Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- You’re Richer Than You Think (“… we struggle to pay for the lifestyles we think we deserve when billions struggle to live. The inconvenient truth is that most of us have more than we need and spend more than we should.”)
- Happiness and Its Discontents (“[We can] feel so anxious about feeling anxious that when we catch ourselves getting a little stirred up, a little excited, even in a good way, we end up suppressing our feelings because we fear that our ardor might deliver us straight into the lair of … anxiety.”)
- Fifty States of Fear (“The interesting thing about the security measures that are taken today is that they provide, as [Erik} Prince puts it, the ‘illusion of security’; another way to put it is that they provide ‘security theater.’ Or perhaps it is actually a theater of fear.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Most Unusual Medical Finding of the Week
- The number of people going to U.S. emergency rooms with pubic hair grooming injuries increased fivefold from 2002 to 2010
Most Interesting Study of the Week
- Whether death row inmate accepts last meal and how much they eat may be indicator of guilt or innocence
Bookish Linkage
- Do good books make us better people or can reading make you smarter or make you more stupid?
- Buddhist rewrites of classic novels
- The Strand Book Store has a “showroom for bibliophile porn“
- Bookish Lists: four books immigration policymakers should read; 50 Years of the Beatles in books; SF books that perfectly capture their authors’ philosophies; 50 essential mystery novels; 10 facts about Americans and public libraries
Nonbookish Linkage
- The 85 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world’s population
- Of course, how much money do you need to be happy?
- And if economic and other conditions around the world are improving, why do so many people feel poor?
- Meet the Soviet Union’s space dogs
- Evidently, there’s a lot of people out there who think God has nothing better to do than help their favorite sports team win
- Why your actions make sense but what other people do is dumb
- All Froot Loop colors are the same flavor
A life spent at one’s desk is a life alone.
Donna Tartt, Nov. 14, 2013
