Table of contents for February 2013 in Reader's Digest

“I love you.” I must say it a dozen times a day, even though I know that words are easy. (For me, anyway.) It’s how we show people we love them that counts. From small gestures to extraordinary efforts, there’s a lot of love in this issue. We bring you love letters between famous couples in Family Digest and the romantic choice Elvis made in our Reads. Don’t miss “What They Did for Love,” page 122. I was touched by the incredible tribute that dad Barry Adkins gave to son Kevin, and I was charmed by Mel and Jo Ellen Schwanke, a couple who dress together to stay together. It’s uplifting reading, the kind of Reader’s Digest story that makes me reflect on my life, my family, in a new…

Alexis Vaughan, 17, slouched in the passenger seat of her dad’s Excursion, wishing fervently she were still in bed. Alexis was grounded, and the early Saturday morning wake-up call to run errands with her father, Michael, was part of the punishment. She stared glumly out the window at the Preston, Idaho, cornfields. A seasoned hunter, Alexis let her eyes lazily scan the landscape for wildlife. Still, she was startled when a deer came into view about 200 yards in front of them, just a few feet off the road. Mule deer never appeared in plain sight ten days before hunting season. “Dad, there’s a deer there!” Alexis said, rolling down the window for a better look. It was a three-point buck—a male deer with sharp, three-pronged antlers on each side…

Ambulances American Medical Response, the largest ambulance company in the United States, introduced bariatric ambulances in 2001. Their cots can accommodate up to 1,600 pounds, compared with older models that hold only up to 800 pounds. CT Scanners Imaging companies such as Siemens and General Electric are building new equipment to accommodate Americans’ growing girths. Siemens’s CT scanner went from a 60-centimeter (23.6-inch) diameter in 1997 to an 80-centimeter (31.5-inch) diameter in 2011, a 25 percent increase. Caskets A standard-size casket for adults used to be 24 inches wide, but 28-inch-wide models are becoming more common, according to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America (CFSA), a trade association for the funeral-supply industry, based in Lake Bluff, Illinois. One company, Goliath Casket, began making 29-inch caskets in the 1980s…

It’s been 49 years since the surgeon general officially declared smoking tobacco hazardous, but we’re only starting to understand the array of chemicals added to cigarettes and the fascinating physiological reasons for doing so. Manufacturer Philip Morris lists 100 different additives on its website; Reynolds and Lorillard list 158 and 139, respectively. Among them: MENTHOL Delivers a cool, minty taste and provides an anesthetic effect that makes inhaling smoke more pleasant. SUGARS Produce a milder, more easily inhaled smoke and generate aldehydes, chemicals that can boost addictive potency. AMMONIA Used to convert nicotine molecules from a “bound” to a “free base” state, making them more addictive. COCOA Added for flavor but in large quantities can dilate the lungs, making them more open to receive smoke. Source: the Wall Street Journal…

• FROM O, the Oprah Magazine If I’ve served pasta twice a week since my 17 ½-year-old son, Ray, first gummed solid food, that comes to roughly 1,768 pots of the stuff. So one evening last summer, when I asked him for help with dinner, Ray’s response surprised me. “What’s a colander again?” he said. That night, as I explained with a touch of panic that the colander is the thing with the holes in it, I wondered what else I hadn’t prepared Ray for. I felt confident that I’d raised a self-reliant boy. But could he boil water? Sew on a button? Wash his clothes without turning them pink? No, no, and no. Suddenly, it hit me like a ton of boiled rigatoni: He’d be leaving the house in…

1 Want to know how much Facebook knows about you? Go to Account Settings in the Home menu and click “Download a copy of your Facebook data.” 2 You may not want to share your updates and other personal information with the whole world, but we’ve kept the default setting as Public. It’s better for us if you share more, and we’re assuming that most of you aren’t going to bother changing your privacy settings. 3 You may not see every post from your friends, and only a fraction of your friends may see all your updates. Facebook wants users to see posts that will keep them on the site the longest, so it moves up the posts that are the most liked, shared, and commented on. 4 If you…

1 Phone Replace his phone’s background image with a cute picture of yourself. 2 Lunch Bag Use a toothpick to write a special note on a banana peel. After a few hours, the bruised skin will reveal your hidden message. 3 Kitchen Drop candy hearts in a sugar bowl, a go-to coffee mug, or any other knickknack. 4 Living Room Spell your sentiments with Scrabble tiles. 5 Garage Collect meaningful odds and ends like movie tickets and vacation souvenirs, and leave them in the car’s cup holder. 6 Bathroom Rub soap onto your fingertip and write on a mirror. Lightly trace over the letters with a tissue to ensure that they aren’t easily visible. When the bathroom steams up, your words will appear.…

• FROM THE New York Times Crikey, Britishisms are everywhere. Snippets of British vernacular that were until recently as rare as kidney pie on these shores are cropping up in the speech of Americans who often have no more tie to Britain than an affinity for Downton Abbey. Yet perhaps this language shift is a reflection of a larger cultural change. Or maybe it’s just pretension. Americans live in a swirl of Ricky Gervais and Adele, says John McWhorter, who teaches linguistics at Columbia University. “We have a generation of, essentially, adults who grew up on Harry Potter,” he notes. “The British accent is just in our ears. We can hear Great Britain in a way that we couldn’t hear it even ten years ago.” SLANG SIMPLIFIED Piece of kit…

Our tour guide at historical Arlington National Cemetery thought he had an answer for everything … until he met our students. “Excuse me,” said one kid. “Are the graves in alphabetical order?” William Cullem, Lincoln, Nebraska Classic We Love On the first morning of boot camp, our unit was dragged out of bed by our drill sergeant and made to assemble outside. “My name is Sergeant Jackson,” he snarled. “Is there anyone here who thinks he can whip me?” My six-foot-three, 280-pound brother, who had enlisted with me, raised his hand. “Yes, sir, I do.” Our sergeant grabbed him by the arm and led him out in front of the group. “Men,” he said, “this is my new assistant. Now, is there anyone here who thinks he can whip both…

Adrienne Farr knew her weight—209 pounds—was out of control when the seven-block walk from the subway to her office gave her heart palpitations, achy knees, and throbbing feet: “I felt completely sick.” Four Days That Changed Everything When Adrienne, then 36, heard about the Digest Diet, she was especially intrigued by the four-day fast-release phase to kick weight loss into high gear. The verdict: “When I lost seven pounds in four days, I couldn’t believe it!” The filling soups and energizing shakes wiped away cravings. “I was shocked by how little food I needed to feel full,” she says. Loving the New Me Adrienne eagerly followed the rest of the plan, which she says has transformed her attitude toward food. “I was 100 percent an emotional eater,” she says. “Happy,…

TYPE 1 Only about 5 percent of people with diabetes have type 1, which is typically diagnosed in children and young adults. The body attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, making it unable to regulate blood sugar. These patients need insulin therapy to survive. TYPE 2 The most common type; either the pancreas does not produce enough insulin, or muscle, liver, and fat cells ignore insulin, leading to high blood sugar levels and increased risk of heart disease, stroke, blindness, nerve damage, and amputation. TYPE 3 This controversial category refers to Alzheimer’s disease, which may arise when brain tissue becomes insulin resistant. It is like type 2 but primarily concerns the brain.…

• FROM THE BOOK Baby, Let’s Play House In July 1963, rock-and-roll legend Elvis Presley went to Hollywood to make his 15th movie, Viva Las Vegas. The plot revolved around Elvis as a guitar-playing race-car driver whose life is upended after meeting Rusty, a swimming instructor with show business aspirations. With the casting of the dynamic Ann-Margret as Rusty, Elvis found the first costar who could match him in looks, musicality, and screen appeal. They were an electrifying pair—Viva Las Vegas, directed by George Sidney, plugged two live wires together and made the movie sizzle. Offscreen, Elvis would find an even higher voltage connection with Hollywood’s hottest young sex kitten. Ann-Margret Olsson, born in Sweden and reared in suburban Chicago, had just made a splash in her third film, Bye…

“PRINT” NEW BODY PARTS Imagine being able to manufacture knee cartilage, heart valves, muscle tissue, and skin at the touch of a button. That’s the aim of bioprinting, a technique that creates human tissue using a special “ink” made from donor stem cells. “These printers use stem cells and special gels to build living, 3-D structures one layer at a time,” says Jordan Miller, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Right now, bioprinting is producing only thin sheets of tissue, but scientists hope that soon the manufactured parts will help strengthen skin, bones, muscles, cartilage, and even kidneys and bladders. The long-term goal: “If you needed a transplant, you wouldn’t have to wait for a donor or use immunosuppressant drugs,” Miller says. “We’d make a replacement organ…

• FROM Esquire In 2001, ten days after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers, Rais Bhuiyan suffered a terrorist attack of his own. The Bangladesh native had been living in Dallas only four months, having moved from Manhattan, seeking a more affordable lifestyle. A year earlier, he’d experienced impossible good luck: He was one of the thousands of winners among the millions who’d applied to the United States’ national green-card lottery of 2000. Even though he’d been cautioned by his friends in the immigrant community that the natives in Texas could be somewhat hostile, Bhuiyan had his heart set on bringing over his fiancée and starting a family as soon as he could. Given the promise by a friend of a job and a place…

The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball (Doubleday, $29.95) “The man with beaten clothes could be forgiven for his crime, because he had invented a new way of seeing. In the late 1800s, in California, the photographer Edward Muybridge and the railroad capitalist Leland Stanford, whose lives and personalities differed sharply, made a strange and unforgettable discovery. Together they married the camera to the railroad and became the inventors of moving pictures, the basis of our culture of screens … There is another uncommon thing about Muybridge and Stanford, namely, one of them was a murderer. Muybridge, the photographer, killed coolly and in a meticulous way, with the expectation that he would die as he killed.”…

My husband will not be confused for Jamie Oliver anytime soon. Before I ran off to work, I gave him detailed instructions on how to cook dinner. That evening, I returned home to find a dry chicken roasting in the oven next to a Pyrex measuring cup full of water. “What’s that doing in there?” I asked. Clearly offended, he sputtered, “You told me to put the chicken in the oven with a cup of water!” Pam Brennan, Stratford, New Jersey Feeling sick, my sister grabbed the thermometer from the medicine cabinet and popped it into her mouth. “Uh, Julie, that’s the dog’s thermometer,” said my mother. “I told you—never put your phone on vibrate!” Julie spit out the thermometer. “Ewww, that was in Fitzie’s mouth?!” Mom hesitated before replying,…

The Power of Miracles I loved grabbing a minute here and there to read “The Year in Miracles.” I was amazed, uplifted, touched, brought to tears (for good reasons), and, most of all, reassured of the good side of humankind. K. R., via e-mail I have never been so moved as by the photo for Moment of Grace. Shoep the dog tugged at my heartstrings. His face shows relief, trust, and gratitude during this peaceful moment. We all suffer and need support, healing, and kindness. We receive it so rarely, but we know it when we see it. I hope this photo will inspire us to be better to each other. George H. Paterno, Kutztown, Pennsylvania Football Battles On I work in a blue-collar town, and when the shop guys…

On the way home from his job at a bakery in Wainscott, New York, one August evening, Craig Schum, 33, stopped his car at the East Hampton Airport. A group was protesting airplane noise, and Schum, who had kicked off his shoes, got out of the car. Within seconds, though, Schum saw something astonishing: A small plane dived and crashed into the woods about 100 yards from the runway. “I don’t remember making the decision that I should go help out,” he recalls. “I just started running.” Schum sprinted across the street barefoot, scaled a six-foot-high chain-link fence, and dashed about 100 yards toward the woods. When he got there, he discovered 51-year-old pilot Stephen Bochter—his head bleeding—beside the burning plane. Bochter’s passenger, his fiancée, Kim Brillo, was on the…

Turns out that some sounds are irritating because they trigger activity in the amygdala, the area of the brain that regulates emotions. The auditory and emotional parts of the brain work together to produce our negative reaction, explains a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Here, the sounds we find least and most unpleasant, based on the brain activity of 13 volunteers who listened to 74 different sounds. MOST ANNOYING SOUNDS 1. Knife on a bottle 2. Fork on a glass 3. Chalk on a blackboard 4. Ruler on a bottle LEAST ANNOYING SOUNDS 1. Applause 2. Baby’s laughter 3. Thunder 4. Flowing water Source: WebMD…

Eat Apples for Better Cholesterol There may be something to that adage after all: Middle-aged participants who started eating an apple a day saw a dramatic 40 percent drop in their oxidized LDL, which is a particularly dangerous, artery-hardening form of “bad” cholesterol. In the small, month-long study, participants who took pills containing the same amount of polyphenol antioxidants contained in apples also saw a decrease, though significantly smaller. Further studies are needed to discover why eating whole apples maximizes the heart-happy benefits. Source: Robert DiSilvestro, PhD, professor of human nutrition, Ohio State University Clearer Labels, Safer Drugs New standards finally require clear, easy-to-read labels on prescription medications to help reduce the 700,000 emergency room visits due to adverse drug effects every year. Critical information will appear in large, uncluttered…

Do you abhor stinky cheeses? You might be a “tolerant taster” who sports fewer tastes buds. Tolerant tasters are generally unfussy eaters, unless they happen to also have an excellent sense of smell. Then strongly scented foods like blue cheese are out of balance: The taste doesn’t match up with the smell, which leads to dislike. Would your dream meal be french fries and ice cream? You might be a survivor of multiple ear infections, which can damage the “taste nerves.” Instead of experiencing sensations like bitterness and fattiness in balance, you may perceive a more pronounced fatty sensation, making rich foods extra tempting. Does dark chocolate remind you of coal? You could have damage to your trigeminal “touch nerve,” which often happens during mouth surgery. In this case, foods…

Clear your browsing history. Internet browsers store information about each website you visit. After a few days, that data can begin to slow down how fast pages load. To delete your history in Internet Explorer, hit Tools, Internet Options, and the General tab. Then, under Browsing History, click Delete. In Firefox, choose Tools, Clear Recent History. In Google Chrome, hit the wrench icon, choose History and Clear All History. Pare down bookmarks. Limit yourself to 20 or so bookmarks. In Internet Explorer, go to File, then choose Export to a File. Choose Favorites, and open the HTML file it saves. Copy and paste the links into a Word document. In Firefox, open Bookmarks, copy the ones you want, and paste into a Word doc. In Chrome, go to Bookmarks, Bookmark…

A Winning Headline Most Craigslist shoppers know what they’re looking for. Write a concise headline with one perfect adjective. Avoid all caps and rows of exclamation points—they look amateur. Photos That Sell Upload one full-length picture of the item and a few close-up shots from various angles. Make sure photos are 800 pixels wide so shoppers won’t have to scroll to see your coffeemaker. A Clear Write-up Put descriptive keywords at the bottom of your ad, and opt for a bulleted list to outline key features—like brand, condition, and size—rather than hiding points in a block of text. Thursday Posts Add your goods between 6 and 7 p.m. on Thursday to target weekend bargain shoppers. If items haven’t sold by Friday, delete the listing and repost on Saturday to keep…

My client had a problem with the Scottish narrator chosen for a video I was editing. Client: The voiceover sounds too Scottish in this part. Can we edit it to make him sound less Scottish? Me: Well … he’s Scottish. Do you want us to get him to record it again? Client: No, no. Can you just make it less Scottish? Me: You mean by using a de-Scottish setting? Client: Yes! Can you do that? From clientsfromhell.net Our supervisor, a saintly grandmother, was toiling away in her cubicle when the human relations specialist dropped by and asked her, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “Do you have time to discuss your STD?” The room went uncomfortably silent, before she explained, “You know, your Short Term Disability.” Bernd…

Talk about proven weight-loss success—just look at the thousands of Facebook fans who post daily to brag about how the Digest Diet helped them get slim, or check out Adrienne Farr (previous page; see her story on page 105), who went from a size 18 to a size 6 after following the diet for ten months. But the plan doesn’t just drive the scale down—it also makes your whole body healthier (readers have lowered cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar; improved sleep apnea; and reduced chronic pain, to name a few of the benefits). That’s because it relies on whole, healthy foods and promotes habits that are naturally “detoxifying.” Unlike fad detoxes and cleanses—which most experts agree are best avoided—this plan packs your body with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and essential…

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast with recordsetting flooding and devastating winds. As communities rebuild, we celebrate four people among many who went above and beyond to help neighbors, children, and strangers in need. The Rescuer in Toms River When Jack Buzzi looked out the window of his parents’ Jersey Shore home during the worst of the storm, he saw something horrifying: His neighbor’s house was floating by on a surge of water from the Atlantic Ocean that had overwhelmed Barnegat Bay and flooded the area. Part of the top floor had broken off, and the rest of the house was in shambles. At the same time, Buzzi was on the phone with his friend Jack Ward, whose sister Kathey Ward, 60, owned the house. The…

ON HANGERS The whole thing didn’t start out very romantically. One day in the mid-1950s, Jo Ellen (Joey) Schwanke brought home a long, black dress for a formal event and eagerly modeled it for her husband, Mel. “He looked at it, and he said, ‘Ye gads! You look like Kate Smith.’” Joey laughs now. But for anyone who has forgotten the very full-figured Ms. Smith, Joey adds, “That’s bad.” Mel, who owned a florist business with his wife in Fremont, Nebraska, took charge. He had always admired Joey’s beauty (still does!), and he wanted others to appreciate her. “So Mel went out and got some orange brocade and gold lame, and then he had a dress made with a [loosefitting] Empire waist so I didn’t look as big—because I’ve always…

It’s 2 a.m. on the Navy destroyer USS Trayer, and the air is thick with the smell of fuel and 350 sweaty recruits who have been working too many hours. It’s another long, monotonous shift of routine maintenance when, suddenly, the night is ripped open by the piercing wail of an emergency alarm. The Trayer is under attack. Explosions rock the ship as fires burn and the anguished cries of the injured fill the air. To escape the flames, the flooding, and the thick smoke, the men and women of the crew scramble through mangled compartments past gruesomely torn bodies. Lights flicker, turbines whine, metal rips, and the relentless scream of the alarm tells everyone what they already know: This is war. Except it’s not. As the recruits battle flame…

Our advisers on the television hit The Doctors share their picks of the most exciting medical innovations featured on the show. For more, watch The Doctors daily (check local listings). A Phone That Predicts Heart Attacks A futuristic app currently under development turns your phone into a state-of-the-art heart rate monitor. Communicating with a tiny sensor embedded in the bloodstream, the app searches for inflamed cells that may rupture and cause a heart attack. If those cells are detected, the app can alert you and your doctor a week or two ahead of time that a heart attack looks likely … giving you time to prevent it. No-Scar Thyroid Surgery When thyroid glands have to be removed—usually because of benign or cancerous growths—patients are left with a visible scar on…

FROM THE BOOK Lizz Free or Die When they took Dad to the hospital that last time, he phoned me from his room. “Lizzy, the paramedics asked me if I was on any medications. I told them, ‘Everything but Viagra.’ Then they put the oxygen mask on me.” It was typical of Dad: dark, inappropriate, and funny. And they were the last words I heard him say. My sister Linda called me the next day: “You need to come home.” In his own way, Dad, who had suffered from emphysema for years, had tried to prepare me for this day. A few months before his death, he had sent me a card and had asked me not to open it “til after I’m gone.” Of course I opened it immediately.…

Schroder by Amity Gaige (Twelve, $21.99) This hotly anticipated novel might remind you of the real-life “Clark Rockefeller” case. Like the fake Rockefeller, Gaige’s “Eric Kennedy” is an imposter who kidnaps his young daughter in a custody dispute—but Schroder evolves as a strikingly original story. The City of Devi by Manil Suri (Norton, $26.95) Set in Mumbai, this brainy thriller opens: “Four days before the bomb that is supposed to obliterate and kill us all, I stand in the ruins of Crawford Market, haggling with the lone remaining fruit seller over the price of the pomegranate in my hand.” Written by a professor of mathematics, the page-turner deftly enfolds suspense, love, politics, and religion. The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood (Norton, $26.95) Surprising connections between two women separated by decades—one…

We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. Will Rogers I wish the whole world could see what I see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are. Felix Baumgartner, record-setting Austrian skydiver This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. Elizabeth Gilbert Don’t aspire to make a living. Aspire to make a difference. Denzel Washington, in GQ I decided I can’t pay a person to rewind time, so I may as well get over it. Serena Williams You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you’re suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another. Daniel Day-Lewis FINISH…

GREATEST HITS FROM OUR STAFF BLOG In case you missed it, go to readersdigest.com/recommends. Of Immediate Interest WORD OF THE YEAR In lieu of trendy terms like superstorm and super PAC, the folks behind Oxford American Dictionary chose GIF, an acronym for graphic files. EXTREMELY ENJOYABLE TIME-WASTERS Don’t tell Liz: We’re busy “working” with kitties, rain, and sand at cat-bounce.com, rainymood.com, and thisissand.com. YOU SAY POPCORN, I SAY PIPCORN New snack-food alert! Pipcorn has no tough hulls and comes in supercharged flavors, like Lemon Truffle. Need more? Oprah herself dubbed it a Favorite Thing. CHEATING: A NEW NATIONAL EPIDEMIC New York magazine investigates why even smart kids are stealing answers and finds it’s one part desperation for success, one part rebellion against the workload. COULD SODA BE A NEW HEALTH…

My girlfriend and I worry about different things. One day, I was like, “What do you fear the most?” And she was like, “I fear you’ll meet someone else, and you’ll leave me, and I’ll be all alone.” And she was like, “What do you fear the most?” And I was like, “Bears.” Comedian Mike Birbiglia I quit [the medical profession] because ... I truly believed that laughter was the best medicine. Turns out penicillin works a lot better. Comedian Matt Iseman A worried man goes to the vet with his goldfish. “I think it has epilepsy,” he says. The vet takes a look and says, “It seems calm enough to me.” The man says, “Well, I haven’t taken it out of the bowl yet.” Submitted by Adam Joshua Smargon,…

• FROM CNN When people you care about aren’t feeling well, you want to help ease their pain and offer hope. But common words of cheer or empathy can have unintended effects. Here’s what to never—or always—say to someone coping with chronic illness. DON’T SAY “You look so good!” Though this may be intended as a compliment, it can imply, “You can’t really be sick. You look fine to me,” which invalidates a person’s pain. “At least you can stop working! That must be nice.” Being physically unable to work can cause serious depression. Those with illness may have high medical bills and financial worries. They also don’t have as much free time as you think. Medical appointments, paperwork, and pain symptoms take up a lot of hours. “Illness is…

• FROM thehairpin.com From Johnny Cash to June Carter Cash Hey June, The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don’t go out there and sing anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout. Love, John From Marilyn Monroe to Joe DiMaggio I don’t know how to tell you just how much I miss you. I love you till my heart could burst. All I love, all I want, all I need is you—forever. I want to just be where you are and be just what you want me to be. I know it’s lousy of me to be so late so often, and I promise to try a million times harder, I promise. Love, Marilyn…

• FROM cleanprogram.com Crispy fried chicken is hard to resist, but it’s not an everyday meal. So here’s a genius idea: Slather hummus on chicken and bake, and you’ll end up with savory meat beneath a just-like-fried crust—without the time, effort, or fat! Serves 4 1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts ½ cup hummus, store-bought or homemade (recipe at right) 2 lemons, 1 sliced into rounds and 1 juiced 4 sprigs fresh rosemary or 2 tbs. dried 1 tsp. balsamic vinegar Sea salt and ground black pepper 1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Place chicken in small roasting pan and top with hummus (make sure it’s layered on quite thick, about ¼ inch). Scatter lemon slices and rosemary over chicken. Drizzle with half the lemon juice and the balsamic vinegar. 2.…

• FROM slate.com How easy would it be for someone to guess your PIN—you know, the four-digit number you use at ATMs and when you make a purchase with a debit card? Researchers at the data-analysis firm DataGenetics scrutinized a database of 3.4 million stolen passwords and uncovered some startling statistics. For example, a hacker’s odds of randomly guessing the correct number is one in 10,000. If he has three tries, odds increase to one in 3,333. If your PIN is your birth date, a year in the 1900s, or an obvious numerical sequence, the odds go way up. The group found that the three most popular combinations—1234, 1111, and 0000—account for close to 20 percent of all four-digit passwords. Every four-digit combination that starts with 19 ranks above the…

• FROM Mental Floss The Simpsons Transformed How We Talk University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman wrote in 2005, “The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture’s greatest source of idioms, catchphrases, and sundry other textual allusions.” Liberman’s assertion sounds crazy—at least until you remember there’s a Milhouse quote for every occasion. Even the gatekeeper of language, the Oxford English Dictionary, has found a spot for Homer Simpson’s trademark “D’oh!” Glee Helped Boost the Record Industry Fox scored a sleeper hit with the musical series in 2009. But the show’s real impact came between airings. As most of the record industry flailed, the Glee recordings found staggering success on iTunes. By the end of 2011, the cast had sold more than 11 million…

In Short In recognition of February, the shortest month (even during a leap year), we celebrate all things diminutive. Zip through this quiz in short order, then baby step to the next page for answers. 1. transient (’tran-sheent or-zee-ent) adj.— A: short-range. B: shorthanded. C: short-lived. 2. vignette (vin-’yet) n.—A: small glass. B: short literary sketch or scene. C: thin line. 3. bagatelle (ba-geh-’tel) n.—A: child’s rucksack. B: cell nucleus. C: something of little value. 4. scintilla (sin-’ti-luh) n.—A: short vowel. B: minute amount. C: minor crime. 5. myopic (miy-’oh-pik) adj.—A: too tiny for the naked eye. B: shortsighted. C: early. 6. irascible (i-’ra-se-bul) adj.—A: small-minded. B: narrow-waisted. C: marked by a short temper. 7. expeditiously (ek-speh-’di-shes-lee) adv.—A: promptly and efficiently. B: incompletely. C: tersely or rudely. 8. tabard (’ta-bird)…

Love the energy and vitality you’re feeling after the week’s jump start? Maintain the momentum with these simple rules: 1) Eat a fruit or veggie and protein with every meal and snack. 2) Don’t waste calories on unhealthy or nutritionally empty drinks—go for water and tea, drink coffee in moderation, and avoid soda. 3) Steer clear of foods that come in boxes, jars, and wrappers. As you continue with the rest of the Digest Diet plan, you’ll transition from shakes and soups to even heartier meals designed to keep your body in fat-release mode. Stay on track by joining us online at facebook.com/digestdiet, where you can get ideas, tips, and support from fellow dieters and Reader’s Digest “editors. You can purchase the rest of the 21-day plan at digestdiet.com or…

• FROM New Scientist Suzanne de la Monte’s rats were disoriented and confused. Navigating their way around a circular water maze—a typical memory test—they forgot where they were and couldn’t remember how to locate the hidden, submerged safety platform. A closer look at their brains uncovered devastating damage. Areas associated with memory were studded with bright pink plaques, like rocks in a climbing wall, while many neurons, full to bursting point with a toxic protein, were collapsing and crumbling, teetering on the brink of death. Such changes are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, yet they arose in surprising circumstances. De la Monte, a neuropathologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, had treated the rats with a diabetes drug that interfered with how their brains responded to insulin. The hormone…

“It’s too pretty to wear!” or “Too expensive!” That’s what Jean Tiffin of Hancock, Maine, always said upon receiving a gift. So her daughter Carol was stumped as Jean approached her 89th birthday. “There’s little she needs except food, medicine, attention …” Aha! Attention. But how could she shower her mother with that? Then it came to her. “Mom craves mail so much that she thinks she’s hit the jackpot when I bring her the Vermont Country Store catalog from the mailbox!” Carol says. So Carol posted an appeal for birthday cards on Facebook. She wrote to Jean’s home church in Memphis and e-mailed Jean’s favorite disc jockey, Rick Foster of WDEA AM, asking everyone to send letters. And then she waited. “Who is this?” Jean demanded when the first…

• FROM THE Atlantic There are two broad reasons why even rational shoppers fall for retailing tricks. First: Consumers don’t know what the heck anything should cost, so the shopping brain uses only what is knowable—visual cues, triggered emotions, comparisons, ratios, and a sense of bargain vs. rip-off. We’re not stupid. Just susceptible. Second: Although humans spend in numbered dollars, we make decisions based on clues and half-thinking that amounts to innumeracy. Here are ten ways consumers are bad at math, with an assist from author and columnist William Poundstone. 1 We love getting more of anything. You walk into a Starbucks and see two deals for a cup of coffee. The first deal offers 33 percent extra coffee. The second takes 33 percent off the regular price. What’s the…

As an undergraduate studying molecular biology, Lukas Wartman was fascinated by leukemia and the prospects for even better treatments. In medical school, he decided to make the disease his life’s work. But while gearing up for his residency in 2003, at age 25, he fell ill. One of Wartman’s med school professors diagnosed him with ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia), a common and treatable cancer in children that’s rarer and tougher to vanquish in adults. “We looked at the biopsy slides together,” Wartman recalls. “My bone marrow was filled with leukemia. It seemed too strange to think I’d have the very disease I was so interested in.” It was the start of a long journey that brought Wartman’s case to the forefront of leading-edge research at Washington University in St. Louis.…

Insane City by Dave Barry (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $26.95) RD: Your novel centers on a wedding that goes haywire. It includes strippers, drug dealers, warring families, bridezillas, Haitian refugees, drunken, debauched friends … is the book autobiographical? Barry: Ha! No, but it is based on things I saw or felt around Miami. I went to a very fancy wedding at the Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne. The bride and groom were in a gazebo, and behind them was the ocean. I remember thinking how funny it would have been had a raft shown up with a refugee. Then my son got married, and his wife, whom I love, went insane, as all brides apparently do. Preparing for the wedding was akin to preparing for the invasion of Normandy—but probably more expensive.…

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS Just Facebook Me! I’m too busy to see my friends on a regular basis, but my problem is I hate talking on the phone! People call at 9 p.m. on a weeknight or on a Saturday afternoon to catch up, and I’m not able to pick up. It’s easier to use Facebook and e-mail to stay in touch. How do I tell them this without hurting their feelings? Phoneless Friend Dear Phoneless, Step one: Let your phone go to voice mail. Step two: Answer the caller in an e-mail. Step three: Let your phone go to voice mail. Step four: Answer the caller on Facebook. Repeat as necessary until everyone gets the point about how to best reach you. Afraid of Fido My boyfriend’s family has four…