Brett

"Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace en.radiovaticana.va (Vatican Radio)..."

Sun, 26 May 2013 16:02:10 -0400

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Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace en.radiovaticana.va (Vatican Radio) “Doing good” is a principle that unites all humanity, beyond the diversity of ideologies and religions, and creates the “culture of encounter” that is the foundation of peace: this is what Pope said at Mass this morning at the Domus Santae Martae, in the presence of employees of the Governorate of Vatican City. Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, concelebrated at the Mass. Wednesday’s Gospel speaks to us about the disciples who prevented a person from outside their group from doing good. “They complain,” the Pope said in his homily, because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” And Jesus corrects them: “Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.” The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong … Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation”:

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

“Doing good” the Pope explained, is not a matter of faith: “It is a duty, it is an identity card that our Father has given to all of us, because He has made us in His image and likeness. And He does good, always.”

This was the final prayer of Pope Francis:

“Today is [the feast of] Santa Rita, Patron Saint of impossible things – but this seems impossible: let us ask of her this grace, this grace that all, all, all people would do good and that we would encounter one another in this work, which is a work of creation, like the creation of the Father. A work of the family, because we are all children of God, all of us, all of us! And God loves us, all of us! May Santa Rita grant us this grace, which seems almost impossible. Amen.”

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- Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace

http://donmilleris.com/2011/12/22/do-you-believe-in-your-own-powe...

Sun, 26 May 2013 16:02:07 -0400

http://donmilleris.com/2011/12/22/do-you-believe-in-your-own-power-to-shape-the-world/

I like this.

Reblog of my friend @KatieHeideman - Entrusted

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:58:10 -0400

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 another living thing. It helps you forget yourself. It grows something new inside you, grounds you, heightens your awareness and reminds you that you cannot divorce care-taking from the good life.

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - Elspeth Reeve - The Atlantic Wire

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:42:27 -0400

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - Elspeth Reeve - The Atlantic Wire:

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, with examples reaching back a hundred years, like this one:

Newsweek, December 30, 1985: “The Video Generation.” There they are, those preening narcissists who have to document every banal moment with their cutting-edge communications technology.

Interview: Mahzarin Banaji And Anthony Greenwald, Authors Of 'Blindspot' : Code Switch : NPR

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:35:50 -0400

Interview: Mahzarin Banaji And Anthony Greenwald, Authors Of 'Blindspot' : Code Switch : NPR:

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.

In each case, however, Banaji, Greenwald and DiTomaso might argue, we strengthen existing patterns of advantage and disadvantage because our friends, neighbors and children’s classmates are overwhelmingly likely to share our own racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. When we help someone from one of these in-groups, we don’t stop to ask: Whom are we not helping?

Banaji tells a story in the book about a friend, Carla Kaplan, now a professor at Northeastern University. At the time, both Banaji and Kaplan were faculty members at Yale. Banaji says that Kaplan had a passion — quilting.

“You would often see her, sitting in the back of a lecture, quilting away, while she listened to a talk,” Banaji says.

In the book, Banaji writes that Kaplan once had a terrible kitchen accident.

“She was washing a big crystal bowl in her kitchen,” Banaji says. “It slipped and it cut her hand quite severely.”

The gash went from Kaplan’s palm to her wrist. She raced over to Yale-New Haven Hospital. Pretty much the first thing she told the ER doctor was that she was a quilter. She was worried about her hand. The doctor reassured her and started to stitch her up. He was doing a perfectly competent job, she says.

But at this moment someone spotted Kaplan. It was a student, who was a volunteer at the hospital.

“The student saw her, recognized her, and said, ‘Professor Kaplan, what are you doing here?’ ” Banaji says.

The ER doctor froze. He looked at Kaplan. He asked the bleeding young woman if she was a Yale faculty member. Kaplan told him she was.

Everything changed in an instant. The hospital tracked down the best-known hand specialist in New England. They brought in a whole team of doctors. They operated for hours and tried to save practically every last nerve.

Banaji says she and Kaplan asked themselves later why the doctor had not called in the specialist right away. “Somehow,” Banaji says, “it must be that the doctor was not moved, did not feel compelled by the quilter story in the same way as he was compelled by a two-word phrase, ‘Yale professor.’ “

Kaplan told Banaji that she was able to go back to quilting, but that she still occasionally feels a twinge in the hand. And it made her wonder what might have happened if she hadn’t received the best treatment.

Greenwald and Banaji are not suggesting that people stop helping their friends, relatives and neighbors. Rather, they suggest that we direct some effort to people we may not naturally think to help.

After reading the story about Kaplan, for example, one relative of Greenwald’s decided to do something about it. Every year, she used to donate a certain amount of money to her alma mater. After reading Kaplan’s story, Banaji says, the woman decided to keep giving money to her alma mater, but to split the donation in half. She now gives half to her alma mater and half to the United Negro College Fund.

Sprrringringingin

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:18:15 -0400

Sprrringringingin

I may have been imagining.

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:14:42 -0400

I may have been imagining.

If media covered America the way we cover foreign cultures

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:49:00 -0400

If media covered America the way we cover foreign cultures:

This article is amazing. What a perspective switch.

News is bad for you — and giving up reading it will make you happier

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:47:10 -0400

News is bad for you — and giving up reading it will make you happier:

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 affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of newsis irrelevant to you. … The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age.”

• “News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress.”

• “News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence.”

• “I don’t know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. … Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don’t have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.”

Meet the Family That Never Learned to Walk on Two Legs

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:16:36 -0400

Meet the Family That Never Learned to Walk on Two Legs:

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 corners of the world, the capacity to surprise us.”

Cool exploration of words related to Pb (lead)

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:51:01 -0400

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 French would put it à plomb. If a person were to remain so upright in the currents and whirlpools of life, they would therefore display perfect aplomb.

Audio

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:12:19 -0400

The head of the House Committee on Science does not understand how science works | The Curious Wavefunction, Scientific American Blog Network

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:46:56 -0400

The head of the House Committee on Science does not understand how science works | The Curious Wavefunction, Scientific American Blog Network:

“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 alone.”

Living From our Squirrel Brain

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:47:14 -0400

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 studied the distance he’d have to run to get in and out of the house, then took the chance, grabbed the nut and escaped back to his tree. Each day my friend would bring the squirrel further inside the house, until, after a few weeks, he could feed the squirrel from his hand. Awesome story. Except for what happened next.

My friend decided to stop feeding the squirrel. And the squirrel went nuts. The squirrel put it’s paws (whatever they are) on the glass door and shook it, chirping and squelching at my friend to let it in to get it’s nut. My friend tried to scare it off, but the animal only hissed at my friend. My friend now hates squirrels. He thinks they are spoiled animals and essentially slightly cuter than rats, though less friendly and human like.

We each have squirrel brains and mostly operate from them. We feed our hunger, our sexual desires, our desires for sleep and so forth from our squirrel brains. But then we also have an executive brain which can overrule the squirrel brain. The executive brain helps us share with others, be patient, resist temptation and so forth. When our executive brain is weak, we become like animals.

If Apple computer puts a nut outside it’s door, then puts another closer to the counter, then another right at the counter, then suddenly sells us something that doesn’t work right, we turn into animals, putting our paws against the door, squealing. Or if Wendy’s is out of frosties, or if church doesn’t start on time, or if somebody disagrees with us and doesn’t give us our intellectual nut. Rodents!

The real corrupt geniuses are the folks who feed the squirrels, the producers, the Glenn Becks and Rahm Emanuels, who doll out press releases to the masses, stirring up the squirrel rebellion to fight the other team, who is making us uncomfortable by squeezing our nuts.

It all makes me want to poop.

I don’t want to think like a rodent anymore. I’ll find my protein in the trees.

Will Ferrell and Jack Black Will Play Tag -- Vulture

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:45:38 -0400

Will Ferrell and Jack Black Will Play Tag -- Vulture:

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.

While Congress Slumbers, Laws Pass Elsewhere : NPR

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:44:09 -0400

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, until the 1870s.”

States have long taken the lead as policy innovators, acting as “laboratories of democracy,” in one much-quoted phrase from 1932 attributed to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

The first comprehensive workers’ compensation law was enacted 102 years ago in Wisconsin and was quickly copied by more than 40 other states. Wisconsin’s experiments with requiring welfare recipients to work became the model for the last major federal legislation on welfare back in 1996.

“While Congress Slumbers, Laws Pass Elsewhere,” by Alan Greenblatt; NPR - April 15, 2013

bluepueblo: Green, Watkins Glen, New York photo by Matt...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:35:08 -0400

bluepueblo:

Green, Watkins Glen, New York

photo by Matt Champlin

Reblog: Thinking in Blocks of TimeBy Steven Pressfield | Published: September 26, 2012 I’m just...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:27:38 -0400

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 pressure on the first day, or even the first week. Resistance would love me to do that. Resistance knows that if I try to do too much too soon, I’ll fail. Resistance would love to see that happen.

So I will remind myself that the enemy is not time. The enemy is Resistance.

The wide receiver returning from injury knows he can’t run a 4.3 forty the first day back. If he tries, he’ll pull a hamstring. I will learn from him. When I sit down to work, I will think in terms, not of Day One, but of Week One, Month One, and From Now Till New Year’s.

I will not try to use the big writing muscles yet. I’ll stick to the little ones. I’ll transcribe, I’ll research, I’ll compile. I won’t try to do real writing for another four or five days and, when I do, I won’t go all-out.

What I’m doing is “building up.”

If I were a trainer working with a two-year-old colt, I would not let him run flat-out the first day back from a lay-off. I might not let him run at all. I might spend the first day working on entering the starting gate or being led to the paddock and being saddled. I will let him stretch his legs a little, but no racing, not even for fun.

When we think in terms of blocks of time, it takes pressure off the need for immediate production. We don’t mind going slowly the first few days because we know we’ll hit our stride in a week or two.

Starting slow does something else that is not often appreciated. It sends a message. A low-pressure Day One tells the muscles, “Wake up, work is coming.” It doesn’t make the muscles panic. It just gets them in the mood. When we up the pace on Day Two, the muscles get the picture. They start to prepare.

Our imaginary colt does not dread running. He wants to gallop. The trick, for us the trainer, is not to give him his head too soon.

So we zoom out. We push the horizon back. We think in blocks of time.

Week One, we accomplish X.

Month One, we accomplish X+Y.

By New Year’s, we have nailed X, Y, and Z.

I recognize that what I do for a living—writing long-form pieces—is not analagous to what many people do. But the long-run mindset is a valuable one to master, even if you’re in the business of git-’er-done-now.

When we think in blocks of time, we acquire patience. We make time work for us instead of against us. Dirty Harry said a man’s gotta know his limitations. We can’t lose ten pounds in ten days. But we can lose ten pounds in a year.

Time possesses powers that are underappreciated in the world of overnight polls and instant gratification.

Start slow and build. Think in terms of blocks of time.

7 Sentences That Sound Crazy But Are Still Grammatical

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:01:50 -0400

7 Sentences That Sound Crazy But Are Still Grammatical:

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 elephant] [in my pajamas].

But another possible, and perfectly grammatical, reading is

One morning [I shot] [an elephant in my pajamas].

4. THE RAT THE CAT THE DOG CHASED KILLED ATE THE MALT.

Make a sentence with multiple center embeddings. We usually have no problem putting one clause inside another in English. We can take “the rat ate the malt” and stick in more information to make “the rat the cat killed ate the malt.” But the more clauses we add in, the harder it gets to understand the sentence. In this case, the rat ate the malt. After that it was killed by a cat. That cat had been chased by a dog. The grammar of the sentence is fine. The style, not so good.

7. THIS EXCEEDING TRIFLING WITLING, CONSIDERING RANTING CRITICIZING CONCERNING ADOPTING FITTING WORDING BEING EXHIBITING TRANSCENDING LEARNING, WAS DISPLAYING, NOTWITHSTANDING RIDICULING, SURPASSING BOASTING SWELLING REASONING, RESPECTING CORRECTING ERRING WRITING, AND TOUCHING DETECTING DECEIVING ARGUING DURING DEBATING.

This sentence takes advantage of the versatile English –ing. The author of a 19th century grammar guide lamented the fact that one could “run to great excess” in the use of –ing participles “without violating any rule of our common grammars,” and constructed this sentence to prove it. It doesn’t seem so complicated once you realize it means,

“This very superficial grammatist, supposing empty criticism about the adoption of proper phraseology to be a show of extraordinary erudition, was displaying, in spite of ridicule, a very boastful turgid argument concerning the correction of false syntax, and about the detection of false logic in debate.”

Read the rest of the sentences in the article.

These weird-but-grammatical sentences illustrate an important fact about sentence construction: we don’t just use syntactic rules to put words together, but we also need to consider how much memory or processing power is available to make sense of them. If you put enough thought into these seven sentences, you can get them to mean something reasonable, but it definitely takes a bit more thinking.

(And then there’s also pragmatics, which is what makes it weird to say “the sky is orange” or “yesterday I walked my pet dinosaur” or the classic “colourless green ideas sleep furiously”).

I love #4. “THE RAT THE CAT THE DOG CHASED KILLED ATE THE MALT.”

Blame it on Socrates: The Bible and Doubt | brianna kocka

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:45:58 -0400

Blame it on Socrates: The Bible and Doubt | brianna kocka:

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”

Brett

"Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace en.radiovaticana.va (Vatican Radio)..."

http://donmilleris.com/2011/12/22/do-you-believe-in-your-own-powe...

Reblog of my friend @KatieHeideman - Entrusted

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - Elspeth Reeve - The Atlantic Wire

Interview: Mahzarin Banaji And Anthony Greenwald, Authors Of 'Blindspot' : Code Switch : NPR

Sprrringringingin

I may have been imagining.

If media covered America the way we cover foreign cultures

News is bad for you — and giving up reading it will make you happier

Meet the Family That Never Learned to Walk on Two Legs

Cool exploration of words related to Pb (lead)

Audio

The head of the House Committee on Science does not understand how science works | The Curious Wavefunction, Scientific American Blog Network

Living From our Squirrel Brain

Will Ferrell and Jack Black Will Play Tag -- Vulture

While Congress Slumbers, Laws Pass Elsewhere : NPR

bluepueblo: Green, Watkins Glen, New York photo by Matt...

Reblog: Thinking in Blocks of TimeBy Steven Pressfield | Published: September 26, 2012 I’m just...

7 Sentences That Sound Crazy But Are Still Grammatical

1. ONE MORNING I SHOT AN ELEPHANT IN MY PAJAMAS. HOW HE GOT INTO MY PAJAMAS I’LL NEVER KNOW.

4. THE RAT THE CAT THE DOG CHASED KILLED ATE THE MALT.

Blame it on Socrates: The Bible and Doubt | brianna kocka

News is bad for you — and giving up reading it will make you happier