Rachel Donadio published an essay on yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Book Review entitled It’s Not You, It’s Your Books. Donadio discusses how a person’s taste in books affects relationships, and she brings in comments from all sorts of literary folks including Augusten Burroughs and Nora Ephron.

Donadio also appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation today, on a program entitled Books: A Canary in the Relationship Coal Mine? It sounds like she’s already getting quite a reaction to her piece, as it’s currently at the top of the NYT’s “Most Emailed” list.

Here’s a brief snippet from the article:

Naming a favorite book or author can be fraught. Go too low, and you risk looking dumb. Go too high, and you risk looking like a bore — or a phony. “Manhattan dating is a highly competitive, ruthlessly selective sport,” Augusten Burroughs, the author of “Running With Scissors” and other vivid memoirs, said. “Generally, if a guy had read a book in the last year, or ever, that was good enough.” The author recalled a date with one Michael, a “robust blond from Germany.” As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, “I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of ‘Proust’ by Samuel Beckett.” That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. “If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one’s education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn’t imagine it.”

So this all leads me to wonder: have I been the victim of the deal breaker book? Has anyone checked out my messy shelves and silently judged me lame? I don’t recall discussing deal breaker books per se, but I did experience a near deal breaker movie — an ex was deeply put off by my abiding love for Brain Candy, the Kids in the Hall movie. I love-love-love that movie, while she, um, didn’t care for it so much.

Being the brainy bunch I know you are, I thought perhaps you’d share your deal breaker book/movie/media experiences. Have you ever judged someone harshly, based on their taste in media?

Last year, in preparation for a wanderlust-sating trip to Eastern Europe, I asked the wanderlusts among our readers about the wildest places they had been. We got some great replies — McMurdo Station in Antarctica, Namibia’s Skeleton Coast and the unforgiving wilds of Burma, to name just a few — but because my trip to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary never materialized, they did nothing but aggravate my desire to travel to far-flung places.

In a few weeks, we’ll finally be remedying that. It’s not as unusual a destination as it once was, perhaps, but according to friends who’ve been there recently, that makes it no less spectacular: New Zealand. Over the past few days I’ve read the Lonely Planet guidebook cover to cover (I love those things — sometimes I even buy them for places I’m not going, just to fantasize), and I’ve been trying to sort through the five billion things there are to do, see, hike on, jump off (or out) of, rappel into, and swim in to try and fit everything into what now seem like two woefully inadequate weeks in country. And I need your help!

What’s unmissable? What’s unusual? What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen or done in NZ?

In the meantime, all I’ve got to go on is my dry old guidebook. So far, it’s got me thinking you’d all be wise to take out an insurance policy on my life right about now — apparently Kiwis have a zeal for more than just land — they also love to throw themselves off of bridges and out of planes, fly down slot canyons in jetboats at breakneck speed, and roll down grassy knolls inside plastic balls. It’s called zorbing (and it’s actually quite safe):

Also, I’m starting to think my wife is going to ask me to jump out of a plane — does anyone care to share their skydiving or bungee jumping stories with the rest of us?

(Above photo of NZ’s Great Barrier Island by Doug Dillaman, a friend of mine in Auckland.)

Here’s a good way to kill ten minutes.

How well do you know your state capitals? Can you name all 50? When you’re done, come back and let us know which ones escaped you.

Take the quiz: Name All 50 State Capitals

And remember, spelling counts. So here’s a hint: Montpelier. If you’d like a cheat sheet, continue reading for a list of all 50 states.
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G4’s The Feed tipped me off on a gem of an item. If the standard Temperpedic and down comforter aren’t offering all the sleep security you need, perhaps you need a slight upgrade to the Quantum Sleeper. Apparently, the mattress and casing will protect you from everything a Happy Fun Ball won’t. Just look at a few of the offerings

• Bulletproof Plating
• Bio-chemical Filtered Ventillation System
• Cover and Door with Emergency Release
• One-way see through head cover (with reflective mirror on the other side, naturally)
• Motion Detector, Smoke Detector, Proximity Sensor, etc.
• Air/Water Tight Sealing
• External Remote Control
• Toiletry System
• CD Player, Microwave and Refrigerator (with a DVD hook-up)
• CB and Short-wave Radio
• and it’s also Fire Resistant

Sound perfect for a certain paranoid loved one? The company’s current estimate is that the bed will set you back $135,000. I’m guessing that doesn’t include sheets. Link via the always great G4.

Sure,we could make the obligatory Keith Richards gag here, but dinosaur jokes are so Mesozoic Era. Why don’t we just fast forward to the stories and deliver some Satisfaction instead?

“Some children sing in choirs,”Mick Jagger has said, “[and] others like to show off in front of the mirror.” Believe it or not, Jagger was in the former group – he
started out as a choir boy. Growing up on the outskirts of London, he was also a fan of great musicians like Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, and Chuck Berry (whose “Come On” would much later turn into the Stones’ first single). Young Keith Richards was equally a fan of classic blues, jazz, and R&B. He and Jagger went to the same elementary school, but they didn’t really hook up until much later in their teens, when Mick was a student at the London School of Economics. Keith recognized him on a train and, interested in listening to his old schoolmate’s record collection, quickly befriended him.

Why Richards changed his name,  who was on the Stone’s first bill, and  the true stories behind Wild Horses, Sympathy for the Devil and Brown Sugar, all after the break. (more…)

My kids visit the local skate park when they can, and are always the only inline skaters there. While coaching them, I’ve had a chance to ponder the differences between skateboarding and rollerblading. Then I see Orbit Wheel Skates, which combines the two. They are essentially two small skateboards, with a large wheel that rolls around your foot. At $145 a pair, they are sold out and and are taking reservations for more.

The advantage of Orbit Wheel skates is that you can slip them into your backpack. That’s nice. But how are these skates any improvement over a skateboard otherwise? Or inline skates? The site says “you don’t need to fuss with buckles and flaps” which is one of the advantages of skateboards, but it’s a safety feature on skates. What happens when you wreck on Orbit Wheels? Skates should either be impossible to slip out of (blades) or very easy to step off (boards). It’s hard to tell with these. They couldn’t possible stay on well enough to execute high jumps safely, and if you try to land on them, you’ve got two to deal with instead of one board.

One of the advantages boarding has over blading is the ability to push off with your foot. You can’t do that with these. Skates are propelled by pushing both left and right, which you can’t do with these. You’re riding sideways like a skateboarder, so you’d have to propel by pushing forward and backward. Sure, you can learn to do it, but it seems like a combination of the main disadvantages of boarding and blading- riding sideways and staying wheeled.

When I see a video of someone doing aerials and flips like a skateboarder, or spins and arabesques like a skater, it may change my mind. But as of now, I don’t see these as being much fun.

Creatively Speaking continues today with Tom Snyder, creator of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Dr. Katz.

I’ve also selected two excerpts from episodes that make me laugh every time I see ‘em (recently got a hold of the complete Dr. Katz on DVD, including commentary by Tom and Jonathan Katz, as well as some episodes that weren’t originally aired).

First one to correctly tell us what movie Ben Katz is quoting somewhere hidden in the first clip gets serious _floss braggin rights. Another interesting bit of Katz trivia: the song the Dr. sings in the first clip was written by our interviewee today, Tom Snyder.

DI: How did you first come up with the idea for Dr. Katz?

TS: I had an educational software company at the time and I’d met a woman, a bartender, at the bar where I liked to write. She drew on napkins all the time and eventually I asked her if she’d like a job drawing illustrations for the educational software games. She worked for me for a year and we started messing around on weekends with me recording my voice and her drawing silly illustrations. So I did a little thing where I played a shrink who was talking to his son and did both of the voices by pitching my voice electronically. It was about a minute long, animated. We sent it out to a friend of mine who worked in Los Angeles. A week later he called and said, ‘Come on out and we’ll pitch it to Comedy Central,’ which we did. They said, ‘It’s fantastic, but what you need Tom is talent.’ Of
course, I thought they meant I wasn’t talented, which was hurtful. But what they really meant was I needed to hire someone like a professional voice comedian to play some of the parts. So I found out that my favorite stand-up comedian, Jonathan Katz, lived in my neighborhood in Boston. So I went over to his house and played this little one minute thing and asked him if he’d like to be the doctor and he said, ‘Definitely, yes.’ So we started making little bits and pieces and Comedy Central picked them up. At first they were little bumpers that would go between advertisements. But then they moved us up to the half-hour format and pretty soon we had an Emmy.

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Only 13 people alive have pulled more than 2% in a US presidential election and lost. It’s a crushing defeat, but they say they would do it again.
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Dean Kamen designed a new prosthetic arm that’s so awesome they named it after Luke Skywalker. If the DARPA grant is renewed, it will go to clinical trials soon.
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Life’s Little Mysteries, like why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets? And why do (some) women wear high heels?
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Everything in this world tends to even out. Explained in the way only Jack Handey could.
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10 Things They Didn’t Teach You at School. If they did, school would have been a lot more fun!
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If you enjoyed our posts on Venn diagrams and flowcharts, you’ll love a new blog of funny charts and graphs. GraphJam invites you to make and submit your own.
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The Top 100 April Fool Hoaxes of All Time. Don’t let yourself be fooled again! I’m posting the link today, because tomorrow they will be very busy.
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A few of our favorite trees. They each have a history, if not a personality.

1. In recorded history, bananas date back to around 600 B.C.E., when they were mentioned in Buddhist texts.

2. Bananas came to the Americas in the 15th century but weren’t regularly imported to the United States until later, following their showcase at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.

3. On average, American consumers eat 30 pounds of bananas a year. [Image courtesy of Johanna Beyenbach.]
4. Banana peels have been a staple of slapstick slip-and-fall gags for decades, but in the 1960s, many people tried using them for a different purpose—to get high. Rumors that smoking dried banana peels caused hallucinogenic effects were likely started in part by singer Country Joe McDonald, who mistakenly attributed an acid trip to a banana-peel joint he’d tried. Regardless, the trippy allegations touched off a banana run on fruit stands across the country, until an FDA investigation found no evidence to support the claim.
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Back when we were in pre-school there were only 4-5 sensible options for the career minded 4-year old: doctor, plumber, fireman and astronaut. Clearly, had we heard about “sin-eating”, “knocking up” or any of these other fine options, we would have eaten more paste, and focused a little less on our permanent records.
by Laurel Mills

1. Filibuster

Long before the term “filibuster” came to be associated with elected officials, it was actually associated with violence and trickery. (Wait a second …) In the 1600s, pirates known to the Dutch as vrijbuiters pillaged the West Indies, and eventually, the word was assimilated into the English language as “filibusters.” Between 1850 and 1860, the name was used to refer to the American mercenaries who attempted to revolutionize Central America and the Spanish West Indies. The most famous of these filibusters was William Walker, a U.S. citizen who succeeded in gaining control of Nicaragua in 1856 by overthrowing the nation’s administration. Walker became president of Nicaragua, but only until May 1, 1857, when a coalition of Central American states ousted him. Because filibusters of previous centuries strove to interfere with foreign regimes, the term evolved to refer to anyone who attempted to obstruct the government, as our legislators occasionally see fit to do when a particularly troublesome bill comes before them.

2. Lungs

Perhaps the cruelest case of naming irony in history, anyone employed to fan the fire in an alchemist’s workshop was known as a “lungs.” And because most alchemists were constantly trying to make gold out of lead and other such base metals, you can only imagine what kinds of dangerous materials were floating about in the labs. As a result, the actual lungs on a lungs gave out relatively quickly, leading to a profession with widespread early retirement.

3.Sin-Eater

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