2013 NCAA Tournament, college basketball, Louisville Cardinals, Kevin Ware, Luke Hancock, Rick Patino, tattoo, Spike Albrecht, Pat Forde, Yahoo! Sports: My husband came in dead tired from a business trip and although he is a native Louisvillian, he fell asleep … so I was left to watch on my own. I did love this pre-game prayer … LOL. Little did I know how much they were going to need it!
One thing I truly enjoy about modern technology is watching on a big tv and following on twitter and social media. As the game was played I was amazed at the silence among my friends .. and said on FB: my, my … basketball fans are very quiet. Wolverine got the birdie’s tongue? … more silence. But Louisville got the last TWEET!
Pat Forde nailed it in his followup article …
Not far away was Hancock, watching the video after scoring 42 points in two games in a brilliant display of clutch shooting. When Michigan raced to a 12-point first-half lead on the strength of little-known freshman Spike Albrecht’s stunning 17 points, Hancock provided the emphatic answer. He scored 14 points in 2 minutes and 33 seconds, stroking four 3-pointers in a dazzling eruption, and signaling that the Wolverines were not going to get away from Louisville.
Hancock’s gravely ill father, Bill, was watching from the front row behind the Louisville bench – the first games he’s been able to attend this NCAA tournament. What Luke did to calm Kevin Ware in Indy, he did to inspire his dad here. When it was over, Hancock went to his frail, 70-year-old father and repeated the question he asked him Saturday night, “How was that?”
It was good. Storybook good.
“I kind of feel like this pushed him,” Ware said of Hancock. “Going out there and playing for his dad.”
I’ve commented that I am Not a fan of Patino … but very impressed with his team. I look on him more favorably after this article … He’s human. And I can’t wait to see the tattoo!
Postgame, there was a bit of everything. There were moments of silliness and joy, such as Pitino laughing about how he was going to live up to a deal he made with his players about getting a tattoo if they won the national title. With an 82-76 victory over Michigan accomplished, his fate was sealed.
Sixty years old and for decades the most polished and properly presented coach in America, one who never let a thread of an Armani get frayed, Pitino was going to get inked up. “He would’ve killed us if we had gotten a tattoo,” his son Richard said before shaking his head at the thought of his dad, of all people, with art.
travel, Thanksgiving, Facebook: On the way … Sleep you traveling masses … Just for a bit …Traveling Along 74 … Sun At Our Backs … Hello, Asheville! A little rainy on your side of the mountains …. — at I-26 W … Shout out to Pidgeon Forge … Man you guys got rain this morning! — in Gatlinburg, TN … Whew… Made it through the “BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS” zone near Sieverville .. — at I-40E Tennessee … Hello, Knoxville. Hello, Brantleys — at I 75N … We are almost to Lexington … Goal is to get to Louisville before I – 64 gets bottled up…. Made it to KY … and the Thanksgiving Exodus has started … Shout out to Lexington KY and the Whites! — at I-75 Near Lexington KY. … Almost to Louisville … Shout out to the Bodes … [my FB posts as we traveled :)]
Thanksgiving: Stay Calm …
Thanksgiving, Goggle doodle: Gobble … Gobble
Davidson College, teaching initiative: Interesting story involving Davidson prof and students.
Longtime science blog readers will certainly remember the popular cognitive psychology blog Cognitive Daily, written by Greta and Dave Munger, that had a fantastic five-year run at Scienceblogs. While Dave is still involved in the science blogging community through projects like Research Blogging and Science Seeker, and of course writing his own blogs, Greta has been pushing forward with online science communication in a slightly different way: working with her undergraduate psychology students at Davidson College in updating and improving psychology-related entries on Wikipedia.
Greta’s project is part of a larger effort spearheaded by the Association for Psychological Science, called the APS Wikipedia Initiative:
APS is calling on its Members to support the Association’s mission to deploy the power of Wikipedia to represent scientific psychology as fully and as accurately as possible and thereby to promote the free teaching of psychology worldwide.
All APS Members are encouraged to participate by adding new entries and enhancing existing ones with more complete and accurate information with references. This is an especially exciting initiative for teachers and students who can make updating or creating Wikipedia entries part of coursework.
I spoke with Greta about this project recently:
Why did you decide to include this somewhat unconventional assignment in your class? What might this sort of assignment offer for your students that is different from more standard papers or presentations?
I’ve always had students in my 200-level lecture course write research papers on a topic of their choice as a way to introduce reading journal articles and writing literature reviews. It also introduces them to the search tools in our library. When I read about the APSWI challenge to have students help correct Wikipedia, I thought it sounded like a really neat idea at many levels: taking some responsibility for how research psychology is represented; having a project the students might get more excited about; and having a chance to tap into the service and leadership part that is so important to Davidson College’s tradition. In order to write a good Wikipedia article, the students need the same reading and research skills that my older assignment was designed to teach them, with the advantage of also contributing to the public good.
Thanksgiving traditions, turkeys, pardons, President Obama: 🙂
It’s good to have friends in high places. Especially when you’re a turkey. On Thanksgiving.
President Obama will use his executive authority Wednesday to pardon two 19-week-old, 45-pound turkeys a day before America’s annual feast. Liberty, chosen from among more than 100 candidates as the National Thanksgiving Turkey, and its alternate Peace, will be driven to Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, where they will be on display through Jan. 6, the White House announced.
Yesterday, the Open University released ‘The History of English in 10 Minutes,’ a witty animated sequence that takes you through 1600 years of linguistic history. The Vikings gave us “give” and “take.” Shakespeare added another 2,000 words and expressions to the mix. The British Empire (see video above) then brought the evolving English language to new lands, creating new varieties of English worldwide. And so the story continues.
public libraries: Worth reading … “6. Public libraries are one of the greatest equalizers for equitable access to information regardless of race, creed or income level.”
… so, before you read my interview with Molly Raphael, President of the American Library Association, please take a moment to look at 10 important things you need to know about our American libraries.
1. Americans go to school, public and academic libraries nearly three times more often than they go to the movies.
2. There are more public libraries than McDonald’s in the U.S. (total of 16,604 including branches).
3. 59% of adults in the U.S. have a public library card.
4. Reference librarians in the nation’s public and academic libraries answer nearly 5.7 million questions weekly.
5. Public libraries are the number one point of online access for people without internet connections at home, school or work (98.7% of public libraries provide public access to the internet).
6. Public libraries are one of the greatest equalizers for equitable access to information regardless of race, creed or income level.
7. In these times of economic crisis, over 65% of public libraries provide services for job seekers.
8. Americans spend more than twice as much on candy as they do on public libraries.
9. Americans spend $34.95 a year for the public library (and check out an average of more than seven books a year)
10. A public library provides a safe, warm, friendly place for a poor family to read with their children.
Boston College,education, collaborative learning: Wow … a collaborative twist on the Socratic method used in law schools.
Peter Wilson believes (as do many education researchers) that collaborative activity fosters learning. It is for this reason that he assigns students to groups at the start of a semester. But he also knows that when a crew of five divvies up the work each student will dig deeply into roughly 20 percent of the material. “I want them to teach each other before they come back to class,” he says. And so he instituted the regime of the bingo cage and the dice, to spur his students to learn the full assignment. The students arrive early because of his habit of drawing the first numbers 10 minutes before class begins, which he does to get a head start. (There are usually two or three more drawings on the same day, without time for preparation.) The opportunity of a little advance warning, however, scarcely explains Hevia’s reaction to “winning.” “I knew the stuff. I had to know the stuff,” the student from Miami said later. “And I guess I felt happy I could show it.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ernest Hemingway, famous people: I have never met anyone really famous … but wondered what I would do.
For a fraction of a second, as always seemed to be the case, I found myself divided between my two competing roles. I didn’t know whether to ask him for an interview or cross the avenue to express my unqualified admiration for him. But with either proposition, I faced the same great inconvenience. At the time, I spoke the same rudimentary English that I still speak now, and I wasn’t very sure about his bullfighter’s Spanish. And so I didn’t do either of the things that could have spoiled that moment, but instead cupped both hands over my mouth and, like Tarzan in the jungle, yelled from one sidewalk to the other: ”Maaaeeestro!” Ernest Hemingway understood that there could be no other master amid the multitude of students, and he turned, raised his hand and shouted to me in Castillian in a very childish voice, ”Adiooos, amigo!” It was the only time I saw him.
At the time, I was a 28-year-old newspaperman with a published novel and a literary prize in Colombia, but I was adrift and without direction in Paris. My great masters were the two North American novelists who seemed to have the least in common. I had read everything they had published until then, but not as complementary reading – rather, just the opposite, as two distinct and almost mutually exclusive forms of conceiving of literature. One of them was William Faulkner, whom I had never laid eyes on and whom I could only imagine as the farmer in shirtsleeves scratching his arm beside two little white dogs in the celebrated portrait of him taken by Cartier-Bresson. The other was the ephemeral man who had just said goodbye to me from across the street, leaving me with the impression that something had happened in my life, and had happened for all time.
The 2012 opening of the Sept. 11 museum at the World Trade Center will be delayed by disputes over redevelopment costs, a person familiar with the construction project said Monday.
The dispute between the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was first reported in The Wall Street Journal.
They Draw & Cook: Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World, cookbooks, illustrated cookbooks: This seems to be a trend … I noted Maira Kalman had illustrated a cookbook recently … Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
For the past 18 months, brother-and-sister duo Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell have been delighting us with their beautifully illustrated visual recipes from around the world. They Draw and Cook: 107 Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World collects the best 107 of these lovely and delicious treats, joining the ranks of our favorite quirky cookbooks with an absolute gem of visual and culinary allure. From the playful and facetious to the elegant and sleek, these illustrated treasures offer everything from Chocolate Haystacks to Starving Artist Goo-lash and, of course, Cooooooookies for good measure.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, Facebook posts: The month started off great with a pink newsprint Charlotte Observer … but really nothing significant in Charlotte after that. I did my part … I bought pink socks and posted on Facebook (see below). Anyone else thin this year was “weaker”?
But the pink also reminds us that this disease can be beaten. In fact, there are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States.
We special-ordered pink newsprint from a supplier in Mississippi to draw attention to the organizations, businesses and individuals who are devoted to this fight. We hope what we present today adds to the difference that they make.
May I ask a personal favor…. only some of you will do it, if you know someone who fought cancer and passed away, or someone who is still fighting… please add this to your status for 1 hour as a mark of respect and remembrance, I hope I was right about the people who will…. Thank you 🙂
Hudson Valley, artisanal distillery, travel: There’s that word again … artisanal!
On a perfect New England fall day a few weeks ago, I toured Tuthilltown Spirits, a Hudson Valley, NY artisanal or “craft” distiller of handmade spirits–some produced from apples grown at orchards less than 5 miles away and grain harvested by farmers within 10 miles. My husband and I first discovered Tuthilltown’s Hudson Baby Bourbon when we visited the New York State Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua, New York a few years back. This led to a search for the bourbon, which at the time was not widely available.
Before Prohibition, there were more than 1,000 New York farm distillers producing alcohol from the state’s grains and fruits. Tuthilltown brings the tradition of small batch distillation back to the Hudson Valley, distilling whiskeys which were the first legally distilled in New York since Prohibition. The handmade spirits, which start at the farm distillery as raw grain and fruit, are made without any additives and are not chill or carbon filtered.
Giant Lego Man, mysteries, random: Who thinks of this stuff?
While the sight of a beached whale is a sad but fairly common occurrence, the sight of a giant Lego man washed up on the beach is something to put on YouTube.
As BoingBoing reports, Jeff Hindman, a resident of Siesta Key Village, Fla., was surprised to find a larger-than-life-sized Lego man washed up on the shore. Now people are scratching their heads as they try to figure out where the giant Lego man came from and whether they should put out an APB for any more refugees from the Land of Lego.
So where did the 8-foot, 100 pound giant come from? Not from Lego. A spokeswoman for Legoland told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the Lego man is a counterfeit and is not endorsed by Legoland or its parent company, Merlin Entertainments Group.
The yellow and green Lego man’s shirt provides some clue to his country of origin. The plus-sized shirt is emblazoned with the phrase “No Real Than You Are,” the number 8 and the name of a Netherlands-based artist known as “Ego Leonard.” According to BoingBoing, similar Lego men with analogous enigmatic messages were found on beaches in Holland in 2007 and England in 2008. No word on whether Lego forensics experts are reconstructing potential hairstyles or baseball caps to help identify the gigantic toy.
tennis, WTA, grunting: Personally think it is very unprofessional.
For years, the party line from WTA players has been that grunting doesn’t matter. The women almost universally stuck to their story that while an opponent’s loud grunt or shriek was noticeable, they preferred to focus on their side of the net and tune it out.
But the rhetoric has changed over the last year, as the chorus of complaints from fans and broadcasters has grown louder and the WTA has been forced to take the issue more seriously. Now the Tour’s top-ranked player has come out and voiced her concerns over the “habit,” or if you believe Caroline Wozniacki, it’s more of a “tactic.”
In an interview with The Guardian, Wozniacki hit out against the grunters, effectively saying that it’s a form of gamesmanship.
“I think there are some players who do it on purpose,” she said. “They don’t do it in practice and then they come into the match and they grunt. I think [officials] could definitely cut it.”
Of course, the most notable grunters on Tour are Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka, both of whom grunt not only at contact but also through the hit, often continuing their wail as opponents are prepping their shot. Serena and Venus Williams are also culprits. While the sisters don’t grunt on every shot (and in fact have played matches in complete silence), their tendency to unleash a grunt often coincides with tense and crucial moments in a match.
College Basketball, Duke University, Seth Curry: One to watch …
Duke head mens basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski announced that Seth Curry has been named a team captain. Curry, a junior from Charlotte, N.C., joins senior Miles Plumlee and junior Ryan Kelly as team captains for the 2011-12 season.”We knew going into the season that the leadership would be fluid,” said Krzyzewski. “We thought after practices started that Seth would emerge as a leader. He is showing some really good leadership and he deserves this. The leadership of our team is more of a team concept with Miles, Ryan and Seth. I think this will help make us a better team.”Curry, a preseason All-ACC selection, is Dukes leading returning scorer after averaging 9.0 points per game a year ago. He knocked down 64 three-point field goals to share the team lead with Andre Dawkins, while also leading the Blue Devils in steals 52 and three-point field goal percentage .435. Curry was named to the ACC All-Tournament team last season after averaging 10.9 points, 2.0 assists and 1.5 steals as Duke claimed its third consecutive ACC Championship.
The conclusion provided for this publication by the two editors, Goleman and Thurman, points toward “a rich opportunity for cross-fertilization. Cognitive sciences may find a wealth of insights and hypotheses about extending the limits of human potential” (p. 117). On the other hand, “His Holiness has said if modern science has proven some Buddhist belief to be wrong, then Buddhism will have to change” (ibid.).
But beyond the limits of even these exchanges, this beginning dialogue between Tibetan Buddhists and Western neuroscientists could and perhaps should have effects on East–West dialogue in general—particularly on contemplative and monastic practices. Both the open manner in which the talks and dialogues were presented and the similarity of aim evidenced by all are examples that could be followed by all religions and disciplines.
The Dalai Lama himself sums this up in his Foreword to the book: “I believe the ultimate aim of all human beings is to obtain happiness and a sense of fulfillment. . . .Whether we are scientists or spiritual practitioners our basic needs and aspirations are the same. . . . (Therefore) I have always stressed the importance of combining both the mental and the material approach to achieving happiness for humankind.”
To start the sequence, we need to seed two people in the goal. Let’s call them Guide One and Guide Two. Guide One begins their walk out, and when they come round the innermost circuit, they are joined by somebody walking in from the entrance. Let’s call that person The Seeker. So far, this is the same as the normal Appleton.
The two walkers process around the outer circuits, remembering the ‘do-si-do’ crossover when they reach the ‘corner’, until the Seeker, walking inwards, is about to transition from the outermost path onto the inner circuits. Here they are walking directly towards the goal and our patiently waiting second seed person, Guide Two.
Now Guide Two leaves the goal, joining up with the two coming towards them. We now have three people walking side by side. This continues for one circuit only, when our original Guide One has to leave the labyrinth. But, unlike the normal Appleton at this point, our Seeker is not cast into the darkness of the Underworld to find his own way to the Goal – he still has Guide Two to help him navigate the Inner Realms of the labyrinth. They can continue to walk side by side as the Seeker rounds the innermost circuit, remembering the ‘do-si-do’ at the corner. This puts Guide Two on the innermost path, so when they have rounded the Goal once more, Guide Two can pick up the next Seeker coming in from the entrance. So we now have two Seekers with one Guide in between them. On the 7-circuit labyrinth, this all happens rather quickly so you need to pay attention; on the 15-circuit there are more inner circuits to negotiate and it was a little more timely and elegant. In fact, had it not been for the additional circuits of this particular labyrinth, I doubt that I would have discovered this extended movement.
After one more circuit, our original Seeker has reached the Goal and has to part company with his Guide and the second Seeker. Our Guide Two now finds himself as a guide to the outer realms of the labyrinth as he guides our second Seeker inwards whilst he is walking out. But after only a couple of circuits, the pair will find themselves coming round the outer paths and facing our original Seeker, now enlightened and initiated by his sojourn in the Goal and ready to join with them as a Guide in his own right… and so the sequence continues.
The symmetry of the walk is delightful, with the traverse of the inner circuits being like a mirror-image reflection of the outer ones. It brings completion to the standard Appleton and can be kept going indefinitely as there is always somebody feeding in and somebody feeding out.
THE consideration of labyrinths worked in Roman mosaic pavements leads us on to a very interesting development of the subject which deserves a chapter to itself, namely, the Labyrinth in the Church.
Probably the oldest known example of this nature is that in the ancient basilica of Reparatus at Orléansville (Algeria), an edifice which is believed to date from the fourth century A.D. In the pavement near the north-west entrance of the church is the design shown in outline in Fig. 42. It measures about 8 ft. in diameter and shows great resemblance to the Roman pavement found at Harpham and the tomb-mosaic at Susa. At the centre is a jeu-de-lettres on the words SANCTA ECLESIA, which may be read in any direction, except diagonally, commencing at the centre. But for the employment of these words the labyrinth in question might well have been conceived to be a Roman relic utilised by the builders of the church to ornament their pavement. Such pavement-labyrinths, however, with or without central figures or other embellishments, and of various dimensions and composition, are found in many of the old churches of France and Italy.
Northern Lights, GA: My son has seen the Northern Lights in Canada … It’s on my list. Never would have thought I could see them in North Georgia.
A solar storm on Monday led to a rare and impressive overnight display of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, that was seen as far south as north Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee.
“A big geomagnetic storm caused the rare Aurora this far south,” Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Brad Nitz said.
The website spaceweather.com reported that a coronal mass ejection hit Earth at about 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, sparking the intense geomagnetic storm that left a red hue in the northern sky far south of areas that normally experience the Northern Lights.
The website said that Monday night’s Aurora was seen in more than half of all U.S. states.
“Many observers, especially in the deep South, commented on the pure red color of the lights they saw,” the website said. “These rare all-red auroras sometimes appear during intense geomagnetic storms.”
Condoleezza Rice, Arab Spring, immigration, education: I really like Rice. Wish I had seen her in Charlotte.
3. The Arab Spring is up there with 9/11 and the global financial crisis as great shocks shaping the world. The average American knows the movement against Middle East dictators is important, but few, we bet, would put that up with 9/11 and the recession.
2. America is wrong to be so anti-immigrant. Immigrants have made this country great, and can continue to do so, she said. A top Russian official boasted to Rice that it had the best minds in technology. “Yes,” Rice said, “unfortunately, they’re all working in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.” She told the Observer earlier that her biggest regret from her time in the Bush administration was the failure of comprehensive immigration reform to pass. “Sometimes I don’t understand the conversation we’re having about immigration,” she said Tuesday. “When did immigrants become the enemy?”
1. The greatest national security crisis facing the United States? Not al-Qaida. Not Iran. Not North Korea. It’s the crisis in K-12 education.
Supreme Court, Freedom of Speech, social networking, education, MySpace Case:
Blue Mountain School District officials have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal of a ruling for a student disciplined for a MySpace parody of the middle school principal.
In a petition filed Tuesday and docketed Thursday by the nation’s highest court, district officials asked the court to hear their arguments in favor of overturning the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ June 13 decision overturning the 2007 suspension of a student identified only as J.S.
The petition asked the court to issue a writ of certiorari, which is the official order indicating that it will hear the case.
By an 8-6 vote, the circuit court ruled that the parodies J.S. and a friend posted were protected by the First Amendment because they were created off school grounds, and that they were unlikely to cause significant disruptions in the school.
faith and spirituality, The Church: “Would we have recognized Jesus as the Christ if we had met him many years ago? Are we able to recognize him today in his body, the Church? We are asked to make a leap of faith. If we dare to do it our eyes will be opened and we will see the glory of God.”
As Jesus was one human person among many, the Church is one organization among many. And just as there may have been people with more attractive appearances than Jesus, there may be many organizations that are a lot better run than the Church. But Jesus is the Christ appearing among us to reveal God’s love, and the Church is his people called together to make his presence visible in today’s world.
Would we have recognized Jesus as the Christ if we had met him many years ago? Are we able to recognize him today in his body, the Church? We are asked to make a leap of faith. If we dare to do it our eyes will be opened and we will see the glory of God.
NFL, Redskins, black fans, DC, history: Redemption story?
Fifty years ago this fall, civil rights groups protested the opening of D.C. Stadium, whose most important tenants — the Washington Redskins — were the last National Football League team to remain segregated. A half-century after many area sports fans boycotted the team for racial reasons, the Redskins have an unrivaled hold on Washington’s black community.
The affinity for the team is seen at Mount Ephraim Baptist Church on fall Sundays, when the Rev. Joseph Gilmore Jr., dismisses his parishioners at 12:30 so he can get situated in his “man cave” before kickoff.
…
The deep relationship between the Washington area’s black sports fans and the Redskins is supported by a new Washington Post poll , which found that two-thirds of African American fans have a favorable view of the team and four in 10 feel that way “strongly.” Less than half of white fans have an overall favorable view. The racial differences concerning Daniel Snyder, the team’s owner, are even starker. Black fans are fairly evenly divided on Snyder, but 72 percent of white sports fans in the area give Snyder negative marks, compared with 9 percent positive.
zombies, apps, games: Think John needs a Zombie game?
The very concept of escape when it comes to zombies has become, from an entertainment perspective, next to impossible. They’ve saturated media and spread their virus across the public consciousness, and like the shambling hordes themselves, their appearances just keep coming. The outbreak of their pop-cultural contagion is a grim allegory to how things would probably go down if flesh-eaters suddenly invaded more than just our minds and wallets.
Dead Escape, then, is just another in the zombie ranks, with its only real differentiation being that it looks pretty nice for an iOS game. Interestingly, it’s not a combat game; in fact it only carries a “9+” rating on the App Store. Instead, it takes the familiar third-person horror genre perspective and combines it ever so slightly with a point-and-click adventure approach. This doesn’t always work, however. There’s little fear when the game refers to a zombie as an “obstacle” that you have to “get rid of,” which may involve simply finding an alternate escape route. And the zombies all inexplicably just stand there; a probable cost-cutting measure in the game’s design that makes Dead Escape one of the least thrilling infection scenarios we’ve seen to date.
Japan earthquake/tsunami 2011, followup, photo gallery: Great cleanup. I do not think the US would be nearly as far along.
Last Sunday was the six-month anniversary of the day the massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s northeast coast.
Some 20,000 people are dead or missing. More than 800,000 homes were completely or partially destroyed. The disaster crippled businesses, roads and infrastructure. The Japanese Red Cross Society estimates that 400,000 people were displaced.
Half a year later, there are physical signs of progress.
Much of the debris has been cleared away or at least organized into big piles.
Tawakkol Karman, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner from Yemen, says that she is frustrated by what she sees as the “ambiguous” policies of the Obama administration toward the Arab Spring.
On one hand, she says, President Obama has made speeches supporting a transition to democracy in the Arab Middle East, and the administration appears to have backed popular movements for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt.
But in Yemen, Karman said in an interview Thursday, the perception is that the administration still has not detached itself from the authoritarian regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, which it has regarded as an ally in the war against terrorism.
….
Karman said that she traveled to Washington to make the argument to the Obama administration that it should break definitively with Saleh. It can do this, she said, by taking two steps: supporting the strongman’s referral to the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges and freezing his personal assets and those of his family. The United States adopted both measures in the case of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
“It is the obligation of the international community and the United States as the leader of freedom and democracy to stand on the side of the Yemeni people,” she said. “Saleh’s regime is over. It is just a matter of time. We, the young people, are the future, so it is in your interest to stand with us.”
Artist, anarchist and literary entrepreneur Félix Fénéon was the one-man Twitter of early 20th-century France. Between May and November of 1906, he wrote 1,220 succinct and near-surrealist three-line reports in the Paris newspaper Le Matin, serving to inform of everything from notable deaths to petty theft to naval expedition disasters. In Illustrated Three-Line Novels: Félix Fénéon, artist Joanna Neborsky captures the best of these enigmatic vignettes in stunning illustrations and collages, inspired by Luc Sante’s English translation of Fénéon’s gems for the New York Review of Books. Sometimes profound, often perplexing, and always prepossessing, these visual snapshots of historical micro-narratives offer a bizarre and beautiful glimpse of a long-gone French era and a man of rare
The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, books: Sounds interesting …
The prison library counter, his new post, attracts con men, minor prophets, ghosts, and an assortment of quirky regulars searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. There’s an anxious pimp who solicits Steinberg’s help in writing a memoir. A passionate gangster who dreams of hosting a cooking show titled Thug Sizzle. A disgruntled officer who instigates a major feud over a Post-it note. A doomed ex-stripper who asks Steinberg to orchestrate a reunion with her estranged son, himself an inmate. Over time, Steinberg is drawn into the accidental community of outcasts that has formed among his bookshelves — a drama he recounts with heartbreak and humor. But when the struggles of the prison library — between life and death, love and loyalty — become personal, Steinberg is forced to take sides.
Steve Jobs, bookstores, random: Steve is watching …
As you can see by the photo embedded above, bookstore employees photographed Walter Isacsson‘s book in various locations around the store in a playful memorial to the late Apple CEO. What do you think?
Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs: Who will be our net visionary?
Bezos has an opportunity to become a very strong innovator, because there is a vacuum left by the tragic death of Steve Jobs, and I’m sure he sees that as an opportunity. He sees an opportunity and he is going to jump on it. It will be interesting to see the direction he takes Amazon going forward. I’m sure he’s going to continue to surprise us with new features and new products.
nostalgia, ’90s tv, millenials: I can’t stand the 90’s show!!
This summer, some of the television shows that defined the ‘90s started airing again…some simply as reruns, but others as updated versions.
In July, Nickelodeon began airing The ‘90s Are All That, a program beginning at midnight that features popular series from the ‘90s such as All That, Kenan and Kel, Clarissa Explains It All, and Doug. Since TeenNick brought the shows back, they have averaged a 50% ratings increase among viewers 18-34.
On Thursday, Beavis and Butt-Head will make its much-anticipated return to MTV, but with certain revisions. For example, the notorious twosome will now be watching Jersey Shore.
Millennials (those born after 1980 and before 2000), often accused of being lazy and spoiled, are now facing unemployment (even though most are well-educated and highly qualified for positions) and high stress levels. In this time of uncertainty, they find these shows comforting. Experts explain the trend as “instant nostalgia.”
“I guess I have comfort in familiarity I forgot I had,” Margolis said. “Seeing an episode of Kenan and Kel that I hadn’t watched in 10 years, but finding that I remember every single word! It’s the best era of TV because the plots were unrealistic but rooted in real-life issues.”
Entomologist Rick Hoebeke tells the Athens Banner-Herald that swarms of brown marmorated stink bugs are probably going to be seeking wintertime refuge inside Georgia homes.
He said the bugs, about a half-inch long, have been known to show up in such numbers that homeowners in Pennsylvania have used buckets and brooms to sweep them off porches.
The Royal Society, archives: 60,000 papers online! Issac Newton … Ben Franklin …
60,000 peer-reviewed papers, including the first peer-reviewed scientific research journal in the world, are now available free online. The Royal Society has opened its historical archives to the public. Among the cool stuff you’ll find here: Issac Newton’s first published research paper and Ben Franklin’s write-up about that famous kite experiment. Good luck getting anything accomplished today. Or ever again. —
New Post polling shows the Occupy Wall Street movement could be a boon for Democrats in 2012. But violent clashes with the police at Occupy Oakland, along with arrests elsewhere, raise questions about how long the movement can last — and whether its message will be muddled by violence.
Oakland police fire tear gas as they prepare to move in to Frank Ogawa Plaza to disperse Occupy Oakland protesters on Tuesday. (JANE TYSKA – AP)
As police start ousting protesters, a disparate movement — one that has been embraced by many Democratic politicians and labor organizations — is struggling to respond.
Protesters in other cities are worried about suddenly finding themselves in a clash with police. And even if the vast majority of protesters are peaceful, violent provocateurs could tarnish the movement’s image in the eyes of the public.
Just as Democrats tried to tie Republicans to the most extreme tea party activists, the Massachusetts Republican Party is already attacking Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as the “Matriarch of Mayhem” for saying she helped create an intellectual foundation for the protests.
Storify, social news experience: Interesting concept … social news experience …
Today Storify launched its new editor interface, featuring slicker, easier-to-use tools for fast content curation.
The new foundation flip-flops the search and editor sides of the interface, and places a higher priority on each content curator writing their own text for the story. Photo searches are big and bright, and the results are displayed in a handy gallery format that mimics a slick, white cube art space. The drag-and-drop functionality makes story curation more user-friendly. Previously, Storify didn’t have a logo – now it does. Storify has its own login system now, too.
Over the past several years, our quest to extract meaning from information has taken us more and more towards the realm of visual storytelling — we’ve used data visualization to reveal hidden patterns about the world, employed animation in engaging kids with important issues, and let infographics distill human emotion. In fact, our very brains are wired for the visual over the textual by way of the pictorial superiority effect.
college application process, college major: Good advice on defining yourself.
At the College Board’s annual conference on Wednesday, I listened to an intriguing discussion of how a student’s choice of major may shape her college experience, not to mention her odds of gaining an admission offer in the first place.
Robert Springall, dean of admissions at Bucknell University, described how he weighs information about an applicant’s intended major, or the lack thereof. Mr. Springall, who brings in about 920 new students each year, said that such information is crucial to meeting a variety of enrollment goals.
“I can’t have 920 students who all want to do the same thing, and I can’t have 920 students who all come in undecided,” he said. “I can’t over-enroll engineering and have no classics majors.”
Such are the demands of shaping a class, an act that one might liken to doing a jigsaw puzzle while balancing on a tightrope. Mr. Springall must ensure that there will be enough—but not too many—students to fill each of the university’s four clusters: arts and humanities, natural and physical sciences, the school of management, and the school of engingeering.
On many campuses, the failure to spread the wealth of students among different disciplines might incur the wrath of faculty members, cause scheduling headaches, and perhaps even jeopardize an institution’s accreditation. Moreover, if a student isn’t interested in, say, engineering on day one of his freshman year, he might have problems getting on the engineering track later.
This is why Mr. Springall looks for applicants whose academic interests are at least somewhat defined. “We’re seeing the importance of starting these conversations at the high-school level and, yes, at the middle-school level,” he said.
Cape Town SA, World Design Capital 2014, kudos: One of my favorite cities in the world!
What is WDC2014?
This prestigious status is designated biennially by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) to cities that are dedicated to using design for social, cultural and economic development.
Cape Town has been named World Design Capital for the year 2014, ahead of fellow short-listed cities, Dublin and Bilbao. The sought-after accolade was awarded to the Mother City this morning at the International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in Taipei.
Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Patricia de Lille, accepted the award on behalf of Cape Town, South Africa and the African continent.
In her acceptance speech De Lille said: “It is an honour for me to be addressing you here today as mayor of the first African city to be named a World Design Capital. A city belongs to its people and it must be designed for and with them and their communities. For many years, people have been applying innovative solutions to our challenges. They have been using design to transform various aspects of life. But they have often been working without an overarching social goal in mind.
“The World Design Capital bid process and title have helped to bring different initiatives together and have made us realise that design in all its forms, when added together, creates human and city development.
There is such an enormous hunger for meaning in life, for comfort and consolation, for forgiveness and reconciliation, for restoration and healing, that anyone who has any authority in the Church should constantly be reminded that the best word to characterize religious authority is compassion. Let’s keep looking at Jesus whose authority was expressed in compassion.
Rice describes a 2008 meeting between the pair that ended with Gaddafi showing her photos of Rice with world leaders — and the performance of a song he had composed in her honor.
“What was going through my head was ‘How long do I have to sit here and how quickly can I get out of here?’ You know, it was funny because when he said, ‘I have a video for you,’ I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, what is this going to be?’ But it was actually just a bunch of pictures of me with Vladimir Putin, me with Hu Jintao,” Rice tells ABC News in an interview set for next week. “And then he said, ‘I have Libya’s best composer, most famous composer write this song for you,’ and it was called ‘Black Flower in the White House.’”
Rice called Gaddafi’s scrapbook “eerie” and labeled the exchange one of the strangest of her tenure.
Asked if the Bush administration grew too close to Gaddafi after he agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction, Rice said no: “I think what we did was to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction, or the most dangerous ones,” she said.
“We weren’t ever really going to get very close to Gaddafi,” Rice added. “And the most important thing was to try and open up this place that had been closed for so long, to get him out of terrorism, to get him away from weapons of mass destruction, to make it a little bit safer. But it’s far preferable that he’s gone.”
faith and spirituality, spiritual master: Who would be mine …
What figure would you choose to be your spiritual master? It might be obvious to you; it might take you some serious reflection. Once you’ve identified a spiritual master, try to learn more about his or her life; think about why you picked that particular figure; and, most important, how to incorporate the lessons of that life into your own life.
For example, when I was annoyed when the woman working next to me at the library kept sighing noisily, I was inspired by St. Thérèse: she tells the story of how she once broke into a sweat at the effort to conquer her annoyance when a fellow nun made maddening clicking noises during evening prayers. I could relate.
I’m curious to know what spiritual masters other people have adopted. Have you found someone whose life or teaching has captivated you? If you’ve identified your spiritual master, please post it—I, and I’m sure other people, would be very interested to see the range of choices.
Occupy Wall Street protesters now have a free app to alert others if they’re about to be arrested.
The Daily News (http://nydn.us/uIbKWq ) says the creator of the “I’m Getting Arrested” app is Jason Van Anden, a Brooklyn software developer. It’s available at Android Market.
Van Anden is working to make it available on iPhone.
Here’s how it works: Users write a text message in advance and program a list of recipients. As they’re about to be arrested, users can hit one button and alert everyone on their list.
thermostat, Nest Labs: Remake of the lowly thermostat …
Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who led iPod and iPhone development from 2001 to 2009, helped transform consumer products used by millions of people. Next up: the humble household thermostat.
The device’s temperature is set by moving its outer ring.
A boring wall fixture and an unlikely target for innovation? Not to Mr. Fadell, his team of 100 computer hardware and software experts and the venture capitalists backing his Silicon Valley start-up, Nest Labs.
They see the conventional thermostat as a dumb switch that can be changed into a clever digital assistant that saves homeowners money and reduces energy consumption and pollution.
“We’ve built the world’s first learning thermostat — a thermostat for the iPhone generation,” Mr. Fadell said.
Nest Labs, based in Palo Alto, Calif., and founded last year, is announcing its offering on Tuesday, and plans to begin shipping the $249 thermostat by the middle of November.
Outsiders who have tried out the product are impressed by its stylish design, ease of use and advanced features, like motion-tracking sensors that detect whether people are present and adjust room temperatures accordingly. But it remains to be seen whether consumers and contractors will pay more for a high-tech thermostat, when good enough has been good enough for decades.
Steve Jobs, textbook market, education: “[T]he Apple co-founder was “somewhat dismissive” of technology’s ability to transform education.”
“Jobs had his sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform,” says a passage in the new book, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. It notes that Jobs said he had met with several major textbook publishers, including Pearson. It appears that his primary focus was on the K-12 textbook market. “The process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt,” Mr. Jobs is quoted as saying. “But if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don’t have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.”
Mr. Jobs was less keen on the power of his products to change other aspects of education, according to the book. Rupert Murdoch said that during a dinner he had with Mr. Jobs recently, the Apple co-founder was “somewhat dismissive” of technology’s ability to transform education.
Davidson College, college basketball, SoCon: Hoping for a good season.
The Davidson men’s basketball team has been picked to win the Southern Conference South Division by the league’s 12 head coaches, the conference announced today, and juniors Jake Cohen and JP Kuhlman were named to the preseason all-conference team.
Davidson earned 10 first-place votes and finished the balloting with 65 points in the South Division. College of Charleston earned the final two first-place votes and finished with 56 points. Georgia Southern was tabbed third (42) ahead of Furman (34). Wofford (32) was selected fifth with The Citadel (17) rounding out the South Division.
Abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, his distinctive art, his volatile personality and and his unusual creative process the subject of much curiosity and debate. Dripped is a wonderful and beautifully animated French short film by director Léo Verrier, paying homage to the great artist. Set in 1950s New York, the film follows Pollock’s ecstatic, passionate quest for truth, beauty and art as he finds the creative voice that catapulted him to the top of the art world — a mid-week treat of the finest kind
“Do I want to tell you this?” Hanson questioned. “No, there will not be a time jump after the baby is born. We will continue on. There’s no time jump. We’re going to see it through as a cohesive story from the time we come back in the beginning of the season to the end of the season. There will be no time jumps.”
But that doesn’t mean the lab will be sans Brennan for any sort of traditional maternity leave.
“Do you think Brennan would take maternity leave?” he laughed. “I don’t consider a couple days [away] a time jump…the audience should not feel a time jump [when she comes back to work].”
Looking forward to the episodes airing in 2012, Hanson teased that in addition to the return of the new serial killer, Booth and Brennan will be struggling to figure out the latest shift in their relationship.
“The personal stuff will be how does a couple have a child, work together and deal with each other, while maintaining the fact that we’re a murder show,” Hanson said. “We’re still going to solve a murder each week. So it’s going to be a murder show each week, for that segment of the audience, and we’re going to see how are they going to [balance their relationship]. That’s what the last 7 [or so] episodes of the season will be. How does that work [for them]?”
A pink flash mob broke out in Reston Town Center to raise breast cancer awareness this weekend.
About 100 people, decked out in pink T-shirts emblazoned with the words “In It Because I Care,” danced for about three minutes to promote breast cancer awareness month and the 2012 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.
Megabus, Atlanta: Already have two overnights booked. Yeah!!
Starting Nov. 16, it plans to begin daily departures from a curbside bus stop at the Civic Center MARTA station in downtown Atlanta to Birmingham, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Gainesville, Fla., Jacksonville, Knoxville, Memphis, Mobile, Montgomery, Nashville and Orlando.
college application process, scholarship: More good advice … Have to search for the left-handedness one!
The key to getting a scholarship is research. Start with your guidance counselor and college financial aid offices. Beyond traditional scholarships for academic achievement, there are literally thousands of special and unusual scholarships out there, each with its own requirements.
These scholarships may emphasize community service, leadership or work experience. Others are for students with very specific interests and talents. The Vegetarian Resource Group offers $5000 each to two students who promote vegetarianism in their school and community; the American Association of Candy Technologists offers $5000 to one lucky student interested in a career in the candy industry. There are even scholarships for left handedness, twins, knitters and skateboarders.
Make sure to do your homework; look at all the details. Pick those scholarships that match your interests and qualifications. Proofread your application. Then, proofread it again. And most importantly, don’t miss the deadline!
John McCarthy, RIP, artificial intelligence: Rest in Peace, John McCarthy … you sound like a phenomenal person.
He remained an independent thinker throughout his life. Some years ago, one of his daughters presented him with a license plate bearing one of his favorite aphorisms: “Do the arithmetic or be doomed to talk nonsense.”
RT @aaltman82 Amy Winehouse’s alcohol poisoning is poetically rendered by coroner as “death by misadventure.” Brits do have a way with words
public colleges, economy:
Tuition increases at public colleges have been a source of concern across the country as states grapple with budget cuts, and “there’s a tendency to look at national numbers,” said Sandy Baum, an independent policy analyst for the College Board and an author of the reports, who also contributes to a Chronicle blog. Yet, she said, the price increases facing students vary significantly from state to state. In Connecticut and South Carolina, for example, tuition at public four-year colleges grew by only about 2.5 percent; and in Montana and North Dakota, tuition and fees at public two-year colleges grew by less than 2 percent.
Apple, Maiden NC, solar farm, green, kudos: Kudos, Apple!
The Charlotte Observer and the Hickory Daily Record report that Apple is clearing about 100 acres of land to build a solar farm adjacent to their Maiden, NC data center.
random, art, NYC: Very weird … performance artist gives birth in museum.
Marni Kotak has given birth to her first child — inside a New York City art gallery.
The 36-year-old performance artist gave birth to a healthy 9-pound, 2-ounce, and 21-inch-long baby boy at the Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn. Kotak had set up a home-birth center at the gallery, turning her space into a brightly decorated bedroom with ocean blue walls and photo-imprinted pillows.
“Baby X” was born at 10:17 a.m., according to a statement from the museum.
Last month, Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein wrote that if you wanted to come up with a bumper sticker that defined the Republican Party’s platform it would be this: “Repeal the 20th century. Vote GOP.” With their unrelenting attempts to slash Social Security, end Medicare and Medicaid and destroy the social safety net, Republicans are, indeed, on a quest of reversal. But they have set their sights on an even bolder course than Pearlstein acknowledges in his column: It’s not just the 20th century they have targeted for repeal; it’s the 18th and 19th too.
Everybody’s heard the complaints about recruiting lately.
Even with unemployment hovering around 9%, companies are grousing that they can’t find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting.
Employers are quick to lay blame. Schools aren’t giving kids the right kind of training. The government isn’t letting in enough high-skill immigrants. The list goes on and on.
But I believe that the real culprits are the employers themselves.
With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are demanding more of job candidates than ever before. They want prospective workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time.
In other words, to get a job, you have to have that job already. It’s a Catch-22 situation for workers—and it’s hurting companies and the economy.
For years I have been making use of a plane crash example to illustrate the moral distinction between killing people and letting people die and the results have always been the same, at least until this past week. Before getting to that, I will briefly present the examples.
I usually open my discussion of utilitarianism by noting that people tend to have utilitarian intuitions in many cases, such as those involving emergency medial treatment. My stock example is as follows:
“Imagine that you are the only available doctor on an island when a plane crashes with six people on board. You have no idea who these people are-they literally fell from the sky. Examining the people, you know that if you try to save the badly injured pilot, you will lose 3-4 of the others for sure. But, if you allow the pilot to die, you are certain you can save at least four of the passengers, maybe even five. What do you do?”
As you might suspect, everyone always says something like “save the five because five is more than one.”
When transitioning to my discussion of rule-deontology, I make the point that sometimes our intuitions seem to steer us away from just the consequences to also considering the action itself. To illustrate this intuition, I change the story just a bit:
“Imagine that you are the only available doctor on an island when a plane crashes with five people on board. You have no idea who these people are-they literally fell from the sky. To save them, you need a lot of blood and you need it fast. Coincidentally, Ted the hermit has come in for his yearly checkup. Ted has no friends or relatives and no one checks up on him. By a truly amazing coincidence Ted’s blood type means that he can donate to all five people. Unfortunately, getting enough blood to save all five will kill Ted. What do you do?”
For years, my students have said that killing Ted even to save five people would be wrong and I fully expected my current students to give the same answer. But, rather than the usual “that would be wrong”, I was met with silence. So, I asked again and two students said that they’d drain Ted. When I said that this was the first class that ever said that, the reply was “times have changed.”
I’m not quite sure what the significance of this might be, but it was certainly interesting.
war crimes, Moammar Gaddafi: This will be interesting.
Gaddafi’s family plans to file a war crimes complaint against NATO with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the alliance’s alleged role in his death, the family’s lawyer said.
Marcel Ceccaldi, a French lawyer who previously worked for Gaddafi’s regime and now represents his family, told AFP news agency on Wednesday that a complaint would be filed with the Hague-based ICC because NATO’s attack on the convoy led directly to his death.
“The wilful killing (of someone protected by the Geneva Convention) is defined as a war crime by Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute,” he said.
He said he could not yet say when the complaint would be filed, but said it would target both NATO executive bodies and the leaders of alliance member states.
And yet, in a roundabout, academic fashion, the university president did imply that liberal arts skills are both translatable and necessary to all things in life.
“Not all students want or need the same education,” Mr. Zimmer said. “But even students who are being trained in a very particular area will have to confront the issue of how what they’re doing connects to what others are doing.”
He then went on to define liberal arts learning as, among other things, an education in “how to integrate multiple perspectives.”
Mr. Zimmer warned against viewing the workplace as a “collection of buckets or isolated specializations,” and he emphasized the interconnectedness of different fields and skills.
“There are arguments about the value of liberal arts education. Tuition costs are a major concern. There are financial and political pressures on institutions to show immediate value,” Mr. Zimmer conceded.
But, ultimately, he said, such concerns should not obscure the mission of liberal arts institutions: “to help students lead fuller lives and be better citizens.”
At the conclusion of Mr. Zimmer’s remarks, an audience member jumped up and asked, “People who were products of liberal arts educations at the best institutions in the country led us into the Iraq war. How do you explain that?”
“Not everybody agrees on what to do,” Mr. Zimmer responded. “It’s a good question.”
Atlanta has widest income gap between rich and poor of all the major U.S. cities, the U.S. Census reported on Wednesday. New Orleans ranked second, followed by the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. …
Rounding out the list of 10 big cities with the largest gaps between high and low income are Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Gainesville, all in Florida; Athens, Ga.; New York; Dallas; and Baton Rouge, La.
Cities in the South seem to have more than their share of inequality, don’t they? Maybe, this kind of thing happens when you’re pro-business, anti-union workers?
words, local customs, retailing, Christmas, Amy Grant, PEZ dispensers, random, holiday traditions: Ok … It’s October 7 … I went to the grocery (do you say grocery, grocery store or call it by its franchise name… Harris Teeter, for me?), and I smelled cinnamon. Looked up and saw a display of McCormick holiday spices, next to that display Christmas tree shaped Little Debbie cakes, next to that fake Oreos filled with peppermint cream, and finally Christmas cookie cutters. Has someone gone mad??
Speaking of Christmas, I just saw a e-mail which lists Amy Grant’s Christmas holiday tour, and I have to admit Amy Grant’s early Christmas album is still my first to listen to every Christmas season … old habits die hard. Thank you Mary Phil for introducing me to her a million years ago.
And while I am discussing holidays … found this fun quiz … HowStuffWorks “PEZ Quiz”. :) … I wish I had saved 21 years of PEZ dispensers from my children’s Christmas stockings, Easter Baskets, Halloween surprises and birthdays …
When Steve Jobs resigned from Apple in August, 7,000 miles away in Hong Kong, graphic design student Jonathan Mak Long, “shocked” by the CEO’s departure, did what he knew best: He created a design to honor the Apple co-founder.
The 19-year-old posted the image, the Apple logo with the bite changed to a profile of Jobs, to his Tumblr blog. Known as Jonathan Mak, he initially received about 80 notes on the image. Then word came this past Wednesday that Jobs had died, after a long battle with cancer. Mak reposted the homage, which this time caught fire on the Web, attracting an almost immediate response of 10,000 likes and reblogs on his Tumblr site and surging to 180,000 — in one day. Comments included “awesome invention like steve jobs.” One thought it should be the “new Apple logo.” Another wanted to “use it as a tattoo.”
Speaking in fluent English (which he said he learned from watching the TV show “Friends”), the Polytechnic University School of Design student told Yahoo! in a Skype interview that the image was a tribute to Jobs’s contributions to the world: “I wanted to commemorate him. He’s such an integral part of Apple. I thought it would be fitting to include him in the Apple logo.” Long added, “With Jobs gone, Apple is literally missing a piece.”
Everybody fails. It’s what comes next that counts.
Jobs wormed his way back into Apple, first as an adviser, then as interim chief executive, then by dropping the “interim.” What followed must be among the greatest comebacks in business.
He proved himself to be the Thomas Edison of our age: prickly, yes, but adept at combining technology and business to change peoples’ lives.
Edison has the more impressive portfolio — you can get by without your iPod more easily than you can without lightbulbs. No, really, you can.
But Jobs has the more impressive following.
For many people who heard the news of Jobs’ death, there was an immediate lurch of sadness.
On the sidewalk beside the Apple Store along Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue, Jobs’ fans on Thursday created a shrine to his memory. They left flowers, lit candles and placed fresh apples on the concrete. The same spontaneous tributes occurred at Apple Stores in London, Paris, Tokyo and elsewhere around the world.
“I promise to always take the next big step,” said one message left for Jobs in Chicago.
“Let’s go invent tomorrow,” said another, invoking a Jobs quote.
“Everyone always wanted a piece of Steve,” said one acquaintance who, in Mr. Jobs’s final weeks, was rebuffed when he sought an opportunity to say goodbye. “He created all these layers to protect himself from the fan boys and other peoples’ expectations and the distractions that have destroyed so many other companies.
“But once you’re gone, you belong to the world.”
Mr. Jobs’s biographer, Mr. Isaacson, whose book will be published in two weeks, asked him why so private a man had consented to the questions of someone writing a book. “I wanted my kids to know me,” Mr. Jobs replied, Mr. Isaacson wrote Thursday in an essay on Time.com. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
Because of that privacy, little is known yet of what Mr. Jobs’s heirs will do with his wealth. Unlike many prominent business people, he has never disclosed plans to give large amounts to charity. His shares in Disney, which Mr. Jobs acquired when the entertainment company purchased his animated film company, Pixar, are worth about $4.4 billion. That is double the $2.1 billion value of his shares in Apple, perhaps surprising given that he is best known for the computer company he founded.
Mr. Jobs’s emphasis on secrecy, say acquaintances, led him to shy away from large public donations. At one point, Mr. Jobs was asked by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates to give a majority of his wealth to philanthropy alongside a number of prominent executives like Mr. Gates and Warren E. Buffett. But Mr. Jobs declined, according to a person with direct knowledge of Mr. Jobs’s decision.
Now that Mr. Jobs is gone, many people expect that attention will focus on his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, who has largely avoided the spotlight, but is expected to oversee Mr. Jobs’s fortune. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mrs. Powell Jobs worked in investment banking before founding a natural foods company. She then founded College Track, a program that pairs disadvantaged students with mentors who help them earn college degrees. That has led to some speculation in the philanthropic community that any large charitable contributions might go to education, though no one outside Mr. Jobs’s inner circle is thought to know of the plans.
Mr. Jobs himself never got a college degree. Despite leaving Reed College after six months, he was asked to give the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford.
In that address, delivered after Mr. Jobs was told he had cancer but before it was clear that it would ultimately claim his life, Mr. Jobs told his audience that “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”
The benefit of death, he said, is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
Personally, I think this person should have just stopped “talking.” I was taught not to speak ill of the dead …
In the days after Steve Jobs’ death, friends and colleagues have, in customary fashion, been sharing their fondest memories of the Apple co-founder. He’s been hailed as “a genius” and “the greatest CEO of his generation” by pundits and tech journalists. But a great man’s reputation can withstand a full accounting. And, truth be told, Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive.
We mentioned much of the good Jobs did during his career earlier. His accomplishments were far-reaching and impossible to easily summarize. But here’s one way of looking at the scope of his achievement: It’s the dream of any entrepreneur to effect change in one industry. Jobs transformed half a dozen of them forever, from personal computers to phones to animation to music to publishing to video games. He was a polymath, a skilled motivator, a decisive judge, a farsighted tastemaker, an excellent showman, and a gifted strategist.
food, comfort food, chicken pot pie, recipes, kith/kin: I cooked for a friend’s family following surgery the other night. When I asked my husband asked what I should cook, he recommended ordering pizza … he doesn’t like my cooking … so I cooked my favorite no recipe comfort food … Chicken pot pie. Enjoy!
Dennard’s Chicken Pot Pie
3 large chicken breasts, cooked at 350 until done, then cut into bite size pieces.
line 9×9 glass baking dish or tall round baking dish with ready made pie crust, reserving enough crust for top … bake 10 minutes
in saucepan, add two cups cream, 1 can cream of chicken soup, chicken broth, salt and pepper, a little white wine … simmer to slightly thickened
cook/thaw carrots in bite size pieces, peas and corn … frozen is fine, as much as you like … add any others that you like
put chicken pieces in bottom of pre baked pastry pan
Pat Robertson, Mitt Romney, faith and politics: I just wish religious affiliation were not the issue in US politics … high moral character is what matters …not the source of your high moral character.
Robertson’s non-endorsement of Romney, for those who have ears to hear, trumpets two critical things to the Republican evangelical base: affinity and electability. At first glance, Robertson’s comments may seem like faint praise for a candidate who is currently the front-runner for the GOP nomination, and for one who unsuccessfully lobbied Robertson for an endorsement in 2008. But it could make an enormous difference for Romney, not only when he addresses the annual “Values Voter Summit” this weekend, but also on the longer campaign trail.
Most critically, by pronouncing Romney part of the Christian fold, Robertson signals that Romney’s faith is not so different from that of the white evangelical Protestants who form a strong core of the Republican base. The declaration that Romney is an “outstanding Christian” is a dramatic upgrade from Robertson’s more tepid comments in the last presidential campaign. In 2007, Robertson dubbed Romney an “outstanding American,” while his Christian Broadcasting Network Web site also declared-under the heading “How Do I Recognize a Cult?”-that “when it comes to spiritual matters, the Mormons are far from the truth.”
This Christian embrace should be a godsend for Romney, given that Americans generally want president’s with strong religious values, and that a significant portion of the electorate still holds reservations about the Mormon faith.
marijuana, food, food – drink, Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, US Government Programs: Odd … Gourmet magazine online article about eating/drinking marijuana and a US Government Program, the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, provides free reefers!
Her description pretty neatly sums up the common expectation of eating marijuana: a bit of psychoactive Russian roulette with a strange aftertaste.
…
Beer probably has the most natural affinity with marijuana; after all, hops and marijuana are botanically speaking, kissing cousins. Boutique brewers in Europe and home brewers in the U.S. have been known to use cannabis tincture and plant matter to create THC-infused beer. Within the bounds of American law, Nectar Ales in Paso Robles, California, makes Humboldt Brown Ale with denatured hemp seeds (containing no measurable THC). The toastier, nuttier quality of the seed is highlighted rather than the herbal, funky character one would get from the plant itself. It is an interesting, unexpected expression of hemp, enjoyable even without its famous effects.
Jeremiah Tower, seminal in the creation of New American cuisine, first during his time as a chef/owner at Chez Panisse (1972–78) and later at Stars, knows a thing or two about letting ingredients speak for themselves, and letting them kick, if that’s what they want. He gives cannabis a clear, though not overpowering, voice in his Consommé Marijuana, recalled (with recipe!) in his 2004 memoir California Dish. The consommé was created in the spring of 1969 as the third course of a “self-consciously decadent” 11-course meal he prepared in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Made with 1 cup of marijuana stems steeped in 6 cups of rich chicken stock, it was strained and served over a chiffonade of nasturtium flowers and basil. As Tower recalls, the dish: “provided another level of stimulation. But not stoned. The brew takes forty-five minutes to reach the brain, by which time (as the menu planned) we were on to dessert, tasting strawberries and cream as we’d never tasted them before.”
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There is, after all, the Bloody Maryjane, based on another drink attributed to him—the Bloody Mary—with a marijuana tincture replacing the vodka.
All of these applications point to a far richer culinary legacy than Alice B. Toklas’ brownies might lead us to expect. If legalization of marijuana comes at the same pace as smoking continues to get marginalized, we could be entering the age of ingested marijuana.
When that age comes, it could appear, rather than with a puff of smoke, in a glass, on a plate, or maybe even poured over a chiffonade of nasturtium flowers.
Uncle Sam a drug pusher? It’s true. For the past three decades, a handful of Americans have been getting regular deliveries of high-grade marijuana, courtesy of the federal government. It’s all part of the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, a little-known initiative that grew out of a 1976 court decision that created the nation’s first legal pot smokers. Of the 14 people who were in the program initially, four are still alive. Keep clicking to meet the government-sanctioned marijuana mavens and learn more about the program – including where the government gets the pot in the first place…
Appalachia, Berea College: I absolutely loved this article about the US region Appalachia and the people who are Appalachians. And the picture that illustrates the article is great … reminds me of “Song of the Lark.”
As a native Kentuckian, I thought that I knew the state. But the first time I heard traditional mountain music, I was awestruck—I had never heard anything like it before. A student, Ashley Long, was singing “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” with the Berea College Bluegrass Ensemble. Darrell Scott’s lyrics and Long’s haunting voice brought tears to my eyes. The song tells the story of a man’s great-granddaughter, who sings about the family lineage in the “deep, dark hills of eastern Kentucky,” where the “sun comes up about 10 in the morning and the sun goes down about 3 in the day,” and “you spend your life just thinking how to get away.” The pain and the despair were palpable in the lyrics and in the style of singing.
When I came to Berea College four years ago, I accepted employment as a college professor; but I quickly realized that I had embarked on something more than just a job or career path. I was drawn to Berea because of its 150-year history and its commitment to African-American students. But I did not want to live in what I regarded as the mountains (in reality, the foothills), so I commuted from Lexington the first year, not telling my family that I had taken a job in the region. I knew they would worry about my living there because of all the negative stereotypes of racist white mountain people.
I didn’t know, but would soon learn, that Appalachian people represent a distinct cultural group. I didn’t understand that their music, traditions, and values were rooted in a way of life I knew very little about; my family and I had accepted as truth all the stereotypes. Over time, I came to know that the rich culture of Appalachia extends beyond Kentucky, including 13 states from Mississippi to New York, with West Virginia the only state entirely in the region.
After a year of commuting, I decided to move. I had found the people in town friendly, and there was a vital black community.
My experience at Berea was different from any other job I had had as a college professor. My first surprise was that, in my first class, there were more African-American students than I had taught in 13 years of my being a professor in Kentucky. The college’s minority enrollment has ranged between 17 percent and 23 percent over the last 10 years, in a state whose African-American population is only about 8 percent.
While it was wonderful working at a predominantly white institution with a significant number of African-American students, even more surprising were the white students. Most of them—60 percent of the 1,500 students on campus—identify themselves as Appalachian. As the semester progressed and I got to know them a little, I found them different from other white people I had encountered. I had worked with working-class whites before, but these students’ differences existed apart from socioeconomic status. Aside from the cultural differences, they were devoid of “white entitlement”; there was a humility and respect that I had never experienced from white students before. They were outspoken about some things and shy about others; they were smart, but not savvy—I found contradiction after contradiction.
Talking with them about their homes in rural Appalachia was similar to talking to international students about their lives in developing countries. I simply did not understand their culture—I hadn’t realized that although these people were white, they were not part of mainstream white culture. That first semester was challenging because I was working with a group that I knew very little about. But I wanted to know more.
In my second semester, I took the college’s weeklong Appalachian Seminar and Tour. I thought it would answer all my questions about the region, but within minutes, I realized that nothing was straightforward. My first question was: “Is it pronounced “Ap-uh-lay-chuh” or “Ap-uh-lach-uh?” (I had been taught the former in grammar school.) Chad Berry, director of Berea’s Appalachian Center, explained that those outside the region said the former, while those inside the region said the latter. I decided to use the regional pronunciation. This was a place where I wanted to belong. I had already begun to feel connected, and I wanted to explore those feelings in more depth.
UNC Basketball, college basketball: Kinda fun … UNC to play Michigan aboard aircraft carrier on Veterans Day.
This Veterans Day, the UNC men’s basketball team will kick off the season against Michigan State in unfamiliar territory — on an aircraft carrier.
And on Nov. 11, the Tar Heels will have an ally in the captain’s chair.
Captain Bruce H. Lindsey, commanding officer of the USS Carl Vinson, leads almost 5,000 crew members with a UNC basketball jersey draped over his captain’s seat.
His daughter, senior Blair Lindsey, gave him the jersey after UNC won the 2009 NCAA National Championship.
Lindsey said he fought to have the inaugural Carrier Classic played on the USS Carl Vinson.
“When I heard that they were thinking about playing the game onboard an aircraft carrier, I thought it would be an awesome way to show a little recognition of the Carl Vinson crew for all of their sacrifices protecting our great country’s freedoms,” Lindsey said in an email.
“This game will really boost the morale of the crew — especially since we will be deploying again soon afterward for six months.”
Lindsey added the fact that the Tar Heels will be playing on the Carl Vinson is an added bonus. He said he has been a UNC fan since he moved to Reidsville, N.C., during high school.
zombie genre, tv, The Walking Dead: Anybody a fan of ” The Walking Dead?”
You’ve been hearing about the show for a year or more, the much-ballyhooed second season starts on cable TV in a few weeks, and now all of The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season is available on a single disc from redbox. (Episodes 1-4 are on Side A–flip it over and episodes 5-6 are on Side B).
If you’re already a fan of AMC’s terrific horror-drama series The Walking Dead, you probably don’t need much convincing to give that first season a quick re-watch before Season Two starts.
But if you’ve heard the hot, undead buzz and are curious what all the fuss is about, or if you’re not a hardcore zombie fan and wonder why you should bother with yet another “silly zombie thing,” let’s get you up to speed and fully on board.
Occupy Wall Street, revolution: “Do these people, like others worldwide who are disillusioned with their governments, have the potential to spark a mass movement?”
If you stopped by Zuccotti Park in New York and asked 10 protesters what their goals were for Occupy Wall Street, you might get 10 different answers. This has led some reports to call the group unfocused, but that may be normal for an emerging movement: would 10 young Egyptians in Tahrir Square in January have been any more unanimous?
One protester, in an interview that Fox News has not aired, said he and others were calling for “more economic justice, social justice — Jesus stuff — as far as feeding the poor, health care for the sick.” Another protester, a former Marine who was elected by Occupy Wall Street participants to speak for them, told NPR that he wanted to overthrow the government and reconstruct it. Will these big ideas get lost now that labor unions and other established interests are joining forces with Occupy Wall Street, bringing their more concrete demands?
The protest already is more popular than Congress. So what are the demonstrators doing right, and what could they be doing better? Do these people, like others worldwide who are disillusioned with their governments, have the potential to spark a mass movement? What are they missing?
Great Recession: US a third word nation? moral failure? read on …
Is the United States a Third-World Nation? 10/7/2011 6:30:00 AMMichael Lewis, author of the new book “Boomerang,” says the United States and many European nations suffered a moral failure which lead to economic collapse. Lewis insists that the U.S. economic situation will get much worse before it gets better.
If you think online dating is the domain of the young, maybe it’s time to check in with your mother. Now, people 55 and older are visiting American dating sites more than any other age group — up 39 percent in the last three years, according to the Internet tracking firm Experian Hitwise. The No. 2 group? Singles 45 to 54. According to IBISWorld, a market research firm, and the United States Census Bureau, about 37 percent of people 50 and older are unmarried. And the divorce rate among the 50-plus demographic is high. With so many older Americans unattached, living independently into their later years, and increasingly comfortable using the Internet, they, too, are logging on for love.
And they may be better at finding it than their younger cohorts. Dating industry professionals say that singles in their 20s and 30s are typically focused on marriage and starting a family, while older singles (many of whom have been married before) have a more relaxed approach and are careful to pick companions who share their interests.
“Baby boomers have been one of the fastest-growing demographics for a lot of online dating companies,” said Caitlin Moldvay, an analyst for IBISWorld. The growth comes at the same time that some younger singles (18 to 34) are moving away from dating sites to social networking sites like Facebook as “a proxy for online dating,” said Bill Tancer, the general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services.
Greg Liberman, the president and chief executive of Spark Networks — which owns specialty dating sites including JDate, ChristianMingle, BlackSingles, SilverSingles — said that for the first eight months of this year, Spark had a 93 percent increase in new members 50 and older across all of its dating sites, compared with the same span of time last year. “We’re seeing significant growth,” Mr. Liberman said.
He’s also observed that, while it’s been common for parents to buy dating site memberships for their adult children, now adult children have begun buying memberships for their widowed and divorced parents. Gone is the heyday of personal ads in The New York Review of Books.
fonts, design, Fortune Magazine: Just thought this interesting …
Two-time National Magazine Award winner John Korpics has a lengthy editorial design resume that includes Premiere, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, InStyle, Fortune, and now ESPN The Magazine where he just joined as Creative Director. One of his final acts at Fortune was the annual “500” issue. It’s always a hefty production, but this year’s is a particularly typographic feast.
Hurricane Irene: Charlotte and western and central NC really got nothing. I actually am feeling guilty because so many friends are in harm’s way … stay safe those n the path of Irene. My beloved OBX was hit hard. 🙂
This photo from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) shows something never seen – and certainly not on what should be a busy Saturday afternoon in August: an empty Grand Central Station. With all transit in the New York area closed, the terminal is a big empty barn. If you’re watching TV news they’ll probably call it “Death Central Station.”
CLS XC, WNC Cross-Country Carnival, UrbanSpoon, Mean Mr. Mustard’s Cafe, Hendersonville, NC, kith/kin: What a great race … very well-organized and wonderful park – WNC Cross Country Carnival at Jackson Park, Hendersonville, NC. Afterwards, we used Urban Spoon app to find Mean Mr. Mustard’s Cafe in downtown Hendersonville … which was excellent.
Midnight in Paris, movies: John and saw Midnight in Paris on the recommendation of several. I loved it and he enjoyed it. He said if he had not read A Paris Wife and recently been there, he would not have enjoyed it nearly as much. Molly adored seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up at 11 pm. Toward the end they showed the Eiffel Tower lit up and it just made me smile.
apps, FutureTap, Urban Spoon, travel, food: We used the similar Urban Spoon, in Hendersonville NC and found a great restaurant. First time I have ever really had success with these apps. Anybody tried this one?
Discover your next destination.
Where To? makes it incredibly easy to locate the closest steakhouse, bank branch, billiard club or anything else you may be looking for, at the drop of a hat! Finally you can find local businesses without any typing, using a slick, intuitive user experience.
Navy SEALs, Hawkeye, man’s best friend, pets, followup, photography, iconic images, followup: I actually did not post this story, but I loved it and wondered what would happen to Hawkeye (what a great name for a dog!) … now we know. I think this photo may become an iconic image of the continued war on terror.
Hawkeye — not a military dog, but Tumilson’s personal pet — “led the family into the gym” where the funeral was held, as the Des Moines Register reports. And then he lay down.
A poignant picture taken by Tumilson’s cousin, Lisa Pembleton, has gotten lots of attention since then. So too have video reports aired and posted by local TV stations and the news networks.
Our colleagues at KPBS’ Home Post blog in San Diego were among the outlets that helped spread the word about Hawkeye. Today, they write that many readers wanted to know what was going to happen to Hawkeye and wondered if they could adopt him. There’s good news: According to Home Post, “Tumilson’s friend, Scott Nichols, will be Hawkeye’s new master.”
Gadhafi, Libya Uprising, personality cults, dictators, megalomaniacs: Unfortunately, those that choose this route can negatively affect international politics for years …
In contrast, Gadhafi showed absolutely no interest in fleeing abroad during the six months that elapsed between the start of the Libyan uprising in February until Tuesday, the day the rebels stormed into his compound in Tripoli.
For months, the rebels encouraged Gadhafi to leave, and it seemed he would have had relatively little trouble finding a new home. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez was often mentioned as a possible host.
Now Gadhafi is presumed to be in hiding in Libya, and the rebels have put a bounty out on him. If captured, he is likely to be prosecuted at home or abroad.
Personality Cults
Absolute power, it seems, not only corrupts — it can also confuse.
“There’s a healthy dose of megalomania in these guys,” John Norris, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress, says of dictators who refuse to surrender power. “If I had to find one common thread, it’s a profound and fundamental miscalculation that the end is near.”
Dictators who rule unchallenged for decades — like Gadhafi or Saddam Hussein — have the hardest time accepting the fact that it’s time to leave, says Natasha Ezrow, a lecturer in government at the University of Essex and author of two books about dictators.
Game of Thrones, bookshelf, tv, HBO: A friend has highly recommended both the Game of Thrones tv show and the book. Books are ordered from Amazon and will watch the show … Anybody read the books or watching the show? HBO: Game of Thrones: About.
food – wine, viticulture, oenology, Stellenbosch, South Africa, apartheid: This is a great story. We have been to SA’s wine country and Kwala-Zulu Natal, and the contrast is amazing. What a wonderful story of post apartheid success.
Her choice of study was a fluke. Though she had been a good student, none of her grant applications for college were approved until an airline, hoping to promote diversity, offered to pay her way to study viticulture and oenology: grapes and wine. What was wine? the young woman wondered, guessing it was another name for cider.
She had never been outside the eastern province of KwaZulu Natal, but she boarded a bus and traveled across South Africa to the wine country of the Western Cape. She gazed at the immense mountains. She puzzled over the short, thin trees planted in perfect rows. She had no idea what they were.
Finally, Ms. Biyela tasted the beverage she had come such a distance to study. She and a handful of other black scholarship students met with a wine connoisseur, Jabulani Ntshangase. He opened a superb red, raised the moist cork to his nose and talked rapturously about the wine’s fruitiness and color and fragrance. She was expecting to sip something sublime when handed the elegant, long-stemmed glass. Instead, she was stunned. It was disgusting.
Ms. Biyela, having definitely adapted her tastes, is now one of this nation’s few black winemakers in an occupation that has been dominated by white people for 350 years. Her blends of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and pinotage have won gold medals and four-star ratings. She was named South Africa’s Woman Winemaker of the Year in 2009. Last month, she was busy judging the country’s entries for the International Wine and Spirit Competition.
“Somehow I fell in love with the ever-changing content of wine,” she said as if still surprised by her own journey. “Wine is never the same today as it is tomorrow. It even depends on where you drink it and who you are with and what mood you are in. It’s a very, very nice thing.”
Though apartheid has been swept away, this country is still a racially divided society. Ms. Biyela is a pioneer in its transformation, not someone elevated through political connections, but a rural woman who made it on grit.
R.E.M., one of Athens, Georgia’s biggest rock exports, has lent their song, “Oh My Heart” from Collapse Into Now to the University of Georgia for a beautiful, new public service message. The University of Georgia reached outside the arches, teaming with an alumni group, to create the in-game public service announcement for the upcoming 2011 football season.
college basketball: I really do like college basketball
…25 consecutive hours of game action highlighted by Champions Classic doubleheader with College GameDay on-site; 17 men’s games; two women’s games for first time; and 11 ESPN telecasts
For the fourth consecutive year, ESPN will celebrate the opening of the college basketball season with a marathon of college basketball coverage across ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3.com. This year’s College Hoops Tip-off Marathon Presented by Disney Parks Tuesday, Nov. 15, beginning at midnight ET, will include 19 live matchups – 17 men’s and two women’s – in a minimum of 25 hours, highlighted by ESPN’s 11 game telecasts and a special one-hour College GameDay Driven by State Farm. ESPN3.com will offer two exclusive games as well as a simulcast of every ESPN and ESPN2 telecast.
The schedule will feature four of the sport’s winningest programs – Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State – in the inaugural State Farm Champions Classic doubleheader, 14 teams that played in last year’s men’s NCAA Tournament, including Final Four participant Kentucky; and four women’s NCAA Tournament teams from last year, including defending National Champion Texas A&M.
Annecy, Talloires, France, small world, kith/kin: Ran into Cat K. yesterday … and small world … she and John honeymooned in Talloires and Annecy .. now I have some more hotels, etc. to research.
“In a Cezanne painting”
Nestled in the hollow of a protective massif, Annecy Lake is one of the world’s purest lakes.
A gorgeous place that inspired Paul Cezanne who painted “The Lake of Annecy”.
“Auberge du Père Bise is settled in a unique location that takes all its magnificence with lights’ reflections over the lake. No one could have imagined a better place… More than a splendid location, your eyes and your taste buds will be taken to a new world of pleasure with the cuisine of Sophie Bise.”
Royal Family, Queen Elizabeth II, Republic of Ireland, historic firsts, bomb threat:
Brushing aside bomb threats, Queen Elizabeth II embarked on the first visit by a reigning British monarch to the Irish Republic on Tuesday — a visit heavy on symbolism after decades of hostility and mistrust, and protected by some of the tightest security Dubliners could recall.
Hours before she arrived, the Irish Army carried out a controlled explosion of a pipe bomb discovered in a tote bag in the luggage compartment of a bus heading for the capital, police officials said.
The bus was traveling from Ballina in the west of Ireland toward Dublin and the device was found in Maynooth, 40 miles from Dublin. About 30 passengers had left the bus when it was stopped and searched, apparently after a tip by an informant, the police said.
art galleries, Paris, culture, travel: Several articles here … am getting excited about Paris!
Every spring art galleries in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood, long famed as home to artists, writers and musicians, open their doors to the public, in a block party called Art Saint-Germain-des-Pres. With what might be the highest concentration of galleries in the world, it’s an ideal area to find a variety of art, from primitive to contemporary and sculpture and painting to photography, jewelry and antiques. This year’s event, from May 19 to 22, will include at least 60 galleries. As an example of the event’s breadth, La Galerie Artco-France will show works by the Surrealist René Magritte and La Galerie Frédéric Got Fine Art photographs by Elliott Erwitt.
Over the first few days of April, the Art Paris fair draws crowds of collectors to the Grand Palais exhibition hall. This year the organizers are offering an additional attraction: Les Nuits Parisiennes, an evening art stroll on April 1 and 2 that links 15 art installations in nine locations across the city center.
“We wanted to make art more accessible, to create an emotional encounter that everyone can appreciate,” said Marie-Ann Yemsi, one of two young curators who conceived and put together the program.
“We wanted to show art in another way, other than in a white cube gallery or museum space — to let the artists’ imagination play with the city,” added her partner, Agnes Violeau.
“The Book Club” is a party that occurs on the last Wednesday of every month at newly refurbished Le Carmen cafe and bar. The event has one simple rule: bring a book, and make sure to swap it by the end of the night. Forget keys or clothes, this is a more modern way to meet people, the event founder Rosa Rankin-Gee believes. “Books don’t spill,” she said. “They are pocketable, holdable, durable, lovely and say so much about the person who brought them.” The next event is scheduled for May 25.
The venue (22, rue de Douai; 33-1-45-26-50-00; http://www.Le-carmen.fr) is a 19th-century private mansion once inhabitedΩ by Georges Bizet, where he supposedly wrote the opera of the same name. The space, with its ornate moldings and plush velvet seats, recreates the ambience of “the literary salons of yesteryear, but brings them up to date,” said Ms. Rankin-Gee. “And democratizes them, in a sense, because just by turning up with a book, every single person contributes.” The atmosphere is rounded out by a selection of retro cocktails and live piano music.
The Book Club goes hand in hand with an upcoming arts journal called A Tale of Three Cities, to be released soon.
iPad, Apps, libraries, New York Public Library: I always loved the NY Public library’s Reference book … that should be an app … but i will enjoy this, too.
Now, the New York Public Library has created a new iPad app that bring the library’s research collections into “the palms of the public’s hand,” as library officials put it in a statement released Tuesday. “Biblion: The Boundless Library” is the name for a series of apps available on Apple’s tablet computer that highlight different elements in the library’s collection. It was developed by the library and the design firm Potion.
Forbidden City, China, Jasmine Revolution: Love the intrigue here …
For 600 years, the Forbidden City, with its vermilion walls, labyrinthine passageways and sloping tiled roofs, has stood in the heart of Beijing as the ultimate symbol of power, the inner sanctum from which authority emanates across a vast land.
It is the last place one would imagine as a base for the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party.
Yet, photographs have circulated on the Internet over the last few days that seem to hint at exactly that. On Friday, officials in charge of management of the Forbidden City handed two ceremonial banners to local police officers to congratulate them on nabbing a thief who had stolen curios from an exhibition at the ancient palace earlier this month. The slogan on one of the banners said: “To shake the great strength and prosperity of the motherland, and to safeguard the stability of the capital.”
The treasonous slogan instantly set the Chinese Internet aflutter, spreading as quickly as court gossip.
Barring the possibility of a secret revolutionary cabal inside the palace, the problem has to do with a common headache in Mandarin Chinese: homonyms. The pronunciation of the word for “shake” – han, with a falling tone – is exactly the same as that for “guard,” even though the written characters are different. In other words, the first phrase should have read to “to guard” rather than “to shake.”
Embarrassingly, no officials at the ceremony seemed to notice the gaffe. Ji Tianbin, vice-director of the Forbidden City, handed out the banner, and Fu Zhenghua, head of the Beijing police, was in attendance.
By Monday, photos of the ceremony had ignited derision across the Internet. Many Chinese mocked the bad grammar of the person had designed the banner, and Chinese news organizations demanded an explanation.
The management office issued a brief apology on its microblog on Monday: The banners had been designed by the security department, it said, and no official had examined them “due to a lack of time.”
It added that the security department had defended the mistake and had refused to apologize. Officials have “investigated the incident and criticized and educated the security department,” the managers said.
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Even more scandalous is talk that a luxury private club has been established in the Jianfu Pavilion, a part of the Forbidden City that has been restored through monies from a preservation fund in Hong Kong. The club’s membership, supposedly limited to 500 people, costs one million renminbi each, or $154,000, according to a microblog posting last week by Rui Chenggang, an anchor for China Central Television. Officials at the Forbidden City quickly denied the existence of any such club, but Beijing News reported on Sunday that an opening ceremony had already been held.
Chang Lingxing, a spokesman for Forbidden City, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that the management office had hired a private company, the Beijing Forbidden City Culture Development Company, to organize lectures and salons. Instead, the company had started handing out “membership sign-up forms.” The management office has told the company to stop, according to a written statement.
One microblog post making the rounds succinctly sums up the three humiliations: “The Forbidden City: the commercial company sold memberships without the officials’ permission; the security department printed the banner without the officials’ approval; the thief stole the exhibits without the officials’ approval!”
But perhaps one should not underestimate the enduring nature of the building. Geremie R. Barme, the prominent Australian scholar of China, wrote this in his book on the history of the Forbidden City: “While its buildings were subject to decay and change, the China of secretive politics, rigid political codes and autocratic behavior continued to exert an influence far beyond the walls of the former palace.”
Davidson College, changes: New dorms … to accommodate growth to 2000!
Davidson College officials will be at the Design Review Board Wednesday, May 18, seeking final approval for a new 5-story dormitory that will house 250 students as the college boosts enrollment from the current 1,800 to 2,000 in the coming years. The Town of Davidson planning staff is recommending approval of the plan.
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The new building would be completed by fall 2012. College officials weren’t sure Monday how much the building would cost. They said they’re still negotiating contracts with construction and design firms.
The new brick building will be designed to fit in with the college’s existing “Neo-Georgian” residential architecture. It would have one 5-story and one 4-story wing, connected by a 1 1/2-story entrance.
The building also would have a fitness center and a meeting space.
Steph Curry, Davidson College: Steph does others things besides play basketball beautifully … and his business ventures are with his Davidson friends … makes you realize that he was truly integrated into the college.
Stephen Curry becomes a video star today.
A former Davidson All-American, he is working with two of his former teammates, Dan Nelms and Steve Rossiter, in launching a website (www.amzini.com) designed to raise awareness of the many social networking sites available online.
Curry will be featured in two videos shot this year in San Francisco with the intention of drawing more people – and their videos – to the site.
“The idea is there are all these different social opportunities out there that people aren’t aware of,” said Nelms, president of Amzini Enterprises LLC.
Charlotte, The Charlotte Observer, media, anniversaries, kudos: Kudos and happy 125th The Charlotte Observer!
Happy 125th birthday to The Charlotte Observer, a newspaper that first began telling Charlotte’s story when it was yet a dream.
Along the way, the Observer has put forward some dreams of its own, helping to shape our region in significant ways. Some will say for the better, others for the worse, depending on a particular issue or outcome. But there is no denying that the place where we live today is a blended legacy of an aspiring city and its newspaper.
That legacy continues now as Charlotte shakes off a devastating collapse of the banking industry and the Observer rewires itself for the digital age. Neither job will be easy, which makes it an especially good time to remember how far both have come.
college, internships, first jobs: More and more, it appears the key to that first job is an internship.
Even though companies say that, on average, they’ll hire 19% more new graduates this year than they did in 2010, some graduates might find that a good portion of companies’ incoming classes are already filled.
That’s because companies say that nearly 40% of this year’s entry-level positions will be filled by former interns, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Duke and North Carolina will start NCAA tournament play in Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable Arena on Friday.
Duke, No. 1 seed in the West, will play MEAC champion and 16-seed Hampton. North Carolina, the No. 2 seed in the East, will face 15-seed Long Island University.
Charlotte’s other games on Friday have Washington playing Georgia and Tennessee going against Michigan.
Last month, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials had the last of their items moved out of the Education Center, an employee found some large binders in a trash bin. They didn’t look like they should be trash.
There were four in all, dark blue and dusty. They were filled with old newspaper clippings.
“I opened them and went ‘ohhhhhh,’?” said CMS spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry, who had the binders brought to a conference room at the Government Center. “I saw names like Garinger. I’d only known that name on a school.”
The clips begin in 1958, a year after Charlotte schools integrated. They end in 1964, four years after the city and county school systems consolidated. They include news stories and features, editorials and photos. They are charming and disturbing and maybe a little too recognizable, in that way history can be.
Charlotte was at the front end of a boom then, and the clips reflect a city growing like a gangly teen. “Suburban school trend already apparent in Charlotte,” said a prophetic headline to one 1959 article. Another, from 1963, examined a proposal to purchase 20 mobile classrooms for $100,000. It was, school officials stressed, a solution that was “temporary.”
Random, small business, Girl Scout Cookies: Life is way too complicated …
It’s Girl Scout cookie season, a time when many working parents ask their colleagues to buy a few boxes of the signature treats on behalf of their kids.
Some small-business owners say they welcome the opportunity to support members of their local community through cookie sales, and even encourage the Girl Scouts to do the selling themselves. But others say the activity – and pursuits like it – could make employees feel pressured to place orders when they’d rather not, since noncomformists tend to stick out more in small workplaces than large ones.
ROLLS-ROYCE’S silver Phantom on display at the Geneva Motor Show had a surprise under the bonnet. In place of a polished, gleaming cylinder-head there were batteries and electric motors to drive the 2.5 tonne aluminium giant. This was just a one-off “concept” car for a world tour to see what the super-rich think of having their everyday transport run on electricity rather than petrol. But less opulent examples of luxury cars going electric were also in evidence. Lexus (the luxury brand of Toyota) showed off seven petrol-electric hybrid models, while Land Rover, Porsche, Mercedes and BMW (the owner of Rolls-Royce) all had hybrids on show.
Until recently only Lexus among the premium brands seemed likely to follow its parent company, which has made more than 2m of its pioneering Prius hybrids since 1997. The Prius itself has evolved, and Toyota now offers an upmarket, seven-seater people-carrier version, with a lighter lithium-ion battery instead of the nickel-metal-hydride technology in earlier models. In Europe one in five Toyota and Lexus cars sold will soon be hybrids, and the Prius is already the company’s best-selling model in Japan.
The emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools presented a plan Saturday to turn nearly one in every three schools into charter schools as part of a bid to save the district millions of dollars and prevent massive school closings.
The 41 schools selected for independent control currently enroll about 16,000 of the district’s 73,000 students and would operate as public school academies starting as soon as this fall. The district expects to release a list of the schools this week and solicit proposals for their transfer.
Recently the district led by a state-appointed manager overseeing a total of 142 schools has explored modeling Detroit on post-Katrina New Orleans, where a shrunken district was remade with mostly charter schools.
Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager, said in a news release Saturday that the charter-school plan would reduce operating costs by $75 million to $99 million, but did not say over what period of time any cost savings would be realized.
The original deficit-elimination plan approved last month called for closing 40 schools next school year, which would have saved the district $28 million, according to Steve Wasko, a district spokesman. The plan also calls for shuttering another 30 schools in 2012.
He said a similar estimate for savings associated with transferring 41 schools to charter control has not been completed.
Bovine colostrum — the milk produced by cows in the first few days after giving birth — sounds like another natural remedy on the line between science and wishful thinking.
Proponents call it “Nature’s Healing Miracle” and point to mention of its healthful properties as far back as the Bible and an ancient Indian pharmacopeia. Modern vendors of the stuff claim it boosts immune function, supports muscle growth and can fight aging.
But now British scientists have published a study (coming out in the March edition of the American Journal of Physiology) suggesting bovine colostrum has at least one very real effect: reducing “gut leakiness” in athletes. Say what?
As gastroenterologist Raymond Playford, one of the authors, explains to Shots:
The gut has to digest and absorb the food that we eat and be a good barrier at the same time. In various diseases and during heavy exercise that barrier fails.
That’s a big problem for a lot of long-distance runners. As their core heats up, gut cells die and toxins from the gut leak into the body.
Playford and his colleagues looked at runners at the end of a 20 minute workout. Normally, these athletes saw a about 250 percent increase in gut leakiness as their temperatures rose. But runners who took colostrum for two weeks before going through the same workout only saw a 50 percent increase, even though they were getting just as warm.
events, time change, DST, touché titles: “Cosmic courtesy” for you E!
The change is disconcerting. But more unsettling still is the mystery we’d rather not face: If clock time isn’t real, what is time, anyway? We don’t understand time, and we definitely don’t want to admit that our allotment is limited. We just want to get on with our day.
Then in 2005, Congress granted Americans a cosmic courtesy: a little extra sun.
In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, intended to strengthen the electricity grid and increase domestic fuel production, Congress inserted a section that moved the start of daylight saving time back to the second Sunday in March and the end to the first Sunday in November.
Before 2005, the last major amendment to the Uniform Time Act came in the mid-80s when the start of daylight time was moved back to the first Sunday in April.
Many countries around the world observe some form of “summer time,” but set their dates individually. — March 7, 2008
Japan Earthquake/tsunami, facts: Wow … moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet and shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches.
The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.
“At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).
The temblor, which struck Friday afternoon near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan’s east coast.
YouTube, lost and found, photography : Loved the story … loved the video … But think about it .. almost no one uses film anymore …
A young New York filmmaker, whose attempt to locate the owner of a canister of film he found in a Brooklyn park during the recent blizzard
turned into an Internet quest, has solved the mystery: She’s young, she’s French, she lives in Paris.
Todd Biebers’ original video, in which he showed the lovely photographs taken around New York City after the snowstorm, drew more than 1 million views, which prompted a second one as he began his quest for the mystery photographer.
Then comes the third, in which he documents his travels to Europe to reconnect with the owner of the film, who found out about his online search, and to meet some of the Europeans who had contacted him during the search.
ultra marathons, kith/kin, good to know: J was thinking about running this one again … Good to know that “An ambulance will not be stationed on the course. There are four major hospitals located within limping distance of the course, on the other side of Lake Shore Drive.”
Aid Stations will have water, Gatorade, Coke, cookies, pretzels, potato chips, candy, fruit, first aid supplies and all the goodies you expect from us. An ambulance will not be stationed on the course. There are four major hospitals located within limping distance of the course, on the other side of Lake Shore Drive . Aid station volunteers and others will be able to call 911 for help if necessary.
YA/children’s literature, Curious George, museum exhibits, San Francisco: If I remember correctly, this exhibit first opened in Skokie. Very interesting true story …
The Curious George stories were an international hit, allowing for a few cultural variations. In Britain his name is given as Zozo; the publishers thought it would be disrespectful to have a mischievous monkey named after the sitting king. Whatever the case, children around the world were taken with George’s unwitting mischief, and charmed by the cheerful, brightly coloured illustrations. But his story of travel, migration and cultural collision has a paradigmatically American dimension.
Against the backdrop of the Reys’ own dramatic travels, these children’s stories assume a poignant cast. The Reys became American citizens in 1946, and moved to Cambridge, Massachussetts in 1963*. They never talked much about their narrow escape, and even today the story is not widely known. This is perhaps because, despite the direct biographical parallels, the Curious George stories give so little indication of their dark historical backdrop. The outlook is resolutely cheerful. George explores his new world fearlessly, and his confidence is justified. Strangers are kind to him. Authority figures are corrective, not punitive. The inevitable misunderstandings are quickly sorted out and forgiven. He is just a fictional monkey. But those would be good standards to help any newcomer feel at home.
architecture, Easter Island Statues, Miami: Only in Miami?
CONCEIVED during the boom and taken over by its lenders after the bust, the Icon Brickell has become the most visible symbol of Miami’s property renaissance. The Philippe Starck-designed condominium complex is, depending on taste, either hugely sophisticated or utterly naff. The columns at the base of the building are shaped like Easter Island statues (see picture); tables and chairs sit voguishly in the water of an outdoor pool; the walls of an enormous spa are lined with books wrapped in white paper. It’s seductively ridiculous.
The complex had been largely pre-sold, but when the bottom fell out of the market buyers refused to pay up. Units are now being marketed at heavily reduced prices. Sales, at around 60 units a month, are running at twice the expected level, says one agent. The main source of demand is cash-rich international buyers, most of them from Latin America. Local agents say Venezuelans are the most active buyers, followed by Brazilians.
country v. city, free market, competition: All I know is most town centers die when Wal-Mart moves … what is the long-term effect?
But after reading an anti-Wal-Mart missive from another small business owner, I’ve been wondering: what message do these guys think they’re sending?
I mean, can you imagine a television station running ads asking you to complain to your government about the existence of other channels? Or if every brand of peanut butter on the shelf carried a sticker demanding that other brands of peanut butter be removed?
As a customer at the hardware store, I have to say I was a little insulted. The message couldn’t be more clear—as a business we’re concerned that your decision to seek a better selection of goods at lower prices will force us to close. Actually, I suppose it’s worse than that—we think you, enlightened customer, appreciate the benefits of an uncompetitive business enough to deny others the option to buy from a store with more attractive goods and prices than our own. Honestly, what sort of patron is moved to action by the call to kill off the competition?
In addition to being a discriminating where-to-stay resource, National Geographic Traveler’s 2010 Stay List is an in-a-nutshell look at the geography, history, and architectural styles of five countries whose total acreage is less than California’s. Selections from England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales range from humble farmsteads to over-the-top castles.
A group of immigrants traveling aboard a ship celebrate as they catch their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
college basketball, Duke, Seth Curry, kudos: I thought I could cheer for Duke because of Seth … but I find I can only cheer for Seth. Kudos, Seth!
On Friday night, Smith’s teammates finished in spectacular fashion while he watched from the bench. Within a span of 46 seconds, Seth Curry drove for a three-point play, made two free throws and passed to Miles Plumlee for a layup as Duke scored seven straight points to stretch its lead to 72-60.
“I was comfortable out there, and I didn’t feel any pressure at all,” Curry said.
Middle East Uprising/Awakening, China, Jasmine Revolution: China next?
Since late December, Chinese pro-democracy and human-rights activists have watched, cheered and agonized over the events unfolding in the Arab world. There has been a surge of online traffic, with Chinese activists sharing links to blog posts, photos and YouTube videos in order to show solidarity with protesters in the Middle East. When Hosni Mubarak stepped down, one Chinese Twitter feed declared, “Today, we’re all Egyptians!”
Online calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” in China first appeared on Twitter shortly thereafter and were followed by details about the proposed protests on the overseas Chinese Web portal Boxun.com. The calls drew small crowds of onlookers and foreign journalists on Feb. 20 and 27 in designated locations in Beijing and Shanghai, but those who gathered were outnumbered by the police, who dispersed them quickly. Many activists had been warned to stay away; others were forced to go on “sightseeing” trips, put under surveillance or house arrest, or detained.
Still, the events in Tunisia and Egypt were immensely encouraging. As one activist explained to me, “The Middle Eastern protests soundly rejected the claims that countries with Islamic traditions cannot embrace democracy and that people in developing countries only desire material subsistence.” For activists in China, the revolution in the Arab world has rendered obsolete the familiar argument that democracy is unsuited to certain cultures.
The Chinese, especially young people, are no less wired than their Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts, and they are deft at climbing over the “Great Firewall” erected by government censors. Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are banned in China, but activists find ways to use them. More important and popular are domestic social-media services like QQ and Sina.com.
travel, lists: I think I am stuck with Calgon … take me away.
FORGOT to plan for a spring break? Haven’t gone skiing yet this year? It’s March, people!
Which means two things: You’re overdue for a break, and it’s not too late to plan one. Even if you just slip away for a weekend.
Want to be on the beach by midafternoon? There are new flights to Destin, Fla., and the Turks and Caicos that are ready to make that happen. Feeling the urge to hit the mountain before the snow melts? Heavy snowfall and spring rates as low as $99 a night are making resorts like Breckenridge, Colo., and Snowbird, Utah, good bargains. Or are poolside cocktails more your style? There are plenty of options in Palm Springs, Calif., where newly renovated hotels are showing off freshened digs.
So, here you go. Whether you want high desert landscapes, powdery slopes or pristine blue water, we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you. Here are 14 top-notch escapes that require fewer than four hours in either a car or a plane from more than a dozen major cities. Wherever you live, we’ve got you covered.
faith and spirituality, death and dying, bookshelf, nonfiction: Sounds interesting …
Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.
Colton Burpo and his father Todd Burpo sign copies of “Heaven Is for Real” in their Imperial, Neb., home.
He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.
Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
faith and spirituality, labyrinths, Charlotte: I think I would like to do a labyrinth tour of Charlotte. Anybody interested?
Almetto Howey Alexander was a woman with a dAream.And as she approached artist Tom Schulz that November day in 2007, she knew he was the one who could help her make it come true.The two had never met, but both had come to the center courtyard at Charlotte’s Presbyterian Hospital for the public unveiling of Schulz’s latest labyrinth – a geometric flat surface with a circuitous path that leads to a center and often brings spiritual peace, even transformation, to those who walk it.”I want one of these,” Alexander told Schulz.”One of what?” he asked.”A labyrinth.”Before that first conversation was over, Schulz had said “yes ma’am” to this elderly black woman and to her dream to have a labyrinth – a place of prayer in motion – for her community in northwest Charlotte.Today at 1 p.m., the McCrorey Family YMCA on Beatties Ford Road will unveil the Almetto Howey Alexander Labyrinth. Schulz’s latest concrete creation is an inspirational outside space that measures 40 by 55 feet and combines ancient African symbols with elements from Alexander’s life and philosophy as a teacher, church member and civil rights activist.It’s believed to be the only Afro-centric labyrinth in the United States and, according to officials at the McCrorey Y, the only labyrinth at a YMCA anywhere in the world.
Civil War, history: I really did not think I would like the sesquicentennial of the Civil War … but I am enjoying this series of articles.
He had spoken to Lincoln since receiving the news; at the reception at the White House after the inauguration, the two men had a tete a tete. Buchanan was observed to be doing nearly all the talking, holding forth with urgent animation. Was the outgoing president imparting some final advice, sharing some guidance that would prove vital in the days ahead? Indeed. “I think you will find the water of the right hand well of the White House better than that at the left,’’ an eavesdropper overheard Buchanan say. Insights about the pantry and kitchen followed. The state of Sumter was never a topic.
Camp Illahee, places, kith/kin: Molly’s favorite place in NC … Heavenly World!
Brevard is also home to another camp where tradition is a trademark.
At Camp Illahee, every Sunday is a time of unity. From the way they dress to the songs they sing, the girls function as a community.
For the entire day, the campers and counselors wear Illahee-logoed white shirts and blue ties. The girls wear the uniforms during Sunday’s worship time, as well as when they eat and gather around the weekly campfire.
“Part of it [wearing the uniforms] is the worship service; it is nice to have everyone dressed alike,” co-director, Laurie Strayhorn, said. “It gives the camp a feeling of unity and makes it a special day…it is a fresh, unifying thing…and a noncompetitive environment.”
Another Sunday specialty occurs when lunch is served. The girls join together in singing the doxology “Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow” before sitting down to their customary Sunday meal, which always includes fried chicken, wild rice, rolls, broccoli and ice cream.
words, faith and spirituality, Middle East Unrest/Awakening: Just as my favorite Presbyterian minister blogger noticed the varying words to describe the actors in the Middle East. I have noticed the varying words used to describe their actions: awakening, unrest, uprising, revolt, protest, revolution, overthrow …
How we name things matters.
This morning it is possible to read about:
“protesters” in Bahrain,
“activists” in Saudi Arabia
“demonstrators” in Kabul, and
“rebels” in Libya.
Is this word usage a spectrum? If so is it marked by escalating violence and lawlessness? If so what halts the descent into killing? Is it inevitable?
google doodles, history: Learned something from this one … lol
Comic legend Will Eisner was honored Sunday (March 6), on what would have been his 94th birthday, with a creative Google Doodle that references the author’s most famous works as interpreted by artist Scott McCloud.
The drawing shows the eyes of Eisner’s most well-known creation, The Spirit (aka Denny Colt), substituting for the two “Os” in Google, flanked by buildings taken from his graphic novels about NYC drawn to look like the other letters.
Earlier this week Congress approved (and President Barack Obama signed) a bill that will cut funding for the literary organization, Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). Follow this link to support the program.
Daniel Pink (
Almetto Howey Alexander was a woman with a dAream.And as she approached artist Tom Schulz that November day in 2007, she knew he was the one who could help her make it come true.The two had never met, but both had come to the center courtyard at Charlotte’s Presbyterian Hospital for the public unveiling of Schulz’s latest labyrinth – a geometric flat surface with a circuitous path that leads to a center and often brings spiritual peace, even transformation, to those who walk it.”I want one of these,” Alexander told Schulz.”One of what?” he asked.”A labyrinth.”Before that first conversation was over, Schulz had said “yes ma’am” to this elderly black woman and to her dream to have a labyrinth – a place of prayer in motion – for her community in northwest Charlotte.Today at 1 p.m., the McCrorey Family YMCA on Beatties Ford Road will unveil the Almetto Howey Alexander Labyrinth. Schulz’s latest concrete creation is an inspirational outside space that measures 40 by 55 feet and combines ancient African symbols with elements from Alexander’s life and philosophy as a teacher, church member and civil rights activist.It’s believed to be the only Afro-centric labyrinth in the United States and, according to officials at the McCrorey Y, the only labyrinth at a YMCA anywhere in the world.
Dennard's Clipping Service 