Archive for October, 2011

I’ve been following this week’s kerfuffle over the young adult National Book Award nominee list in a state of baffled amazement. If you haven’t heard about it, Linda Holmes has a good overview over at NPR’s Monkey See blog. But, long story short, Lauren Myracle’s book, “Shine,” was included among the National Book Awards’ nominees, but the judges apparently meant to nominate Franny Billingsley’s book, “Chime.” After some back-and-forth, Myracle has withdrawn her book from the running — it was either that, or have the nomination stripped from her.

Why do small children chat with invisible friends? No, they’re not conversing with ghosts or hosting tea parties for demonic spirits. As it turns out, those creepy cool encounters with unreal beings is just a part of how the human brain works. Think of it as a socialization simulator. And guess what? Even the average adult brain engages in something very similar: social surrogacy. How many of your close friends are fictional?

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You don’t have to read the tabloids to keep up with celebrities anymore! There are Facebooks and Twitters and all kinds of other things to let you, yes you, see into the inner lives of the famous people of your choosing. It’s easy to start feeling like your favorite celebrities are your friends. We caution against that. Here are the names we dropped.

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Now I’m not going to necessarily advocate the stance that a vacation must follow a rigorous itinerary — we stayed at a fancy resort for three days during our vacation largely lounging at the beach and the pool, after all, and it was fantastically relaxing to just kick back and not have to follow any schedule apart from that which our own levels of laziness dictated — but there is something to be said for doing some mapping out in advance. More after the jump.

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Some stuff I’ve learned recently is as follows:

There is at least an unwritten policy of FEMA called the Waffle House index, which uses whether Waffle Houses in an area are open to determine the level of impact a disaster had on that area. The logic goes that since Waffle Houses are open 24 hours a day every day of the year, if one is closed then an area must be in pretty bad shape. Either the water’s too high for the employees to reach it or the employees are all dead. In either case, the area around the Waffle House could use assistance.

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There are those things everyone else loves, but we … don’t. Or I don’t. Or Holly doesn’t. For whatever reason. Sometimes we don’t even know why. Here are all the gauntlets we threw down. You’ll have to listen to find out who hated what (and some of this we don’t even hate). Here’s a link to the episode on iTunes.

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While doing this podcast, Rachel and I got lots of inside info from our site director Tracy Wilson who lived  in Asheville for many years. So we thought it would be fun to list her favorite places to eat and visit here. To Eat Laughing Seed, a vegetarian restaurant that has been around since 1991. [...]

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What lucky ducks we are to have so many things to entertain us. I think we both felt a little guilty about categorizing this as a problem. Once we got past that feeling that we’re horrible people, here’s what we talked about.

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A few Octobers ago, I ate no fewer than 50 boiled peanuts on the ride up to the North Georgia mountains in hopes of seeing yellow and red leaves, and arrived to a sad, leaf-free trail. But that was then and this is now — when there’s a leaf peeping app called “Foliage Leaf Peepr” right there on your phone.

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I’ll tell you who isn’t afraid of commitment: the Hohenzollernbruecke bridge in Cologne, Germany. The bridge was reconstructed after it was bombed during World War II, and since then it’s been padlocked with the immortal love of thousands of couples from around the world, according to SFGate. Just look at all these “love locks”!

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