How Can We Measure Women's Happiness?

Russ Douthat writes in an op-ed in the NYT about a new study showing women are not as happy as they used to be.

He writes, "This is “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” the subject of a provocative paper from the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The paper is fascinating not only because of what it shows, but because the authors deliberately avoid floating an easy explanation for their data."

One comment Douthat makes really hit home with me: "Or perhaps the problem is political — maybe women prefer egalitarian, low-risk societies, and the cowboy capitalism of the Reagan era had an anxiety-inducing effect on the American female."

Crowdsourcing to Find Creative Ideas

I am always looking for interesting commentary on creativity and innovation, and I saw this blog by Garrick Schmick of Digital Next at AdAge on creativity and crowdsourcing. Let's see what he says. Thank you to GeoCities for the image.

He writes, "We typically think of "creativity" as a singular effort with the Steve Jobs or Lee Clows of the world -- the solitary individual known as much for their personality as their work -- at the helm. But creativity has always been a social activity. Today's creative agencies are supposed to be hothouses of ideas with charismatic leaders and collaborative teams. Fostering a creative culture counts -- after all, Warhol's factory wasn't just a live/work loft. But what happens when the technology behind crowdsourcing makes creativity a social activity that knows no geographic bounds? Where does the creative produced by the collective take us? Do we visit wild new frontiers or does a herd mentality take hold?"

NOLA Finds 10,000 Scientists Hitting the Streets

Today's photo: pretty much what the skies looked like yesterday as we flew in to New Orleans.

New Orleans is still quite the vivid place I remember pre-Katrina - at least from the view of streets in the Quarter. Driving in from the airport we viewed some of the devastation to houses, ones imprinted in memory from TV coverage of the days that followed. I could see the water to the rooftops and the people and dogs waiting for help on the remaining corners not yet submerged.

There is still wildness and hardscrabble in the streets - the French Quarter Festival has brought the street party people with beer spilling from cups. Scientists here for EB 2009 are meshed in among the revelers - dockers mixed with patched jeans, polo shirts mixed with leather motorcycle jackets. Like tourists everywhere, I am looking for the best local restaurant everyone tells you not to miss. My affluence among hardship feels awkward, but it is what it is.

Remember "Think Different"?

Visit thumbjockey to find an interesting story on creativity and innovation!

Thank you to bub.blicio.us for the image.

World Wide Web - Only 20 Years Back

I like to cover innovation in this blog, and there is no doubt that proposing the World Wide Web has had greater impact than just about anything in the past 20 years. Really, this marks the day the world changed. And, consider how technology has changed since this day and the impact it is having on culture now and what it holds for the future [visit Singularity at SciAm]. Thanks for the image from American Heritage.com.

Says Larry Greenemeier at Scientific American, "Twenty years ago this month, a software consultant named Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN) hatched a plan for an open computer network to keep track of research at the particle physics laboratory in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee's modestly titled "Information Management: A Proposal," which he submitted to get a CERN grant, would become the blueprint for the World Wide Web."

Read more on the web site! "What surprised Tim most is that for years people were so much more interested in simply browsing for and reading content rather than in creating it. His very first browser—WorldWideWeb—was actually both a browser and an editor. It let you write your own pages, post them online, and edit pages posted by others. But the commercial browsers didn't offer editing capabilities. This frustrated him for a number of years. The whole point of the Web, to him, was not to just see information but to publish it, too. This didn't really happen until blogs emerged, followed by sites like Facebook, where people can easily post content."