Suckers and neighbors

Right now I'm sipping an iced latte which I got with my deca-punched frequent customer card at Espresso Royale. But I'm wondering whether it even makes any sense to get an iced latte, or should I have just gotten an espresso with a free cup of ice and some free milk from the condiment counter? Can anyone really tell the difference between steamed milk that's been iced from regular iced milk?

This morning I saw a speech given by Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, to the Detroit Economic Club on TV. He made passing reference to $2.75 lattes, comparing it to the extortionate cost of Raisinets at the movie theater: you're paying for the experience as much as the product, he said. And now I feel like the sucker in the Looney Tunes cartoons who gets the face of an ass superimposed over his face.

A couple hours ago, the Italian national team won the 2006 World Cup final in a big way: during an overtime that came down to penalty kicks. I was at a bar in downtown Ann Arbor, and the place erupted when the fifth kick sailed into the back of the net. Afterward I biked down to Silvio's, one of three places in town owned by actual Italians, the other two being NYPD and Bella Italia. Inside, people were still celebrating as images of the Azzuri being bathed in white confetti flashed on-screen. I got three slices of frutti di mare, said hello to Silvio, and went outside. Drunken frat boys were cheering for Italy probably just for the sake of making noise, and later, as I was munching down, cars passed with Italian flags draped outside of their windows.

Had I time and money to study whatever I wanted, say, a MacArthur grant, one thing I'd like to look at is how emotions spread throughout a nation, kind of like epidemics. I love those rare times when nations attain consonance: in the U.S. we all get a little bit more charitable at Thanksgiving and Christmas, a little more patriotic on the 4th of July. In Italy right now everyone's in soccer ecstasy. I love this idea that you could call anyone in Italy right now and talk about the game, probably to the sound of cheering in the background. How long did it take for everyone to get the news? And how long will that emotion last? Can you rate how neighborly people feel, and do feelings of social isolation vary inversely? Do crime rates go down when more people feel neighborly? Or will there always be some people who are immune to neighborly feelings?