Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut.
Others think their American ways will work in other countries. That's not always accurate and can be disrespectful to the local culture.
The Russo brothers are the best people ever, and they cast me in 'Happy Endings.' I did text Joe Russo to say, 'I don't think my character dies, so if you need a local news cameraman to show up in 'Captain America 2'... I know it doesn't make sense, but just hear me out on this!' He was really cool about it and turned me down right away.
My parents homeschooled my sister and me for many years. Why? Because the local school insisted that I, being three, should go to preschool, and my sister, being five, should go to kindergarten. The problem? You learn your alphabet in preschool, and I was already reading chapter books.
Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, 'Flying Fingers,' debuted; since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.
A corollary is that, when laws are out of touch with the people, those laws can and should be changed - from the most simple local regulations to the highest law of the land, our federal Constitution.
When I was a boy in Desuq, Egypt, a city on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, about 50 miles east of Alexandria, my family lived steps away from the local landmark, a mosque named for a 13th-century Sufi sheik.
The first time I played a killer, in the 1997 film 'Mojo,' I went to my local video shop and got out a video of real executions and a history of the Third Reich. The guy in the shop was giving me a look. I thought this would help, but I don't think it made any difference, and I don't want to see any more executions.
I started in local news in South Carolina, so viewers there supported me. We had a morning show that we put to No. 1, and then I moved to San Antonio, Texas, and we became the No. 1 morning show there, too.