The Cost, in Dollars, of Raising a Child from The New York Times. FYI: It’s staggering.

Smoking Out Chimney Problems From The NY Times.

The Best Places to Hide Valuables in Your House from LifeHacker.

Escaping the Shadow of Pompeii from The NY Times.

US woman ‘runs over husband for not voting’ from 9 News. And the follow-up: Daniel Solomon, Man Allegedly Run Over For Not Voting Against Obama, May Be Permanently Disfigured from The Huffington Post.

John McAfee Denies Killing Neighbor, Goes Into Hiding From Belize Police from The Huffington Post. Have you be following this story? Cause it’s B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

A Diary of Camping in New York City from The Atlantic Cities.

The 15 Best Cities For Female Entrepreneurs from Forbes.

Mexico: Risking Life for Truth from The New York Review of Books.

The Man Who Smelled Too Muchfrom LA Weekly. ”William Nowell got a windfall and got off the streets. The only problem were his neighbors — and his foul odor.”

The tale of the Smithfield boy, the goat and the tree from the Desert News.

9-Year-Old Boy Steals Nearly $4,000 From Parents To Buy Candy from The Huffington Post.

What’s the best thing you read this week?

‘Drunk Nate Silver’ Sweeps Twitter: Prognosticator Goes Mad With Power from the Huffington Post. Made me laugh until I cried.

Taking a Closer Look at an Odd Pair of Very, Very Old Socks from Threaded, a Smithsonian blog. (Via my friend Vicki. Thanks, Vicki!)

The Food Lab’s Complete Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving, 2012 Edition from Serious Eats.

Is Lying on Twitter a Crime? from the Wall Street Journal.

Why knitting is the new rock’n'roll from The Telegraph.

Can America Embrace Biking the Way Denmark Has? from Slate.

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Password from LifeHacker. Not that I endorse such behavior.

Cross-Court Winner from Slate. Really, really good.

The Heart of the Jack-o’-Lantern from the NY Times. Four ways to cook a pumpkin.

Forest debate out of balance: forest owner from ABC Rural. This article is about Peter Downie, the man who created the Cormo breed of sheep.

The Garbo of Fashion from the NY Times.

Revisiting a Famous Meal, Soup to Nuts: Ross King’s ‘Leonardo and “The Last Supper” ’ from the NY Times.

Date an Entrepreneur from the Knowit blog.

Letitia Baldrige, Etiquette Maven, Is Dead at 86 from the NY Times. This is my Obit of the Week!

40 Things To Say Before You Die from Forbes. Print this out and hang it over your desk!

Stargazing in the Elevator from the NY Times. How to talk to celebrities in elevators.

Murder of an Idealist from GQ. “For six hours on September 11, the American compounds in Benghazi, Libya, stood siege. When the attack was over, J. Christopher Stevens’s body was pulled from the wreckage—the first U.S. ambassador killed by militants in over thirty years. Since then, his death has been politicized and the details of the attack distorted. Sean Flynn straightens out the story of Stevens’s last days in Libya—and reveals the true believer we lost that day.”

This Land Is My Land from Atlanta Magazine. “In the high country of North Georgia, an old bootlegger and a gun merchant feuded for years over a quarter-mile property line. It ended in the worst possible way.”

How Do You Raise a Prodigy? from the New York Times.

What are you reading this weekend?

The Massive Iceberg That’s Thisclose to Breaking Off of Antarctica from The Atlantic Wire.

A Simple Fix for Farming from The New York Times

Things Holly and I have argued about this week from 27B/6. This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read in my whole life but BE WARNED: there are swear words. Lots of ‘em. Mostly the one that starts with F. (If you click on that link, you are forever forfeiting your right to send me an angry, self-rightous email about the language therein. This is a legally binding contract. You can tell because I used “therein”.)

The Island Where People Forget to Die from The New York Times.

Do Restraining Orders Work? from Slate.

Mad Dash from The New York Times. As a frequent user of dashes- and a grammer snob- I enjoyed this article.

Twenty-Five Pieces of Basic Sartorial Knowledge So You Don’t Look Dumb from Put this On.  Send this to every man in your life, please.

Russell Means, Who Clashed With Law as He Fought for Indians, Is Dead at 72 from The New York Times. This is my Obit of the Week.

How the Blind Run Marathons from The Atlantic.

Tiny Condos And Houses For Sale from The Huffington Post.

The Spoon Theory. My friend Joelle linked to this on my whiney rant post last week and it is definitely worth a read. It’s a little over-written but it does a pretty good job of describing what it’s like to be in pain all the time.

What are you reading this weekend? I’m home sick and very, very bored, so I really want to know.

Ramjeet Raghav, 96-Year-Old Dad, Claims He Is World’s Oldest New Father from The Huffington Post. For reals, y’all.

Wines Worth Dropping a $20 Bill as Easily as an Autumn Leaf from the NY Times.

The Snail Wrangler from the NY Times. This article about a snail rancher kills me.

Empowering Women With A Wriggly New Industry: Worms from Co.Exist.

Making Sleep a Childhood Priority (or Not) from the NY Times.

A Second Act, Stuffed With Pie from the NY Times.

Cost to Prevent All Future Extinctions: $11 per Person? from Mother Jones.

Where Will The Next Pandemic Come From? And How Can We Stop It? from Popular Science.

BOSS RAIL:The disaster that exposed the underside of the boom from The New Yorker. “A high-speed train crash in China unravels years of corruption in the building of the world’s most expensive public-works project.” A Home at the End of Google Earth from Vanity Fair. “Separated from his older brother at a train station, five-year-old Saroo Munshi Khan found himself lost in the slums of Calcutta. Nearly 20 years later, living in Australia, he began a painstaking search for his birth home, using ingenuity, hazy memories, and Google Earth.”  This one is my pick of the week.

The Greatest Fake-Art Scam in History? from Vanity Fair.

What have you read this week that made you wonder?

The Peanut Butter Cure Moves From Hospital To Snack Room from Shots, NPR’s health blog.

‘Flight’: A Few Million Little Creatures That Could from NPR, about Flight of the Butterflies, a 3-D IMAX film about the migration of the monarch to sanctuaries like the one Aguado and Brugger came upon in Mexico.

Misdeeds, Not Mistakes, Behind Most Scientific Retractions from Shots,  NPR’s health blog.

Portrait of the Artist as a Postman: The strange and secret world of Kermit Oliver. From Texas Monthly.

A Wearable Camera That Photographs Your Entire Life from FastCompany.

An Extra Cheap Way To Get Salt Out Of Water Could Help Make The World Less Thirsty from Fast Company.

Who Wants to Live in a Replica of Disney’s Haunted Mansion? Now’s Your Chance from Jezebel.

Reasons Why You Cannot Be a Bridesmaid from Jezebel. “Also if money is tight and you cant afford to contribute to say the bachelorette party or wont be able to afford a dress etc then L— and Myself don’t have time to deal with that, I’m sorry.” Someone please tell me that this is fake, that there aren’t really people like this in the world. Pretty please?

What did you read this week that made you think?

Makers unite – the revolution will be home-made from BBC News.Hmm…catchy headline.

Is A 15-Year Old Texan Girl Driving This Ultra Rare Lamborghini To High School? from Jalopnik.

Neil Young Comes Clean from The New York Times. Great article.

The New New Girl: Mindy Kaling Promotes Herself Out of The Office and Into The Mindy Project from New York Magazine. I heart Mindy Kaling.Have you seen her new show? It’s really good, very well written.

Oh My God Please Stop Taking Your Wedding Pictures in the Middle of the Street from Jezebel. Yes. Please do stop.

12 Proposed U.S. States That Didn’t Make the Cut  from Mental Floss.

Poverty Informs J.K. Rowling’s New Novel For Adults from NPR Books.

Comfort Food Is Real: Scientists Discover ‘Good Mood Foods’ from GOOD. I KNEW IT!

The Solar Charging Kit for Africa You Want for Your Own Home from GOOD.

Oldest Message in a Bottle Found from Discovery News.

Sea Otters: An Unlikely (But Adorable) Soldier In The Fight Against Climate Change from Co.EXIST.

The Miracle Of The Levitating Slinky from NPR.

Chicago Tylenol Murders: An Oral History from Chicago Magazine. Can you believe it’s been 30 years since this happened?

The Great New England Vampire Panic from Smithsonian Magazine. “Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living.”

Did you read anything that made you think this week?

Ryan Harris, Alaska Fisherman, Survives Day At Sea Adrift In Plastic Bin from The Huffington Post.

Reviving New York Harbor With Oysters: Why Hasn’t This Happened Yet? from The Atlantic Cities.

How Climate Change Could Make Summer Crime Waves Worse from The Atlantic Cities.

Reclaiming the Title of Fastest in the Land from The New York Times. Oh Texas! How I love you and how you embarrass me!

Woman Might Have Luckily Bought a Renoir at a Flea Market for Fifty Bucks from Jezebel. As someone who shops in flea markets all the time, I’d like to know when this going to happen to me.

How to avoid strangers on the bus from Unlikely Words. Last month while I was flying to the West Coast, a man on my plane looked the insistently chatty woman next to him dead in the eye and said, “I’m not friendly.” Then he returned to his newspaper. You’ve got to respect his honesty.

“I have not shot her yet” from Letters of Note. This letter Dorothy Parker wrote to Seward Collins from her hospital bed may be the best thing I’ve ever read. Ever.

The Cottingley Fairies: Five Photos That Fooled the World from History in an Hour. I’ve always loved this story.

Was Van Gogh Color Blind? from Big Think.

How My Mother Disappeared from The New York Times.

I have been so busy this week that I didn’t get much reading done. What did I miss?

How I Fixed My Skin by Making My Own Beauty Products from Good.

The Environmental Impact Of Wasted Food from Co.EXIST. Wasting food, particularly meat, is one of my biggest pet peeves!

An Ingeniously Designed Kids Bike Grows With Them As They Age from Co.EXIST.

Meet A Man On A Mission To Save Rare And Unusual Figs from The Salt, NPR’s food blog.

‘The most convincing Nessie photograph ever’: Skipper claims to have finally found proof that Loch Ness Monster exists from The Mail Online. Don’t get too excited.

Boopy Goes to Berlin: A Cold War memoir. From Slate. This is lovely.

Like NASA Rover, Family Switches to Mars Time from Weather.com.

Richard Aoki, Man Who Armed Black Panthers, Was FBI Informant from The Huffington Post.

Home Builder of the Day: CNC Printing Machine from The Atlantic Cities. “A machine that prints house parts from 3D plans for simple human assembly.”

In Upstate New York, the Amish Struggle for Survival from The Atlantic Cities.

What’s So Special About the Sea of Galilee? from Slate.

Amazingly Preserved Brain Discovered in 2,600-year-old Severed Head from Slate.

Maywood Confidential: The Unsolved Murder of Police Officer Tom Wood from Chicago Magazine.

Chicken of the trees from Chicago Magazine. “The rural eastern gray squirrel has long been a valued food source, but what about its urban cousin?”

Jane Pratt’s Perpetual Adolescence: Why She’s Still Talking Teen Three Decades After Sassy from The Cut. “Jane Pratt has been 15 for an awfully long time now.”

Go Away from The Morning News. “Artist colonies are mysterious places. Available only to a select few, supposedly teeming with alcohol, affairs, and creative hoodoo. But the rumors aren’t true—if only because they lack detail. Scenes and lessons from three residencies.”

SKELETON ARMY RISES FROM BOG from Discovery News.

‘The Sheep Are Like Our Parents’ from The New York Times. Via my bookish pal Amanda.

Whale group hopes for hand-knit help from the Times Colonist.

Inside the Surprisingly Lucrative World of Cardboard Theft from The Atlantic Cities. I found this madly interesting.

2,000-Year-Old Food Discovered Off the Coast of Italy from Delish.

Guess What? I Hate Your Sushi Pics Almost As Much As You Hate My Baby Photos from Jezebel.

Let’s Discuss the Merits of Anthropologie (The Clothing Store, Not the Discipline) from The Billfold. I love Anthro but I thought this was very refreshing.

Sudden Death: What’s In The Ground In Briarcliff Manor? from The Huffington Post.

Lost Pet Parakeet Returned After Telling Cops its Address from Petside.com. Favorite story of the week.

Dog Carries Puppies Out Of Burning House, Brings Them To Fire Truck from The Huffington Post. Other favorite story of the week.

Dog Adopts Baby Chimpanzee After Its Mother Dies At Zoo from The Huffington Post. Another favorite story of the week.

Man Texts About Needing to Stop Texting, Then Drives Off a Cliff. HA! Via my bookish pal Sarah.

Trees vs. Power Lines: Will We Have to Choose? from The Atlantic Cities.

At the Buffalo Bill Museum, a Showdown Between History and Myth from The New York Times.

Beach Essentials in China: Flip-Flops, a Towel and a Ski Mask from The New York Times. You know, I am evangelical about sunscreen (I wear 11o every day of the year) but this is a bridge too far even for me.