Study Finds Happy People Have More Meaningful Conversations
The findings, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, suggest that happy lives are social and conversationally deep rather than solitary and superficial. The researchers think that deep conversations may have the potential to make people happier, though the findings from this study don’t identify cause and effect between the two. (LiveScience)

Sarah Palin Is Writing a Book on Her Spiritual Values
Republican star Sarah Palin will write a new book reflecting her patriotic and “spiritual” values, publisher HarperCollins announced. The conservative former governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate will pen “a celebration of American virtues and strengths,” HarperCollins said in a statement. (Agence France-Presse)

Top-Selling Home-School Biology Textbooks Get an F
Two of the best-selling biology textbooks stack the deck against evolution, said some science educators who reviewed sections of the books. (Dylan Lovan, Associated Press)

Growing Consensus the “Hobbit” Is a Separate Species
Her scientific name is Homo floresiensis, her nickname is “the hobbit,” and the hunt is on to prove that she and the dozen other hobbits since discovered are not a quirk of nature but members of a distinct hominid species. (Michael Casey, Associated Press)

Crying Is Human
What is it about the human brain that creates this ability to cry? Relatively little study has been done on the subject, though some researchers are plunging in, with fascinating results. (Judy Foreman, The Boston Globe)

Mass-Market Mysticism
In a sense, Americans seem to have done with mysticism what we’ve done with every other kind of human experience: We’ve democratized it, diversified it, and taken it mass market. No previous society has offered seekers so many different ways to chase after nirvana, so many different paths to unity with God or Gaia or Whomever. (Ross Douthat, The New York Times)

Cultural Evolution
Michael Ruse: If, like me, you are with Darwin, seeing humans as unambiguously natural and wanting to locate us and our origins firmly within orthodox evolutionary theory, you still have got to recognize that we are rather special animals. Without denying that there are traces of it in other species, and certainly without denying that we have it because overall it is (or was) of adaptive advantage, our culture does set us apart. How then are you to deal with it in an evolutionary context? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Does the Next Supreme Court Nominee Have to Be a Protestant?
If Justice John Paul Stevens decides to call it a career after he turns 90 next month, the Supreme Court would for the first time in its history be without a justice belonging to America’s largest religious affiliations. Perhaps that would mean only that religion is no longer important in the mix of experience and expertise that a president seeks in a Supreme Court nominee. (Robert Barnes, The Washington Post)