“Well, Captain, she’s either the biggest lump of coal Santa ever brought, or one of the largest dilithium crystal piles I’ve ever seem. Would explain what powers those eight tiny reindeer.”
Monthly Archives: January 2014
What Do Y’All, Yinz, and Yix Call Stretchy Office Supplies? : The New Yorker
What Do Y'All, Yinz, and Yix Call Stretchy Office Supplies? : The New Yorker.
Sample of quiz:
How well does this test of regional slang reveal where you’re from? Answer the questions below to find out.
What do you call sweetened carbonated beverages?
a. Soda
b. Pop
c. Coke
d. Dope
e. Horse
f. Fizz-bang
g. Explodo
h. Gentleman’s seltzer
i. Heaven bubbles
What do you call the stretchy office supplies used to hold items together?
a. Rubber bands
b. Elastics
c. Flippos
d. Snapshooters
e. Wigglers
f. Stretchums
g. Satan’s bracelets
Looking Backward: My Top Ten American History Books | New Republic
Looking Backward: My Top Ten American History Books | New Republic.
A sample of the article by John B. Judis:
I woke up on Christmas morning thinking about American historians. It probably was because I had a dream about a historian I knew, or maybe it reflected my own wish—having never taken or taught an American history course, but having written five books of American history—to be regarded as one of the gang. I had hours to kill before my family got up, so I started thinking of what historians and books had most influenced my view of American history, and I came up with a list of ten. They’re my favorites; they’re not the best books, because I haven’t read comprehensively, especially in certain periods. It’s much heavier on the history of religion than on social history, and on the Progressive Era than on, say, the Civil War.
1. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness. (1956) Miller, a professor at Harvard for two decades after World War II, wrote how Puritan theology—before that, popularly identified with sexual repression and witch burning—influenced America’s idea of itself as having a mission—an “errand into the wilderness.” In Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, Miller also parsed the early conflicts within American Christianity that issued, paradoxically, in the First Amendment. Ideas of American exceptionalism and of America having a special mission in the world all date from the Puritan beliefs that Miller described in his books.
Filed under history books
Doctors Are Now Prescribing Books to Treat Depression | Smart News
Doctors Are Now Prescribing Books to Treat Depression | Smart News.
Sample of article:
William Nicholson once said, “We read to know that we are not alone.” And that sentiment, of reading to connect with the world and to feel less isolated, may be more than just a poetic thought. Doctors are now prescribing books to patients with depression, hoping that reading will help them find connections.
Leah Price at the Boston Globe reports on the a new program that launched in the United Kingdom this June:
If your primary care physician diagnoses you with “mild to moderate” depression, one of her options is now to scribble a title on a prescription pad. You take the torn-off sheet not to the pharmacy but to your local library, where it can be exchanged for a copy of “Overcoming Depression,” “Mind Over Mood,” or “The Feeling Good Handbook.” And depression is only one of over a dozen conditions treated. Other titles endorsed by the NHS include “Break Free from OCD,” “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway,” “Getting Better Bit(e) by Bit(e),” and “How to Stop Worrying.”
Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/12/doctors-are-now-prescribing-books-to-treat-depression/#ixzz2pHkNT3OX
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Filed under Uncategorized
Haiku to you Thursday: “Blossoms begin dark”
Blossoms begin dark – /
seeded in the deepest heart /
of soil, humans, and stars.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Interview: Joe R. Lansdale : Under the Moons of Mars
Interview: Joe R. Lansdale : Under the Moons of Mars.
Sample of interview…
Interview: Joe R. Lansdale
How did you first come to discover the Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs?
Actually, as a child when TV was beginning to look for things to fill the air waves, every Saturday they showed Tarzan movies, or Bomba movies, or Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers, or a combination there of. The Tarzan movies got me interested in the name Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials got me interested in S.F. adventures, so when I was eleven, and came across a Princess of Mars, and a little later Tarzan of the apes, I was hooked through the gills. I had always wanted to be a writer, seemingly from birth, but when I found Edgar Rice Burroughs, I knew I had to be.
What do you find appealing about the characters and milieu?
It was so different from my life, and at that age I pretty much felt the stories were real. The first person narrative of so many of the John Carter tales was what worked for me, more than the Tarzan novels, or any of the series that were not first person. The framing device of Burroughs receiving the story was another one of the things that pulled me in. I think from that moment on my favorite form of storytelling, and writing, was first person. When I look at the thirty novels I’ve written, most of them are in first person, and I think Burroughs influenced that. I write things, normally, very different from what Burroughs wrote, but he is still my sentimental favorite, and the narrative drive he had in his stories has stayed with me to this day. Oh, and add to the fact that John Carter was a Southerner, could live forever, and could go to Mars by just spreading is arms wide was way cool. I did that, you know, as I’m sure a lot of young boys did back then. Spread my arms hoping, just hoping, those stories, were as I suspicioned then, true. Now I realize if I had been swept across that vast void to Mars, I’d have been killed in moments by most anything I encountered. Dang it.
Filed under Uncategorized
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