Tuesday, March 20/2018

First day of spring and also, apparently, International Happiness Day. The Cyprus Mail captions it oddly, saying that Cyprus is the 61st happiest country. Could be worse; that is in the top half, but that's not how they put it. The annual index ranks countries on happiness with income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity as the variables. Like all countries Cyprus looks first at itself and then at its significant others, citing Greece at 79th and Turkey at 74th, as well as Russia 59th, Israel 11th, US 18th and the UK 19th. Then the stinger, in a paragraph all to itself: "The report also includes the north of Cyprus which held 58th position".