Please forgive the late post...I developed a fever yesterday, respiratory infection from a seasonal allergy. I think I was weak from working on school projects all weekend without sleeping much, they took longer than I thought they would.
In any case...off to doctor now.
I had lots of neat stuff about Josephine Baker and a Polish psychologist named Dabrowski (unrelated, she was not among his...mmm...patrons). I'll include next week.
Posting as is, to get out the door.
{{{{don'tgettooclosecoughinghugs}}}
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
- Flannery O'Connor
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
- Albert Guinon
No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.
- Michel de Montaigne
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
- Samuel Johnson
Love can be sordid only if you work at it.
- Brooke McEldowney
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
- David T. Wolf
Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
- Alfred North Whitehead
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
- Groucho Marx
No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.
- Elbert Hubbard
TWLTW
- FYI
- The avg. bluefin tuna weights 770 lbs.
- The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) sets quotas worldwide for bluefin harvesting. Europe's annual quota: 13,500 tons. Europe's estimated black market harvest: 61,000 tons.
- Activists are advocating that bluefin tuna be put on endangered-species lists.
- Houston's mayor Annise Parker, public lesbian and Mensa member, was interviewed by that organization's monthly membership magazine last month. Things I learned from that interview, when I got around to reading it this week:
- Houston's mayor is a member of Mensa.
- The Texas Medical Center is the largest medical center in the world. They really do grow 'em big down there. (Even though Robin Williams had his heart valve done in Cleveland! Go Buckeyes!)
- Half the Houston police force is at retirement age.
- Low cost of living due to being the country's largest unzoned city. Not sure what that means.
- 42% Hispanic, 6-7% Asian, 25-26% Caucasian, 25-26% African American.
- 40% of Houstonians
are may be foreign born.
- Quote: "All the big cities in Texas are blue islands in a big red sea."
- On her publicly discussed sexuality: "This is about what you can get done, not who you are." [Given recent polling, someone should tell the Teabag people that.]
- On her (now) public Mensa membership: Early on she was advised by a donor to never tell anyone. "It's not something I advertise or hide. I took his advice and went on." [In other words, the former president of the Houston area GLBT political caucus was told her political career would benefit from...keeping her intelligence a secret. It may just be me, but I don't think either should be a liability in politics or any other career.]
- There is no monthly magazine by and for publicly lesbian Mensans, that I know of. It was the Mensa one. [This list item is dedicated to all those who don't have to look back to know why I wrote it. But if you did, that's ok, too. I didn't catch it until I read it twice, either, so it's not dedicated to me, that's for sher.]
- That nice looking man who seemed so reasonable when he spoke after President Obama's State Of The Union Address has apparently lost his mind. But, thank God for Gail Collins.
- In a related matter, Gail Collins, Jill Biden, and Spike Lee are all speaking at Teachers College's convocation in about 6 weeks. It's almost enough to get me to go to a graduation where I know absolutely no one graduating, solely on the strength of the speaker roster. Shotgun, anyone?
- I found this absolutely stunning after last week's federal-and-state-expenditures-on-education diary. Very, very interesting how the very things the American people are most willing to spend less on are the very things our government does actually spend less on. Education fell behind only veteran's benefits, Medicate, Social Security, and Medicaid; and ahead of highways, health research, and national defense. The number one thing Americans are willing to spend less on? Foreign aid, and that category is already less than 1% of the federal budget.
- No wonder Adam and the Ants sounded nearly the same as Bow Wow Wow. They were pretty much the same band, except for Adam, that is. May the sun shine on your face, Malcolm, and may all the amps in heaven be dialed to 11.
- Dry cleaners used to launder clothes with scented kerosene and, sometimes, gasoline. They use different chemicals today, but most are still petroleum-based.
- Vocabulary:
- Phronesis: Wisdom, considering the relationship between means and ends
- panspermia: the idea that life originated somewhere else — Mars, giant clouds in the Milky Way — and migrated to Earth, floating through space.
- Apodictic: Clearly beyond dispute, certainly true
- Confession is good for the soul, even if the ballroom is more than half empty by the time it gets made.