Now that 11.7 million people and companies are using it, though, Pinterest is emerging as an online tool that job seekers can use to market themselves and explore potential careers, industries and employers.

Pinterest lets you save photos or images from news stories, blog posts or other online content in the form of pins that are organized into folders called boards. You can follow other people and re-pin, comment or "Like" their pins. You also can link your Pinterest boards to your accounts on Facebook or Twitter.

"If you're in a creative or design field, it's an amazing place to build a portfolio or create a visual resume," says Annie Favreau, managing editor at InsideJobs.com, a career exploration website.

Here's how to use Pinterest for a job search:

1. Optimize your Pinterest profile. Adjust account settings to allow your profile to appear in results of searches on Google and other search engines. Load your profile description with keywords that match the job you want. Include a recent photograph and links to your website or LinkedIn profile so potential employers can learn more about you. Here's one example of a Pinterest resume, from a Harvard Business School student who hopes it'll lead to a job with the online network.

2. Set up an online resume and portfolio. Gather samples of your work onto one or more boards to use as an online resume. Don't get cute with labels; call your resume board "My Resume" or something similar so it's easy to find. Pinterest is especially useful if you work in photography, architecture, interior design or other creative fields, "because it has this strong emphasis on the visuals. It's one more access point into your work," Favreau says. But anyone can use the site to create an online portfolio. Just make sure that the resume or portfolio you're linking back to has an image you can pin. This San Francisco Chronicle story shares how one Bay Area marketing manager uses Pinterest to showcase his current and previous jobs.

3. Dedicate a board to careers you're curious about. If you're searching for your next act, use Pinterest to find information on jobs or careers. Use the search box -- located in the upper left-hand corner of the site's front page -- to enter related words or phrases. Pin anything that comes up that you want to save for future reference.

4. Create boards for companies or industries you'd like to know better. Pinterest can give you a glimpse into a company's culture that you can't get from reading their "About Us" page, Favreau says. "If they're sharing Instagram pictures of their office, you won't find that a whole lot of other places," she says.

5. Follow experts. Keep up with employment trends by following the university career centers, jobs websites, outplacement specialists and career coaches that have set up shop on Pinterest. SecondAct has a board dedicated to all things work-related called Get a Job. I've also created a Job Hunting and Careers board with pointers to my stories here and other resources. Favreau also recommends following Career Bliss, BrazenCareerist, and Lea McLeod, a Portland, Ore., career expert who works with midcareer and other professionals.

6. Leave comments. Strike up a conversation with a career expert or someone who works in a field you're interested in by commenting on one of their pins. As with any other type of online or real-world networking, you never know where it could lead.

7. Wander around. Do some browsing to see what's out there. "If you're constantly coming back to the same area, or something keeps popping out at you, if might be worth exploring" as a career option, Favreau says. She also recommends using the site as a mental boost for your job-hunting efforts, and created a Career Inspirations board for that reason.

8. Protect your work. If you're sharing photography or other original work on your boards, use watermarks to protect individual images just as you would when displaying them on other websites. You want your work to be out there, but it pays to be on your guard, Favreau says.

9. Be professional. If all you do on Pinterest is share pictures of puppies, think twice about sharing your Pinterest profile with potential employers. "But if you are using it for a job search, it is an impression of who you are, so when you're creating your boards, make sure they line up with your professional appearance," she says.

10. Watch out for spammers. The bigger Pinterest grows, the more spammers it's attracting. To prevent unwittingly passing along spam disguised as a normal pin, be sure to click through on images to see where they lead before re-pinning them. Don't click on pins that look like ads or giveaways, which Pinterest doesn't offer or condone. Here's what else you can to do to avoid Pinterest spammers.

A final word about Pinterest: It can be extremely habit-forming. "I set myself to short periods of time, like 15 minutes, because although it can be an amazing tool, it's also a distraction," Favreau says. "It's so easy to [lose track of time] it's kind of shocking."

Read more: What's With All the Interest in Pinterest?

Science is still fuzzy on exactly what changes in the human mind as we learn, and why some people seem to be so much more adept at manipulating the information -- thinking creatively -- than others. Malcolm Gladwell's books Blink and Outliers are fascinating examinations of how the mind works, both on a subconscious and conscious level. In the latter, Gladwell makes a case that luck and hard work are often far more important than you'd think to the success of high achievers such as Bill Gates and the Beatles.

While that may be true, it doesn't fully explain the special way of seeing things that made Picasso Picasso, or the cerebral capabilities that lifted Mozart and Einstein to greatness. Researchers continue to tease out these secrets of the brain, as these five recent books reveal:

1. Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. Following his earlier bestseller, How We Decide, Lehrer reached No. 1 on The New York Times' list with this exploration of creativity, which was excerpted in The Wall Street Journal. The late tech wizard Steve Jobs is one subject of Lehrer's analysis; so is the fact that the color blue seems to enhance creative output. The book is an "entertaining, Gladwellesque plunge" into an evolving scientific frontier, says reviewer Michael Mechanic in Mother Jones. Old methods come into question. The author challenges, for example, the wisdom of brainstorming meetings. Meanwhile, Lehrer suggests that failure and frustration are necessary to the creative process, as the Huffington Post notes with a video illustrating Lehrer's concepts. Reviewer Michael S. Roth of The Washington Post finds it interesting that Bob Dylan achieved songwriting success only when he gave up on trying to write a great song, allowing a sort of "ghost" to inhabit him and produce the lyrics. "We can learn to pay attention to our daydreams," Roth says.

2. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning by Gary F. Marcus. Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Science held for decades that new memory circuits form far more easily in the young, and that it's relatively difficult for adults to pick up additional languages or complex skills. At 39, Marcus, a cognitive psychologist, tests the theory by immersing himself in learning to play the guitar. "Guitar Zero makes some delightful counterintuitive points," says a review in The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. "Kids are not quicker learners; but they are more persistent," says Doidge, who notes that Marcus applied childlike obsessiveness to his ambition. The author received guitar lessons from neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, who wrote the earlier book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Marcus "does not become the next Jimi Hendrix," Doidge says, but eventually he plays well enough to perform on stage. The book goes far beyond the simple point that practice makes perfect, says Nick Owchar of the Los Angeles Times. The author looks at how the brain becomes rewired and how learning produces "feelings of control and novelty" that are, Owchar writes, "crucial to our psyches. Rock on."

3. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. Humans exert a lot less control over their own lives than they like to think, says Mlodinow, who explored the powerful influence of chance events in his earlier book, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. This time, in a similarly lean, accessible volume spiced with wit, he looks at how our conscious thoughts are shaped by perceptions and biases hidden from our awareness. Technology "has revolutionized the field of neuroscience, allowing researchers real-time looks at brain activity during all sorts of experiments," points out Marc Mohan, a reviewer for Portland's The Oregonian, who notes that Mlodinow cites some fascinating studies. One topic Mlodinow explores is "the propensity of people to marry people with the same name," Mohan notes. Reviewer Jesse Singal, writing at The Daily Beast, says Mlodinow makes a compelling case that, although we delude ourselves into believing we think and act logically, "our rational brains aren't really calling the shots."

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. If Subliminal is not exhaustive enough for you, delve even deeper in this book by a psychologist who shared a 2002 Nobel Prize for his work in decision-making theory. "Through anecdote, biography, and keen, plain-spoken insight, Kahneman presents an unsettling account of human judgment's common fallibilities that is both captivating and convincing," says reviewer Stephanie Kovalchik in the statistics magazine Significance. As Gladwell did in Blink, Kahneman examines the fast, intuitive part of the mind that often excels at sensing danger and making decisions in the blink of an eye. However, he gives more weight than Gladwell to the slower, more developed intellect. "For enthusiasts who have taken up Blink as a defense of their sixth sense," Kovalchik says, "Kahneman's book can be summed up with a single sobering rejoinder: don't think so fast." Reviewer Christopher Shea of The Washington Post likes the examples of psychology at work -- juries, for example, awarding higher payouts when damages are capped at $1 million, as if a "gravitational force" were pulling them toward the limit. "Human irrationality is Kahneman's great theme," writes Jim Holt in The New York Times. "It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound . . . consistently entertaining and frequently touching. By the time I got to the end . . . my skeptical frown had long since given way to a grin of intellectual satisfaction."

5. The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present by Eric R. Kandel. Here's another Nobel Prize winner: Kandel, a neuropsychiatrist, shared the award in 2000 for his studies of memory, chronicled in his 2006 memoir, In Search of Memory. His focus in this book is on how we perceive art, and how beauty affects the mind -- a new field of study known as neuroaesthetics. "Through brain imaging and other studies, scholars . . . have explored the cognitive responses to, say, color contrasts or ambiguities of line or perspective in works by Titian, Michelangelo, Cubists, and have examined how the brain's pleasure centers respond to appealing landscapes," says reviewer Alexander C. Kafka in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Kandel, an art lover who was born in Austria, concentrates on the Austrian Expressionists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, as well as writer Arthur Schnitzler and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In doing so, he has written "two extraordinary books in one," says reviewer Robert Epstein of Scientific American. The first is about the five geniuses; the second "reviews the recent explosion of research in brain science, bringing us up-to-date on what is currently understood about the neural correlates of vision, memory and creativity." All in all, says Epstein, "it is an amazing ride . . . that's astonishing in both depth and breadth." Jonah Lehrer, author of the book Imagine listed above, interviews Kandel in this Wired Science blog post.

Keep reading: Book Buzz: A Swedish Crime Fiction Revolution

Once we synch the iPad to our email and calendars and upload apps we use for work, it'll be time for a little electronic R&R.

These days, online games are no longer the exclusive playground of kids and teens. The average age of a social gamer -- someone who plays online against other people -- is 39, and the average new social gamer is a fiftysomething woman, according to a November 2011 survey [pdf] from PopCap Games.

People are playing online games more than ever, with 41 percent of 1,201 U.S. and U.K. players polled by PopCap saying they spend at least 15 minutes a week on online games, up from 24 percent in 2010. While PCs and laptops remain the game devices of choice, more people also are using consoles, smartphones and tablet computers -- like our iPad -- to get their game on, according to PopCap.

Games have become so engrained in midlife norms and culture that people use them to make new friends or partners. One couple -- he lived in Houston; she was in Atlanta -- got married after meeting over Words With Friends, as chronicled in this HuffPost50 story.

E3, one of the electronic entertainment industry's biggest conventions of the year, opens June 5 in Los Angeles, so expect to see dozens of new titles spilling onto iTunes and Google Play (the recently renamed app store for Android smartphones) in coming weeks. New offerings getting industry watchers excited include games such as Elder Scrolls Online and Halo 4, and the upgraded Wii U controller. Diehard fans can catch E3 product briefings live on their Xbox 360s, Facebook or Spike TV.

In the meantime, here are some current games that have people buzzing:

1. Angry Birds in Space. They're the same irate cardinals that kept you up way too late trying to make it to the next level. Only in the new version, the birds are in outer space, where "the variable gravity environments provide a new set of challenges. It might not be rocket science, but it's already a massive hit," says game review site Metacritic.
Versions available: iOS, Android, PC and Mac
Price: $.99

2. Draw Something. Players' enthusiasm for the Pictionary-style drawing game subsided somewhat after online game giant Zynga bought its creator, OMGPOP, in late March. Still, gamers downloaded Draw Something more than 50 million times in the first 50 days it was available, making it one of the fastest-growing online games ever, according to this Wall Street Journal article. In the game, one player sketches pictures to illustrate a word that another player has to guess. New features let players send comments with their drawings and "erase" their last line, as this CNET review explains.
Versions available: iOS, Android, and as a Facebook app
Price: Bare-bones version is free; upgraded app is $1.99.

3. Minecraft. The graphics in this 3-year-old multiplayer adventure game are an anomaly: They're so old-school, they're cool. This is a "sandbox" game where players use textured blocks to build, inhabit and battle over online worlds they can design to look like anything. Some gamers have created landscapes patterned after the arenas where tributes do battle in the popular Hunger Games series. The game, created by Swedish programmer "Notch," has more than 10 million registered users and has developed such a following that fans congregate at an annual MineCon convention.
Versions available: iOS, Android, PC, Xbox 360
Price: Bare-bones, single-player version is free; upgraded multiplayer version is $26.95; mobile app is $6.99.

4. Plants v. Zombies. They've taken over TV shows, movies, even Jane Austen novels. Now the undead populate a handful of hit games, including this popular version, which has won multiple game-of-the-year awards. "My husband and son play these," says Rita Colorito, an Illinois freelance writer.
Versions available: iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, Kindle, others
Price: $2.99 to $19.95, depending on the platform

5. SoundHound. The music search and recognition app is meant to be a tool for looking up songs, but people also use it like a game. "It's actually really fun to sit around with friends, hum a tune and see if the app will recognize the song. It's impressively accurate," says SecondAct's Kara Ohngren, who reviewed the app in this Entrepreneur.com story.
Versions available: iOS and Android
Price: Bare-bones version is free; upgraded version for iOS is $6.99.

SecondAct asks: What's your favorite social, online or video game? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Read more: How Social Health Games Can Make You Trimmer

Workplace bias against older employees is everywhere, even as the population ages and people continue to work later in life. Even if it's unintentional, age discrimination can make employees of all ages feel less interested and happy in their jobs.

Those are some of the conclusions researcher Jacquelyn James and her colleagues at Boston College's Sloan Center on Aging & Work detail in a new report on ageism in the workplace. The report, which will be published next month in the Journal of Managerial Psychology, is based in part on a 2009 survey of 6,000 employees at a national retail chain.

Employees who believe their companies intentionally or unintentionally pass over workers 55 or older for promotions because of their age are more likely to feel "unengaged" at work, according to the report.

Age discrimination in the workplace has been a growing problem in a tight economy that's pitted workers of all ages against each other when it comes to finding or hanging onto jobs. Although the jobless rate for younger workers has been higher than for workers 45 and older, older workers who lose a job take longer -- an average of 60 weeks -- to re-enter the work force.

The issue of ageism at work came up again this month in a Senate Committee on Aging hearing on unemployment, and also in a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendation that federal lawmakers adopt strategies to help older job seekers. BloombergBusinessWeek also explores the issue in this story: Boomers and Millennials: Who's Got it Worse in the Workplace?

In an interview with SecondAct, James talks about why eliminating age bias in the workplace is so difficult, why middle-aged and older workers aren't taking opportunities away from younger colleagues, and how workplace demographics have changed in recent years.

SA: Why is there so much ageism in the workplace?
JJ: Unlike all of the other isms, ageism is OK. We don't have any cultural or social sanctions against ageism. We all buy those birthday cards that denigrate age. Nobody's going to criticize you for making fun of that old guy driving the car slowly. But if we made a negative comment about a black person or a woman, someone would say "No, that's not funny." But aging is a lifelong process. We all still have the view that aging is going downhill, when right now there's a much longer period of life when we have health and vigor and have amassed talent and resilience and have a lot to offer.

SA: Why is it important for companies to keep ageism at bay so employees are happy at work?
JJ: Employers want employees who feel productive and good about what they do. If they feel energized and capable, they'll recommend working there to other people. If they aren't engaged, companies are going to have problems with retention, morale and productivity. Not having engaged employees means a negative for the bottom line. Employers only worry about age discrimination in terms of being sued. But this is a bigger problem.

SA: What about the idea that older workers are getting in their younger colleagues' way?
JJ: There's been a lot of effort made to analyze whether if older workers retire it would free up jobs for younger workers. But the data doesn't back it up. The problem isn't that older workers are keeping jobs from younger workers. It's that there aren't enough jobs to go around. Also, older workers are providing support to a lot of people, financial support to younger people and caregiving support to their parents. They're still contributing to Social Security and the economy instead of retiring and becoming a drain on those resources.

SA: Isn't it a paradox that because of the aging population and the economy, more people are working later in life, yet there's still discrimination against older workers?
JJ: I was talking with a friend this morning about this. She has a client who's an [executive] who's 58 and looking to make his next move. He's been told by three search firms that he's attractive except for his age. But a 58-year-old is likely to work for another 12 years and be a major force. He's acquired all this experience and knowledge and emotional resilience, and yet he's being turned away at least ostensibly because of his age. We try to educate employers about differences between older workers of yesterday and today. You shouldn't look at a 58-year-old today as someone who's on their way out the door.

SA: How are today's late-career workers different from before?
JJ: There's this idea that they're not eager for promotion, that they've got one foot in retirement, and that's just not true. We found that a lot of older workers do want promotions.

SA: Any advice for people who are out of work and have been job hunting for months, or even longer?
JJ: Knowing that for most people it does come to an end is reassuring, because people get discouraged and quit trying. One thing I tell people is you can't quit trying. No matter how many times you get rejected, you have to keep going.

Read more: 9 Ways Midlife Job Hunters Can Be More Tech Savvy

For the most part, that's fine. Programming is the sort of eye-glazing, rear-numbing work many of us prefer to avoid, and the people who do it well deserve to be well-compensated. But there are times when buying new software seems a bit much:

• Your child's room parent upgrades to the latest Microsoft Word, and now you have to, too, or you can't read the classroom volunteer schedule.
• The company that makes your home or small-business accounting software cuts off support for your version in an attempt to force everyone to upgrade to the latest edition.
• Your teenager announces her future in design for web and print and requires immediate purchase of Adobe's CS6 Master Collection (list price $2,599, though educational discounts are available).

Fortunately, there are alternatives out there, and they're free. That's right -- free. What's known as open source software is part of the "gift economy," an alternative to markets or barter where people just put what they make out there, free for the taking. Why programmers would do this may seem a mystery; one study at the University of North Texas found that these programmers like the prestige they earn but also are interested in "learning for the joy of learning and collaborating with interesting and smart people." Imagine a world where people did their work for reasons like that!

The gift economy and open source movement extend way beyond the world of software (OpenCola, anyone?). But the place to start is with your computer. Here are three of my favorites:

1. OpenOffice and LibreOffice

I wrote this blog post in OpenOffice, just as I create and edit all my spreadsheets, presentations and similar work in this free suite of programs. I know most of the people I work with use Microsoft's Office suite, but that's fine -- my OpenOffice can read and write Microsoft's formats. OpenOffice has this multilingual capability, and it includes all the bells and whistles that I and most other users will never really need. It's free for download at OpenOffice.org. The same goes for its colleague, LibreOffice, a similar suite of programs produced by The Document Foundation.

2. GIMP

Pretty much everyone needs some kind of image-processing program these days. As a professional photographer, I've used Photoshop since the first day I could get an image into a computer. But on the family computer, my kids have downloaded GIMP, and I use it when I'm on that computer. I have yet to discover anything I needed to do that I couldn't do in GIMP. I wonder if the next generation is going to consider this open source program its standard.

3. WordPress

Many people need a website, and maybe more than one. For nonprogrammers, the easiest way to create this is to buy a domain name and hosting service, then install WordPress (many website providers will even do it for you). From there, starting to customize your new website takes minimal skill. By one estimate, more than one out of five new sites uses this free software, often jazzing it up with the many templates that are free or inexpensively priced on the web.

These are three of my own favorites. I use a number of others, often professionally. The key, though, is to know this choice is available. Whatever you want to do on your computer, before you buy new software, try a search for open source alternatives. You'll be supporting a whole community of programmers who've been writing code just for the interest of it. And you can't beat the price.

Read more: How the Recession Made Frugality Cool

One line from the soldier's epitaph is guaranteed to stick with you: "The son's remains were returned thirty-six years after he was shot down, to be laid to rest with his father, who had never stopped searching for him."

Middle-Aged Olympic Hopefuls: In a recent post, I wrote about a slew of American athletes in their 40s who are striving to win medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, among them swimmers Dara Torres and Janet Evans. Here are two new members of that elite club. North Carolina resident Erika Braun, 40, has qualified for the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, to be held in Omaha June 25 to July 2, in the 50-meter freestyle event. After coming close to the trials' qualifying time of 26.39 seconds several times this spring, Braun finally swam a lifetime personal best of 26.32 to make the cut. Another 40-year-old swimmer who'll be competing for a chance to go to London is Steve West, a member of the Novaquatics swimming club in Southern California, who qualified for the trials in April by setting a world record in the 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 1:04:68.

Experience Shines on the Big Screen: The New York Times reports on the remarkable success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a gentle comedy about British retirees in India. The movie is now on track to reach $100 million in box-office receipts worldwide, even though its main stars, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, are both in their late 70s. As The Times notes, Fox Searchlight deliberately targeted the film at what executives saw as an untapped audience of middle-aged and older moviegoers. (Here's a recent SecondAct piece on a contest co-sponsored by the studio, which will award $5,000 grants to midlifers who are spearheading second acts as social entrepreneurs in their communities.) The strategy worked so well that Fox Searchlight is trying to get Marigold Hotel on more screens nationwide. For more films in the same vein, check out SecondAct's guide to summer movies for grownups.

Bob Dylan Gets Quite a Birthday Present: Freewheelin' Bob, who turned 69 on Thursday, will be one of 13 honorees to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in a May 29 White House ceremony. As this Reuters story details, Dylan will be in esteemed company on the dais -- along with novelist Toni Morrison, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn, and former Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt. In this Wall Street Journal piece, Jon Friedman, author of a recent book on Dylan, suggests that the folk-rock icon's next award may be a Nobel Prize, while this Broward-Palm Beach New Times article by Lee Zimmerman (apparently no relation to Bob, though they share the same original surname) offers this fascinating primer on the myriad twists and turns taken by Dylan in his eclectic half-century-long musical career. Here also is a collection of SecondAct's articles on Dylan.

Steven Tyler Reminds Us He's More Than an Idol Judge: The Aerosmith singer has reinvented himself as a supportive mentor to young performers on American Idol, which this week concluded its season. (As this Los Angeles Times piece details, while Idol's audience was smaller this year, the venerable talent show still is a ratings juggernaut, with 20.7 million viewers tuning in for the finale.) But Tyler hasn't given up his other gig, as he demonstrated when Aerosmith performed Wednesday night on the show. In this Rolling Stone article, Tyler dishes on the band's upcoming CD, Music From Another Dimension, set for release in August.

How to Help Adult Kids Become Financially Independent: From Kiplinger.com, here's an insightful piece by Janet Bodnar on how to help your twentysomething offspring get started in adult life without becoming one of those dreaded helicopter parents. Included are tips on how to give useful but nonintrusive advice on job interviewing, and how to sit down and work out a sensible plan for filling the inevitable shortfalls in their personal budgets. She links back to a previous piece by a millennial-generation colleague, Amanda Lilly, who offers a youthful perspective on how to utilize parents' help wisely.

Sideways on Stage: Here's a Los Angeles Times review of the theatrical version of Sideways, the tale of two middle-aged guys and their misadventures in California wine country, which was spawned by Rex Pickett's 2000 novel and the 2004 hit movie based on the book. A few weeks ago, I wrote this SecondAct piece on what those of us attempting midlife reinventions can learn from Pickett's own career struggles and successes.

Robin Gibb's Last Encore: Robin Gibb, 62, who along with brothers Barry and Maurice formed the British pop group the Bee Gees, died in England this week after a battle with cancer. Robin Gibb contributed more to music than just his distinctive vibrato on the song "Staying Alive." As this Time article details, Robin and his son R.J. Gibb also composed The Titanic Requiem, a orchestral work that was performed in April in London by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Here's a studio recording of one of its songs, "Don't Cry Alone," with a haunting vocal by Robin.

Remembering Kathi Kamen Goldmark: The author of the 2004 comic novel And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You, Goldmark was the organizer and founding member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of authors-turned-musicians who perform live to benefit charity. (Other members include Dave Barry, Amy Tan and Stephen King.) Goldmark, of San Francisco, died this week at 63. In her honor, here's a live performance of her satirical love ballad "Older Than Him."

Last Word: "I manage my investments the way I play golf. I don't take risks." -- former pro golfer Annika Sorenstam, 41, in this week's Forbes article on how financially savvy athletes deal with retirement

One of my favorite ways to enhance the presentation of drinks is to create fruit-filled ice cubes (like strawberry ice from Joy the Baker). Simply chop up fresh fruit, place it in the bottom of an ice cube tray, top with water and throw it in the freezer for several hours. It couldn't be easier.

So raise a glass to summer with one of these delicious cocktail recipes from my go-to mixologists.

1. Tequila Mint Sour

From: This Girl Walks Into A Bar...
Why you should try it: The homemade sweet and sour and the large, thin slices of fresh lemon make this drink a refreshing way to kick off pool season.

2. Strawberry Rhubarb Smash

From: There Will Be Bourbon
Why you should try it: This warm-weather bourbon drink strikes a nice balance of berry sweetness with sour lemon and tart rhubarb -- straight from the farmers market to your glass.

3. Pineapple Julep

From: 12 Bottle Bar
Why you should try it: Orange liqueur and pineapple juice punch up the flavor of this tropical twist on the classic mint julep. A splash of gin and sweet sparkling wine make this drink worth every sip.

4. Grape Crush

From: Derrick Salatnay
Why you should try it: Salatnay, the resident mixologist at A Restaurant in Newport Beach, Calif., shares a favorite summertime cocktail with SecondAct. He takes a culinary approach to creating his libations, pulling inspiration from what's in season.

5. Whatamelon

From: H. Joseph Ehrmann
Why you should try it: Ehrmann is the owner and chief bartender at Elixir in San Francisco and was named 2010 Bartender of the Year by Nightclub and Bar magazine. His signature cocktail is an invigorating blend of fresh watermelon, cucumber vodka and fresh mint.

6. Fresh Lime Margarita

From: Drink and Cocktail Recipes
Why you should try it: Nothing says summertime quite like sipping a margarita in the sunshine. This recipe is so simple, there's no reason to reach for those sugary mixes, and the blanco (silver) tequila makes for a milder flavor.

Keep reading: No-Cook Summer Meals
Dinner in a Hurry: 5 Satisfying Salads

Many readers -- and even reviewers -- ignored the book until recently, when it became a movie starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Foer's novel suddenly grabbed headlines, demonstrating yet again that a film project can catapult a book to new heights -- or thrust an old classic back into the spotlight.

More such rediscoveries are happening now at the Cannes Film Festival. As Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times notes in an interview with National Public Radio, the 65th anniversary of the famous French confab, which runs through May 27, has a distinctly American flavor because of movies based on American novels. 

Here are five debuting films and the novels on which they are based:

1. On the Road 

This is a retelling of the Jack Kerouac novel of the same name, published in 1957. The book, along with The Dharma Bums, a year later, established Kerouac as a major voice of the so-called Beat Generation, a movement associated with a rejection of materialism and a spiritual searching that often involved experimentation with drugs and Eastern philosophy. On the Road follows the autobiographical character Sal Paradise as he leaves New York City with his free-wheeling friend to see America. "It tells tales of madness played out by all kinds of strange characters, in settings as diverse as a Virginia small-town diner, a New York jazz joint, and a Mexican whorehouse," writes reviewer Anna Hassapi of the blog Nabou. The Beats, she adds, saw no point in conforming to the traditional American Dream -- what Kerouac termed "the mad dream-grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City." The Beat Museum in San Francisco has been tracking the development of the film version and the novel's continuing influence on pop culture. Here's the trailer:

2. Cosmopolis

Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche star in this adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2004 novel about a day in the life of a young billionaire in New York City. The book, also called Cosmopolis, tracks financial tycoon Eric Packer as he is chauffeured across Manhattan to get a haircut. The trip becomes a nightmare due to traffic from a presidential visit and a famous rapper's funeral, combined with rapid changes in the financial markets that bring down Packer's empire. "The very notion of a day-long push along Forty-seventh Street is funny and metaphoric -- a soul's slow-motion hurtle from the U.N.'s posh environs to the desolation of Hell's Kitchen," says John Updike's review in The New Yorker. David Cronenberg directs the film version and also claims credit for the screenplay. Here's the trailer:

3. The Paperboy

Zac Efron handles the lead role in a story about a young man returning to his home town in Florida to help his brother, a newspaper reporter, probe the truth about a convict on Death Row. Pete Dexter's eponymous novel, published in 1996, falls short of his earlier Southern novel, Paris Trout, which won a National Book Award, but even so, "Dexter's writing is rock-solid," says Publishers Weekly. "He offers acute observations about the nature of reporting and his grip on the Southern male psyche is unquestionable." Dexter, who wrote the script for the film version of Paris Trout, does the same here, sharing screenplay credit with Lee Daniels. Here's an interesting profile of the novelist, who lives on an island in Washington state's Puget Sound, written by Ellis E. Conklin of the Seattle Weekly. Here's a clip:

4. Killing Them Softly

This tale, by influential young filmmaker Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, concerns a Boston mob enforcer's attempts to avenge a petty heist -- and how things go awry. The film is based on the 2011 novel Cogan's Trade, by George V. Higgins, who drew praise from reviewers for packing the story with wit and crackling dialogue. The author has "an uncanny ear for the argot of the underworld," says O.L. Bailey, writing for The New York Times. "His ability to capture its textures and rhythms in fiction without losing authenticity immediately established him as an impressive chronicler of the lifestyle and mores of the small-time hoodlum." Bailey says the slang gets too heavy at times, but the twisted story has attracted a heavyweight cast, with Brad Pitt starring alongside James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta. The New York Times profiled filmmaker Ellison a year ago, and the Los Angeles Times ran a feature about her this month. Here's a clip:

5. Lawless

Megan Ellison's second film at Cannes is about a family of bootleggers in Prohibition-era Virginia, where moonshine dominated the underground economy. Matt Bondurant's 2009 novel, The Wettest County in the World, inspired the movie; both tell a fictionalized version of Bondurant's own family history. His grandfather and uncles were bootleggers in a culture nearly as rough as today's violent drug cartels. The novel is being re-released in July under a new title, Lawless: A Novel Based on a True Story. The movie, meanwhile, stars Jessica Chastain, Shia Labeouf, Guy Pearce, and Mia Wasikowska. Here's the trailer:

Read more: 7 Summer Movies For Grownups

"No matter what your age, if you have an idea or a business that's ready to move to the next level, the SBA wants to make sure you have access to the tools you need to start and grow," says SBA administrator Karen Mills. "For many older entrepreneurs, starting a small business can be an opportunity to transform a lifetime hobby or interest or years of professional experience into a lucrative line of work."

The SBA has set up a web page for the 50-plus set with an online self-assessment tool that will help potential small-business owners evaluate their readiness for starting a business. Also available is information to help with business planning, shaping a winning business idea, professional counseling, financial services and information to find resources in your area. The SBA and AARP are currently developing additional online courses, self-assessments and webinar series for entrepreneurs.

For more updates on National Small Business Week, browse coverage at Entrepreneur.com. 

Summer is the season when studios unleash a fusillade of would-be blockbusters, aimed primarily at adolescent and young adult moviegoers, and that can make the theaters seem like an air-conditioned no-man's land for forty- and fifty-somethings who like their entertainment to be a little less over-the-top and a little more artistically and emotionally satisfying.

But if the prospect of The Expendables 2 or the latest Adam Sandler comedy is enough to make you want to hunker down in your living room with a bunch of Downton Abbey DVDs, don't despair. Fortunately, this summer also features new releases by directors Rob Reiner, Spike Lee and Woody Allen, whose Midnight in Paris was last year's surprise warm-weather hit, and a handful of what look to be sophisticated and challenging indie and foreign films, as well.

Here are seven of the most promising prospects for grownup moviegoers:

1. Moonrise Kingdom

Director Wes Anderson's quirky comedies -- starting with Bottle Rocket and Rushmore in the 1990s -- have developed such a devoted following that the trailer for Moonrise Kingdom, which emerged earlier this year on the web, garnered more enthusiastic reviews than most entire films get. (Watch it, and you'll understand why.) Moonrise tells the story of two free-spirited 12-year-olds, portrayed by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, who decide to escape from suburbia and run away together -- and the panicky search for them by well-meaning but clueless adults. Anderson has assembled a cast that includes Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzmann from Rushmore, plus Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton and Bruce Willis. In theaters May 25.

2. To Rome With Love

Woody Allen not only directed the film but also returns in his first acting role since his 2006 film Scoop. As with Midnight in Paris, Allen's choice of an exotic, romantic European locale reminds us that while he's one of the most acclaimed American movie auteurs, he's really closer in spirit and aspirations to the great European directors of the 1950s and 1960s -- Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and the like -- who influenced him in his youth. Allen's gifts for comedic dialogue, which won him an Academy Award in 2012 for his Midnight in Paris screenplay, are a powerful attraction to veteran actors. For Rome, a set of intertwined stories vaguely reminiscent of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1971 film The Decameron, Allen has assembled a talented cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page and Roberto Begnini. In theaters June 22.

3. Beasts of the Southern Wild

Director Benh Zeitlin's film, which Indiewire praises as a "gorgeous, lyrical fable," was a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival. Beasts of the Southern Wild tells the tale of a 6-year-old girl (Quvenzhané Wallis) in Louisiana, who, when the levee breaks, goes off on a desperate search for the mother she knows only from her father's tall tales. In theaters June 27.

4. The Magic of Belle Isle

Director Rob Reiner is reunited with The Bucket List star Morgan Freeman in this tale of a cranky novelist in decline and how he rediscovers his love of storytelling. Virginia Madsen, Kenan Thompson and Fred Willard also appear. In theaters July 6.

5. Chicken With Plums

I'm a huge fan of graphic novelist turned movie director Marjane Satrapi, who adapted her book Persepolis, about the misadventures of a girl growing up during the Iranian revolution and its aftermath, into a wickedly funny and painfully moving animated film in 2007 with the help of co-director Vincent Paronnaud. Satrapi and Paronnaud are back with a live-action retelling of another Satrapi story, this one about a violinist and his lover. In theaters August 17.

6. Red Hook Summer

As a filmmaker, Spike Lee is occasionally brilliant (1989's Do The Right Thing, his 1992 biopic Malcolm X and the Peabody Award-winning 2006 documentary When The Levees Broke come to mind) and consistently provocative. Red Hook Summer, the gritty urban drama of a Brooklyn preacher and his visiting grandson from Atlanta, aroused a lot of controversy at this year's Sundance Festival, in part because of its shocking ending. This Los Angeles Times story calls it "one of his most audacious films in years." Intriguingly, Lee also brings back Mookie, the character he portrayed in Do The Right Thing, who is still delivering pizza. In theaters August 10.

7. The Woman in the Fifth

Polish-born director Pawel Pawlikowski's film got my attention because it stars Ethan Hawke as an angst-ridden American writer who flees to Paris -- a premise that initially sounds a bit like Before Sunset, the 2004 romantic comedy he made with Julie Delpy. This time, though, instead of encountering an old flame from his youth, Hawke's character is trying to win back his estranged wife and young daughter. Instead, he becomes involved with a mysterious femme fatale portrayed by Kristin Scott-Thomas. When the film was released in the UK in 2011, Telegraph movie reviewer David Gritten described it as a classic 1960s art-film style mystery, and "a rare film that leaves you wondering where it's going, how it may end -- and afterwards, even questioning what actually happened." In theaters June 15.

SecondAct asks: What's on your summer movie list? Please share your picks in the comments section.

Read more: `The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' Portrays Reinvention on a Budget 

The number of Americans dying from hepatitis C-related diseases nearly doubled from 1999 to 2007, prompting the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to call for anyone between 47 and 67 to get tested for the liver-destroying illness.

One in 30 boomers has been infected -- and many don't even know it, according to the report. Yet all it takes to detect the often-curable disease is a simple blood test. "The CDC views hepatitis C as an unrecognized health crisis for the country, and we believe the time is now for a bold response " says Dr. John W. Ward, the center's hepatitis chief, in an interview with Associated Press.

First identified in 1989, hepatitis C is the top cause of liver transplants in the U.S. New drugs introduced last year, however, can cure about 75 percent of infections, and prevent many of the 15,000 yearly deaths from related diseases.

CDC officials say the new measure calling for one-time blood tests could lead 800,000 more middle-aged Americans to get treatment, and save more than 120,000 lives. Identifying and treating those carrying Hep C will cost about the same as detecting and treating cervical cancer or high cholesterol, Ward tells The Washington Post. But first, people need to know if they are sick.

Are you at risk? You might be if:

You were born between 1945 and 1965. Baby boomers make up more than three-quarters of the 3.2 million Americans infected with the blood-borne virus. And they are five times more likely than other adults to have the disease. "With increasingly effective treatments now available, we can prevent tens of thousands of deaths from hepatitis C," CDC director Thomas R. Frieden says in the report. About 3 percent of boomers test positive for the virus, which now kills more Americans than AIDS.

You haven't been tested -- or just can't remember. Almost three-quarters of Americans between 47 and 67 have never been tested or are unsure if they have been tested for Hep C, according to a recent survey by the American Gastroenterological Association, which makes one of the hepatitis C drugs.

You didn't think you were at risk. Past hepatitis C guidelines recommended testing mainly high-risk people, such as health workers and IV drug users. According to webmd.com, health officials says most infections likely occurred in the '70s and '80s, when many boomers were in their teens or early 20s. The CDC now suspects a broader range of activities, ranging from sharing toothbrushes to snorting cocaine, spread the disease. About a quarter of infected boomers, however, don't remember engaging in risky behavior, according to the CDC report. Many people not only did not know they were at risk simply for their age group, but also didn't realize the disease is treatable. "Identifying these hidden infections early will allow more baby boomers to receive care and treatment before they develop life-threatening liver disease," says Kevin Fenton, director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS.

Your were unaware that common activities spread the infection. Health officials say people could catch the infection through tattoos, piercings, shared razor blades and even manicures. People who underwent blood transfusions or organ transplants before 1992, when donated blood and organs were not yet screened for the virus, can also be at risk.

You thought hepatitis C screening was part of your annual physical, or that you would know by now if you were sick. Although the virus can scar the liver and lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer, early symptoms are rare or nonexistent. Dr. Ryan Ford, a hepatitis specialist at Emory University, tells AP that some boomers learned of their infection when they donated blood or had their blood tested during physical exams, such as for life insurance policies. Screening is not part of most routine health physicals. If you want a Hep C blood test, you need to ask for it.

Keep reading: Forget the Scale. Watch These Numbers Instead.

Programmer jobs in tech havens like Silicon Valley may be dominated by younger employees, but there's plenty of work to go around, and plenty of training opportunities -- if you know where to look.

Federal government economists forecast that software programmers, web developers and similar jobs will be among the fastest-growing occupations in the country through 2020, presenting ample opportunity for the technology-inclined of all ages. The number of software developers, for example, is projected to grow 30 percent by 2020, more than twice the average, according to the 2012-2013 Occupational Outlook Handbook, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in late March.

In its annual Best Jobs listing, U.S. News & World Report ranks software developer as the hottest tech career of 2012, with a current median salary of $87,790. Web developer came in third, with a median salary of $75,660 and computer programmer fifth, with a median salary of $71,380.

Many software or web developer jobs require four-year degrees. But the academic standards for some positions aren't as stringent. The Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Labor Department's extensive O.Net careers database are good starting places to research specific tech jobs, and the education or training that's required.

Once you've decided on a direction, here are some possibilities for getting the training you need, online or in person, including a few options especially suited to midlife workers and career changers:

1. Online degree programs. Tech trade schools, such as ITT Technical Institute and DeVry University, offer online associate and bachelor's degrees in subjects such as web design, information systems, and network systems administration.

[Related: 9 Ways Midlife Job Seekers Can Be More Tech Savvy]

2. Certificate programs. Some community colleges and technology trade schools offer certificates of mastery in subjects such as web page development or programming. Students who attend the Computer Institute at Miami Dade College, for example, can earn a Microsoft Office specialist certification or take courses in web page development, digital imaging and programming with .net.

3. Boot camps. Private training companies, such as NetCom Learning, offer single- and multi-day training for individuals or groups on popular programming languages and other subjects at locations throughout the country. NetCom's Ready to Run schedule lists open classes beginning in May and June.

4. Online tutorials. Sites such as Code Year and Lynda.com offer online tutorials that people who aren't interested in a degree or certificate can use to teach themselves to code. Startup Code Academy launched Code Year in January, offering free weekly lessons on specific programming languages. Current lessons cover JavaScript, with previous tutorials on CSS, HTML and more available in the archives. This Mashable video explains more. Lynda.com offers 77,000 text and video tutorials on everything from basic computer skills to Drupal, Joomla, HTML5, and other website programming languages. Some material is free; otherwise, subscriptions start at $25 a month.

5. Plus 50. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) created the "Ageless Learning" initiative to make it easier for people 50 and older to train or retrain for new careers or volunteer work. Check this page on the AACC website for a list of participating U.S. community colleges, and then use the links to the schools' respective websites to find information on course offerings. For example, Shoreline Community College in Shoreline, Wash., offers classes in website design and computer skills.

6. MIT Opencourseware. Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses the website to share syllabi from courses offered in the past few years with the general public. Available tech courses include introduction to computer programming and practical programming in C. Depending on the class, you could have access to lecture notes, assignments (and solutions), online textbooks, projects and examples, exams, and study groups. Everything is free, but you can make a donation. Starting this fall, MIT and Harvard will offer interactive classes on multiple subjects free to anyone in the world through a nonprofit venture called edX. Listen to this recent NPR interview with MIT President Susan Hockfield for details.

[Related: 6 Things to Know About Modern Master's Programs]

7. Other online classes. A handful of internet startups also offer college-level courses, some for credit. As you'd expect from web-based learning ventures, a lot of what's offered is tech-related. Udacity, co-founded by a Stanford professor, has university-level classes on computer programming, web application engineering and programming languages. Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan are working with a startup named Coursera to offer more than 40 free, graded classes in a range of subjects, including game theory, natural language processing, and coming soon, software engineering for web-based services. Another website, Udemy, lets anyone take or build free or paid online courses. The site's computer courses include programming in Ajax, Python and Ruby on Rails, as well as more basic courses on web design and building mobile apps.

Read more: Browse the SecondAct Career Center

It just doesn't work, does it? Surely the recession has had a huge impact -- an especially traumatic one for the 12.5 million American workers who are still unemployed. But it just doesn't feel like it's made the imprint on the national psyche that the Great Depression did.

No national orgy of sock-darning and home auto repair. No piling into rickety SUVs in a mass exodus to go west (perhaps this time to North Dakota, where unemployment is just 3 percent). Certainly no shuttering of luxury retailers, which have thrived over the last few years.

And yet the recession has made saving money a little more legit. Something you can admit to in mixed company. As William Safire wrote when a new word -- frugalista -- was coined: "Concerned about your budget in this year's market debacle? Sharpening your pencil and tightening your belt, foraging for bargains but not altogether abandoning good food and good screens? Join the frugalistas!"

We may, slowly, be climbing out of the recession. (Economists say it ended in 2009 -- but economists tend to have tenured jobs at big universities.) Yet the cry to "join the frugalistas" remains. And that's because it's not just about money.

It's About Health

Compare the frugalista manifesto with what health experts keep telling us. For an example, check out the work of longevity expert Dan Buettner, who joined up with National Geographic to study "Blue Zones," societies around the world where people live a long time. Buettner came up with nine "lifestyle habits" that can lead to longer, healthier lives. Several of the habits are straight out of the frugalista's playbook.

There's "move naturally" -- using your own power to get around. Not surprisingly, the walking shoe and the bicycle are frugalista icons. According to Buettner, simple things like walking instead of driving, taking the stairs and gardening can add about four years to your life. Then there are the eating habits -- don't overeat, and focus on plants. Again, aiming lower on the food chain than feedlot-fattened beef is central to frugal dining. Add in a daily glass of wine, and Buettner says you pick up eight years of life. You'll save some cash, as well.

It's About the Planet

This point would fill a book rather than a blog. But for a visual example, try the imagery of photographer Chris Jordan, who has dedicated his art to showing us ourselves through the mirror of our garbage -- from the number of mail-order catalogs we toss every three seconds to how our ugly trash kills baby birds way out in the Pacific. A glance at a few of his photos will have you chanting "reduce, reuse, recycle" for at least a month.

It's About Choices

For the consumer, our economy is no longer like the old five-and-dime, where everything had a fixed price. Instead, it's closer to airline fares, where what you pay depends on when you buy, how you buy, and -- most notably -- what's important to you.

There are choices out there, though our marketing-driven society is loath to broadcast them. You should get to set your own priorities, even fly first-class sometimes when you think it's worth it. But you can't make the choice until you know the options.

And that's the idea here -- knowing the options. It's what my weekly frugal living blog posts will explore.

Read more: To Buy Or Not To Buy

Lopez, who displaced last year's No. 1, the much-younger Lady Gaga, earned an impressive $52 million over the past 12 months. In part, that's due to her $20 million salary as a judge on Idol, which heads to its season finale showdown on Wednesday.

Like fellow American Idol judge Steven Tyler, Lopez displays a surprising, previously unseen side of her personality on the show, morphing from a glamorous hiphop diva into an earnest, supportive mentor. Two seasons on Idol, coupled with a painful split with ex-husband Marc Anthony, may have humanized J-Lo and attracted the interest of a new generation of fans. Her CD Love?, released last May, reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200, and Lopez went on to score lucrative endorsement deals with L'Oreal and Gillette. She's also become a brand, marketing a line of affordable clothing for Kohl's and an eponymous fragrance line. With 6.6 million followers on Twitter and 12 million fans on Facebook, she's the envy of a lot of younger stars as a social media force.

Incidentally, J-Lo tweeted last night in response to reports that she is leaving the show: "There is no truth to reports that say I am definitely leaving Idol. All I said was I haven't decided what I am doing next year."

Other Forty- and Fifty-Something Celebs on Forbes' List: The No. 2 spot goes to talk-show host turned multimedia entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, 58, who's been having a rough time with her new cable TV network, yet still managed to rake in $165 million over the past year, making her the highest earner on the list. Forty-nine-year-old Tom Cruise (No.9) may have the most impressive comeback on the list: He rebounded from his 2005 couch-jumping incident and other mishaps to score a huge hit with Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol, which earned $700 million worldwide. Former American Idol judge Simon Cowell, 52, has been struggling to duplicate his success with The X Factor, but he had more success as a record producer in his native England; he earned $90 million over the past year. Coming in at 20 is actor-director-producer Tyler Perry, 42, who's created an enduring franchise with his low-budget movie comedies and a string of successful TV shows. The latter includes the current TBS hit For Better or Worse, the top-rated sitcom on basic cable and the most popular show on TV among African-American viewers.

In other news:

RIP, Donna Summer: Other pop culture news this week was a bit sadder. Donna Summer, the queen of the mid-1970s disco craze, with hits such as "Love to Love You, Baby," "Hot Stuff" and "Last Dance," died of cancer at 63. Los Angeles Times critic Randall Roberts observes that Summer and producer Giorgio Moroder created a formula that still rules the pop charts four decades later -- an explicitly sexy chanteuse, cooing music calculatingly redesigned in the studio to be played at extended length at high volume on dance floors. After a couple of decades away from the music business, Summer resurfaced in 2008 with a CD, Crayons, and performed that year as a guest star on American Idol.

Midlifers Are Bullish About Facebook Shares: Facebook, the social network with 900 million users around the world, was created by a bunch of guys under 35, who stand to make a lot of money as the company launches its initial public stock offering today. But middle-aged people are nearly as bullish on Facebook's financial prospects. According to a new Associated Press-CNBC poll, 55 percent of people between 44 and 65 think that Facebook shares are a good investment. That's nearly as much as the 59 percent of adults under 35 who have a positive view of Facebook's prospects. Only 39 percent of those over 65, in contrast, give the stock a "buy" rating. Slightly more than half of all Americans -- 56 percent -- have joined the social network.

Bono's Really Bullish on Facebook IPO: MTV reports that Bono, the frontman for Irish supergroup U2, stands to become the richest musician on the planet if Facebook's IPO performs as predicted. The 52-year-old singer privately purchased a 2.3 percent stake in the social network in 2009 for $90 million. On opening day, however, Facebook stock had its ups and downs, as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal explain.

Majority of Middle-Aged Americans Favor Legal Status for Same-Sex Relationships: There's been a lot of jaw-flapping on cable news channels about the political significance of President Obama's announcement that he now supports gay marriage. But a new Fox News poll shows that more than 70 percent of middle-aged Americans seem to be headed in the same direction. Among people ages 35 to 54, 32 percent now believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry legally, while 34 percent favor legally recognizing same-sex partnerships that are similar to marriage but go by a different name. Only 28 percent are opposed to legal recognition for same-sex couples. Some 63 percent believe that 20 years from now, most or all states will legally recognize gay marriages.

Coffee Drinkers Live Longer: Okay, so we finally can put to rest the notion that drinking coffee is somehow bad for your health. The Associated Press reports that a new study of 400,000 people -- the largest ever done on coffee and health -- finds that those who enjoy the bitter brew actually are slightly more likely to live longer. It doesn't matter whether you drink decaf or regular, either. "There may actually be a modest benefit of coffee drinking," lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute explains.

Midlife Reinvention Story of the Week: Of all those Ivy League over-achievers who graduated from Columbia University this past Sunday, the most impressive academic accomplishment belongs to Gac Filipaj, 52. An ethnic Albanian refugee who was forced to flee the civil war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Filipaj has been working for the past 20 years as a janitor at Columbia. With the help of a tuition-waiver program, in 2000 Filipaj also became a Columbia student, taking classes in the morning before his custodial shift and then studying late into the night. "I had some difficult moments," he tells the New York Daily News. "Some days, I was so tired." But he stuck with it, and after more than a decade of hard work, he earned a bachelor's degree in classics, and graduated with honors. Filipaj plans to keep his job while he earns a master's degree in Roman philosophy."I think I'm going to stay at Columbia. If I can get a job better than cleaning, good. If not, there is nothing shameful about that work." Filipaj says he hopes that his achievement will inspire others to think about getting an education.

ABC Cancels Ashley Judd Series Missing: Judd's spy-turned-helicopter-mom series, the subject of this SecondAct review, won't be coming back for a second season, TV Guide reports.

Last Word: "I'm a baby boomer and a mom, and we invented technology." -- AARP tech blogger Suzie Mitchell, 57, in a recent post

SecondAct.com invited these bloggers to share posts this week about how they've reinvented themselves. Their stories about following passions to change careers, take up new sports, re-enter the dating scene, lose weight or become a parent for the first time are intimate, heart-felt and often inspiring.

Here are some highlights:

On becoming a life coach: "I've always been a coach at heart -- the one people call when they need a sounding board. I'm a natural planner, problem solver and great listener. It would be safe to say this is the career I have been working towards all of my life, I just didn't KNOW it was my purpose until a few years ago." -- Melissa Miller-Young, on leaving the public relations and advertising business, on Zen Life Solutions.

On becoming a park volunteer: "I signed up for docent training and a few months later found myself in a classroom with 20 other late-life trainees. For the next five months, I studied geology, desert ecology, reptiles, birds, desert mammals, and Arizona history. I learned to identify dozens of desert plants. I read and did written homework, took weekly quizzes, helped prepare a plant book. It was extremely difficult, and more fun than I could have imagined." -- Kathryn Lance, on trading work as an author to volunteer at Tucson's Tohono Chul Park, on Kathryn Lance's Books and Musings.

On trading in a nursing career: "What's that expression: The proof is in the pudding? The first year I worked full-time from my home office, self-employed, hustling for work, I made more money than I did working full-time as an RN." -- Marijke Vroomen Durning, on leaving nursing in her 40s to be a medical and health-care writer, on Nurse Turned Writer.

On giving team sports another try: "I took a ball to my chest, just as I did in 1978. This time I didn't walk off the field. I finished the game. Best. Day. Ever." -- Patrick McGraw, on playing adult league soccer to get the "do over" he'd always wanted, on PFM Reports.

On becoming a triathlete: "When I finally jumped in the Hudson River for the second time, I had dropped about 50 pounds. I had worked out with a personal trainer, and I was in the best shape of my life. That year's [physical] was just the way I like it. Zero problems." -- Barb Freda, on starting to do triathlons at 50, on Babette Feasts.

On biking to reinvention: "Though I hadn't ridden it in years, I was drawn to the bicycle in my garage immediately. It would become my safety net, my refuge, my release. And it would take me to the land of carefree living, where nothing mattered but the ride." -- Jackie Dishner, on cycling to get over a failed marriage and start a new career, on BIKE with Jackie.

On dating in midlife: "If my life is a movie, I get that I'm the star, and the director and producer, but I'm pretty darn sure at this point that someone else wrote the script. Because this is not where I'm supposed to be, in an personal care aisle in a superstore looking at 18 shelf feet of choices of condoms." -- Lisa Jaffe Hubbell, on the perils of online dating, on Land Guppy.

On becoming a new mom at 38: "I thought I knew what my next two years would be like, though I didn't know what would happen after that. I thought maybe I'd come back to Apple. But then I discovered I was pregnant. And in the next few months, all of the plans I had been so sure about unraveled." -- Doña Bumgarner, on navigating midlife parenthood, on Aubergine, Musings of Midlife Mama.

On adopting at 40: "In March of 2004, a year before my 40th birthday, I traveled to Guatemala with my daughter, Anna, and my father to meet my new 6-month-old daughter. In October of that same year, Anna and I returned to Guatemala to claim my new 13-month-old son. In the period of seven months, I doubled the size of my family!" -- Jan Roberts Culpepper, on adoption, single parenthood and other midlife second acts, on Simply Jan.

On losing weight as a second act: "Deacon Walt explained that Pope John XXIII was a big man, probably as 'big as you, Don,' and then he patted my stomach. I was a bit shocked at his joke, but I wasn't offended. Instead, for some reason, it got me thinking that I should ask John XXIII to intercede for me as I contemplated doing something about my weight." -- Don Gonzalez, on his year-long midlife weight loss journey, on Joe Catholic.

On writing as a second act: "I found myself wondering what would have happened had I been more adventurous -- taken a journalism job in Canada's Far North, taught English in Asia or some such thing. At first I thought the time for those adventures had passed. But the idea that I needed to shake up my life just wouldn't go away." -- Victoria Musgrave, on trading a corporate communications job to be a freelance writer and graphic designer, on Victoria Musgrave.

On writing science fiction as a second act: "I enjoy writing a good deal more than I enjoy marketing. And I'm not making any [money]. But I still get a warm feeling from hearing from people who love my books.... A second act? Not a very profitable one, but very fulfilling." -- Sue Ann Bowling, on switching from atmospheric scientist to award-winning self-published science fiction author, on Homecoming.

On finding wisdom in middle age: "You can travel farther faster through the second half of your life if you're not carrying around all your resentments, feuds and unmet expectations from the first half of your life like over-packed luggage." -- Julie Farrar, on what travel taught her about midlife success, at Traveling Through.

Want to read more stories? You'll find a rundown of all 2012 Blogathon participants here at Word Count.

Do you have a midlife reinvention story of your own? Please share a comment below.