Happiness Measured Through...Bloggers?

It's true. A new metric has been developed that analyzes blogs (as well as song lyrics and speeches, such as presidential State of the Union addresses) to determine the average mood of the nation. Read about it here.

Interesting things to take away:

Teenagers are the most unhappy bloggers, according to the study, using negative words like "mad" and "fat."

Michael Jackson has positive lyrics.

Notable days of depression include the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and June 25, or the day MJ died. Days of higher than average happiness include Christmas and Valentine's Day (although both have negative words associated with them).

It's interesting, at least.

Hot Damn!

I wasn't doing anything in particular this morning, checking my Google analytics numbers for the past few days. Idly checking todays numbers, for Sunday the 13th, I notice that the number of visits is an all time high (for two and a half months of operation), at 26. Cool. Five minutes ago, I checked again. The scale is off for some reason, and I can't figure out why...until I realize that it's been thrown off by a huge number of visits today. On this single day, January 13, 2008, I have had 110 visits. Excuse me, but what the hell happened? Aside from a few direct links, and an equal number from IDTMI (thanks for the link again, by the way), there's nothing I recognize. 94 visits came through referral from Google images. What? How? And why are they almost all from New York and New Jersey? Two searches using the keyword "New York Giants" found the blog. Is that what it is? Giants fans searching for their team, and finding a fan in the blogosphere? Because that's really cool.

By the way, the Giants did beat the Cowboys this evening, and it was fantastic. Nothing like an interception in the endzone to end the game and rub it in Romo's face. Oh, and little Manning is going farther than big bro. We'll always have the priceless pep talks, though.