Wednesday, October 19, 2005



No matter who you are, you have the potential to be so very much less. Fascination with the end of days is seemingly everywhere ...

Julie Powell was a depressed temp whose life changed forever after she embarked on a year-long Julia Child cook-a-thon Recipe for success

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Literary Seductions
Word spread quickly in some conservative Christian circles when Israeli troops captured the Old City of Jerusalem from Arab forces in June 1967. This was it: Jesus was coming.

But Jesus did not return that day, and the world did not end with the culmination of that Arab-Israeli war. Neither did it end in 1260, when Joachim of Fiore, an influential 12th-century Italian monk calculated it would, nor in February 1420, as predicted by the Taborites of Bohemia, nor in 1988, 40 years after the formation of Israel, nor after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But after last week's devastating earthquake in Pakistan, coming as it did after a succession of recent disasters, the apocalyptic speculation, bubbled up again with impressive fervor on many Christian blogs, in some pews and among some evangelical Christian leaders.


Doomsday: The Latest Word if Not the Last [Even in calamities, cultural attitudes and burial customs come into play when handling the dead Disasters and Their Dead ; PDF version of History and the Noble Art of Lying ]
• · Peter Waterhouse and Crina Virgona investigated the ways in which ten individuals have achieved success despite difficulties with literacy and learning Contradicting the stereotype: case studies of success despite literacy difficulties ; Four Corners follows the "food chain" to see who should take responsibility for what is consumed by those at the very bottom – the children – and asks what can be done to make them healthier. Generation OO ]
• · · As publishers know, a book is judged by its cover, and particularly by the inside back flap of the dust-jacket. As book reviewers know, the author photo positioned there powerfully prejudices their reading and they must shield themselves from its dangers like Perseus avoiding the deadly gaze of the Medusa. As for book buyers, we know that the encounter on the back flap is a significant first meeting, and will tell us instantly whether this is someone whose company we want to share for the next however many bedtimes. Frances Wilson calls for the abolition of author photographs ; Will the Internet replace the boob tube? The Death of Television
• · · · This is new territory. I am an explorer We all struggle ; There is no precedent in US -- or any other -- history for the level of personal debt now carried by the American people. Consider the raw numbers Personal Debts and US Capitalism
• · · · · Few cities can match Sydney's appetite for parties Who makes Sydney's A-list? ; "Google.org will include the work of the Google Foundation, some of Google’s own projects using Google talent, technology and other resources, as well as partnerships and contributions to for-profit and non-profit entities Google.org – the philanthropic arm of Google
• · · · · · Has the American way of life-- especially our love affair with big cars--reached a tipping point? Nightmares and Dreams: The Auto in American Life; And must lawyers write badly? A Bad Writer? Or Just a Lawyer?



Happy Birthday Gina ;-)