Pineview GA, places: This was the home my mother grew up in and the home of one of my favorite great aunts. To see it on Zillow for $24000 … just makes me cry. It is a great house worth a million just for the memories.
CHICAGO—Northwestern University reversed course on Thursday and condemned a live demonstration of sex in a classroom, after defending the act earlier in the week.
“Many members of the Northwestern community are disturbed by what took place on our campus,” Northwestern President Morton Schapiro said in a statement. “So am I.” He said the university was launching an investigation.
Kevin Helliker has the latest on the fallout over a live demonstration of sex in a classroom at Northwestern University, which the school initially defended then reversed course as outrage intensified.
Following a human sexuality class last week on Northwestern’s Evanston, Ill., campus, Prof. John Michael Bailey invited students to stay for an extracurricular demonstration that he warned would be explicit and graphic. Of the 567 students enrolled in the class, about 100 stayed to watch a sexual act involving a woman, a man and an electric-powered device.
TED videos: I can’t wait to watch this year’s TED videos.
John Hunter
Educator Teacher and musician John Hunter is the inventor of the World Peace Game (and the star of the new doc “World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements”).
Mobile-phone technology is like fire: as soon as a society gets it, it can’t imagine life without it. In the current issue, Ken Auletta writes about the Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim, whose former company, Celtel, brought the cell-phone boom to Africa, where the number of cell phones “has grown from fewer than four million in 1998 to more than four hundred million today—almost half the population of the continent.” Despite their expense, inconvenience, and even danger, they’ve proven invaluable in Liberia, a country entirely without landline service, where people need all the tools they can get to face the overwhelming task of rebuilding from nothing.
The Army private suspected of giving classified U.S. documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks was forced to sleep naked in a military jail at least once this week, the Marine Corps acknowledged Friday after the soldier’s lawyer complained.
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The 23-year-old Crescent, Okla., native remains in maximum custody and on prevention-of-injury status — designations that keep him confined alone 23 hours a day, and require removal of all clothing except his boxer shorts at night.
Why I do this…: There are a lot of reasons I started to do this “blog”. Among them was that I did not want to bore my facebook friends with all my posts or send around e-mails to everyone who I thought had similar interests. I have been doing this about a year now … and I love it when someone sends me a link that they think will interest me because it means that they read it and that they may, to some extent, share that interest. It also keeps a dialogue going. So thank you Elizabeth for the link to the Nashville native who is teaching in Cairo … see below
Egypt Uprising, blogposts: This young man’s perspective is very interesting.
Yesterday morning an angry man confronted me only one hundred meters from my apartment, yelling at me for being an agnahbee (foreigner). This is the first time that I have felt a serious threat directed at me since all of this began. Last night, the new prime minster and vice president of Egypt gave speeches about the crisis. Both referred to ambiguous foreign elements that have played a role in exacerbating the crisis. This morning men attempted to take a friend of mine living in the wealthy island neighborhood of Zamalek to the police as he tried to cross the bridge into downtown on the way to Tahrir Square. Several hotels where journalists are staying have been broken into and ransacked by the pro-government thugs. It seems that anti-foreign feelings are beginning to be presented by more than just the thugs acting on orders from the government.
The mood in Cairo has shifted abruptly. The consensus among Egyptians supporting the movement for democratic reforms and the end of Mubarak’s regime has been weakened by the burdens of the struggle—no work and limited food. Mubarak’s small concessions seem to have placated the least resolved of the protesters. The government’s strategy to divide the people and sow uncertainty seems to be working. The joyous mood of Tuesday’s peaceful demonstrations has disappeared and in its place an angry suspicion of foreigners is creeping in. It is no longer safe for me to remain in Cairo as I had hoped. It seems that it was naive of me to expect that I would be able to in the first place.
Though I am no longer in Cairo, I travel with the people in Tahrir Square on my mind and close to my heart. There is nothing I can
Super Bowl XLV, The White House, The President, Bill O’Reilly: OK, I would be happy to be bipartisan for a few hours! Comments about O’Reilly’s 12 minute interview are very interesting … protocol … respect for the office. I personally think it should carry over into how he is treated in the media in general … not just in person.
And no, the guests won’t be grouped based on the team they’re rooting for. With a renewed Obama push for bipartisanship, I’m told “the whole point is to bring people together.”
Forget the regular refrain of, “Are you ready for some football?” When it comes to the showpiece game of the year, isn’t it all about the advertisements?
World Economic Forum, class issue, followup, bucket list: Davos seems like the perfect mix of people wanting to come together to do the right thing for the world. I guess there will always be a divide.
WAS this the year when class came to Davos? To many outsiders, the event reeks of privilege, but from the inside its spirit has long attempted to be egalitarian. The bespectacled figure clumping along in the snow in his ski jacket could on closer inspection turn out to be a billionaire, a green campaigner, central banker or a politician. Yet somehow each year the divisions grow. Ever more of the plutocrats seem to travel by limousine, rather than foot. (The telltale indicator of status remains footwear: the more impractical the shoe, the clearer it is that the owner has arrived by car). There seems to be more queue-jumping by the powerful. Security is the obvious excuse: police kept a herd of freezing people outside one hotel for close to half an hour on the pretext that a Russian politician (and his courtly motorcade) might, just might, appear.
Class is also part of the conversation this year, especially in the Anglo-Saxon business world. There is a growing realisation that the pain is disproportionately hitting the bottom of society, an acknowledgement that it is not going to change soon—and, perhaps more selfishly, a worry that it will result in a backlash of some sort. Thus British businesspeople, especially those with consumer businesses, fret what will happen when governments cuts begin to bite in northern towns where many households depend on the state (either through benefits or as an employer). But the biggest worry is in America.
FaceBook, novel uses, random: Modern day uses of technology … So next time you find something .. put it on FaceBook …
“TRYING to find the owner of a red Pentax camera I found on the corner of 34th and 7th Ave in NYC. With your help, I hope to find the camera owner and return this camera to him/her.”
Adelyn Zhou posted this message on her Facebook page on Thursday, January 27th, minutes after picking up a stray digital device in New York’s garment district. She added a selection of 13 snapshots from the camera, showing a hotel logo (but no name), a room number, the room’s interior, and a bunch of companions. Ms Zhou then tagged the photo album with some of her own friends, hoping someone might recognise something (or, less probably, somebody) that could help identify the owner.
Barely an hour later, her wall and message box were crammed with comments, suggestions—and the name of the hotel. An enterprising friend had discovered it through a Google map search of the garment district. Three hours on, the camera was back with its rightful owner, a grateful 16-year-old French tourist who was staying at the New Yorker Hotel, a stone’s throw away from where the camera had been found. (The tips kept coming for another few days—one amateur sleuth, for instance, accurately identified the hotel by its décor.)
In 2008, a website called IFoundYourCamera.net was set up in Winnipeg, Canada, with the express purpose of aiding similar searches. Honest finders of lost cameras post photos on the site, along with information on where and when it was found. About 30 cameras have been returned to their owners since the launch of the site, according to Matt Preprost, its founder. That is about 10% of the searches initiated on the site, which now gets thousands of visits each week.
The idea is noble, and clever, but it needs scale for the true potential of network effects to kick in. So, Ms Zhou plumped instead for Facebook which, with its 500m registered users, is more than just a social network. It is the world’s ultimate lost and found.
Feb. 6 marks the 100th birthday of the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Few political figures in recent memory have matched the Gipper’s charisma or enduring appeal. We look at other world leaders whose legacies have stood the test of time
twitter: There is a website that keeps list of the most popular tweets … tweet, tweet …
Most popular Tweets of the week (1 to 20) Ranking the 100 most replied and/or retweeted tweets this week, worldwide. To discourage “cheating”, this list is ordered by distinct users (i.e. 10 replies from the same user will count for 1, not for 10). Congratulations if one of your tweets made this Top 100 😉
csf, faith and spirituality: Can a corporation have and maintain a Christian purpose?
Considering Chick-fil-A’s conservative Christian mission, perhaps the most striking feature of the recent controversy is how unusual it is for the company. As the chain continues to grow, they may find it more difficult to avoid the culture war.
BofA, misleading headlines, banking, journalism: The headline of this story only mentions BofA … JPMorgan Chase & Co , Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo & Co are all co-defendants … others are still appealing … I think they should get credit for moving forward … this makes them look like the big bad wolf …
The largest U.S. bank by assets is among the more than two dozen U.S., Canadian and European lenders named as defendants in the class-action litigation, which in 2009 consolidated lawsuits filed across the country.
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) are among the other defendants named in the case, court records show.
Bank of America spokeswoman Anne Pace in an email said the bank has already changed its overdraft practices, eliminating fees for debit transactions and significantly lowering fees for customers who overdraw excessively.
She also said the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender has “fully accrued funds” to cover the settlement.
Faced with growing alarm about Islamic militants who have made Britain one of Europe’s most active bases for terrorist plots, Prime Minister David Cameron has mounted an attack on the country’s decades-old policy of “multiculturalism,” saying it has encouraged “segregated communities” where Islamic extremism can thrive.
Speaking at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Mr. Cameron condemned what he called the “hands-off tolerance” in Britain and other European nations that had encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups “to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream.”
Candlemas Day, Groundhog Day, worship: I’ll give it to the Episcopalians for making sure I know that Groundhog Day is a “strictly a secular holiday!”
FEAST OF THE PURIFICATION OF THE VIRGIN
CANDLEMAS DAY (FEB 2)
The events commemorated today are recorded in Luke 2:22-39.
Counting forward from December 25 as Day One, we find that Day Forty is February 2. A Jewish woman is in semi-seclusion for 40 days after giving birth to a son, and accordingly it is on February 2 that we celebrate the coming of Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus to the Temple at Jerusalem (1) to offer sacrifice on behalf of Mary to mark the end of her seclusion (see Le 12:1-8), and (2) to ransom or redeem (buy back) Jesus as a first-born male (see Ex 13:11-13; 22:29; Nu 18:15-16; Dt 15:19). As they did so, they were greeted by the aged Simeon. In a Sunday-School pageant, I once saw, the narrator said, “And now Simeon bursts into a spontaneous song of praise, assisted by the Temple Choir.” His song, called the Nunc Dimittis, has always had a prominent role in Christian worship. It has often been rendered in verse. I append one example.
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Because an old reading for this festival contains the line (Zephaniah 1:12), “I will search Jerusalem with candles,” the day is also known as Candlemas, and sometimes observed with a candle-lit procession. On the other hand, Groundhog Day (“If the groundhog (or woodchuck, a kind of marmot, which burrows and hibernates) sees his shadow on 2 February, there will be six more weeks of winter.”) is strictly a secular holiday, brought to the United States and Canada by German immigrants.
RIP, Willie B, childhood, Atlanta: Oh, I didn’t know … One of my favorite childhood memories was going to see Willie B. I even took my kids to see him in his new habitat in the 90s.
On this day in 2000, Willie B., Zoo Atlanta’s famous resident gorilla, passed away.
CU – Boulder, students, kith/kin: So now I know what Boulder students do after graduation!
The University of Colorado at Boulder is ranked the No. 1 school recruiting undergraduate students to serve in the Peace Corps. According to a CU news release, 117 students are serving around the world this year.
In the CU news release, Chancellor Philip DiStefano said he is glad CU is contributing to the global community.
“I am delighted that our emphasis on civic engagement as part of the learning experience at CU-Boulder has resulted in service-oriented graduates contributing to their global community,” DiStefano said in the news release. “Service learning and civically engaged graduates are a cornerstone of our Flagship 2030 strategic plan and it is gratifying for the university community to realize that our vision is becoming a reality.”
Super Bowl, sex trafficking, culture: Yesterday I posted a friend’s blogpost about the feasting aspect of the Super Bowl … I guess the fans feast in other ways, too.
While football fans are eagerly anticipating the Feb. 6 Super Bowl showdown in Dallas, some state officials are gearing up for the big game’s dark side: the surge in human trafficking that tends to accompany major sports and entertainment events. “What we’ve learned is that sexual trafficking, sexual exploitation of children in particular, is all about supply and demand,” says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. With more than 100,000 fans descending on Dallas, that demand is going to be great. There is a “looming potential explosion of human trafficking around the Super Bowl,” says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is expecting hundreds of girls and women to be brought to the area.
Past Super Bowls have borne this out. In the wake of 2009’s game in Tampa, Florida’s Department of Children and Families took in 24 children who’d been trafficked to the city for sex work. Given that Texas, according to Abbott, is second only to California when it comes to trafficking, the figures for Dallas could be even worse.
2012 Democratic National Convention, Charlotte, kudos: … “beautiful, energetic, innovative and diverse city we are building” – we have some work to do … “few singular events in the U.S. rival the domestic and worldwide media exposure of a major political convention: a presidential inauguration, a royal wedding, the Super Bowl and the Olympics.” … I am not so sure about that one …. But kudos nonetheless to my home city!
“We’re honored that the Democratic National Committee chose Charlotte to host its 2012 convention,” said Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx. “Thanks to the hard work and support of so many throughout our community, we have an unmatched opportunity to show the world what a beautiful, energetic, innovative and diverse city we are building in Charlotte. As we tell the story of Charlotte, and what a great place our city, state and region are to live and do business, we also will tell the story of America to our fellow citizens and our neighbors around the world.”
Duke Energy Corp. CEO Jim Rogers, who co-chairs the Charlotte In 2012 organizing committee with Mayor Foxx, added, “Charlotte’s selection clearly elevates our city to a new level in national and world stature. Only a few singular events in the U.S. rival the domestic and worldwide media exposure of a major political convention: a presidential inauguration, a royal wedding, the Super Bowl and the Olympics. The economic and reputational significance of being chosen for this honor cannot be overstated.”
Great Recession, consumers, superlatives, Wilmington NC: Thumbs down on this one Wilmington, NC:
Where are people most addicted to their plastic? Apparently it’s Wilmington, whose residents seem to love (or maybe just need) their credit cards more than anywhere else in the country.
That’s according to data from Equifax, one of the national companies that compiles credit reports on consumers. According to a just-released study from Equifax, people in Wilmington owe an average of 17.26 percent of their income to credit cards, more than any other U.S. city. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, or maybe it’s something in the water, but the seaside haven is also the hometown of two of the three N.C.-based banks that have failed during the financial crisis.
Great Recession, Financial Meltdown, BofA: Well I think Moynihan came out ok given the Bank’s performance.
It was a tough year for Bank of America, what with the foreclosure mess and a sagging stock price. Its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, nonetheless received $10 million in his first year on the job.
Mr. Moynihan will get a bonus of $9.05 million in the form of restricted stock, along with a base salary of $950,000, bringing his total pay to $10 million for 2010. In 2009, before Mr. Moynihan took over as chief executive, he received a total of $6.1 million in compensation.
Mr. Moynihan’s base salary did not go up, however, and he received no cash bonus, a reflection of Bank of America’s slow recovery from the financial crisis, when it received two bailouts from Washington totaling $45 billion. What is more, Mr. Moynihan will have to fulfill performance goals to earn the full $9.05 million.
Other top officers of the company did receive a cash bonus of $900,000, but it will be paid in monthly installments and is tied to the stock price.
“All of the year-end compensation was deferred and tied to some measure of stockholder value,” said Bob Stickler, a spokesman for the company.
Wilmot Greene sat among charred remains of his iconic Georgia Theatre recalling the fire that reduced it from an alternative rock icon to rusted steel girders and walls of black bricks.
A year after an unexplained fire gutted the century-old musical cradle of bands such as R.E.M., the B-52s, Indigo Girls and Widespread Panic, Greene still kicks himself for missing Rockinwood play the last show before the fire. He says he’d missed only about 20 shows since buying the place in ’04.
green, Great Recovery, history, recycling: Actually recycling a town …
And that’s just the start. Sempra has big designs on being a major player in the green energy game. But as the wind whips through my hair and I study the immense emptiness all around, I can’t help but ask, “Why is this such a good location for such a thing?”
“First, there is a lot of available, flat land,” Crider says. “Second, it is incredibly sunny. This region gets about 330 days of sunshine per year. And third, there’s existing transmission lines which provide access to major markets throughout the western United States.”
Which, as is so often the case, raises another question: Why are those lines way out here?
To find that answer, you have to drive 20 minutes to struggling Boulder City, population about 16,000. The town is uniquely poised to cash in on the new energy boom precisely because it was built on old energy technology; during another time when the economy and energy collided; when thousands of jobless men came here during the Great Depression to undertake an unprecedented power-generating project.
“This town is here because it was a federal reservation to build Hoover Dam.”
globalization, poverty, social responsibility, solutions: “Some 1.6 billion people around the world lack reliable access to electricity.”
The first decades of the 21st century will be remembered as the ones in which the world finally began to grapple with global development. The likes of Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono — TIME’s Persons of the Year in 2005 — have channeled funds to fighting malaria, TB and HIV, while supporting agriculture, infrastructure and even governance. But there’s one obstacle to development that has too often been forgotten, a blind spot that does more than almost anything to keep the poor poor: they don’t have electric power.
Some 1.6 billion people around the world lack reliable access to electricity. That means they don’t have electric lights for students to study by at night. They can’t easily charge cell phones — assuming they even have them — which means they can’t easily create markets or sell goods. Without regular power, their hospitals are severely limited — after all, you can’t even keep vaccines cold without a refrigerator. Agriculture is essentially peasantry if farmers lack powered machinery. As long as those hundreds of millions remain in the dark, they will remain poor — yet solving energy poverty isn’t even one of the U.N.’s ambitious Millennium Development Goals.
art, google street view, art galleries: I still would rather travel there, but I think this is a great idea. YouTube – Art Project – Preview.
Now that Google has conquered a majority of the earth’s major streets with its Google Street View project, the company is starting to move inside. It’s creating the Google Art Project, a virtual equivalent of 17 major art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Britain and the National Gallery in London, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, among many others.
Hosni Mubarak: The Last Pharaoh – Photo Gallery – LIFE.
Egypt Uprising, media, twitter:
With Egypt’s last remaining internet service provider taken offline, the country’s citizens have resorted to old school telephone technology to establish limited connections to the outside world.
Several internet service providers outside of Egypt have established dial-up phone numbers that can be used for pokey-yet-usable connections like the ones that have slowly died out in many developed countries as broadband internet becomes more prevalent and less expensive.
And Google and Twitter teamed up to build a speak-to-tweet service that allows people inside Egypt to call one of three international phone numbers and leave a voicemail that’ll be transcribed and sent out over Twitter. The messages themselves can be heard at the Speak To Tweet Twitter page.
Hilliard said that although classes at the American University have not begun, four students are currently in Cairo awaiting the start of their semester. Three students will be leaving Cairo, while one is still deciding.
“We expect three of those students will return home within the next 24-36 hours, and to be in a safe location in Europe within the next 12-24 hours,” Hilliard said. “The fourth student is thinking over the option of staying or going, and has not made the decision yet.”
Google’s head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa has been missing in Egypt since last week, according to multiple news outlets.
Wael Ghonim, who has headed the company’s marketing in the region since January 2010 , has not been seen for several days as protests continue to swell in Egypt, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Times reports that Ghonim was a guest speaker at an Al Jazeera forum in Januray and that the news agency had been contacted by Ghonim’s family and friends.
“His wife is appealing for any information on his whereabouts,” said an Al Jazeera blog post on its English website.
Google declined to confirm to the Times if Ghonim was in fact missing. A spokeswoman told the newspaper: “We care deeply about the safety of our employees, but to protect their privacy, we don’t comment on the individually.”
Coca-Cola Co. closed its Cairo office starting Sunday. The office “will not reopen until security in the city improves,’’ said Kenth Kaerhoeg, a spokesman for the big beverage business in Atlanta. “The safety of our employees is our primary concern and we are taking all necessary measures to ensure everyone’s safety.”
Mr. Kaerhoeg declined to offer any details about possible evacuations or the exact number of Coke staffers in Egypt. An Egyptian bottler operating as its local franchisee owns eight bottling plants there.
Egyptian operations of food giant Nestle SA “have been temporarily interrupted due to ongoing political unrest across the country,’’ said Nina Backes, a spokeswoman for the owner of brands such as KitKat, Gerber baby food and Nescafe coffee. “The company is currently evacuating the families of around 20 expatriates,’’ she added.
Ms. Backes said its three Egyptian factories “have temporarily been shut down.’’ She declined to say how family members are being evacuated – nor whether Nestle might also evacuate expatriates. “We continue to monitor the situation closely,’’ she added.
Nestle’s Egypt unit has three factories and 3,000 employees. It began factory operations there in 1988. Nestle, based in Vevey, Switzerland, is the world’s largest food company by sales.
Unrest in Egypt also is affecting U.S. companies without permanent offices there. An Occidental Petroleum Corp. spokesman said ten professionals on a temporary Egyptian assignment cut short their stay and left Cairo Sunday on chartered aircraft arranged by the company without difficulty. “They left sooner than anticipated,’’ he continued.
He declined to disclose why the Oxy Pete staffers went to Egypt several weeks ago. “There was no definitive time frame” for their abbreviated business trip, the spokesman said.
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad may face mass protests this weekend from opposition groups.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Syrian opposition groups are organizing protests against the government
The calls are the latest call for demonstrations in the wake of Tunisian protests
Those protests helped topple the Tunisian government and spark widespread unrest in Egypt
(CNN) — What began as a popular uprising that toppled the Tunisian government before spreading into Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan and, of course, Egypt, may now be headed for Syria.
Opposition movements in Syria are calling for mass protests on Saturday against the rule of President Bashar Al-Assad.
The groups are organizing on Facebook, with several pages promoting protests in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities.
Protest organizers want better living standards, human rights improvements and a greater voice for youth, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based organization that studies and translates news accounts and social-media postings.
It’s unclear how many people might join the protests. A few thousand people had expressed their support for the movement on the Facebook pages, some of them undoubtedly from outside the country, the research institute said.
It’s 11:30 on Tuesday morning and the dusty office space around Adil is buzzing with the idealism of two-dozen young professionals, many of them juggling four cell phones at once. They’re lawyers, accountants and web designers. They wear jeans and flip flops, colorful headscarves, and the black and white checkered keffiyahs associated with the Palestinian intifadeh. Today they are among the country’s core activists who shoulder the responsibility for the largest Egyptian uprising in more than 50 years.
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Welcome to the nerve center of the Arab world’s latest rebels. The 6th of April is one of several youth activist groups who have helped to bring the nearly three decade regime of President Hosni Mubarak to its knees. It was formed in the wake of a massive labor strike on the 6th of April 2008, becoming since then the group that made Egyptians under 30 a force to be reckoned with.
art, Davidson, Davidson College, Herb Jackson, art galleries, NYC, kudos: Kudos to Herb Jackson!
Riding the Phoenix by Herb Jackson
In case you have your snow boots ready and are traveling to NYC, be sure to plan your trip for mid-February to catch Herb Jackson’s art exhibit at the Claire Oliver Gallery on 513 West 26th Street (just off 10th Avenue). The opening will be Thursday, Feb. 17, from 6-8 p.m. at the gallery. For a digital preview of Herb’s paintings, access http://www.claireoliver.com and select the heading “upcoming” before clicking on his exhibition. Congratulations, Herb, on your continued artistic success.
For more than 25 years, De Vany has been an advocate of what he calls “evolutionary fitness”: a regimen of low-carb eating and interval- or cross-training workouts (with periodic fasting) aimed at controlling insulin. But he has also become the grandfather of the growing Paleo movement, a health philosophy built around the belief that modern life — dating from the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago — is simply alien to our genes. Believers say that only by returning to a diet of wild game and fresh produce, eliminating grains and dairy, and exercising in short, intense bursts, can we thrive in a world of escalators and cheese fries.
media, twitter: I follow quite a few magazines and newspapers on twitter (where do you think I get my clips?), so I am very disappointed that the most followed is People magazine.
There are eight magazine brands with more than a million followers, and 14 with more than half a million, while the newspaper industry has just two: the New York Times (2,882,697) and Wall Street Journal (618,751). Inspired by a survey done by The Wrap last fall, we decided to take an updated look at the magazines with the most Twitter followers.
The following list of most followed magazines was culled at the end of January (follower counts were taken on Jan. 31). For about 50 titles, the follower counts were compared to a similar count conducted in October, to see how their counts grew over the last three months. Among the top 25, Rolling Stone (#25) and The New Yorker (#14) both grew about 30 percent in terms of followers, while the Economist (26 percent) was not too far behind.
health, obesity: You would think we could solve this one …
Obesity drugs are dead. Orexigen Therapeutics(OREX_) is done. Arena Pharmaceuticals(ARNA_) is a corpse. Vivus(VVUS_) is in an irreversible coma, waiting for someone to pull the plug.
The only silver lining from Tuesday’s outright and devastating rejection of Orexigen’s obesity drug Contrave is that investors need not waste time or money any longer speculating on which of these three companies will be the first to get their drug approved. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has made it crystal clear that it has serious problems with the entire obesity drug field and that none of these drugs — Contrave, lorcaserin or Qnexa — have weight-loss benefits that justify the safety risks.
blogposts, favorites, Super Bowl, faith and Spirituality, gLee: I loved this one by my dear friend Cary! I love how she can relate worldly events to faith and make sense of the two.
However, I am a little more superficial, OK a lot more superficial. I want to know what shrewd FOX executive made the decision to run the first new 2011 episode of gLee (whose fans probably could care less about the Super Bowl) “after” the Super Bowl?
Sometimes a Super Bowl party is just a Super Bowl party. Eat, drink and be merry. But sometimes a Super Bowl party is a pale imitation of the greater party we are invited to, in union with God.
What will Super Bowl parties look like in heaven? I imagine there will be cheese.
quotes, bakeries, Charlotte, history: Qu’ils mangent de la brioche … Well if you have to eat cake … try cannoli cake from Suarez Bakery – Home (thank you Trobs) or cupcakes from The Blushing Bakeshop – Home (thank you Dan) .. both were excellent on my day.
And now for a history lesson from Wikipedia …
This article is about the phrase commonly misattributed to Marie Antoinette. For other uses, see Let them eat cake (disambiguation).
“Let them eat cake” is the traditional translation of the French phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, supposedly spoken by “a great princess” upon learning that the peasants had no bread. As brioche is a luxury bread enriched with eggs and butter, it would reflect the princess’s obliviousness to the nature of a famine.
Although they are commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette,[1] there is no record of these words ever having been uttered by her. They appear in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, his putative autobiographical work (completed in 1769, when Marie Antoinette was 13), where he wrote the following in Book 6:
Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d’une grande princesse à qui l’on disait que les paysans n’avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit : Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.
Finally I recalled the last retort of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: “Let them eat brioche.”
Rousseau does not name the “great princess” and there is speculation that he invented the anecdote, which has no other sources.[2]
kudos, Mal Murray, Habitat for Humanity, Davidson, community service, kith/kin: Kudos to Mal Murray, a very special friend to my family. He has served Habitat for many years.
Mal Murray received Habitat for Humanity International’s 2010 Clive Rainey Lifetime Achievement Award for his efforts to help make simple, decent, affordable housing possible in partnership with low-income families. Meanwhile, Our Towns Habitat for Humanity received a $2,500 grant recently from Charlotte-area Realtors
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Each year, Habitat for Humanity International recognizes four volunteers in the United States with the Clive Rainey Lifetime Achievement Award. Award winners act as builders, fundraisers, advocates and more to further Habitat’s mission of eliminating poverty housing.
followup, birthdays, kith/kin: My whole kith/kin family gets kudos for making me feel special …
John planned a wonderful gathering with very special friends and my favorite comfort food … pork chops …
Jack called and talked a long time … even recommended a book … The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist … anybody read it?
ET does not often remember things like his mother’s birthday … I woke up to this IM “Happy birthday on my time zone haha sorry if I woke you up” 2:00 am. Well, 2 am EST is midnight MT … He timed it exactly right … I smiled all day thinking about that.
Molly made me a divine chocolate/coffee infused cake with cream cheese icing AND gave me the most adorable pair of bright yellow plastic J Crew shoes and party headband (my tiara) … made me feel young!
And all my extended family called or sent me notes.
I am blessed … thank you, thank you …
bookshelf, spirituality and faith, kith/kin: As i mentioned above, Jack, my son who is an anthropology major, recommended this book. Anybody read it? It will be interesting to me to watch his spirituality/faith walk as he relates his major to his faith.
“Esteemed primatologist de Waal strikes another blow against human uniqueness as he asserts that other animals also possess culture.” — –Science News [3/10/01]
blogposts, favorites, Tolostoy, writers, lists: Interesting list of Tolstoy included in Gretchen Rubin‘s post. I like her question … What are your rules?
In Henri Troyat’s biography, Tolstoy, which I haven’t been able to finish yet, because I find Tolstoy so maddening, Troyat includes an excerpt from Tolstoy’s “Rules of Life” (I’m still trying to get my hands on the whole list). Tolstoy wrote these rules when he was eighteen years old:
Get up early (five o’clock)
Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock)
Eat little and avoid sweets
Try to do everything by yourself
Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for evry minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater
Keep away from women
Kill desire by work
Be good, but try to let no one know it
Always live less expensively than you might
Change nothing in your style of living even if you become ten times richer
Apart from the specifics of this particular list, I’m always interested to see when great minds take this approach. Taking the time to write your resolutions, or your personal manifesto, is an endeavor that can help us be more aware of the elements of a happy life. Everyone’s list of rules would be different; certainly Tolstoy’s list reflects him.
literature, southern literature, Elizabeth Musser, Atlanta: I am a little miffed they left out our own Elizabeth Goldsmith Musser … given the setting for the photo shoot. Do you think it is because of the genre she writes .. Christian historical fiction …
Is there a book club in America that hasn’t yet thrilled to The Help? Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel has lasted some 22 months on the New York Times hardcover fiction list—and will soon be a DreamWorks movie. “Kitty” Stockett far right, in fact, is leading a new wave of southern female writers who might look like belles but who write fearlessly about the region’s troubled legacies of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Typically, these women left the South in their 20s, heading for New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. But in time they came home. And they’re now turning Atlanta into the most vibrant new literary scene outside of Brooklyn.
LOL, random, products, design, Daniel Pink: Saw this in the Petco flyer last week … maybe it is just me but I think it is LOL hysterical. But really it is just a ball … with a design element to humor the humans. So would you pay $12 for the equivalent of a used tennis ball to the dog? I wonder if this product meets Daniel Pink’s definition of elegant design? If you don’t know about Daniel Pink … check out the blog post about him which contains an interview.
technology, culture, Jane Austen, bookshelf: Another book that will be getting a great deal of commentary!
What I’m against is a kind of technological promiscuity, where that technology, so perfect in that [Abu Dhabi] circumstance, is the technology you think is perfect for people to bring into a board meeting, when they need to be working on a problem together. In that case it’s not the technology of choice. They’re not physically present with the people they need to bond with and deeply connect with, and need to make very consequential decisions with. I hate the metaphor of addiction: it implies we have to get it away, give it away, wean off. This is great stuff. It’s not heroin. It’s just something we need to learn to use when most appropriate, powerful, and in our best interest.
…
You mention how when people see the little red light on their BlackBerry, indicating a message has arrived, they feel utterly compelled to grab it. Do you personally experience that compulsion?
I recognize it with my email. Somebody said of email, “It’s the place for hope in life.” It reminds me of how in Jane Austen, carriages are always coming, you’re waiting, it could be Mr. Bingley’s invitation to a ball. There’s some sense that the post is always arriving in Jane Austen. There’s something about email that carries the sense that that’s where the good news will come. I did a hysterical interview with an accountant about why he felt so strongly about his texts. He said he might get a Genius award! I said, “I don’t think they give those to accountants.” And he said, “But you know what I mean.” He was trying to express that anything could happen on email. Anything could happen! I try to figure out what it is that this little red light means to people. I think it’s that place for hope and change and the new, and what can be different, and how things can be what they’re not now. And I think we all want that.
women, politics, stereotypes: A strong American woman is stereotyped a cowgirl … interesting article.
America has no tales of Amazons or of Atalanta; our national narrative does not chronicle the defeat of an armada by a virgin queen nor a teenage Joan leading her army into battle. American history includes no Cleopatras or Hatshepsuts; no Trung Sisters, who defended Vietnam from the Chinese in the first century; and no Catherines, great or otherwise. The mythos of our founding revolves entirely around fathers, save for the seamstress Betsy Ross and the querulous spouse Abigail Adams.
What we do have, to serve as the foundational fantasy of female strength and individualism we’ve agreed upon as embodying American power, are cowgirls: Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, the outlaws, frontier women and pioneers who pushed West, shot sharp, talked tough and sometimes drew blood. Frontier womanhood has emerged as one of the only historically American models of aspirational femininity available to girls — passive princesses and graceful ballerinas not being native to this land — and one of the only blueprints for commanding female comportment in which they are regularly encouraged to invest or to mimic.
blogposts, economy, Great Recession, future, quotes, Mark Twain: Again, my favorite Presbyterian minister blogger takes two articles I noted and pulls them together to say what I wish I had said … I wish I had his quick mind! And of course he quotes my favorite … Mark Twain. Thanks, Jim
Mark Twain said it best:
Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
Religious people know this to be true. I am not referring to resurrection (a dimension of Christian faith, for sure) but to religious belief as a general phenomenon. Belief is a dynamic reality. It impacts attitude, instills confidence, generates hope, impels certain actions. Of these there is not a lot of confidence and hope to be found in the usual portrait of our country’s health these days. If you believe we are dying, die we will. The truth is very different though.
The USA remains a genuine heavyweight. Time to start fighting like one. Fighting, that is, not with anyone, but against despair and resignation.
blogpost, media, religion, prayers: So my other favorite Presbyterian minister blogger … the younger … nails this one in my opinion. I will use his prayer this week! Thanks, Marthame!
There are those who say that the church is in the midst of a historical moment unlike any since the Protestant Reformation. And just as the “new media” of the printing press made Martin Luther possible, our world is being changed daily by new technologies and new ways of communicating. Is it time for the church to, dare I say, “change”?
In some ways, we have been standing by the shore, doing what our ancestors have taught us, faithfully tossing our nets into the sea, pulling in a catch, and doing it all over again. And as uprooting as it might be, maybe we need to listen for that voice of Jesus telling us to leave all that behind.
NYC, change, travel: Maybe I better get there soon!
CBGB, the birthplace of punk rock, is gone. No longer can visitors to Coney Island plunk down a few coins to play the unsettling attraction called “Shoot the Freak.” And seedy, edgy, anything-might-happen Times Square? These days, it’s all but childproof.It continues: That diner on the corner for decades — closed. The beer garden down the street — now a Starbucks. The block once home to clusters of independent businesses — thriving as a big-box store.
And last month, another piece of the old New York slipped away with the demise of the city’s Off-Track Betting parlors. It’s enough to make old-school New Yorkers bristle.
Around countless corners, the weird, unexpected, edgy, grimy New York — the town that so many looked to for so long as a relief from cookie-cutter America — has evolved into something else entirely: tamed, prepackaged, even predictable.
“What draws people to New York is its uniqueness. So when something goes, people feel sad about it,” says Suzanne Wasserman, director of the Gotham Center for New York City History at the City University of New York.
“I think that’s also part of the New York character,” she says, “that ‘Things were better when …'”
Change is constant, and few cities change faster than New York. But at what cost? Where is the line between progress and lost distinctiveness?
gardens: I friend told me about this. I am putting it on my 2011 calendar for November! Thanks, Maxwell for the idea.
Begin with a container. Plant an array of bulbs in layers now, and flowers will appear at intervals throughout spring. Think of the tiny irises as appetizers to the season, followed by the grape hyacinths. Next, delight in miniature narcissus. Build up to a feast of large daffodils. Then, as the icing on the cake, finish with a topping of violas that bloom from fall through late spring. The best part is that prep time takes less than 30 minutes.
Norwich England, Great Britain, sense of place, travel, bucket list: OK, so I loved Norwich from this article. It seems to have a real sense of place. I am adding it to my list. How could you not be intriqued by a place described as a book lovers/writers paradise and this ““I love the emptiness and the atmosphere,” he said. “The scenery is quite unique. There is that feeling of being in a lost corner.””
Norwich, a two-hour train ride northeast from London, has increasingly become a refuge for writers fleeing the hectic pace of the capital’s publishing scene. At first glance it appears to be just another charming medieval town, with a fantastically preserved castle and a 900-year-old cathedral. But look a little deeper and you’ll notice the wellspring of author readings and literary festivals, featuring recent talks by Booker Prize winners like John Banville and Penelope Lively.
The comfy cafes within the town’s narrow old lanes are full of aspiring writers pecking away at laptops, dreaming of becoming the next Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro, both of whom got their start here at the University of East Anglia’s esteemed creative writing master’s program.
Mr. Ishiguro was so struck by Norwich and its surrounding county that he used it as inspiration for his 2005 novel “Never Let Me Go” (though the book was actually set in East Sussex, the 2010 movie adaptation was largely filmed in Norfolk County, home to Norwich). “I love the emptiness and the atmosphere,” he said. “The scenery is quite unique. There is that feeling of being in a lost corner.”
green: I knew it was coming. Duke Power is giving customers a dozen bulbs for free. I am interested to see if they really cut my bill.
The brightest bulb in most homes for more than a century is fading toward darkness this year as California turns out the light on the century-old incandescent.
Beginning Jan. 1, the state began phasing out certain energy-sucking bulbs, federal standards the rest of the country will enact next year.
Manufacturers will no longer make the traditional 100-watt bulb and stores will eventually sell out of current supplies. Consumers will have to choose from more efficient bulbs that use no more than 72 watts, including halogen incandescents, compact fluorescents and light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs.
“These standards will help cut our nation’s electric bill by over $10 billion a year and will save the equivalent electricity as 30 large power plants,” said Noah Horowitz a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That translates into a whole lot less global warming pollution being emitted.”
The change is part of the federal Energy Independence and Security Act that President George Bush signed in 2007, to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. California was allowed to adopt the national standard one year earlier.
branding, advertising, Starbucks: just interesting …
The rise of the affluent society has left people with lots of time and talent to spare, Mr Shirky argues. For decades they squandered this cognitive surplus watching television. Today, thanks to the internet, they can also channel it into more productive pursuits.
For a surprising number of people these productive pursuits involve worrying about companies’ logos. Howard Schultz, the boss of Starbucks, recently announced that his company would mark its 40th anniversary this March by changing its logo a bit. The words “Starbucks” and “coffee” will disappear. And the mermaid, or siren, will be freed from her circle.
Starbucks wants to join the small club of companies that are so recognisable they can rely on nothing but a symbol: Nike and its swoosh; McDonald’s and its golden arches; Playboy and its bunny; Apple and its apple. The danger is that it will join the much larger class of companies that have tried to change their logos only to be forced to backtrack by an electronic lynch mob.
quotes, Reynolds Price, RIP: Given his recent death, I think a quote from Reynolds Price is appropriate.
“… what I still ask for daily – for life as long as I have work to do, and work as long as I have life.” — Reynolds Price, A Whole New Life
In A Whole New Life, however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate and compelling as any work of the imagination. In 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord (“The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward”). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life. Beyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here — a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer’s much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means all) doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the “now appalling, now astonishing grace of God.” A Whole New Life offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.
green, design, wildlife: Special provisions for the bears cougars, bobcats, elk and deer …
At a picturesque spot in the mountains near the ski resorts of Vail and Breckenridge, Colo., two streams of traffic converge: people driving east and west on Interstate 70, and animals — black bears, cougars, bobcats, elk and deer — headed north and south to feed and mate. When they collide, the animal is almost always killed and the vehicle badly damaged, even if the driver is lucky enough to escape injury.
The obvious solution is a bridge or a tunnel for the animals, but how do you build one they will use?
politics, GA politics, David Ralston-GA House Speaker, really stupid: Since I often comment on the really stupid things we do in our youth, why is it that our politicians are the next group of people who do really stupid things?
House Speaker David Ralston and his family spent part of Thanksgiving week in Europe on a $17,000 economic development mission paid for by lobbyists interested in building a high-speed train line between Atlanta and Chattanooga.
Commonwealth Research Associates, a D.C.-based consulting firm, paid for the trip, which also included Ralston’s chief of staff Spiro Amburn and his spouse, to Germany and the Netherlands the week of Nov. 21-27, according to records filed with the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, formerly known as the State Ethics Commission.
The trip was the most expensive single expenditure reported by a lobbyist since at least 2005.
Justice Antonin Scalia, The Supreme Court, Separation of Powers: Haven’t decided what I think of this other than I would like to be there. Do you have an opinion? Is this appropriate for a Supreme Court Justice?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, described just last week by a Washington law professor as “the first real celebrity justice” for his controversial public pronouncements, will come to Capitol Hill on Monday to lecture about constitutional law to some earnest members of the House of Representatives. He was invited to do so by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican and tea party activist in Congress, as part of her effort to educate lawmakers about the nation’s founding legal documents.
Although Justice Scalia has been criticized in some quarters for accepting the invitation, it is not unreasonable of him to consider the opportunity to speak face-to-face with his interbranch partners as a rare and welcome one. And although many observers see the effort as a partisan ploy between and among conservative ideologues, there are plenty of nonpartisan things Professor Scalia can lecture about. For example:
South Africa: 11 official languages is very difficult … interesting to watch how this is resolved.
UNDER the 1996 constitution, all 11 of South Africa’s official languages “must enjoy parity of esteem and be treated equitably”. In practice English, the mother tongue of just 8% of the people, increasingly dominates all the others. Its hegemony may even threaten the long-term survival of the country’s African languages, spoken as the mother tongue of 80% of South Africans, despite the government’s repeated promises to promote and protect indigenous languages and culture.
Under apartheid, there were just two official languages, English and Afrikaans, a variant of Dutch with a dash of French, German, Khoisan (spoken by so-called Bushmen and Hottentots), Malay and Portuguese. Pre-colonial African languages were relegated to the black townships and tribal “homelands”. Even there, English was often chosen as the medium of education in preference to the inhabitants’ mother tongues. Black South Africans increasingly rejected Afrikaans as the language of the main oppressor; English was a symbol of advancement and prestige.
Today, 16 years after the advent of black-majority rule, English reigns supreme. Not only is it the medium of business, finance, science and the internet, but also of government, education, broadcasting, the press, advertising, street signs, consumer products and the music industry. For such things Afrikaans is also occasionally used, especially in the Western Cape province, but almost never an African tongue. The country’s Zulu-speaking president, Jacob Zuma, makes all his speeches in English. Parliamentary debates are in English. Even the instructions on bottles of prescription drugs come only in English or Afrikaans.
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice, theater, Davidson, review, kudos: I attended Davidson’s production of P&P last night. It was fun, but not great. The staging was very good … 50 scene changes … and they flowed. The acting was good, but loud (were they not used to the mics in the larger theater? … I know the story by heart and the dialogue, too … Some men in the audience laughed at the wrong points … they obviously were not used to the subtlety of her dialogue … sorry, men. Kudos to Tatum P. who was a charming Mrs. Reynolds.
The Davidson College Theatre Department will present one of its most ambitious efforts ever in producing the North Carolina premier of one of literature’s most popular love stories October 27-31.
The college’s presentation of Jane Austen’s beloved 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice, will be the state premier of a 2009 adaptation of the play by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan originally produced at Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
Professor of Theatre Ann Marie Costa, who directs the production, has assembled an “A Team” of area theatre professionals and a large student cast to reinforce the script with an energetic, rich production that highlights the humor and complexity of Austen’s characters. She said the new adaptation will especially appeal to Jane Austen fans because it maintains much of the actual dialogue of the novel.
…
DiFiore said the Davidson production should be highly entertaining for the audience as a “solid, full production.” It will include large ball scenes, dynamic lighting, elaborate costumes, music, and many scene changes.
Music provides almost constant accompaniment for the play, with theme music for lead characters and multiple instruments playing in large ballroom scenes. Davidson College music faculty member Cynthia Lawing played the piano parts on a modern instrument, and Bill Lawing, another music faculty member, converted it electronically to mimic the sound of a piano forte, the instrument played in Austen’s time. Sam Van Hallgren, a producer with WDAV, created the overall sound design for the play.
Charlotte-based costume designers Bob Croghan and Heidi O’Hare are creating period costumes from scratch for female characters, and Davidson College set designer Josh Peklo has built two major automated platforms that will support outdoor and indoor worlds for 50 scene changes. Delia Neil of UNC Charlotte is choreographing English country dance scenes, and Todd Wren has designed the lighting.
quote, politics: From my brother-in-law Gary — “Regarding the President being referred to as Dude by Jon Stewart the other night on Comedy Channel “news”, let us respectfully remember that there is only one “Dude”!”
“Let me explain something to you. I am not Mr. Lebowski. You’re Mr.
Lebowski. I’m the Dude. So, that’s what you call me. You know, that, or
his dudeness, or duder, or el duderino, if you’re not into the whole
brevity thing.” – Jeff Bridges, from “The Big Lebowski,” 1998
restaurants, Charlotte: actually Belmont … The String Bean is about 30 minutes from my house … worth the drive … I had a pimento cheese sandwich with fries fried in duck fat. Both were very good. Trobs had the Cuban and the Reuben (I think) … W will go again!
The String Bean Fresh Market and Deli is an experience. There’s nothing like it in the area. We feature a creative menu with daily specials that go far beyond your typical “Deli”. Our collection of 200 beers and 400 wines is sure to quench your thirst. The Market Place boasts never frozen fish and meats…cut to your liking
food, I’d walk a mile for a …, facebook: My review of The String Bean … see above … brought on a fb discussion of french fries … what are your favorites … good enough that you would go out of your way to get them again?
C: We went to Dandelion Market (Charlotte) partially because they had duck fat fries on the menu, but they had taken them off. Bummer. About a half block from Caroline’s apartment in New York is the David Burke restaurant in Bloomingdale’s. …
Dennard: If you are in Boulder’s Larkburger has trufle oil and parmesan fries which are amazing …
random, culture, blogposts: A grew up with being told woman of a certain age should not have long hair … so I enjoyed this post.
Hey! I missed all the fun! Wouldn’t you know it–the one time I write something that goes viral, I go missing in Utah, without a laptop. I’ve come home from the excellent Utah Humanities Council Festival, only to find my piece in The New York Times about having long hair at 55 jammed with comments, more than 1200 so far. I’m told they will soon close out the commentary section as the people who monitor it must move on to other subjects. I cannot wait to catch up on them, to see what nerve that hit. Mothers and daughters? Middle age? Graying hair? And here is a link for readers of Slow Love Life who missed the Times. The picture here is of my braid, which Theo took last summer; you can tell that I’m not so good at braiding. The picture in the Times is no one I know–but reminds me of a young Joni Mitchell, yes?
media, ebooks, technology, business models: If I were a writer, I would try to figure this one out … $80,000 for short fiction.
In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, King revealed how much he earned on the story. While aspiring novelists can’t imagine eBook sales figures, it does reveal an audience hungry for digital reading.
Here’s more from King’s interview: “I didn’t do ‘Ur’ for money. I did it because it was interesting. I’m fairly prolific. It took three days, and I’ve made about $80,000. You can’t get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It’s ridiculous.”
me, kith/kin, places, Atlanta: As a child I visited the Swan House because it was the home of the grandmother of my kith uncle. I loved the foyer … but I vaguely remember something about not walking on the black tiles … funny what you remember …
A fan wanted to confirm that Mrs. Inman would ask people to only walk on certain tiles in Swan House. The story is true. She asked family and house workers to walk on the white tiles because the black tiles scuffed easily.
In one unexpected result of the scandal, the women’s movement was considerably strengthened. In the 1992 election that followed, voters who watched a circle of white men act like bozos elected more women to Congress than ever before. In the spirit of silver linings, maybe in this election cycle, another unintended result of Mrs. Thomas’ phone call will be a closer look at judicial conflicts of interest.
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