A psychologist at the University of Leicester has published the results of a study showing the happiest countries in the world.

Canada comes in at #10. Costa Rica (my wife’s home country) is #13 (which makes the two of us average at about Ireland). The US places a respectable #23 (out of 178). 6 of the top 9 are all Scandinavian/Germanic countries (which are the usual suspects in studies like this one). The other 3 in the top 9 are the Bahamas, and (perhaps surprisingly) Bhutan and Brunei. Also surprising is that the really big names in Europe and Asia all do quite poorly, from Germany at 35 to Russia at 167. Considering the amount of wealth and/or power these countries have, I think it’s telling that they’re not performing better.

I should make one thing clear: in my opinion at least, these are really the only results that matter. Everything else we talk about (economics, politics, health, etc) is a means to the end of personal happiness.

(Via Guy Kawasaki).

Laura and I are watching To Serve and Protect, the Canadian version of COPS. When compared against its southern counterpart, it’s comically dull. There’s no wrestling, tasering, or footchases. It’s basically just cops (in mustaches) picking up drunks and pot smokers. And everyone (the busted and the busters) is polite with each other.

I lived and worked in the US for almost 8 years. I met quite a few people, and got to know some of them well. I’ve encountered many more on the Internet, especially on places like SlashDot. I was there both before and after September 11, 2001 and saw the changes. Most of the people I got to know to any reasonable degree were of the same background/ class/ economic strata/ educational level… mostly college-educated techies. I knew a few that were departures from that community.

I’ve already written a bit about “Americans”. As with everything else on my blog, what I write is my opinion, based on my experiences. I can write about Americans in the plural sense and not worry about necessarily painting my friends with the same brush. I know the difference between the aggregate traits of a group and the individuals within the group.

There are differences in Canadians and Americans; I think the differences are apparent and interesting because at the core they are very much the same (thus the differences are accentuated). I’ll be writing about that more in the future, I’m sure.

Oh yeah… and on my blog at least, “Americans” refers to citizens of the United States of America… as opposed to residents of the Americas. My wife, a Costa Rican (ie: a “Central American”) loves to debate that distinction.

When it comes to socialism vs. capitalism in economic discussion, there’s lots of evidence and good arguments for both sides of the debate. That’s a topic I’m interested in.

But when it comes to authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, I think the issues are much more cut-and-dried: authoritarianism is pretty much always a bad thing for everyone but the authority.

From Venezuelan Congress grants Chavez power to enact by decree:

“Viva President Hugo Chavez, long live socialism!” National Assembly President Cilia Flores said as she proclaimed the law approved.

Note that they’re (intentionally) confusing Chavez’s socialist economic strategy (which I think is a legitimate strategy to hold, even if it’s ultimately wrong) with his authoritarian grab for more power. That sort of thing happens all the time, and it often works.

The key to understanding politics is that it isn’t a one-dimensional spectrum; there’s more to the world than Left-versus-Right. (Incidentally, that is absolutely not understood by most Americans, and that’s something that enabled the current Republicans to masquerade as conservatives. By most measures, they’re not.) One of the more useful divisions I’ve seen (and adopted) is to split political ideology into social and economic axes: that is, the role of authority (versus individual liberty) and the means of a creating a successful economy (free-market versus central planning).

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out The Political Compass and take their test see where you land on the social and economic scales. Here’s my most recent one; it actually comes out more socialist than my previous tests (but still mostly center). I’m

On the same page as the test results is a chart showing various leaders/famous people and how they’d score if they took the test (based on their public statements):

Note how almost of the “big-name” leaders score high on the authoritarian side. That is, of course, no accident: if you’re the authority, you’re probably more likely to think that authoritarianism (ie: Do-As-I-Tell-You-To) is a good way to do things. And, if left to their own devices, someone given authority will tend to exert it in order to keep it/gain more. That is exactly why authoritarianism needs to be kept in check; it’s self perpetuating, and it’s only beneficial to those who have it.

Seven months ago, Laura and I sold our house in one of the hottest housing markets in the United States and began looking to buy a house in one of the hottest housing markets in Canada. Real estate weighs heavily in our minds.

Housing prices in Calgary have climbed by a lot, especially in 2006. As people like to do, they often talked around the campfire about how prices were “overblown”, “unsustainable”, “ridiculous” etc. The news sources did a lot of that too.

Today, the Calgary Contrarian (a really good local real estage blog) had a link to this Calgary Hearlad article regarding the “third annual international survey of housing affordability.” The headline and the first 2/3 of the article had few surprises: Calgary is very unaffordable (ie: high housing prices relative to average incomes) and comparable to Toronto, Vancouver/Victoria are still way worse.

That’s not news to anybody. The real interesting part is here:

The survey says that in Canada on average citizens require only 3.2 years of annual income to purchase a home, the best record in the survey. Also surveyed were Australia, Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.

Of the 159 major urban markets in six countries, 42 are affordable, 36 moderately unaffordable, 22 seriously unaffordable and 59 severely unaffordable. All the affordable markets are in North America with 35 in the United States and seven in Canada

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the increase in real estate prices is a very global phenomenon. It’s not just Calgary that has seen housing prices rise; we’ve been watching Edmonton, Red Deer, and Saskatoon too and they’ve all grown dramatically. Florida wasn’t alone in it’s increase; the whole country jumped and there were plenty of other hotspots. Britain, France, Australia, Russia and many others have had similar increases. Even Costa Rican prices have inflated. It’s everywhere.

The practical effect of this is that it doesn’t matter much where you want to live… you’ll probably be paying more than you would have five years ago. You may be able to pay less by living somewhere else, but everywhere I’ve looked at, the housing prices are quite directly correlated by the desire we have to live there (proof positive: Regina is the “most affordable” city in the study. For those unfamiliar with the city: it’s generally regarded as a craphole).

So, we’ve decided to bite the bullet and pay the high Calgary prices… and be happy about it.

Flickr is a fun site. Not only do you get to host your photos, but it also tells you how popular they are by several standards. One of those standards is the number of page hits.

Laura and I were living in Florida when Hurricane Katrina passed through in 2005. At that point it was only a medium-size Category 1 (ie: relatively weak) hurricane. Some friends lost their power for several days, but we were pretty much unscathed. After it passed over Florida, Katrina proceeded to move into the Gulf of Mexico and wipe out New Orleans.

For something to do, I took some pictures of the hurricane aftermath. In our area, that mostly amounted to blown leaves and some tree branches. I took some pictures of our pool, which had lots of crap floating in it. None of it was particularly interesting. (A few months later, Hurricane Wilma would hit our area a lot harder, and I got some much more interesting photos of that.

One of the boring pictures of my dirty pool became my most-viewed picture ever — due exclusively to people looking for photos tagged “katrina”. That’s pretty disheartening for a budding photographer.

Later on, as we moved to Calgary, my photography skills improved, and I discovered Autostitch, I took this picture of Lake Louise:

It’s also been quite popular on my Flickr page. As of this posting, it’s received 71 hits, while the dirty Katrina pool has received 82.

The Lake Louise picture is, I think, much more deserving of the top spot. So, in the hopes of scoring some additional hits for it, I’m posting it to my blog.

I haven’t linked at all to the pool picture; that would, of course, defeat the purpose of this post. If you really want to see it, you’ll have to go digging.

I got in late last night without incident.

By the way, everyone needs to go and see Pushing Tin if they haven’t already.

I’ve discovered that, much like a one-night-stand, Omaha only looks pretty in the dark and only from certain angles.

I didn’t venture to far from my hotel (which is in the aptly-named “Old Market District”), but what I saw wasn’t impressive. Everything is brick, somewhat grungy, and crumbling. The seasonal dirty slush, bare trees, and gray clouds didn’t help much.

I’ve also discovered that the camera on my PDA is really, really crappy… so bad that it’s almost not worth bothering with.

If you would like to see the rest of my pictures, check out my set on Flickr.

I’m in Omaha, Nebraska for a business meeting. This is the first time I’ve traveled for business since I went to JavaOne in San Francisco in 2000.

Getting across the border was uneventful; they didn’t ask me any real questions. The flight was comfortable enough. I flew United this time. One of their armrest-audio channels is the aircraft’s radio; you can listen in to all the air traffic controller chatter. That was pretty neat; Ted would probably freak listening to it.

Omaha (from what I’ve seen at least) is surprisingly pretty, at least at night. There’s tall well lit buildings and a cool-looking stadium called Qwest Center. It contrasts a lot of Denver (all I saw was the massive airport on a huge flat plain; farther out I could see a mass of suburbia). I didn’t bring my cool camera but I have one on my PDA so I’ll try and take some shots tomorrow

In eight years of living & working in the US, I never got a Martin Luther King Day off from work (which would have meant a long weekend right around my birthday). Now that I’m in Canada, it seems I never will.