It’s a simple recipe for happiness. Eliminate all negative emotions, anything that creates bad feelings and distracts from the project at hand. Clear it all away, and what’s left? The space for creativity pure and simple. That’s happiness for Hitch.

Last month, on the occasion of the author’s 50th birthday, we posted a large collection of free essays and stories by David Foster Wallace. But we missed a rare item: the complete audio recording of the commencement address Wallace gave at Kenyon College, in Ohio, on May 21, 2005–three years before he took his own life.

There’s probably not a standup comedian bigger than Louis CK right now. His FX television show, Louie, earned him two Emmy Award nominations in 2011, and his recent comedy special, Live at the Beacon Theater, made history when CK distributed the show via the web (not HBO) and netted $1,000,000 in sales in a matter of days.

Can one person experience love more deeply than another? That’s what The Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging and filmmaker Brent Hoff set out to understand when they hosted the 1st Annual Love Competition. Seven contestants, ranging from 10 to 75 years of age, took part.

Matt Morris, an award-winning filmmaker living in Winter Park, Florida, came across Johnny Barnes in the same way he has discovered all of his film subjects — by complete accident. One day, while flipping through images on Flickr, Morris stumbled upon a tourist’s photo of the 88-year-old Bermudian.

The gender stereotypes might be backward-looking (we’ll make up for it later in the day), but the technological vision is on the mark, right down to email, e-commerce and online banking. Of course, these weren’t the only people imagining an electronic, connected world during the 1960s.
In 1964, the futurist Arthur C.

The nomadic people of Mongolia don’t stay put very long. They’re always on the move. They travel light. And they build a yurt, their home away from home, wherever they go.

A little food for thought. The Guardian talked with a palliative nurse who has recorded the most common regrets of the dying. It’s worth giving the top five regrets a read, especially if you’re at risk of ending up in the same penitent place.

In the mid-1990s, Stephen Fry, the British actor and comedian, had a moment of crisis. He recalled in 2006:
Eleven years ago, in the early hours of the morning, I came down from my flat in central London. I went into my garage, sealed the door with a duvet I’d brought and got into my car.

Remember Jeff Harris? He’s the photographer who has documented every day of his life with a self-portrait since 1999. Now meet Madeline Schichtel, a young production assistant living in LA.