A very good question posed by Philip Greenspun.

One of the observations from the studies conducted so far is that the effect of light on the prevention of the development of myopia may have a threshold effect, that is both the level of light required and the duration of light exposure may need to reach critical amounts before light has its preventive effect. In the latter case, the epidemiological studies that have examined children’s exposure to outdoors have consistently found a preventative effect for between 10-14 hours outside per week in addition to any hours spent outside during school time, while 3-6 hours per week has not been associated with any effect....

Marco Arment wrote an excellent review of the new Nook Simple Touch and while he loves the Nook and its new touch screen, he still came to the following conclusion. The Nook Simple Touch isn’t going to convert a lot of Kindle fans. Amazon’s ecosystem is going to keep a lot of people in. My ideal e-reader would be the Nook hardware and interface, but backed by the Kindle’s ecosystem and services....

Kyle Baxter compares Windows 8 to Mac OS X Lion, but here’s the salient point: Lion borrows heavily from iOS both in concept (App Store, Launchpad, gestures, full-screen applications) and in appearance (user interface elements that resemble popovers introduced on the iPad). Apple could merely be adopting good ideas that iOS introduced to improve Mac OS, but I think there’s something more going on. I think Apple’s attempting to converge Mac OS and iOS....

I do. Back in August of 2009, I wrote about my Zumba experiment in which I decided to try my hand (and feet) at Zumba. My wife began teaching Zumba in September of 2009. I decided to attend all of her classes and have since grown quite fond of Zumba for a variety of reasons. First of all, the experiment was a success. I am now licensed to teach Zumba, AquaZumba, and ZumbAtomic....

Dan Ariely on marketing and advertising: Consider for a moment a world without marketing hype. One in which there’s nothing you really desire beyond what you need to live. There’s nothing your kids want; they don’t bug you every time you’re in the supermarket. How hard would you work in such a world? What would motivate you to work harder? Now consider our current consumer environment: Multiply the desire for Respirer by thousands of products of varying levels of utility: iPads, leather couches, crystal martini glasses, cars, garden gnomes....

Leo Babauta on the negative impact of marketing and advertising on human interaction: We’ve lost sight of the simple truth that we need none of these products being pushed on us by marketers and advertisers. We’ve forgotten that we need very little, and so we buy so much. And we are oblivious to the fact that corporations use us as advertisements and marketing tools.

Mesmerizing video of a series of pendulums moving in an out of sync with each other until at the end…

Dave Pell, of Davenetics, Tweetage Wasteland, and The Skeptical Hypochondriac, offers a delightful service for Kindle owners called Delivereads. The service is simple. Subscribe to Delivereads with your Kindle e-mail, and every week or so, Dave will send you a neatly formatted digest of interesting articles that he finds on the web. The content is curated, the articles are high quality, and the digest is clean and easy to navigate. If you own a Kindle, you should subscribe to Delivereads....

Derek K. Miller died on Tuesday, May 3, 2011. On May 4, his last post was published on the Internet. His words are simple and true. Go read them, and then go enjoy this beautiful world. Life is fleeting.