27 September, 2007

Two Barbers, and Happiness

There’s an old question I remember having heard when I was a kid: You go to a small town and realise you need a haircut. There are just two barbers in town. One of them has a lousy haircut. The other one has the coolest haircut ever. Who do you go to?

The answer, of course, is that you go to the barber with the bad haircut. As there are just two barbers in town, they obviously cut each other’s hair. So the bad-haircut dude is the better barber.

I was reminded of this today when I came across a New York Times report about a study that reveals that, in general, men are happier than women. The implications of that are obvious.

Shame on us.

Update: Falstaff writes in to point me to “[t]he ever reliable Mark Liberman on why the New York Times report you cite, like most NY Times coverage of research findings, totally misinterprets the research findings and provides implications that are totally bogus.”

And reader Arup Raha writes in to berate me for the suggestion that men are responsible for making women unhappy. Dude, I was joking. Men rock. Really.