1) Warning labels for lousy science writing – via Elizabeth Pisani @ The Wisdom of Whores.
2) Andrew Revkin argues that the “top billion” – probably you, definitely me – also need Millennium Development goals to deal with grotesque overconsumption, for our own good and everyone else’s.
3) A reminder from “Lessons I’ve Learned” that life is both easier and harder than you think in Cambodia.
4) Saundra at Good Intentions are Not Enough has some links to organizations working to break the silence on failures in NGO work; understandable but ultimately harmful to doing better work and not repeating mistakes. On the same vein, a recent NYT article on FailFare, as hosted by the World Bank, where NGOs are encouraged to talk about failure in a gentle, casual environment (i.e., finger food and wine).
Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk. I’m not really asleep
when my sister calls
to say she’s just hung up
from talking with aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to take care of Uncle Frank
who is completely bed ridden.
Aunt Bert says
it’s snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn’t been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She’s been suffering
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for the mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn’t do it, put on a red dress.
I threw an extra ‘t’ into possibilities today, because it’s Friday morning, and when my coworker called me on it, we had a momentary brain-link about writing a book or blog of pasta recipes and calling it “endless pastabilities”. We thought we were very clever for about a minute, and then I googled it and found that, like all good ideas, someone has already had it. Sigh.
