Friday, May 25, 2012

Best of the Week #60

The Friday before a long weekend is always relaxing – half the office is already out of town and it’s pretty much universally recognized that nothing major really needs to be started, since no one will look at it until Tuesday! (I'm not saying that I’m not working – it’s just that the office vibe is different). And I’m looking forward to staycating this weekend – chores, biking, lounging by the pool, and spending more than 3 consecutive waking hours at my new apartment (which I haven’t done since moving in two weeks ago – I am the ghost roommate). 


But before that, let’s get on with Best of the Week! (Sidenote: Can you believe that I have curated 60 of these posts of ridiculousness??? Crazy.)


My most popular post this week was Sister1’s Slutty Brownies. Oooohhh I can’t wait to show you the variation on this recipe I made last night…beyond



This might me my new favorite blog: "List Addicts." I’m pretty sure that 80% of the time I think in lists.


For those in the District, "Your Guide to the Coolest Washington Summer Ever." I’ve already done 12 out of the 40 suggestions…looks like I have my work cut out for me!




Why Nigerians have at least 2 cell phones: "African viewpoint: Nigeria's dialing dilemmas."
  • In the first place, it takes luck for the call to get through, and when both parties are connected, there is no guarantee that you will hear each other or that the line will not drop after a few seconds. A conversation which normally should not last two minutes may after several calls take 10 minutes and, believe me, both of you will pay for every second….
  • So everyone who can afford it has a minimum of two mobile phones from different operators. Some have as many as four. They use whichever is operational at any given time.
This is the for-serious magazine cover and I love it.




This entire article is fascinating – “What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have in Common?
  • What's most interesting about fact checkers is the circumstances they work under and the traits they must possess to perform their job. Generally speaking, fact checking is a largely thankless job where the person is invisible if he does his job perfectly and is only noticed for his work when things go wrong.
  • It turns out, the lonely, lowly fact checker, is in actuality not so lonely. There is a commonality of his circumstance and traits among a select group of other professionals, a collective I call The Invisibles, and we as a culture can learn from this unique group.
  • Though I've only focused on a few members of this club, in my research I found again and again these same unique traits in other Invisibles, and I've been humbled by them. Meticulousness, savoring great responsibility, and seeking only internal satisfaction are a trifecta of traits—a near antithesis of our societal ethos of insouciant attention-cravers—as a culture we'd all do well to follow.

I know this meme is old news…but still – "Hey Runner Girl."





Make fun of me all you want, I am a book club person. This Jezebel article is pretty funny: “Provoking Discussion Questions Every Book Club Should Ask.”
  • 4. This book has sold several million copies and has been translated into 26 languages. A lot of us are kind of resentful about this. Do you think you could have written this book or something? Do you think writing a book is easy?
  • 10. What foods or beverages did you spill on the book during the course of reading it? Anything good?

An interesting concept – “Free bicycles help keep Indian girls in school.”

  • Free bicycles help keep Indian girls in school under a new state government program designed to help girls in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, where the female literacy rate of 53 percent is more than 20 points below that of its men.
  • "We found that the high school dropout rate soared when girls reached the ninth grade. This was primarily because there are fewer high schools and girls had to travel longer distances to get to school," said Anjani Kumar Singh, Bihar's principal secretary overseeing education.
  • Poor families could not spare the money for transport, or were reluctant to let girls travel so far away, fearing for their safety.
I haven’t actually read this NYT article/profile yet, but it looks promising (Caballo Blanco should be familiar to anyone who has read Born to Run). “Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story.”
Ooh and you can listen to it being read to you! Cool! (MP3)


Cute Roulette. Enough said. 


And speaking of cute, I want Shauna's puppy.






Hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!