It’s famously tough getting through the Google interview process. But now we can reveal just how strenuous are the mental acrobatics demanded from prospective employees. Job-seekers can expect to face open-ended riddles, seemingly impossible mathematical challenges and mind-boggling estimation puzzles. (…)

1. You are shrunk to the height of a 2p coin and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do? (…)

3. Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco. (…)

5. Imagine a country where all the parents want to have a boy. Every family keeps having children until they have a boy; then they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in this country? (…)

6. Use a programming language to describe a chicken. (…)

7. What is the most beautiful equation you have ever seen? (…) Most would agree this is a lame answer:
E = MC2
It’s like a politician saying his favorite movie is Titanic.
You want Einstein? A better reply is:
G = 8πT (…)

8. You want to make sure that Bob has your phone number. You can’t ask him directly. Instead you have to write a message to him on a card and hand it to Eve, who will act as a go-between. Eve will give the card to Bob and he will hand his message to Eve, who will hand it to you. You don’t want Eve to learn your phone number. What do you ask Bob? (…)

11. How much would you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? (…)

14. Can you swim faster through water or syrup?

{ Wired | Continue reading }

images, clockwise from top left { 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 }

quote { thanks Tim }

In my new book Drop Dead Healthy, I try to become the healthiest person alive. In doing so, I examine hundreds of activities to determine if they are healthy.

Is meditation healthy? Yes. Petting dogs? Yes, because it lowers the blood pressure. Sitting? Definitely not. Going to a noisy restaurant? No. Taking naps? Thank God yes.

One of the few activities I didn’t discuss: Reading. Is reading healthy? Or will it slowly murder you?

No doubt I’m a bit biased, but I’ve come to the conclusion that overall, books are, in fact, good for your health. (…)

More and more research shows that sitting is bad for you. It significantly increases your chances of heart disease and slows your metabolism.

This is why, for my book, I ignored the siren call of my chair and did a lot of reading standing up. Reading on your feet burns about 34 more calories per hour than reading while sitting. Eventually, I took it further. I bought a treadmill, converted it into a desk, and did all my reading and writing while walking. It took me about a thousand miles to write the book.

{ AJ Jacobs/Omnivoracious | Continue reading }

There is no shortage of advice on how to recover from a bad break-up: keep busy, don’t contact your ex, go out with friends. (…) But according to a new study, something important is missing from this list. (…)

“It is just something that happens these days.” (…) This statement expresses a sense of common humanity, or recognition that suffering is part of the human experience, which is considered a fundamental part of self-compassion. (…)

“It was all my fault. (…) I know I did it all wrong.” In contrast to the first statement, this one includes a high degree of self-judgment, with no evidence of self-kindness. (…)

Results indicated that participants who were judged to be higher in self-compassion showed less distress at the beginning of the study and at the nine-month mark, while those low in self-compassion showed a greater increase in distress between six and nine months.

{ Psych Your Mind | Continue reading }

photo { Sam Haskins }

{ Too much focus on ‘learning from failure’ can make us unhappy }

photo { Dennis Darling }

How to survive an atomic bomb

The first thing to understand is that if you are still alive five minutes after a small nuclear weapon detonates, you are already very likely to survive.

{ Jason Lefkowitz | Continue reading }

{ Ryou has crafted a series of food storage contraptions that counter the hidden, black box technology of the refrigerator by relying on “traditional oral knowledge [that] has been accumulated from experience.” | Architizer | Continue reading }

{ Thanks Tim }

“Nor” expresses a negative condition. It literally means “and not.” You’re obligated to use the “nor” form if your sentence expresses a negative and follows it with another negative condition. “Neither the men nor the women were drunk” is a correct sentence because “nor” expresses that the women held the same negative condition as the men. The old rule is that “nor” typically follows “neither,” and “or” follows “either.” However, if neither “either” nor “neither” is used in a sentence, you should use “nor” to express a second negative, as long as the second negative is a verb. If the second negative is a noun, adjective, or adverb, you would use “or,” because the initial negative transfers to all conditions. e.g., He won’t eat broccoli or asparagus. The negative condition expressing the first noun (broccoli) is also used for the second (asparagus).

“May” implies a possibility. “Might” implies far more uncertainty. (…)

“Since” refers to time. “Because” refers to causation. e.g., Since I quit drinking I’ve married and had two children. e.g., Because I quit drinking I no longer wake up in my own vomit. (…)

Contrary to almost ubiquitous misuse, to be “nauseous” doesn’t mean you’ve been sickened: it actually means you possess the ability to produce nausea in others.

{ 20 Common Grammar Mistakes | Lit Reactor | Continue reading }

Ask a social scientist about the keys to happiness and you’re likely to hear that it’s better to buy experiences than buy possessions. What you’re unlikely to hear is a good explanation for why experiences make people happier.

Two Cornell psychologists, Emily Rosenzweig and Thomas Gilovich, attempted to answer this question by examining regret rather than satisfaction in the aftermath of a purchase. They theorized that with material purchases the strongest regret stems from action (i.e. buying the wrong thing), whereas with experiential purchases the strongest regret comes from inaction (not having the experience.) The result is that those who make a purchase are more likely to feel regret when buying a material good, and therefore buying a material good leads to comparatively less happiness.

{ peer-reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

photo { Erwin Olaf }

• A few months ago we put out our fourth bag of garbage in more than four years

• Our most recent bag took 26 months to fill

• We have reduced our residual waste output (a.k.a. garbage) by 40%,

• We “process” nearly 75% of our own “materials” on site into beneficial compost

• We have achieved a 99.6% waste diversion rate

{ Shareable | Continue reading }

Is losing weight as simple as doing a 15-minute writing exercise? In a new study published in Psychological Science, women who wrote about their most important values, like close relationships, music, or religion, lost more weight over the next few months than women who did not have that experience.

{ APS | Continue reading }

According to the research, in modern America the average income required to be happy day-to-day, to experience “emotional well being” is about $75,000 a year. According to the researchers, past that point adding more to your income “does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness, or stress.” A person who makes, on average, $250,000 a year has no greater emotional well-being, no extra day-to-day happiness, than a person making $75,000 a year. In Mississippi it is a bit less, in Chicago a bit more, but the point is there is evidence for the existence of a financiohappiness ceiling. The super-wealthy may believe they are happier, and you may agree, but you both share a delusion.

{ You Are Not So Smart | Continue reading }

photo { Joel Meyerowitz, Spinning Christmas Tree, New York City, 1977 }

How to Gamble If You’re In a Hurry

The beautiful theory of statistical gambling, started by Dubins and Savage (for subfair games) and continued by Kelly and Breiman (for superfair games) has mostly been studied under the unrealistic assumption that we live in a continuous world, that money is indefinitely divisible, and that our life is indefinitely long.

Here we study these fascinating problems from a purely discrete, finitistic, and computational, viewpoint, using Both Symbol-Crunching and Number-Crunching (and simulation just for checking purposes).

{ arXiv | Continue reading }

1. Figure out what you’re so passionate about that you’d be happy doing it for 10 years, even if you never made any money from it. That’s what you should be doing.

(…)


10. Successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do.

{ ABC | via WSJ }

photo { Loretta Lux }

Prompted by various books and movies, I’ve decided to make a bucket list of all the things I want to do before I die. The problem is, I don’t know how to limit myself. (…)

My suggestion is that you focus your thinking by making a reverse bucket list of all the things you are positive you don’t want to do.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

painting { Gustave Caillebotte, Gardeners, 1875-77 }

1. High heels can lead to heel and ankle pain. (…)

2. High heels alter the electrical activity in your lower back muscles. (…)

3. High heels can shorten your muscle fibers and thicken your tendons. Last year, scientists in Austria reported on their findings on women who, perhaps counter-intuitively, feel pain when walking flat-footed. These women were habitual heel-wearers, and ultrasounds revealed their calf muscle fibers to be 13% shorter than those of women who wear flat shoes. (…)

4. High heels can lead to joint degeneration and osteoarthritis of the knee. (…)

5. High heels can lead to calluses, bunions, and hammertoes.

{ Try Nerdy | Continue reading }

What are some examples of fairytale romanticism? (…)

There is only one ideal partner for me. AKA: Soulmates. This belief is a great way to turn yourself into a neurotic mess by 35. There are many compatible relationship partners for someone out in the world. (…)

(…)

If you’re in love, you’ll “just know.” OR Love at first sight. Some singletons are waiting to be hit over the head with love as soon as they see their soulmate. For some, only an instant blazing fire of emotion will do. These people miss potential compatible relationship partners simply because their first meeting didn’t automatically create this sensation.

{ eHarmony | Continue reading }

What is the universal edibility test?

G­etting lost or stranded in the wilderness is serious business, and ­you need to make sound decisions to give yourself the best chance at survival. (…) Going without food will leave you weak and apt to make poor decisions, which could endanger your life. Being able to identify edible plants in the wilderness is a good skill to have under your belt.

The problem is, there are more than 700 varieties of poisonous plant in the United States and Canada alone, so unless you have a book that clearly identifies edible species, it’s nearly impossible to determine whether or not a plant will make you sick with absolute certainty. (…)

The universal edibility test requires breaking down the parts of a plant and testing them individually over a period of 24 hours. (…)

Find something near you that’s growing in abundance. To prepare for the test, don’t eat or drink anything but water for at least eight hours beforehand.

Separate - Because only some parts of the plant may be edible, separate it into its five basic parts. These are the leaves, roots, stems, buds and flowers. There may not be buds or flowers. Check out the parts for worms or insects — you want a clean and fresh plant. Evidence of parasites or worms is a good sign that it’s rotting. If you find them, discard the plant and get another of the same variety or choose a different one.

Contact - First you need to perform a contact test. If it’s not good for your skin, it’s not good for your belly. Crush only one of the plant parts and rub it on the inside of your wrist or elbow for 15 minutes. Now wait for eight hours. If you have a reaction at the point of contact, then you don’t want to continue with this part of the plant. A burning sensation, redness, welts and bumps are all bad signs. While you wait, you can drink water, but don’t eat anything. If there is no topical reaction after eight hours, move along to the next step.

Cook - Some toxic plants become edible after they’re boiled. (…) Once you’ve boiled it, or if you’re going raw, take the plant part and hold it to your lip for three minutes. (…)

Taste - Pop the same part in your mouth and hold it on your tongue for another 15 minutes. If you experience anything unpleasant, spit it out and wash your mouth with water. (…)

If you’ve made it this far through the test, then you’re well on your way to determining if part of the plant is edible. But before you can start wolfing down that root, stem or flower, there are a few more steps to the universal edibility test: Chew, Swallow and Chow.

{ How Stuff Works | Continue reading }

Although procrastination is conceived as a problem by the scientific community, there is not much consensus regarding the nature of this issue. Scholars have been arguing for decades whether procrastination is a rather uncontrollable phenomenon that happens merely on a whim or if it can be classified as arousal, avoidant, or decisional, for example. In any event, statistics since the early 1970′s have consistently shown an alarming prevalence of procrastination reaching over 70% among college students and starting at 20% in the general population. (…)

The Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) website offers a worthwhile guide to identifying and dealing with procrastination.

{ BrainBlogger | Continue reading }