Bathroom scales are useless. Worse, they are dangerous to your emotional well-being. If you own one, here’s why you should toss it out.

(1) Weight is nothing more than a convention used by humans on Earth to denote the the force they are exerting — in this case, on a bathroom scale — due to the strength of the Earth’s gravity (g). Because g, which is approximately 9.8 meters per square second, varies slightly depending upon where you are on our planet, weight scales have to be calibrated to reflect an accurate reading. So your weight in Bali, Indonesia will probably be different from your weight in Oslo, Norway. What does the numerical weight reading on your bathroom scale tell you? Nothing but a number related to the Earth’s gravitational force. If you were to weigh yourself on Mars, the number would be different.

Unfortunately, if you are like most people, when you see this number on your bathroom scale, your mind adds several things to it. Your mind adds grief and disgust if you see a number above the threshold. If that the number has not changed over the past six months, your mind adds disappointment. Even if the number falls below the threshold and you feel happy, there’s this sense of disquiet and anxiety: what if it goes up again? Your mind is never at peace.

(2) Therefore, a bathroom scale’s only function is to inflict mental torture on its owner. For this reason alone, it should be tossed out. But wait, doesn’t it indicate how healthy (or unhealthy) you are? No.

(3) Using a bathroom scale prevents you from truly feeling your body. It is an excuse that keeps you from the more challenging task of getting in touch with your body. It distracts you from focusing on what’s important: the state of your health.

I have never owned a bathroom scale. If you ask me how much I weigh, I can give you a pretty good guess based upon the weight recorded by my doctor during the previous year’s physical examination.

What do I need a scale for? I know if I have gained or lost a little weight by the way my clothes feel. It’s the same with you. Do your trousers feel tighter? Can you still close your shirt? Is it still easy to zip up your skirt? Or perhaps, the waistline of your trousers feels roomier. Is the butt of your shorts sagging? How do your clothes look on you? How do you feel in them?

You do not need a bathroom scale to tell you how you feel and look. When I have been eating well and exercising regularly, I can see that my clothes simply look better on me. I also feel better. I have more energy. I am in a better mood. So far, my annual physical examinations show that I am in good health. What do I need a bathroom scale for?

But one must go beyond looks. It is important to focus on how your body feels when it is in motion. Are you lumbering when you run? How do your feet, legs, arms, belly, and butt feel when you are doing yoga or pilates, swimming, hiking, skating, running, biking? Can you walk up 11 flights of stairs and continue to talk without losing your breath? If the answer is yes, you are out of shape and having a bathroom scale flash a number at you every morning is utterly ridiculous and irrelevant. Some people who weigh less than people their same age and height, cannot climb more than 5 flights of stairs without stopping.

In summary, toss out your bathroom scale. There are more accurate and emotionally healthy ways to figure out the state of your body. A bathroom scale only inflicts mental torture on you and distracts you from the most important task at hand: looking at and listening to your body.

Simplicity means reducing the number of things you do in a day. It means focusing on the task at hand. Because we divide up our days in 24 hours and we need sleep, simplicity means limiting the number of tasks we do in any given day. How much time have we spent tweeting, sending text messages, updating our profile on the various online social networks we have joined? Was all that necessary?

I will be the first to admit that I have spent countless wasted hours reading blog posts, commenting on them, posting on Twitter, reading and retweeting tweets, updating my Facebook page, and then wondering why I don’t have time for anything else and why I feel so unsettled. I don’t want to spend 2010 in this way. To start the year, I have cut in half the number of blogs I subscribe to and am limiting my time on Twitter.

As for my offline life, I have been doing my daily meditation, spending time with friends, cooking, reading books that have been screaming for attention on my bookshelf, and writing. I feel peaceful and grounded.

The mother (stepmother) of the suspect is a woman from Yemen (where the suspect is said to have received the incendiary materials). During his middle school years at the international school in Togo, he already had extremist views. Then he went to London to study, then went to Egypt, and finally to Dubai. Family members say that he told them he did not want to have anything to do with them.

Source: Het Parool (Dutch paper)

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction. One never puts down a sentence without the feeling that it has never been put down before in such a way, and that perhaps even the substance of the sentence has never been felt. Every sentence is an innovation. [my emphasis]

Recommended reading:

The Stories of John Cheever

The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III

What used to be a 4 hour plus train ride is now only 3 hours and 18 minutes. The Thalys TGV between Paris and Amsterdam is finally running at its intended speed. After many years of incompetent bumbling around, the Netherlands railway authority and the Dutch government finally got their act together. This comes years after the Belgians were already allowing the high-speed trains to run at high speeds through Belgium. Sigh.

Lovely day in the city, I am about to work on my Mac Book.

(read more at The New York Times)

Senior Bush administration figures including Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad, and Jay Garner, the retired general who led reconstruction efforts immediately after the war, are leading a new business push into Iraq. The two one-time senior officials are among a raft of former US soldiers and diplomats either leveraging their war experience helping foreign companies to enter the Iraqi market or starting businesses there themselves.

Read more on the Financial Times (may need subscription).

Is this what the war in Afghanistan will be about? Lots of dead people, billions of dollars spent, just like in Iraq, lots of cruelty so that in the end, a few well-connected people can make billions of dollars. This is obscene. At home, millions of Americans can’t afford health care because the Congress and the Senate can barely pass a health care reform bill that’s humane. They’re too busy pandering to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. I am so disgusted.

Pierre Marcolini: my favorite chocolatier

Apple opens store (finally) in Paris

Look cool, get warm in this cozy Vivienne Westwood Anglomania coat

Imagination draws its energy from a confrontation with desire. It feeds off desire, transmuting and magnifying reality through desire’s power. Fantasy does the opposite; it avoids desire by fleeing into a crude sort of wish-fulfillment that seems much safer. Fantasy might be teddy bears, lollipops, sexual delights, or superhero adventures; it also might be voices in one’s head urging acts of outrage and mayhem. Or it might be the confused world of separation and fear we routinely live in, a threatening yet seductive world that promises us the happiness we seek when our fantasies finally become real. Imagination confronts desire directly, in all its discomfort and intensity, deepening the world right where we are. Fantasy and reality are opposing forces, but imagination and reality are not in opposition: imagination goes toward reality, shapes and evokes it.

The best time to visit Rome is NOT in the summer, but in the early fall or in the spring. October is a perfect because the churches and museums are not as crowded, the restaurants are serving classic autumn dishes such as tagliolini with black truffel, and the air has a cool crispness that encourages walking and exploration.

Most people, myself included, have visited Rome in the sweltering heat of July when walking up the Palatine Hill feels like a death sentence handed down by Caesar Augustus. When you finally make it down from the Palatine Hill to the Forum to marvel at the columns of the Temple of Saturn and the Arch of Septimus Severus, you find yourself drenched in sweat and in such a foul mood that instead of spending the time to make out the details of the carvings on the Arch of Titus, notably, Roman soldiers carrying off loot taken from the Temple in Jerusalem, including the only concrete proof that there was a menorah in the Temple, all you want to do is seek shelter from the sun. Alas, this is the Forum and there are no trees. So you find yourself crouching behind one of the columns, together with hundreds of other tourists. Therefore, Rule no. 1 is do not visit Rome in July or August.

My visit to Rome in October of this year was simply marvelous. The weather couldn’t have been better: in the evenings, one needs a light jacket, but during the day, it is warm enough to walk around in summer clothes. Romans are already outfitted in their best fall clothes, including knit jackets with fur trim, gorgeous lightweight cashmere coats and boots. I find people-watching in Rome as entertaining and informative as a walk through the Pantheon.

I have begun posting reviews of restaurants and boutique hotels on Mapplr and will finish this week with a short guide to my favorite shops and restaurants in the city, as well as practical tips on getting around, finding Wi-Fi and more.

I posted my Rome photos in two sets on Flickr: one shows the Forum and Palatine Hill (above), and the other has shots of Rome’s neighborhoods and the Pantheon (below).

Check out my recent posts on Mapplr (with more to come):

Kame Hall: modern boutique hotel in the heart of Rome

Al Pompiere: traditional Roman cuisine in an old palazzo

Il Buco: excellent Tuscan food near the Pantheon in Rome

Mapplr’s favorite restaurants and cafes in Rome

Mapplr’s favorite hotels in Rome

At first, the silence is eerie, then it becomes a sheer delight. Walking around SOMA is no longer such a frightful experience. There are no traffic jams, no hurried obnoxious drivers texting, talking on their phone and trying to get onto the bridge at the same time, in a big hurry. The streets are quiet and suddenly this part of San Francisco has become so much more livable.

Unfortunately the bridge may open even as soon as today. I am wishing it remains closed indefinitely. Perhaps they can close the bridge one day a week.