Yarns Found

In the LIght

2009-06-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

Eric Heller, in The Disinherited Mind, tells of the Munich clown whom he characterizes as "one of the greatest of the rare race of metaphysical clowns...." He recounts how he once enacted the following scene: the curtain goes up and reveals darkness; and in this darkness is a solitary circle of light thrown by a street-lamp. Vallentin, with his long-drawn and deeply worried face, walks round and round this circle of light, desperately looking for something. "What have you lost?" a policeman asks who has entered the scene. "The key to my house." Upon which the policeman joins him in his search; they find nothing; and after a while he inquires: "Are you sure you lost it here?" "No," says Vallentin, and pointing to a dark corner of the stage: "Over there." "Then why on earth are you looking for it here?" "There is no light over there," says Vallentin.

Electric Fences and Cows

2009-03-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

E.B. White was amused to learn from a farmer friend that many electrified fences don't have any current running through them. The cows apparently learn to stay away from them, after that you don't need the current. "Rise up, cows!" He wrote. "take your liberty while despots snore.

Source: Hackers & Painters, Paul Graham

Barreling Down the Hill

2009-03-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

When the poet Ruth Stone was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields when she would feel and hear a poem coming at her over the landscape. She said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her. When she felt it coming – ‘cause it would shake the earth under her feet – she knew that she had only one thing to do: run like hell to the house as she was chased by this poem. The whole idea was to get to a paper and pencil fast enough so that when this poem came through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. There would be other times she wouldn’t be fast enough. She’d be running and running back to the house, the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it. She said it would continue on through the landscape looking for another poet. And then there were times when she would almost miss it. She would reach out with her hand and catch it by the tail and pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on a page. In these instances, the poem would come up on the page complete and intact – but backwards. The last word to the first.

Source: Elizabeth Gilbert, TED 09

No Time to Loose Gardening

2009-02-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'

Clarke and Asimov

2009-02-02T07:21:00.000-08:00

According to Arthur C. Clarke, one day in the late 1960s he and Isaac
Asimov shared a New York taxicab. During the ride they agreed that
Clark was the world's leading science fiction writer and
second-ranking nonfiction science writer, while Asimov was the leading
science writer and second-ranking science fiction writer.

Robert Heinlein, the third member of the "trinity" of science fiction
writers who dominate the postwar growth of the genre, was not in the
cab, so Clarke and Asimov did not have to deal him in.

Source: Emmet Labs
Sent in By: Jason

The Oak Beams at New College

2009-01-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was founded around the late 14th century. It has like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oaks beams across the top, yes? These might be two fee square, forty five feet long.

A century ago, so I am told, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that caliber nowadays.?

One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be on college lands some oak. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him about oaks.

And he pulled his forelock and said, “Well sires, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the college was founded, a grove of oaks ha been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down for one Forester to the next for five hundred years. “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”

A nice story. That’s the way to run a culture.

Author: Gregory Bateson, anthropologist/philosopher
Source: How Buildings Learn

The Chinese Farmer

2009-01-13T08:32:00.001-08:00

There is an ancient Chinese story, still known to most East Asians today, about an old farmer whose only horse ran away. Knowing that the horse was the mainstay of his livelihood, his neighbors cam to commiserate with him. "Who knows what's good or bad?" said the old man, refusing their sympathy. And indeed, a few days later his horse returned, bringing with it a wild horse. The old man's friends came to congratulate him. Rejecting their congratulations the old man said, "Who knows what's good or bad?" And, as it happened, a few days later when the old man's son was attempting to ride the wild horse, he was thrown from it and his leg was broken. The friends came to express their sadness about the son's misfortune. "Who knows what's good or bad?" said the old man. A few weeks passed, and the army came to the village to conscript all the able-bodied men to fight a war against the neighboring province, but the old man's son was not fit to serve and was spared.
Author: Richard Nisbett

Source: Geography of Thought

The Conrad Cantzen Shoe Fund

2009-01-09T09:36:00.001-08:00

The Conrad Cantzen Memorial Shoe Fund is a special fund administered by The Actors’ Fund of America. In 1945, actor Conrad Cantzen bequeathed his estate to The Actors’ Fund with the stipulation that it should be used to help actors purchase shoes so they did not appear "down at the heels" when auditioning. Mr. Cantzen believed that a good pair of shoes made a great first impression on casting directors. Mr. Cantzen felt that performers were more confident when auditioning in new shoes.

Bet on the Future

2009-01-05T17:25:00.001-08:00

The Rockefeller Center in New York is, in my opinion, one of the most inspiring buildings in the world.

Like most things, the inspiration comes not so much from the thing itself, but the stories that surround it - and like all the best stories [and yes, alright, go on then, brands too] it has many lovely little pieces that all, somehow, fit together.

John D Rockefeller leased the space from Columbia University in 1928 to build a venue for the Metropolitan Opera.

Then, in 1929, the biggest stock market crash ever happened, for reasons that no one can really explain, and the USA entered the Great Depression.

The Metropolitan pulled out of the project and Rockefeller faced a very serious decision.

"It was clear that there were only two courses open to me. One was to abandon the entire development. The other to go forward with it in the definite knowledge that I myself would have to build it and finance it alone."
He decided to push ahead as the sole financial backer of the biggest development project in the history of the world.

It gave thousands of people hope, and jobs, throughout the Depression.

Rockefeller had no promised tenants for the building, but happened to have an interest in an emerging technology called radio.

Thus 30 Rock became the bleeping heart of the America's mass media industry.

Rockefeller, by all accounts, hated popular music - he was into opera - but he gave the leg up needed for RCA and NBC and the beginnings of a popular mass culture.

He hired Samuel 'Roxy' Rothafel, an infamous silent film and show impresario, to conceptualise and open Radio City Music Hall.

[Roxy once said: Don't give the people what they want - give them something better.]

Rockefeller made one of the biggest bets in history, at the very beginning of the worst economic crash of modern times, on the future.

Source: Talent Imitates, Genius Steals

Author: Faris Yakob

Oniomania

2008-12-24T07:53:00.000-08:00

Not so much the desire
for owning things
as the inability to choose
between hunter or emerald
green, to buy
just roses, when there are birds
of paradise, dahlias,
delphinium, and baby's breath.
At center an emptiness
large as a half-off sale table.
What could be so wrong
with a little indulgence?
To wander the aisles of fresh
new good things knowing
any of them could be hers?
With a closet full of shoes
unworn back home,
she's looking for love
but it's not for sale —
so she grabs three of
the next best thing.

Author: Peter Pereira

Source: What's Written on the Body

Fly Fishing

2008-12-24T07:47:00.000-08:00

Author Norman Maclean grew up in Montana. He taught English at the University of Chicago for many years, and built a cabin in Montana, near the Big Blackfoot River, and he spent every summer there.

After he retired from teaching, at the age of 70, he wrote his famous autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, which was published in 1976 by the University of Chicago Press. It was the first work of fiction the press ever published, and it was a huge best-seller, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It begins:

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman."

Author: Garrison Keillor

Source: The Writer's Almanac

Holding onto Paradise

2008-12-21T19:43:00.000-08:00

I hear a mocking cackling in the foliage above ... Suddenly, a nearby tree shakes with commotion. Two ring-tiled, white-whiskered monkeys are playing tag. Zooming in through my view finder, I notice something odd: the branches appear to be sprouting bran muffins.

I pick on of the muffins off the ground. It's brown and woody. It feels like it was baked in a buttered tray at 350 degrees for two hours too long. Not only is the muffin rock hard, it's also hallowed out, as through someone had flipped it over and scooped out all the insides. The shell's interior bears scratch marks and a couple of fibrous veins.

A plaque identifies the tree as a sapucaia. In season, the cupcakes grows packed with a half dozen seeks shapes like orange segments. At ripeness, these burst through the base, scattered on the ground. Impatient young monkeys sometimes punch into an unripe muffin and wrap their fingers around a fistful of nuts. Because their cognitive faculties are not developed enough to understand that extracting their paws requires letting go of the nuts, they end up dragging their sapucaia handcuffs around for miles.

In English, those sapucaias are called paradise nuts.

Source: The Fruit Hunters

Author: Adam Gollner

A Political Exodus from Clarksville

2008-12-17T07:53:00.000-08:00

Gerald Daugherty used to live in the hip and shady section of Austin known as Clarksville. When he became active in a campaign against a proposal to build a light rail system in town, Daugherty put NO LIGHT RAIL bumper stickers on his car and on his wife’s Mercedes. That apparently didn’t go over too well in Democratic and pro-rail Clarksville. Somebody “keyed” the Mercedes at the local grocery and for good measure punched out the cars turn signal lights. Was Daugherty sure the damage had been politically motivated? Not really. But then one morning he found his car coated with eggs. “There must have been two dozen eggs all over my car,” he remembered. “Splattered. And then deliberately rubbed on the ‘No Rail’ bumper stickers. You knew where that was coming from.” So Daugherty sold his house in a precinct that gave George W. Bush only 20 percent of the vote against Al Gore. He bought a place in a precinct where two out of three people voted Republican in the same election. Two years later, Daugherty became the only Republican elected to the county governing body. His move out of Clarksville, he admits, was a political exodus. He left a place where he “stuck out like a sore thumb” and moved to a neighborhood that was more ideologically congenial. He reasoned, “you really do recognize when you aren’t in step with the community you live in.”

Source: The Big Sort
Author: Bill Bishop

Six Word Stories

2008-12-15T12:32:00.000-08:00

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

Author: Margaret Atwood

Source: Wired

Thanks to: Jason Li

Thomas Jefferson's Dinners

2008-12-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

Thomas Jefferson circumvented the boarding house factions during his presidency by inviting legislators to the White House for dinner, no more than a dozen at a time. He sat them at a large, round table, both to nullify questions of status in seating and to preclude private conversations. The wine was imported and plentiful. Jefferson's French chef was "his best ally in conciliating political opponents." Servants weren't allowed in the room - the president served out of a dumbwaiter near his chair - so the legislators felt free to speak in confidence. Jefferson wouldn't mix Federalists and Republicans, but he would use the dinners to cross over the boarding house factions in both parties.

Source: The Big Sort

Author: Bill Bishop

The Three Stonecutters

2008-11-28T18:56:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, there was a traveler who came upon three individuals working with stone. Curious as to what the workers were doing with the stones, the traveler approached the first worker and asked, “What are you doing with these stones?” Grumpily and without hesitation the worker quickly responded, “I am a stonecutter and I am cutting stones.”

Not satisfied with this answer, the traveler approached the second worker and asked, “What are you doing with these stones?” The second worker paused for a moment, sighed, but smiled a little and then explained, “I am a stonecutter and I am trying to make enough money to support my family.”

Having two different answers to the same question, the traveler made his way to the third worker and asked, “What are you doing with these stones?” The third worker stopped what he was doing, bringing his chisel to his side. He looked at the traveler with a beaming smile on his face and declared, “I am a stonecutter and I am building a cathedral.”

Source: Maloonamy

Pavolv's Other Finding

2008-11-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

In one of his lesser-known experiments, the great Russian psychologist Pavlov discovered that a dog could be driven to a state of neurosis, trembling, urinating and defecating, if the signal it had been trained to respond to were sufficiently confused. If a bell which had come to be associated with food suddenly became the herald of an empty place, the dog could, after a few examples of this, be reconditioned to accept a state of food-less affairs. But if there was total irregularity in the proceedings, the creature would no longer know what to think: confused by the mysterious connection between the food and its non-appearance, between bells that sometimes meant one thing and sometimes another [though always the opposite of what one expected] the dog would slowly slide into a form of canine insanity.

Author: Alan de Botton

Source: The Romantic Movement

Ariadne's Thread

2008-11-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

It was perhaps no coincidence that she had always been fascinated by the story of Ariadne's thread. The ancient Greek myth recounted the arrival of Theseus in Crete, where he was to be imprisoned and meet his end in the labyrinth-shaped palace of the fierce Minotaur. But before being put away, Theseus was glimpsed by the hot-blooded Ariadne, one of the daughters of King Minos, who fell in love with the handsome youth and resolved to rescue him from his cruel fate. Risking her own safety, she slipped the young man a ball of string which he might use to trace his way back out of the labyrinth. Love being tightly linked to gratitude, when Theseus managed to kill the beast and escape the maze, he reciprocated the princess's feelings and fled Crete with beloved Ariadne in tow.

Author Alan de Botton

Source: The Romatic Movement

A Bullfinch's Melody

2008-11-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

A baron fell in love with a woman who lived near his castle in Rosenau near Coburg, Germany. At first, the girl didn't really take his love seriously. So he decided to serenade the girl from beneath her window at sunrise ever day, but the girl continued to rebuff him.

He then came up with the idea to gather all the young wild bullfinches nesting on the castle grounds and teach them to whistle a melody. If you train them the right way, bullfinches are very gifted at whistling melodies. So he trained the birds, released them, and invited the girl to come for a walk in the palace gardens. The birds were everywhere and were singing exactly the same tune he had played on his guitar beneath her window and, of course, she fell in love with him. If you go to these gardens today, you can till find traces of this love song from over 250 years ago in the birds' melodies. It's been transmitted through time. The love has become eternal.

Source: Broken Screen

Gas Rationing

2008-11-26T19:55:00.001-08:00

On November 26 1942, President Roosevelt announced the United States would begin a national gas rationing campaign on December 1st. All Americans had to display a sticker in their car window saying what category of gas ration they had. Everyone started out at "A," which got people about four gallons a week. Local rationing boards were set up to assign a "B" or "C" ration to people who needed more gas if they could prove it was necessary for their work.

The campaign made propaganda posters that asked, "Is This Trip Necessary?" or said, "When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler! Join a Car-Sharing Club TODAY!" Along with the gas rations, the national speed limit was set at 35 mph.

The gas rationing wasn't a result of a gas shortage. The United States was self-sufficient in oil and was actually a major exporter of petroleum. But the Japanese had taken over the rubber plantations in the Dutch East Indies that produced 90 percent of America's raw rubber, and there was no synthetic rubber. The government was afraid that if everyone kept driving, they would wear out tires that couldn't be replaced. The factories and the entire war effort would come to a halt. So the United States' first national gas rationing campaign was a roundabout way to conserve rubber.

Source: The Writer's Almanac

The Jukebox

2008-11-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

On November 21, 1889 the Jukebox made its debut at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. It was called a "nickel-in-the-slot player" and was built by the Pacific Phonograph Co. Later that year, jukeboxes were installed in other places around the city and on ferries that traveled back and forth across the bay between San Francisco and Oakland.

The jukebox consisted of an electric phonograph inside a free-standing oak cabinet. The technology for amplifiers hadn't been perfected yet, so there were headphones, which looked like stethoscopes. Up to four people could listen to a song at any given time. In 1927, the Automatic Musical Instruments Company introduced the first jukebox with amplifiers.

Jukeboxes changed the music business. Many early radio programs refused to play country, blues, or jazz, but jukeboxes made that music available in taverns, restaurants, and diners, and on Army bases. Eventually, country, blues, and jazz joined the music of Tin Pan Alley as pop music.

Source: The Writers Almanac

Practice Makes Perfect

2008-11-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - came to the US in February 1964, starting the so-called "British Invasion" of the American music scene. The interesting thing is how long they had already been playing together. Lennon and McCartney began in 1957. (Incidentally, the time that elapsed between their founding and their greatest artistic achievements - arguably Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album - is 10 years.) In 1960, while they were still a struggling school rock band, they were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany.

"Hamburg in those days did not have rock'n'roll music clubs. It had strip clubs," says Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles' biography, Shout! "There was one particular club owner called Bruno, who was originally a fairground showman. He had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.

"Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool," Norman continues. "It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance. And he arranged to send some bands over. That's how the connection was established. And eventually the Beatles made a connection not just with Bruno, but with other club owners as well. They kept going back, because they got a lot of alcohol and a lot of sex."

And what was so special about Hamburg? It wasn't that it paid well. (It didn't.) Or that the acoustics were fantastic. (They weren't.) Or that the audiences were savvy and appreciative. (They were anything but.) It was the sheer amount of time the band was forced to play. Here is John Lennon, in an interview after the Beatles disbanded, talking about the band's performances at a Hamburg strip club called the Indra: "We got better and got more confidence. We couldn't help it with all the experience playing all night long. It was handy them being foreign. We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it, to get ourselves over. In Liverpool, we'd only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing."

The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don't perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.

"They were no good on stage when they went there and they were very good when they came back," Norman says. "They learned not only stamina, they had to learn an enormous amount of numbers - cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock'n'roll, a bit of jazz, too. They weren't disciplined on stage at all before that. But when they came back they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them."

Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Source: Guardian

Baby Shoes

2008-11-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Source: On time with no where to go

Moral Majority

2008-11-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Evangelist Billy Graham began his career in Los Angeles in 1949, holding revival meetings in circus tents. He crusaded against communism, but he opposed segregation, and became friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. He refused to join the religious right's Moral Majority, saying, "I'm for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice."

Source: Gairrson Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac"

On The Days I am Not My Father

2008-11-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

I don't yell. I don't hold inside
the day's supply of frustrations.
My hands stay open all day.
I don't wake tired and sore,
dazed from senseless, panicking
dreams. On the days I am not
my father I hold my son
when he cries, let him touch my face
without flinching, lie down with him
until he falls asleep, realize
that just because he has a sharp tongue,
just because he's sometimes mean,
just because he's smarter than me
doesn't mean he'll become my father.

On the days I am not my father
holding you is enough until
holding you is no longer enough
for either of us. I listen well.
I let things go unfinished,
in an order I didn't plan.
My mouth is relaxed. My teeth
don't hurt. My face stays
a healthy shade of pink all day.
On the days I am not my father
I don't fill the silence with my own
irrational rants. I don't resent
the voices of others. I don't make fun
of you to make myself feel better.

On the days I am not my father
I don't care who wins
or loses. The news can't ruin
my day. I water plants.
I cook. I laugh at myself.
I can imagine living without
my beard, with my hair cut,
without the fear of looking
too much like my father. On the days
I am not my father I romp
and play, I don't compare myself
with everyone else, the night
is always long enough, I like
how much I am like my father.

Source: Scott Owens' The Fractured World

Want to be My Boyfriend? Please Define.

2008-11-05T08:13:00.001-08:00

RECENTLY my mother asked me to clarify what I meant when I said I was dating someone, versus when I was hooking up with someone, versus when I was seeing someone. And I had trouble answering her because the many options overlap and blur in my mind. But at one point, four years ago, I had a boyfriend. And I know he was my boyfriend because he said, “I want you to be my girlfriend,” and I said, “O.K.”

He and I dated for over a year, and when we broke up I thought my angsty heart was going to spit itself right up out of my sore throat. Afterward, I moved out of my mother’s house in Brooklyn and into an apartment in the East Village, and from there it becomes confusing.

So, a few days after the chat with my mom, when I found myself downtown drinking tea with my friend Steven, I asked him what he thought about dating. He has a long-term girlfriend, and I was curious how he viewed their relationship.

“The main thing,” he said, “is I don’t mind if she sleeps with other people. I mean, she’s not my property, right? I’m just glad I get to hang out with her. Spend time with her. Because that’s all we really have, you know? I don’t want her to be mine, and I don’t want to be anybody’s.”

I sucked my teeth and looked over at the next table, where two men sat opposite each other. One looked over his shoulder and gave me a closed-mouth grin.

Steven explained that it’s not a question of faithfulness but of expectation. He can’t be expected not to want to sleep with other people, so he can’t expect her to think differently. They are both young and living in New York, and as everyone in New York knows, there’s the possibility of meeting anyone, everywhere, all the time.

For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll say I’ve dated a lot of guys. It’s not that I’ve gone out anywhere with a lot of these guys, or been physical with most of them, or even seen them more than once. But there have been many, many encounters.

I’ve met guys in the park, at the deli, at galleries, at parties and on the Internet. The Internet idea came from thinking that if I could sift through people’s profiles, like applications, I could eliminate the obvious lunatics.

And that didn’t work out very well. One leaned across the table an hour into dinner and screamed: “You love me! I know you do!” Another stood outside my apartment with one finger on the buzzer and another covering the peephole...

...Continued here

Source: Marquerite Fields, New York Times section on Modern Love

Let’s Not Get to Know Each Other Better

2008-11-05T08:10:00.000-08:00

A FEW months ago I liked a girl — a fairly common occurrence. But being slightly ambitious and drunk, I decided to ask her out on a date.

This was a weird choice, as I’m not sure I know anyone who has ever had a real date. Most elect to hang out, hook up, or Skype long-distance relations. The idea of a date (asking in advance, spending rent money on dinner and dealing with the initial awkwardness) is far too concrete and unnecessary. As the adage goes: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Why pay for dinner if you can sit around watching TV? If you stay at home, you hardly even need to stand up, let alone put on a nice shirt.

Despite misgivings, this particular foray felt legitimate, a coming-of-age moment straight out of a John Hughes movie. I had always wanted to go on a real date: flowers, dinner and all that. I thought that maybe in doing so I would feel more like an adult and less like a dumb little boy.

So I called this girl, feeling a little sleazy as I searched for the right words: “Hey, um, this is Joel. Do you want to, like, go out? On a date?”

“O.K.,” she said uncertainly, no doubt suspicious the whole thing was a joke.

Her positive response did nothing to calm my jitters. Give me a party, a front porch gathering, or a random encounter, and I’m comfortable talking to anyone. But this kind of formal planning unnerved me. Riding my bike home, I realized I didn’t even know what a real date was, beyond some vague Hollywood notion.

In my 21 years, I have had my share of trysts and one-night stands. I’ve been in love. I know it was love because I shamelessly clung to her. I have had my share of ups and downs but have no idea if I’m doing the whole love thing right or wrong. We don’t tend to define it that way.

In this age of cyberselves, with hookups just a Craigslist ad away, the game has evolved to the point of no rules. It’s not the ’50s where I can ask some lucky girl to wear my pin and take a ride in daddy’s car. This change probably benefits me in the end, as I’m sure an offer of a ride in my dad’s Sable would be swiftly rejected.

For my generation, friendship often morphs into a sexual encounter and then reverts to friendship the next day. And it’s easy as long as you don’t put yourself on the line or try too hard. Don’t have a prospect? Check Facebook. Afraid to call? Text.

With so many avenues for communication, one might expect an onslaught of romantic soliloquies, but that isn’t the case. Casual is sexy. Caring is creepy. You don’t want to show your hand, and you certainly don’t want to fall in love. At least until you do, and by then it’s too late.

Planned romance is viewed as nothing more than ambition, so it’s important that things be allowed...

...continued here.

Source: Joel Walkowski New York Times Section on Modern Love

Fitzgerald's Failure

2008-11-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and, as President Shapiro said, that is the hometown of F. Scott Fitzgerald and in St. Paul when we think of Princeton, we think of Fitzgerald. My house is in his old neighborhood. And in the spring we get a certain number of high school students who are wandering around looking for his place, who have read the Great Gatsby in English and were moved by it. The novel is 75 years old, but Fitzgerald managed to get down on paper a certain kind of pure yearning that high school readers recognize as their own. Some of these high school students ask me if I knew Fitzgerald myself and I tell them, only slightly. We went to different schools. But every day on my walk I pass a big frame house on Summit Avenue with a veranda on two sides of it that used to belong to a woman named Porterfield who ran it as a boarding house. And in the summer of 1919 Fitzgerald, at the age of 23, liked to sit on that veranda with his friends, John Briggs and Don Stewart, and smoke and talk about the novel he was writing and the girl in Montgomery, Alabama, whom he hoped to marry.

He had gone off to Princeton with a beautiful picture in his mind of a gothic campus and himself as a campus hero, winning all of the prizes. He spent much of his time at Princeton coughing [GK is coughing, had water and continues coughing]. He was slightly tubercular, as I am, but he spent his time writing for the Triangle Club and acting in their shows and his grades were poor and he had to leave school. He enlisted in the army hoping to go to Europe and get in the war and redeem himself. But the war ended before he could. His novel had been turned down twice, and the girl had broken off the engagement. He was living in a tiny third-floor apartment with his parents in St. Paul with his alcoholic father and his spooky mother. And he spent every day in a little room where he had pinned the chapters of his novel to the curtains and where he was busy writing new material and cutting out big swaths of other material and reshaping the whole thing. Everyone knows how this story turned out, how the novel was published, and the girl married him, and he became a famous writer of the twenties. But when I think of Fitzgerald I like to think of him sitting on that veranda, at the age 23, a Princeton dropout, so broke he had to borrow pocket money from his friends and yet so full of courage and passion with an indomitable spirit, looking forward to the next day and the next month and the years to come and all of the love and glory in the world that he knew would be his.

Source: Garrison Keillor's 2001 Princeton graduation speech

Drunken Preacher

2008-11-03T21:20:00.001-08:00

There is a lot of human nature in everybody. I learned this in church. I didn’t grow up attending inter-faith services like this one, in which you have readings from different religious traditions and in which you sing hymns about the fields and the forests. I grew up in a church where they painted vivid pictures of the jaws of hell opening up and swallowing you for your sins and where the preacher did not stand up on this high rostrum but walked up and down the aisles looking for converts and shaking his Bible at them. These were the people who put the “fun” into Fundamentalism. And we boys were always made to sit down front where we could get the full impact of him.

It was the summer and the goldenrod was heavy in the air as was the ragweed, and I was becoming emotional over that and the preacher saw me weeping and he said, “Here’s one who’s under conviction of sin, right down here.” And he came for me. I remember his shirt was wet, and his hair was pasted to his head. He reached out his hand and I took it, and he pulled me towards him, and I tripped and I fell into his arms. And when I came into his arms I could smell the whiskey on his breath. It was an amazing discovery for a boy at the age of 12, to realize that the preacher himself had his own contradictions and today was not one of his winning days but he was still in the game. He held me close to him, and he prayed to God that I would be spared punishment for my sins. To have a drunken man pray for your soul is a mysterious privilege that a person never, ever forgets. All of the good people sitting in back were not aware of this, but he was a sinner too and that’s what gave him the authority to preach. And the man who speaks passionately about the pursuit of excellence is a man who is deeply aware of his own mediocrity.

Source: Garrison Keillor speech at 2001 Princeton Graduation

A Tapioca Epiphany

2008-11-03T21:18:00.000-08:00

I got into comedy when I was a kid. I was one of those really quiet kids. They weren’t sure if I was an introspective genius or if I was heard of hearing. And one day I was sitting in the school cafeteria across the table from our class intellect, Leonard Larson, the guy who always corrected you if you mispronounced words. The guy who was committed to excellence, at least on the part of others. He was a tough critic who made you pay a big price for a mistake. He came from parents who had gone to college, so he picked up a big vocabulary around the dinner table and also a very nice set of handy opinions about things. I had a large vocabulary that I got from reading books, so I was never quite sure about pronunciation. “Epitome,” for example, was a word I didn’t use for years. Or “suave” or “hors d'oeuvres,” “charisma,” or “inchoate.” I sat across from Leonard as he ate his tapioca pudding and I told him a stupid joke, one that involved mucus and yet, as dumb as it was, the timing was perfect. He was just swallowing when it hit him and I made Leonard Larson, our class intellect, exhale tapioca through both nostrils. I have never had this effect on anyone before. And it was a big experience to see a great intellect turn red and yak up tapioca. Two long noodles of it, I thought he was going to blow his entire lunch. I was thinking cerebral hemorrhage and to me, at that point, comedy started to seem like a noble thing. Destructive, yes. Humiliating, yes, but not in a bad way. A good line of work for somebody who is not that smart.

Source: Garrison Keillor speech at 2001 Princeton Graduation

The Fable of Bees

2008-10-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

A spacious hive well stock't with bees

That liv'd in luxury and ease

Millions endeavoring to supply

Each other's lust and vanity...

Every part was full of vice

Yet the whole mass a paradise

Envy itself and vaity,

Were ministers of industry

Author: Bernard de Mandeville

Source: American Mania, by Peter Whybrow

Nickle or Dime

2008-10-27T11:53:00.001-07:00

Mark Twain tells the story of a young boy he met in the mid-West. Every time a stranger came into town the other boys delighted in showing the stranger just how stupid this boy was.

They'd hold out two coins, a dime (10 cents) and a nickel (5cents), and tell the boy he could keep one. He'd always pick the nickel because it was bigger. Every time he did it all the other boys laughed.

Mark twain took him aside and said, "Son, I have to tell you that the small coin is worth more than the bigger one." The boy said, "I know that mister. But how many times do you think they'd let me choose if I picked the more valuable one?"

Source: CST advertising

Sent in by Geoff Northcott

God's Answers

2008-10-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

A man living in a an area war torn for several years. All around him are destroyed villages, dead bodies, dying and and sick people. Heavy feelings of sadness and hopelessness overcome him. He is moved to tears.

He is a very religious man. Wondering why God lets all this destruction and pain happen to good people, he looks up and asks, "Why aren't you doing anything to fix this?

God answers. "I did do something. I made you."

Source: Sufi legend

Ghandi's Plan

2008-10-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

In 1949, Tarzie Vittachi, a young Indian reporter, had the opportunity to interview Mahatma Gandhi. He asked him, "How are you going to build and Indian nation that will satisfy the wants of the Indian people?"

Ghandi replied, "I am going to teach them to reduce their wants and satisfy their needs."

Source: Tactics of Hope by Wilford Welch

The Scorpion and the Frog

2008-10-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"

"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.

"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"

"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"

"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.

"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.

"I could not help myself. It is my nature."

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Source: All About Frogs
Good analysis

In Style

2008-10-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

A young woman, working as an editor for Diana Vreeland, is done dirt by her man, who turns out to be a crumb, so she throws herself in front of the rush hour train. She sustains only minor physical injuries and is packed off to some place like Payne Whitney or Austen Riggs where she can get better. Returning to her job three months later, repaired but shaky, she is called into Mrs. Vreeland's office. The arbitrix of style rises from her chair and taking the wounded bird's hands in both of hers, says consolingly, "My dear, here at Vogue we do not throw ourselves in front of trains. If we must, we take pills."

Source: Don't Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff

Nostalgie de la Boue

2008-10-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

I tutored adult literacy at a men's shelter for about two years a while back. Christmas was coming, and Syliva, the amazing woman who ran the career center, mentioned that a lot o the guys in the program would be going to see their kids, wives and girlfriends, etc., for the first time since getting back on the road to recovery. All of the men had histories of drug abuse or alcoholism, a lot of them had been homeless. Their families had really gone through hell and Sylvia thought it would be nice to somehow arrange it so that the men weren't showing up empty-handed. Even a small token would go a very long way in repairing relationships that had been sorely tested over the years. I called up my friend Rory, who raided the giveaway closets of the various glossy women's magazines at which she works, eventually filling up two large boxes with fancy cosmetics and toiletries. More than enough for all the men to arrive bearing gifts.

Since the program had both a strong recovery and a christian foundation, Sylvia went through the boxes, setting aside those things she thought might be less that suitable. Anything boozy or overtly sexual - bourbon-flavored massage oil, for example - would be out. When I looked over what she had discarded, I saw that, without exception, she had taken out the big-ticket, really expensive items.

"They're not going to understand that these are fancy things," she said, indicating the exorbitant bottle of witch hazel with its unadorned, text-heavy label like a purgative tonic from an old dispensary, and the bar of soap resembling a rough, gray river stone wrapped up in brown paper and tied with waxed string. "They're going to think the guys go them medicine from the drugstore. It would look like the exact opposite of a present. These things just look...," she searched for the word, "poor. They're already poor. Why would they want to be reminded of that?"

Source: Don't Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff

Nostalgie de la Boue = "A fond yearning for the mud"

For a Million Dollars?

2008-10-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

A wealthy man approached a proper lady. He asked if she would have sex with him, a strange man, for a $100,000.

Offended and disgusted the woman snaps a "No."

"Well how about half a million?" the gentry offers.

Another refusal.

"A million then?"

A pause.

The lady allows it saying, yes, she would.

The man follows up asking if she would do the same thing for a can of Schlitz and a plastic sleeve of beer nuts, the woman reels back with an affronted, "What do you think I am?"

"Madam, we have already established what you are. Now we're just quibbling about the price."

Source: Don't Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff

Taking Einstein's Exam

2008-10-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

The fall semester was on it's final day as students shuffled into a classroom to wrestle their final exam.

The class was theoretical physics. The teacher, Albert Einstein.

One student in the mix was particularly worried. This was his second attempt to pass Einstein's famous class. Branded a failure once, he committed himself to removing that label. He'd studied for weeks. He read and reread chapters. Went to tutors. Even retook the old physics exams that had brought him his own scarlet letter.

When this semester's exam made it to his desk, he was astonished. Could it really be this easy he thought? The thought of success was too much to keep in. In an eruption of joy that could not be contained by an inner monologue, the young man burst, "These questions are the same as last years!"

But Einstein heard.

He look at his student and replied, "Yes they are. But the answers are different."

Source: Overheard at Pop!Tech 2008

Two Wolves

2008-10-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride, and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too. The children thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, Which wolf will win? The old Cherokee simply replied: The one I feed.

Source: Cherokee Indian Folklore

The Exuberant Cellist

2008-10-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

A young cellist, around the age of 5, was running down the halls of the theatre with her cello in hand.

A guard stopped the exuberant girl and asked,
"Did you just finish playing?"

The girl responded, "Nope, but I'm about to."

Source: Ben Zander, Conductor Boston Philharmonic Pop!Tech 2008

An Entire Lifetime

2008-10-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

One day, a man visited Picasso in his studio to commission a piece of work. The artist, now at the peak of his fame and talent, obliged.

The patron turned to leave, but Picasso told him to wait a moment.

Vision in mind, Picasso reached for a paintbrush, knelt over a fresh piece of canvas and began painting. Ten minutes later, he stepped back, marveled at his work and said to his customer,

“That will be $35,000.”

The man gasped and snapped back,

“That is absurd! Why should I pay you that much? That painting only took you 10 minutes to paint.”

To which Picasso informed,

“Actually, it took me my entire lifetime.”

Source: Unknown because I picked it up along the way.

Putting the World Back Together

2008-10-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

A CEO was having to babysit for his young daughter. He was trying to read the paper but was totally frustrated by the constant interruptions. When he came across a full page of the NASA phot of the Earth from space, he got a brilliant idea. He ripped it up into small pieces and told his child to try to put it back together. He then settled in for what he expected to be a good half-hour of peace and quiet. But only a few minutes had gone by before the child appeared at his side with a big grin on her face. “You’ve finished already?” he asked. “Yep,” she replied. So how did you do it?” “Well, I saw there was a picture of a person on the other side, so when I put the person together, the earth got put together too…

Source: Amory Lovins Eulogy at Donella H. Meadows funeral as recounted in Hot, Flat and Crowded.

If You Can't Fix It, Don't Break It

2008-10-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O. - The Environmental Children's Organisation. We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money ourselves to come six thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future.

Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go. We cannot afford to be not heard. I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don't know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver with my dad until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear about animals and plants going exinct every day -- vanishing forever.

In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterfilies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry about these little things when you were my age?

All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to realise, neither do you! You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct.
And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert.

If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!

Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organisers, reporters or politicians - but really you are mothers and fathers, brothers and sister, aunts and uncles - and all of you are somebody's child. I'm only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong, in fact, 30 million species strong and we all share the same air, water and soil -- borders and governments will never change that. I'm only a child yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.

In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid to tell the world how I feel.

In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to share. In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter -- we have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets.

Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets. And this is what one child told us: "I wish I was rich and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter and love and affection." If a child on the street who has nothing, is willing to share, why are we who have everyting still so greedy?

I can't stop thinking that these children are my age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the Favellas of Rio; I could be a child starving in Somalia; a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India. I'm only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this earth would be!

At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us to behave in the world. You teach us: not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures to share - not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?

Do not forget why you're attending these conferences, who you're doing this for -- we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying "everyting's going to be alright," "we're doing the best we can" and "it's not the end of the world."

But I don't think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My father always says "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words.

Thank you for listening.

Source: 12-year-old Severn Suzuki Speech at 1992 Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro

UnFuck the World

2008-10-21T10:18:00.001-07:00

"Unfuck the world."

Source: Founding idea behind Nau - an innovative, outdoor apparel company - as stated in the founders non-disclosure agreement.

On Creative People

2008-10-21T10:02:00.001-07:00

On Creative People
Highly creative people have an independence of judgment.
They are questioning of authority.
They make fewer quick decisions, fewer black and white decisions.
They’re prepared to entertain irrational impulses.
They place great value on humor.
They cannot be rigidly controlled.

On Their Loyalties
Their first loyalty is never to the company, but to themselves and their profession.
They’re true to their own talent, their environment and its challenges

On Their Orientation to Problems
Their prime motivation is never money.
They simply spend all they can get and want more.
They are motivated by the task.
They work harder, longer without external pressures if the task attracts them and the environment excites them.
With the creative person, in the exploratory stages, there is great interest in the problem at hand, perhaps commitment to its eventual solution, but certainly not to any particular approach.

On Their Approach to Work
Creative people spend more time sifting alternatives not appearing to “get on with it.”
They make irregular progress.
Not step-by-step, but in unpredictable leaps.
This is lateral thought.
There is an open mindedness, a willingness to pursue leads in any direction, a relaxed and perhaps child-like, playful attitude that allows a disorganized, undisciplined approach to the point of putting the problem aside entirely.

On Their Judgment
Creative people are frightened of early commitment to an idea. (They are still sifting)
They need undisciplined exploration including artificial disorganizers such as drugs, alcohol, brain storming, games and anything but direct pressure.

On Managing Them
Management has to learn how to distinguish incubation from laziness suspend judgment from indecision boundary expansion from drunkenness.

On Their Big Ideas
Creativity is characterized by a willingness to seek and accept relevant information from any and all sources; to suspend judgment and defer commitment until The Big Idea.
Once finally arrived at, it is held to with bull-headed conviction and defended vehemently.
There is great conviction, dogged perseverance, strong ego involvement,
longing for praise and dogmatic support of the new way.

Source: I have lost the source of this writing. Please let me know if you know.

Choose Good

2008-10-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

Used to be we did things. Movers and shakers, we were.
Lit up all the houses and then got the old automobile
up and running like you never would’ve believed.
Gave women the vote and rolled rubber bands into balls –
you didn’t want to throw anything away.
Oranges went into stockings and they were a real treat
because they came all the way from Califronia,
or maybe Florida, depending on where you come from,
and that was a long ways away.
So you ate them slower, and you loved it more.
Marched for civil rights
and your big nose was just your big nose, lady,
and nothing a little powder couldn’t fix.
A bit of suffering was good for the soul.
Free love, hard work, a smidge of honest sacrifice
and a good dose of the-hell-I-can’t.
And what are we doing now, with this long hewn legacy?
What are we making of our one and only chance
to show history what we’re made of?

Source: Copy in ad for Good.is/choosegood

Economic Liberty

2008-10-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

One hundred and sixty five years ago, a Scottish businessman set out his plans for a newspaper. James Wilson's starting point was a "melancholy reflection":"White wealth and capital have been rapidly increasing" and science and art "working the most surprising miracles", all class of people were marked "by characters of uncertainty and insecurity". Wilson's solution was freedom. He committed his venture to the struggle no just against the protectionist corn laws but against attempts to raise up "barriers to intercourse, jealousies, animosities and heartburnings between individuals and classes in this country, and again between this country and all others." Ever since, The Economist has been on the side of economic liberty.

Source: The Economist, "Capitalism at bay" October 2008