I was never overly impressed with self-reported happiness indices and country rankings, until I read this 2022 working paper by Blanchflower and Bryson. The paper still uses self-reported data but this time, they add the negative dimensions of personal experience to tabulate a net happiness score. Combining data on around four million respondents from theContinue reading “World Happiness”
Category Archives: Reference Materials
Mushrooms in Eden
Controversy over what’s depicted in the image, and what it may say about early Christians, has raged for decades. BY EMMA BETUEL AUGUST 5, 2021 (Atlas Obscura) Does This Medieval Fresco Show A Hallucinogenic Mushroom in the Garden of Eden? In France, Plaincourault Chapel features a peculiar depiction of the Garden of Eden’s Tree of theContinue reading “Mushrooms in Eden”
Conquest Via Luxury
Tacitus wrote Agricola to honor his father-in-law, Cnaeus Julius Agricola, who died August 23, 93 CE. After a short introduction (exordium, 1-3), Tacitus organized the work in three parts. In chapters 4 to 9, Tacitus narrates Agricola’s life before he became governor of Britain in 77 CE. In the second part (chapters 10-38), Tacitus covers Agricola’s governorship ofContinue reading “Conquest Via Luxury”
Protective Arts 