- Ted Talks: My Year of Living Biblically
- Barack Obama is planning to visit Tennessee!
- And who doesn’t need to get rid of some clutter?
- Why You’re Better Off Avoiding the iPhone (via cmwillis).
- Do you ever read something that is just so incredibly stupid that you have trouble even trying to process the folly? Usually I’m left speechless by extreme cases of idiocy like this one (also see here), whereas Naamah had no such trouble in responding (don’t follow the link if you’re bothered by colorful language).
And finally, there’s this gem. Way back in the day, when Dear Daughter was just a toddler, and she thought that the TV only had one channel, and that that channel had only one hour of programming a day (see, we ruin our kids when we let them go off to school and they find out about all sorts of evil stuff, like Disney and candy and Chuck E. Cheese), she used to get to watch Sesame Street. I probably wouldn’t let her watch it if she was a kid now, but back then, before Elmo, and before Jim Henson died and the Muppets got whored out to anyone wanting to make a sleazy buck, it was a pretty cool show. And it was because of features like Put Down the Ducky.
I can still see her in my mind’s eye, clutching her little plastic saxophone while doing a hoppy little dance and shrieking along with the song, while I enjoyed it for all the cool people who made appearances (John Candy as Yosh Schmenge from SCTV, Andrea Martin as Edith Prickley from SCTV, New York Mets Keith Hernandez & Mookie Wilson, Jane Curtin, Madeline Kahn, Joe Williams, Paul Reubens/Pee Wee Herman, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Wynton Marsalis, Celia Cruz, Ihtzak Perlman, Gordon Jackson & Jean Marsh as Angus Hudson and Rose Buck of Upstairs Downstairs, Paul Simon, Jeremy Irons, Pete Seeger, Rhea Perlman and Danny Devito, and NY Giants Sean Landeta, Mark Ingram, Karl Nelson and Carl Banks). I hope the video doesn’t get yanked off of youtube, but if it does, I’ll try to find a replacement somewhere…
I read this a couple of days ago at Joe. My. God., and it’s been running through my head ever since. It’s from E. B. White.
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born threre, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something….Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
Speaking of the City, an Ikea store just opened in Red Hook (amid some controversy), and to ease concerns about traffic congestion in the area, Ikea is offering free public transportation to and from the store. Eager consumers are already planning Ikea Hacks to take advantage of the company’s ground-breaking strategy.
But enough of the city and on to other random matters:
- The Eagles went and sold their souls to their corporate masters and Chris the wandering geneticist totally busts them for it. Nicely done.
- After jumping all over Michelle Obama’s patriotism will the right wing give John McCain a free pass? — or will they at least finally lay off the stupid non-story of what Michelle said?
- So, Charlie “Manhunt” Crist, caved in to the wishes of the Wonder Twins, McCain and Bush, and now thinks that we should drill for oil off the coast of Florida. But has he thought of the damage this could do to Florida’s tourist industry? For new leases that won’t start producing meaningful oil for 20-30 years? Maybe we should be truly innovative and think beyond politics: Here’s a funny thing. While the Republicans are arguing that drilling every square inch of America will cut fuel costs, study after study has shown that the effect will be both minimal and several years down the road. On the other hand, just dropping from 65 to 55 will net most cars a 10% savings in fuel costs. That’s far more than we’ll get by turning Florida into the Tar Sands State.
Plus, Joe Biden rocks. UDPATE: or for instant savings, close the Enron loophole! - Al Franken wants “to invest in America again.”
- I saw a lot of MSNBC’s hagiography (update: see Hitchens) after Tim Russert died, and while I understand that they were only trying to do right by the man after losing one of their own, it also made me a bit uncomfortable to listen to them go on and on about the greatness of Russert in what continues to be a field of failure — and as great a man as he was, it was a failure that Russert shared.
- I remember when my father would not pay more than 19¢ a pound for bananas. Those days are clearly over, never to return, and what’s more, the banana as we now know it may soon go extinct.
- Joe Lance is chasing down a story about voting and privacy that was prompted by a card he received in the mail.
- And finally, there’s lots more from the Tennessee blogosphere: Carole Borges wonders who we can trust in the medical field anymore, Tiny Cat finds something that’s just plain weird, and much, much more!
This is pretty incredible. From out of the past — the year 1890 — here is the captured voice of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, reading aloud his “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (via S&R).
I was gifted Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us over the holidays and started reading it this afternoon. I haven’t gotten very far yet, but I really enjoyed the opening chapter’s description of Białowieża Puszcza — the half million acres that is all that is left of Europe’s old-growth, lowland wilderness.
The forest is home to two distinct genetic families of wisent, which are separated by a fence (built by the Soviets in 1980) that runs along the border between Belarus and Poland. Beyond the bison, there are more species found here than anywhere else on the European continent, even though the area does not enjoy the benefit of variations in elevation and climate that might increase the number of habitats.
It sounds like a gorgeous setting. If you’ve ever wanted to see the Garden of Eden, this would be one site to put on your “Places to Visit” list.
I was going to just append this to my previous post about The Golden Compass, where I’ve already added a couple of articles with others weighing in, but was surprised to see that the entry was almost two weeks old already! So anyway, here’s where The Little Professor opines on what has since become a full-blown controversy. It’s a good read.
So, has anyone see the film yet?
UPDATE: here’s another good commentary.
Back in the mid-1990s, I had a job at a bookstore where I got to read lots of cool publishing magazines. DD (dear daughter) was only nine or ten at the time, so I was very much focused on children’s and young adult literature. DD has always been something of a bibliophile, and at that time, she was firmly into full-length books and loved our read-aloud time every night — usually she had a couple of books going at once, because bedtime included an hour or so with one parent, followed by another hour reading with the other. Seriously. She was insatiable when it came to books. She sat through the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time (of many) when she was just four years old and by this age had already enjoyed all of Tolkien’s Middle-earth books, Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. I was constantly on the lookout for quality young adult or accessible adult books that we could read together.
I’m not going to tag anyone with this, since a lot of people may be off having wild holiday weekend fun, but feel free to post a “things I have learned this summer” on your own blog!
1. Baths are awesome. I got one of those book stands made for a bathtub which also holds a candle and a glass of wine. Add a bit of bubble bath, and wow! I’m not getting out unless the house is on fire.
2. The Atlanta airport should be avoided at all costs, especially when you’re flying international. I flew out of Atlanta early this summer and as I was standing in an unbelievably long line to get through security, I saw this headline in that day’s Atlanta paper: Atlanta too busy for just one airport? The short answer: YES — they just can’t handle the number of people who go through there every day, and passengers are being tortured as a result. It gets a little bit worse with each passing year. These days, upon arriving at the airport on an international flight, you must first go though immigration (and stand in a line), then hang around the luggage claim area to pick up your bags. Then you go through customs (and stand in a line). Then you have to recheck your bags for the trip over to the main terminal. And then for some reason, you have to go through security all over again (and stand in a line), even though you just got off a plane. At this point, you get to take a tram to the main terminal, hang around yet another luggage claim area and pick up your bags again, and then, at last, once you start to despair of ever escaping, you finally get to leave the freakin’ airport. It’s a nightmare. And before returning to the states, I had purchased a few bottles of wine at the duty-free store in Barcelona, forgetting that I’d have to jump through all these crazy hoops in Atlanta. When I had to recheck my bags, I was forced to stuff my wine bottles into my soft-sided luggage to avoid having them confiscated because I was about to have to go through security again and, of course, fluids are all verboten, even if they’re sealed in a duty-free shop bag and even if your only remaining destination is outside. Then I got to watch as some guy flung my bag into a pile under the luggage of all the other passengers, all the while imagining my clothes turning a nice rioja-shade of pink. We moved on and later, as we were riding on an overloaded escalator, a guy suddenly turned to my husband and purged: “I have to make a confession. I am an engineer and back in the 70s, I helped design this airport. [pause] I am so sorry.” Indeed.
3. People need to move around more, especially as they get older. I spent some time hanging around a lot of retired people this summer and it was quite the eye-opening experience. Almost without exception, the active people — even those with physical limitations — enjoy vigorous health, while those who don’t move around much all have long lists of health complaints. I also got to spend some time this summer with my father, who in his mid-seventies is proof that as long as you figure out a way to keep moving, you’ll be able to keep moving. He still plays tennis (singles) several times a week and rides his bike to work every day. So please, after you’re done reading this, go for a bike ride or take a walk or sign up for a water aerobics class — just be sure to do something.
4. The family car trip is apparently a thing of the past, which makes me sad. I have such fond memories of covering long distances during those vacations of my youth — washing down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with those little bottles of welch’s grape juice, singing stupid songs, fighting over who was invading whose personal space, trying to complete a list of all fifty state license tags… we spent hours and days going from place to place, and even though the time wasn’t all filled with magical Brady Bunch moments, I love thinking back on those journeys. And then when my daughter was very young we had the some of our own epic journeys, and we got through them all with lots of books, crayons, paper and travel games. But these days, people travel with so much electronic equipment that they don’t interact at all — they put on their earphones and watch movies, listen to music, play video games… and the journey is lost on them. Or even worse, their parents drug them, so that they don’t have to deal with them at all (this is true — I’ve seen people confess to it on their blogs and the NYTimes did a story about it). I just don’t understand how this happened. When did being a kid become a disease?
5. I hate Harry Potter. Not that I have anything against hearing a well-told tale, and I gather the HP books contain some good story telling. But between the last book coming out and the (presumably) next-to-the-last movie release, for a good part of the summer you people just wouldn’t shut up about Harry Potter! It may be good reading, but it’s not the only damn book in the universe. And all your nattering about it got kind of old after a while.
6. Maybe this is old news to the rest of you, but I just found out that college students use Febreze like some sort of a magic wand that they wield over their dirty clothes in an effort to avoid doing laundry. This news came to me via DH (dear husband — whose job puts him in contact with college students on quite a regular basis) when he saw that I bought some febreze and jokingly asked if I was going to give up doing laundry.
7. The American Medical establishment has gone completely off the rails. American physicians have become addicted to pharmaceutical drugs — they are writing prescriptions instead of doing diagnostic testing, telling parents of toddlers that it’s ok to give them unnecessary drugs to quiet them during long car rides or flights, and prescribing hard-core anti-depressants to kids with normal teenage angst. I understand that the never-ending cycle of ads and commercials encouraging people to “ask their doctor” for certain medications (which, btw, might turn them into gambling addicts) is partly responsible for pressure many doctors feel to give their patients a magic pill, but part of their job is to educate their patients, not just give them what Big Pharma has brainwashed them into thinking they need. If I come in with allergy symptoms, but test negative for both allergies and asthma, it’s ok to skip the prescription pad and tell me that what I really need is a neti pot and a yoga class — it would, in fact, be refreshing to hear.
8. Shopping at Wal-Mart does have its price. I haven’t shopped there in years because I don’t believe it’s the fairy tale paradise that the corporation wants us to believe in, and this summer I started to feel vindicated. Train sets and other toys covered in lead paint. Tainted pet treats. Poisoned toothpaste. After the all the summer’s controversies, perhaps it should now qualify as child abuse to buy anything for your family at Wal-Mart. How do you know you’re not feeding your children poison or dressing them in lead-flecked hairshirts? After all, the majority of Wal-Mart products come from China, where they clearly haven’t yet instituted any sort of quality control measures. It’s just a matter of time before more toxins are discovered on Wal-Mart’s shelves. Think you don’t pay a price for low prices? Think again.
9. If people got to spend more time at the beach, we wouldn’t need so many spas. I spent two weeks on the Gulf coast this summer, and took advantage of the opportunity to run on the beach every morning. Within a few days, my feet looked like I’d had a pedicure. And the humid salt air had my normally dry skin feeling so soft and wonderful, you’d think I’d had a facial!
You know how it goes. You open a window in your web browser, start out searching YouTube for clips of Tom Snyder and before you know it, a couple of hours have passed and you find yourself in some bizarre corner of the Internet, reading some obscure list on a dark and dusty remnant of some slightly-more-famous-than-the-rest-of-us dude’s website.
This is all a wind up to this crazy tibit: here’s a list of every book Art Garfunkel has read since 1968 — through January, 2006, anyway (via his wikientry).
I think I should go to bed now.
Goodnight!
