Friday, November 16, 2012

Best of the Week #83


It is Friday, Thanksgiving is just 6 days away, and I fly home this Sunday! Are you ready for turkey day? In case your menu is still up in the air, here are my favorite fall recipes. And the first time I cooked a turkey (major panic, but crises averted). And the second time (mild panic, again averted).

Speaking of fall recipes, my most popular post this week was Mini Pumpkin Pies with Gingerbread Graham Cracker Crust.


I love this "Corgi Flop" video (obviously). OMG I’m about to go home again – get psyched for all the forthcoming Amy pictures! (Amy is my corgi. She is awesome.)

A few fun facts (source):
  • “Sprezzatura” means “studied nonchalance” in Italian; the art of trying without seeming like you’re really trying.
  • Green is the rarest eye color.
  • In Revolutionary times, we were one vote away from having German being the official language of the United States.
This exists. "Arm Tunnels." No words, only emotions./wtf. "Tunnels on the pillow's underside allow the person cuddling in the back to extend their arm without cutting off blood flow, which prevents arm pain and numbness."



Cerealism” art project reminds me of 100 Day in first grade when we had to make something out of 100 of something.


President Obama cries in this and I may or may not have teared up a bit watching it: "I'm Really Proud of All of You."


This warms my heart. LOVE me some metrics. In another life I would totally be a data cruncher. "Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win."
  • For the general public, there was no way to know that the idea for the Parker contest had come from a data-mining discovery about some supporters: affection for contests, small dinners and celebrity. But from the beginning, campaign manager Jim Messina had promised a totally different, metric-driven kind of campaign in which politics was the goal but political instincts might not be the means. “We are going to measure every single thing in this campaign,” he said after taking the job. He hired an analytics department five times as large as that of the 2008 operation, with an official “chief scientist” for the Chicago headquarters named Rayid Ghani, who in a previous life crunched huge data sets to, among other things, maximize the efficiency of supermarket sales promotions.
One of the many instances of the internet benefiting from people having waaaay too much time: "But can you see the 'ugly naked guy'?: Artists sketch floorplan of Friends apartments and other famous TV shows." 15 floor plans from Friends, Fraiser, Sex and the City, Batman, etc.


From SpeedyKate – if muppets made vegetables, this is what they’d look like. (It's a chayote squash.)


Yet another example of girls kicking a$$: "Domination on the Football Field (By a 9-Year-Old Girl)."
  • Underneath that enormous helmet, she’s got a mess of tousled sweaty hair, and a ton of talent. And not just for a girl. According to her father Brent Gordon, out of the 172 kids in the district who tried out, Gordon tested the fastest in every speed and agility drill. (That sh!t cray.)

"Celebrating Progress: Iconic Photos That Paved the Way for Tuesday’s Civil Rights Victories."
Women's rights march on Fifth Avenue in New York City, 1970.
  Bob Adelman/Magnum Photos.
Black movement for integration. Teaching the illiterate to write so they can vote in Virginia, 1960.
  Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos.

Have a great pre-Thanksgiving weekend!