Happiness Is a (Fill in the Blank)

Woke up this morning to pick up our hometown daily, the Burlington Free Press, and find a terrific front-page article about my husband's research by Tim Johnson.

As Johnson writes, "these are heady times for numbers crunchers" -- the amount of text and data available now allows researchers like my husband and Chris Danforth, his colleague at University of Vermont, the ability to mine for trends, influence and even the spread of ideas. Peter and Chris examined the happiness levels in blogs, song lyrics, and State of the Union addresses. (Who was the most happy president? JFK beat out Reagan, believe it or not.)

A lot of the press coverage of their paper, published in the Journal of Happiness (love that name), has focused on their findings that sentiment in blogs fell to their lowest level on the days following Michael Jackson's death. Meanwhile, Jackson's song lyrics rate as some of the happiest tunes out there.

Ben Stein Expelled at UVM?

The latest mini-scandal in Vermont seems to be over Ben Stein -- the one-time host of "Win Ben Stein's Money" and the teacher who repeats "Bueller, Bueller?" in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," not to mention a Nixon speechwriter and noted economics commentator.

UVM announced Ben Stein as its commencement speaker -- and shortly afterwards, the angry emails began flying. And not just from Vermonters: Richard Dawkins wrote to UVM's president that he was "dismayed" at the choice.

So the president of UVM got on the phone with Stein to alert him to the backlash, and Stein agreed not to speak at UVM. But Stein wasn't happy about it. Check out what he wrote to the Burlington Free Press in an email:

Stein called the university’s response to the furor “chicken sh**, and you can quote me on that.”

But one of the most embarrassing facets of the whole embarrassing episode is Stein's comment that the president of UVM "endlessly, endlessly asked me to do it" for a discount (again, from the Burlington Free Press.) And that the president used family connections to ask Stein to speak (apparently some best-friend/brother-in-law connection). Yes, everyone knows budgets are being cut at UVM, but really? Geez.

End result: Howard Dean will be UVM's commencement speaker. I don't predict any protests.

Side comment: I heard Ben Stein speak at an investor conference when I worked at Bloomberg News. It was an Internet/tech conference right after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001 or early 2002. Interestingly, he started off making some relevant comments about how expectations of endless growth (as many dot-coms had been making) were untethered from reality, but then spent the rest of his speech talking about how much he missed his recently deceased father and how important it was to develop a strong relationship with your children. The room was unusually attentive -- instead of the usual investing spiel, he gave what was probably the first heart-felt talk ever heard at one of these confabs.

Vermont's sad-happy story of the week

Target Poodle
Originally uploaded by lakewentworth

While everyone is cheering the U.S. Airways flight's amazing crash-landing in the Hudson and survival of all 155 passengers, there's another story of death averted that's captured Vermont's attention.

Apparently, Michou, a poodle, was left in a car by his French Canadian owner for three weeks at the Burlington airport. (Note: Photo is NOT a picture of Michou -- check out the Burlington Free Press story from the link).

The poor pooch was just 9 pounds -- down from his normal weight of 25 pounds -- when he was found this week after someone complained of a bad smell coming from a car with Quebec plates (think: giant doggie litter box).

The owner said he didn't realize the dog was in the car.

Meanwhile, authorities in Vermont have given him a ticket for $100.

The good news is that Vermont authorities took custody of the dog, and hopefully he'll find a good home after his ordeal.

Fabulous & Frugal New Year's Eve

Check out my piece, published today in the Burlington Free Press, about throwing a fabulous and frugal New Year's Eve party. My friend Jess opened a catering business this month and she provided many of the great ideas for whipping up a fresh yet thrifty cocktail party. I want to try her recipe for a champagne cocktail . . .

Cut top talent, and what do you get?

The New York Times' David Carr writes a wonderful column about the recent trend of newspapers cutting their top (and highest paid) talent to save the money they'd otherwise have to pay their oldest and most experienced writers.

He writes:

Yes, the revenue picture is grim and growing grimmer. The biggest outlay besides putting the printed artifact on the street is salaries. And journalists tend to get a lot more indignant when the sheet cake and goodbye speeches are being served up on behalf of people who have the same job as they have.

But there is a business argument to be made here. Having missed the implications of the Web and allowed both their content and their audience to be scraped away by aggregators and ad networks, newspapers are now working furiously to maintain audience, build new ad models and renovate presentation. But they won’t stay relevant to readers with generic content ginned up by newbies with no background in the communities they serve.

In my local market, the Burlington Free Press let go one of its columnists, Ed Shamy, who wrote funny, sarcastic and always enjoyable columns about life in Vermont. If the paper explained why they picked him to cut, I missed it. But the end result is the newspaper is less interesting to read, has less relevance for local readers, and has lost a strong voice that helped define what it means to live here.