• The question of whether or not you can catch up on sleep is often debated. Turns our that a weekend spent sleeping late after a week with little sleep does work, according to the Sleep journal:

A study in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Sleep suggests that a dose of extra sleep on the weekend may be good medicine for adults who repeatedly stay up too late or wake up too early during the workweek. However, even a night of 10 hours in bed may not be enough to cure the negative effects of chronic sleep restriction.

• There are many articles about whether or not video games are beneficial. It is amazing to watch them play now, so fast, much faster than me. According to a University study, there are benefits; fast paced video games improve decision making:

Participants in a University of Rochester study, "Improved probabilistic inference as a general learning mechanism with action video games", by UR professor of brain and cognitive science Daphne Bavelier played 50 hours of video games over multiple weeks. Players who played action games like Call of Duty 2 (pictured here) made quicker decisions than those who played slow-paced strategy games like The Sims without sacrificing accuracy.

• Esquire had an article for the holidays on how to be more interesting (in social situations) …. Most are common sense, but 8 made me think:

8. With people you don’t know, limit stories to the last five minutes of your life — the turnout, the Scotch selection, the homeless man you mistakenly took for a valet.

• One last list, the Globe & Mail put up their 2010 Travel Hall of Infamy list this weekend. The oddest …

The Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed Award to three British Holiday Inns for launching another new amenity – human bed-warmers. During a January cold snap, guests who paid an extra fee could have a staff member in a one-piece sleeper suit crawl between their sheets to preheat the bed to 20 C. The service is “a bit like having a giant hot water bottle in your bed,” chain spokeswoman Jane Bednall said. Guest Evan Jones disagreed. “It’s slightly creepy,” he said. “I might pay to not have it.”

• Enjoyed the article How Canada’s Dollar Got Ahead and Left America Behind in Esquire, discussing Canadian financial prudence and the fact that there wasn’t a single Canadian bank bailed out during the recent crisis. The article could have been called ‘Revenge of the Conservative’.