When eating scones, do you put the cream on first, or the jam? It never occurred to me to put the jam on first, but apparently the question plagued Hollie Newton and her friends, so she asked the authorities. Find out what The Ritz said by clicking on the image above or going here. (And really? People put butter and jam and cream on scones?!)
Thanks to LDN's twitter feed for the story.
Publisher's Weekly listed their best books in the major categories (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc) of 2009. Among them are two of Powell's Indiespensible titles (David Small's Stitches and Sam Savage's The Cry of the Sloth), a book I was really disappointed by (Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger), and a Zadie Smith book of essays (Changing My Mind) I'd never even heard of before.
But a controversy has erupted over their definitive Top 10: every author on the list is male. The Powell's blog features lots of links showing reaction to the story.
Good magazine features a regular series of infographics called "Transparency." As a communicator, I truly admire someone who can present vast amounts of complicated information in an easy-to-read, instinctual visual. Above is a graphic that shows the 20 countries from which the most people came to the US in 2008, how many immigrants already had family here, and how many received asylum. (For another great graphic, check out the largest bankruptcies in history here.)
This is from a lovely post on the Powell's blog by Tod Davies:
We went to our dog agility class today, which, for the uninitiated, is a hilarious kind of mini-Grand National training for dogs... hoops, tunnels, jumps, climb-its... the dogs love it and we, surprising ourselves, do too. It's a great pleasure to take the long drive across the valley floor between the mountains, past the ranches and small-town houses, out to where Diane has all the brightly colored obstacles set out on her fresh mown grass.
Diane, who teaches the class, is one of those very American women you never hear about. A good neighbor, a quiet citizen, a person who thoroughly enjoys her life, and has created that life to give her a decent, unextravagant living by doing the things she loves best. She's one of those people (thank God for them) who volunteers actively at the local animal shelters, and really makes a difference with her volunteering. She's the one who started a free obedience class with each adoption; she goes out every week and teaches new pet owners how to get the best out of their pets. Doing that, she single handedly cut the return rate on dogs to the shelter by a half. That's where we met her, when we adopted one of ours.