The Happiest Man in America: A Tall Asian Jew in Hawaii

Gallup polling has put together a composite of what America’s happiest man probably looks like.

By

Cord Jefferson

Mar 9, 2011

By Cord Jefferson

March 9, 2011

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Having every day for the past three years polled 1,000 randomly selected American adults on their quality of life, the polling firm Gallup believes it has has ascertained what things make a life in the United States “the good life.” Jews are happier than Catholics, for instance. And taller men are happier than shorter men.

Using the data obtained and a formula called the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, researchers were able to put together an interactive map of where joy is the highest and lowest in America. They were also able to give The New York Times a description of what the happiest person in the country probably looks like. Firstly, that person is a man. But also: “He’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.”

Go here to read the Times interview with a man who fits that description.

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Photo credit: Photo credt: @wilderlife8107 on YouTube – Native plants can be regrown thanks to dogs.

Environment, Science

Wildlife reserves and gardens alike can be regrown thanks to dogs wearing backpacks with seeds

A dog walk in the garden can produce new flowers.

Erik Barnes

5/20/2026

Whether it’s a forest recovering from a wildfire or our own backyards, nature can use some help. Spreading seeds to ensure grass or wildflower growth can be a time-intensive process. However, there is one way that can be fun, quick, and help your dog get some exercise: strapping a backpack full of seeds onto them.

The practice has been popularized internationally by sisters Francisca and Constanza Torres with their three dogs. Many forested areas of their native Chile were devastated by wildfires. The sisters came up with a plan to help reseed and regrow what had been burned down. The two would strap backpacks filled with grass and wildflowers seeds onto their border collies. The backpack had a small opening that would allow the seeds to fall out and spread as their dogs ran, jumped, and played throughout the area.

This helped the forests regrow while also providing the dogs exercise. The dogs were also able to walk into nooks and crannies human planters normally can’t access.

An idea goes international

The idea spread past countries and coastlines as a nature reserve in Lewes, East Sussex, England offered dog walkers backpacks with seeds. The walkers would strap the packs onto their furry friends as they went on nature walks to help rewild the area.

“We’re really interested in rewilding processes, but they often involve reintroducing big herbivores like bison or wild horses,” said the project’s manager Dylan Walker to The Guardian in 2024. “In a smaller urban nature reserve it’s really hard to do those things. So, to replicate the effect that those animals have on the ecosystem we aimed to utilize the vast number of dog walkers that are visiting the nature reserve daily.”

The concept itself was taken from nature. For centuries, wolves would have seeds caught in their fur. Over time, movement, and grooming, the seeds would be spread throughout other areas of the forest. The wolves acted as natural carriers for seeds much like bees are for pollen.

Reseed your garden with Rover

This technique doesn’t have to be reserved for wildfire recovery or regrowing public gardens. Your yard could benefit from it, too. While you could find a pack for your pup and fill it with seeds, there’s another way. Gardener Patrick Vernuccio suggests just filling a tea strainer with seeds and clipping it onto your dog’s collar. It should perform the same effect.

If you have your dog help seed your yard, be sure that the plants you hope to grow are dog-friendly. Use non-toxic seeds for dogs such as roses, marigolds, and pansies among others. The ASPCA has a full list of plants that are unsafe for dogs to refer to when you’re unsure.

Man’s best friend can also be man’s best gardening buddy.

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Photo credit: Canva/Liu277339840 via Wikimedia Commons – Clean drinking water can be collected from fog.

Environment, Science

How the ‘fog harvesting’ women of Morocco are influencing how desert areas get drinking water

This could help with an ever growing water crisis.

Erik Barnes

5/20/2026

According to UNICEF, over two billion people live in an area with water scarcity. Climate change, data centers, and other factors are impacting the amount of drinkable water available. However, for the last ten years the women of Morocco have been implementing a water collecting technology that could be useful in other dry areas.

For centuries, the people of Aït Baamrane in Morocco relied on rain and groundwater from wells for drinking and irrigation. It is reported that women of the town would walk four hours to fetch 50-gallon drums of water to carry back. However, intense drought and desertification have made the region even more difficult to live in. Now, they primarily rely on “fog harvesting” for water, with technique showing remarkable success since they started in 2010.

The women-led NGO Dar Si Hmad built what is now the world’s largest operational fog-water harvesting system. This not only has successfully provided an average of 6,300 liters of potable water for more than 400 people in five villages in the area, but significantly reduced the time and physical cost of carrying water.

How fog harvesting works

Fog harvesting is the collection of water droplets from wind-driven fog. While Morocco is a dry area, it does have fog near its mountains and coastal regions. The fog collection system is typically constructed in the form of a mesh net set up and pulled taut between two posts. The net is spread out at an angle that’s perpendicular to the direction of the wind carrying the fog. Freshwater droplets are formed as the fog passes through the net, dripping into a gutter that leads to a storage tank.

The fog-water collected in this particular system goes through a thorough UV, sand, and cartridge filtering process. The system is also solar powered, making it environmentally sound and cheaper than other methods. Since the collected water is pure from the sky, it is free of most contaminants and pollutants.

Fog harvesting expanding

Fog-harvesting/fog-catching has since expanded to other areas of the world. Movimiento Peruanos Sin Agua (Movement of Peruvians without Water) haven’t just built fog-catching nets in Peru, but in rural communities in Colombia, Bolivia, and Mexico. Fog-collectors in Spain collect droplets and water to help offset dry vegetation wildfires on the Canary Islands. Chilean fog harvesters are looking into expansion to help provide water for the poorest communities and dry urban areas.

Other water collecting methods are being tested

Scientists are also trying to find other methods to quickly and effectively draw water from the atmosphere. Researchers at MIT have developed a salt-based hydrogel that collects moisture from water vapor at night between glass panels. These panels create condensation of pure water when they are heated by sunlight. There is also research going into a sonic device that can quickly “shake water out of the atmosphere.”

While scientists are in the midst of finding ways to obtain and conserve water in our future, there are steps people can take today. In terms of water conservation in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has some resources that can help. Like collecting fog, collecting folks willing to pitch in can do wonders for the community.

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Photo credit: Canva – A lost fanny pack contained a small fortune.

Nation, News

Florida man found $30K in a fanny pack in a Wawa bathroom. He knew exactly what to do.

“It’s not my money to take. I was not raised that way.”

Erik Barnes

5/20/2026

Florida resident Luis Salazar went through something many of us have experienced: he found someone’s lost property, a fanny pack, in a convenience store bathroom. Who hasn’t gone to a public restroom to find a dropped wallet, backpack, or purse and tried to return it to its rightful owner? For Salazar, though, there was a another factor: the lost fanny pack contained $30,000 in cash.

On a Sunday afternoon, Salazar was using a Wawa gas station restroom in Riviera Beach, Florida. That’s when he noticed a fanny pack hanging on the safety railing. Salazar figured that the person who had used the restroom before him had accidentally left it behind. He tried to see if the fanny pack’s owner was still at the Wawa, but no luck.

Salazar opened the fanny pack hoping to find some identification inside so he could return it to its rightful owner. While he couldn’t find a drivers license or any other ID, he did find something else: a thick pile of cash. In fact, it was $30,023.

“My body was just numb, just seeing all this money that belonged to somebody else,” Salazar said to WPBF News.

What do you do with a lost fanny pack filled with $30K?

Salazar knew exactly what to do. He kept the money safe in the fanny pack and continued his search for the rightful owner.

As Salazar spent days looking for the owner, the owner finally noticed his $30,000 dollar-filled fanny pack was missing, and called the local police to help him find it.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, my freaking money’s gone. I’m out of all this bread. I don’t know what I’m going to do,’” the owner said to WPBF News, declining to be identified.

After reviewing the Wawa convenient store security footage, the police were able to identify both the fanny pack owner and Salazar. They contacted Salazar who happily brought over the fanny pack to the police station with every single dollar still inside. The fanny pack owner cried and hugged Salazar, thanking him for finding and returning it.

The owner was incredibly grateful that an honest person found his lost pack.

“I was pretty astonished that anybody would have done that,” he said. “Think about it. That’s life-changing money. People would kill for that kind of money.”

Meanwhile, Salazar just did what he thought was natural.

“If something doesn’t belong to you, you didn’t earn it. Give it back. Be kind,” said Salazar. “It’s not my money to take. I was not raised that way.”

Most people are honest people

While acts of honesty like Salazar’s should be celebrated, there are more people like him than you would think. A 2019 study researched human behavior by dropping over 17,000 “lost” wallets in 40 countries over the course of two years. The results found that wallets with money inside were more likely to be reported than those without cash. In fact, the more cash inside the wallet, the more likely it was reported.

“The highest reporting rate was found in the condition where the wallet included $100,” the study’s lead researcher Alain Cohn told NPR. “Forty-six percent of wallets with no money were reported, compared with 61% of those with about $13 and 72% of those with nearly $100.”

So Luis Salazar’s behavior was part of something that is (thankfully) more normal than most would expect.

“I guess maybe there’s just more good people in the world than most people think,” said the fanny pack owner. “You never know who you’ll run into, and Luis is just one of those good people.”

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