Friday, September 23, 2011

Best of the Week #33

Hello Crazy-Face-Busy,
Thank you for inviting yourself to my Friday.

Love,
Mollie

But there are so many Best of the Week links I want to share with you! So I’m taking a brief break from reporting on a state of emergency situation to bring you your favorite Friday distraction!

My most popular post this week was Remember to Enjoy Your Workouts. I got some great feedback on this post – please comment if you have ideas on how to focus on the fun parts of training when the going gets tough! 


Also, luckily AKA Darkwave offered to pool with me Thursday morning. I can hear all about Ad-Mo-Pool-Lady-Judy's sex life once...but twice might kill me. 

Guess what I made last night? Yup, you’ll read all about it on Tuesday.


I know that not everyone finds McSweeny’s fall-out-of-your-chair amusing…but I do.

JUST FINISHED MAKING A MASSIVE JALAPENO-JERKY-AVOCADO SANDWICH.  ODDLY…NOT DISGUSTING.
My Facebook status from noon to 2:00 pm yesterday, and a mnemonic for the twelve months in the Julian calendar (January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December).

How much 'forced labor' fuels your lifestyle? Take the test to find out your slavery footprint.

Created by the U.S. State Department and a watchdog group, the free app and website will make consumers aware of their "slavery footprint."
"This is a new way to create awareness about the issue of modern slavery and empower consumers," said Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. "If we can do carbon footprints, why not slavery footprints?"

Love this image: Raindrops on Road



This post on the McGurk Effect shows a video on how your mind tells you what to hear - basically how seeing is believing.  

I don’t speak Mandarin…but: 10 extraordinarily useful Mandarin Chinese phrases
7. Zhēnde! Wǒ yìdiǎn dōu búkèqile! “Really! I’m not being polite at all!” 
Perfect for when people keep piling kung pao chicken into your bowl long after you’re full, or pouring you glass after drunken glass of baijiu — and think you’re just saying “búyào” (“I don’t want it”) to be polite. 
Once, when a Chinese friend insisted I drink another round of Tsingdao, I had to repeat this phrase over and over while shielding my glass from his swinging beer bottle. Be ready to battle for your stomach and sobriety.
And another wee bit of shameless self-promotion: Will Japan Re-Build Abyei's Banton Bridge? Love me some satellite evidence.



From 1000 Awesome Things: Reading an Actual Newspaper. I actually do read a paper newspaper still...but I'm one of few. 
Do you remember waking up on Saturday morning and tiptoeing onto the ice cold porch to grab that tightly wound paper in the plastic bag?After tossing it on the kitchen table you’d tear it open and fill the air with the stale stench of newspaper ink, hot plastic bag, and morning dew. Next you peeled off thatdisgusting black rubber band and unroll it till you had a bumpy beautiful stack of crisp fresh news. 
This post is a bit grim, but interesting and timely - Death penalty: Top 5 countries toexecute the most people
1. China is far and away the global leader in terms of the number of people executed: It executed at least 470 people in 2007 and at least 1,718 in 2008. For 2009 and 2010, Amnesty's report only lists “thousands” because of the Chinese government’s stance that such statistics are state secrets. In 2010, China executed more people than the rest of the world combined, according to Amnesty International.
According to the Death Sentences and Executions report, a large number of China’s death sentences are for drug-related offenses.
I don’t know if you know this, but yesterday, September 22, marked Bilbo Baggins’ (and Frodo’s) birthday! My friends and I are doing our LOTR nerd-fest again…and to kick it off, you must watch this video: Gollum sings I Will Survive. This will kill you. Seriously. I can’t stop laughing.