At tonight Cafe Scientifique

At tonight’s Cafe Scientifique Daniel Nettle talked about happiness. Not in a hippy self-help way, but in a psychological, physiological, sociological, behavioural way.
Happiness, though tricky to measure, hasn’t increased since the ’50s despite the over-wehelming increase in wealth and health. There seems to be a distinction between wanting things and liking things, supported by the difference in our brains response to addictive drugs such as cocaine (want) and non-adictive pleasure drugs like ecstasy (like).

We learned a new concept tonight, that of Flow. We’re probably flow junkies, and not-coincidently (?) our snowboard bindings are made by a company called Flow. We also learned Switzerland (or possibly Norway) is the happiest country. Either way, they both have snow. 😀

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We picked up a copy of his book: it has a happy yellow cover.

We met up with

We met up with some friends from Aspect days yesterday, something which seems to becoming a bit of an annual event. One of them, Jules, has spent the last year or so starting up a new business, and has just launched Anagram Works in time to appear in a couple of the Open Houses in Brighton during this year’s Brighton Festival. She’s made a series of greetings cards, as well as a Brighton mug (I’m now the proud owner of one of these which will be going into the office tomorrow to replace my previous, rather dull, black mug).

Another step forward the

Another step forward: the council has banned smoking in the venues that it owns.
“A complete smoking ban cannot be implemented in the city without government approval but Brighton and Hove Council hope that could be brought in as early as next year.” If you want to move this along, the BBC have some suggestions.