This is a short summary based on studies that illustrate what the factors for success are in life. One of the most famous was the marshmallow test by Walter Mischel and, later, Joachim de Posada (Don’t eat the marshmallow yet). Future bias is shown to be the most important, but Philip Zimbardo provides an optimal time profile. http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf (via enjoymentland.com) Perhaps I should explain that the “optimal time profile” he suggests is the one that is associated with success in life. Zimbardo has written a book on this theory called The Time Paradox. I’ve just begun reading it, but it is fascinating. ...

(via 37signals.com) Christopher Alexander nails it. Attention to detail does not mean perfection. Perfection is not necessarily appealing either. The art is discovering what’s important and letting the rest fall as it may.

According to alphaDictionary: “[H]ere are the 100 most beautiful words in English. How do we know we have the most beautiful? They were chosen by Dr. Goodword (Robert Beard), who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. For five years he wrote the Word of the Day at yourDictionary.com and since 2004 he has been writing the series, So, What’s the Good Word? here at alphaDictionary. Below is a select list of his favorite poetical words that he used in his poetry—or wishes he had.” ...

(via rossracine.com) Ross Racine designs these amazing subdivisions by hand in Photoshop. The one above looks rather like spaghetti, but I may have driven through one like it once. It took me hours to find my way back out. “Drawn freehand directly on a computer and printed on a high-end inkjet printer, my works do not contain photographs nor scanned material.” There are some really interesting and imaginative designs, if not all entirely functional. Of course, I’ve flown over a good amount of subdivisions that are anything but sensical, so he’s not far off on some of them. ...

The dialect, thought to originate from medieval gipsies, was used by all manner of villains in Shakespeare’s England, becoming known as thieves’ cant or rogues’ cant. But it was thought to have become obsolete until its unexpected revival, believed to have been led by criminal members of the travelling community. The Ministry of Justice is so worried about the use of the code that it has issued a security alert to governors at jails in England and Wales. ...

Everything in this life as we know it is down to chance. “You make your own luck,” many a drunken pub bore has droned into my ear over the years. Up to a point, Lord Copper. What about the Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last week, killing everyone on board? Just awful bad luck. Men, women and children – all 228 of them – with everything to live for snuffed out in an instance. ...

Being very good at what you do makes you just that: very good. Being very good and being nice: that makes you great. The article is targeted at programmers (or even system administrators), but I think the moral of the story can apply to many different fields. If you are an expert, it can be draining and frustrating when someone else just doesn’t get what you are trying to communicate or when a journeyman makes a novice mistake. ...

The author of This Gaming Life, Jim Rossignol, writes, “My personal favourite is a variant of the “aliens just stayed home” hypothesis, by a chap called Michael Huang. He suggested that the aliens created such an amazing version of World Of Warcraft, that real life seemed boring, and they neglected the difficulties of space travel. Indeed, if space flight is really going to take thousands of years, hundreds of generations, and immense resources that could be better spent on having a good time, why should millions of sentient beings be expected to sink their lives into making it happen?” ...

I take it you already know, Of tough and bough and cough and dough. Others may stumble, but not you, On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through. Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps. Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead — For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’! Watch out for meat and great and threat, ...

Contrary to expectations, guests given the numeral-only menu spent significantly more than those who received a menu with prices showing a dollar sign or those whose menus had prices written out in words. Psychological theory, by contrast, predicted that the scripted format would draw higher sales. It’s interesting to note that affluent restaurateurs have probably been aware of this for years. Based solely on anecdotal evidence, currency symbols on the menu decrease as the average price increases. ...