The lead article in today’s USA Today is on happiness. It claims that psychologists (Seligman, et al) are coming to the conclusion that human beings are happy when in a family, with friends, and are forgiving. This is a view that represents the bugeoning "positive psychology" movement, a view that emphasizes people’s strengths and talents instead of their weaknesses. Even though all this seems common sense-like, and in some ways unremarkable, it ought to be encouraged. Will it be possible to come to all the right conclusions through so-called modern scientific methods? We can only hope. There was one interesting sentence (not elaborated upon) in the article: "A person’s cheer level is about half genetic, scientists say." I also note, in passing that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who’s at Claremont now) concept of "flow" is mentioned favorably in this context of "positive psychology." My only comment on that is: wouldn’t it be ironic if a Hungarian understood happiness better than anyone? Have you ever read the Hungarian national anthem? Pretty depressing.