Blonde and books

I tried dying my hair blonde out of a box and it didn't work. And by that I mean literally nothing changed. Am I too much of a brunette for boxed hair dye? That's probably a good thing.

In other news, last night I finished The Paradox of Choice. Definitely recommended. Two of my favorite take-aways:

"When asked about what they regret most in the last six months, people tend to identify actions that didn't meet expectations. But when asked about what they regret most when they look back on their lives as a whole, people tend to identify failures to act. In the short run, we regret a bad educational choice, whereas in the long run, we regret a missed educational opportunity. In the short run, we regret a broken romance, whereas in the long run, we regret a missed romantic opportunity. So it seems that we don't close the psychological door on the decisions we've made, and as time passes, what we've failed to do looms larger and larger. "

"Who do you think is happier, an athlete who wins a silver medal in the olympics (second place) or an athlete who wins a bronze medal (third place)? It seems obvious that second is better than third, or silver medalists should be happier than bronze medalists. But this turns out, on average, not to be true. Bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists. As the silver medalists stand on the award platform, they're thinking about how close they came to winning the gold. Just a little more of this, and a little less of that, and ultimate glory would have been theirs. As the bronze medalists stand on that platform, however, they're thinking about how close they came to getting no medal at all. The near miss of the silver medalists is triumph, whereas the near miss of the bronze medalists is also-ran obscurity."

Tonight I started reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. It's only the 9th day of 2012 and I'm already on my third book. Here's to a more well-read year!