Netbooks at a local Starbucks

[guitarist]

I want to know more about this technique, about how you looked into their soul to find they were happy. That would be a useful thing to know, from 20-50 feet away, with complete strangers, in a busy public place.

You mean they weren't cursing, crying, or sighing? Absence of visible suffering qualifies as happiness? I need to reconsider my observational powers, and learn some of these perception techniques!