A 2015 Harris poll is making waves again as the college year is about to start. The poll, which surveyed 1,502 first-year students, found that 60% wished they had received better emotional preparedness from parents and their high school before attending college. In addition, one-in-eight students declared that being an independent adult was "extremely or very challenging." Little do they know that every adult 28 to 108 years old feels the same way.
"Emotional preparedness" is most likely what you think it is:
1.) The ability to adapt to new environments 2.) The ability to take care of oneself 3.) The ability to control negative behaviors 4.) The ability to create positive relationships
The survey doesn't offer much in the way of solutions--and media outlets simply echo the survey results--so we're simply left with the news that students feel emotionally vulnerable and incapable of taking care of themselves at college.
In the end, incoming freshmen are staring in horror at their dorm room laundry basket and have entered DEFCON 3 levels of panic over what to do.
Writers need inspiration somewhere in life, and for many that inspiration comes from their pet cats.
This is a running series where we post pictures of famous writers with their feline companions--the cute, the cuddly, the creepy. And that's just the writers.
Today: Edward Gorey
Who spiked the water supply?
This wouldn't be the first time that some of Gorey's work put someone to sleep.
Apparently the photographer moonlights as a ninja in their spare time, as they somehow managed to keep everyone asleep while snapping away with their camera. The Bruce Lee of photographers? The Bruce Lee of photographers.
Motoring through another book. And world domination.
Kevin Nguyen is a renaissance man of sorts, writing for GQ about books, video games, Wrestlemania, Drake's music, and shilling $130 trash cans sold through Amazon.* He's like that annoying friend you have that has 679 Yelp reviews to their name, including visits to CVS and the local 7/11.
"A half-hour commute can easily turn into five hours of dedicated reading time every week..."
Wait--the math--an hour a day round trip--times five--oh, the math is hard...
2.) Read on your phone while using the bathroom!
"...[Read in] the bathroom because you drank too much coffee. Those pages add up fast."
Just think how all that caffeine and a loose bladder will lead to speed reading!
3.) Stop reading books you don't like!
"...[I]f it’s going to be another four or five painful hours to finish it, you can afford to put it down."
So, wait, wait, wait--I have free will?
4.) Try the library!
"Free shit rules."
Which is what I also say to myself when I dumpster dive and play Freddy Fast Fingers at friends' homes.
5.) Multitask and read during commercial breaks during your favorite show!
"Watching live TV? Just sneak in a little reading."
Which works perfectly when you're watching a commercial-free show live, like 'Game of Thrones' or 'Downton Abbey'.
6.) Read when you wake up, not before bed!
"Even if you’re not an early riser, use the time you spend checking Instagram in bed to read a couple chapters."
But Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Imgur, Linkedn, Google Plus, and Reddit called dibs, I guess.
_________________________
I'm sure Nguyen means well, or just wants to fill a weekly quota for stories posted on the GQ website. One or the other.
My tip to you?
Read because you want to. Read because you need to. Read because it is you.
*Regarding the $130 trash can, Nguyen writes, "I know what you’re thinking: $130 for a trash can?! I get it—that’s expensive! But it's a quiet life upgrade that’ll change your relationship to the kitchen." No, $130 of delicious, fattening food is the quiet life upgrade that will change my relationship to the kitchen.
A career in writing will lead to premature aging and a healthy dose of personal humiliation. But science and medicine is where you'll make money, fame, and the respect of your parents. As a result, we might as well pay attention to what they're doing in those fields.
So it's time to take another peak at anything going on in the world of science and medicine this week.
Starting off with: A weasel goes out in a flash...of sorts.
Confirming long-held suspicions of villainous behavior, a weasel is possibly to blame for taking down the $7 billion, 17-mile Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
And how was it disabled? Engineers found the charred, furry remains of what they believe was a weasel or marten at the scene of the crime. Crime doesn't pay, weasels! Karma bites back!
This isn't the first time cute animals have tried to cripple science at the Large Hadron Collider. Back in 2009, a soggy, plain baguette dropped by a passing bird became caught in some electrical equipment and took out the collider then as well. That's right--bread products and birds are undermining scientific advancements, too. The chaos needs to end!
Does this mean small woodland creatures hate particle theory? Are they fundamentalists? Spies? What's their angle? Only time will tell.
Slime actually exists outside of Nickelodeon skit shows and two-bit divorce lawyers, and scientists have discovered that it can think. Sort of, at least, according to Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
A single-celled organism called Physarum polycephalum has no nervous system, with largely a solitary desire to find food as its lone act of survival. Picture your average 15-year old boy. Just like that.
Scientists wanted to know if the unicellular organism would adapt if they put a harmless barrier between it and a food source. Using caffeine or quinine as the barrier, P. polycephalum showed reluctance to move at first. On day one of the experiment it took the slime hours to adjust to the barrier, as apparently our mindless friend doesn't appreciate the finer qualities of a cup of joe as we do.
After nearly a week of testing though, and apparently tired of the charade, the slime smartened up. Once placed in the petri dish on day six, it immediately moved across the barrier to its food source. Scientists believe this is an example of 'habituation,' where harmless stimuli are ignored in order for the appeasement of important life functions.
What to take away from this? Slime will adapt and dominate the planet in forty million years. Be prepared.
A researcher at the University of British Columbia studied a collection of 250 photos of humans hugging their dogs and claims that not only are many people suspicious of being touched by you, but even your dog would appreciate three feet of personal space.
Stanley Doren, a professor of psychology at UBC, studied the photos and says the canines often exhibit signs of stress, anxiety, discomfort, or plain dislike of the hugging situation. The discomfort originates in dogs' inherent desire to flee from danger, and with all your hugging and canoodling you're trying to negate ages of evolutionary behavior.
Doren believes that 81.6% of dogs in the photos were giving off at least one sign of discomfort--all while you were trying to Instagram and Facebook that awkwardness--except you weren't picking up on the social cues apparently.
So the next time your dog is giving you some serious side-eye action, he's not flirting. He's wondering where the pepper spray is.
When a human egg is activated by a human sperm, a tiny little zinc firework explodes around the egg, researchers at Northwestern University say. The larger the zinc firework, the healthier the egg is for developing a viable embryo. Zinc is now officially the sexiest chemical on the periodic table.
Researchers say this could have huge benefits toward choosing the healthiest eggs for in vitro fertilization. "It’s a way of sorting egg quality in a way we’ve never been able to assess before," said Northwestern's Teresa Woodruff.
To think, all those years creepy guys said they could make fireworks happen in the bedroom--they weren't lying.
The average college student doesn't sleep nearly enough, as reports show the studying masses rest to a tune of 6-to-6.9 hours a night, which single-handedly explains the magical allure of Monster energy drinks. Remember, just because it looks and tastes like antifreeze doesn't mean it's a bottle of Prestone.
The school you attend also likely plays a factor into your sleep cycles. Take the University of Miami. According to the website Niche, The U ranks amongst the nation's highest for attractive male students, female students, and party culture. That's subtly saying that no one has been asleep for more than 15 minutes at the University of Miami since 1980.
Miami's club culture, beaches, and penchant for rock-hard abs and honey-kissed skin means The U's student body is dragging, which explains how $9,000 sleep pods now exist on its campus. Do they look like something from a bad 1960's Japanese sci-fi movie? Why, yes! Yes they do:
Claustrophobia included at no extra charge.
A New York company called MetroNaps developed the pods, which wrap the user behind a visor and treats them to an aural experience of ambient noise for 20 minutes, allowing one to fall into a brief nap before cajoling them awake through subtle noises. Subtle noises like the club beats thumping from down the street, I assume.
The University of Miami has placed the pods--along with a massage chair, too, for pod-phobic people apparently--on campus for students to use free of charge. Nightmares not included.
No more latte or small raspberry scone with a lovely sugar drizzle that keep attaching themselves to your thighs. Not in most of Minnesota at least.
Initially, the coffee shop movement for Minnesota started in the 1990s--so picture that very special episode of Friends where Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox sipped cappuccino and debated the merits of War and Peace (if they ever made it).
Back then was a different time. People actually attended libraries. Today, some Minnesotan libraries are reporting visits dropping by 15%-20% from 1990 totals. Likewise, various issues popped up--like libraries typically opening up later than the morning rush demand, a wealth of boutique coffee shops today, and vendor costs.
So get ready, North Dakota! Time to prep for the hoards left of coffee-less Minnesotans.
I could've said Most Minneotan libraries decide to shut the book on cafes. But too easy. Source: Star-Tribune
In case you're a little murky on your British retail book merchants, Waterstone's is the British equivalent of America's Barnes & Noble. It's the largest bookseller throughout the U.K., usually buying up the competition and burgeoning on a monopoly. You know how Barnes & Noble has a Starbucks in most of their stores? Guess who also wants you caffeinated out of your mind from a Starbucks latte while browsing books? Yup. Waterstone's.
In 2012, thinking eReaders were going to obliterate sales of old-fashioned paper books, Waterstone's came to an agreement with Amazon to sell its Kindle. It made sense. E-book sales were increasing by 50%, 60%, 70% year to year.
And then it stopped.
Digital book sales still increased, but marginally. Yet the sale of eReaders stalled.
"It feels very much like the life of one of those inexplicable bestsellers; one day piles and piles, selling like fury; the next you count your blessings with every sale because it brings you closer to getting it off your shelves forever to make way for something new," Daunt said.
Douglas McCabe, an analyst for British research and analysis firm Enders, said it was "no surprise" of Waterstone's move. "The e-reader may turn out to be one of the shortest-lived consumer technology categories," he said.
Hey, you never know. I'm still holding out hope that Betamax makes a roaring comeback.
Dubbed English on Track by French rail officials, the program teaches intimate, small groupings of students how to speak English in conversational style, all while commuting to Paris on high speed trains.
When avoiding 50,000 words of a novel, you'll want to avoid caffeine. Caffeine = energy, and the last thing you need is a brain full of synaptic excitement.
Try to make yourself as lethargic and/or drowsy as possible. Your best bet is to consume ungodly amounts of chamomile tea while listening to a Lou Reed album.
You'll be out cold and avoiding Nanowrimo within 15 minutes.
Honest Tea set pop-up, standalone displays of their bottled tea on the street and left signage stating each tea was $1--but you paid solely through the honesty method. No cashier. Nobody watching except passersby. Just a box to put $1 in before you grabbed a tea. (Aww, a national marketing campaign pretending to have a conscience!)
Only two cities were 100% honest, without a single theft. One city was Salt Lake City--where everyone fears the wrath of Brigham Young and Mitt Romney. The other was...Oakland (wha-wha-what??), which made folks in San Francisco feel horribly ashamed for five minutes before they realized they still lived in San Francisco and not Oakland, and immediately felt better.
The most common traits of honesty? Women, gray hair, beards. Which means everyone in Oakland is potentially a gray-haired bearded woman.
The least honest? People from Brooklyn and Los Angeles. And the most common traits of tea thieves? Bald, plaid wearers, and comic book readers. So, in other words, hipsters with a Superman jones.
The real upset was that people from Wall Street were the 7th most honest--which surprised everyone, not the least of which was everyone who works on Wall Street.
According to the results, people living in the Northeast are the biggest caffeine junkies. And writers? Professors? Education administrators? All addicted to the black beauty. No!!!
Next thing you'll tell me writers are addicted to drugs and alcohol and are emotionally unstable!
National University in Singapore installed a Coca-Cola vending machine that dispenses soda whenever you hug it. (The cutest little capitalistic marketing you've ever seen!)
Pepsi needs to get on this, except less cutesy. I'm thinking flying karate kicks, Bruce Lee-style.
Hocking says she started writing while she had a full-time job, working 3pm to 9pm (full-time, eh?), and then would write for up to 12 hours after that fueled on Red Bull and SweeTarts. (No, really. SweeTarts. It's the poor man's pick-me-up.)
I don't know what "paranormal romance" actually means though. I'm assuming it's about someone like Edward Cullen, minus the hair mousse. Maybe? Ghosts? Maybe the novels are about zombies. I've often thought that there was a huge void on the zombie romance novel front. Look how zombies are so dedicated to having people for dinner. How romantic!
Except National Caffeine Awareness Month is a trap. "Awareness" should have been a red flag. No one uses the word "Awareness" when referencing a commemorative month unless they hate the thing they're commemorating--like breast cancer or heart disease.
Turns out there's a non-profit group called The Caffeine Awareness Association (who I must assume is a verrry sleepy group) that hates your morning cup o' Joe. Clearly, they've never had a quality latte made for them...
Legend has it that those six words make up an entire story by Ernest Hemingway. According to the story, Hemingway was lunching with some fellow writers and bet he could write a story--complete: beginning, middle, end--in six words. His friends disagreed and bet $10 each. Hemingway immediately wrote those six words on a napkin, passed it around, and everyone handed over $10.
1.) ...Ernest Vincent Wright writing the 50,000 word novel Gadsbywithout using the letter E. Ever. At all. Not once. Because writing novels is easy enough when you have all 26 letters available.
Hell, I just used the letter E twenty-two times on the tiny section right there explaining about Gadsby.
2.) David Shulman wrote a sonnet. Not that impressive, I grant you. But what if I said the sonnet was titled Washington Crossing the Delaware? And that all fourteen lines of the sonnet were an anagram of the title? And that it was all done in rhyming couplets?
Yeah, I'm already feeling like a deadbeat by comparison, too. Don't worry.
3.)The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby was written by a series of eye blinks (done only with with left eyelid) which were translated into Bauby's memoir. This was all done because Bauby had a massive stroke which paralyzed his body.
But the real issue is whether he could have done all that while not using the letter E.
4.) Sri Chinmoy was a spiritual leader. But apparently his spirit had a lot of free time, because he enjoyed writing. A lot. As in 1,000 books, 20,000 songs, and 115,000 poems. I know what you're thinking: what an underachiever! What? No plays?
On November 1, 1975, Chinmoy wrote 843 poems. He didn't start the 843 poems on November 1. Oh, no, no. He started and completed all 843 poems within a 24hr period.
I don't know if Chinmoy believed in caffeinated products, but an endorsement deal with Maxwell House Coffee would have been a good idea.
Soap operas are often known for some of the greatest writing modern civilization has ever known. Would Shakespeare have been a writer for daytime television? Most likely, once he learned the art of nuance.
That's where the Days of Our Lives screenwriter comes in. (You'll find him sobbing at his keyboard.) He's been asked to drop product advertisements right in the middle of his screenplays in the most subtle way possible.
Such as for Wanchai Ferry Chinese Food:
Did grandma just say it has rice, so it'll fill me up? Well, you don't need to twist my arm. As long as she's dishing out seconds, I'm game.
But did someone just mention ChexMix?
The real concern here is why the blond actress is whipping out the Ken's Salad Dressing to serve with the ChexMix. Now, I'm no culinary master, but I tend to prefer ChexMix without some raspberry vinaigrette. A million and one flavors in your mouth might be one flavor too many.
But if you don't feel like eating ChexMix, how about some snacks for the kiddies?
That kid just guaranteed herself a future in the unemployment line. Flubbing lines is one thing. Flubbing lines for a product placement is another.
Maybe she would have done better if she filled herself up with some Cheerios:
That's right--the easiest way to romance is through a box of whole grain oats. Whenever I start a new relationship, I often woo the ladies with some cold cereal. If they play hard to get, I might then dip into some Cream of Wheat.
Eventually your looks wear off and Father Time comes a-knockin'. That doesn't mean you can't keep Cheerios in your life though:
Hmm, it seems that Anderson fella doesn't care about his heart health. Cholesterol is his best friend. I'm just calling it now: when Anderson dies from a heart attack, a character will lean over his casket snacking on Cheerios, sobbing, trying to compose themselves, saying, "He'd have been alive today if...he...((bites their lip and grabs a handful of cereal))...if...he...just ate more Cheerios."
And if you're in a bad mood? Well, sorry. Cheerios can only do so much magic. That's when you need to hit the hard stuff:
Tell me about it. I'm a busy guy between grad school and work. Seems to me Midol is what I'm missing. She's sold me!
Maps are great. They're always readily available to tell you a few things about yourself:
1.) You're lost.
That about sums it up.
But maps can be interesting when you're not lost in some remote West Virginia mining town where two men are playing banjos on a porch and staring at you intently. Maps can document the ways in which we talk. According to this map from East Central University (that being in Oklahoma, in case their school name was a little too vague for you), this is how each American county names their soft drinks. (Click on image for larger view.)
In short, counties in a shade of blue call their soft drinks pop. (Picture The Andy Griffith Show, with Opie telling his Paw that they should share a pop while they sit beside the ol' fishin' hole.)
Counties in red call their soft drinks coke. (This could be because Coca-Cola originated down south, and asking people to be imaginative is sometimes asking too much.)
Counties in a mucus-y/bile looking yellowy-green call their soft drinks soda. (Pronounced "SO-der" by New Englanders, who are all able to see the invisible letter R at the end of words.)
Counties in a solid shade of green call it "other." (Or, rather, tonic or fizz or whatever mood they're in on a given day.)
What this map doesn't show? What people call Kleenex across the country. Is it Kleenex? Is it tissue? Someone needs to make a map of this. I can't make up my mind, and I'm easily susceptible to peer pressure.
