For Starters

In terms of the most significant events of my life, without writing an autobiography, I can at least provide perspective to the reader through the use of the following table:

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that made all the difference.

Going Forward

On a going-forward basis, I will add journal entries intermittently, as significant events occur or as I think of things I want to jot down and hear back from others about. If anything you read here, or anywhere else on this web site stirs interest, please respond by e-mail. Just return to the home page by using the button marked "Home" in the top right-hand corner of this page, and then click on the e-mail link in the top left hand corner of the Home page. It should open up an e-mail window that you can use to reply. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Selected Photos From My Work in Iraq - Dec 2006 - Nov 2007

                                                                               http://www.defenselink.mil/tfbso/news/feature.html

Gross National Happiness

Excerpted from Trends On-line eMagazine published June 2008

Research shows that there is a direct relationship between income and happiness in the lowest income brackets. However, once people reach the level of middle-class income, they no longer become happier as their incomes go up.
Edward Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, concludes that lacking money causes unhappiness, but having more money does not cause more happiness. Millionaires are no happier than people of average income. As a group, the old are happier than the young.
A 2002 study showed that the percentage of Americans who said they were "very happy" was no greater than it was in the 1950s, even though the average American�s real income went up by more that 200 percent from 1957 to 2002.

According to Robert Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard University, 50 years of research shows that the happiest people are those who have the best relationships. Moreover, having solid relationships seems to help people stay in good health and live longer.
Brian Knutson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University, tracks changes in the brain to measure happiness. Knutson found that the anticipation of a reward often causes greater feelings of happiness than actually receiving it. In one study, Knutson asked test subjects to play a video game. He found that people were actually happier, as measured by oxygen flow in the brain, when they anticipated winning money than when they actually won the money.

Now, an important new addition has been made to the newly emerging science of happiness research. Arthur C. Brooks, professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University, has published a book titled Gross National Happiness1 that distills nearly five decades of research into what makes people happy. The well-supported conclusions are valuable for individuals, managers, and policy makers. Consider just seven of the most important findings:

First, happiness increases as we acquire material rewards up to a level of about $10,000 per capita per year. Above that level, having more, in and of itself, does not seem to make much of a difference.
Second, above the cut-off just mentioned, it is increased relative wealth that makes people happier. Research shows that people use money to keep score and making more money gives them validation that they are adding value.
Third, marriage improves happiness. Controlling for factors such as race, income, and age, married people, as a group, are consistently happier than those who are single, widowed, or divorced.
Fourth, people are happier when they believe they have earned what they get and are in control of their circumstances. This is one reason that people who receive public assistance are notoriously unhappy. They have been deprived of both of these happiness drivers.
Fifth, people who are religious are happier than those who are secular. Why is this? For one thing, religion makes life more manageable by clearly delineating a set of decision-making rules for one�s life. It also provides access to a community of supportive, like-minded people.
Sixth, those who give generously are much happier than those who don't. Apparently, humans are hardwired to be charitable. Research shows that helping others actually has a positive physiological impact on our brains.
Seventh, people who have strongly-held political beliefs are happier than those who are ambivalent. While conservative extremists and liberal extremists tend to make moderates uneasy, research clearly shows that people in either extreme group are happier than people in the middle.

Let�s take a closer look at that last finding: People with strongly held political beliefs are happier than those who are ambivalent. Brooks studied survey results from The National Opinion Research Center, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and Gallup. He found that while extremists on both ends were happier than moderates, people who described themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative" were nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy as people who described themselves as "liberal" or "very liberal." That correlates with a 2007 survey, in which 58 percent of Republicans said their mental health was excellent, compared to only 38 percent of Democrats. What explains this disparity? Brooks points out that, beyond their political differences, conservatives and liberals take different approaches to religion and marriage, which are, as we just discussed, two of the most prominent drivers of happiness.

Religious affiliation is positively correlated to happiness, according to the General Social Surveys (GSS). In 2004, 43 percent of people who considered themselves religious called themselves very happy. This is nearly twice the 23 percent of secularists who say they are very happy.
In fact, according to the GSS, if two people are identical in every way including income, age, education, gender, family status, and race but one is religious and the other is not, the religious person is 13 percent more likely to be very happy than the secular person.
Since conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals, this largely explains their greater levels of happiness. Specifically, conservatives are more than twice as likely as liberals to attend religious services every week, while liberals are twice as likely as conservatives to worship rarely or never.
Moreover, the disparity is increasing: Between 1974 and 2004, church attendance among liberals plunged from 27 percent to 16 percent. During that same 30-year span, church attendance among conservatives increased from 38 percent to 46 percent.

People who are religious also tend to give more of their money and time to charity, which is yet another driver of happiness. They are 38 percent more likely to give money than are people who are not religious, and 52 percent more likely to volunteer.
Now let�s look at the impact of marriage on happiness. Married people of all political affiliations are twice as likely as unmarried people to rate themselves as very happy. Forty-two percent of people who are married are very happy, compared to 23 percent of people who have never married, 20 percent of people who are widowed, and 17 percent of divorced people.
In fact, if two people are identical in every way but their marital status, the married person will be 18 percent more likely to be very happy than the person who isn't married.

Just as conservatives are more likely than liberals to be religious, they are also more likely to be married. Two-thirds of conservatives are married, compared to just one-third of liberals. The differences in happiness are even greater when we contrast married conservatives with single liberals: Married conservatives are three times more likely to be very happy than single liberals.

Children and friendships are also important to personal happiness. According to the GSS, 52 percent of conservatives who are religious and married with children are very happy, compared to just 14 percent of single, nonreligious liberals without children. Friends also play a key role in happiness. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey found that a person with more than 10 close friends is twice as likely to be very happy as someone who doesn't have any close friends.

All of this research suggests that Americans can increase their level of happiness by leading a stable family life that includes marriage and children, worshipping regularly, and socializing with friends. Unfortunately, not every country gives its citizens the same freedoms that Americans enjoy. What impact does that make on individuals' happiness? Brooks cites the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom, which was developed by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation.  On a scale of 0 to 100, in which 100 equals maximum freedom, the top countries are the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand, which all score above 80. The countries of Western Europe score between 65 and 75, followed by countries that were once communist and other developing nations. At the bottom is North Korea, with a score of 3.

After analyzing the 35 nations in the index, Brooks concluded every 1 percent increase in economic freedom (defined as the freedom to start a business, invest, own property, and so on) leads to a 2 percent increase in the percentage of the country's population that is very happy.
There's one other reason, besides freedom, that explains why people in the U.S. are generally happier than those who live in other countries. Americans are genetically predisposed toward happiness. How could this be? Consider that the genetic bias toward risk-taking is extremely rare. So, over the past 250 years, very few people in Europe, relatively speaking, were optimistic enough to trade the safety of the world they knew for a new, uncertain life in America.

However, because America was settled by exactly that type of people, we are a nation of people who are literally born with a bias for taking bold risks in the quest for big payoffs. That explains why the U.S. is widely recognized as the world leader in innovation and entrepreneurialism. Such traits positively correlate with earning and achieving, two key drivers of happiness mentioned earlier.