“Throw me something (preferably a Pop-Tart), mister”
Everything is late this year. I have been anticipating my annual Lenten Labyrinth Walks for weeks. Some years I am already half way through.
But today is Mardi Gras, a pre-Lent bacchanalian festival, and in some communities the festival has been going on for weeks. And I just learned that it is supposed to go on for weeks, because liturgically the festival takes place from Epiphany until Ash Wednesday, culminating in one wild final hoopla on Fat Tuesday/ Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras. Let the good times roll. Who knew?
My first pre-Lent bacchanalian festival indulgence is a Diet Dr. Pepper and a toasted brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart. I, too, “snap it in half, the way that children who eat Pop-Tarts do to make them feel like they last longer.” And I must share with you where I found this quote … you will never enjoy a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart the same again. Bob Trobich, a close Davidson friend posted a note about a publication by his son, Michael, my godson. Bob said … “Proud Dad time. My son Michael has been a writer since high school (maybe before). He’s won some awards and had a piece published previously in “Polyphony”, an international student-run literary magazine. Now, he has a piece in “Adelaide”, which is a literary journal published out of New York and Lisbon.” I immediately loved Micheal’s piece, and one of my favorite passages was about a brown sugar cinnamon pop-tart.
“When Kate was younger, she had the same nightmare on the second Saturday of every month. She would be holding a Pop-Tart in her mother’s kitchen, brown sugar cinnamon, her favorite. She would snap it in half, the way that children who eat Pop-Tarts do to make them feel like they last longer. She would break it, and out would come a colony of ants, a steady stream of tiny black marching insects, rows and columns and regiments and battalions and she couldn’t drop the Pop-Tarts, all she could do was let the ants crawl over her body, cover her skin, and scream silently.
Kate does not call the way she is “nervous”. Kate does not call it anything. She takes photos of the best that people can be because people, she has decided, are like Pop-Tarts. Sometimes, they are horrible and terrifying. But most of the time, they’re pretty okay, and they deserve to see that.”
And tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent. This Lent, I hope to de-binge, to practice limits. I shall purposefully restrict myself and be disciplined. I want to appreciate Lent, think about what I’m doing with my time, putting in my body, or feeding to my soul. I shall choose during the 40 days of Lent to set limits and require myself to do something else or, sometimes, both.
In addition to enjoying a last indulgence of a perfectly toasted brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart and a Diet Dr. Pepper, I will take a Mardi Gras walk, go to my TMBS class, look at pics of friends celebrating in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro (hello, Angela!), the largest such festival in the world, and eat pancakes (and in case you are wondering, they do not serve pancakes at the Waffle House) and make a list of something, my 2019 Lenten practice. That will be a new practice for Lent. It may be a grocery list … but I’m in a listmaking phase of life.
Massive snowstorm blanketing the East Coast, NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly: A slightly different perceive …
NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Like This Page · Yesterday · Massive snowstorm blanketing the East Coast clearly visible from the International Space Station! Stay safe! #YearInSpace
PHOTOS: Freezing rain, sleet and snow fell in the region today and viewers sent us hundreds of photos like this one from @EmilyKozel #CLTSnow MORE PHOTOS
Cape Winelands , South Africa, travel, The best places to visit in 2016, lists, Business Insider:
The Cape Winelands is where some of the world’s most popular wines are produced, making it an ideal destination for wine tasting. The area’s wineries are lined along some of the most scenic routes, including a historic wine estate that dates back centuries. Enjoy top-notch wine alongside a variety of locally produced cheese, olives, fruit, and organic produce, or try a meal at one of Franschoek’s many acclaimed restaurants.
Sacred Harmony of Geometry, Sacred Geometry Really Is, EnergyFanatics.com:
There will come a day when music and its philosophy will become the religion of humanity. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan What Sacred Geometry Really Is Sacred Geometry means literally “The Sacred Measure of the Earth”. But it could also be called “The Blueprint of all Creation”. In reality, Sacred Geometry is a profound spiritual science, which has been taught for thousands of years in spiritual traditions around the world. This is because Sacred Geometry reveals the actual patterns by which Spirit creates our World.1 There are a Ton of esoteric teachings with Sacred Geometry all through them. Yet no one really knew what Sacred Geometry REALLY represented: The segmented BLUEPRINTS to ENERGY; The Mathematical Formula of CREATION. Sacred Geometry represents the Segmented Blueprints of Magnetic Currents & Neutral Particles of Matter.2 One of the most important discoveries of the new quantum physics is that of the holographic nature of the universe. The geometric language of light, that forms the underlying matrix of this hologram, is the alphabet of the new paradigm. The primary infrastructure of all existence is written in the Sacred Geometric language of light. All is light … all is geometry. Sacred Geometry is the ‘graphic code’ that reveals the processes of inherent order underlying all of creation. The mathematical laws of Sacred Geometry govern every system of growth, every motion in the universe, from atomic bonds to spiraling galaxies.3
Remote Year, Travel the World for a Year While You Keep Your Job, Brit +:
Here’s the deal: You love your work. You love to travel. Unfortunately, you can’t always have the best of both worlds (at least not with out a major career change) – but what about when you can? Enter: Remote Year, a company that will essentially arrange a trip around the world for you while you work remotely.
Anshuman Ghosh, @moography, quirky, street photography, fusion between what was real and what was not, phone framing:“I’ve got crazy ideas in my head when it comes to how I would like to see the world,” says Anshuman Ghosh (@moography), an Indian business developer based in South Africa. He was initially drawn to street photography, but Anshuman wasn’t able to create the world he imagined in his mind — one that was less serious and more quirky. “I wanted to create something that was a fusion between what was real and what was not,” he says. “I came up with this technique I call phone framing.” Anshuman sketches a drawing on paper, cuts it out and aligns everything together to create a seamless visual illusion. “Placing the phone in the picture gives me the freedom to trick my audience into believing the phone is more than something that it is.”
Novel’s First Sentence, A Secret History | Electric Literature:
A great first sentence is very important. In a novel, it’s a “promise,” a “handshake,” an “embrace,” a “key.” Great first sentences are celebrated everywhere literature is cherished and mandated everywhere it’s taught. They’re a pleasure and a duty—the “most important sentence in a book,” everyone agrees. But they haven’t always been important. When Daniel Defoe wrote the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe, in 1719, first sentences weren’t important, and so he wrote, “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull.” When Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre in 1847, first sentences still weren’t important, and even so she wrote, “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”
Neural Algorithm, ‘Paint’ Photos, Van Gogh To Picasso, Bored Panda:
A group of researchers at the University of Tubingen, Germany, have developed an algorithm that can morph an image to resemble a painting in the style of the great masters. Technically called “deep learning” algorithms, they are already in use by companies such as Google for image recognition and other applications. “The system uses neural representations to separate and recombine content and style of arbitrary images, providing a neural algorithm for the creation of artistic images,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “Here we introduce an artificial system based on a Deep Neural Network that creates artistic images of high perceptual quality.” A photograph of apartments by a river in Tubingen, Germany was processed to be stylistically similar to various paintings, including J.M. Turner’s “The Wreck of a Transport Ship,” Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
Paris, Bookstore Shakespeare &Co., VICE | United States:
George died in 2011 at the age of 98, by which point he had upgraded from a bed in the shop to a flat on the third floor in the same building. I’m living here now, in his former apartment, ostensibly to finish my second novel. But more practically and pressingly, I’m a “homeless wanderer.” People have been asking me how I got this position, whether it was hard to obtain. The short answer is no, and the long answer is yes: I parted ways with a partner I loved, leaving the home where we’d lived together, and lost a contract I was relying on, so I asked Sylvia if I could stay for a while. She said, without question or hesitation, that I could stay for as long as I needed. George called Shakespeare & Company a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore,” and I feel infinitely grateful to George and Sylvia for creating and maintaining a space that prioritizes community.
In this play, as in others, Shakespeare calls on the ambiguous associations of Catholic figures, images and ideas, as a means of engaging his audience with the problems he frames. He seems to revel in the pleasures of slippery meaning. By flirting with stereotypes and sectarian expectations he makes his audience think more deeply about the difficulties of the plays and their own culture. Whatever Shakespeare’s personal religion was, the religion he put on stage was both playful and probing.
The Wanderlust Gene: Why Some People Are Born To Travel: I must have it …
As told on one psychology blog, the inherent urge to travel can be traced back to one gene, which is a genetic derivative of the gene DRD4, which is associated with the dopamine levels in the brain.
The gene itself, which is identified as DRD4-7R, has been dubbed the “wanderlust gene,” because of its correlation with increased levels of curiosity and restlessness, for the most part.
In reality, however, those who carry this genetic information typically share one common theme, a history of traveling.
CSD students video wins C-SPAN honorable mention | DavidsonNews.net, Selective Service System, whether women should be required to register for the US military draft along with men, IMO: I have always thought that women should be required to register for the US military draft along with men and that all should serve even in peace times.
Community School of Davidson seniors Julia Conlon, Anna DeGrauw, and Zac Halsey have won an Honorable Mention in C-SPAN’s national 2015 StudentCam competition. Julia, Anna, and Zac will walk away with $250 for their documentary, “Selective Service System,” which investigated whether women should be required to register for the US military draft along with men.
Davidson NC, locally-owned bookstores, At Main Street Books time to turn the page | DavidsonNews.net: I always stop in …
Main Street Books is opening a new chapter in downtown Davidson next week. Longtime owners Barbara Freund and Betty Reinke will stroll off into the sunset and leave the marvelous business of books behind. As of today (Friday, March 6, 2015) they’ve sold the shop, The good news is that the new managers, Adah Fitzpatrick and Catherine Hamilton-Jenson, will continue to grace our town with reading material and we look forward to getting to know them.
But for today, we look back on a wonderful 28 years of “turning pages.” Main Street Books occupies the Archie Brown Building built in 1901 earning it the notoriety of being the oldest building on Main Street. Back in the 1970’s Mrs. Chester Dale (Harriet) ran The Christian Book Store in this space before splitting the space between “Shalom” Book Store and Marshall Case’s Realty Company. When Mrs. Dale sold the building to Ed Harris in the mid 1980’s, the main floor was renovated to include air-conditioning and better lighting with the balcony (yes, there was a balcony in the store!) sealed off for separate office space and bathrooms.
Mrs. Dale insisted the building remain a book store and on Town Day, May 2, 1987, her vision was realized as Main Street Books opened its doors with owners Barbara Freund, Joyce Patch and Catherine Hall. Six months later, Catherine Hall dropped out and eight years later, Joyce Patch “retired” to make room for Betty Reinke. So for the past 20 years, residents and visitors have found Betty or Barbara at their “perch” by the front door greeting all, making friends from near and far, and selling lots of books. Barbara worked Tuesday and Thursday; Betty on Monday and Wednesday; and they switched off Fridays and Saturdays. Dependable subs were Virginia Hundley, Phyllis Young and Sue Toumazou.
“As to “doing” the labyrinth, the task is simplicity itself. “You just follow the path,” says Dr. Weil. “It takes about 20 minutes.” He says there is no particular mindset one must bring to the experience, but he notes with a smile that “grimly determined to finish it as quickly as possible,” probably isn’t the best way to go. One of Dr. Weil’s favorite activities is watching groups walk the path. “It’s interesting, because they look like planets, with some of them going retrograde,” he says.
But many people walk it alone. Nancy Olmstead, Dr. Weil’s executive assistant, has done so more than 20 times. “When you are done walking, you experience two things that would seem to be contradictory: you feel really relaxed, and really energized,” she says. “There are not too many things in the world that make you feel that way.”
Jace has also walked it many times. “I like the metaphor,” he says. “One path. One entrance. One exit. We all walk it.” As for the doctor himself, “I would say that it is at least relaxing. It’s a nice walk. It is centering.”
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One of Dr. Weils favorite activities is watching groups walk the path. “Its interesting, because they look like planets, with some of them going retrograde,” he says.
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Because I knew that simply following the path would take me to the exit, I realized I was free to focus on the walk itself. I was amazed to find a strange, beautiful collection of objects lodged between and atop the rocks: a tiny stone Buddha, several glass beads, a quartz crystal. I had missed most of them on the way in; but marveled at all of them on the way out.
“I never quite know how they get there,” says Dr. Weil of the artifacts. “People just leave little gifts.” Gifts indeed. The lesson was clear: Focus on the journey. The destination will take care of itself.
YA Historical Fiction for Downton Abbey Fans | Lisa Parkin: YA fiction, historical fiction Philadelphiaand written by someone with a great name … and zombie fiction.
Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard — Its late 1800s in Philadelphia. And zombies are loose in the city. The historical landmarks in the city are fun to pick out…during all the eating of brains.
14 Foodie Terms That Have Lost All Meaning, “artisanal”: I am glad to know what is is supposed to mean. Enough!!
“Artisanal”
When it first started appearing on menus, it came with the promise of ingredients lovingly transformed by a culinary master. Now, “artisanal” is a descriptor on frozen dinners and canned soup. Those can artisans apprentice for decades!
“Solvitur Ambulando” – It is solved by walking, 2015 Lenten Labyrinth Walks, Almetto Howie Alexander Labyrinth – McCrorey YMCA/Charlotte NC 4/40:
Are you okay? Soon after i started walking, one of the women leaving the Y’s hosted church asked me if I was OK? i then realized that if you did not know that there was a labyrinth on the raised area near the parking lot, or if you did, that you did not know what a labyrinth was, you might be confused by a woman walking in circles. So I tried to explain to them that I was very much ok and that they should try to walk the labyrinth .
Before walking, I intentionally looked at each of the symbols painted around the center of the labyrinth 11 circuit Chartres-style labyrinth. I would like to know more about the symbols.
I also notice, for the first time, that the lunation’s are scored in the concrete …
The walk ..
I always laugh when it approach the center because it looks like a Parcheesi board …
Sirens … Three fire engines scream as they pass.
More church members continue to come out of church. They are almost all African-American women with children. I see very few men, except young adult men. Very interesting in light of Edward’s Ethnic Studies class where he has learned about the role of women in African-American culture.
I have been walking this labyrinth frequently for several years. Today I noticed on the billboard (which I have looked at multiple times) the artist drawing as well as the labyrinth’s logo. It became clear to me that the “Parcheesi board” at the center is a CROSS. I feel really rather silly.
And then i notice the quote at the base of the labyrinth: “With patience persistence and prayer, a God-filled spirit can bring a seed to fruit – Almetto Howie Alexander 2011
“The labyrinth is my dedication to the Washington Heights community to inspire people of all ages to find a peaceful place to reflect, refocus, heal, meditate, find peace of mind and pray,” says Mrs. Alexander.
We Should All Be Feminists, 6 Books To Give Your Best Friend, lists:
We Should All Be Feminists
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As most of us know, award-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDxEuston talk on feminism was recently sampled in Beyoncé’s “Flawless.” Now this compact but passionate speech is available in book form. “The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are,” writes Adichie. Girls are brought up “to see each other as competitors… for the attention of men” while boys are raised to prove themselves with their masculinity. Her conclusion: “If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” Pair this slim but substantive book with Roxane Gay’s best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist, both of which illustrate how being outspoken can sometimes also be the best way to be heard.
aul Durand-Ruel set out to create value for something that no one wanted, and changed the economics of taste for ever. With a brilliant eye and steady nerve, he was the first dealer to make a business from contemporary art, and for years he was the only one who sold, and often the only one who bought, the Impressionists.
The Atlantic Magazine’s Mission Statement: Interesting mission statement for a 158 year old magazine … one of my favorites.
The Atlantic Monthly was first published in 1857 by the renowned lecturer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They did actually launch with a mission statement back then:
The Atlantic will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of … the American idea
The Atlantic’s mission statement has since been updated to:
The Atlantic is America’s leading destination for brave thinking and bold ideas that matter. The Atlantic engages its print, online, and live audiences with breakthrough insights into the worlds of politics, business, the arts, and culture. With exceptional talent deployed against the world’s most important and intriguing topics, The Atlantic is the source of opinion, commentary, and analysis for America’s most influential individuals who wish to be challenged, informed, and entertained.
An ice Stonehenge, or as five guys from Lake Mills, Wisconsin call it, the “Rock Lake Icehenge” is quite a sight to see as you’re driving down Lake Shore Drive along Rock Lake.
Marcus Borg (Liberal Scholar on Historical Jesus), obituary, NYTimes.com: I do not agree with his conclusions. but I do believe his work was important.
Marcus J. Borg, a scholar who popularized a liberal intellectual approach to Christianity with his lectures and books about Jesus as a historical figure, died on Wednesday at his home in Powell Butte, Ore. He was 72.
His publisher, HarperOne, said the cause was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Professor Borg was among a group of scholars, known as the Jesus Seminar, who set off an uproar with its very public efforts to discern collectively which of Jesus’ acts and utterances could be confirmed as historically true, and which were probably myths.
His studies of the New Testament led him not toward atheism but toward a deep belief in the spiritual life and in Jesus as a teacher, healer and prophet. Professor Borg became, in essence, a leading evangelist of what is often called progressive Christianity.
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“His own vision was not simply derived from opposing fundamentalist or literalist Christianity,” Mr. Crossan said. “It was a very positive vision. He could talk about Jesus and he could talk about Paul and the positive vision they had.”
In his last book, the memoir “Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most” (2014), Professor Borg wrote: “Imagine that Christianity is about loving God. Imagine that it’s not about the self and its concerns, about ‘what’s in it for me,’ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life.”
religion before the modern period, civilization, Karen Armstrong, Sam Harris and Bill Maher: “It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps” – Salon.com.
First of all, there is the whole business about religion before the modern period never having been considered a separate activity but infusing and cohering with all other activities, including state-building, politics and warfare. Religion was part of state-building, and a lot of the violence of our world is the violence of the state. Without this violence we wouldn’t have civilization. Agrarian civilization depended upon a massive structural violence. In every single culture or pre-modern state, a small aristocracy expropriated the serfs and peasants and kept them at subsistence level.This massive, iniquitous system is responsible for our finest achievements, and historians tell us that without this iniquitous system we probably wouldn’t have progressed beyond subsistence level. Therefore, we are all implicated in this violence. No state, however peace-loving it claims to be, can afford to disband its army, so when people say religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history this is a massive oversimplification. Violence is at the heart of our lives, in some form or another
9 Things You Should Know About Vintage Christianity, OnFaith, lists: Interesting list … something to think about.
“I am dedicated to unoriginality.” So said historical theologian Thomas Oden in his classic work, Classical Christianity. He goes on: “I plan to present nothing new or original in these pages . . . My aim is to present classical Christian teaching of God on its own terms, undiluted by modern posturing.”
I echo Oden. Because, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, this year is the year to go backwards in order to move forwards in our faith.
To regress, by rediscovering and retrieving the vintage Christian faith.
But what do I mean by vintage Christianity? Before we can explore it, let’s define it. And since everyone seems to be doing listicles these days, here are nine things you need to know about the vintage Christian faith …
The magazine itself was part of an emerging genre of food-related publications like Lucky Peach and Cherry Bombe, which offer readers a media experience that is as much tactile as it is about content.
“It is part of a genre of very niche publications that say one thing we can do is create this beautifully designed artifact,” said the author and magazine veteran Kurt Andersen.
The problem, he said, may simply have been one of audience and execution.
“I don’t want to speak ill of the dying, but what is the plausible audience in such a magazine?” he asked. “It was too kind of nitty-gritty and old-fashioned, back-to-the-land hippie magazine for the food-farm porn market, and yet too ‘What about the dairy situation in the Philippines?’ for people who are really raising chickens for a living.”
Each issue of Modern Farmer, the stylish agrarian quarterly, has an austere portrait of an animal on the cover. So far, there have been six. The animals look remote and self-satisfied, as if nothing you said could matter to them, just like human models. The first cover had a rooster with an eye resembling a tiny dark paperweight. The second had a goat looking haughtily askance. The third was of a sheep whose gaze is so penetrating that she seems to be trying to hypnotize you. The fourth was of a pig in profile whose ears flop forward like a visor; according to a note by the photographer, a pig’s flopped ears trap smells as it searches for food. The fifth had a hulking farm dog with a ruff like a headdress, and the sixth has a serene-looking cow with a black face and a white forehead and nose. Ann Marie Gardner, the magazine’s founder and editor, says that she always thought she would have animals on the cover. The art director, Sarah Gephart, says, however, that she had nearly finished designing the magazine when Gardner told her that the cover would have animals. “We thought it would be people,” Gephart said.
Modern Farmer appeared in the spring of 2013. After three issues, it won a National Magazine Award; no other magazine had ever won so quickly. According to Gardner, though, Modern Farmer is less a magazine than an emblem of “an international life-style brand.” This is the life style of people who want to “eat food with a better backstory”—from slaughterhouses that follow humane practices, and from farmers who farm clean and treat their workers decently. Also, food cultists who like obscure foods and believe that fruits and vegetables taste different depending on where they are grown. Also, aspirational farmers, hobby farmers, intern farmers, student farmers, WWOOFers—people who take part in programs sponsored by the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms movement—and people who stay at hotels on farms where they eat things grown by the owners. Plus idlers in cubicles searching for cheap farmland and chicken fences and what kind of goats give the best milk. Such people “have a foot in each world, rural and urban,” Gardner says. She calls them Rurbanistas, a term she started using after hearing the Spanish word rurbanismo, which describes the migration from the city to the countryside. Rurbanistas typify the Modern Farmer audience.
Veteran Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrator Ann Clark was named superintendent Tuesday while the school board searches for a long-term leader – but Clark will not be considered for that job.
Instead, Clark said she plans to retire from the district in 2016 when a new superintendent is selected and ready to take office.
Clark’s new position will cap a three-decade career rising through the CMS ranks. Her selection also fills the void left by former Superintendent Heath Morrison, who resigned in November after an investigation into claims that he bullied staff members. The months since then have been marked by uncertainty among the district’s 18,000 employees and the Charlotte community.
“Ann will provide the stability and direction we need,” school board Chairwoman Mary McCray said.
Clark, who had been the deputy superintendent, said it was her decision not to be considered for the position long term. She said she had planned to file the paperwork Dec. 1 to retire this spring, but after Morrison’s departure she decided it would be in the district’s best interest for her to stay.
2015 NBA All-Star Game starters, ESPN, Steph Curry: On a more cheerful note …
The star of the NBA-leading Warriors, Curry ended up with more than 1.5 million votes, more than 42,000 ahead of James, who had a 13,285-vote lead over the sharpshooter at the previous update. James was the leading vote-getter last year, preceded by Kobe Bryant in 2013. Curry, who just two years ago was an All-Star snub, becomes the first Warriors player elected to consecutive starts since Chris Mullin in 1991-92.
There’s a reason more than 10 million people tuned in Downton Abbey’s fifth season premiere — and it’s not because of the pretty costumes! From dark family secrets to untimely deaths to salacious gossip, Downton Abbey delivers an unparalleled level of mystery and drama week after week.
We rounded up nine mysteries set in the Edwardian period and beyond that promise all of the drama Downton Abbey fans have come to know and love! Check out the full list below, complete with publishers’ descriptions and reviews
During the second world war, people in Britian were facing life and death issues every day. The director of religious programming, at the BBC, asked C.S. Lewis to give some “Broadcast Talks” about faith.
At first, Lewis was unsure – he liked neither the radio nor traveling to London. He finally relented, because he thought it was his duty. His first talks were so successful that the BBC wanted him to do more – and he agreed.
Friedman’s negative income tax proposed that we eliminate poverty with one fell swoop by providing everyone with a livable income, no matter what their employment status is.
Wow, right?
Before we move forward, let’s acknowledge that there’s something not quite perfect about an old white guy coming in to save the “helpless poor people” (see The White Savior Industrial Complex). But Friedman’s idea of a negative income tax is worth discussing not because he’s such a nice guy; it’s worth discussing because it’s a valuable policy idea.
A variation of Friedman’s plan is often referred to as a guaranteed basic income.
long story short: OK, why do I “clip”? Long story short … it’s my filing cabinet.
long story short
Sl. to make a long story short. Okay, long story short: everything that goes up comes down, okay? Then the guy comes over, and—long story short—\”You got a match?\”
So I was looking back over past posts for 7.6 and I found several worthy of reposting.
Umberto Eco, lists, culture, Brain Pickings: So I said I love lists ….
As a lover and maker of lists, this made my heart sing: In 2009, the great Umberto Eco became a resident at the Louvre, where he chose to focus his studies on “the vertigo of lists,” bringing his poetic observational style to the phenomenon of cataloguing, culling, and collecting. He captured his experience and insights in The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay, where he charts the Western mind’s obsessive impulse for list-making across music, literature and art, an impulse he calls a “giddiness of lists” but demonstrates that, in the right hands
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The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.”
~ Umberto Eco
via Umberto Eco on Lists and Making Infinity Comprehensible | Brain Pickings.
7.3.14 … when cultures collide and the result is rollicking laughter, the deep in your belly kind, it’s all good … I would always rather be happy than dignified … 6
7.4.14 … It’s not the 4th of July without TOMATO PIE! … And a history lesson … Happy 200th anniversary, The Star Spangled Banner … What’s Queen Charlotte got to do with anything? … 3
7.5.14 … Summer nights are worth staying up for … 2
7.12.13 … Alto del Perdon Spain: ‘Where meet the path of the wind and the path of the stars” … 1
1.12.13 … all my babies are gone … almost … 1
3.24.14 … Boo, Haman … Oh, and in case you missed it, ALL OF AMERICA IS ELIMINATED … First naked yoga … Now naked pilgrims … 1
1.25.14 … pilgrimages and naked yoga … 1
1.27.2011 … Felt like I was in the blue soup scene of Bridget Jones’ Diary last night. 🙂 1
Total views of posts on your blog 25
And here are a few new ones … and yes they are random!
It’s A Nice Day For A Flash Wedding, NPR: Where would I want a pop up wedding?
You’ve heard of pop-up restaurants, flash mobs and other hipster happenings. Now comes a pair of entrepreneurs in Washington, D.C., offering pop-up weddings for those who want to elope, but do it with flair.
Locations are never booked ahead of time, planning is minimal and fingers are crossed that you and your partner don’t get asked to leave before you are pronounced husband and wife, or wife and wife.
PopWed Co., which started last January, procures the wedding license, chooses a creative location, takes the photographs and performs the ceremony.
fruit pizza, kith/kin: And years ago, I had fruit pizza at the home of my college roommate. I make it around the 4th of July which is also near her birthday. Happy birthday!!
The Darkest Parks in the US, The Go List, OutsideOnline.com, lists: I wonder what the night sky will be like from the Camino Frances? 5000 v. 500 in the average light influenced area of the US. I have so more places to go visit …
Summer nights are worth staying up for at these 7 dark-sky parks
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In 2007, the IDA began designating International Dark Sky Parks, or exceptionally dark sites surrounded by communities dedicated to preserving them. This makes for epic stargazing. According to the IDA, while you may see around 500 stars in your moderately light-polluted backyard, Dark Sky Parks often boast more than 5,000.
Tour de France, UK Stages, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Cambridge UK: Molls told me the Tour de France was going through Cambridge on Monday … WHAT?
The world’s greatest cycling event comes to Britain this week – and up to 3 million spectators will watch the UK stages. But what else makes the Tour de France such a huge international occasion?
The first two stages of the annual Tour de France unfold in Yorkshire, while the third is a 99-mile (159km) sprint from Cambridge to London.
2014 is not the first time the Tour has crossed over onto these shores. The 2007 race began in London, and the seventies saw an ill-fated stage in the west country, remembered by some as a clash between British bureaucracy and gallic romance.
The UK’s love affair with the Tour has blossomed alongside the country’s growing status as a cycling superpower. The 2013 event was won, for the second year running, by a Brit.
What’s my take on the Hobby Lobby Contraception Decision? I’m not a fan of the ACA, but we have it now and if we riddle it with exceptions then it serves no purpose. I do not think the government should require individuals or corporations to provide a “benefit” on its terms. If we have redefined healthcare to be a fundamental right, then the government should be in the healthcare business. And an employer should be able to provide additional healthcare benefits. That is my philosophical take. i do think that there is a certain amount of irony in that the case will be known as The Hobby Lobby CONTRACEPTION Decision.
As for the Hobby Lobby Contraception Decision, I think it is wrong on a corporate law standpoint. The court has essentially permitted a “piercing of the corporate veil” without the legal consequences inherent in such activity by a corporations owners.
Atlanta Public Art: Sol LeWitt’s 54 Columns, YouTube, Gregor Turk: i was driving from Julianna’s on 7.3 through the Highland Virginia Highlands area and I look up and see the columns. I try to get my friends to stop (I am flailing my arms and they are looking up and seeing what looks like the foundation pilings you see at the beach.) We were under a time constraint, so we could not get out and interact or check out the stains of pink, but I will do it next time! Thanks, Gregor, I will let you know what i think.
Since 1998, 54 Columns has been a controversial piece of whether it is considered art or not. The Public Art Coordinator at the time, Gregor Turk, argues that Sol LeWitt’s attempt in minimalism had been successful.
And Gregor’s posting of the YouTube link made me search for other info on Atlanta Public Art … I have a new resource!! atlanta public art – YouTube.
Humans of New York, lightbulb trips: I really enjoy their posts and wonder what i would say. So this from the other day stuck me … because i want my visits to be so much more when I visit my mom.
“What do you feel most guilty about?”
“That I live on the West Coast, and my mom lives here on her own. I’m here on business, so I just got to visit her. My friend calls these ‘lightbulb trips.’ When you visit your older parent after not seeing them for a while, and there’s something simple they need you to do, like a burned out lightbulb that they need you to reach, and you realize that if you hadn’t come, they’d have been sitting in the dark.”
I think i would quote Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austin:
Mr. Darcy: Do you talk by rule, then, when you’re dancing? Elizabeth Bennet: Yes, sometimes it is best. Then we may enjoy the advantage of saying as little as possible. Mr. Darcy: Do you consult your own feelings in this case, or seek to gratify mine? Elizabeth Bennet: Both, I imagine. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room. Mr. Darcy: [Drily] This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I’m sure.
How not to say the wrong thing, Kvetching Order, Los Angeles Times: I have posted this before but it is worthy of reposting …
Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma. For Katie’s aneurysm, that’s Katie. Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma. In the case of Katie’s aneurysm, that was Katie’s husband, Pat. Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order. One of Susan’s patients found it useful to tape it to her refrigerator.
Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, “Life is unfair” and “Why me?” That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring.
Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.
When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn’t, don’t say it. Don’t, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don’t need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, “I’m sorry” or “This must really be hard for you” or “Can I bring you a pot roast?” Don’t say, “You should hear what happened to me” or “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” And don’t say, “This is really bringing me down.”
Good to Know, Thad Cochran’s Liberal Daughter Rails Against McDaniel Supporters, RedState: For those of us in the center, it is good to know that if we disagree with the tea Party/New Right, we are automatically Liberal.
“On July 18, 2006, Cochran voted, along with 19 Republican Senators, for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act to lift restrictions on federal funding for the research. He co-sponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002—called McCain Feingold, but was actually the McCain Feingold Cochran bill. Over his many years in the U.S. Senate, Cochran has worked on behalf of Mississippi’s needs: not only with disaster relief and farm subsidies…”
“So, for those of you who have told me this is the first time you will be voting for a Republican, allow me to assure you that he does NOT belong to the lunatic fringe who are talking so loudly and with such outrageous vitriol. “
Big Green Egg, Chocolate Chip Cookies cooked on a Big Green Egg: Maybe I should have tried this on my husband’s BGE!
Chocolate Chip Cookies cooked on a Big Green Egg – that’s something you don’t see every day! Great pin shared by @jessicasmithson.
Share your creative grilling pins in our #myhttender contest and you could win a XL Big Green Egg Grill + $100 Harris Teeter gift card! http://bit.ly/1fRz2FJ
San Juan Island WA, A Cabin Set in Stone, Shelter | OutsideOnline.com: I really like this one.
This retreat on San Juan Island in Washington is set in stone. Literally.
Carved into the rocky outcropping of the sloped, grassy site, the 2,500-square-foot getaway is nearly camouflaged by its concrete walls and green roof. Heavy equipment—large drills, dynamite, hydraulic chippers—and the handwork of talented craftspeople made the two-bedroom home a reality.
The Perfect Summer: Lake Life, Garden and Gun, Lake Rabun GA, kith/kin, Lake Toxaway NC: I adore this pic from my daughter’s recent visit to the Lake Rabun to visit a Davidson friend, her family and their 4 footed friends. And, of course, she returned last weekend, her last in the US for a while. Ah, the good life! (And her summer mountain lake weekends reminded me of many weekends I spent at Lake Toxaway in NC (one in particular when I was a college student at the Black’s lake house … skiing by the light of the moon. 🙂
Lake Rabun
Lakemont, GA
There’s one marina and a twenties-era inn, and the closest grocery store is a thirty-minute drive. But it’s exactly that quiet charm that has kept families returning for generations to this North Georgia hideout, just a hundred miles from Atlanta. Summer highlights include the Fourth of July Wooden Boat Parade—the area is home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of classic crafts.
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, 9/50, Gregor Turk:
I had great fun at the Opening Gala for 9/50: A Southeast Arts Presenters Summit at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center 6.20 with Catherine W.. Seriously thought about buying a Gregor Turk original dish. As a matter of fact, I may go back … It is not often that you can own a dish designed by one of your first crushes.
2014 FIFA World Cup, viewing venues, Germany: I would go and watch!
This Stadium In Berlin Was Transformed Into A Giant Living Room For The World Cup
World Cup fans in Germany transformed the Union Berlin stadium into a giant living room Thursday, packing the pitch with sofas to lounge on while watching the opening match between Brazil and Croatia.
AP Photo/Axel Schmidt
Organizers estimate that 12,000 fans showed up at the home field of 1 FC Union Berlin for the first World Cup game. 780 sofas were registered and an estimated 3,000 watched from a couch on the field. End tables and lamps were also provided.
baking, the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, tweaking: Useful info!
Some like their chocolate chip cookies soft and chewy. Others prefer it a little crispier. No matter what your cookie preference is, a simple adjustment in ingredients will help you bake your perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies.
OZY took insights from several science-focused food experts (UCLA Science and Food teacher Kendra Nyberg, cookbook author Tessa Arias, Serious Eats, and cookie videos) to come up with rules of thumb for making different kinds of cookies.
For example, if you want a crispy cookie with a soft center, use 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. Want it more cakey? Use more baking soda to puff the cookies up.
UNESCO’s newest World Heritage Sites, CNN.com, lists, bucket list: I keep adding places … the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc (France)
New World Heritage Sites include the earthen remains of a Louisiana civilization dating back to 3700 B.C., Myanmar’s Pyu ancient cities (Myanmar’s first-ever site), and evidence of the end of the age of dinosaurs at the cliffs of Stevns Klint in Denmark.
Trading routes that crossed modern borders across South America and Asia were also inscribed on the list. The Qhapac Nan, the Andean road system, runs through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. A 5,000-kilometer section of the Silk Roads known as the routes network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor crosses through China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
In addition to being of “outstanding universal value,” an inscribed site must also meet at least one of 10 criteria such as “representing a masterpiece of human creative genius,” containing “exceptional natural beauty” or being an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement.
Other new sites include the Okavango Delta (Botswana); the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc (France); Rani-ki-Vav (India); Caves of Maresha and Bet Guvrin in the Judean Lowlands (Israel); the vineyard landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato (Italy); Namhansanseong emergency capital city (South Korea); and Saudi Arabia’s historic Jedda, the Gate to Makkah.
UNESCO has been gradually adding to the World Heritage List since 1978.
Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal, When Harry Met Sally, Vanity Fair, kismet, favorite movie scenes: 🙂
Last week, we heard how Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reunited to relive their When Harry Met Sally orgasm scene during a surprise reunion, and our hearts smiled thinking about Harry and Sally still together after 25 years. But the reunion was even more special than we originally thought.
In an interview with Mindy Kaling, a devout When Harry Met Sally fan, for Entertainment Weekly, Crystal talks at length about his chemistry with Meg Ryan and how it has not dissipated since filming the Rob Reiner movie together. “[S]he came over and we spent an hour together on Sunday, the day before the event [where they reunited onstage], and it was like it had never stopped. We both went, ‘Isn’t this something?’ We just fell into each other all over again.”
He continues:
“My Burns and her Gracie, you know, it really was that all over again. It was just, I hate this word, but it was delicious. So then when we walked out on stage together to ‘It Had to Be You’ — nobody had any idea we were together. They snuck her in and out of Lincoln Center. […] And we walked out and the people went crazy. And we got to the podium and we just started talking, told stories, overlapped each other, giggled with each other. Besides the audience loving it, I said to them, “For those of you who wanted a sequel all these years, well, this is it.”
Dear readers, it gets better.
And then we walked offstage and there was a monitor backstage and it showed the New Year’s Eve scene — the last scene in the movie where I had that speech to her — and we just held hands and looked at it. And [my character is] telling her, ‘You’re the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night…,’ ‘…when you want the rest of your life to start right away’ — you know, all of those great lines. And we just looked at each other and just smiled and hugged each other. It was, like, perfect. It was really perfect. So, it’s that undefinable kind of thing that you call ‘chemistry’ that I call…it’s like a magic that happens. It’s kismet. It’s meant to be. And you don’t have that with a lot of people.
Judge Rules 13-Year Sentence Man Never Served is Complete, NBC News.com, criminal justice system: A Missouri man who was locked up after officials realized he never served a 13-year sentence is being released from prison by a judge who decided he turned his life around when he should have been doing time.
Cornealious “Mike” Anderson’s family began crying when the court granted his request for release nine months after he began serving the sentence he was given in 2000.
restaurants, NYC, The Sherman Zwicker, Bon Appétit.
The Sherman Zwicker is a 142-foot wooden fishing schooner, built in the 1940s to fish the Grand Banks, that Firth and his business partners are turning into a floating oyster bar-slash-maritime museum docked on the southwest tip of Manhattan for the summer. As we spoke, those business partners were prepping the Sherman Zwicker to sail from its current home in Maine to its new home in New York’s Pier 25, a voyage that should take them two days. Firth plans to meet up with them before they get underway and tag along for the trip, to see how his new restaurant handles on the open ocean.
BBC – Culture, Ten of the world’s most beautiful bookshops, lists: So I’m finding at lest one this year!!
El Ateneo, Buenos Aires
Visitors can go from stage to page at this Argentinian icon. First built as the Teatro Grand Splendid in 1919, before becoming a cinema in 1929, El Ateneo appeals to the dramatic reader. With frescoed ceilings, ornate carvings and plush red stage curtains, it has retained its original splendour: customers can sit in the theatre boxes to browse in comfort. (Photo: Carlos Toledo/catoledo
“I must go down where all the ladders start in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.” Featuring the WB Yeats quote on its website, Shakespeare & Company is a place that does more than sell books. Named after a bookstore frequented by Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce during the 1920s, the shop on Paris’s Left Bank has become equally legendary. Opened in 1951 by the American George Whitman – and run by his daughter Sylvia since his death in 2011 – it became a gathering place for Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs. From the start, Whitman allowed travelling artists and writers to lodge at the shop, which is also a lending library; the spirits of past authors haunt its crowded walls. (Photo: John R Rogers)
An Israeli startup’s new ad features the “fake” sign-language interpreter from Nelson Mandela’s memorial service — and the company says it pulled him out of a psychiatric hospital to film it.
The commercial featuring Thamsanqa Jantjie is a stunt from Tel Aviv-based Livelens, which recently raised $2 million for its social livestreaming app.
St. Patrick’s Day, How To Pronounce Slainte – YouTube, St. Patrick’s Day memes, How the Irish Saved Civilization: Now I know why I’ve been craving mint patties …
The Dublin Airport Facebook page posted this notice clarifying that it’s “Saint Paddy’s Day,” not “Saint Patty’s Day.” (DublinAirport/Facebook)
Here’s a PSA from the Dublin Airport: Don’t call it St. Patty’s Day. Also, March 17 should never be referred to as Patty’s Day either.
You may, however, call it St. Paddy’s Day, or Paddy’s Day. Also acceptable are the traditional St. Patrick’s Day and Patrick’s Day.
Got that?
In a fogra (notice, in Gaelic) posted to its Facebook page, the airport addressed what is apparently a pet peeve: the improper use of St. Patty’s Day in the United States and Canada.
“Please share this simple message with your friends and relations in the United States and Canada,” the fogra reads. “Using the power of your network, hopefully we can banish the scourge of St Patty once and for all.”
So what’s the problem with St. Patty’s Day?
Patty is a nickname for Patricia, a woman’s name, according to the website paddynotpatty.com. St. Patrick was, of course, a man.
Paddy is appropriate because it comes from Padraig, a variant of the name Patrick.
But if you really want to impress an Irishman, you need only say: Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh (Happy St. Patrick’s Day!).
An intro to St. Patrick from one of my favorite books:
Like many another in impossible circumstances, he began to pray. He had never before paid attention to the teachings of his religion; he tells us that he didn’t really believe in God, and he found priests foolish. But now, there was no one to turn to but the God of his parents. One is reminded of the reports of contemporary hostages about how they make it through the dreary years of captivity. “Tending flocks was my daily work, and I would pray constantly during the daylight hours. The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more—and faith grew and the Spirit was roused, so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and after dark nearly as many again, even while I remained in the woods or on the mountain. I would wake and pray before daybreak—through snow, frost, rain—nor was there any sluggishness in me (such as I experience nowadays) because then the Spirit within me was ardent.”
Patricius endured six years of this woeful isolation, and by the end of it he had grown from a careless boy to something he would surely never otherwise have become—a holy man, indeed a visionary for whom there was no longer any rigid separation between this world and the next. On his last night as Miliucc’s slave, he received in sleep his first otherworldly experience. A mysterious voice said to him: “Your hungers are rewarded: you are going home.” Patricius sat up, startled. The voice continued: “Look, your ship is ready.”
Cahill, Thomas (2010-04-28). How the Irish Saved Civilization (Kindle Locations 1304-1316). Anchor. Kindle Edition.
“They understood, as few have understood before or since, how fleeting life is and how pointless to try to hold on to things or people. They pursued the wondrous deed, the heroic gesture…poetry for intense emotion, the music that accompanied the heroic drinking with which each day ended, bewitching ornament for one’s person and possessions.”
― Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization
Selection Sunday, process and bracket structure, NCAA Basketball, March Madness, NIT, Davidson basketball:
An overview of how teams are selected and seeded in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and a look into bracket methodology.
2014 NCAA bracket: Use Slate’s interactive to make your picks based on the odds, SAT scores, coach’s salary, and a whole lot more. I may try dog lovers. According to the interactive, Connecticut wins. And then again, Wofford has a dog mascot, a terrier, and they got the SoCon’s automatic bid. So maybe not.
Want to pick an NCAA bracket but have no idea where to start? No worries—use our interactive March Madness bracket-filler. We can pick the winners based on who’s the odds-on favorite, or we can serve up a bracket full of underdogs. Want to go with whoever has a dog mascot, or a cat, or a bird? We can help. What about picking by SAT scores? We’ve got you covered. The first-round games start on Tuesday, but most bracket contests give you until Thursday morning to submit your picks. Now, get to clicking!
No. 7 seed @DavidsonMBB will play at No. 2 seed Missouri on Tuesday on @ESPN2 in the 1st round of the NIT Tournament
Pat’s Backcountry Beverages Covet | OutsideOnline.com: I neither drink beer nor camp … so that is just interesting to me. So I guess the question, “After all, who among us hasn’t fantasized about some sweet suds at the end of a long, hot hike? ” doesn’t apply to me.
We’ve written about Pat’s Backcountry Beverages Carbonator, the Nalgene-size system for fizzifying your drink of choice where ever the trail takes you. And while we’ve talked about Pat’s alcohol-packed beer flavors—the world’s first beer concentrate, according to the company—we haven’t put them to the test. Until now.
As a backpacker and a booze writer, when I heard about Pat’s first two beer flavors (complete with alcohol!) I couldn’t resist checking them out. After all, who among us hasn’t fantasized about some sweet suds at the end of a long, hot hike? But could these “beers” pass the taste test of an admittedly picky beer drinker? The short answer—Yes.
For those unfamiliar with the idea, Pat’s Backcountry Beverages Carbonator is a plastic bottle with built-in levers, valves, and cups. You add a mixture of potassium bicarbonate and citric acid to the small charging cup within the bottle, pull a lever on the cap a few times to add water, and a chemical reaction starts, releasing CO2 into your beverage of choice. In this case, your beverage of choice would be beer.
Pat’s offers two flavors: Pale Rail and Black Hops. They both come in portable, 1.7-ounce liquid packets that you add to the water before you charge it. These packets are sold in four-packs for $10 a pop, which isn’t too outrageous compared to your standard micro-brew.
It’s worth noting that these aren’t merely “beer flavored.” Founder Pat Tatera developed what he calls a “Hybrid Brewing Process.” The beer begins as a normal beer would, except once it’s done fermenting, he vacuum-distills it. This pulls out most of the water and the alcohol, which Tatera sets aside, leaving a beer-like syrup. Then he restarts the brewing process, but instead of using water to create the wort, he uses the beer syrup. He repeats these steps four times, then soaks Cascade Hops in the reserved alcohol to extract their flavor, and combines that with the syrup. The result? A little packet of concentrated beer. Just add fizzy water.
I went through the process exactly as I would if I were in the field, using cold, bottled water to simulate filtered water from a stream. Despite Pat’s claim that it’s just three steps, there are several steps within each step, and you’d be hard-pressed to remember them all if you didn’t bring the instructions. It takes approximately five minutes to brew each beer. Here’s how they measure up to the real thing.
The Wall Street Journal, MH 370: Curiouser and curiouser!
Police have intensified their investigation of the pilots of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 amid suspicion that foul play was involved in the jet’s disappearance. http://on.wsj.com/OuBZ2i
100 Diagrams That Changed the World, Brain Pickings:
100 Diagrams That Changed the World (UK; public library) by investigative journalist and documentarian Scott Christianson chronicles the history of our evolving understanding of the world through humanity’s most groundbreaking sketches, illustrations, and drawings, ranging from cave paintings to The Rosetta Stone to Moses Harris’s color wheel to Tim Berners-Lee’s flowchart for a “mesh” information management system, the original blueprint for the world wide web.
But most noteworthy of all is the way in which these diagrams bespeak an essential part of culture — the awareness that everything builds on what came before, that creativity is combinatorial, and that the most radical innovations harness the cross-pollination of disciplines. Christianson writes in the introduction:
It appears that no great diagram is solely authored by its creator. Most of those described here were the culmination of centuries of accumulated knowledge. Most arose from collaboration (and oftentimes in competition) with others. Each was a product and a reflection of its unique cultural, historical and political environment. Each represented specific preoccupations, interests, and stake holders.
Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bennet, A Lesson From Elizabeth Bennet, Darling Magazine: A new magazine. 🙂
Truth is not always that which the majority believes it to be; it is often disguised as myths found in the popular trends of social normality, myths that a girl like Elizabeth Bennet is able to debunk. Elizabeth is, in essence, a modern woman well before her time. She is able to see past the delicacies and deceits of corseted ball gowns, budding romances, and pretentious suitors, all of which make the young women around her swoon with anticipation.
The simplicities of the female lifestyle do not satisfy Elizabeth’s longing for a life of purpose and meaning for the mere reason that she, unlike her sisters, is unwilling to exchange her desire for truth with a fleeting happiness inspired by a gentleman’s passing fancies. She refuses to take the hand of a man for whom she feels anything but wholehearted love, and instead she chooses to sleep soundly with a well-deserved pride in her nonconformity.
RIP, Howard “Bo” Callaway, ‘Superstar’ of Republican party, http://www.ajc.com, kith/kin: RIP Bo Calloway: I will never forget him. We got a dog in 1966 and named him Bo for Bo Calloway. That is my first memory of an election. I was 6. He lived until 1981 and I was 21. It was a good name for a dog.
In the 1960s, when nearly every elected Georgia Republican could fit in a Studabaker, Howard “Bo” Callaway was the party’s driver.
By 2010, when the GOP swept every statewide office for the first time, Callaway’s name was spoken with reverence, as the father of the Georgia Republican Party and its first superstar.
Callaway, 86, who helped his parents create the Callaway Gardens resort near Pine Mountain, died Saturday, nearly two years after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.
His death marks the end of an era that saw him become, in 1964, the state’s first Republican congressman since Reconstruction, and almost the first Republican governor two years later. And while he never returned to elected office, veteran Georgia Republicans say he never stopped working to grow the party.
Artists like Monet and van Gogh saw the world in a way that was once rejected as crazy. But their work came to be prized in every meaning of that word. This Monet masterpiece is called “Parliament in London,” part of the priceless collection at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
You may not be a visual artist. But if you’re one of those “crazy” people who sees hopeful possibilities in a world that others claim is going to hell in a handbasket, don’t let the cynics do eye surgery on you!
You won’t become as famous as Monet, but you’ll achieve something equally important. You’ll open other people’s eyes to the daily opportunities we all have to help make this world a more life-giving place for all concerned.
Happy Birthday, Davidson! Today is the perfect day to make your gift to Davidson. You only turn 177 once, after all. – http://bit.ly/1kD4AjY
Flexibility, Lenten Devotions:
Sunday March 16, 2014
The Virtue of Flexibility
Flexibility is a great virtue. When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of others, we may easily be broken. Being like wild reeds does not mean being wishy-washy. It means moving a little with the winds of the time while remaining solidly anchored in the ground. A humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause these issues to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let’s be flexible while being deeply rooted.
Green Renaissance, Panchita (a Galapagos sea lion) : Panchita, now pregnant and expecting her baby sea lion, goes out to sea every day and then returns to the hotel to rest. … as good as a good dog story!
March 13
This is Panchita, a Galapagos sea lion. Panchita was caught up in a net, which left deep cuts all over her body. She managed to make it to this hotel where animal advocates nursed her back to health for 3 months.
Panchita, now pregnant and expecting her baby sea lion any day, goes out to sea every day and then returns to the hotel to rest.
Chartres Cathedral, Easter Dances by the clergy, Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church | The Second Sunday in Lent (March 16): Just loved this devotional post. And now I must research Chartres Cathedral Easter Dances by the clergy!
Martha Sterne on Mar 16, 2014 9:13am
Sundays are “Feast and Fill in Your Own Quote” days on our Lenten Journey. What comes to you through this image? This I just learned – the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, created in the early thirteenth century, was the scene of Easter Dances by the clergy! Photo is by an anonymous internet pilgrim.
Stanford’s newest majors marry computer science and the humanities, USA TODAY College:
Many students see little noteworthy overlap between course offerings in computer science and in the traditional humanities. However, a new generation of digitally savvy liberal arts scholars believes that technology is changing our understanding of the humanities.
In a growing field known today as the “digital humanities,” professors and students engage in a computer-based study of the liberal arts.
In light of the growing popularity of the field, Stanford University approved two new “joint-majors” on March 6 that will allow students to pursue an interdisciplinary study of English and computer science or music and computer science beginning next academic year, according to a press release by the university.
Unlike double majoring in computer science and a humanities field, students who choose the new CS+X program will not be required to complete all the requirements from both majors, according to the university.
Students will pursue a curriculum integrating coursework from both disciplines and will need to complete a senior project or honors thesis that synthesizes their work from both fields.
“Throw me something (preferably a Pop-Tart), mister”
Dennard's Clipping Service 
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