Pumpkin Pie, Linux, and Happiness
Last night I made two pumpkin pies from scratch. I took a frakin’ pumpkin and cooked it, then I pureed it, drained it in cheesecloth, mixed it with buttloads of sugar and cream and spices, and poured the mixture into two pie shells that I’d made out of flour and butter and stuff. Then I cooked them! And they turned out really well! I’ve literally never made a pie before, but now I’m a convert. Plus, Jesse and Chris and I managed to eat a quarter of one of the pies last night so I have a bit of a sugar hangover.
Over the past couple of weeks, when I haven’t been on deadline, I’ve been thinking about the spectre of a possible Microsoft Linux distribution. After the MSFT-Novell deal, anything could happen. Read more about that.
I’ve also been pondering the nature of happiness, from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. Possibly that’s because I’ve recently read economist Richard Layard’s book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, and philosopher Joel Kupperman’s Six Myths About the Good Life. I can’t say I would recommend the Layard, because his sole insight (that money doesn’t make us happy) is followed by a lot of misguided public policy wanking. Kupperman’s book, however, is satisfyingly spiky: he refuses to accept conventional wisdom about what makes us happy (in fact, he argues that some kinds of happiness are simply bad). And his references jump pleasingly from Western philosophy to Buddhism to pop culture and back. Also, in the course of my reading these books and some essays on the topic, I discovered that I’m apparently quite happy by most definitions. Read more about the science and ethics of happiness.
