just what the doctor ordered

Apparently a harvard study determined that happiness is contagious.

Happiness is contagious in social networks

So I thought I'd spread a little holiday cheer: merry christmas

Mmmmm.....beer

Oh man! These taps are screaming for drew's beer! For those of you who don't know, Drew has been featuring a new beer every Wednesday night at Mattingly on Jefferson. Looks like the fermentors are almost up and ready to go for all the drew brew we can drink(dont worry, drew said he'd bottle a couple of good ones for me). Drew, thanks for the shout out to Moolah 3H in the Suburban Journal! He's also led the creation of some seasonal beers you can only get at the Tap Room. If you stop by Mattingly and see drew, ask him for a tour of the brewery.

suburban journal
channel 5

holy shit, I'm glad I dont live in Pakistan

Pakistan is in a civil war with a bunch of fundamentalists, fighting our war against al queda and Afghanistan, fighting terrorists from India, its own country, and the Taliban, and now members of their own country are lashing out at India to piss off India's nuclear armed government. This might not be a surprise to anyone else, but this article put into perspective for me a lot of the dynamics going on.

WSJ

Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski.

This is something I was talking to Julia about on our trip to Chicago: I think our generation is going to produce a new era of hippies. Our generation has been brought up to think that we have the opportunity to accomplish anything we put our minds to if we work and study really hard. After 16 or more years of school putting us at the top 25% educated individuals in the United States, we are finding this to not be much of an accomplishment and finding it difficult to get a desirable job, or even less, a job that makes more than that of a waiter(save that of the members of UAW association). Our predecessors have not been opening up the job opportunities we had been led on to expect and fail to promote our advancement. I realize we are also the generation who received trophies whether we won or lost, which may have led us to think that we are more deserving for accomplishing less than we should be, and I also realize that other generations faced similar difficulties when facing realities in the job market. Now though, the rising unemployment rate, struggling economy, increasing cost of living, involvement in two distant wars, and the prolapsed age of retirement have made the transition to the working world quite difficult and quite discouraging for us. Those of us that had expected more out of life for less work will soon fall victim to apathy and pointlessness as we bum around and use up the resources available to us(parents and credit cards). Educated and angry at the system we may just take to the real world in a movement with new values and directions as our hippie parents did back in the sixties. The bums have not lost.