Random Fact of the Day - Red Alert!

I think I might add a new feature to my blog: The Random Fact of the Day segment. Today's random fact is the origin of the term "red alert." Have you ever thought about why it is 'red' alert instead of 'yellow' alert or 'black' alert? It is because of the wavelength of the color of light. If you are an amateur astronomer or have ever taken an astronomy lab class, then you know that when you are outside at night observing stars and need to illuminate a piece of paper, you use a red light. The cells in your eye that pick up red light are extremely insensitive to light. What that means is that your pupils do not dilate as much with red light as they do with other colors of light. When a ship goes to red alert the lights change to red to allow the crew's eyes to adapt to dark conditions and prepare for if the power is lost and all the lights go out.

I'm Sick!!!

I must have picked up something from the guy who sits in the cubicle behind me at work because he was sick last week and tried to be a trooper by not calling in sick. If there is anyone reading this right now who tries to be a trooper or has something to proove by not calling in sick when you are actually sick, please take my advice...CALL IN SICK! For the sake of the rest of us who are trying not to get sick, please call in sick.
My main point/question is why are men such babies when they are sick? I say that not in judgment, but in a sense of fraternity because I might be the worst perpetrator of this. When I get sick, I turn into such a baby. I think to myself that if the world only knew what I was going through, then people would have compassion and sympathy for me. But no one could possibly know how bad this cold is because no one has ever had a cold this bad...ever! Even the people who suffered during the Plague could not truly sympathize with me because their malady was not even this bad. So, I inevitably wallow in self-pitty thinking that no one will ever understand.
To any men reading this, do you get like this when you get sick? Before you answer, I challenge you to ask your wife, girlfriend, parent or anyone who knows you well enough to have seen you sick.

The Science of Happiness

I have been hearing a lot of buzz recently about the science of happiness. There have been several studies done in the past 2-3 years which have sought a scientific explanation for human happiness so it can be reproduced to make everyone happy. In January 2007, for example, there was a three-day Positive Psychology Summit which was an academic summit attended by 425 people (mostly scientists) trying to get to the bottom of happiness. This summit was part of an organization called the Gallup Institute for Well-Being. In 2005, Time Magazine did a full-spread article on the topic. This isn't only an American phenomenon, either. The BBC ran a 6-part miniseries on the science of happiness in April-May 2006. It seems as if the secular world is trying to find happiness just as much as we are in the Christian world. God has been replaced by neurons and synapses to try to find a way to make us happy.
I heard an interesting report on KPCC today, though. Eric Wilson, the author of "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy", took a new approach. He argues that depression and sadness is where the human race experiences most of its creativity. If some of the most important artists in history - van Gogh, Picasso, Alexander Hamilton, Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo, Marilyn Monroe (this list could go on for a very long time) - were alive today, they would be diagnosed with clinical depression and might be heavily medicated. And (follow Wilson's argument here) if they were heavily medicated, they probably would not have produced the works/art that they did and the world would be a much different and gloomier place. Wilson argues that if we pursued a scientific method to discover the source of happiness so we would always be happy, then the human race would not have the artisitc output that it does. In modern society, heavily medicating sadness, we are stifling the artistic potential of the human race.
What do you think? Are we supposed to be happy and should we try to not be sad if we can find a way to be happy? Is sadness a bad feeling?