If you're happy and you know it -- pass it on

nation and world
Emotion contagion: If you're happy and you know it, you can pass it on
By Maria Cheng
The Associated Press
Updated: 12/05/2008 12:53:02 AM MST


LONDON — When you're smiling, the whole world really does smile with you.

A paper being published today in a British medical journal concludes that happiness is contagious — and that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers.

American researchers who tracked more than 4,700 people in Framingham, Mass., as part of a 20-year heart study also found the transferred happiness is good for up to a year.

"Happiness is like a stampede," said Nicholas Christakis, a professor in Harvard University's sociology department and co-author of the study. "Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know."

While the study is another sign of the power of social networks, it ran through 2003, just before the rise of social networking websites such as Friendster, My Space and Facebook. Christakis couldn't say for sure whether the effect works online.

"This type of technology enhances your contact with friends, so it should support the kind of emotional contagion we observed," he said.

Christakis and co-author James Fowler, of the University of California at San Diego, are old hands at studying social networks. They previously found that obesity and smoking habits spread socially as well.

For this study, published in the British journal BMJ, they examined questionnaires that asked people to measure their happiness. They found distinct happy and unhappy clusters significantly bigger than would be expected by chance.

Happy people tended to be at the center of social networks and had many friends who also were happy. Having friends or siblings nearby increased people's chances of being upbeat. Happiness spread outward by three degrees — to the friends of friends of friends.

Happy spouses helped too, but not as much as happy friends of the same gender. Experts think people, particularly women, take emotional cues from people who look like them.

Christakis and Fowler estimate that each happy friend boosts your own chances of being happy by 9 percent. Having grumpy friends decreases it by about 7 percent.

But it also turns out misery doesn't love company: Happiness seemed to spread more consistently than unhappiness. But that doesn't mean you should drop your gloomy friends.

"Every friend increases the probability that you're at the center of a network, which means you are more eligible to get a wave of happiness," Fowler said.

Being happy also brings other benefits, including a protective effect on your immune system so you produce fewer stress hormones, said Andrew Steptoe, a psychology professor at University College London who was not involved with the study.

But you shouldn't assume you can make yourself happy just by making the right friends.

"To say you can manipulate who your friends are to make yourself happier would be going too far," said Stanley Wasserman, an Indiana University statistician who studies social networks.

The study was conducted only in a single community, so it would take more research to confirm its findings. But in a time of economic gloom, it also suggested some heartening news about money and happiness.

According to the research, an extra chunk of money increases your odds of being happy only marginally — notably less than the odds of being happier if you have a happy friend.

"You can save your money," Christakis said. "Being around happy people is better."

Oh, so cool! Not one, but TWO Sherlock Holmes films coming out in the next few years...

from http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/sherlock-holmes-downey-jr-vs-cohen.php

Robert Downey Jr as Holmes! Perfect! Downey had this to say about the project:
"… you go back to the real truth of Sherlock Holmes, [which] is that he’s a lot more broad and less stoic than I remember seeing the detective - he’s a bare knuckle boxer and he’s a martial artist and he’s a big weirdo, which is why I said “I’d love to do this!”




Fans of literature will also remember that, in addition to tales of his boxing and martial artistry, Holmes was not opposed to striking criminals with his cane, discharging firearms, breaking the law in search of justice, and dabbling in tobacco, morphine, and cocaine. Holmes has been watered down over the years, but the sleuth from the books was a bit of a bastard and it is this version of Sherlock Downey and Ritchie aim to bring to the screen.

And then, a comedy with Sacha Baron Cohen as Holmes, and Will Ferrell as Watson. I bet it will be hilarious, but I KNOW I'll like the Downey version better -- especially if they're true to The Canon.

Books, glorious books

I've been reading some good books lately.

The Anglo files : a field guide to the British -- hilarious dead-on skewering of the Brits

John Adams by David McCullough

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads

Snowy and serene saturday = perfection

I'm curled up on the bed, looking out at the darkening sky with the newest cat, Perry, curled up beside me. He's such a sweetie, and I am SO relaxed. This was one of those Saturdays that are just plain cool -- a little light cleaning around the house, an hour browsing at the book store, some instant redecorating for the season (a change of curtains, move some art around, more candles, shuffle the houseplants...) and it's just a great, lazy afternoon. I needed one of these! Been working like a mule the past few months, just hammering it to get to the end of the year.

Tomorrow, I'm goig to hit the second-hand stores again -- I'm jonesing for some "new" furniture. I want a sofa for the family room, and I definitely need some new Xmas lights.

And I need to plan a party! That's GOT to happen.

Simple pleasures, simple joy

I frequently think about all the happy, hopeful, good things in my life I can be thankful for. Sometimes this is bittersweet, because I have realized that, over the years, my interests have sharpened, focused, and narrowed -- and honestly, I never though that would happen. Maybe that's just what happens as you mature; you tend to gravitate toward things that you love and know. Maybe that's why it's so hard for people to change, or to deal with change. I don't know.

I'm happy about, and thankful for:

My family -- though they do test me, they're right at the top (OK, so I guess that just means I'm normal!)

The ever-changing fur menagerie -- I have lost count of the total number of pets we've had over the years, especially the string of Snowball cats. WE went through a lot of tuxedo cats! But Queen Sierra, she is The Cat Who Stayed. She's been with us since her kittenhood with a Marin County Witch.

Taking the woofs to the Bark Park -- and all the happy doggies there. Always makes me smile.

Reading a good book -- or listening to one. Especially if a good book is being read by a good reader. I love that!

The silly vintage landscapes I've somehow found myself collecting over time... I just adore those luscious, golden, Technicolor-saturated color schemes, rich with gold and green and blue and browns. Love them.

My beat-up print of Bruegel's The Wedding Dance -- I look at those centuries-old faces, and they always get me. Especially the bride and groom, so innocent.

The Sopranos.

House.

A good movie -- though, honestly, it's been ages since I've seen a movie that struck me as really, truly GOOD, fresh and different. Napoleon Dynamite was the last time.

The FAIL Blog. Hilarious.

The people I work with. I know how fortunate I am to have such a great work-family. Even though I try to be careful to keep "work" and "not-work" separate (I don't socialize with work folks, for example) I really care about so many of the people I work with.

My car. It's old, but it's fully paid for, and I still enjoy driving it every day. I've never had the "new care jones" -- I have always thought it is just plain stupid to buy a brand-new car. The two times we've done it -- both when we were so flush with funds from our production company, and both purchased cash within six months of each other -- it just never sat right with me. Sure, it was nice to drive a new car, but it didn't feel like money well spent. The old, used Cherokee we replaced with the brand-new car was just as good, to me!

Anyway, I need to remember this stuff from time to time.

These Piss Me Off, Especially Quiznos and Butts

I saw a flaming jackass throw his cigarette out his car window today, which started me musing on things that piss me off. I remember one time when we lived in Marin when this happened. Ayla must have been maybe 8 or 9 at the time. We were stopped at a red light in Corte Madera in the left lane, and beside us in the right lane was a blonde bimbo yakking on her cell phone and puffing away -- until she blithely tossed her fag out the car window. Red light. Stopped in traffic. I threw it into Park, jumped out, marched around the car, picked up her stinky butt, and tossed it right back into her lap. Ditz never missed a beat, just told her caller, "Oh my god, some crazy woman just got mad about my cigarette".

Hah.

Hell, it felt good.

OK, here's another one. Our first summer in Denver, mid-July, baking hot -- my car thermometer read 104 degrees. I'm driving down Arapahoe Road, and here's a guy on the corner, wearing a Quiznos cup costume. (Here's what it looked like, though the guy was just sagging there limply, being fully ensconced in vinyl in the hot sun. He wasn't moving much.

I pulled over and went to talk to him. Turns out the poor guy speak no Ingles, just some immigrant sucker out to make a buck, and the asshole Quiznos Subs store manager on Arapahoe Road in the Denver Tech Center tossed the guy out there in the broiling sun in the full-body vinyl costume, to dance around for the lunch crowd at the peak of the day's heat.

I asked him if he was okay -- he said in broken Spanglish that he didn't feel so good. So, I piled the guy and his costume (AND his empty size-medium Quiznos soda cup -- that was his hydration for three hours in the sun) and drove him back across the street and into the strip mall to the Quiznos. Got him indoors, and barked for the store manager, PRONTO. And I climbed right up into her grill.

The squat, tubby woman was all beligerant and in my face -- "it's not that hot, he's only out there for a couple of hours, he should have said he didn't want to do it." IDIOT BITCH.

I explained to her that her brain-dead decision to send a full-body costumed character out to get dizzy and faint in the sun did not reflect well on the Quiznos Corporation, and that I was going to write an article about it, and get right on the horn with the VP of Franchise Marketing for Quiznos, and get them riled up about it. I was ROYALLY pissed off. I HATE it when people do stupid-ass things at work, and this was just such a dumb decision, it was amazing.

When I got back to my office, sure enough, I called Quiznos corporate, and totally freaked out their VP of Marketing. It was glorious. And writing the article was fun.

And, ever since then, I have refused to patronize Quiznos -- because it wasn't the only Bad Quiznos Story I came across. (Note: Googling "Bad Quiznos Experience" brings up 204,000 hits.)

I guess I just have a short fuse when it comes to boneheaded behavior -- especially when I experience it first-hand. I have always known that I have a strong righteous streak, and defending the underdog has always been important to me.

Onward and upward.

Short Pants Got No Reason

So I ordered a bunch of new outfits from Ulla Popken, a catalogger/online retailer that I have really liked in the past. Because I'm a big broad, finding good clothes has never been easy, and I like Ulla's blend of lovely details with quality fabrics and construction.

But I'm a mite peeved this time. I'm tall, and I almost always opt to buy my pants with the "Tall" size rather than "Average". I picked out a couple of Ulla suits that I really had coveted from looking at the catalog photos -- one a navy pinstripe with white piping, the other a grey glen plaid with a long blazer. Both suits came with just ridiculously short pants. The catalog said a 30" inseam, but when I actually got out the tape measure (after trying them on and gasping) the navy pants had a scant 28" inseam, while the plaid ones were barely 29" -- and that's a LOT when it comes to pants, especially since "a great length" for me is usualoly 32" or even 33".

Grrrrrr.

So I called Ulla Popken, spoke to a very nice customer service rep, who gave me the most bizarre reason for the shorties: It seems that they make the inseam SHORTER as the sizes get BIGGER. And their "average length" (as in, "the length the catalog lists as the actual length")is really just the length for the size smaller than I had ordered.

Which made me think, since their sizes went up three more from what I ordered, did the biggest size come with a 22" inseam?

Jeez Louise.

After much thinking about it, I decided, what the hell. I kept both suits, and I just wear them both with aplomb, with ankle pants, as the style.

But man! A dream of mine is to someday find a way to get nice pant suits that really and truly FIT me.

Which makes me think about tailoring -- I have never had anything tailored. I've been chicken, thinking it'd be too expensive. (OK, not true -- I did have a dress "altered" when I bought it from Harper Greer in San Francisco, and it felt like SUCH a luxury! But that's it.)

In my dreams, I could even find someone who knows how to sew, who could copy two different very simply constructed suits I own -- but make the pants, sleeves, and jacket just a bit longer. I would love that.

Sigh... this is what happens when you exist beyond the bell curve of normal size. But I wouldn't want to trade it for anything! I am happy with myself, I am who I am and I don't ever want to be just like everyone else.

a vile vacation

So it's Monday, and I've just wasted two vacation days... I took Friday and Monday off to relax. OK, I did get to do some of that. My house is clean, tidy, I even did a minimal amount of redecorating..

but now the husband's back in the hospital. We're pretty sure this is Visit Ten to our local medical center, after back surgery complications, knee replacement, MSRA, complications, knee replacement, gall bladder, complications, and more complications. Hopefully this is where we start to turn life around.

The weird thing is that Hubby has been working on projects for a guy who I believe will be the Susan Powter of the 2010's - ok, maybe he'll do better than her (hopefully! What ever happened to Susan Powter after her fall from grace?) but this guy's sharp. And, hanging around with a leading proponent of physical fitness, when your physical condition is... poor... is odd. So we'll see what happens.

musings on shameless self promotion

It strikes me that some "blogs" are deadly boring to read, even if they have an audience of sorts. One that comes immediately to mind is http://blogs.firsttechcu.com/. I use this as my classic example of a "fashion don't" -- it's June 16, and the l;ast post was April 3, and the whole thing is deadly dull -- absolutely and obviously written by a "marketing communications department" at the credit union. It's newsletter pablum! Blah!

I struggle with this at my job, because I work in financial services --and you'd better believe that "we" (in the Corporate-Royal-WE sense) frown on mavericks talking about "our organization" on the Internet. But, I love this company, and I KNOW that this is an organization that's passionately committed to building financial success for our members... but... blogging about stuff like that is dicey and puts me on thin ice.

So, 'nuff about work-related ponderings, except to point you to www.youngfreelaberta.com, which is a credit union that does a killer job of connecting with their members. I love this site, I'm addicted to it.

sunday with options on the side

From the Library right now: Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea - Chelsea Handler

On the Zen: Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon

I'm just killing time until I've got my Creative Zen reloaded -- no iPod for me. My Zen only has 4GB of storage, which IS woefully inadequate -- but an iPod was not an option because you can't use it for audiobooks from the library. And i am a total audiobook junkie.

Here's a quick customer service story about Creative -- http://www.creative.com/:

I bought a $34 DC charger for my Zen V Plus. The thing has a fat transformer socket plug, a long cord -- and at the end of the cord, a little 2" piece that's a USB2 plug on one end (that goes into the Zen) and a proprietary plug that connects to the cord on the other.

Well, the USB2 end snapped off, rendering the gizmo useless. So I contacted Creative, eventually ending up talking to a guy I figured was in India (from his accent). I explained the issue, and asked if they could just sell me the little 2" plug, not an entire new $34 unit.

The guy goes, "I know exactly what piece you mean -- but my inventory check shows that we do not have this piece in stock. However, I have an extra one of these plugs at home that I am not using. Can you please hold -- I am going to ask my supervisor if it's okay for me to just send this to you."

Okay... now I'm a little speechless. Sure enough, the supe says yes, and three days later, a receive a handwritten envelope, sent First Class Mail, postmarked in Kansas, with my FREE part inside and a little note on a Post-It -- "we appreciate your business."

Guess you could say I'm now a totally loyal Creative customer. Because of great customer service.

No good deed goes unpunished

Somebody mentioned this to me yesterday about a situation I'm dealing with. When you try to do something that's "good" but you end up getting bitten in the ass... ugh. It's just not fun.

I've been really cranky today! You ever have one of those days when people just need some slapping?

At least my dog is really fabulous. That always counts for something!

Taos, Ojo Caliente, and Cops (and Space Bunnies)

Ayla and I did a road trip down to the Land of Enchantment, and visited Taos, New Mexico. It was just the BEST weekend, really felt like a lot longer than just a few days. And it was just lovely bonding time with her, just wonderful.

First, the FOOD was just unreal. Literally. I mean, from our very first meal on the road, we just had one incredibly tasty meal after another. That includes the breakfast burritos from Sonic in Walsenberg. That surprised us, it was like real food!

We left before dawn on Friday morning, heading south on I-25 through curls of fog. Ayla had made a great mix CD with a bunch of my favorites and hers. Some Queen, some choir songs, some classical, some new stuff. Some singalong stuff. We had a blast in the car.

Approaching Taos, the landscape started shifting, and we came across "classic" New Mexico-looking places with chiles hanging by the doors, etc. Got to town, got a bit oriented, and found a cheap little motel called the Indian Hills Inn that was staffed with just ridiculously nice people. The manager was like a movie character of a good motel manager. He put us in a room "right next to Grandmother Willow" -- a ginormous old willow tree, right out our window. I mean, functional and plain, but still charming in its way (and I mentioned cheap, right? Which always sways me).

Ayla and I went exploring, bopped around the town, drove out into the hills and got semi-lost. We asked the motel guys "where do the local folks eat?" and they directed us to this kind of crummy-looking Mexican restaurant, one of those places with a plastic-lettered signboard over the front counter where you order and then they bring you your food. Our food arrived, and we both went ga-ga over how totally GOOD it was. I mean, it made us laugh, it was so good. We started trying to figure out WHY -- was it the air? The water? No idea.

Slept like rocks that night.

Next morning, we got up and drove across a lonely gravel road to Ojo Caliente, a hot springs resort that was one of the best I've ever been to. Kind of a longish drive, especially on a gravel road -- but it was FUN. We soaked and lazed and soaked and snoozed and soaked some more -- because they have a bunch of different pools, all with supposedly differnt mineral properties. Then we had to drive back late in the afternoon.

So, we're on this gravel road, buzzing along, and suddenly, I think there's a helicopter hovering right over the car, out of nowhere -- this loud, blap-blap-blap-blap sound. Then the steering goes all hinky, and I realize (while going about 50) that we've had a tire blowout. Not a soul in sight on the road.

Pulled over safely, and Aylie and I climb out to inspect the damage. That back tire was SHREDDED -- it was GONE (and I thought I had reacted pretty fast!).

Marty calls us "Bunnies in a Spaceship" when it comes to "man stuff" like tool-required repairs. He insists that Ayla and I are... shall we say... "ill-equipped" to deal with any sort of mechanical issue. But, here we were, in the flat-ass middle of nowhere between Ojo Caliente (a bump in the road) and Taos (somewhat bigger than a bump in the road).

No problem! We're Bunnies in Space -- we can HANDLE this!

So, we put on the flashers (in case there's a RARE chance that one other car just might come tooling along the road, and maybe not see us stuck there -- I mean, it was EMP-TY), opened the back of the Explorer, and started hauling out the stuff to change the tire.

*I* even *READ THE DIRECTIONS*. Seriously.

Ayla and I had it TOTALLY under control. We high-fived each other -- "Yay! Bunnies In Space CAN Change a Tire!") and I started with the tire iron on loosening the lug nuts. (See? I even know they're called "lug nuts" -- hah!). That's when the red and blue lights started flashing behind us.

So, now we've got a Taos County Sherriff on the scene. NICE guy. He takes a look at this Colorado mom-and-daughter pair (and, of course, we're totally law-abiding, as is my nature) -- and he's ready to help. So he takes over the tire-changing.

Then, the jack falls over, because the gravel is so soft. That's when Cruiser #2 pulls up. Now, I've got THREE Sherriff's deputies, me and Ayla -- the biggest crowd outside of town. One of the deputies offers to head down to the barracks to get their floor jack (the barracks is apparently only a few miles away). So, Ayla and I stand there making chat with the two guys who remained -- they were just amazingly NICE guys.

Made me thing about the series "COPS" -- the people those cops always have to deal with are total slimeballs and scumbags. Here we were, just a couple of nice, average, suburban females, getting help, gratefully, from a bunch of cops! Hot day, even for springtime -- but when it was done, I promised to send the Sergeant a thank-you letter, which I did. Those deputies were probably the best "advertisement" for the Land of Enchantment there could possibly be -- above and beyond service, nice, friendly, helpful (and above all, helpful).

The Spaceship Bunnies got back into our ship, waved a happy goodbye, and drove back to Taos.

And that is why I'd like to do another trip to Taos -- because of the people (especially the cops).