Great Planet Money this week delving into whether it makes economic sense to replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin.

I was reading this little piece, which is the best musical instrument?, and this bit caught my eye:

What complicates matters further is the sheer variety of instruments. We began creating them ridiculously early (the earliest extant flute is 67,000 years old) and have never stopped. Recently I’ve been to concerts featuring virtuosi on both a six-stringed electric violin and the hang, a Swiss-invented steel drum of beguiling sensuality. Neither existed 20 years ago.

Never heard of the hang, so turned to YouTube, and lo, it’s a pretty cool thing!

Apparently they are [hard to come by](http://www.hangblog.org/2006/11/27/how-to-buy-a-hang/). There's a variant by a US maker, Pantheon Steel, but those are [distributed via lottery](http://www.pantheonsteel.com/FAQ.aspx#Acquiring_a_Halo) (and cost \$1,800). They [sound deeper](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqVW72GzA9U).

The Valve Employee Handbook may be the greatest employee handbook ever written. It is certainly the only employee handbook I’ve ever read for fun.

I had kinda given up on supercuts, but this one turned my head. All the DoubleOh in the Bond movies:

Faux Friendship. "Facebook’s very premise—and promise—is that it makes our friendship circles visible. There they are, my friends, all in the same place. Except, of course, they’re not in the same place, or, rather, they’re not my friends. They’re simulacra of my friends, little dehydrated packets of images and information, no more my friends than a set of baseball cards is the New York Mets."

So very, very happy that Ze Frank is doing another show! The preview episode, An Invocation for Beginnings , is an auspicious start.

Practical Tips from Four Years of Worldwide Travel. "Lonely Planet recommends a place as “Our Pick”? Great, I go there, and walk two doors down to stay nearby. Rough Guides says “this is the best restaurant in town”? Perfect! Almost every one of those recommendations will spawn another restaurant within walking distance. Industrious entrepreneurs quickly learn that when these books recommend a place, they quickly get overcrowded and prices go up. The solution: they open a place right next door or nearby to handle the spillover. Without fail, those are the places that are cheaper, more delicious and not jaded."

The Man Who Broke Atlantic City. "Fifteen million dollars in winnings from three different casinos? Nobody gets that lucky. How did he do it?"

Arsenic in Our Chicken?. "… my topic today is a pair of new scientific studies suggesting that poultry on factory farms are routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics and even arsenic."

Man Walks All Day to Create Spectacular Snow Patterns: pretty cool way to exercise.

Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy. Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses. Awful.

I like staring at this wind map.