Canada among the happiest countries in the world – The Globe and Mail

Canada is the fifth-happiest country in the world, according to a global study on the social and economic well-being of nations.It finds the world has, broadly speaking, become a “little happier” in the past three decades, as living standards have risen. One exception is the United States, where life satisfaction has not improved.

The happiest countries are all in Northern Europe – Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands. The least happy countries are all poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa – Togo, Benin, Central African Republic and Sierra Leone.

But wealth alone doesn’t make people happy. Rather, the first-ever World Happiness Report finds other key factors at play, too: political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption are “together more important than income in explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries.”

At the individual level, “good mental and physical health, someone to count on, job security and stable families are crucial,” said the 155-page paper, co-edited by University of British Columbia economics professor John Helliwell.

via Canada among the happiest countries in the world – The Globe and Mail.

Strange Random Happiness Quote:

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire

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French Pop part 2

Cover of Guillaume Apollinaire

Following on from the article about the new French radio station in London, here are a couple of the modern artists they recommend (although they do sing in English and sometimes not at all…), namely Phoenix and Air.

Strange Random France Quote:

“Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them and they flew.”  - Guillaume Apollinaire (French Poet and Critic who helped to direct poetry into unexplored channels, 1880-1918)

Related articles

• French melody (bbc.co.uk)
• UK’s French expats to get local radio station (newstatesman.com)
• William Stafford, Rimbaud & the Poet as an Embarrassed Young Man (seapoetry.wordpress.com)
• VIDEO: Daft Punk joins Phoenix on stage, seems totally pointless/lame (hipsterrunoff.com)
• French Fear ‘Brain Drain’ to the U.S. (nytimes.com)
• Supermarket French, Chanson French, and Lyrical Arabic (theworld.org)