Hey all,

I stumbled on this and thought it might be of interest:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/amislove/twittermood/
See in particular the time lapse video partway down the page. The project here extracts mood information from twitter posts across the US and maps them as they change throughout the day. "The early morning and late evening having the highest level of happy tweets."

More generally, one might consider how much happiness is a function of where we live. The set-point theory of happiness says our happiness levels should adjust to our set-point after being in some location for a while, but that theory might not be fully accurate. In my own experience I have reason to doubt the theory. For example I'm really looking forward to moving from rural/small town State College back to a vibrant city - but also lots of people really like State College. So I'm curious what y'all think about this.

It's obviously not strictly true, otherwise you'd expect all nations to score equally on happiness survey scales - it's easy to find surveys showing they don't: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_h ... piness-net

Iceland! Wow, didn't expect that one. Arepo, you've visited there, did all of the people you met seem very happy? I've only heard stories of living there with non-stop days in june and 20 hours of darkness in December could make people a bit...errrr....extreme sometimes.

I didn't really get to talk much to the natives, since I was staying in a hostel and doing mostly organised activities. Keep in mind also that that survey was put together before the financial crash, which hit Iceland worse than almost any other developed country, so the picture might look quite different now.

It's not that surprising, though. They have a lot of things going for them - beautiful scenery in easy access, low population density, developed world technology, a very strong (pre-crash) economy, very cheap and clean geothermal energy and (for the same reason) an endless supply of free hot water. Also, they're relatively warm for a Scandinavian country, since they're hit dead on by the gulf-stream.

Arepo wrote: . . . Keep in mind also that that survey was put together before the financial crash, which hit Iceland worse than almost any other developed country, so the picture might look quite different now. . .

Yeah, we often forget that part. Meaningful work, being appreciated for who you are and what you do, etc, are very important.