Thursday, January 14, 2016

A sponge peddler, a huge sack slung over his shoulder, peered anxiously at the rain.

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From Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst. A wonderful word sketch of a time (Greece, October 1940) and a place (downtown Salonika). Enterin...
Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken

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Joseph Banks was one of the stars in the Age of Enlightenment firmament. From Wikipedia: Banks made his name on the 1766 natural history ...
Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Journalism and cultural illiteracy

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From 4 Problems With Media Confusion Over Ted Cruz’s Quoting Of Scripture by Mollie Hemingway. In some ways Hemingway is making a mountain...

There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words

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I have enjoyed the inspirational life-story of Eric Hoffer and the products of his mind such as The True Believer . From the Wikipedia entr...
Monday, January 11, 2016

Train travel from children's books to spy books

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When the kids were growing up, they all enjoyed the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. The original ones by Reverend W. Awdry. One item, much...

And the right story tells us who we are

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From the Poet Laureate of California, Dana Gioia . I am fascinated by the idea of how language and stories shape us and in often unknown w...
Sunday, January 10, 2016

Nonroutine is the key

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A good while ago I posted about research showing how at-risk routine work was compared to non-routine work. Specifically, routine manual wo...
Saturday, January 9, 2016

Tell truth and shame the devil

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William Shakespeare, Henry The Fourth, Part I Act 3, scene 1, 52–58 Glendower : I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur : Why, so...

I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.

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From Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, attempting to answer Aristotle's question "How should we live?" ...
Friday, January 8, 2016

Ephermera

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Doing some beginning of year cleaning of my desk and general work area. Lots of notes to myself, many cryptic, some indecipherable. Some a...