My so-called privacy: According to 3-month study by Earthlink, the average PC is infected by 28 spyware programs, tiny parasite programs that, in many cases, send your web-surfing habits back to the the programs' creators.

Happy trails: Mark Honigsbaum, writing in the Observer, goes in search of happiness:

The biggest puzzle of all, however, is why, given their wealth, the leading Western democracies aren't happier. After all, income levels in Europe and North America have risen steadily since the Seventies, yet satisfaction levels have hardly improved at all, and in the US they have actually fallen. Indeed, many psychologists argue that if the incidence of depressive illnesses is a guide (three to 10 times higher today than in 1950), then misery and angst are on the rise.

According to Andrew Oswald, an economist at Warwick University, one explanation is that under capitalism we spend too much time looking over our shoulders at the Joneses. The other - more compelling - theory is that because of higher educational expectations and the onus on achievement, more and more of us are tortured by our failure to live up to the aspirations of youth.

'People start out in life pretty certain that they're going to end up like David Beckham or win the Nobel Prize,' says Oswald. 'Then, after a few years, they discover it's quite tough out there - not just in their careers, but in life. Unsurprisingly, their happiness drops.' The good news is that the downer doesn't last. According to Oswald, if you trace the trajectory of most peoples' happiness over time it resembles a J-curve. People typically record high satisfaction levels in their early twenties. These then fall steadily towards middle age, before troughing at around 42. Most of us then grow steadily happier as we get older, with those in their sixties expressing the highest satisfaction levels of all - as long, that is, as they stay healthy.

Goo from the other side: The ever-fascinating Cabinet magazine geeks out on ectoplasm:

The word ectoplasm, from the Greek ektos, "outside," and plasma, "something that can be formed or molded,"... is defined as "a viscous substance ... from which spirits make themselves visible forms... alive, sensitive to touch and light... cold to the touch, slightly luminous and having a characteristic smell...." In the 1920s, a French doctor who conducted numerous experiments expanded on the characteristics of the stuff: "The color white is the most frequent.... On touch ... it can seem soft and a bit elastic when it spreads; hard, knotty or fibrous when it forms strings.... Sometimes it gives the sensation of a spider's web fluttering over the observers' hand.... The substance is mobile. At one moment it evolves slowly, rises, falls, wanders over the medium, her shoulders, her breast, her knees, with a creeping motion that recalls that of a reptile..." The same witness warned, "Any touch will resonate painfully on [the medium]. If the touch is ever so slightly harsh or prolonged, the medium evinces pain compared to that which a shock to the quick would produce."5 After making its appearance, ectoplasm was re-absorbed into the medium's body—unless it was rudely captured, as in the case of Helen Duncan.