Happiness is Contagious

"Dinner: Mole in Hole and Diet Coke With a Side of Happiness," by Elizabeth McQuern, on Flickr.

As you can see on the computer screen in the photo, I'm spending my dinnertime researching the contagious nature of happiness, based on a re-examination of data from the Framingham Heart Study. Someone else re-examined the data, I mean. Not me. Heh.

So the Framingham (Massachusetts) Heart Study is this incredibly detailed and very close study of thousands of individuals that was begun in 1948, a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in collaboration with Boston University. Data gathered from it has been used in countless eye-opening studies.

Here's what I found out, courtesy of the BMJ:

"Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the network, and the relationship between people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one’s friends’ friends). People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future."

I think it makes perfect sense that people who don't know each other directly affect each other's lives. I have seen that, especially in cases of people with dense social networks and frequent interaction, like me, we affect the lives of people two and three degrees out.

Also, this is really interesting: "Effects are not seen between coworkers." Maybe businesses are measurably full of crap when they say "We're all one big happy family here at Spacely Spork Inc!"

And this part is extra awesome: "Happiness is a fundamental object of human existence,¹ so much so that the World Health Organization is increasingly emphasising happiness as a component of health."

So, essentially, you're only as happy as your friends. So cheer up, you sad sacks of crap! Ha ha. Just kidding.

Today's Youth Have Too Much Self-Esteem? Other Links of Interest

Study: Today's youth think quite highly of themselves. "Many people who grew up in the '50s say, 'Nothing I did was ever good enough for my parents.' Now we're seeing the pendulum swing, and you hear from coaches and teachers who have been at it a while that kids have become more fragile. They don't take criticism well. Thinking you're God's gift to the world is nice for you. It's a little harder for everyone else."

Racial humor may never be the same -- we hope. "We're entering an era in which racial comedy will have to deal with creative thought rather than relying on the casual repeated use of the F word, the N word and the rest of the slackers' alphabet. In this changing frontier, how will we construct the new bases for racial humor?"

Al-Qaeda calls President-elect Obama a "house negro." Is it smart to insult the man who decides which caves to bomb? No.

The Economist has a hilarious article about George W. Bush's most defining physical feature - his nostrils. "More often, nothing exceptional was on the way to being said. But the nostrils ran ahead, twitching like a bull in a rodeo or a frisking wild horse, hinting at danger to come...Being bigger and better than most people’s, the presidential nostrils were also more acute. They could sniff out WMD in Iraq as snappily as hot dogs at a football game, though it took the UN many years to come up with nothing."

When Will My People's Persecution End?

"Is gingerism as bad as racism?" English photographer Charlotte Rushton: "I was on the Tube, pregnant, and I was really humiliated by this drunk yob. He was shouting 'do the cuffs and the collars match?' He got right up into my face."

I told a joke about this exact thing happening to me on the train in Chicago during my first Underground set. Some moron got right in my face and said "redhead, redhead, carpets match the drapes?"

That guy was a jerk, and that was a totally rude thing to say, but I'm kidding about personally suffering any real stigma related to being a redhead, because #1 "gingerism" is not as profound and complex a social issue here as it is in the UK ("some claim it could be a throwback to anti-Irish sentiment from...when the Irish...were regarded as ethnically inferior").

And #2 I'm a natural blonde, so it's not something I grew up suffering taunts for. But still. Lay off the firecrotch jokes (language in video NSFW)!

Thanks to K-Rock for the link!

Take That, Bullies!

Some utterly awesome high school kids fought back against bullying after a new freshman student wore a pink t-shirt to school, was called a "faggot" and was threatened with a beating.

The next day, two seniors, David Shepherd and Travis Price, bought a ton of pink t-shirts and arm bands, and 850 kids showed up wearing pink. The bullies wigged out, threw chairs, and got even more angry.

"Our intention was to stand up for this kid so he doesn’t get picked on," David explained. "It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something."

I love this story. I love these kids. What a couple of kick ass teenage boys.

Bullies, Lina Medina, Capgras Syndrome, and Dogme 95

What do you do when you have insomnia issues? The sheep thing has never worked for me. I read random stuff online. Here's what I read about last night.

From Slate: "A study says 90 percent of third- to sixth-graders have been bullied...bullying and victimization were widespread, as 89.5% of children experienced some form of victimization and 59.0% of students participated in some form of bullying...Bullying has become an epidemic that can harm kids' mental health." What do they mean "become an epidemic?" I don't think this is a recent development in human sociology.

Lina Medina was born September 27, 1933 in Peru. Her son Gerardo was born five years, seven months, and twenty-one days later. Not urban legend.

Second City (Toronto) vet and SNL comedian Tony Rosato has apparently been suffering from Capgras Syndrome,"a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that an acquaintance, usually a spouse or other close family member, has been replaced by an identical looking impostor." According to the Toronto Star, he complained to police that his wife and newborn son had been replaced with false doubles. "Tony told friends he was connected to higher energies and had 'information to save the planet,' says his long-time friend Derek McGrath, who plays Rev. Magee in Little Mosque on the Prairie. Rosato believes he is 'the guardian of light,' adds McGrath, who worked with Rosato at Second City and has supported the beleaguered actor through his legal travails..."

Danish director Lars Von Trier is too depressed to continue with his film career. Or is he faking it? In either case, this list of standards for the Dogme 95 an avant-garde filmmaking movement is interesting.

1. Filming must be done on location.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera.
   
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable.
   
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action.
   
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden.
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen.
10. The director must not be credited.

Old Gay Picasso Cream Puffs and Evolving Chimp Hairstyles

Remember that charming English geriatric YouTuber? Now there's a 92-year old blogger. He was a Canadian tv host. And he's quite funny. Here's what he had to say about cannibalism: "In times past, among some of the Pacific Islands peoples, since a butchered human very much resembled a butchered pig, it was referred to as "long pig". I presume these cannibals ate only their enemies, not their family members, no matter how tasty they may have looked." (via BoingBoing)

More evidence that the womb environment makes men gay. "It adds further weight to the argument that lesbian and gay people should be treated equally in society and not discriminated against for something that's just as inherent as skin colour." (via BBC)

Oh, crap, I hate it when I accidentally punch a hole in my Picasso.

Dude, if I ever get married, it's going to be in a wedding dress made of cream puffs.

Watch your back, homo sapiens. Chimps are more like us than apes...and they're evolving faster than we are. "..our clock began to slow down about 1 million years ago, and today it is 3 percent slower than that of the chimp and 11 percent slower than in the gorilla.. (via MSNBC/Live Science)

Today's style specials include Great Big Hair, and the Feathered Back Hair Site. Doesn't it make you nostalgic for the days of Aqua Net and Paul Mitchell?

Internet Suicides in Japan

Really sad.

Internet suicide pacts have occurred since at least the late 1990s
and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands. But in
Japan, where the suicide rate is among the industrialized world's
highest, officials are worried about a recent spate of such deaths.

A record 91 people died in 34 internet-linked suicide cases in Japan
in 2005, up from 55 people in 19 cases in 2004, the National Police
Agency reported last month. The number of internet suicide pacts has
almost tripled from 2003, when the agency began keeping records.

(Via Wired)