Italian Food, Donor Children, Political Psychology, Happiness
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This time we'll be going back to L'Allegria, a fine Italian restaurant a few blocks from Times Square, at the corner of 44th St & 9th Avenue, the menu is here (http://www.lallegriarestaurant.com/media/websiteallegria.html) . You can get a vegetarian pasta dish for $13, or meat pasta for $15. They also have a Prix Fixe dinner for $26.95.
http://bluejacket7.com/pix/lallegria.png
Children of sperm donors currently do not have the right to learn about their biological fathers like adopted children do, and there's a push to give them that right. Donor Children (http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/25/donor-conceived-and-out-of-the-closet.html)
There is research on psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, most of it drawing conclusions flattering to liberals and unflattering to conservatives. By amazing coincidence, most of the researchers drawing these conclusions are liberals. Political Psychology (http://scienceline.org/2011/03/political-%E2%80%94-or-politicized-%E2%80%94-psychology-2/)
One thing I wonder about: here in NYC, it seems 90% of the people are liberals. In Texas I would expect 90% to be conservatives by our standards. So that suggests that perhaps 80% of the people develop politics ambient to their environment, regardless of their personal psychology.
Furthermore, there are probably a certain percentage of contrarians who will tend to be conservatives in NYC and liberals in Texas, depending upon where they land.
In the past, psychologists have been focusing on making mentally ill people sane -- getting people from negative to zero. Now, some psychologists are investigating what causes people to be happy, exploring the positive range. Science of Happiness (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1015902,00.html)
One thing that I wonder about happiness is, is it always a desirable goal? One skill that helps people to be happy is the ability to forget the bad things you've done, and rationalize that you've been a saint the whole time. If that's what happiness requires, should we want happiness?