Yesterday it occurred to me that the other six deadly sins could be regarded as variations on greed. To wit:
This isn’t perfect by any means, but it does make me wonder.
Underwriting — the public broadcasting equivalent of advertising — accounted for about a third of NPR’s annual budget, and is the most seriously impaired. In particular, the decline of support from companies in the entertainment, automotive and financial fields prompted NPR to cut its projected underwriting revenue from $47 million to $33 million this year, according to Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior vice president of strategy and partnerships.
Programs being eliminated are Day to Day, which I enjoyed, and News and Notes, which I don’t think I ever heard.
Posting may be light this week as we prepare for the Lego Robotics tournament on Saturday … made somewhat interesting by the fact that the coach had a death in his family and won’t be there!! All I want is for the kids to be happy with what they’ve accomplished, so please think a good thought for them — thanks!
I should know better than to cook when my head’s not in the game. But the to-do list was weighing heavily this morning, and I made a batch of fudge … somehow managing to put in 2-1/2 sticks of butter instead of the required 1-1/2 sticks. It seems to be setting up OK, but I’m really wondering about it. Is anyone willing to predict what the end result will be, other than even more calorie-iffic than usual?
Remember when we mourned the loss of the Mother’s Cookies bakery? CNN is reporting that Kellogg has bought their recipes and “plans to reintroduce many of Mother’s Cookies most popular cookies.” Wonder if we should start lobbying Kellogg for our favorites now?
I’ve observed that most people have a President in their lives who seemed (or seems!) to best embody their values, who is forever after “their” President. I know for a lot of people that was JFK, or Reagan. Mine is Jimmy Carter.
I was too young to vote for Carter in 1976, but I campaigned for him anyway; in 1980 I actually sat at a campaign table in Sproul Plaza, enduring the wisecracks from the John Anderson crowd and the public ridicule of folks like Stoney Burke, who thought that Carter was way too far right. It’s a measure of my political naïveté that I was shocked when Reagan won the election (and remember that this was the election that they called for Reagan long before the polls closed on the West Coast, which added insult to injury).
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying how very much this article pleased me. Jimmy Carter has been working on this issue for a long time, and has evidently had stunning success. God bless him.
Via Chuck Currie.
This is the time of year when I contemplate letting hope triumph over experience and consider slipping quietly into the back of a church so that I can experience a little bit of Advent.
I remember with shame that I used to roll my eyes at the way church attendance swelled on Christmas and Easter. So I ask an undeserved favor, as someone who doesn’t really want to be noticed, but doesn’t want to be scorned either. If a stranger should appear at your church between now and New Year’s, will you give them a nod and a smile for me? It takes more courage to cross that threshold than you might imagine.
OK now y’all, fess up: how many of these do you recognize? How many did you use?
Personally, I’m still traumatized by that program — was it WordPerfect? — that gave you a command line dot when you got it right. Sumbitchin’ stingy thing.
I heard part of a story on NPR the other day about a woman who is formulating “signature scents” for different colleges:
Masik was extremely meticulous about how they created the scent for each school. They wanted to ensure their perfumers had a clear vision of what each school represented. As a result, Masik conducted campus visits, discussions with students and alumni and a significant amount of research. In the end, the following distinctive characteristics served as inspiration for each university’s “signature scent”:
* School colors
* Mascot spirit
* Traditions and history
* Landmarks and architectural style
* Campus trees and flowers
* Mission statements
* College town character
* Themes in the alma mater and fight songs
I think a scent for the Pooch’s alma mater might include tear gas, eucalyptus, and patchouli, with a strong top note of cannabis.
Staff at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, on their octopus Otto:
We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out the 2000 Watt spot light above him with a carefully directed jet of water.
[...]
Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it.
Via BoingBoing, whose headline reads Angry bored octopus goes wilding.
* On the plural form of “octopus,” I refer to the Wikipedia entry, which says, “There are three forms of the plural of octopus; namely, octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.” Personally I quite like “octopodes,” but I fear no one would know what I was talking about.
