July 2012
80 posts
“Shake off your hangover, sweetheart, and start writing.”
—Scott Patton, a former Washington Post editor who died Wednesday, to a young reporter who needed a nudge to meet deadline.
Stephen Fry reading Shakespeare satirical sonnet →
vimeo.com
via Open Culture.
10 Pieces of Advice for Young Writers →
storify.com
- Care about things. Show it. Be funny, barbed, and pointed when needed. Slick is easy; don’t be slick.
- Confidence and arrogance will both protect you when people yell at you. One is vital and one is poisonous.
- Learn to be your own devil’s advocate. Interrogate your own arguments. Interrogate your point of view.
- Successful writers can play loud and soft and can make a variety of harsh and gentle sounds, just like great musicians.
- Look at the people whose careers you admire and think about their paths. Don’t assume you want the fast lane.
- If you are read widely, you will get blowback, no matter what. Don’t let it paralyze you, but don’t reflexively blow it off.
- If you try to make your fortune creating controversy, then even if it works, you’ll be expected to keep doing it.
- Being young doesn’t make you dumb or smart, important or irrelevant. But you’ll be a different writer in 20 years.
- “Win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press’ll think you’re colorful.” Obey deadlines and house style.
- You are entitled to be wrong, to feel embarrassed, to feel like a jerk, and to keep writing anyway.
[as told by NPR’s Linda Holmes]
The myth of mastery
Thing is, with my workouts, there is *never* a sense of mastery. Mastery is not the goal. Sooner or later I forget that, and I get pulled into this feeling of “Good lord, here I am slogging away at the back of the class like I always am. When am I going to stop feeling like a dork?”
Answer? Never.
If you can do something well and for a long time, my gym’s thinking goes, it’s too easy and you’re wasting your valuable 60 minutes in the gym. You should be doing something harder (and perhaps more compromising to your ego like a bear crawl or any other of the ridiculous-looking-yet-perversely-difficult body weight combinations we do).
It’s not about perfection. It’s about keeping it difficult, making the time count, remembering to laugh compassionately with others and at yourself, avoiding injury, using good form, and taking on ever more challenging movements (that make you feel like a dork most of the time and push your boundaries on an emotional and physical level).
It’s hard at the gym so it can be easy in the other departments of your life
Higgs Boson
Domenico Vicinanza, Mariapaola Sorrentino, Giuseppe La Rocca
Here’s What the Higgs Boson Sounds Like
The discovery of the Higgs boson was a singular event, but it was also the product of a long effort: the Atlas project, which used CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to analyze particle acceleration. The existence of the Higgs was confirmed — or, well, the existence of a particle that “looks for all the world” to be the Higgs was confirmed — when groups of researchers detected a “bump” corresponding to a particle weighing 126 GeV, making it consistent with Dr. Higgs’ mysterious particule.
The Higgs, in other words, was discovered due to a data anomaly. And now, that data set — and that anomaly — have been set to music. Or, more precisely, music has emerged from that data set and that anomaly.
That music being, precisely, an upbeat melody that resembles the habanera, a tango-like Cuban dance.
Play
ODDITIES OF LIFE: Strange Laws Across the United States →
odditiesoflife.tumblr.com
Texas, it’s against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, you can’t put pretzels in bags based on an Act of 1760.
Alaska law says that you can’t look at a moose from an airplane.
In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to…
“
Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
Audre Lorde
I will always repost this.
(via thenewwomensmovement)
“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.” —Lewis Carroll (via serialstranger)
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.” —Lewis Carroll (via serialstranger)
“Roundup, the herbicide that over 50% of all GM crops are engineered to tolerate, is not safe or benign as has been claimed but has been found to cause malformations (birth defects), reproductive problems, DNA damage, and cancer in test animals. Human epidemiological studies have found an association between Roundup exposure and miscarriage, birth defects, neurological development problems, DNA damage, and certain types of cancer.”
—From GMO Myths and Truths, a report developed by genetecists Michael Antoniou, PhD, John Fagan, PhD, and research director Claire Robinson, MPhil. More information about the inherent risks of GMO agricultural profucts and foods here: Summary Report, Full Report.
June 2012
32 posts
Second Nature Fitness: Recovery...are you really helping your body? →
secondnaturefitness.tumblr.com
Repetitive movement leads to repetitive overuse injury. It doesn’t matter what the movement is - running, walking, cycling, swimming, squatting, deadlifting, pressing, curling - if you do it too much, your body will suffer.
Do not deceive yourself into thinking that just because you’re on some…
Well said.
If you want to do this for the rest of your life, act accordingly. Good body work is never too expensive!
