You may think that you’re a pretty positive person. But we’re betting no matter how hard you try, you wouldn’t be able to out-happy Matthieu Ricard, a French Buddhist monk who’s been nicknamed “the happiest man on earth.”

Seem like a stretch? We’re not just claiming that title based on the fact that Ricard is never seen without a smile, or that monks are generally a pretty beatific bunch – he’s got science on his side, too. In 2004, researchers at University of Wisconsin conducted a study on the brain patterns of hundreds of volunteers from different walks of life. The bell curve of the MRI measurements fell between +0.3 (a Sylvia Plath acolyte, no doubt) to -0.3 (Richard Simmons, perhaps?). But Ricard alone achieved an astonishing score of -0.45 – a level of joy so far above the others that his score was nearly off the chart.

So how did Ricard become the world’s happiest man? The 60-year-old monk didn’t always live a quiet life in the Himalayan mountains – as a young man, he was lauded as one of the world’s most promising biologists. But in 1972, he dropped out of the stressful world of French academia, trading in his laboratory for a monastery in Darjeeling, India, where he studied under Tibetan master Kangyur Rinpoche. In the years since, he has become well known as an author and photographer, and he serves as the Dalai Lama’s personal translator in France. He has devoted his life to the study of Buddhist philosophy and the art of happiness – and he firmly believes that the rest of us can achieve his incredible level of joy, too.

“The mind is malleable,” Ricard told The Independent. “Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.”

To fill your life with joy, he said, you must recognize what already makes you happy, and work to change your mental balance. “You have to identify what it is in that situation that makes you happy. It’s as though you’re making a journey, and you look in your rucksack to find it half filled with provisions, half with stones. You need to take out the stones and put in more provisions.”

In his new book, Happiness, Ricard serves as your own personal cross-trainer in the art of happiness, with advice on meditative exercises to increase peace of mind, and his own philosophies on how to fill your life with joy. With his help, you might just be able to tune out your noisy neighbor’s Metallica cover band for a few minutes, and imagine you’re relaxing on a private beach instead. If you can’t make it out to visit a Buddhist monastery any time soon, his book might just be the relief you need.

<a href=http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/191>Here</a> is video of Ricard speaking at the 2004 TED conference.

Well, following the Intelegant Awards of 2007, honestly thought that nothing could beat Morgan Stanley’s stunning Christmas turkey. After all, nothing goes to show what a really dedicated collective team effort can achieve like a negative profit of $8,000,000,000. Good job guys.

But, as we all know to really mess things up it takes but one truly committed individual.

The kind of losses that make African debt look minuscule couldn’t happen again within six weeks of each other, could it?

Mais oui!

In a move so financially stunning that is makes the Titanic look like Timmy losing his rubber duck in his Friday night bubble bath, rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, has single-handedly cost one of the central pillars of French banking Société Genérale a stunning $7 billion.

Vraiment, faît accomplie…

Even Yasuo Hamanaka, who previously held the personal record losing some $2.6 billion in 1996, while trading copper commodities at Sumitoma, must be green as Cu2O with jealousy.

I guess it’s one record where you’re glad to lose the title?

But I also bet that Jerry boy won’t hold the title for as long this time…

Isn’t it time that someone took compliance as a healthy option - rather than bad tasting medicine?

After all, you and I might have stopped at say $2,000,000,000 - but then again, why don’t go, literally, for broke if no-one’s watching?

While this is an outstanding effort to wipe out one of the more important European banks that should have taken strategy of M. Porter proportions, he appears to have failed to actually detonate the Big Bertha of a bomb that these losses should. Unless you count a takeover - which does look likely. Oh. Merde.

It’s early days and one cannot predict these things. Just ask Jerome. Whose obvious predilection for prediction seems destined to fall flatter than an a bevy of bungy jumping elephants with manic-depressive tendencies.

I think we can all safely predict an excellent career for Jerome as author and chat show celebrity. If he survives prison. Poor Jerome. Courage mon ami, the loss of all your friends on Facebook is only temporary - give them a glimpse of a TV camera and those same friends will come running back - just don’t be surprised if they do so anonymously.

I mean there are fair weather friends, then lousy weather, then there’s darn that tornandey just ripped Daisy straight out of her stall and took Mary Lou and the best milkin’ pail with her weather. This is the latter.

The Daily Telegraph reports that it was the death of a father and the break-up of a marriage were the triggers for the behaviour - sounds reasonable - damaged ego plus misery - work becomes everything - must have status as the biggest and best.

Ah, boys and their toys.

Just hoping, seriously, he’s got one good friend to sit up nights with him for the next couple of weeks.

And no sleeping pills.

Methinks, it’s going to be tough for one person to beat this this within another six weeks, but hey, hedge funders are getting ready to move again so you never know…

I am just about to start a five day open course on the neuroanatomy and neuropsychology of stress on Monday here on the blog, and Jerome, mon brave, if you would drop by and read it, and I do think you might be the target profile for such a course, then I solemnly promise you’ll have one friend, well, if an add on my Facebook page doesn’t cheer you up, what will…?

An unknown artist, called Invader, has a webpage at http://www.space-invaders.com/artworks.html, and proves that a Rubik Cube is art as well as the best puzzle ever.

Amazing….

Well it’s been a year to savour for those who like the darker side of miserable failure.

I have chosen only those outstanding errors that reek of schaudenfreude.

Could have gone with Google’s purchase of $240 million for a 1.6% share of Facebook, (Well, it is only $240,000,000), but who knows that might work out, right?

After all they did buy the advertising rights, and we all click ads when we visit Facebook, right? Oh dear.

Or the Aqua Teen movie publicity stunt that caused numerous bomb scare reports in the Boston area, but has since been widely praised as a brilliant if albeit risky (it did cost the CEO of the Cartoon Network, Jim Samples, his job) tactic to publicize a fanboy movie offering.

Or dozens of others, including giants like Microsoft’s Vista (an acquaintance described to me very venomously as “the biggest and slowest suicide note in history”), or Apple’s stunning own goal regarding the pricing of the iPhone.

Data loss is a growing trend (And more of those later), and data collectors are growing very long tails and horns:Yahoo! seem to demand new information about you for everything. Amazon, who know more about your purchasing habits than a professional shopper, and almost inevitably, AOL, who are running a spyware campaign that includes a data gather. Nice. (Source: Business Intelligence Lowdown)

Then there’s just plain messed-up finances like well, a lot of mortgages.While all are good, none are so great as to be labelled monumentally FUBAR’d.

Life is regrettably even more bizarre.

So, some of the below are well known to us all, some perhaps not so well known.

However, the ones chosen I believe all show merit for truly messing on their own carpet in elephantine quantities and are truly deserving of the immortal epithet:

“Teamwork is fun - it allows you to blame someone else.”

Perhaps not surprisingly two involved mass transportation, and definitely not surprising to anyone at all, all involved IT in one form or another.

Two involved IT in, well, a huge way.

If you count the biggest (probable) robbery in history as huge.

The winner is actually missing from most other lists on the internet as it happened on the 21st December 2007, but given the amount involved it really does make the top of the list.

So here goes:

The runner-ups.

A real doozie to kick-off the proceedings, Response Unlimited, a marketing company of some importance, that took on the task of marketing a fund-raising campaign for Terri Schiavo’s family (The most famous right to life case of 2007) and then sold the list as sales leads. Outstanding. And for biting the hands that feed them, Response Unlimited, got burned at Christian Media Research’s pages.

LA Airport.

Some 17,000 planes were grounded at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this year because of a software problem. The problem that hit systems at United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) agency was a simple one caused in a piece of lowly, inexpensive equipment.

The device in question was a network card that cascaded out until it hit the entire network at the USCBP and brought it to a standstill. Nobody could be authorised to leave or enter the US through the airport for eight hours. Passengers were not impressed. (Source: ZDNet)

And the winner of the lack of personal perspective award:

John Mackey. Former CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

Who not only disguised postings on Yahoo!’s message boards in order to beef up the stock price but proved himself to have a Zeppelin sized ego while doing it. Among several classic lines: “I like Mackey’s hair. I think he looks cute.”

Bet he smiled as he posted it.

Bet he’s not smiling now.

For getting it so wrong in the quality steaks (sic):Topps Meat who redefined the expectations of the company BBQ by letting standards drift a little. Well, they did recall 21.7 million pounds of meat. That’s a lot of burgers. Their nationwide e-coli scare led a recall that cost the company so much money it simply went broke.

And, for the most effective Valentine’s day Massacre since Al Capone also offered free transportation in the Chicago area:(Not just because it gave Jay Leno jokes forever) Jet Blue. The previously excellent low-cost airline stranded, or rather imprisoned, thousands during a Valentine Day’s marketing stunt.

Jet Blue could have been forgiven, it was due to snowstorms, but their follow-up efforts were just horrible. To experience what sardines die for, being enclosed in tight proximity of strangers in a metal can, Jet Blue gets a reasonable mention.

And so to IT and personal information:

It’s a tie:

For achieving what millions of fake Ebay emails and all those phishing sites couldn’t TJMaxx; who singlehandedly found that 45.7 million credit card details had been snatched from their new wireless setup with a worm, which to top it all had lain undetected on their system for eighteen months.

Possibly the biggest bank robbery in history, no-one will say how much was eventually taken. No one yet has been caught.

And,

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (UK) for losing the details of 25 million individuals, with some 7.25 million UK families potentially affected.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, said that two discs containing the details of everybody in the UK who claims and receives child benefits had been lost.

Details on the discs, which were only password protected, included names, addresses, dates of birth, national insurance numbers and bank and building society account details.”This is an extremely serious matter,” said Darling.

No kidding.

Expect a very large number of passport applications from people with Eastern European English very soon.

And the 2007 runner-up:

Northern Rock Building Society

Who’d have thought a British Building Society would have made a global list. What a mess - like a page from a lost Victorian melodrama the Bank of England was called in to valiantly shored up the BS after the positively Hollywood-like sight of a genuine bank run by the good people of Britain. I promise to pay the bearer…. not on your nelly.

Dropping from the FTSE 100 to the 250 was bad enough, but for the largest mortgage lender in the UK to have to go the Bank of England as a lender of last resort, well, it was just not cricket.

On the first day of the run it is estimated that some £1 billion was withdrawn by customers - including a couple who barricaded themselves in the Cheltenham branch as they were unable to access their savings of £1 million online due to traffic to the site.

It wasn’t all bad news though, there were some hedge funds managers who thoroughly deserve their Christmas bonus as they conservatively made their funds some £1 billion.

Oh, and don’t be surprised to see more of this financial shenanigans in the future.

And finally, just getting in at the timestamp, the winner is:

Morgan Stanley.

Yes, one of the top financial institutions, who wisely left the announcement until after most magazines had published their lists on December 21st 2007 announced a single catastrophic mistake by traders at Morgan Stanley’s mortgage business which blew a US$8 billion ($10.6 billion) hole in the bank’s finances.

That’s $8,000,000,000.

Or a lot of presents at Costco. Which is where some bank’s staff will no doubt be shortly applying for work.

In what might be the biggest single loss by a trading desk on Wall St, Morgan Stanley said it was stuck holding vast quantities of mortgage derivatives that had plunged in value since mid-year and kept on plunging in November.

John Mack, chief executive, called it “an error of judgment”. Colm Kelleher, chief financial officer, said the bank had learned “a very expensive and humbling lesson”.

Amen to that.

Congratulations to all those who didn’t make this list, and commiserations to all those that did. We wish all a better 2008, and hope that your records, flights, investments, and IT are all safe in the coming year.