Happiness is ... not having the children This according to Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, who was speaking at the Happiness & Its Causes conference in Sydney yesterday. He said people's happiness goes into steep decline after they have children, and never recovers its old level until the children leave home. As a source of pleasure, playing with one's offspring rates just above doing housework ... Read full entry

Mid-thirties crisis? You're having a thrisis Let's while life away lurching from crisis to crisis. The quarter-life crisis kicks in at 25. Mid-life crisis kicks in at 45. What to do in the intervening years? Have a thrisis... a life-crisis especially for people in their mid-thirties. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised, given our accelerated pace of life - kids drinking alcopops at 13 and reporting signs of burnout before ... Read full entry

Study: Old Age Is the Happiest Time And here's why: "The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages." A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches, pains and deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they ... Read full entry

Stuff of Life (but Not Life Itself) Is Detected on a Distant Planet Methane, an ingredient of the building blocks of life, has been found in the atmosphere of a planet called HD 189733b, which is 63 lights years distant from Earth. Astronomers reported Wednesday that they had made the first detection of an organic molecule, methane, in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system and ... Read full entry

Riding Shotgun by Christine MacLean at Jugglezine. The new year; this is the season for making changes... Angela King, a manager in her mid-thirties, knew that her husband Kevin was restless in his white-collar job. While it was good in many regards, it hadn't been giving him any personal satisfaction. When Kevin started riding along in the squad car with his police officer brother and asking him questions about ... Read full entry

New Year resolutions could add years to your life. Just to follow on from the How to live forever piece. The millions of people resolving to live a healthier life in 2008 can take heart: four relatively simple, healthy behaviours may add 14 years to your life, say researchers. Even better, they help no matter how fat or unhealthy you are already. New Years' resolutions may be worth considering after all.

How to live forever. Soon there may only be but one certainty in life, taxes. The problem is though there would be no end to them as a result. "IN THE long run," as John Maynard Keynes observed, "we are all dead." True. But can the short run be elongated in a way that makes the long run longer? And if so, how, and at what cost? People have dreamt of ... Read full entry