Weekend Reading: The Downtime Edition

This week's links are brought to you by this excellent article about how we need more downtime than we think....

On a related topic, I don't really agree with this post about how our lifestyles have been designed, but it is an interesting and provocative read. And I do agree with the point that our current work culture is pretty suboptimal.

And Laura Vanderkam discussed the balance between planning and spontaneity on the weekend. We tend to list out the chores and work we need/want to do, make sure we plan in at least one fun thing for the family, and then let the rest happen as it will. I don't like a completely packed weekend, but I find that for us, having one fun thing explicitly planned works well.

But let's stop being serious for awhile and just have some fun links:

As someone with a rather common last name, this xkcd comic made me laugh out loud.

If you haven't yet seen this gif showing the most popular girl's names in the US by state and decade, check it out.

I associate James Blunt with driving the East coast of Australia, because his song "You're Beautiful" seemed to always be on the radio when we were there (early January, 2006). Now, I will also associate him with a great sense of humor.

I decided to set up a tumblr for Tungsten Hippo, mostly because there seem to be a lot of cool book-related tumblrs and I wanted to follow them. The Times Haiku tumblr is one of my favorites.

Speaking of cool things in Tungsten Hippo-land, here is my favorite recent pin, a purse made from old books.

WTF, Evolution brings you the giant swallowtailed caterpillar.

Of course, we need some potty humor (courtesy of Mr. Snarky, of course):



But let's end on a more highbrow note, with some good old-fashioned sports trash talking. With horns.



(h/t to @cpellegr of Spurious Tuples for that last one.)

Happy Weekend, everyone. I hope you have some good downtime!