- MySQL Performance Blog: Give me 8 hours, and I’ll help you build a better application. Three simple things you should to to make your applications more robust. * Andrew Sullivan: The Rotten Core. As Alasdair Gray said, “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.” * Foreign Policy: Think Again: Africa’s Crisis. Things aren’t as bad in Africa as you think. This is a short article that sheds lights on a lot of popular misconceptions. * Amateur Gourmet: Dinner at El Bulli. The closest I’ll ever come to eating there, except perhaps when I watched Decoding Ferran Adria. * Business Week: Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs?. An argument that job creation has stalled due to a lack of basic research. * Financial Times: The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil. Absolutely brilliant feature on an Iraqi petroleum geologist who emigrated to Norway in 1968 to get proper health care for his daughter and walked into the opportunity of a lifetime.