Did you have great hopes for Xmas? Were you disappointed, but think it was good at least for you to have hoped? Turns out, hope need not make you happier. From the NYT Year in Ideas : Prisoners with life sentences but with the possibility of parole adapt less well to prison life, for example, than prisoners with life sentences without the possibility of parole. … The research team … tracked people who had portions of their colons removed or bypassed, such that the patients couldn’t defecate normally. The condition is extremely unpleasant and leads many people to say they’d rather be dead. … But a colostomy isn’t always permanent. Some patients are likely to heal and have their bowels reconnected. . Were it up to the patient to choose, "almost anybody would choose temporary over permanent," Ubel says.