Brian Gongol
Another reason to live longer
A long-term survey suggests that lifetime self-assessments of happiness peak around age 74. What's most significant about that observation is that life expectancy at birth in the United States didn't even reach 60 until the Great Depression, or 70 until the Vietnam War era. We have a lot to learn about continuing to extend human life expectancy, but there's every reason in the world to think that longer, healthier lives will prove to be more fulfilling with time. We ought to consider death something other than an inevitability, and with continuing enhancements to personal medicine, bionic organs, and electronic enhancements to the human brain, we may find that death is not necessarily inevitable for us all. Trees can live for thousands of years; why couldn't we? And as we seek to "cure" the problem of death, we ought also to address aging as a chronic condition to be delayed and managed. Pain and debilitation shouldn't be inevitable in one's elder years. Perhaps we'll discover someday that happiness really peaks at 148.
Twitter and Facebook are not the right places to end a relationship
An e-mail may be sterile and a text message remote, but breaking off a relationship in public via a social-networking website isn't just tacky -- it's deeply inconsiderate. Moreover, it makes a personal matter a subject of public record...and public records on the Internet never really die.
Iowa union boss calls member a "scab"
And accidentally sent an e-mail using that language to the subject of the epithet. Bullying isn't just for playgrounds. Labor unions can serve a useful purpose, but when they become tools for individuals' political gain and social status rather than the protection of their member workers against abuse, they wear thin their welcome.
Hamlet would've been much better with a "Will and Grace" component
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A sad but unavoidable consequence of protecting the water
