I know you should observe a cooling-off period before hitting Send on an angry email. Does that rule also apply to online restaurant reviews?
Mmm ... vengeance. A dish best served as an amuse-bouche. But vengeance is not justice. Are you trying to alert the restaurant to a legitimate flaw — or do you just want to rant about some gustatory affront? Is this about their liver and onions or your bile and spleen? As entertaining as those thermonuclear reviews on Yelp can be, you're morally obligated to be constructive. Stating that a joint's baked halibut "tasted like rancid crud stewed in toilet water" is just a slam; stating that it "tasted like rancid crud due to severe oversalting," on the other hand, lets the chefs know they need to lay off the sel gris.
You might also try this thing we do here in the mainstream media: We read articles more than once and make revisions before publishing. Sure, it's economic suicide for us, but your readers will appreciate it, especially if your meal was accompanied by beer, wine, and/or buckets of tequila. So if you're in word-slurring mode, sleep on that post — reviewing while intoxicated is a no-no on par with drunk-dialing your ex.
I follow North Korea's official news agency on Twitter for its bizarre Orwellian fare. But does my listening in help prop up an evil dictatorship?
Two key points of fact: First, the @kcna_dprk Twitter feed is actually run by an Austrian citizen, not one of Kim Jong-Il's Hennessy-sipping flunkies. But he does post verbatim language and links from North Korea's state-run Central News Agency, so what you're getting is unvarnished totalitarian blather — alternately humorous ("New Kind of Distemper Paint Developed") and sinister ("Revenge-Vowing Meeting of Young People Held").
Second, while Twitter may rank up there with sliced bread on the list of great inventions, following people isn't the same as casting your vote for them (yet). A follower count doesn't necessarily imply support. In fact, by hipping your Twitter pals to North Korea's desperate backwardness, you could actually spread some light in the world. While you're at it, you should point them toward Dear Leader's recently published book, The Workers of Kangson Should Take the Lead in the Drive for Effecting a New Great Revolutionary Surge in Building a Great, Prosperous, and Powerful Nation. (Amazon reviews have not been kind.)
Or if you really think of reading Twitter feeds as an "activity," imagine that you're engaged in some sort of freelance intelligence work — sort of like reading Pravda at the height of the Cold War. Maybe those carefully parsed stories about factory openings and those threats to incinerate Seoul actually contain meaningful information. If you figure out anything, be sure to retweet it, perhaps with some clarifying comment like "OMG" or "so sad." Be the change, my friend.
My company gives us two 15-minute breaks per day. I'd like to spend one of them power-napping in my cubicle, but my boss says no way. What should I do?
Before we got this cushy gig, with its nap times, sharing circle, and juice boxes, we had a few stick-in-the-mud bosses, the kind of fearful corporate drones who see daytime sleep as a sign of weakness. Despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary, your boss just can't shake the notion that nappers are the wounded gazelles of the business world, ripe for figurative slaughter.
The best way to counter this kind of knee-jerk prejudice is with data. Start with one of the reams of studies showing that a quick nap beats coffee as a way of boosting mental performance. Explain that REM sleep increases your level of acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter in cognitive functioning. A mug o' joe does not.
Then propose a little wager: If you aren't markedly more productive after, say, a four-week trial run, you'll treat your boss to the fanciest steak dinner in town. Just make sure the two of you agree on the performance metrics before making the bet official.
Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wired.com.
