Alexandra Alter and Tiffany Hsu reports in the New York Times:
In the last decade, the chain has closed more than 150 stores and now operates 633.
I have not set my foot in Barnes & Noble for a long time, but I hope it won’t go away. Bookstores are so essential for the mind.
Alan Burdick writes in the New Yorker:
This week, a team of researchers at Harvard published the largest and most definitive study of the subject to date, and the findings are compelling. “Men who wore non-boxers”—that is, briefs and their confining kin—“have significantly lower concentrations of sperm and lower sperm counts,” Jorge Chavarro, a fertility researcher at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a member of the research team, told me. “It’s a numbers issue.”
I believe the study is accurate because I only wear boxers and I have four kids. I never liked my package to be tight. It just feels good letting it loose. The only downside is that you can get horny easily and it will show. In any rate, I have been telling my wife to get rid of all of the kids’ briefs and get them to boxers. This study provides a good reason to switch.
In “How to See Kung Fu Films,” MoMA film curator La Frances Hui explains the techniques and styles of Kung Fu through the master works of legendary filmmaker Lau Kar-leung. A fascinating clip.
Argentina fought with sweat and blood to get that one goal to advance to the next round and it damn deserved it. Argentina had come so close in the last two World Cups. It will be its turn this time to bring home the World Cup. Keep it up, Argentina.
Soccer is a game that forces you to forget about the past even just five seconds ago. You need to remain focus. The team that loses its concentration will lose. We witnessed that when Argentina lost its first goal to Croatia. The Argentina’s players were disoriented. As a result, Argentina lost two more goals. In contrast, Germany stayed focus even one of its player received a red card. Playing 10 against Sweden’s 11 players, Germany managed to score another goal at the last minute of the game. Soccer is about forgetting the past mistakes and looking for the future opportunities. This is why I love watching the World Cup.
My buddy and former colleague Tim Brown has written a book titled Flexible Typesetting for A Book Apart. I learned so much about typography from Tim when we worked together at Vassar and I can’t wait to get my hands on his new book. If you want to learn about web typography, you must pick up this book as well. Preorder today and A Book Apart will donate 25% of all profits to RAICES to help reunite detained immigrant parents and children.
What people don’t realize about blogs is that they are never a complete story. They are incomplete and by nature more mysterious, more episodic, and thus more interesting. Blogs are meant not to leave you with everything. The whole idea is to think to deliberate, and to come back again and again, to finish what was started a long time ago. But there is no end, just a pause, for a voice to start, talking again. I think somewhere along the line I forgot what it is to blog.
Here’s a provisional thought (all thoughts on a blog are provisional) — to read a good blog is to watch a writer get a little bit better, day after day, at writing the truth.
Jan Hoffman
The numbers of teenagers reporting “feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” suicidal thoughts, and days absent from school out of fear of violence or bullying have all risen since 2007. The increases were particularly pointed among lesbian, gay and bisexual high school students.
Nationally, 1 in 5 students reported being bullied at school; 1 in 10 female students and 1 in 28 male students reported having been physically forced to have sex.
Read more about the disturbing rise of depression and suicidal thoughts from teenagers.
Anemona Hartocollis:
Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university.
Asian-Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic group on admissions measures like test scores, grades and extracurricular activities, according to the analysis commissioned by a group that opposes all race-based admissions criteria. But the students’ personal ratings significantly dragged down their chances of being admitted, the analysis found.
If this discrimination toward Asian is true, our kids have no chance of going Harvard. Oh well, there are plenty of schools to choose from.
Gretchen Reynolds:
Over all, the results suggest that exercise and standing up have distinct effects on the body, says Bernard Duvivier, a postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University, who led the new study.
Moderate exercise seems to hone endothelial and cardiac health, he says, probably in large part by increasing the flow of blood through blood vessels.
Standing up, on the other hand, may have a more pronounced and positive impact on metabolism, he says, perhaps by increasing the number of muscular contractions that occur throughout the day. Busy muscles burn blood sugar for fuel, which helps to keep insulin levels steady, and release chemicals that can reduce bad cholesterol.
Read the article at The New York Times.