THREE KINDS OF FRIENDS _ Despite having 150, 300 or even 2,000 “friends” on Facebook, most adults really have only a handful of real friends. It’s okay that we lump all acquaintances together into what we call our circle of friends, but there are basically three kinds of friends: Greek philosopher Aristotle classified friendship into three different types:
• Friendships of Utility — Those where people are on friendly terms mainly due to the benefits each brings to the table. Business partners, colleagues, and schoolmates are examples.
• Friendships of Pleasure — Where people find each other because of the enjoyment it brings. People hanging out due to fitting hobbies, common interest, and fishing buddies are examples.
• Friendships of the Good — The most important among the three types of friendship. These are friendships based upon respect, appreciation for each other’s qualities, and a strong will to aid and assist the other person because one recognizes their greatness.
… The first two types of friendship are easily broken. These friendships are driven by one’s utility and pleasure. Particular when benefits is achieved or a change of common interest, these friendships will most probably fade off. However friendship based on goodness are usually long lasting.
… Friendship of the good are hard to find and develop. If you happen to have more than a handful of friends based on goodness, you are indeed blessed.
WEST SIDE NUT CLUB FALL FESTIVAL _ It’s been called “the nation’s biggest street festival after Mardi Gras. The West Side Nut Club Fall Festival returns to Evansville, Indiana, October 5–11 for its 105th annual celebration. More than 130 food booths and hundreds of thousands of visitors make this a wild Midwestern culinary adventure. Fried Oreos and green beans are merely the beginning; past offerings have included fried turkey testicles, fried butter, brain sandwiches, and alligator stew. Yes, classic festival favorites, from hot dogs to caramel apples, are also available. The food is the main attraction and each year organizers release a Festival Munchie Map. (LINK) The Nut Club name is a playful early-20th-century club identity, not a reference to food sold at the festival. When local West Side businessmen formally organized the group in 1921, they chose the acorn as their symbol and adopted the slogan, “Root, Boost or Scoot.” The acorn/nut imagery fit their goal of putting down roots, promoting — or “boosting” — the neighborhood, and encouraging civic improvement.
STUDY SAYS PARENTS ARE MISERABLE _ Parents are miserable. Researchers (University of Western Ontario and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) wanted to figure out why some families decide to stop at having only one child. So they analyzed data from a German survey that covered more than 20,000 people across the country, and tracked their reported well-being from three years before having kids to at least two years after their first child was born. They found that people are usually pretty happy before having kids. That happiness goes up when anticipating the birth of their first child and stays high during the year their first child is born. After that, everything goes downhill. Thirty percent of parents stayed at the same level of happiness. But on a 1 to 10 scale, 37 percent of parents had a one-unit drop in “happiness units,” while 19 percent had a two-unit drop and 17 percent had a three-unit drop. To compare that to actual sad life events: unemployment and the death of a partner usually lead to a one-unit drop in happiness, and divorce only causes a 0.6-unit drop. On average, parenthood leads to a whopping 1.4-unit fall in happiness.
