, and while most industries are shedding jobs, consumer debt councilors, conservation consultants and green energy suppliers have ramped up hiring, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

The Monitor also points out that the leading edge of the recession overlaps with the start of the baby boomer retirement wave. This has sparked a government hiring binge as Uncle Sam scrambles to replace outgoing workers.

Who else hires during a recession?

Private security firms. They’re seeing a spike in demand these days, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Who Hires During a Recession? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Back in 1992 at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), World Champions Mansour Matloubi and Stuey Ungar faced off in a series of $50,000 buy-in heads-up freeze outs. Mansour tells me he was at the top of his game at this point in his poker career, having just won the WSOP in 1990. The game they were playing that day was no-limit Hold'em, and the blinds were $200-$400 when the following hand came up. Stuey opened for $1600 in the small blind, and Mansour called with 4-5 off suit. After a flop of 3-3-7 rainbow (no suits), Stuey bet $6,000--he started the hand with $60,000 to Mansour's $40,000--and Mansour called the $6,000 bet. On fourth-street a K came off and both players checked. On the river a Q came off to make a board of 3-3-7-K-Q, and Mansour, smelling weakness in Stuey, bet his last $32,000 or so. Stuey looked "right through" Mansour, and within ten seconds he said, "You have 4-5 or 5-6, I'm gonna call you with this." Stuey then flipped up 10-9, and called the $32,000 bet with merely ten-high! Wow, what an unbelievable call! Stuey can't even beat a jack-high-bluff with his hand, never mind any pair. In fact, Stuey could only beat 4-5, 4-6 or 5-6 in this scenario.

Stuery Ungar by Phil Hellmuth

There is an incredibly high correlation between average levels of happiness and average incomes — greater than 0.8. Angus Deaton actually beat us to this finding, and his analysis of these data is worth a close reading, (here).

There’s another striking finding in this graph: the relationship between happiness and log income appears nearly linear.

Thus, a 10 percent rise in income in the United States appears to increase happiness by about as much as a 10 perecent rise in income in Burundi.

...

2. Even so, it is worth noting that a 10 percent rise in income in Burundi requires one-sixtieth as much income as a 10 percent rise in income in the U.S. Thus, even if the slope is three times as steep for rich countries as poor countries (as we estimate), this still means than an extra $100 has about a twenty-times-greater effect on happiness in Burundi than it would in the United States.

Comparisons like this make you think that foreign aid may not be such a bad idea.

The Economics of Happiness, Part 2: Are Rich Countries Happier than Poor Countries? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Three more observations about what we can learn from this history:

1) The income-well-being relationship has appeared just about as strongly in surveys probing happiness as in surveys asking about life satisfaction. (There are exceptions.)

2) One interpretation of the 2006 Gallup data is that it is still all about relative income comparisons: In today’s global village, folks in Jamaica may be comparing their lot in life to the greater prosperity they observe when watching U.S. television shows. Countering this, it looks, to my eye, as though the income-happiness link appears about as strong in countries that are truly plugged in to the global village, as those that are less engaged.

3) Moreover, the relationship between income and happiness is about as strong today as it was in the very first surveys, which were taken sixty years ago, when the world was less integrated.

The Economics of Happiness, Part 3: Historical Evidence - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

After an anti-Delta tirade, there is some good info about the two programs.

InsideFlyer.com: Merger Madness - Delta/NW and what it means for Frequent Fliers

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YouTube - Monkey Riding Mini Bike

One thing was clear from this exercise, Gingrich said. "The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."

That was about the mildest way to put it. Although Wallace and Jennings conceded that the criticism was fair—if journalists considered themselves "detached,"they could not logically expect American soldiers to rescue them—nevertheless their reactions spoke volumes about the values of their craft. Jennings was made to feel embarrassed about his natural, decent human impulse. Wallace seemed unembarrassed about feeling no connection to the soldiers in his country's army or considering their deaths before his eyes "simply a story." In other important occupations people sometimes face the need to do the horrible. Frederick Downs, after all, was willing to torture a man and hear him scream. But Downs had thought through all the consequences and alternatives, and he knew he would live with the horror for the rest of his days. When Mike Wallace said he would do something horrible, he barely bothered to give a rationale. He did not try to explain the reasons a reporter might feel obliged to remain silent as the attack began—for instance, that in combat reporters must be beyond country, or that they have a duty to bear impartial witness to deaths on either side, or that Jennings had implicitly made a promise not to betray the North Kosanese when he agreed to accompany them. The soldiers might or might not have found such arguments convincing; Wallace didn't even make them.

Why Americans Hate the Media

The Festival Speech Synthesis System

Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C library, from Java, and an Emacs interface. Festival is multi-lingual (currently English (British and American), and Spanish) though English is the most advanced. Other groups release new languages for the system. And full tools and documentation for build new voices are available through Carnegie Mellon's FestVox project (http://festvox.org)

The Festival Speech Synthesis System

These days everyone in IT is a consultant, employs a consultant, or both. I'm a consultant, aren't you? Outsourcing, offshoring, LEAN management, a lousy economy, and covering one's IT butt have led organizations of every type and at every level to look outside for answers to their IT questions and often even to ask those questions in the first place. This has led to the greatest disconnect I have seen between job requirements and apparent internal capability in the 30 years I've been around IT. It's scary. Hardly any organization can get by without using consultants and -- here's the bad news -- most consultants aren't very good. So here is my advice on how to select and use an IT consultant followed by a grim list of the 10 most common lies told by bad consultants.

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . The Truth About IT Consultants | PBS