World Happiness Report 2018

The annual World Happiness Report is out again and March 20th is the International Day of Happiness. The report measures six key variables supporting well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity. I first saw this in the news in 2016 and wrote about it then. It's interesting to see how the rankings change for the countries I've lived in and will live in next.

The top 10 is dominated by Nordic countries. Sweden is #9 and about the same as the previous 2 years I've looked at this since I lived there. The U.S. slipped from #13 to #14 last year and slid further to #18 this year. It's not a good trend so we definitely need to work on those key variables contributing to everyone's well-being instead of mostly benefiting the rich and well-connected. We could learn a few things from the countries above us on the list. That's assuming happiness is a shared goal in American society and the metrics for this report are the right ones. Wasn't there something about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at one time in our history? It's worth looking at more deeply.

Top 20

1 - Finland, 2 - Norway, 3 - Denmark, 4 - Iceland, 5 - Switzerland

6 - Netherlands, 7 - Canada, 8 - New Zealand, 9 - Sweden, 10 - Australia

11 - Israel, 12 - Austria, 13 - Costa Rica, 14 - Ireland, 15 - Germany

16 - Belgium, 17 - Luxembourg, 18 - U.S., 19 - U.K., 20 - United Arab Emirates

Caracas Museums

We took a tour of some local museums we haven't seen before. We started with a look around the architecture of Teatro Teresa Carreño but we couldn't see inside the theater since they were setting it up for something. We stopped in the natural science museum (Museo de Ciencias Naturales) with a lot of stuffed animals. We spent some good time in the fine arts museum (Museo de Bellas Artes). All of these buildings are in an arts district together near Parque Los Caobos. The day ended with the national art gallery (Galería de Arte Nacional).

Caracas Architecture Tour

We went on a little tour in Caracas to see two completely different eras of architecture. First was the colonial era Quinta de Anauco built in 1797. Second was Villa Planchart or El Cerrito built in the 1950s. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures inside that one but it's high on a hill with outstanding views so I got pictures of that and the exterior. The house itself was a 1950s artistic cool inside. You can see a few pictures of that at the link above.