An interesting new study suggests people who are extremely active are happier than people who sit idle.

The finding may explain why people confess to being so incredibly busy in today’s society.

(via emilyposts » psychotherapy)

“I need you to take on a contract for me,” Watanabe says. “But in this case, instead of coordinating a facilitative approach in the light of the client’s tactical aims, you will take a prescriptive approach in implanting strategic objectives as part of a processual intervention in executive leadership.”

“I’ve done that before, as a junior associate, but it’s dangerous,” DiCaprio says with raspy wistfulness. He has a vision of privatized British hospitals crumbling into a foamy sea. “But the only way to do it is to infiltrate the client’s internal management consulting group to convince the board that it’s their own strategic objectives they’re implementing.”

Brilliant.

(via kottke)

“This sauce is really good,” she said. “It’s so Jean-Georges. He does this French-and-Asian thing.” She warned me that she would need a few seconds to figure out its precise ingredients. (She refused to divulge them, on the ground that Vongerichten would consider the recipe “a trade secret.” I later learned from one of the waiters that the ingredients include powdered English mustard and soy sauce.) “It’s so complex,” she said. “It makes me smile.”

The New Yorker goes undercover with a Michelin food critic, whose mere existence is so secretive that the author is forced to refer to her as M, which is the initial of a name that isn’t even hers.

I couldn’t help but think constantly of Anton Ego, the food critic nemesis in Pixar’s Ratatouille, while reading this article.

(via givemesomethingtoread)

Interesting article in the NYT:

Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees, according to a 1999 federal study. “Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.

I’m not going to lie—I mainly blogged this just to see how well I can do it on my iPad. In case you’re wondering, it’s wonderful.

List posts are bad*, but this is a good article—the points are all very well elucidated, so don’t lynch me.

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
2. Humans are naturally polygamous
3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim
5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
6. Beautiful people have more daughters
7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
8. The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
9. It’s natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they’re male)
10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

So the next time your girlfriend catches you gaping at an attractive, blond bombshell on the street, just remind her that you can’t help it—it’s just human nature. That will dull the pain from the slaps across the face you’ll likely be receiving. Science is awesome.

NPR’s Laura Lorson:

Love may be patient and love may be kind, but really, love’s not at its best in the middle of February. February is kind of the dark night of the soul of cohabitational relationships. February is when even Tristan and Isolde are getting on each other’s nerves. Isolde finds herself saying things like, “I really wish you wouldn’t leave your snowy, salty boots to drip melt water all over our living room carpet,” and Tristan fires back with, “Wow, you really sound like your mother when you get angry.” And then someone ends up sleeping on the couch with the dogs—hypothetically speaking, of course.

In my world, romance and love are very different things. If love is a diamond, romance is rhinestones. Love abides; romance is a squatter on the run from a collection agency. Romance likes that it has a holiday where it’s the center of attention. Love isn’t all that interested; love’s got bigger fish to fry. Romance will ply you with whispers and compliments; love is busy fixing your leaky roof and taking out the trash.

I don’t understand all the fuss behind Valentine’s Day either. It’s my birthday—shoutout to all my other 1988 Valentine’s Day babies!—but otherwise it’s a fairly gloomy day, a day in which the winter hasn’t released its grip, trees are still bare, and scarves still wrapped around necks. I can’t think of a worst time to celebrate ‘love’, or even the fake, forced ‘romance’ the article talks about.

Fantastic article.

An hour and a half after waking, early birds and night owls were equally alert and showed no difference in attention-related brain activity. But after being awake for 10 and a half hours, night owls had grown more alert, performing better on a reaction-time task requiring sustained attention and showing increased activity in brain areas linked to attention. More important, these regions included the suprachiasmatic area, which is home to the body’s circadian clock. This area sends signals to boost alertness as the pressure to sleep mounts. Unlike night owls, early risers didn’t get this late-day lift. Peigneux says faster activation of sleep pressure appears to prevent early birds from fully benefiting from the circadian signal, as evening types do.

Personally, I can stay awake 16 to 20 hours a day whether I wake up at 7 AM or 12 PM. But I do notice I’m considerably more tired at the end of the day when I wake up early than the times I wake up later.

Too bad most of the article is hidden behind a pay wall. And if the Financial Times’ editor Lionel Barber is to be believed, this will not be the only instance—in fact, he predicts that “almost all” news organizations will be charging for online content within a year. While I understand and accept news corporations’ reasons for doing so, I have to side with John Gruber on this issue, who claims it is “a fundamentally flawed strategy” to charge for online content:

A dollar for a newspaper or a few bucks for a glossy magazine feels like a fair price for a copy. Trees have been cut, presses have been rolled, trucks have been driven to get that copy into your hands.

What feels like a fair price for a copy of a web page, on the other hand, is nothing. They’re just ones and zeroes.

Let’s hope Lionel Barber is wrong and Gruber is right, and that we should never see too many ridiculous pay walls blocking online content.

Edit: Uh oh. The Wall Street Journal today announced that it will begin charging for mobile access to its news content starting October 24^th. As Gruber-Yoda would say, “Not victory, Obi-Wan. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, this News-corporations-paywalling-online-content War has.”

_{by Shine from Yahoo!   [via dearmary]}

1. Why can’t we be friends? This sounds nice but in reality an ex does not make a true friend, especially immediately after the breakup.
2. I must have closure. Closure can be difficult to obtain no matter how many conversations one has. The best closure can come from resisting the urge for dialogue and moving on.
3. I just need to make sense of it all, and I just have one more thing to say before you go. Another version of closure and another reason to stay in contact when in reality this just gives your ex another opportunity to hurt you. Not fun.
4. I want to be available for reconciliation. Wanting to get back together is a fair feeling to have. Even if you do end up reconciling, the relationship will undoubtedly be different. It is still important to take some time without speaking in order to mourn the relationship and contemplate how you really feel.
5. I just need to give their stuff back. Do it quickly, in the first couple days. After that, use one of our many mail services.
6. I miss the physical intimacy. And your ex is familiar because you know them (and it won’t increase your “number”). But again, this is just prolonging the inevitable and will keep you stuck in the past. Time to cut off the ex and find someone new (or maybe even just yourself) to get jiggy with.
7. We run in the same circles. If this is the case, you won’t be able to help running into your ex, but that does not mean you need to get in touch afterward. Keep your conversations polite, brief and away from anything that can bring up negative feelings from the past. Obviously easier said than done.