Faster than ice caps

• Gold Peak tea is delicious.

• A new College Board report says the country is 12th in terms of 25 to 34 year olds with college degrees. Canada, South Korea, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Israel, France, Belgium and Australia are all ahead of us. The NYT article I read this in was well-written but for one glaring problem: the writer consistently equated Lady Gaga and Snooki. ("Putting our brains on hold", Bob Herbert, 8/7/10)

• Within fifteen minutes of being lined up on a table in view of each other, my rats start doing the same things at the same time--sleeping (in the same position, no less), grooming, whatever. Any ideas how/why this happens?

• No seriously, gold peak tea, I need more.

• I also found it interesting that the college board president "called on educators to develop curricula that are more 'interesting and inspiring.'" Err. Somehow I don't think that will help much.

• "American politics is apparently cursed by the fatal allure of free cabinetry." Gail Collins = best NYT columnist? I think so. (First typed "communist" instead of "columnist".)

• "The most horrifying of the lot was [the] green backless disaster, which looked like something a concubine would wear to the annual Harem Achievement Awards ('Harries')." Funniest clothing review I've read in some time.

• I'm going to write a mystery novel where the identity of the killer is totally obvious and there are a bunch of clues and it should be open-and-shut, but through a series of hilarious mishaps and general displays of incompetency, the detectives still take the length of the novel to figure it out, by which time the reader thinks I must be pulling their leg, there's no way it could be that obvious, but then it actually is the obvious person, and the reader's mind is blown by the obviousness. Blam, bestseller.