Blue Monday

It's Blue Monday!

The official most depressing year of the day, or so them say. Me, I dunno if it is or not. The sky's looking pretty blue to me, and some coffee will be on the go soon.

Anyway, Blue Monday, according to the Wikipedia:

Blue Monday is a name given to a date stated, as part of a publicity campaign by Sky Travel, to be the most depressing day of the year.

This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a Further Education centre attached to Cardiff University.Guardian columnist Dr Ben Goldacre reported that the press release was delivered substantially pre-written to a number of academics by Public Relations agency Porter Novelli, who offered them money to put their names to it.^[1] The Guardian later printed a statement from Cardiff University distancing themselves from Arnall: "Cardiff University has asked us to point out that Cliff Arnall... was a former part-time tutor at the university but left in February."^[2]

According to a press release by a mental health charity^[3], the formula is:

where weather=W, debt=d, time since Christmas=T, time since failing our new year’s resolutions=Q, low motivational levels=M and the feeling of a need to take action=N_a. 'D' is not defined in the release, nor are units.

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