Hallmark holidays

A pithy, apt term for Days like Valentine's, Father's, Mother's and the myriad other marketing ideas that the Hallmark's of the world come up with to sell merchandise. Idea courtesy, Emily Bazelon, writer for Slate.com Also from the same story on how to dole out praise: Tell a human being how smart he is, and the only way he'll go is down. Tell him how determined and hard working he is, and he'll keep working at it.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The 13 stages in a writer's life

Lost Youth. The Wanderjahr. The Great Idea. Sitzfleisch. Troubles. Procrastination. Competition. Agony. Breakthrough. Voice. Controversy. Fame. Influence. (Extracted from Janet Browne's observations on the life of Charles Darwin.)

Acceptance

The sentence in which Darwin, with infinite tact and reluctance, spells out the one point in his argument he knew would shock his readers most: "that man with all his noble qualities … still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

Isabelle on her magic

Short stories on how stories are made.

Smart feeling

Kinda like a kids' magazine for grown-ups. Why so? Because a good kids' magazine is supposed to be instructive and fun; something you don't find in magazines nowadays. Nor grown-ups. That apart, how great a name is Mental Floss? It is.

Charmonica

Where I learnt a few more things about my blues harmonica. Play.

Pencilled in

If you want to learn how to do pencil portraits, start here.