Title goes here.

Sometimes you reach for a series of cashews and almonds in the trail mix bag, and suddenly recognize...

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 21:13:16 -0800

Sometimes you reach for a series of cashews and almonds in the trail mix bag, and suddenly recognize that the next almond is not necessary. And it’s satisfying to leave the almond be.

"Growing up, we were told by guidance counselors, career advice books, the news media and others to..."

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 19:15:36 -0700

“Growing up, we were told by guidance counselors, career advice books, the news media and others to “follow our passion.” This advice assumes that we all have a pre-existing passion waiting to be discovered. If we have the courage to discover this calling and to match it to our livelihood, the thinking goes, we’ll end up happy. If we lack this courage, we’ll end up bored and unfulfilled — or, worse, in law school.”

- “Follow a Career Passion? Let it Follow You”

by Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport

"Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin..."

Sun, 06 May 2012 23:08:25 -0700

“Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes the sky, impounding the city lights, returning to us a dull yellow glow. I run every other day at the small indoor track [at Columbia] which slants slightly upward like a plate; I stretch long and slow, twist and shake, the fatigue, the inertia finding home in different parts of the body. I check the time and growl—aargh!—and tumble onto the wheel. And bodies crowd and give off heat, some people are in front and you can hear the patter or plod of the steps behind. You look down to watch your feet, neat unified steps, and you throw back your arms and run after people, and run from them and with them, and sometimes someone will shadow your pace, step for step, and you can hear the person puffing, a different puff than yours, and on a good day they’ll come up alongside and thank you for a good run, for keeping a good pace, and you nod and keep going on your way, but you’re pretty pleased, and your stride gets lighter, the slumber slipping off behind you, into the wake of the past.”

- Barack Obama, in a letter to Alex McNear during a long-distance college relationship.

“By her account, the passion was as much about ideas and words as about their romance—what she later called ‘that dance of closeness through language.’”

Young Barack Obama in Love by David Maraniss, Vanity Fair

Pushing up the window shade to find a sprawling latticework of lights beyond the glass pane....

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:01:26 -0700

Pushing up the window shade to find a sprawling latticework of lights beyond the glass pane. Thousands, or maybe millions, of incandescent pinpricks — mixing with swaths of absolute blackness before meeting a softer sky. The fact that the glowing web stretches all the way to a gently curved horizon gives the impression of going on forever. It’s a kind of infinity, obstructed only by the airplane wing in my right side peripheral vision.

I wonder what it is, within our brains or souls or whatever...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:43:41 -0700

I wonder what it is, within our brains or souls or whatever else, that allows certain musics to connect with us. What determines our inclinations toward those patterns and blends and tones and sounds?

latimes: thenoobyorker: neighborhoodr-losangeles: I can’t...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:42:54 -0700

latimes:

thenoobyorker:

neighborhoodr-losangeles:

I can’t express how much I love this.

(via pbump.net)

I love kids.

This kid rules.

I bit into a small apple today, and grazed the hollows that housed its seeds. A couple droplets the...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:33:42 -0700

I bit into a small apple today, and grazed the hollows that housed its seeds. A couple droplets the color of chestnuts tumbled out, and after a few more bites and a bit more coaxing, I had a neat pile of them in my hand.

For some reason, I find apple seeds quaint.

To split one in two with a deft twist of the fingernail: an unnatural bifurcation resulting in torn halves and waxy fragments that crumble and tumble from the shell.

Catchy. Lettuce appreciate. npr: A Butter Ad That Will Get You...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:42:23 -0800

Catchy. Lettuce appreciate.

npr:

A Butter Ad That Will Get You To Eat More Vegetables

Those northern Europeans are serious about their butter; many countries typically leave in more fat than we do in the U.S. Some would argue that makes for a better product.

But butter, and all that fat in it, is turning into enemy No. 1 in the fight against obesity. Denmark, for one, has become the first country in the world to tax butter and other sources of saturated fat.

So if you’re a Danish butter company, it’s probably a wise move to downplay butter’s centrality at dinnertime. That’s exactly what Lurpak has done in this ad for the U.K. market, featuring its new “lightest” spreadable butter.

— Eliza Barclay

I have said this before, but: The Parent Trap had a good...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:57:15 -0800

I have said this before, but: The Parent Trap had a good soundtrack.

latimes: Trying to get back to the only life he knew: Luis...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:19:11 -0800

latimes:

Trying to get back to the only life he knew: Luis Luna, 20, was smuggled to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 3. He grew up, went to school, found jobs. Then the Washington state resident was deported after a cop pulled him over for a broken headlight. He hopes to return on the undercarriage of a boxcar.

It had been nine months since Luna was deported from the U.S., where he had lived since his mother smuggled him from Mexico when he was a toddler. In America, he played point guard on an intramural basketball team, grilled burgers at a McDonald’s and looked forward to the senior prom. In Mexico, he had no family. He was a stranger sleeping on the streets, scruffy and destitute.

Photo: Nogales, Mexico — Lying prostrate across the rails, Luis Luna nervously tries to figure out how to crawl up into the undercarriage of a freight car. He’s done it before, but he has only seconds before the U.S.-bound automobile carrier starts moving again. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

life: Toyokazu Nagano has shot dozens of portraits of his...

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:06:44 -0800

life:

Toyokazu Nagano has shot dozens of portraits of his daughter Kanna in the very same spot, yet neither ever gets old!

(via our guest-blogger Photojojo)

The photo set!!

Have you ever turned to look for something, only to realize that it's been gone for years?

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:29:16 -0800

Though I’m actually referring to a piece of furniture, I feel like this could apply to the intangible, as well.

…

Just being blunt for the sake of remembering the thought.

life: On this day in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan was founded. The...

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:48:25 -0800

life:

On this day in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan was founded. The Klan, of course, has had a hand in some of the nation’s most infamous acts of racial terror and murder…

But what does the KKK look like today? Photographer Anthony Karen has documented the modern-day Klan in their homes, at rallies, and at Klan gatherings, taking us deep inside a world we would otherwise never see — a world most of us might not even want to know about

“The couple got married the day before hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana in 2008,” Karen says of the newlyweds portrayed here. “It was a traditional Klan ceremony, with vows exchanged in front of a fiery cross, performed at a remote hunting camp in the middle of a nature preserve. The bride was dead-set on taking her wedding portrait with cypress trees in the background, so she put her husband and me on the back of an ATV and took us on a death-defying ride to find the perfect spot.”

(see more — LIFE Goes Inside Today’s KKK)

It often strikes me — how strange it is, that the specters of past society still persist.

"He said, ‘I wonder about turtles.’ ‘What do you wonder about turtles?’..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:57:08 -0800

“He said, ‘I wonder about turtles.’
‘What do you wonder about turtles?’ Angela asked him.
‘When they pull in their heads,’ he said, ‘do their spines buckle or contract?’”

- “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut

As I browse the archives of El Estoque for some virtual...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:27:45 -0800

As I browse the archives of El Estoque for some virtual household cleaning, I realize that I recognize — that I remember — so many of the early articles. It’s mildly surprising.

As a freshman, I remember seeing some of them on the home page, unchanging for a few weeks. Strange as it is, I remember some of the sources included in the articles. Even stranger, I vaguely remember some of the syntax of the articles.

Whether this is a testament to the wonders of the human brain, or to my own gravitation toward the publication, I’m not sure. Maybe both.

Checking up on the site, while I procrastinate at midnight, is a habit that has not left me since the early days of 2008-2009. Hopefully it’s not too presumptuous to venture: perhaps there are readers — just a few — who are doing the same thing that I did way back then?

These thoughts are not related to the song above, except for the fact that it was playing on repeat while I typed this.

jacquesofalltrades: Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway...

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:12:24 -0800

jacquesofalltrades:

Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway accounts - Yahoo! Finance

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children. He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it all before Christmas.Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.

“She told him, ‘No, I’m paying for it,’” recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”

At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

The Christmas spirit, in action.

(h/t Dot Johnson)

Feel-good.

npr: Homeless At 60: ‘A Bullet I Didn’t See Coming’ Queen...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:01:32 -0800

npr:

Homeless At 60: ‘A Bullet I Didn’t See Coming’

Queen Jackson has been homeless for about a year. As she recently told her case manager, Debra MacKillop, it all started in 2009, when she was laid off. Since then, there have been hard moments, and some precious ones, as well.

Caption: Queen Jackson, right, and her case manager, Debra MacKillop, visited StoryCorps in Denver.

Photo: Courtesy of StoryCorps

apatpatonthehead: Going back to the ’70s

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:28:45 -0700

apatpatonthehead:

Going back to the ’70s

I know I should be studying or otherwise being productive, but...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:57:44 -0700

I know I should be studying or otherwise being productive,

but the good life is so much more appealing.

sunfoundation: Venn Piagram Get it? It’s a Venn diagram made...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:19:42 -0700

sunfoundation:

Venn Piagram

Get it? It’s a Venn diagram made of actual pies. That’s why it’s called a Venn piagram.