It's Friday! That means it's time to look back on our week and find a few things that brought us (and you) joy.

Photo: Amazon.com

Unlikely successes: A book that got panned is now a 50 year-old classic.

A vacation you can take while sitting at your desk (via Hacker News )

We just want to know how this photo happened.

True fighters: Afghan women celebrate International Women's Day in full force.

Photo: Courtesy of LifeSoap

Buy soap, bring clean water to a community thousands of miles away. That's the premise behind LifeSoap, a new company that sells trios of organic bar soap—which it calls Boxes of Joy—and pledges 90 percent of the after-tax profits to fund clean water and sanitation projects in developing countries.
For $20 a month, LifeSoap delivers a fresh Box of Joy to your door every four weeks, along with an update on their humanitarian projects. The company's 25-year-old founders, Juwon Melvin and Aaron Madonna, are passionate about solving the clean water crisis—and making great soap. Their bars combine organic oils with soothing ingredients like oatmeal and shea butter (and skip synthetic fragrances, colors, and preservatives). LifeSoap's first project, rehabilitating wells and building latrines at a school in Nicaragua, is already under way.

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There's something so appealing about the right quote at the right time. This must be why that ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster (even though, yes, now it's everywhere, has morphed into a million versions, and is as overplayed as that Adele song that you still love anyway) can sometimes still inspire a strange, teary, throat-lump, at least in this steadfast soldier—er, blogger. You know the one: the lovely, slender font; the regal crown; most of all, the stately, applicable-to-everything and somehow-oh-so-British message. It seems relevant to nearly any situation, from driving in soul-crushing rush hour traffic to, you know, surviving daily life in wartime Britain. Right?

The original poster started making the rounds a few years ago, swiftly followed by a raft of impersonators and spin-offs. (Check out Oscillator's great graph of the image's evolution.) But where did it come from? For anyone who's ever wondered where the original "Keep Calm and Carry On" carried on from, this video is a must-see. Find out who made the poster, who crafted the slogan, why it was never used when first made during WWII, and the charming story of how it resurfaced.  And don't forget: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.



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And now for a moment of pure mindless fun: Hipster Disney princesses.

"It's like being part of this everlasting necklace when you're just a bead on a chain": A gorgeous, DNA-inspired music video.

The way you type a word could make you happier. AKA, brains are funny.

How to figure out what's really going on in your life.

Even cooler than a jet pack, even stranger than flying shoes, these are the skyscrapers of the future.

The Life-Lifter: “I believe in fate and destiny a little bit and I think that was meant to be." Meet the world's oldest (that's a combined 193 years) newlyweds.

Photo: Thinkstock

We may be losing an hour of sleep from Daylight Saving Time this weekend, but come Monday, we'll have an additional 60 minutes of daylight. They'll be most noticeable right around dinnertime, so many of us will find ourselves eating our evening meals a little later. Why not use those few minutes to try something new (and healthy) in the kitchen? Here are four fast fresh ways to turn everyday vegetables into meals that wow.

Roast your own peppers. Cheaper and much more flavorful than jarred, homemade roasted peppers are a snap to make. This recipe explains how to do it (and how to make a soup with the finished product).

Slice your greens. Adding leafy greens like arugula and spinach to couscous or quinoa isn't always seamless: rip the vegetables into shreds and they overpower the tiny grains; chop them finely and they get lost. Slicing them into slender ribbons takes some time but ensures they'll be easy enough to pick up on a fork with the grain, and still lend substance to the dish.

Photo: Thinkstock

We all have our ways of dealing with a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. A latte with the friend who always cheers you up, a visit to a flower shop, a good, long sulk in the tub. I mean, soak. Chicago Now's Plight of the Suburbanite blogger has a smart way to lift yourself up in those glum moments: A Feel-Good File.

She writes: "I saved favorite emails, accolades and a handful of pictures from my work at my desk. When I hit a really difficult day, I'd sift through that. While it couldn't erase an error or a loss, it boosted my spirits and helped get me back onto a productive track." While the idea was originally to have this Feel-Good File at work, she now has one at home too—brilliantly stowed in that usually-uninspiring-place, the laundry room—full of her running medals, photos of family and friends, meaningful letters and awards from work. She writes that taking a moment to look through this file helps her to "bolster my own spirit and keep myself from getting derailed."

Why not set up your own Feel-Good File?

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Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Ozwald Boateng: In the Kitchen on Nowness.com.

* Laurence Fishburne wanted to help his friend, the designer Ozwald Boateng, to become a better husband and father, so he channeled his considerable charm into a cooking lesson. Lucky for us, it was caught on tape. (The Nowness)

* If you're looking for a little inspiration, take a tour of the mechanical wonders and vintage toys in cartoonist Chris Ware's home and studio. (Trip City)

* Mantyhose: Are men ready to wear tights? Are we ready for men to wear tights? (The Week)

"Dreams, for most kids, stay in a blur. For John, it's starting to clear."—Will Orozco, a retired sanitation worker in the Bronx, on his gymnast son John's Olympic hopes. (NYTimes)

Hey, has anyone noticed that that whole Harry Potter series thing has gotten really popular? I think I have a theory as to why. Instead of using this powerful knowledge to launch my own mega-successful line of books and films, though, I'm going to share this theory here in this blog post (you're welcome!). I think it's that whole "muggle" thing. In these books, as in most whimsical children's fiction, there is an implication that most of the grownup world is dull and unmagical and without imagination—they just don't get it—and that only a chosen few are sensitive enough to know magic when they see it. So every reader has the chance to say to themselves (or out loud, if they are reading along someplace or else exceptionally unmuggly and free-spirited), "But I get it! I would believe! I would understand!"

And yet, most of us don't make nearly enough space in our lives for the whimsical.