Phew!

A couple of interesting (to me, at least!) items you may have missed. The first is from the BBC:

The brilliance of creative chaos

George Bernard Shaw liked the tidy approach

Interesting op/ed about the ability of writers to create in chaos, or those writers who need an orderly work space. I won't tell you what category I fall into, but go read this one here.

The next piece is from the CBC:

Joy to the world is contagious: study

Happiness is contagious, and the more people you know who are full of good cheer, the more likely it is that you're also happy, a study of our social connections suggests.

In Thursday's online issue of the British Medical Journal, researchers analyzed data from more than 4,700 participants in Framingham, Mass., who took part in a heart study from 1983 to 2003.

The research trove included information on births, marriages, death, divorces and contact information of close friends, co-workers and neighbours of the volunteers, allowing Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and his colleagues to assess happiness.

"What we are dealing with is an emotional stampede," Christakis said.

"Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviours and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know."

Happiness was assessed based on scores for four statements:

• "I feel hopeful about the future."
• "I am happy."
• "I enjoy life."
• "I feel that I am just as good as other people."

Who'd a thunk it? I have to wonder how many research dollars, and hours, were spent on coming up with this gem? Really! It seems to me that these conclusions are ALL commonsense. However, you can read the rest of this article here. Oh, and BE happy! You can do it!!!