Weekend Reading: Good Things You Should Read Edition

I'm still making my way through a bunch of production deployments at work, so my lack of spare brain power continues. I think that with a little more thought, I could have organized this week's links into a "things that make me mad/sad/frustrated" theme or something like that. But that just isn't going to happen this weekend. My main goal for tonight is to make it through until Friday Night Beers without dissolving into a puddle of goo or yelling at anyone. It is touch and go....

Anyway, on to the links.

Anil Dash posted some pretty good rules of the internet, which led me to his even more awesome post about how it is your fault if your website is overrun by assholes.  

I forget who tweeted the link to this explanation of the fact that yes, clinical trials do work, but it is a good post. I had not realized the utility of clinical trials was in question. From what I can gather, people are confusing poor use of statistics and/or our incomplete understanding of human physiology with "clinical trials don't work."

I really liked this father's take down of people lionizing him for... being a dad.

You've probably already seen something about how McDonald's made a budget for its workers. And how it assumes a second job. But did you see the part about it not including any money for heating? I guess you can just go to work and huddle around the fryer if you're cold.

And do you remember how I wrote that the lack of diversity in tech probably hurts companies' bottom lines? Neil Ungerleider, writing in Fast Company, agrees.

This New Yorker blog post from Amy Davidson captures what may be breaking my heart the most about the Trayvon Martin case.

This tweet captures the point even more succinctly:

The hardest question came from one of my little cousins. Confused, he asked, "What could Trayvon have done differently?" There's no answer.
— Jonathan Wall (@imfromraleigh) July 16, 2013

I'd say that pondering this question would help the people who are defending Zimmerman's actions understand why so many people are so upset... but then I made the mistake of reading some of the comments under Davidson's post, and no, it doesn't seem to be helping people understand. Sigh.

But let's end on a more hopeful note... Jennifer Zobair shares a story of an incident at her book reading that could have been ugly but turned into something better.