Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 90

The Good Wife, or The dream life of Hillary Clinton

The series created by Michelle and Robert King begins with a premise grabbed from the headlines. Alicia, who had been a full-time mom for 13 years, is forced to return to legal practice in order to support her family after her husband, Chicago State’s Attorney Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), is jailed on charges of corruption […]

Bibliotherapy: Reading makes you happier

The Novel Cure, Php695 at National Bookstores Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run […]

Boredom is actually good for you

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. Image: Robert Plutchik Although boredom is essential for human development it’s been given a bad rap. “Boredom has traditionally been associated with a range of negative outcomes, both within the workplace and outside it,” Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman of the University of Central Lancashire write in their 2014 paper. Mann […]

Jurassic World, you’re no Jurassic Park

Somewhere, Steven Spielberg is laughing his head off. He’s credited as executive producer of this reboot, which proves that newer is not necessarily better. Jurassic World is so idiotic, it seems to argue that dinosaurs should return because humans are too stupid to run the world. It is a measure of how far civilization has […]

Turn your empty coffee pods into earrings

Found these at a weekend market in Italy: earrings made of empty coffee pods. They’re very light, they’re environment-friendly, and it is highly unlikely that you will meet anyone wearing the same earrings.

“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this”

Already our favorite line from the movies this year. Is The Martian even science-fiction? Reads like engineering to us, and not that far-fetched.

“I’m going to have the science the shit out of this”

Already our favorite line from the movies this year. Is The Martian even science-fiction? Reads like engineering to us, and not that far-fetched.

Playing catch-up

Diplomatie stars Niels Arestrup who played horrible father figures The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet. Having done very little in the past week, we are catching up this week and our schedule is crammed. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Ever notice how articles written at leisure seem too casual and […]

We now return to regular programming.

Regulars may have noted that we have not been posting articles daily. This is because the last week of May always tries to kill us, so we took time off from writing columns and blogging. Also our ancient Mac and slow internet connection were sucking all the joy out of going online. The allergy (to […]

The Love Object: Stories by a sexy old broad

The Love Object: Selected Stories by Edna O’Brien, hardcover Php1,199 Edna O’Brien is one of the acknowledged masters of the short story. If that’s not enough to make you pick up this collection, this might: she writes elegant, sexy stories. How sexy? Her first book was burned in her native Ireland. We’re reading this book […]