I’m just catching up on my weekend reading and have to agree with Richard’s wife Jocasta –

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I’m just catching up on my weekend reading and have to agree with Richard’s wife Jocasta –

There’s money in happiness studies, but further research is needed
By Richard Glover
July 30, 2005

I pose in front of Jocasta, seductively unbuttoning my shirt. “You could make $1666 – just by having sex with me. What do you say?”

Sitting at the kitchen table, Jocasta is mechanically spooning down muesli while reading the Herald’s arts page. “Sex with you?” Jocasta says, looking up. “I’ll consider it. The question is: do I have the spare 90 seconds?”

I have left the news section of the Herald folded by her muesli bowl. It quotes two economists, both experts in the new field of “happiness studies”. According to the Herald report, the economists have calculated that you can increase your happiness by the equivalent of $60,000 a year simply by lifting the frequency of sex from once a month to once a week.

Already I have made some calculations in the corner of the newspaper. Three extra times a month; that’s 36 extra a year, which is 36 divided into $60,000. Or $1666 a go.

“Consider this,” I say, pointing out my calculations. “They say it’s virtually money in the bank. How about it?”

Jocasta is unconvinced. “It’s not that I’m against sex,” she says, “but don’t you think they are overstating its virtues just a little? You can buy a small used car for $1666. You could have 16 massages, 100 bottles of good South Australian shiraz, or your own body weight in Belgian chocolate. I’m not saying you are exactly bad in bed, but at $1600 you certainly are setting your bar fairly high.”

Jocasta chuckles and settles back into the Herald arts pages.

I undo another button, suck in my belly and pose staring out the window in a manly sort of way, hoping the light will catch my face, highlighting what little is left of my bone structure.

I wonder about the two professors who did the sex study. The Herald gives their names as David Blanchflower, of Dartmouth College, and Andrew Oswald, of the University of Warwick, in England. Do they have wives? Did each of them check out their finding with their partners: “Darling, David and I have calculated that sex with either of us is worth $1666 a go.”

You can imagine the wives looking up from their breakfast cereal. “Sweetheart, are you sure you shouldn’t run the figures through the computer again? Perhaps you’ve just mistaken the decimal point. I think sex with you could well be worth $1.66.”

Back at the kitchen table, Jocasta has finally put down the arts page and, at my insistence, is perusing the piece about the sex study. “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so stupid,” she says. “What do they mean, it’s like money in the bank? Do they imagine that every time the Visa bill arrives you’re both going to jump into the sack in an effort to bonk yourself back into solvency?”

I try to explain. “They are just saying that it’s the equivalent of having more money. That it brings happiness equal to more money.”

“Well, sure,” says Jocasta, “but why have they only studied sex? It’s like they think it’s the only thing that can bring happiness. You can bet two female economists might have set their sights a little wider. What about three extra hours of sleep each month? That would be worth $60,000, and then some. Or three fewer trips to the supermarket? Or three days in which I don’t have to perform 57 different tasks all at the same time – half of them to do with work, and the other half to do with you and the children and the fact that I’m supposed to run everything while you all stand around, waiting to ‘help’, as if you are all doing me some massive favour.

“Why don’t they try putting a cash figure on that?”

Jocasta is looking over the newspaper, giving me a long, hard stare. I try to summon up the spirit of Blanchflower and Oswald, but they appear to have disappeared. I feel they have tempted me into an intellectual cul-de-sac and then left me to slowly die.

Without being quite aware of why, I find myself doing up the buttons on my shirt.

Jocasta softens her look. “There’s one other thing they don’t understand. With women it all depends on mood. If I’m in a good mood, you never know what might happen.”

She puts down the paper. “Maybe,” she says, “Blanchflower and Oswald should make a study of a women’s moods – and the sudden lift that can occur when a woman has so thoroughly and totally won an argument. It makes anything possible.”

Not quite aware of why, I find myself once again undoing my shirt buttons.

Happiness may be elusive, but it’s worth the wait.

richardglover@ozemail.com.au

Mike Carlton was terribly evil to bring this to my attention –

KITTED out in kevlar helmet and hunky cammo flak jacket, the Prime Minister cut a fine, martial figure as he strode from a Black Hawk helicopter to take personal command of our troops in Iraq this week.

It was a thrilling, evocative moment, watching those historic footsteps trodden in ancient sands.

Who among us did not think of Napoleon Bonaparte, addressing his army of Egypt two hundred years ago? “Soldats, songez que du haut de ces pyramides, quarante siecles vous contemplent!” Soldiers, from the summit of those pyramids, 40 centuries look down upon you!

Or, as the Duke of Wellington said of the emperor: “His presence on the battlefield was worth 40 thousand men.”

Or perhaps more recent scenes of desert warfare. General Montgomery before Alamein: “Gentlemen, we are going to give Field Marshal Wommel a bwuddy nose.”

Whatever. We can be sure that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and co would have quaked in their boots when they switched on the Al-Jazeera news that evening and saw Howard in full oratorical flight to his battalions. It was a heavy blow in the war on terrorism.

But inspiring as those images were, there was something more homely, too, about that doughty figure peering through his glasses beneath that too-large helmet.

Something familiar. Something faint but insistent in the memory bank, a flickering of the synapses on the mental hard drive.

I thought and thought. Who was it, what was it? And after a few days it came rushing back.

Do you remember M*A*S*H, that classic TV comedy about the doings of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War? And if so, can you recall Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, the dorky little bespectacled clerk who slept with his teddy bear, always the butt of japes and wheezes? T’was he! Howard and Radar, Radar and Howard, dead ringers.

Modern politicians should always heed a rule first laid down by John F.Kennedy: never wear funny hats.

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Ban Those Dangerous Whoopee Cushions Now!

Thank heavens this is as serious as it gets on the terrorist front in Sydney –

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Ban Those Dangerous Whoopee Cushions Now!

Thank heavens this is as serious as it gets on the terrorist front in Sydney –

‘Whoopee cushion’ deactivated
July 31, 2005 – 8:35PM

A Sydney bus driver began wondering what he’d picked up today when a suspicious popping sound drifted down from the back of his vehicle.

But he refused to let his imagination run wild, despite the recent terror bombings targeting London buses and underground trains.

Instead, he calmly went to investigate and found the source of the “pops” was not some kind of evil explosive device or bomb timing mechanism, but a “whoopee cushion-style toy”.

The driver found the small foil bag, which made the popping sound when crushed, on a rear seat of the government bus at Coogee, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, about 4.50pm (AEST).

The driver duly completed his run – picking up and setting down passengers as usual – and only alerted the police when he arrived at Circular Quay about 25 minutes later.

Officers from The Rocks station subsequently took possession of the offending toy.

A police spokesman dismissed an earlier media report that the driver had been injured by a firecracker.

“(The toy) appeared to be activated by pressure, and not an explosive,” he said, adding that the bus driver had done the right thing in contacting them.

“We’re asking people to remain alert, not alarmed, so he brought it forward,” he said.

AAP

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Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime

I’ve been listening to the third part of this series. This one concentrates on that runaway Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover, Georg Friederich Händel. I was amused to hear how he skipped out on the Elector promising he would come back but stayed in England and to his horror finding that soon after on Queen Anne’s death his former patron was now to be King of England.

Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime
Sunday 31 July 2005

Summary
Handel’s operas were 18th century London’s equivalent of Cats. So how did he become a Great Classical Composer? How did he go from being popular to worthwhile?
The transcript hasn’t been put up yet but will be available sometime during the week at the following site –
Transcript – Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime

To listen click on the link below. It’s in Real Media format.
Audio Link – Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime

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Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime

I’ve been listening to the third part of this series. This one concentrates on that runaway Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover, Georg Friederich Händel. I was amused to hear how he skipped out on the Elector promising he would come back but stayed in England and to his horror finding that soon after on Queen Anne’s death his former patron was now to be King of England.

Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime
Sunday 31 July 2005

Summary
Handel’s operas were 18th century London’s equivalent of Cats. So how did he become a Great Classical Composer? How did he go from being popular to worthwhile?
The transcript hasn’t been put up yet but will be available sometime during the week at the following site –
Transcript – Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime

To listen click on the link below. It’s in Real Media format.
Audio Link – Music and Fashion: Program three: Showtime

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Jean-Paul Sartre

I was listening to The Europeans on Radio National and I’m sure peak_in_darien will just love to listen to it. I know how much she adores Sartre. *veg*. Seriously, it is an interesting segment. Here is the blurb from Radio National –

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existential Life
This year, the French are celebrating the centenary of Jean-Paul Sartre, the controversial philosopher, political polemicist, novelist and playwright. He was an intellectual celebrity who attracted the kind of public attention usually reserved for pop stars but what is Sartre’s real legacy?

Details:

If you crossed Mick Jagger with writer David Hare and then again with activist journalist John Pilger, you might come close to creating a modern equivalent of the French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre. Forever identified with the vibrant intellectual Left Bank café life of Paris in the middle of the twentieth century, Sartre made philosophy hip and fun.

Sartre was in intellectual superstar. His public lectures were standing room only and tens of thousands of people followed his cortege through the streets of Paris when he died. From the 1940s, he dominated French cultural and political life. He founded the left wing newspaper Liberation as well as an influential literary journal. He wrote novels and plays, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, which he promptly declined.

He invented his own brand of philosophy – Existentialism – which became the basis for a reinterpretation of psychoanalysis. He wrote essays and biographies; he was a political polemicist who embraced Marxism and Communism, supporting the purges of Stalin and Mao. In the latter years of his life he marched in the streets for Third World liberation and exhausted himself intellectually in the hopeless task of reconciling existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis.

What was so special about Sartre and his ideas?

Guests:
Dr Elizabeth Rechniewski
Senior Lecturer
School of Languages and Cultures
University of Sydney

Dr Maurice Blackman
Head, Department of French
University of New South Wales

Scott Churchill
Graduate Program Director for the Department of Psychology
University of Dallas
Texas

Roger Scruton
Philosopher and Writer

Further information:
French National Library – Sartre Exhibition
French National Library – Sartre Exhibition

Jean_Paul Sartre

Sartre Online

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existential Life – AudioLink

peak_in_darien, you might like Roger Scruton’s critique.

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Jean-Paul Sartre

I was listening to The Europeans on Radio National and I’m sure will just love to listen to it. I know how much she adores Sartre. *veg*. Seriously, it is an interesting segment. Here is the blurb from Radio National –

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existential Life
This year, the French are celebrating the centenary of Jean-Paul Sartre, the controversial philosopher, political polemicist, novelist and playwright. He was an intellectual celebrity who attracted the kind of public attention usually reserved for pop stars but what is Sartre’s real legacy?

Details:

If you crossed Mick Jagger with writer David Hare and then again with activist journalist John Pilger, you might come close to creating a modern equivalent of the French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre. Forever identified with the vibrant intellectual Left Bank café life of Paris in the middle of the twentieth century, Sartre made philosophy hip and fun.

Sartre was in intellectual superstar. His public lectures were standing room only and tens of thousands of people followed his cortege through the streets of Paris when he died. From the 1940s, he dominated French cultural and political life. He founded the left wing newspaper Liberation as well as an influential literary journal. He wrote novels and plays, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, which he promptly declined.

He invented his own brand of philosophy – Existentialism – which became the basis for a reinterpretation of psychoanalysis. He wrote essays and biographies; he was a political polemicist who embraced Marxism and Communism, supporting the purges of Stalin and Mao. In the latter years of his life he marched in the streets for Third World liberation and exhausted himself intellectually in the hopeless task of reconciling existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis.

What was so special about Sartre and his ideas?

Guests:
Dr Elizabeth Rechniewski
Senior Lecturer
School of Languages and Cultures
University of Sydney

Dr Maurice Blackman
Head, Department of French
University of New South Wales

Scott Churchill
Graduate Program Director for the Department of Psychology
University of Dallas
Texas

Roger Scruton
Philosopher and Writer

Further information:
French National Library – Sartre Exhibition
French National Library – Sartre Exhibition

Jean_Paul Sartre

Sartre Online

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existential Life – AudioLink

, you might like Roger Scruton’s critique.

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A Suggestion for a Gift for Dubya from a Grateful Ally

Polly wants you to ‘f— off’
July 28, 2005

A foul-mouthed parrot previously owned by a lorry driver has been banished from public areas in a British animal sanctuary after repeatedly embarrassing his keepers.

Barney, a five-year-old Macaw, is now kept indoors at Warwickshire Animal Sanctuary in Nuneaton, central England, when outsiders visit after abusing dignitaries with swearword-littered insults.

“He’s told a lady mayoress to f— off and he told a lady vicar: ‘And you can f— off as well’,” sanctuary worker Stacey Clark said.

Clark said sanctuary workers believed Barney either picked up the phrases from television or was taught them by his previous owner, a lorry driver who emigrated to Spain.

“He does say ‘Hello, big boy’ and ‘Thank you’ when you give him a biscuit,” she added.

“But it’s mainly naughty words and always to the wrong people. We’re trying to teach him not to swear. Macaws are very intelligent birds.”

Package the bird immediately and dispatch him to Dubya with love and kisses from Tony.

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A Suggestion for a Gift for Dubya from a Grateful Ally

Polly wants you to ‘f— off’
July 28, 2005

A foul-mouthed parrot previously owned by a lorry driver has been banished from public areas in a British animal sanctuary after repeatedly embarrassing his keepers.

Barney, a five-year-old Macaw, is now kept indoors at Warwickshire Animal Sanctuary in Nuneaton, central England, when outsiders visit after abusing dignitaries with swearword-littered insults.

“He’s told a lady mayoress to f— off and he told a lady vicar: ‘And you can f— off as well’,” sanctuary worker Stacey Clark said.

Clark said sanctuary workers believed Barney either picked up the phrases from television or was taught them by his previous owner, a lorry driver who emigrated to Spain.

“He does say ‘Hello, big boy’ and ‘Thank you’ when you give him a biscuit,” she added.

“But it’s mainly naughty words and always to the wrong people. We’re trying to teach him not to swear. Macaws are very intelligent birds.”

Package the bird immediately and dispatch him to Dubya with love and kisses from Tony.

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