Feeling Blue? Find Happiness in Charity

Recent research suggests that money can indeed buy happiness – as long as it is spent on someone other than oneself. A study by a team University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found that spending as little as $5 on someone else can mean real gains in happiness for a given day.

Over 600 U.S. volunteers were asked their annual income and spending habits, including monthly bills, gifts, purchases they make for themselves, and charity. They were also asked their general level of happiness.

Then they were given $5 or $20 with specific instructions on how to spend it. Participants were told whether to spend the money on themselves or on someone else. The volunteers who spent the money on someone else reported feeling happier, even when they had felt they would be happiest spending the cash on themselves.

This study may also explain why U.S. citizens are no happier, even though Americans are richer than in years past. Despite drastic increases in earned income, charitable donations have remained flat over time.

Due to recent economic events, now is the time when many more citizens are in need of a helping hand. On the same coin, rocky financial times have actually led to a drop in charitable donations. From food shelves to homeless shelters, charities are strapped for cash and supplies.

There are communities that are fighting back, however. Though money is tight in many households these days, now is not the time to close up your wallet to charity. Whether it is a few cans of food donated to your local area food shelf or $5 given to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, every little bit counts. Small amounts given here and there will brighten the lives of both the giver and the receiver.

Oldest Known Audio Recording Discovered

U.S. audio historians have discovered the oldest-known audio recording, created by a French inventor named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 - 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Up until now, the oldest recorded sound still in existence has been from 1888. This predates it by 28 years.

The recording, which lasts a mere 10 second, is of a person singing a line of the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.” It was created by an invention called the phonautograph. The device scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper which had been previously blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp. The phonautograph was incapable of playing the sound back, however. It was Edison’s breakthrough invention of the phonograph on August 12, 1877, that changed the course of history.

Before people thought of recording sound and playing it back, many inventors such as Edison, Scott, even Alexander Graham Bell, were trying to create a visual representation of sound. When Scott’s scratchings were made, it was so he could visually study what sound “looked” like. The recording at the time of its creation was never intended to be played.

Earlier this month, experts made very high-resolution digital scans of the paper. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California then converted these scans into sound. The result is a ghostly sounding recording of a human voice singing "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit" ("By the light of the moon, Pierrot replied").

The link to the recording in the Reuters article is broken. Here is a link to the correct page.

This article can also be found at The Bloggernews Network.

Friday IQN Post

Every Friday, I will have at least one thing to post. That is the day of the week my iQualifyNow.com article is published! This one was supposed to be published last week, but they held it over.

This week's article is about vacation planning! In this unsteady economy, some people may be cutting their vacations short or not taking them at all. This article is about planning financially for your vacation. There is an emphasis on budgeting, planning, and most of all, ensuring that you don't put your trip on credit. You don't want to be worrying about money while you're supposed to be having the time of your life!

Vacations Require Financial Planning: Do Your Homework!

Political Scandals Weigh Down Progress

I got real sick of the Gov. Elliot Spitzer controversy. But at least the good news with that, is once the scandal hit, it was like a week before the guy stepped down. Coverage has tapered off considerably since then. Now the conversation in New York seems to be more about new Gov. David Paterson's infidelities and indiscretions, though in a far less feverish manner since he was up front about it.

I wish Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would just step down already. The Motor City has enough problems, the fact that this story blocks out all other news in Michigan isn't really helping. I think that everyday I hear 2-3 stories about him, and I live in Minnesota. People in Michigan must just be bombarded with this stuff.

Sticking around isn't going to help him and it certainly isn't going to help the city. Simply having a new mayor in office, without legal problems, could help Detroit move forward instead of wallowing in a leadership scandal that has already been dragging on for months. Of course, it seems that finding a government figure, state or federal, that actually puts their constituents first is rare indeed.

Happy Belated Bloggy Birthday!

I just noticed that this blog is just over a year old. March 17th, 2007 was the first post I made to Sense & Serendipity. Including this entry that I'm writing now, I have 22 posts. 3 of which were written yesterday. Over half of them were written during 3 months of this year. I think its time for me to really get this thing going!

Happy Birthday, Sense & Serendipity. Sorry I've been ignoring you. I promise to do better!

Recent Financial Articles

I still write for iQualifyNow.com too, which has taken up some time and brainpower. An article that exposes 10 every day fees that you can avoid or reduce was enlightening. There is a more recent article than this one for rcollege bound students researching what school to go to, but it hasn't been published on-line yet. As soon as it is, I will post a link to that one too. Its about financially planning for your fiscally responsible vacation!

Shirking My Blog

Wow. It has been longer than I thought since I contributed a post. After I finally took a look and saw that, I had to enter something.

Really, I've been working on... Well, Work. But its been blogging! The Realtors I write for finally got their blog off of the ground. I've been helping them try to fill it with content in order for it to go up in the ranking. My synapses are a little fried after spending so much time working on single-minded posting, I haven't had the energy to write for myself. I do have some ideas in the works though, now that people are finally starting to find the Realtor blog. FYI: On that page, I write as "Matt Barker."

So... Hopefully there will be some intelligent and thoughtful posts published here next week.