Every gets bored sometimes

I have been reading Voltaire's Candide recently and I have the sense that he (Voltaire) has difficulty with happiness and wisdom/learning. Candide wanders the world getting shit on while attempting to figure out the world and why it was created ('to torment me'), why we exist, why evil exists, etc? Normal philosophical questions. At the end of the story Candide decides it is better to not think and just work... work is what makes a person happy and thinking is what makes a person miserable. Hmmm...

I had a point when I started writing this but I was interrupted by recursive cows and a discussion of the worth, or lack there of, of one of the graduate students employed by my employer.

Ah, there it is. One of the ideas that seems to come up quite a bit in Candide (other than mocking Leibnitz) is the idea that ones happiness is relative to other people (i.e. I am less miserable than that guy so I must be happy). While it does not appear that Voltaire supported this idea, I think that I will use it to simplify my view of the world. It shall be called the Theory of Relative Happiness.

Z. Monkey

P.S. What is the only word which contains 'spb' (in that order)?

Please excuse the links in this log of web... I was too lazy to find good ones.