Health Inventory and Goal-Planner from American Heart Association

My Life Check: painless and helpful in suggesting, quantitatively, what you could be doing better for your health, without being puritanical about the salt, sugar, and fat.

Ode to the Cast Iron Skillet

In an essay that would make Strunk & White proud, Salt & Fat lays out the virtues of cast iron in the kitchen.

A Plea for Pragmatism Over Ideology on Earth Day

A little practice often upsets a lot of theory. 

Funniest Thing We've Read in Months

A restaurant review. No, it's not fiction.

The New Non-Profit Journalism

This may be the only way investigative journalism will continue to get done: ProPublica, which is funded by a non-profit and by individual donations, not subjected to focus-groups or concerns about news-stand sales. Of course, that is what NPR is supposed to do, but they aren't exactly investigative, are they?

Now THIS is Web2.0

TripIt: You email it reservation confirmations (flights, hotels, car rentals, etc) and it mashes up an itinerary for you, publishes it as an iCal feed, alerts you to people you know who live (or, if they use TripIt too, people who will be traveling nearby), and suggests sights to see. Via.

Free Coffee!

Friday Happy Hour

Courtesy of David Wondrich, who knows his drink:

The Shandy Gaff

Fill a pint glass a little more than halfway with a good American pale ale (eg, Red Tail) that's been well chilled. Top off, slowly, with ginger beer (we recommend Goslings). 

Boston Common, Visualized by Color Analysis in the Time Domain

Fascinating. Beautiful. Not sure what it is good for otherwise. 

Best Rube Goldberg Machine EVER!

It's also a music video for OK Go's latest. Via.

When Would You Say Sex Has Occurred?

We got our sex ed from TV, but it turns out Indiana didn't.

Not More, Just Different

Turns out when broken down by social program spending and sick care/rescue spending, the US values sickness more than health, and, just as interesting, the USA's overall spending on health & sickness is similar to other countries'.

One could apply some supply-side thinking and hypothesize that if we did more to keep the 300+ million Americans healthy, they'd be more productive than they are now, what with all that sick time missed at work, and GDP would go up, so that as a percentage of GDP, health/social program spending would go down...

I.Am.Bored: The Mariana Trench

How deep is it? It is so deep...

Which Cars Are Assembled in the USA?

Interactive graphic at the NYTimes. We thought more BMWs came from South Carolina than just the SUV-types, but nice to know we have a decent selection of Mazdas and Subarus if we want to buy American.

The Day the Music Died

The truth about the economy, from The Onion.

The Complete '53 to '89 Corvette Set

We especially like that they've been sitting, largely ignored, in a garage in Brooklyn.

Perfect Timing

On the heels of yet another annoying Facebook re-design comes Google Buzz, which is like the Facebook feed without the time-wasting games that people of weak minds (like ours) are so easily addicted to.

Gift Cards are Broken

The industry term is actually "breakage." Just send cash.