May 2013
9 posts
16 tags
Reblog of my friend @KatieHeideman - Entrusted →
Kona is my 8 month old puppy– my constant companion and eager friend. My friends joke about her being my child– doggie day care, regular sleeping patterns, check-ups, and nights spent cleaning up vomit. I’m thankful for the glimpse ahead into motherhood she offers me– a deep sense of responsibility and a taste of joyful affection, wanting to provide the best for her. It’s good to be entrusted with...
17 tags
Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me... →
Basically, it’s not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it’s that young people are narcissists, and they get over themselves as they get older. It’s like doing a study of toddlers and declaring those born since 2010 are Generation Sociopath: Kids These Days Will Pull Your Hair, Pee On Walls, Throw Full Bowls of Cereal Without Even Thinking of the Consequences
Great perspective post,...
17 tags
Interview: Mahzarin Banaji And Anthony Greenwald,... →
The insidious thing about favoritism is that it doesn’t feel icky in any way, Banaji says. We feel like a great friend when we give a buddy a foot in the door to a job interview at our workplace. We feel like good parents when we arrange a class trip for our daughter’s class to our place of work. We feel like generous people when we give our neighbors extra tickets to a sports game or a show.
...
9 tags
If media covered America the way we cover foreign... →
This article is amazing. What a perspective switch.
10 tags
News is bad for you — and giving up reading it... →
News is bad for you. It leads to fear and aggression. It hinders your creativity and makes you sick. We should stop consuming it, says Rolf Dobelli, who’s abstained for years
Highlight excerpts:
• “Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter...
5 tags
Meet the Family That Never Learned to Walk on Two... →
Highlights:
1. “They had created their own culture.”
2. “As the psychologist Esther Thelen argued, walking isn’t built-in, locked away in some inviolable part of ourselves and our genome. It’s discovered anew by every infant. And development, despite its constraints, despite its usual predictability, is a creative, highly sensitive process: It still has, in some isolated...
7 tags
Cool exploration of words related to Pb (lead) →
Examples:
“…plumbous, which means leaden or heavy.”
plumbing
plumbers
Lead is “…useful in working out the depth of water, as currents will not sway it much. Therefore one can plumb the depths using a plumb line. The weight will plunge into the water (from Latin plumbicare) and then plummet to the very bottom. The line will remain perfectly upright, or as the...
April 2013
10 posts
Listen
7 tags
The head of the House Committee on Science does... →
“It’s been said many times. Curiosity-driven research with no immediate application or goal is what has has primarily led to science’s greatest discoveries as well as our high standard of living. It is what has led to the ascendancy of American science during the twentieth century. If you want great discoveries to happen, the recipe is clear; get the best scientists together and leave them...
Living From our Squirrel Brain
Donald Miller http://donmilleris.com/2010/11/15/living-from-our-squirrel-brain/
I was recently troubled to learn I think like a squirrel.
A friend told me a story a while back about a squirrel he saw on the deck of his condo. He put a couple nuts out one day, and the squirrel came back the next day looking for more nuts. So he opened his sliding door, and placed a nut just inside. The squirrel...
Will Ferrell and Jack Black Will Play Tag --... →
I loved this article from a few weeks ago (https://twitter.com/brettrwilkes/status/309816768032018435)! I guess Will Ferrell did too! via @vulture: Will Ferrell & Jack Black are attached to star in Tag, about adults playing an extreme version of…tag.
4 tags
While Congress Slumbers, Laws Pass Elsewhere : NPR →
Interesting. I wonder what the dynamic will be in the future.
“The U.S. has always been historically a highly decentralized country,” says Edward Rubin, a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University. “For the first 100 years, most of the basic forms of government were being done in the states. The only federal agent anyone would have seen is a postal agent,...
Reblog: Thinking in Blocks of Time By Steven Pressfield | Published: September 26, 2012
I’m just home from two weeks’ vacation—and gearing up to get back to work. The first thing I’ll do is stop myself from thinking in terms of immediate gratification.
Dirty Harry taught us, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”
I will make myself think, instead, in blocks of time.
I will not put...
2 tags
7 Sentences That Sound Crazy But Are Still... →
allthingslinguistic:
Seven implausibly grammatical sentences from Mental Floss:
1. ONE MORNING I SHOT AN ELEPHANT IN MY PAJAMAS. HOW HE GOT INTO MY PAJAMAS I’LL NEVER KNOW.
Take advantage of the fact that the same sentence can have two different structures. This famous joke from Groucho Marx assumes that most people expect the structure of the first part to be
One morning [I shot an...
Blame it on Socrates: The Bible and Doubt |... →
Good analogy about learning and growing:
“It was like ripping a muscle to make you stronger: it hurt like hell when I read it, but I knew, in all of its humility, that there was something there, it was burning and ripping something new in me”
6 tags
Pre-Globalism
Reblog of Kevin Kelly: Pre-Globalism
Tourism is at least 1,000 years old. Ancient Chinese accounts record a parade of tourists coming to gawk at West Lake in Hangzhou (contemporary scene above), then the capital of China in the Song Dynasty. Emperors prettified the lake with causeways, pavilions, and stone bridges to woo and impress visitors. People came just to see the sights, which is the...
8 tags
Suicidal dogs and bipolar wolves
Reblog from http://www.salon.com: Suicidal dogs and bipolar wolves
Do animals have personalities? How about mental illnesses? A science historian explains
By Malcolm Harris, The New Inquiry
This piece originally appeared in The New Inquiry Magazine, Vol. 8: Other Animals.
New Inquiry Senior Editor Malcolm Harris talked with science historian Laurel Braitman about her work on animal...
March 2013
5 posts
11 tags
"…find some holes that are crowded together. Draw... →
“Cancer cluster in Toms River, New Jersey: The link to a Superfund site is surprisingly weak.” - Slate Magazine
Toms River, like Woburn, appeared to be an exception. But was the difference caused by two federal Superfund sites that had been polluting the area for years? Or was it a statistical anomaly? Years earlier, the epidemiologist Seymour Grufferman coined the term “Texas sharpshooter...
Vertical Gardens →
(via Instapaper)
February 2013
1 post
“On immigration, the evidence is overwhelming; the best way forward is clear.
...”
– David Brooks on immigration. Compare and contrast with the state of things 100 years ago. (via explore-blog)
November 2012
2 posts
3 tags
WatchThis is precious. You might cry. “Cancer brings young soul mates together.”
2 tags
October 2012
5 posts
17 tags
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
I love this poem.
By Galway Kinnell:
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we...
Business experience and presidents...
[Crazy!]
From Washington Post Opinions:
“The startling bottom line is that the nation’s GDP has grown more than 45 times faster under presidents with little or no business experience than it has under presidents with successful business careers. And on average, when there has been a successful businessman in the Oval Office (so, Truman is excluded), GDP growth has been negligible.
...
On reading *and* marginalia... →
Follow the link in the title above – these are just some lovely thoughts on books and note-taking (aka “marginalia”)
September 2012
2 posts
2 tags
New glasses and new countries
My insurance covered a backup pair of glasses, so I went for an exam & looked at frames. The free choices were scarce, of course, & the lady helping me was trying to upsell, but I kept repeating I was just getting the free ones. I picked a pair quicker than I’ve ever chosen anything in my life, & she said, “Wait! Let me see them on you.” I thought. ...
August 2012
1 post
Art funding
“Mitt Romney Says He Would Ax Arts Funding If Elected”:
…excerpts from an upcoming Mitt Romney interview in Fortune magazine, in which the Republican presidential candidate expounds on his plan to shrink the federal government and reduce spending. Depressingly, but not surprisingly, he targets arts funding, saying:
…there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of...
July 2012
2 posts
1 tag
“Most grammar “rules” that begin with “you can’t” or “it’s wrong to” are myths....”
– Everything You’ll Ever Need to Know About Language
June 2012
5 posts
2 tags
1 tag
“Oh, and if forward motion fails you sometimes? That’s OK—just find a different...”
– The Art of Non-Conformity » Forward Motion
1 tag
“used the word ‘book’ to mean ‘cool’, precisely because they are created from the...”
– Found in translation | Macmillan
May 2012
6 posts
1 tag
“I remember a while ago seeing Stephen Fry interviewed, and he was talking about...”
– http://bit.ly/M4hN4Q
mewithoutYou - Ten Stories: The Glossary
ohdoubters:
The new album from mewithoutYou, entitled Ten Stories, is a concept album about a circus train crash and the dark and philosophical adventures of the animals that escape (or don’t) in the aftermath. Aaron Weiss uses typically detailed and mysterious lyricism, and thus I thought a glossary for the phrases and names of plants and animals and even fabrics that he throws at you might...
6 tags
"Grandmatical English"
If you want to see a funny saying from my grandma every day, you can check out http://www.grandmatical.com. There’s an email signup at the bottom, so you get a short email once a day. And there’s RSS, etc.
Enjoy! ;)
Me: I might eat a little. Grandma: You better.
1 tag
April 2012
3 posts
