Consider this bit of startling finding: once people have an annual income of about $10,000 per capita, more money doesn't go far in making them happy. (We're talking about worldwide per capita income, not US).

Indeed, a growing number of economists are realizing that consumption is not equal to happiness. So they're asking: what makes people happy?

What is different is that these economists are revisiting old assumptions and asking new questions. They’re not taking the neoclassical model of rational economic man for truth. They have been willing to learn from their colleagues in psychology. They have given up on the old assumption that the more you consume, the better off you are; instead, they are actually looking at the question empirically. Most importantly, they are bravely asking, “What factors make people happy?” It’s another sign of the coming revolution in economics.

Consider this: once people have an annual income of about $10,000 per capita, further income does little to promote happiness. Worse yet, economic growth in most industrial nations, which has tripled or quadrupled our wealth since 1970, hasn’t made us noticeably happier. In some countries, despite all this vast increase in wealth and consumption, folks are less happy than they were a generation ago.

Here's an interesting article by Tom Green of Adbusters: Link

Marc Schiller of Wooster Collective, one of my favorite street art blogs, posted this photo of a pay phone on the streets of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Now that's vandalism at its best, folks! Link

In their art exhibition titled It's always six o'clock, artists Eva and Franco Mattes of 0100101110101101.org took some familiar cartoon charactes and subverted them just so ... all in the name of art: Link - via Who Killed Bambi?

This unassuming set of Toto Bar boxes by Isay Weinfeld unfolded to reveal cleverly designed storage spaces for an evening's cocktail party. It stores everything you need from liquors to glasswares! Link - via MoCo Loco

Do you ever kick your lawnmower in frustration when it won't start? Well, Keith Walendowski took it a step further when he got pissed at his lawnmower ... the inebriated 57-year-old man took a shotgun and shot it!

“I’ll tell you the truth,” a criminal complaint quotes an apparently inebriated Keith Walendowski. “I got pissed because my lawn mower wouldn’t start, so I got my shotgun and shot it.

“I can do that. It’s my lawn mower and my yard, so I can shoot it if I want,” Walendowski told police.

Shooting your lawnmower, unfortunately, voids the factory warranty: Link

Ever wonder why tigers grow up to be such fierce hunters? You would too if you're constantly badgered by the prank monkey when you're growing up!

This is easily the funniest monkey video you'll see today: Link [embedded Flash video at I-Am-Bored]

You'll never count sheep again to sleep after you see this nightmarish (yet fascinating) drawing, titled The Way of the Sheep, by German art student Markus Neidel.

Link [Flash]

(Yes, it's like the horror version of Zoomquilt)

You thought that it could only happen in the movies, but James Wakefield had a plan to win back his girlfriend's love: have a friend kidnap her, so he could be a hero and rescue her!

And as if that's not strange enough, there's the bit about a Dalek voice-changer helmet:

[James Wakefield] offered his friend Aaron Rawson £20,000 to take the woman to a wood and threaten to attack her, while wearing the helmet to disguise his voice.

Wakefield, 28, would then turn up and "save" her in the hope of winning her back, the court heard.

Rawson, 21, claimed he thought Wakefield was joking until he turned up with the £40 helmet he had bought at Woolworths, along with night vision goggles, handcuffs, an air pistol, a balaclava, a boiler suit and a knife block.

Find out how a cat foiled the brilliant plan: Link

Swimmer Marc Lewis of La Jolla, California, did something that no one had done before: he was the first to swim from Santa Rosa Island to the beach of Goleta (a 30-mile swim):

Lewis completed the swim in 15 hours, 47 minutes. Averaging 56 strokes per minute, he swam approximately 53,032 strokes.

“Maybe that's why my left shoulder hurts,” he joked. [...]

Swimming in the dark, guided by a boat's dim lights and glow sticks on the kayak, is not Lewis' favorite part of a marathon.

“It's disorienting,” he said. “You don't have the landmarks you have during the day.”

The lowest point came at 20 miles, realizing he still had 10 miles to go. As motivation, he methodically went through a list of all the people who helped him get to this point, everyone on the boat, the kayakers, support swimmers, members of the La Jolla Cove Swim Cove.

“I remember thinking short-run, long-run,” Lewis said. “In the short run, the pain, the exhaustion is temporary. I can do anything for another seven hours. But I've gotta live with getting out of the water possibly for the rest of my life.”

Don Norcross of the San Diego Union-Tribune has the story: Link

(Photo: Scott Linnett/Union-Tribune)

By the way, the record for the longest open ocean swim (without flippers) was set by Australian Susie Maroney, who swam 122 miles (197 km) from Mexico to Cuba. She completed the marathon swim in 38 hours and 33 minutes in 1998.

Homer Simpsons got the Spider Pig, but Feng Changlin of Fengzhang village in rural China got something even better: a Monkey Pig!

"It's hideous. No one will be willing to buy it, and it scares the family to even look at it!" Feng told Oriental Today.

He says the piglet looks just like a monkey, with two thin lips, a small nose and two big eyes. Its rear legs are also much longer than its forelegs, causing it to jump instead of walk.

Link

How does one explain teh InterWeb to children? Kevin Fanning and Kean Soo of Jellaby have boiled down everything we know about the Net into a series of nursery rhymes for kids, with great illustrations:

Do not stop to think or edit:
You must be the first who said it.

You heard a brand-new band? What luck!
You’ll be the first to say they suck.

In order to increase renown,
add “bacon” to most any noun.

It’s not your job to right a wrong,
just mark it FAIL and move along.

Rather than felicitations,
send your friend an application.

To be an expert’s no great tax:
Write common sense and call it “hacks.”

Your friends won’t like it, on the real,
but you must Flickr every meal.

In disagreements, all your readers
must be branded Nazi leaders.

It doesn’t matter what you say,
just publish it twelve times per day.

The illustrations are TEH AWSOME! Check it out at The Morning News TMNGalleries: Link - via The Presurfer

Sixty-two-year-old Italian scuba diver has just set a new world record in ... underwater cycling!

Nine minutes later he reached the 65m mark. ''It was tough because I ran into more mud than I expected,'' he said. ''I had to click up a gear to make pedalling easier''.

Apart from raising money for cancer research, Innocente is on a self-appointed mission to prove that mountain bikes can go anywhere.

He has already cycled over glaciers, deserts and mountains from Alaska to Kenya. Then, about seven years ago, he decided to continue the mission by uniting his two passions - scuba-diving and cycling.

Since then Innocente has been honing his technique and gradually pushing up the record for undersea cycling.

Needless to say, he dominates the sport.

To make sure he stays on the seabed his bike is weighed down with about 35 kilos of ballast and its tyres are pumped up with water instead of air. The 'Nautilus' also has fins and spoilers to help him drive it through the water.

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-07-23_123234635.html

MINSK, BELARUS: Twin brothers Michael and Vladimir Iariga, 16 years old.
Michael, with hydrocephalus, is 5 minutes older than Vladimir, who is deaf. (Photo: Robert Knoth)

The Chernobyl disaster may seem like a distant memory to you and me, but more than twenty years later, the after effects of the nuclear disaster are still felt by many people.

In their book, Nuclear Nightmares: Twenty Years Since Chernobyl, photographer Robert Knoth and reporter Antoinette de Jong documented - with harrowing photos - the suffering of victims poisoned by radioactivity:

Chernobyl was just one of the devastating nuclear debacles that have taken place in the last 45 years in the former Soviet Union, including above-ground testing to which many people were exposed without proper safeguards. These photographs by Robert Knoth, from the regions of Mayak, Semipalatinsk, Chernobyl and Tomsk-7, are testimony to the continuing medical, economic and social consequences of the thriving nuclear industry in Eastern Europe. The people who are subjects to these photographs must cope with birth defects, cancer, and other debilitating health issues due to the permeating presence of radiation. They must also face the fear that the genetic damage that they have suffered may be passed down to their offspring.

Link - Thanks Perry!

Previously on Neatorama: Chernobyl: 20 years later | Ghost Town: Chernoby Photoblog

We posted about the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas before, where teenager Nicole Ruhter found a 2.93-carat "Pathfinder Diamond."

Well, it turns out that the state park is living up to its moniker as another diamond was found by passer-bys. This time, it's 9-year-old Matthew Smith:

"I was just walking along the path and I saw something shiny, so I picked it up," Matthew said. "I told my mom, 'I think I found something.' And she says, 'Put it in your bucket ... I don't think it's a diamond.' "

His mom, Suzanne Smith, admitted she thought most diamonds were white and almost dismissed the dark, cola-colored stone her son found. "I don't know my rocks very well, so I said, 'Oh, that's a pretty rock,' " she said.

But when Matthew got the stone examined, he learned he had stumbled upon a 2.75-carat diamond.

The Dallas Morning News has the story: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/072508dnmetdiamond.89f1f527.html (with video) - Thanks Travis Hudson!

Previously on Neatorama: Teenager Stumbled on the "Pathfinder Diamond" | Digging for Diamonds: For $6, it's Finders Keepers

Instructable user jopensopen is sick and tired of lugging his old Dell Latitude CPI laptop - it's heavy and awkward to carry as it has no handle.

He probably has in mind the sleek Apple MacBook handle mod we've featured before on Neatorama, but somehow the result is vastly different! Link - Thanks Arthur Lexington!