I would love to see this movie.
How do you ascend?
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:
Although it is clearly culturally conditioned, this kind of “ascent” seems an incontrovertible fact of life. However we choose to interpret it, people all over the world and in all phases of history have had this type of contemplative experience. Monotheists have called the climactic insight a “vision of God”; Plotinus had assumed that it was the experience of the One; Buddhists would call it an intimation of nirvana. The point is that this is something that human beings who have a certain spiritual talent have always wanted to do. The mystical experience of God has certain characteristics that are common to all faiths.
What I’ve Been Listening To
What I’ve Noticed
Women in Afghanistan are setting themselves on fire in astonishing numbers. Getting child marriage banned must be higher on our list of priorities.
Think you’re not going to get into grad school this year? Toaster Sunshine has some words of wisdom for you.
I would like this bookshelf in my house
A review of acupuncture’s effect on heart rate variability. Conclusion: bullshit.
On comparing Obama to Napoleon.
Why I always wore my best underwear to ochem lab.
I’m glad Google has finally left China. I think more companies that work in China should recognize the human rights abuses they help perpetuate.
Nancy Pelosi gets a lot of flack from the right and the left, but I think she’s actually pretty awesome.
What would a real Christian America look like? (Probably not an America that kicks its homeless & mentally ill in the face.)
Despite a court order and reams of scientific evidence, the FDA refuses to do its job.
Where we are with migraine research: still at something happens and the brainstem (or the CNS) doesn’t like it, but we have some new drug targets.
Early women scientists were awesome, but they sure had to put up with a lot. This description of Wanda G. Bradshaw says a lot about the times – she isn’t even allowed interests separate from her husband.
The MSM contributed too much to the misinformation about health care reform by misrepresenting poll results.
Including transportation costs would go a long way towards realistically representing housing affordability: 69% of communities are considered affordable using the standard measure of 30% of income, but only 39% are affordable (less than 45% of income) if housing and transportation costs are considered.
High fructose corn syrup makes you gain more weight than a calorically equivalent amount of table sugar. When are we going to stop subsidizing corn so much?
Zoos aren't just for fun & education: they're absolutely essential for conservation (and unbelievably cute pictures of baby animals).
Pretty Things
by shui2fr
Berry Go Round reminder
The next edition of Berry Go Round will be up here next week. I can accept submissions through the end of the day Saturday if you haven’t sent me your botanically inclined posts yet.
A Poem
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
by Robert Hayden
(via 3QD)