Frank Greve:

Car reviewing was great fun back in the '70s when Car and Driver, then based in Manhattan, sometimes did late night acceleration tests on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the lads from Motor Trend wound for days through the South of France in spring at carmakers' expense. About all that's left of that era is the prose. Specifically the kind of over-the-top prose that founding father Tom McCahill of Mechanix Illustrated, a slumming Yalie, offered up when he declared the 1957 Pontiac's ride "smooth as a prom queen's thigh." Lawrence Ulrich approached McCahill's high bar last fall in a New York Times review when he likened driving the Ferrari 458 Italia to "barreling Woody Allen's Orgasmatron over Niagara Falls." And the Wall Street Journal's Neil, who won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2004 while writing about cars for the Los Angeles Times, sailed high over the bar last fall when he compared the joy of accelerating an especially muscular Mercedes-Benz, the CL63 AMG, to "being fired from a Roman catapult into a mattress of cocaine."

Witold Rybczynski:

In Washington, we've come to see the bizarre phenomenon that one federal official characterized to me as "bollard envy," where the degree of protection becomes a symbol of bureaucratic status, like a choice parking spot or a corner office. Perhaps the most egregious example is the screening center for visitors that Congress built for itself; by the time the underground facility was finished it covered half a million square feet and cost $620 million.

Lapham's Quarterly:

The G8 met in Hokkaido, Japan, in July 2008 to address the global food crisis. Over an eighteen-course meal -- including truffles, caviar, conger eel, Kyoto beef, and champagne -- prepared by sixty chefs, the world leaders came to a consensus: "We are deeply concerned that the steep rise in global food prices coupled with availability problems in a number of developing countries is threatening global food security."

A.J. Jacobs:

Brad Blanton, a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist, says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. Oversharing? No such thing.

I have a theory: I think Blanton devised Radical Honesty partly as a way to pick up women. It's a brilliant strategy. The antithesis of mind games.

Janelane, on Dmitri the stud:

At least he had the courtesy to tell her he was good in bed so she knew what she was missing out on!

"Leonard Nimoy":

It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth?

The answer ... is No.

Paul Graham:

I'm not saying we should stop, but I think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why.

Jacobs:

If you're going to be a schmuck, at least you should find some redeeming quality in it.

One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I'm saving a whole lot of time.

Penelope Trunk:

Stop talking about time like you need to save it. You just need to use it better.

Stewart Brand:

In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

I Think You're Fat

Douglas Adams:

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.

At first, Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation, he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

Alan Hall:

This is not daydreaming.

It's more purposeful. More productive.

It is the practice of stillness in the midst of the madding crowd.

W. H. Davies:

What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare ...

David Foster Wallace:

Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find, and, in waves, a boredom like you've never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it's like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.

William Deresiewicz:

There's been much talk of late about the loss of privacy, but equally calamitous is its corollary, the loss of solitude.

Roger Cohen:

Being "always on" is being always off, to something.

Liz Danzico:

I need idle time in equal proportion to planned time; leaving time for the unplanned, and making sure there's enough time for a bit of nothing. It's this space that makes the planned more worthwhile.

Deresiewicz:

Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things -- to acknowledge things to yourself -- that you otherwise can't.

Mark Pilgrim:

In the end, how many 25-year friends can you hope to make in one lifetime? How many do you really need?

Looking for moments of peace amid the hurly-burly of daily life

Julian Baggini:

Despite its prominence, the contemporary, science-backed pursuit of happiness nevertheless raises serious questions about our value system. If all that matters is that we feel good, then what about other ideals we hold for the good life? In particular, if truth and happiness conflict, which one should prevail: blissful ignorance or painful knowledge?

From last year's best-of:

What if I want something more than the pale facsimile of fulfillment brought by a parade of ever-fancier toys? To spend my life restlessly producing instead of sedately consuming? Is there an app for that?

As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more.

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

Happiness exists just around the corner, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get there.

Is there a formula -- some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation -- for a good life?

You can't be happy all the time, but you can pretty much focus all the time. That's about as good as it gets.

Baggini:

As might be expected from a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, this is a solid but arid assessment ...

From this week's Economist:

"Let's be honest," said Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama's chief of staff: "The goal isn't to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution. I'm passing it through the United States Congress with people who represent constituents." That attitude, shot back Bill Galston, one of the slighted think-tank's senior fellows, all but guaranteed that Congress would duck the hard issues.

Baggini:

It seems that uncertainty, change, and the perception that there is a gravy train others are riding but you're not, conspire against the gains of economic growth.

Decius:

Paul Graham asks what living in your city tells you. Living in the north Perimeter area for 6 odd years now has told me that everybody makes way, way more money than I do. It's not inspiring so much as it makes you sympathize with class warfare.

Baggini:

The issue, according to Barbara Ehrenreich, is whether we start with the facts or with our attitudes.

Have you seen "Doubt"?

Father Brendan Flynn: You haven't the slightest proof of anything!
Sister Aloysius Beauvier: But I have my certainty!

Where happiness lies

Vladislav Rogozov in BMJ:

As a surgeon Rogozov had no difficulty diagnosing acute appendicitis. In this situation, however, it was a cruel trick of fate. He knew that if he was to survive he had to undergo an operation. But he was in the frontier conditions of a newly founded Antarctic colony on the brink of the polar night. Transportation was impossible. Flying was out of the question, because of the snowstorms. And there was one further problem: he was the only physician on the base.

Hugh MacLeod:

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

Vladislav Gerbovich:

When Rogozov had made the incision and was manipulating his own innards as he removed the appendix, his intestine gurgled, which was highly unpleasant for us; it made one want to turn away, flee, not look -- but I kept my head and stayed.

From Haiti:

"We're using ketamine as pain relief during amputations. Ketamine is going like water."

Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report

Please, stop. Please.

Every time you commit one of these errors, a bottlenose dolphin scoffs in your general direction.

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

Tamar Lewin:

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those "Baby Einstein" videos that did not make children into geniuses.

The company will refund $15.99 for up to four "Baby Einstein" DVDs per household, bought between June 5, 2004, and Sept. 5, 2009, and returned to the company.

Christopher J. Ferguson:

Many people like to think that any child, with the proper nurturance, can blossom into some kind of academic oak tree, tall and proud. It's just not so.

Matt Kaplan, in 2007:

Rather than helping youngsters, such products may actually hurt their vocabularies.

Frederick Zimmerman, in 2007:

It's like empty calories for the mind.

Caleb Crain, in 2007:

In August, scientists at the University of Washington revealed that babies aged between eight and sixteen months know on average six to eight fewer words for every hour of baby DVDs and videos they watch daily.

From last year's best-of:

Never has one generation spent so much of its children's wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it.

Andrew Lahde:

All of this behavior ... only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

Step into a world ...

this is an exploration of other people's lives.

look around you, there are streets like this in every town.

they are all connected.

Some may prefer to browse at Flickr.

From the archive, see also, Faces of Meth.

the street

John Sterns:

I hear voices (“auditory hallucinations”, technically). Before my treatment, hospitalisations and incarcerations, these voices were all separate and distinct, with individual sounds, tones, rhythms and pitches. Now they are one voice--my voice. Once a chorus, they have become a soloist, though attacking me with the same message. Treatment has meant that I have finally found a “self”, a “me”, after four decades. But the me I’ve discovered is now my enemy.

Being Crazy Is Noisy

Gold Star. Take a moment to consider Matthew Crawford.

Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. Beneath our gratitude may rest envy.

...

Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around. The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting. What you need now is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules.

Publishers Weekly gives Crawford's new book a starred review:

Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Matthew Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls “manual competence,” the ability to work with one’s hands. With wit and humor, the author deftly mixes the details of his own experience as a tradesman and then proprietor of a motorcycle repair shop with more philosophical considerations.

Paul Graham:

If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them.

Richard Sennett:

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician -- but what makes a true master?

Pleasure in making comes from innate necessary rhythms, often slow ones.

Ira Glass:

If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get super-lucky.

The Case for Working With Your Hands