James' World 2

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Roughly every four years, an extra day gets tacked onto the end of February, a time-keeping convention known as the leap year. The practice of adjusting the calendar with an extra day was established by Julius Caesar more than 2,000 years ago and modified in the 16th century by Pope Gregory XIII, bequeathing us the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

That extra day is a way of aligning the calendar year of 365 days with how long it actually takes Earth to make a trip around the sun, which is nearly one-quarter of a day longer. The added day ensures that the seasons stay put rather than shifting around the year as the mismatch lengthens.

Humanity struggles to impose order on the small end of the time scale, too. Lately the second is running into trouble. Traditionally the unit was defined in astronomical terms, as one-86,400th of the mean solar day (the time it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis). In 1967 the world’s metrologists instead began measuring time from the ground up, with atomic clocks. The official length of the basic unit, the second, was fixed at 9,192,631,770 vibrations of an atom of cesium 133. Eighty-six thousand four hundred such seconds compose one day. (see article)

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The Astronomer,” a 1668 painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.Credit…DeAgostini/Getty Images

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Maybe your spouse did laundry and put something in the dryer that wasn’t supposed to go, or you simply got distracted and didn’t hear the timer go off. Accidents happen. If your favorite cashmere ends up looking like it belongs on your 6-year-old niece, remain calm. There is a solution, and it’s fairly simple.

First of all, take a deep breath. There’s no reason to dump that knit in the donation pile—yet. Try this trick to bring your sweaters, cotton T-shirts, and jeans back to their original state: (see article)

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The holidays may be the most wonderful time of the year, but entertaining during them is stressful. “Sometimes the moment overwhelms people, and they forget to focus on the important thing, which is human connection,” says Daniel Post Senning, co-president of the Emily Post Institute and great-great-grandson of famed manners expert Emily Post. “The point of etiquette is to focus on relationships, and if you can do that during the holidays, you’ll be in good shape.”

In October, Senning and his cousin Lizzie Post marked the centennial of Emily Post’s Etiquette with the release of the guide’s 20th edition. It covers everything from thank-you notes (still relevant!) to how much to tip in a ride-share (10% to 20%). Senning spoke with Bloomberg Pursuits about avoiding common mistakes during festive entertaining.

The only wrong response to an invite is no response.

Hosts can take a no, but the guest who doesn’t reply is the biggest challenge. The place where people get into trouble is anxiety about coming and going, so be clear about expectations, both as a guest and a host, especially for overnight invitations—when am I supposed to arrive and when am I supposed to leave? The old expression that fish and house guests start to stink after three days is worth keeping in mind.

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Illustration: Tomi Um

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For some reason, negotiation tends to be considered a specialized professional skill instead of a basic life one. Business school students and salespeople learn tons about how to work out deals, but most of the rest of us never learn much about how to negotiate. That’s one reason why buying a major asset like a house or car is so stressful for regular folks—negotiating is mysterious to us.

But everyone negotiates on a constant basis, and learning some of the fundamentals of banging out a mutually-beneficial deal is a crucial skill we should all acquire. The challenges of learning how to bargain is often the mixture of emotion, psychology, and math. Leverage can swing back and forth between parties, and emotions can play as much of a role as finances (as anyone who has overpaid for a house because they “fell in love with it” can attest). That’s why learning some basic negotiation skills is essential—starting with why you should always seriously consider making the first offer.

The Anchoring Effect

You’ve probably heard that you should always make the first offer when negotiating, possibly with some vague explanation about setting the terms. This is, in fact, generally good advice—because of something called the Anchoring Effect.

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Photo: vchal (Shutterstock)

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