Happy Friday, it’s more than halfway through January, yay..

1) The Back to Her Roots planner. Sometimes I wish I was a graphic designer…

2) The rise of Quinoa and how it’s affecting Bolivian diets. It’s a very Guardian article, but I hadn’t really thought about the impact of my eating habits on anyone but me.

Averaging $3,115 (£1,930) per tonne in 2011, quinoa has tripled in price since 2006. Coloured varieties fetch even more. Red royal quinoa sells at about $4,500 a tonne and the black variety can reach $8,000 per tonne. The crop has become a lifeline for the people of Bolivia’s Oruro and Potosi regions, among the poorest in what is one of South America’s poorest nations.

3) The differences between Jennifer and John. Sexual discrimination is real people..

The results were stark. Jennifer was ranked less competent than John and was offered a median starting salary almost $4,000 lower than John. In addition, the faculty was less willing to mentor Jennifer, but, strangely, found her to be more likeable. All this from a piece of paper. I should point out here that there was no statistically significant difference between the responses from male or female faculty, nor were there differences between levels of faculty, suggesting this is not a hierarchical bias.

4) Austerity or class war? I vote class war…

This assault on an entire social contract, says Malcolm Sawyer, a leading expert on Kalecki, is what his subject warned about. “The argument for dealing with budget deficits has provided cover for attacking wages and benefits.” And austerity is just code for the transfer of wealth and power into ever fewer hands.

5) Meaningless accidents. For anyone not in London or the UK, there was a helicopter crash in Vauxhall yesterday, two people died, others are injured, Londoners are grateful it wasn’t worse.

Some sense may come of all this. But not in a day. And not in a few weeks, either. Somewhere, I expect there are people with red eyes staring blankly at each other and taking in the unbelievable news that a loved one has been killed in so random a way. The narrative order offered by the reporters and columnists will probably not help them make deeper sense of Wednesday’s events. And no, I am not implying that God is the ready-made answer. For me, God is the question. A question that will not leave me alone. Back here, the community gradually returns to life. Tesco in Vauxhall is open, but only a few people are out shopping. I finish the day with a prayer. In the midst of life, we are in death