Quotes of the week
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
~John Kenneth Galbraith
My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.
~Jane Rule
Every man loves two women; the one is the creation of his imagination and the other is not yet born.
Kahlil Gibran
If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.
Kahlil Gibran
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Kahlil Gibran
"If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between "for" and "against" is the minds' worst disease"
Sent-ts'an c. 700 ce
Meditation of the week
Life is for enjoying. It is not a race to see how much you can get done.
--Jill Clark
Before we quit using alcohol and other drugs, we wasted precious hours, days, maybe years. Consequently, we feel we must make up for lost time. We make promises and commitments we don't have the time or the energy to fulfill. This is a normal response to hindsight. After all, we missed many wonderful opportunities when our focus was on getting and staying high.
Making up for the past is different from making the most of each twenty-four hours. It's not how much we accomplish in life but how we treat others along the way that counts. We can accomplish our daily tasks while being kind to other people. But choosing the latter as the more important action will bring a far greater sense of well-being than succeeding at "moving mountains."
I will get done everything I really need to do today if I focus on being kind to the women and men who cross my path.
--Jill Clark
Before we quit using alcohol and other drugs, we wasted precious hours, days, maybe years. Consequently, we feel we must make up for lost time. We make promises and commitments we don't have the time or the energy to fulfill. This is a normal response to hindsight. After all, we missed many wonderful opportunities when our focus was on getting and staying high.
Making up for the past is different from making the most of each twenty-four hours. It's not how much we accomplish in life but how we treat others along the way that counts. We can accomplish our daily tasks while being kind to other people. But choosing the latter as the more important action will bring a far greater sense of well-being than succeeding at "moving mountains."
I will get done everything I really need to do today if I focus on being kind to the women and men who cross my path.
Epiphany of the Week
January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany. The word "epiphany" comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "manifestation" or "striking appearance." Before Christianity, the word was used to record occasions when Greek gods and goddesses made appearances on earth.
In the Eastern Church, which includes the Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches, today is a general celebration of God's becoming man. It includes celebrating a whole host of things: the birth of the baby Jesus, the revelation of Jesus' divinity to the rest of the world — like to the Magi visiting from Persia — and most importantly in the East, Jesus' baptism in the Jordan River.
Centuries after the Eastern Orthodox Church began celebrating the Epiphany, the Roman Catholic Church decided to start doing so too. But for some reason, the Western Church really latched on to this image of the Persian priests bringing gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold to the infant Jesus, guided from their homeland of Iran by a shining star. The Magi are mentioned only in Matthew's Gospel and he never specified how many magi there were — just that there were three gifts. In 1857, the Reverend John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote some lyrics for a seminary Christmas pageant, a song that begins: "We three kings of Orient are / Bearing gifts we traverse afar / Field and fountain, moor and mountain / Following yonder star."
Bridge of the week
On this day in 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco began. It was finished four and a half years later, in May 1937. The bridge is 8,981 feet (1.7 miles) long, 90 feet wide for six lanes of traffic, and 746 feet high — almost 200 feet taller than the Washington Monument. It's suspended 220 feet above the water, and it links the city of San Francisco to the County of Marin. The color of the bridge is officially called "International Orange," a slightly deeper shade of "Safety Orange." Frommer's travel guide called the Golden Gate Bridge "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world."
Best of Craig’s List of the week
a complete novel in one paragraph:
Video of the week
Websites of the week
Irony at its best http://www.sharenator.org/Irony_at_its_best/
And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
