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17

May

Commence Rhetoric

For the class of 2012, I wish you joy…I wish you a roof, four walls, a floor and someone in your life that you care about more than you care about yourself…I wish you the quality of friends I have and the quality of colleagues I work with. Baseball players say they don’t have to look to see if they hit a home run, they can feel it. So I wish for you a moment—a moment soon—when you really put the bat on the ball, when you really get a hold of one and drive it into the upper deck, when you feel it. When you aim high and hit your target, when just for a moment all else disappears…The moment will end as quickly as it came, and so you’ll have to have it back, and so you’ll get it back no matter what the obstacles.  A lofty prediction, to be sure, but I flat out guarantee it.

— Writer Aaron Sorkin at the 2012 Syracuse University Commencement Ceremony

27

Apr

Alaska is so happening. 

Alaska is so happening. 

26

Apr

Cities and places quite simply are the outcome of supply and demand. If you wish to engineer the future of a place, it will come down to the people who live there. Its profile is most determined by what it exports and not what it imports…Since the financial crisis, people are beginning to look at what they really have. What do they have that actually creates work and wealth? It’s a little late but at least we’re there.
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

24

Apr

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This little story—“Kohn”—won its producer a few awards, got picked up by Radiolab and went around the internet a bunch of times. But there’s really no substitute for hearing the original “un-cut” version of the story, as it was first arranged by Andy Mills. 

21

Apr

McShurley has little regret. “Why wasn’t I more honest with voters?” she asks. It’s a rhetorical question: “They didn’t want to hear it.” Voters may have lost faith in their leaders, but the leaders, too, have lost faith in the people.

20

Apr

Pumpkin Art

14

Apr

That is the penalty of leaving your native land. It means transferring your roots into shallower soil. Exile is probably more damaging to a novelist than to a painter or even a poet, because its effect is to take him out of contact with working life and narrow down his range to the street, the cafe, the church, the brothel and the studio. On the whole, in [Henry] Miller’s books you are reading about people living the expatriate life, people drinking, talking, meditating, and fornicating, not about people working, marrying, and bringing up children; a pity, because he would have described the one set of activities as well as the other.
George Orwell, “Inside the Whale”

12

Apr

aseaofquotes:

Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

aseaofquotes:

Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

07

Apr

More news from the hyena-human conflict

An analysis of [Ethiopian hyena] scat [during Lent] showed that hyenas turned to a diet of donkey as humans gave up butchering meat. Before Lent, 14.8 percent of hyena droppings contained donkey hair. During Lent, that number increased to 33.1 percent, dropping again to 22.2 percent once Lent ended and butcher scraps again appeared around human settlements.

The results, published April 4th in the Journal of Animal Ecology, illustrate how adaptable and opportunistic hyenas are, according to the researchers. They also show how intertwined the lives of humans and hyenas really are — a fact that could have implications for how hyena-human conflict should be managed.”

How do Hyenas Observe Lent?