Woo hoo! (Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Quick: what are the three happiest words in the English language?

If you’re a late-night partier, you may have thought “happy hour prices.” If you’re a working stiff, your answer may have been “today is payday.”

If you’re a mathematician like The University of Vermont’s Peter Dodds, however, your answer may have been “laughter, happiness, love.” In 2011 Dodd authored a study that in part ranked more than 10,000 words for “happiness;” and the top three were “laughter, happiness, love.” Dodds and other researchers then measured the frequency of those words in 10 million Tweets that were posted in 2011 and tagged to 373 U.S. urban areas.

The results of their work has been making news this week – they determined that based on the Tweets, Napa is the happiest city in the U.S.

The words that Dodds and his colleagues ranked were those that most frequently appeared on Twitter and in Google Books as well as in music lyrics from 1960 to 2007 and the New York Times from 1987 to 2007. In his paper, Dodds describes how the researchers determined the mood of a word:

For the evaluations, we asked users on (the Amazon website) Mechanical Turk to rate how a given word made them feel on a nine point integer scale, obtaining 50 independent evaluations per word. We broke the overall assignment into 100 smaller tasks of rating approximately 100 randomly assigned words at a time. We emphasized the scores 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 by stylized faces, representing a sad to happy spectrum.

Here is the full list of words ranked by happiness, as well as the average happiness score each word received. The five least happy words on the list are “terrorist,” “suicide,” “rape,” “terrorism” and “murder.”

Remember last week? It seems so long ago. An asteroid buzzed the Earth. A meteor hit Russia. Cops turned Los Angeles upside down. The President gave a major address.

And… oh yeah, there was the Harlem Shake.

As the latest meme to sweep pop culture, the Harlem Shake probably reached its peak last week when it was the subject of stories by mainstream media outlets like USA Today, The Atlantic and CBS. Then it jumped the shark. Everyone has been doing it lately – from sports teams to grandparents to public media organizations – and most of their videos have been forced and forgettable. By the summer, you’ll probably need to Google ‘Harlem Shake’ to remember what all the fuss was about.

Still, there are reasons to look back on the Harlem Shake meme with appreciation. It was kinda fun, as watching a good Harlem Shake video was like playing a much more enjoyable version of “Where’s Waldo?” You often re-loaded the page and re-watched the video to find the interesting things and people in the background.

So let’s look at 8 of the people who made Harlem Shake videos interesting.

1. The University of Georgia men’s swim team member wearing the Stormtrooper mask. Because memes are always more interesting when they involve amazing feats of endurance.

2 and 3. Matt and Kim. Because they made you wish you had been at this show.

4 and 5. Superman and Wonder Woman. Because they seem like the awesomest parents ever.

6. The Alien. Because you now know what costume you’re going to wear for Halloween this year.

Who to look for.

7. The guy on the table petting the cheetah. Because he’s a guy on a table petting a cheetah. (If only it was a real cheetah.)

Who to look for.

8. The woman with the mustache video bombing.Because hopefully she’ll serve as inspiration for the next great meme.

Who to look for.

So you turn on the radio for solace. You hear this, and it makes things seem just a little bit better…

Maybe you could use an NPR dating site.

It’s an idea that’s been discussed by public media folks on occasion. What if there was a site where you could meet others interested in foreign affairs, the genius of Kepler and Ira Glass’s dog? A few stations – including St. Louis Public Radio and WNYC – have organized dating events for listeners. Perhaps it’s time to try matching public radio fans online.

For Valentine’s Day KQED asked its Facebook and Twitter followers if they thought NPR should start a dating site. KQED’s Aarti Shahani also interviewed public media executives and online dating experts about the idea for a story you can find here.

Combined, the story and the comments received via social media make a pretty compelling case for a site that would allow This American Life listeners to find love with Terry Gross groupies. Here are five reasons why NPR should start a dating site.

1. There are a lot of people who share an interest in public radio. About 26.8 million Americans listened to NPR newscasts every week in 2011, according to the Pew Research Center. And they’re not all run-of-the-mill librarians. Some of them are sexy librarians. Some of them are sexy pop stars and actors.

George Clooney hearts NPR.

Justin Timberlake, photo via NPR.org

OK, so J.T. is off the market. Still, there are other sexy men and women who like NPR.

“It’s a pretty big group and there’s got to be several million who are single,” NPR President and CEO Gary Knell told Shahani. “They’re hungry for a connection and a community of people who, like them, want to engage in and are curious about the world, which is really complicated, and can be really lonely.”

2. Lonely listeners have something in common they can talk about: NPR. This NPR fan noted that public radio can be a great conversation starter on dates.

Not convinced? The next time you’re out with a fellow public radio fan, try beginning the conversation with the questions posed by real NPR headlines like “is the Internet making us stupid?” and “did North Korea test a ‘miniature’ nuclear bomb?”

If you’re not sure that the person you’re dating is a bona fide public radio aficionado, you can just ask them to identify the name of the NPR  staffers who have been name-checked on Parks and Recreation.

3. As the conversation continues, NPR listeners might find they have a lot in common. Listener Katherine Lee says she thinks many NPR listeners might share the same worldview.

Audience studies seem to back her up. In general, NPR listeners are described as middle-aged college graduates whose households earn nearly twice the income of average American households. According to stats reported by On the Media in 2006, NPR listeners are likely to…

• Be liberal
• Be curious
• Drink soy milk
• Drink French wine
• Own a Volvo

4. If you hook up at the end of the date, you might help create a race of super-beings. That’s what NPR’s Chicago station WBEZ hopes will happen. They launched an ad campaign recently that made waves by asking listeners to “go make babies” with other “interesting people.” Those “interesting people” would hypothetically be future NPR listeners.

Listener Alex Soros called these “interesting” babies an “uber race.”

5. And even if you don’t get lucky, your date is still bound to be interesting. Because it will probably be with somebody like this guy:

Left: Randy Moss (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) Right: Snoop Dogg. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

But a few of their choices did raise some questions …

• Ryan Gosling as Alex Smith? Really? I mean, don’t me wrong: Smith is a handsome man. But Gosling is as gorgeous as a Greek god. Find a mortal to play Smith.
• Sacha Baron Cohen as Colin Kaepernick? Borat, Kaepernick ain’t.
• Jim Carrey as Jim Harbaugh? “If you’ve seen Harbaugh’s epic sideline antics, you know why we’re casting Ace Ventura,” Digital First argues. Well, Digital First, 49ers fans know why you’re casting “Ace Ventura” – it’s because you don’t know anything about Harbaugh. His sideline outbursts aren’t antics, they’re a reflection of his competitive drive and energy. If Harbaugh met Ace Ventura, we’re pretty sure the coach would make him run sprints until he puked.

Left: Ryan Gosling (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) Right: Alex Smith (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

Here are Digital First’s casting picks for a Super Bowl “movie;” scroll down and click “Read more…” for what they say about the 49ers.

Who do you think should play Smith, Kaepernick and Harbaugh in a movie? What about the rest of Digital First’s suggestions? Leave a comment at the bottom of this post.