I'll agree with you about Heart of Darkness. But THT utterly lacked credibility—the premise was asinine and the result predictable. I see no reason why that should be part of anyone's cultural literacy agenda. I'd boot that off for, say, Kenzaburo Oe's Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Atwood sure doesn't have a Nobel…

Care to explain? I'd personally rank both of those a lot higher than The Hitchhiker's Guide or, god forbid, The Handmaiden's Tale.

To see how American-English centric this list is, look at the "other" tab—it has four novels only. One is Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (Indian author), one is Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czech, which I'd actually argue should be filed as a "European" or as a broadened "Slavic" category…

I used BL on occasion back in the day, but felt guilty and stopped after I learned that one of the guys I had been buying from on BL had been stealing the sets from Target and parting them out (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10200275/ns…). I recently went back to them for some parts I couldn't find on the LEGO…

He doesn't explain that well. You are correct that the stud 0 and stud 1 are not 16" OC. The reason for that is if you want to lay a sheet of drywall, you would want 48" to be the center of a stud, so you cheat the stud on the end. Yes, it means the insulation won't quite fit perfectly in the first gap, but hell,…

I usually do the brown stock from MC—I don't do a lot of white sauces for whatever reason. Except I'm not a huge fan of leeks, so I do a more traditional mire poix. The pressure cooker is amazing for stock, however—so much easier... I usually freeze mine in 1/2C increments in a muffin tin, then transfer them to a…

Grilled hash browns sounds interesting. This is what I've been doing recently (although I've used... ahem... a bit more clarified butter): http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/1… Not sure what's going on over at Serious Eats, but they seem to be putting everything in the waffle iron these days. Hash browns work…

I'm slowly coming around to the view that there is a limit to how thick bacon should be sliced—or rather that both thick and thin cut have their place. I stick to pan frying—I've tried the oven thing, and find I prefer what comes out of the skillet (this seems to be ass-backwards from the rest of the world; maybe…

I regularly make chicken stock. I use the recipe from Modernist Cuisine and there is usually a large quantity of it frozen in 1/2C pre-measured portions vacuum sealed in my freezer. If I'm doing something involving a pan sauce, I'll use high quality concentrated stock. But if I'm about to do something like a large…

As far as chicken stock goes, if ATK is to be believed (http://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/59…), Knorr Homestyle only gets a "recommended with reservations." The top pick, which was also cheaper by about 20%, was Swanson chicken stock (but not, oddly, Swanson Natural Goodness chicken stock.

I buy my bacon from a small butcher shop (Red Apron). It will certainly not win any prizes for cost savings, but it is the best bacon I've ever tasted. Oddly, ATK rated Oscar Meyer middle of the pack for branded bacon, but their test showed that the same brand (even the same formula) tested differently depending…

It's not a Dexter thing—it's just that what I do during the day tends to be very analytical, with results seen only over a multiyear horizon. I think I like working with my hands because it is so tangible—you chop, you have little pieces, you cook them, then you get to eat them. It very yin to the yang of my…

Maybe I'm strange, but I actually like knife work in the kitchen. Something really sort of satisfying about it.

By that logic, nothing should be in the code, hence I'll suggest your logic is flawed. TMVs are something you can adjust to achieve temperatures at the spigot hot enough to give you blisters, and you have the opportunity to adjust it anyway you want. But the code offers homeowners a way of protecting, for example,…

You are thinking of the wrong thing, or at least the point-of-use variant that is mentioned at the end of the post. The typical TMV is "installed at your hot water heater" (not the shower mixer) and, I would note, allows you to "set a limit (that you determine) on the maximum water temperature."

Before installing, check and see if you have one and all you need to do is adjust it. I thought these have been required by code for a while...

Part of it is also just observational. I don't think I spent a lot of time considering whether I had a good day or a bad day until I regularly starting asking my kid how his day was—and what the best part of his day was. At some point he also started asking me and I think I started having better days as a result. …

One point they make in the podcast about the Cool Tools book—but a point that it equally applicable to the podcast itself—is that there is something useful about learning about tools because you may find that there are tools to solve problems you didn't know existed and tools that may solve problems you thought were…

You will be happy to know that Adam Savage actually was sort of down on the cordless Dremels—he said the motor in the last two he'd bought burned out.

In case anyone is wondering, they recommend: