Friday Link Love

Fridays are going to be my roundup day, with some links of things I found interesting during the week.

This week's links are divided into categories.

The Political

This is clearly not a political blog, but given the news this week, I'm going to include 2 pieces.

"The Lies They Tell Us" is a Foreign Policy article about Pakistan, which includes a discussion with Sohaib Athar, the Pakistani IT consultant and coffee shop owner in Abbottabad who gained instant fame for becoming "the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it," gaining more than 100,000 Twitter followers as a result. Athar has posted an FAQ on his site from all the many (many) questions he's been getting on Twitter.

The other piece is Megan McArdle's post about the fake Martin Luther King quotation that flew through cyberspace in the wake of bin Laden's death. I'm not much of a McArdle fan--I don't agree with her politically and find her generally irritating--but I thought this was interesting, and given that she was the person who discovered the quote was fake (and has the platform to talk about it), it seemed fitting to let her describe it. A less thorough analysis was in a blog in the Christian Science Monitor as well.

The Sad:

Derek Miller was a writer, blogger, musician (and much more) from Vancouver who died of cancer at 41 earlier this week. In his blog, he wrote a last post, his own obituary: The Last Post. It is lucid, thoughtful and very sad. The Vancouver Sun also published a tribute to him.

The Uplifting:

I'm a recent convert to The Rumpus' advice column, Dear Sugar, but I think she is very wise and knows of which she writes. Also, while reading this column, I realized that I think I know who she is in real life. (I've had a few clues, but only while reading this column did it suddenly make sense.) Still, Sugar is Sugar as well as her real self, so I will let her continue to be that, especially in case I am wrong. Dear Sugar: The Future Has an Ancient Heart or, a graduation speech for English majors.

The Delicious:

I am always a sucker for cheese biscuits, and these look particularly yummy. Not sure when I will have the occasion to make them, but I hope it will be soon. Cheese Biscuits from Food52. There will be more about Food 52 next week.

The Overdue:

In past years, I have posted the links of all of the other bloggers participating in the blogathon on my own blog, but I think the list is actually too long to do that this year--nearly 200 bloggers and more than 200 blogs! (Some people are very ambitious, blogging every day in multiple blogs--I can't even imagine!) Thankfully, Michelle Rafter has the list up, and so I will link it here and encourage you to check out some of the many other interesting bloggers posting daily this month. I certainly plan to!

The 2011 Blogathon Blogroll

Happy Friday!

P.S. If you're wondering about the above photo, I've decided to also use the Friday posts to post random photos I like but have no other place to put. The photo above, as some might know, was taken inside the sculpture "Cloud Gate," otherwise known as "The Bean" in Millenium Park in Chicago.