"All about the Benjamins" won't make any sense

There are ads in all the Metro stations imploring people to use Sacajawea dollars, "They last for decades and save the nation money!". If we're still struggling with dollars in coin form I'm sure these redesigns for paper money won't make it too far past the drawing board, but they do strike an interesting balance between form and function.

The Steel Closet: Redesigns of the U.S. Dollar

Update: Jose Andres chickpea stew

I made this over the weekend with mashed potato instead of bread and it was great. Then I added a dollop of anchovy butter and it was aMAzing.

Or that Fanta commercial

Both my inner eight year old boy and eighty year old woman loved this.

I try to resist...

...posting every picture I see of an Obama doing something cute but this one overpowered me.

Awesome indeed

I heartily enjoy the Discovery Channel's fine programming and this commercial, included in the Daily Beast's list of the year's funniest commercials (are they late or premature? ah well.) pretty much sums up why.

Language diagram

Next time my father asks why I studied Chinese in college instead of his native language, spoken by a whopping five million people, I'll show him this graph in which it's represented by a teeny dot under Portuguese. Their numbers for Finnish are off by a couple of million, a rounding error for the leviathan that is Mandarin, but in Finland that's about the equivalent of only counting the U.S. population east of the Mississippi. Despite a few data glitches, graphs are my new favorite toy so there's lots to play with on this site.

Add a few bottles of Two Buck Chuck and they might talk back

All Things Considered recently joined every other media outlet in the universe with a "budget challenge" piece by asking a bunch of chefs to create a dinner costing $10 or less for a family of four. Since I only have a few weeks left until the official end of my early twenties I found it helpful preparation for the day when celery sticks and Triscuits covered with melted cheddar cheese don't cut it for me anymore. Jose Andres, the lovable celeb chef at the helm of some of my favorite places in DC, contributed this spinach and chickpea stew that sounds so good, I only worry that it will be less frugal since I may eat it all in one sitting. I'm glad I listened to the spot in addition to reading the recipe- I might have missed his Mediterranean schtick about talking to the chickpeas. Food TV hosts the Neelys prepared mac and cheese that sounded like a delicious artery clogger, and the Navy chef's skate and gnocchi takes the prize for seeming way more expensive than it is.

One for the "holy cow" file

" In North America, the trends are similar. In 2050, according to United Nations projections, it is possible that nearly as many babies will be born in the United States as in China."

The Wilson Quarterly: The World's New Numbers