Photo by o5com (www.flickr.com/photos/o5com/5081595200/)

Walking is good for you. That’s true. Thomas Jefferson, the wisest President in America’s history, regarded it as the best form of exercise. But now, according to dietician Susie Burrell, we rely on it too much. “There’s a perception that going for a walk is getting good exercise,” she says, “but we’re now so sedentary, walking is just compensating for all the sitting we do in out daily lives.” Her solution? Working out more intensely. Sorry about that. Naturally, she explains it a little more…

But of course, not everyone can go running or do hour-long abs sessions, so here’s a link to encourage you to walk a few steps (which is better than sitting around).

Click here if you want an explanation of this photo.

This is something I noticed on the Sydney Morning Herald website about a trendy, “happening” restaurant that relies on pretentious patrons who don’t mind being treated badly, as it refuses people for various dumb reasons. Yes, a bit like an “exclusive” night club. While I haven’t been there, so I couldn’t vouch for the review, I’ve seen enough places that fit the description. Though I don’t usually bother reading comment on a Web story, I thought that this one summed up such places.

Arrogance like this works only in that narrow window when they are the “it” place. After that, when relationships and a loyalty built through good experiences really starts to count for everything, places like this will wither and die quickly. And no one will mourn their passing.

Fickle businesses bread fickle customers.

Oh yeah, here’s the link.

Teamwork by Gavin Llewellyn. The England cricket team celebrate a third successive victory against India at Edgbaston to secure their place as the world's number one Test team.

Well, it’s not all bad… but does everything have to be done in a team? “Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all,” write sociologist Susan Cain in The New York Times. “Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.”

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

Solitude has long been associated with creativity and transcendence. “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” Picasso said.

Sure, obviously some things are best done as a team. Playing cricket, for example. And I thought that ending the Cold War required teamwork… but then I read that Ronald Reagan did it all by himself, so I must have been wrong!

Academy Award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Walt Disney Family Museum. Photo by Loren Javier.

As Oscars season comes closer, and everyone spends their time guessing who will win, it’s worth reminding ourselves how utterly overrated the Academy Awards really are. True, they have helped a few careers, but have they made anyone a star recently? The closest one I can think of in living memory was Marion Cotillard, who probably would have been nabbed by Hollywood anyway because she was a) gorgeous, b) talented, c) gorgeous, d) already an established star in France, and e) gorgeous. Most other Oscar-winning actors I can recall were either stars already, or the Oscar didn’t really help (F Murray Abraham, Marlee Maitlin… No, I’ve never heard of them either). OK, the Oscar might have helped Adrian Brody, but he’s not as big as you’d expect. Look, instead of going through how pointless it all is, let me just list a few people who did not win Oscars…

1. Alfred Hitchcock (the Irving Thalberg Award was a nice gesture, but as it doesn’t look like an Oscar, it doesn’t count)

2. Alfred Hitchcock (this is just such an appalling snub that it deserves to be mentioned twice)

2b. Greta Garbo

3. Marilyn Monroe (OK, many – including me – would argue that she didn’t really deserve one… but she proves that you can be known as one of the greatest-ever film stars without even being nominated)

4. Cary Grant (see Marilyn Monroe… except he was at least nominated)

5. Martin Scorsese before 2000 (his Oscar for The Departed wasn’t “overdue”; it was completely the wrong film!)

6. Lillian Gish (who was still giving awesome performances in the early years of the Oscars)

7. Barbara Stanwyck

8. Richard Burton (a zillion nominations, no wins)

9. James Dean (those who accused Heath Ledger of only winning because he had died so young, please explain this)

10. Jacqueline McKenzie (well, not yet, at least – and dammit, that’s a tragedy!)

Sadly, Michael Clarke has given up on the long-standing record for most ridiculous cricketer's mustache. (Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library.)

Yes, I include this one in the book – basically saying that all the hype when someone breaks a sports record (with the help of the latest technology) is a little OTT, because it happens all the time. (It would be more of a big story if a sports record stood for years without being broken.)

Of course, there are some exceptions. Australian cricketer Michael Clarke has just broke the latest one: the highest batting score at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The previous record: Englishman Reg ‘Tip’ Foster’s 287 against the Australians in 1903. 1903!!! I won’t try to explain to those across the ocean who don’t understand cricket (mainly because I don’t understand it myself), but for those who don’t understand basic math, Clarke has just broken a 109-year-old record!

For the record, the Sydney Cricket Ground is important enough for the record to be significant. (Think of a Wimbledon record being broken in tennis.) Unlike most sports records, this one is very exciting. (Well, “exciting” in cricket terms, at least.)

IF - Juggle, by gr33ndata

Multitasking – being able to juggle dozens of things at once – has always been admired (even before the word was coined). It’s now something we’re all expected to do in the modern world (just like our iPhones), and another thing that women can boast about to show their superiority to men. (“I can update my Facebook page, change the baby’s diapers and cook dinner at the same time! Men can’t do that.”) But as the smart people at Luminosity note, research suggests that multi-tasking is highly OVERRATED.

When people attempt to attend to several different tasks, they’re not actually working on all of them at once. “Multitasking,” as it’s used in common parlance, is somewhat of a misnomer: rather than performing multiple tasks simultaneously, the brain actually switches rapidly between tasks. And task-switching is an expensive habit for the untrained brain—the cognitive control required to flip back and forth gobbles up the brain’s limited processing power. The result: plenty of extra time and effort expended, usually rendering any attempt to “multitask” less efficient than simply concentrating on one task at a time.

What does this mean for those of us who are constantly plugged in, forever fiddling with a dozen things to see and do? The popularity of multitasking in modern culture has left its true detriments largely ignored. But it’s time to put down your phone—and your tablet, and your iPod, and your remote.

There is plenty of scientific evidence against multitasking. You can check it out here.

The decorations are even up in Ho Chi Minh City over Christmas. (Well, this was November 27, but close enough.)

Now that Christmas festivities are mostly over for another year, and everyone’s putting away the decorations, it’s time to say that, if you were doing it for the traditional Christian reasons (the birth of Jesus, for those who didn’t know), you probably had the wrong day entirely. (Of course, if you used the day as a secular excuse for gift-giving and enjoying yourself, then it’s as good as any other.) There is no evidence, biblical or otherwise, that he was actually born on that day. Of the many different theories of why December 25 was chosen, the most likely is that it was already celebrated by followers of Mithras, the central god of a Hellenistic cult that developed in the Eastern Mediterranean around 100 BC. It appears that followers of Mithraism believed that Mithras was born on December 25, probably of a virgin, and his birth was attended by shepherds.

Mithras also had twelve disciples; Sunday was his sacred day; he was buried in a tomb and rose again after three days. Spooky, hey? When scholars investigated Mithraism (relatively recently – they did it early in the twentieth century), they upset some Christians by suggesting that Mithraism might have influenced Christianity. (In fairness, Mithraism continued – developing and perhaps changing its beliefs – for some centuries after Christ. Some of the influences might well have been in the other direction.)

So when was Jesus really born? Based on the Star of Bethlehem, astronomers reckon that he was born within a few hours of September 11, 3 BC. (Yes, September 11. Got a problem with that?) Historian Dr. Ernest L Martin, in his 1981 book The Birth of Christ Recalculated, even went so far as to suggest that the signs in the sky, on the night of Jesus’ birth, could only have happened on September 11, between 6:15 pm and 7:49 pm.

Of course, even if Jesus wasn’t born on December 25, a lot of awesome people were born on this day. So it’s probably not so bad.

The world is already overpopulated. Think twice before doing something rash, like having a baby.