The most underreported conflict in the world right now
Melbourne Festival review: Gob Squad's War and Peace an insult to Tolstoy
“A great deal of poetic work has arisen from various despairs,” wrote Lou Andreas-Salomé, the first woman psychoanalyst, in a consolatory letter to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke as he was wrestling with depression, nearly a century before psychologists came to study the nonlinear relationship between creativity and mental illness. A generation later, with an eye to what made Goethe a genius, Humphrey Trevelyan argued that great artists must have the courage to despair, that they “must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.”
Thai research team discovers chemicals which can stop cancer from growing Thai PBS (furzy). Expect a host of dietary supplements to crop up within a year, regardless of whether the chemical will make it through your digestive system…
… Maverick Philosopher: Sunday Morning Sermon: Awareness of Death as Cure for Existential Drift:
Starting in grade school, I was taught to think of death every day, and I have mostly followed that teaching. But I must say, now that I am 75, the nature of the thinking is different.
“Write little; do it well.
Your knowledge will be such,
At last, as to dispel
What moves you overmuch.”
[Yvor Winters, “To a Young Writer,” The Selected Poems of Yvor Winters, ed. R. L. Barth, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1999.]
PASSING A VERY OLD SNIFF TEST: Distilling olibanic acids, the scent-producing molecules of frankincense. Chemists discovered that “…previously unknown molecules explained frankincense’s distinctive smell…” For what it’s worth, 5,000 years is a common estimate for the number of years human beings have used frankincense (“the sacred resin”). 6,000 years is another.
Middle East’s Migrant Population More Than Doubles Since 2005 Pew Research. “Regional conflict and economic opportunity boost number of migrants from 25 million to 54 million.”
Muslim flight attendant for ExpressJet suspended, wouldn’t serve alcohol” [Detroit Free Press, earlier]
The Bourbon So Exclusive That Even Billionaires Can’t Buy It
Citing the commandment “Do not bear false witness,” a Patheos blogger says she’s particularly fed up with Christians’ role in spreading “obvious blatant misinformation.” She offers them some guidelines to help ensure truth flourishes.
My present to Malchkeon . a very small piece of JEWELRY: Miners in Myanmar (Burma) have uncovered a piece of jade weighing 175 tons.
Target halts clown-mask sales amid creepy-clown hysteria
At the TLS Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurðardóttir offers a solid overview/introduction to 'Nordic noir', in Snowed under...
The U.S. presidential election has given comedy many gifts. Among them are three memes based on television favorites "Arrested Development," "The Office" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Time magazine takes a look
An Interesting Piece on GMU Economist Robin Hanson. “Hanson is an economist with a background in physics and engineering; a Silicon Valley veteran determined to promote his theories in an academy he finds deeply flawed; a doggedly rational thinker prone to intentionally provocative ideas that test the limits of what typically passes as scholarship. Those ideas have been mocked, memed, and marveled at — often all at once.”
- Noah Feldman (Harvard): Do Christians, Muslims And Jews Worship The Same God? (Dec. 25, 2015)
- Chronicle Of Higher Education: Do Evangelical Christian Colleges Have A Diversity Problem? (Feb. 7, 2016)
New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Professor Wore a Hijab in Solidarity — Then Lost Her Job, by Ruth Graham:
When
Larycia Hawkins, the first black woman to receive tenure at Wheaton
College, made a symbolic gesture of support for Muslims, the evangelical
college became divided over what intellectual freedom on its campus
really meant.