There’s something inherently happy-making about being told you’re happy. I mean, what’s more cheerifying than the news that your fellow citizens—and you among them—have been given a berth on a list of the world’s lightest souls? And so it is with Canadians, who were prominently included recently in a ranking of the world’s happiest people. This is the 24/7 Wall St. list of the Countries With the Happiest People, a...
Candy’s dandy, and liquor’s quicker, but nothing’s as powerful as community when it comes to comforting someone enduring the personal issues surrounding a health crisis. So says a wide-ranging piece of research coming out of a website established to provide just that to people staring down some crummy bit of news about their health or someone else’s. A full 91% of the more than 4,000 respondents to this...
There are currently some 4,635 people over the age of 100 in this country—and the old folks’ numbers are on the climb. By 2031, the Canadian centenarian count is expected to have jumped to 14,000. From enhanced public social systems to soaring progress in medical research to a lifelong taste for crossword puzzles, the explanations for these long-lived souls are as numerous as they are mysterious. Certainly you...
“Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters.” So said Lady Macbeth to her nervous husband on the eve of their planned regicide. And while the rest of us may not have king-murdering schemes written across our features, all of our faces are vast repositories of information about the personalities that lurk behind them. Personology is the science of reading faces, wherein a person’s...
What ill cannot find relief in the wet nose of a Labrador? What question cannot be answered by the irrefutable weight of a lap-curled Tabby? What problem cannot be solved with the undulating song of a budgie? Pets have much to offer the flesh-covered companions with whom they share their lives, all of it gloriously intangible. In their company, we can transcend the surly bonds of our earthly existence and somehow...