Nicollette Sheridan
Spiritual atheists
"More than 20 per cent of atheist scientists consider themselves to be 'spiritual,' according to a Rice University study," says Religion News Service. "The findings, to be published in the June issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, are based on in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists from 21 of [America's]top research universities. Elaine Howard Ecklund, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of sociology at the Houston university, said the research shows that spirituality is not solely a pursuit of religious people. 'Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought,' she said. 'It's not an either/or. This challenges the idea that scientists, and other groups we typically deem as secular, are devoid of those big 'Why am I here?' questions. They too have these basic human questions and a desire to find meaning.'"
An audiophile's lament
"Technology certainly has come through in some ways," writes David H. Freedman in Discover magazine. "Today's iPod Shuffle is so small that it is little more than audio-enabled jewellery. No complaints on the pricing, either: You can get a pretty good MP3 player for the cost of a newly released CD. There's just one little snag: Today's sound quality is miserable, worse than what I was listening to on my budget stereo 30 years ago. … The problem with MP3s is that they are 'lossy,' which means they literally are missing some of the sound. When your brain hears sounds made up of multiple frequencies (as almost all music is), it tends to pay attention to whichever frequencies are the most readily perceived at any moment and largely ignores the rest. Most MP3 files simply leave out the subtler components of the music altogether - as much as 85 per cent of what is actually recorded - in order to shrink the file size."
Work hard, stop early
"Try this for a day: Don't answer every phone call. Stop checking your e-mail every two minutes. And leave work early," Business Insider says. "You'll be astounded at how much more you'll get done. According to a study published in the Psychological Review conducted by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, the key to great success is working harder in short bursts of time. Then give yourself a break before getting back to work. The trick is staying focused. Ericsson and his team evaluated a group of musicians to find out what the 'excellent' players were doing differently. They found that violinists who practised more deliberately, say for four hours, accomplished more than others who slaved away for seven hours. The best performers set goals for their practice sessions and required themselves to take breaks."
Warming hits harvests
"Global warming has already harmed the world's food production and has driven up food prices by as much as 20 per cent over recent decades, new research has revealed," The Guardian reports. "The drop in the productivity of crop plants around the world was not caused by changes in rainfall but was because higher temperatures can cause dehydration, prevent pollination and lead to slowed photosynthesis." The study was published in the journal Science.
Wedding words
Jan Freeman of The Boston Globe explains:
- The "lock" in wedlock is a red herring; the Old English word was wedlac, formed from wed, meaning "pledge, security," and "lac," a suffix indicating "actions or proceedings."
- Bridegroom began its career as Old English brydguma, or "bride's man." After a few centuries, brydguma and brydgome and its variations retired from the scene; when the word was resuscitated, in the 1500s, the noun "gome" (meaning "man") had gone extinct. So brydgome became bridegroom - a much more transparent word, since "groom" could mean "lad" at the time. Noah Webster, hard at work reforming American English, was nettled by the inaccuracy. He preferred bridegoom, says Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, and "he went so far as to enter and define bridegoom in his Dictionary of 1828."
Unlawful killing?
"Nicollette Sheridan, who played Edie Britt on the ABC dramedy Desperate Housewives from 2004 to 2009, is accusing the network and the show's producer of murder - the murder of her character, that is," reports The Wall Street Journal. "She claims that after she had a spat with the show's creator and honcho, Marc Cherry, he wrote her character into a fatal car crash. Talk about being terminated. And so last year, Ms. Sheridan sued. A judge ruled [last]week that the question of whether Edie was lawfully killed can go to trial before a jury."
Detroit's illiterate
"Detroit's population fell by 25 per cent in the last decade," says The Huffington Post. "And of those that stuck around, nearly half of them are functionally illiterate, a new report finds. According to estimates by The National Institute for Literacy, roughly 47 per cent of adults in Detroit - 200,000 total - are 'functionally illiterate,' meaning they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills. Even more surprisingly, the Detroit Regional Workforce finds half of that illiterate population has obtained a high-school degree."
Thought du jour
"We do not know whether today we are busy or idle. I have seemed to myself very indolent at times, when, as it afterwards appeared, much was accomplished in me."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), American essayist and poet