We’ve all experienced what the cartoon character has just gone through. You decide to do something the next time you go into a room where that task has to be done and then as soon as you get there, you forget what it was that you wanted to do. Sometimes you know that you have forgotten something but can’t recall what it is, at other times you don’t even realize that you have forgotten until much later, when you are doing something else.
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The crafts company Hobby Lobby has been fined $3 million and asked to return over 5,000 stolen artifacts to Iraq. The name of the company may be familiar to some because they were behind a victorious lawsuit that went all the way to the US Supreme Court because they argued that the religious beliefs of the owners of the company should allow them to not provide contraceptive coverage in the employees’ health insurance policies. Yes, the family that owns the company consists of religious zealots.
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Donald Trump seems intent on making childish belligerent noises over North Korea and this is concerning because bellicose rhetoric (such as considering doing some “very severe things”) has the effect of raising the stakes and expectations. This can create its own dynamic and lead to Trump doing something rash because to not take action after talking tough would make him (at least in his own eyes and those of his supporters) look weak, and for such weak-minded people that is something to be avoided at all costs.
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Jack Sock is a tennis player who was on the court for his first round Wimbledon match. When a young boy in the stands gestured for a souvenir, he threw him a towel. But an old man in front of the boy caught part of the towel and wrested it away from the boy. This was caught on camera and distributed on Twitter and has understandably caused widespread disgust because it was easily identified as a jerk move. Adults should really know better.
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Here is a video that shows original unappetizing forms of vegetables and fruits before human beings cultivated and bred them to be the forms that we now eat. We’ve come a long way, baby.
People are usually taught some version of the Golden Rule, originating in religion or philosophy or just common sense. It is stated in various forms but usually boils down to the precept that one should behave towards others the way that you would like them to behave towards you or, even more extreme, that one should love everybody.
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On this Independence Day holiday, I am repeating a post on what to me is one of the most intriguing phrases in the US Declaration of Independence. It is contained in the famous sentence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
I have always found the inclusion of “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right to be appealing. One does not expect to see such a quaint sentiment in a revolutionary political document, and its presence sheds an interesting and positive light on the minds and aspirations of the people who drafted it. [Read more…]
My post a couple of days ago about the first Sri Lankan to climb Everest sparked an interesting discussion about these climbs. Would you like to see what it is like to get to the top of Mount Everest but think it’s too damn dangerous? Well, you can follow the trek taken by most climbers to get to the summit and, once you get there, have a 3D view of the world below you.
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Eddie Izzard has long been my favorite stand up comedian. I think s/he is positively brilliant. I love the seemingly stream of consciousness patter, the mimicking of conversations, allusions to the Bible and history and popular culture, and the ability to find humor in the most mundane aspects of life. There are many clips from the live performances available on YouTube (many of which I have linked to in the past) but if you can get hold of the full performances that are available on DVD, they are well worth it.
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Earthworms are not prepossessing creatures. As a child I used to find them gross and carefully avoided them when I encountered them on sidewalks, hard to do after rains when they seemed to be all over the place. But over time, I came to view them in a positive light, that though they may not win any beauty contests, they were busily working away on our behalf, enriching the ground and making it more fertile, and that their abundant presence was an indicator of healthy soil. But it seems like that entirely benign beneficial façade may be misleading, the product of a good public relations campaign by the earthworm lobby.
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