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Food on airlines

Food on airlines is about what you would expect, considering that all the food must be prepared ahead of time and served to a large number of people with very different taste preferences. It is amazing that the food is as good as it is, but still, it frequently will not please you.

U.S. carriers are pretty good about accommodating standard dietary preferences, but you have to help them out. If you are vegetarian or keep kosher, tell your travel agent when you purchase the ticket, and the airlines will usually accommodate you.

If you have food allergies, you are probably safest bringing your own food with you. (In fact, even if you eat anything, you are probably better off bringing your own food with you!) Be advised that many countries have import restrictions on foods; If you bring food, be sure that you either finish it all on the plane or make sure that it will clear customs.

Morley Selver suggests never getting on an airplane hungry. You might think you will get a meal shortly, but the following could happen:

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1) Everyone boards the aircraft, then they decide they have to fix something. They are not sure how long it will take, therefore nobody is allowed off.

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2) You take off on a 3 hour flight that has 2-1/2 hrs of turbulence where the flight crew is not allowed to serve meals.

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3) You do not like the food.

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4) There is an electrical problem with the galley and your half of the plane does not get a meal. The best bet is to eat before you get on or take something you can snack on (e.g. a granola bar). If you take two, you may be able to sell one for $10.00. :-)

Witches

Witchcraft was not made a capital offence in Britain until 1563 although it was deemed heresy and was denounced as such by Pope Innocent III in 1484. from 1484 until around 1750 some 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt or hanged in Western Europe.

Most supposed witches were usually old women, and invariably poor. Any who were unfortunate enough to be 'crone-like', snaggle-toothed, sunken cheeked and having a hairy lip were assumed to possess the 'Evil Eye' ! If they also had a cat this was taken a proof, as witches always had a 'familiar', the cat being the most common.

Many unfortunate women were condemned on this sort of evidence and hanged after undergoing appalling torture. The 'pilnie-winks' (thumb screws) and iron 'caspie-claws' (a form of leg irons heated over a brazier) usually got a confession from the supposed witch.

Witch fever gripped East Anglia for 14 terrible months between 1645 - 1646. The people of these eastern counties were solidly Puritan and rabid anti-Catholics and easily swayed by bigoted preachers whose mission was to seek out the slightest whiff of heresy. A man called Matthew Hopkins, an unsuccessful lawyer, came to help (!) He became known as the 'Witchfinder General' . He had 68 people put to death in Bury St. Edmunds alone, and 19 hanged at Chelmsford in a single day. After Chelmsford he set off for Norfolk and Suffolk. Aldeburgh paid him £6 for clearing the town of witches, Kings Lynn £15 and a grateful Stowmarket £23. This was at a time when the daily wage was 2.5p.

A heart carved on a wall in the market place at Kings Lynn is supposed to mark the spot where the heart of Margaret Read, a condemned witch who was being burnt at the stake, leapt from the flames and struck the wall.

Much of Matthew Hopkins theories of deduction were based on Devils Marks. A wart or mole or even a flea-bite he took to be a Devils Mark and he used his 'jabbing needle' to see if these marks were insensitive to pain. His 'needle' was a 3 inch long spike which retracted into the spring-loaded handle so the unfortunate woman never felt any pain.

There were other tests for witches. Mary Sutton of Bedford was put to the swimming test. With her thumbs tied to opposite big toes she was flung into the river. If she floated she was guilty, if she sank, innocent. Poor Mary floated!

A last reminder of Hopkins' reign of terror was discovered in St. Osyth in 1921. Two female skeletons were found in a garden, pinned into unmarked graves and with iron rivets driven through their joints. This was to make sure a witch could not return from the grave. Hopkins was responsible for over 300 executions.

Mother Shipton is remembered still in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. Although called a witch, she is more famous for her predictions about the future. She apparently foresaw cars, trains, planes and the telegraph. Her cave and the Dripping Well , where objects hung under the dripping water become like stone, are a popular site to visit today in Knaresborough.

In August 1612, the Pendle Witches, three generations of one family, were marched through the crowded streets of Lancaster and hanged.

Though many of the Acts against witchcraft were repealed in 1736, witch hunting still went on.

In 1863, an alleged male witch was drowned in a pond in Headingham, Essex and in 1945 the body of an elderly farm labourer was found near the village of Meon Hill in Warwickshire. His throat had been cut and his corpse was pinned to the earth with a pitchfork. The murder remains unsolved, however the man was reputed, locally, to be a wizard.

It seems that belief in witchcraft has not entirely died out.

http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/witches.htm

The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them

"It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it."

Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook

Psychologists have recently handed the keys to happiness to the public, but many people cling to gloomy ways out of habit, experts say.

Polls show Americans are no happier today than they were 50 years ago despite significant increases in prosperity, decreases in crime, cleaner air, larger living quarters and a better overall quality of life.

So what gives?

Happiness is 50 percent genetic, says University of Minnesota researcher David Lykken. What you do with the other half of the challenge depends largely on determination, psychologists agree. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."

What works, and what doesn't

Happiness does not come via prescription drugs, although 10 percent of women 18 and older and 4 percent of men take antidepressants, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Anti-depressants benefit those with mental illness but are no happiness guarantee, researchers say.

Be Happy

University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman offers questionnaires for assessing your happiness, beating depression and developing insights into how to be happier on his web site.
Nor will money or prosperity buy happiness for many of us. Money that lifts people out of poverty increases happiness, but after that, the better paychecks stop paying off sense-of-well-being dividends, research shows.

One route to more happiness is called "flow," an engrossing state that comes during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling. It comes less from what you're doing than from how you do it.

Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California at Riverside has discovered that the road toward a more satisfying and meaningful life involves a recipe repeated in schools, churches and synagogues. Make lists of things for which you're grateful in your life, practice random acts of kindness, forgive your enemies, notice life's small pleasures, take care of your health, practice positive thinking, and invest time and energy into friendships and family.

The happiest people have strong friendships, says Ed Diener, a psychologist University of Illinois. Interestingly his research finds that most people are slightly to moderately happy, not unhappy.

On your own

Some Americans are reluctant to make these changes and remain unmotivated even though our freedom to pursue happiness is written into the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
Don't count on the government, for now, Easterbrook says.

Our economy lacks the robustness to sustain policy changes that would bring about more happiness, like reorienting cities to minimize commute times.

The onus is on us.

"There are selfish reasons to behave in altruistic ways," says Gregg Easterbrook, author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" (Random House, 2004).
"Research shows that people who are grateful, optimistic and forgiving have better experiences with their lives, more happiness, fewer strokes, and higher incomes," according to Easterbrook. "If it makes world a better place at same time, this is a real bonus."

Diener has collected specific details on this. People who positively evaluate their well-being on average have stronger immune systems, are better citizens at work, earn more income, have better marriages, are more sociable, and cope better with difficulties.

Unhappy by default

Lethargy holds many people back from doing the things that lead to happiness.
Easterbrook, also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute, goes back to Freud, who theorized that unhappiness is a default condition because it takes less effort to be unhappy than to be happy.

"If you are looking for something to complain about, you are absolutely certain to find it," Easterbrook told LiveScience. "It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it. Most people take the path of least resistance. Far too many people today don't make the steps to make their life more fulfilling one."

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By Robin Lloyd, Special to LiveScience