Have you not heard? No one is taking long vacations these days! (Um, except all of us here! Apparently we are shiftless and lazy.) The new trend, we hear, is for employees to take a few four- or five-day breaks, instead of a full week or two. Oh, and everyone brings their BlackBerries and "checks in" with the office while they're poolside. Wow! Sounds like such a great life! And the Times was so eager for us to hear about this new trend that they wrote two articles—one in Metro, one in Styles—about it this weekend.

Six-foot-tall amateur food semiotician Allen Salkin takes a close look at women who eat red meat on the first date. Why do they do it? Well, women eat meat mostly to fool guys into thinking they aren't neurotic, says Martha Flach—and she should know, as she's an Altarcations winner! Eating steak is also totally the new new new wave feminism. "Ordering meat...is a declarative statement, something along the lines of 'I am woman, hear me chew,'" says a vagina-blessed person. Salkin himself, although he probably has no vagina in his own body, postulates that "[t]he mediums of steak and hamburger each send a different message." Right, is true! And only sluts order their steaks rare.