Firstly, there was a rigid system of social stratification; and as we know uncertainty about ones social status is huge cause of stress: people are much happier when they know their exact status.

Secondly, there were strict rules about displays of status within a social order. If your order was entitled to a fur collar, it had to be a particular size and a particular type, the same as that worn be everyone else in that order. At your wedding celebration, you were limited to a specific number of guests; in a church procession a certain number of candles. Now as "Status Anxiety" points out, it's your status relative to your immediate peers which is most critical to happiness, so this again should keep everyone happy.

Thirdly, economic activity was deeply micromanaged by your Guild. If you were a shoemaker, the Guild would dictate not just how many nails you use, and what hammer you use, but exactly how many times you struck each nail. Hit a nail four times instead of three and you could be punished for trying to outcompete your peers. If your workshop was on the street, you were forbidden from nodding at passers-by, and even sneezing when people pass by. Such a thing could be construed as advertising, and hence an attempt to outcompete your guild fellows.

So: no advertising, no peer pressure, no status anxiety, no rat race, strict protectionism: it's exactly what the Happiness folk ordered. They should totally set up a medieval city and live there.

Reading 2
Finished Emperor by Stephen Baxter. Odd book: seems like he intended to write an alternate history, but changed his mind to straight history instead.

It covers about 400 years of Roman Britain, split up into sections covering various periods. The characters involve members of the same family, who hand down a mysterious prophecy. This is apparently an attempt to change history, but this book (and apparently its sequel) only cover straight history.

The physical research seems pretty tight: characters are always pointing out things like little oddities in fort design to each other and explaining why they happen.

Socially and psychologically though, it just doesn't feel right for the period: everyone thinks and acts too contemporary. It's hard to believe in a woman allowed so much independence, or a Christian in such an aristocratic family at the time.

Plotwise, it doesn't really work. The individual stories aren't really that interesting, and with all the characters dying of old age between sections, there isn't really any narrative drive behind the book as a whole.

I'm interested enough in the history that I'll look out for the next one; but wouldn't particularly recommend it.

Reading 3
Comics. Finished the compilation of the first four years of the Boondocks: A Right to be Hostile. Read quite a few of them when they first came out: was slightly shocked to see that was 1999: feels like only the other day. Pretty good: they still hold up pretty well, though would be nice to have more character development and explanation of what happened to the parents.

McGruder lost interest in the strip later on though, resorting first to cut-and-paste art, then farming the strip out to other writers. So, this compilation probably has the best of it.

Reading 4
Finished Renoir, Paris and the Belle Epoque by Karin Sagner-Duchting. Very short but lavishly illustrated book covering what it says. Very non-technical, explains things very simply without assuming much knowledge.

Borrowed it from the library since I keep meaning to go the the Renoir landscapes exhibition at the National Gallery sometime: has very little information on landscapes though.

Me : Work
Pissed off and tired out by a bunch of things.

Work is frustrating. I'm still full time on this fucking fucked up project, involving stitching together half a dozen incredibly flaky, unreliable undocumented other applications. It's practically impossible to test because we have only one environment that has to be shared by everyone, so it just goes like this:

1. I get hold of the environment, spend 2 days setting everything up to work, tell the business to start testing
2. Business don't test anything for 3 days because they're too busy. Everyone bitches at me for hogging the environment
3. Business start testing. By now, one of the flaky apps has fallen over. So, business report that my app has failed, stop testing
4. I start it up again,
5. Business eventually start testing. Find a minor bug
6. I spend a day getting bug fixes and deployed
7. By now, someone else needs the environment so I give it up
8. Redo from start

I'm spending all my time either hassling people to get stuff deployed or get the environment, or endlessly troubleshooting these flaky apps that I have no control over.

This project has dragged on for literally years, under three other people before I took over. Nobody really cares enough about it prioritise it, but nobody wants to kill it either.

Even when it does go live, the other apps are incredibly flaky, constantly fall over when data fails to meet arbitrary standards, and are in a constant state of flux; so this app is going to have a constant stream of problems whatever I do.

Web
Economics roundup.

Why home ownership causes unemployment and people stay in declining areas.

Olympic overspend not as bad as it's painted.

Bouncernomics.

Parking Attendantnomics.