On vacation last week, I read “In Africa,” John T. McCutcheon’s stories of his safari in Africa at the turn of the 20th century, first serialized in the Chicago Tribune. It’s light-hearted, easy to read, and charming. (Presuming you can get over the fact that they are slaughtering animals. Having made my peace with that [...]

From Pink Tentacle’s round-up of projected 2008 trends in Japan:
When it comes to nubile young female athlete idols, the letter “B” stands for beach volleyball and badminton. In 2007, beach volleyballer Miwa Asao raised eyebrows when she released a gravure DVD and posed for sexy Sabra magazine, while badminton doubles team Kumiko Ogura and Reiko [...]

I don’t wear polo shirts that often (upper or lower case), but I love this 40th anniversary Polo Collector’s Trunk from Ralph Lauren, which includes 40 different Polo shirts in a handsome leather case. Only five large!
I have never owned a Polo-brand polo shirt before. Is there anything that sets the brand name ones apart [...]

Popular Mechanics has an okay list of “25 Skills Every Man Should Know” on the site. (Disclosure: I am a contributing editor at the magazine. Don’t fire me because I’m about to slag your list a little!)
I’ve put the top five from Pop Mech below, which I don’t think they were ranking in order of [...]

While I generally think that genre-specific Wikipedia replacements are sort of pointless—why not just create more Wikipedia entries?—I can’t help but be entertained by the newly-launched “Whiskipedia,” which aims to become the “definitive online resource for all things Whisk(e)y.”
The initial content is drawn from Gavin Smith’s Whisky: A Book of Words (with permission).
Main Page [Whiskipedia.org]

I like what Serious Eats‘ Ed Levine has to say about losing weight this year. Rigorous, boring systems never work; changing the way you appreciate food certainly does. Most of what he outlines are the very same things that helped me lose and keep off 45 pounds last year. (And will hopefully help me shed [...]