I had never in my life heard of Lauren Leto, which is fine, as she’d never heard of the New York Observer. She moved to New York City back in April. She is 23. And she is running a multi-million-dollar web and content business. (I mean, who among she and I isn’t?) “I feel like I’m already jaded,” she told Awl pal Zachary Woolfe, for a profile today. Lauren and I agree on many things! Like, New York “isn’t a town for dating. This is a town for working.” I salute and welcome her!

I would not ever have been caught dead with a copy of Harry Potter in public. When I’d see my fellow adults, some of whom may have been kidults actually, toting those books around, I’d feel a very real horror. I think it is embarrassing for them! And so I didn’t ever even read it. It wasn’t just the squeamishness about the popular and mass market, even though I’m a little bit of a snob, sure-it’s really just a fear of being someone who reads books that don’t require advanced reading skills. Even in a world where there’s lists like The Best YA for Adults 2009, and where “His Dark Materials” was basically considered grown-up dinner party conversation, I still think a certain amount of shame about being an adult who reads things meant for 12-year-olds is appropriate. So I was a little skeeved out by myself at midnight, while I was reloading Amazon.com, waiting for Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay to be released.

The book, if you don’t know it, is the finale of a YA scifi-ish [N.B. technically “dystopian future”] trilogy, called “Hunger Games,” which stars a teen woman who lives in a terrible time in which everyone’s a slave and young people are forced to star in reality TV shows where they battle each other to the death. This latest and final book has a first printing of 1.2 million copies.

Unlike another YA scifi series that stars a strong young woman character, the Books of Ember series, this trilogy is kept linear and short enough-it’s all narrative, no backtracking-and from the beginning, the point of the books is clear: that the heroine is supposed to basically smash the state and liberate the people and so on.

This is also way more interesting than Harry Potter’s tiresome obsession with avenging his parents or whatever! I mean, that’s the kind of value system I want to inculcate in the young!

But similarly, the “Hunger Games” series is also very clean in that soothing YA way. Everything is clear-including our heroine’s romantic choices (there are two boys! Et cetera!)-and all is spelled out in fairly big block letters.

Is it making me stupider? Maybe! But only for a couple of hours. I mean, this kind of book goes down fast.

Though I can’t tell you for sure yet. It turns out that Amazon is a west coast company at heart. And their idea of a “midnight” release is what people over here on the real coast of America call “3 a.m.”? Only the kids can stay up that late to get their books. (Also? Check it out! Young people, staying up late at night for books again!) But from the first page, all I had time to scarf down over breakfast, I would say that the book is like totally awesome, you know?

You may have heard of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a list often presented in pyramid form which “describes human motivations from the most basic to the most advanced.” Maslow’s needs, arranged from the most basic, are physiological, safety, affection/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. But in our fast-paced world, with its new freedoms and technologies, does that list still represent human wants and desires? A couple of psychologists say no, and have rebooted the chart to better reflect our modern era.

The research team — which included Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Mark Schaller of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver — restructured the famous pyramid after observing how psychological processes radically change in response to evolutionarily fundamental motives, such as self-protection, mating or status concerns.

The bottom four levels of the new pyramid are highly compatible with Maslow’s, but big changes are at the top. Perhaps the most controversial modification is that self-actualization no longer appears on the pyramid at all.

At the top of the new pyramid are three evolutionarily critical motives that Maslow overlooked — mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting.

So parenting is now the highest goal to aspire to. (We should refer to this as the Park Slope hierarchy of needs.) It does make sense when you think about it, since the whole purpose of human existence is to procreate, and if you have not you are an utter failure as a member of your species and are probably pretty lousy at some of the other elements in the new hierarchy, particularly the one about “retaining a mate.” (Although if that new Jennifer Aniston movie teaches us anything, it’s that you don’t need a mate to be a parent. On the other hand (SPOILER ALERT FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NEVER SEEN A ROMANTIC COMEDY BEFORE), she does wind up married, so, yeah, if you don’t have a kid you’re still one of life’s losers. Sorry. It’s not me, it’s Science. And Jen Aniston.)

Still, the new chart is causing controversy, particularly among barren, loveless psychologists who cannot accept that their empty apartments, devoid of the happy sounds of mate and child which signify human fulfillment, are an indictment of their pathetic existences. Additionally, there is the very valid criticism that the new hierarchy does not reflect the broad range of lifestyles we now live. Working closely with my own team of researchers, I have assembled an alternate pyramid which, I think, squares the circle. (Of pyramids.) I’m pretty sure this one is 100% accurate and should settle any disputes. I await my call from Stockholm.

DNA tests on relatives of Adolf Hitler have revealed that the Führer “is likely to have been descended from both Jews and Africans,” two groups of which he was not particularly fond. Reached for comment at his hidden fortress in Brazil, Hitler remarked, “Oh, man. That totally changes everything! Isn’t it funny how you get an idea in your head and you go off half-cocked and do something you’d probably have done differently if you had all the information at the time? Sorry about that! Hey, can you get me in touch with Amar’e Stoudemire? I’ve got a ton of questions and I figure he’d be exactly the right person to answer them.”

Will-I-Am’s been quiet lately, hasn’t he? Since making that song from that movie that nobody went to see at the start of the summer, he’s been oddly removed from the public eye. You think, maybe he’s working on a new Black Eyed Peas album or something? Or a 3D concert film with James Cameron? Well, it turns out he’s been in Europe. You know what else is in Europe? Amsterdam. What else is happening in Amsterdam? Oh, right, the 150-year-old chestnut tree that was a rare source of comfort and joy for Anne Frank for the two years she spent hiding in an attic during the Holocaust was destroyed this weekend.

Anne Frank would look out the window at the tree, and write about in her diary.

“Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”

She wrote that in May, 1944, three months before being discovered and captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, and then Bergen-Belson, where she died of typhoid at the age of 15, just a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp.

A few months earlier, in February, she’d written,

“Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the windAs long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.”

But now that tree is gone, and it is Will-I-Am’s fault.

The British government’s decision to solicit ideas to trim its budget-memorialized in verse by dead Philip Larkin here-gets the Apple Action News treatment. It’s not as showy or dynamic as previous efforts-the subject is decidedly unsexy-but the CGI Queen carting around swan meat is a nice touch. It’s like they’re making these just for me!

“Chinese Fire Drill” Joke Avoided

How was your commute? “A massive traffic jam in north China that stretches for dozens of miles and hit its 10-day mark on Tuesday stems from road construction in Beijing that won’t be finished until the middle of next month, an official said…. Some drivers have been stuck in the jam for five days, China Central Television reported Tuesday. But Zhang said he wasn’t sure when the situation along the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway would return to normal.”

Here’s a long look at some of the studies and expert testimony behind the Prop 8 ruling. (Unsurprisingly, the science suggests that gay marrieds have disagreements about tidiness and money, just like straight marrieds, so therefore, I guess we’re all the same.) This is funny somewhat because we’re still working on the idea that men and women are even similar or equal-including in the brain. In a review of Delusions of Gender, a look at neuroscience (and neurosexism!), the Times makes a reference to the paper’s own publication, in 1915, of a letter by neurologist Dr. Charles L. Dana. His contention was that women’s “upper spinal cord” was smaller and therefore they were just not very useful.

This (also: phrenology) is handy to remember for those that get bogged down in science about “gay brains” and alleged neurological or just plain social differences between the straights and the gays. Those women were crazily demanding the right to vote because they were stupid. (Also, their demands were “garish” and “vulgar”-and voting would lead to more mental illness in women!)

But they’re largely just like the selfish activist gays of today, who are excitedly, vulgarly demanding marriages, despite their deficiencies.

Love Story is the Harvard Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Somehow at the end of last week we missed the trailer for Fair Game, the Valerie Plame movie, based upon her (heavily CIA-redacted) memoir. How totally weird is this wildly overproduced trailer? From the director of Swingers and Bourne 1 (also the executive producer of the “Knight Rider” TV reboot!) comes this throbbing piece of intrigue, which at least gives us a chance to see Naomi Watts again come November (after the release of what looks like a C+ Woody Allen movie).