Given the Economist’s somewhat erratic policy of making material available for free online, it was a pleasant surprise to see that numerous pieces from its end-of-year double issue are easily accessible.One of the articles on America’s Most Hated Companies got me thinking. First, it made realize that, for a small country, Ireland has an abundance of enterprises that people would be willing to nominate. My personal choice would be torn between two companies with TLAs: NTR (responsible for the Westlink embarrassment) and NTL (who have, in my experience, the worst customer service in Christendom).Second, The Economist indulged in some Googling to gauge popular sentiment:

Type �hate Bill Gates� into Google even now, and you will probably get over 15,000 hits. Type �love Bill Gates�, and on a good day (for Mr Gates) you may get 2,000.

In a similar vein, I decided to use the search engine to discover how people really feel about this time of year. “Love Christmas” elicits 617,000 results on Google, while “Hate Christmas” uncovers a mere 273,000 hits. However, and it wouldn’t be a Monkey’s Typewriter column without a caveat, while the combo “Christmas + happiness” leads to a whopping 7,030,000 results, “Christmas + depression” prompts an ever greater 7,260,000 links. I hope my readers find the first combination closer to their experiences in the coming days!