webcowgirl

Per today's New York Times, having friends can save your life.

"Proximity and the amount of contact with a friend wasn’t associated with survival. Just having friends was protective."

"Only smoking was as important a risk factor as lack of social support."

"In the study of nurses with breast cancer, having a spouse wasn’t associated with survival."

Anyway ... it's interesting to think that it's important to physical as well as mental health.

As for me, I'm still feeling pretty weak. This is not going to be one of those staying late at work days.

My new Alain de Botton book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, has shown up. I'm excited about reading it after hearing him speak earlier in the month. To quote my review: De Botton had interesting things to say about why people don’t enjoy work (”They’re not supposed to, but they think they are, so they’re dissatisfied”), why workplaces are bizarre (”They put policies in place to make sure you continue to value making money over, say, having sex with your coworkers”), what work says about us as a society (”It’s a good thing that people have jobs no one can understand, at least according to those that judge a society’s evolution by how specialized its workers can be”) and the biscuit industry (”Of all of the people at XYZ biscuit company involved in the design of the Biscuit Alpha, not a single one of them knows how to bake”).

Anyway, it was interesting enough that I went out and bought the book afterall. It's too late for me to get it autographed but, who knows, maybe he and I will sit down and have lunch today and discuss life after Proust, a topic relevant to both of us. There has to be more to life than Charlaine Harris, after all.

Also, Twittering with your mind - just the thing I think