Sally Herman

fritesandfries:

I stumbled about this post today from Dinner: A Love Story and found a few “rules” that I love and agree with:

• “Acid” is usually the answer when you taste a dish and wonder “What’s missing?”
• Clean as you go. Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. [Note: People ask me how I keep my kitchen so clean. This is what I do.]
• The simpler the recipe, the more likely I am to cook it.

I’m not sure what I would add this list, but what would YOU add?

nevver:

Burn & Destroy

cabinporn:

Waldhaus by atelier st

nevver:

No Standing

noraleah:

Via spinnellii:

Icaro Doria, a Brazilian man, working for a magazine in Portugal started this campaign using real data from the UN and flag images, he’s created whats known as Meet the World. The colors within the flags from its respective country are used to represent current, geographical relevant issues. Take a look.

United States

Angola

Somalia

China

Colombia

Burkina

The perfect way to end the day.

Seth gave me a Keel’s Simple Diary™ and I love it! It’s a simple, fun way to journal.

Against my better judgment, this is what I ate for lunch today.

Goldman Sachs is investing $450 million of its own money in Facebook, at a valuation that implies the social networking company is now worth $50 billion.  Goldman is also apparently launching a fund that will bring its own high net worth clients in as investors for Facebook.

On the face of it, this might just seem like the financial sector doing what it is supposed to – channeling funds into productive enterprise.  The SEC is apparently looking at the way private investors will be involved, but there are some more deeply unsettling factors at work here.

Remember that Goldman Sachs is now a bank holding company – a status it received in September 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, in order to avoid collapse (for the details, see Andrew Ross Sorkin’s blow-by-blow account in Too Big To Fail.)  This means that it has essentially unfettered access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window, i.e., it can borrow against all kinds of assets in its portfolio, effective ensuring it has government-provided liquidity at any time.

Any financial institution with such access to such government support is likely to take on excessive risk – this is the heart of what is commonly referred to as the problem of “moral hazard.”  If you are fully insured against adverse events, you will be less careful.

A friend gave me this useful formula : Subtract your age from the number 100, and the answer is the number of pages you have to read before giving up on a book you’re not enjoying.* Her advice came to mind the other day as I was preparing to return yet another partially read book to the library. Oops, I thought : am I dangerously deficient in perseverance?

No, I said to myself. Life is short - why spend it with books I don’t really want to read?

This is what I’m reading to feed my craving for useless knowledge.  The inventions range from the board games of Monopoly and Scrabble (both invented during the Great Depression) to the invention of the window pane (only in 1959 was the process refined to make the windows we use today) to the pressure cooker (which showed that steam could be a power source paving the way for the invention of the steam locomotive). It also features the light bulb and other inventions that we consider life changing. However, I’m most fascinated by the inventions that I’ve never though about, such as the pressure cooker or the ball bearing.

Interesting piece in the WSJ recently about the amazing effects of music. Here are some of the findings:

• Listening to Bach, Corelli, and Mozart is more effective in treating mild depression than is talking to a psychiatrist. per a study published in The Arts in Psychotherapy (more)
• …

jayparkinsonmd:

Paintings by Victor Rodriguez (via)

I assumed Garance Doré went to art school because she draws the most beautiful illustrations. Today I learned she did not. If you need some inspiration to follow your passion, read her post about her first real job.