Category: Notebook
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Room 237…
I watched Room 237 last night on Netflix instant streaming and highly recommend it. It is a documentary that presents several theories on what is really going on in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. But wait! It is so much more than a geek-out about The Shining. (Although, to be fair, the film will be more enjoyable if you’ve seen The Shining, and…
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Thoughts on tolerance of others’ beliefs…
Here’s something I see a lot, at least in Internet discussions: When someone criticizes a belief held by a group of people, such as a political or religious group, they are shouted down for being “intolerant” of that group as a whole and not willing to accept others’ beliefs. But this is a fallacy. There are…
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Less than perfect…
It has become the norm to blog about every teeny-tiny facet of daily life, from cooking to getting dressed to home organization to raising children. I think these blogs have set an unreasonable standard for daily living, though. If you follow enough of them, you start to think that everything must be absolutely perfect all…
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Vintage vs. Penguin: On being seduced by book covers…
I have been rearranging my books, necessitated by a large Christmas haul of mostly beloved classics. I hate to admit it, but I mostly organize my bookshelves based on aesthetics– books all the same height together, for instance, or a publisher’s similar designs together. In this latest rearranging, I noticed how many black and white…
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On privacy…
SHARING IS CARING. SECRETS ARE LIES. PRIVACY IS THEFT. —The Circle by Dave Eggers One of the ideas explored in Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle is the loss, and even voluntary relinquishing, of privacy in a world where everything is filmed and nothing is ever deleted. Considering the revelations this year about the NSA’s electronic snooping,…
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Blank slate…
I find myself wishing sometimes I could start all over again with a blank slate. Just wipe everything out and start anew. I don’t mean my entire life, of course (or I should say, I rarely mean that). I have to believe that many people have had one moment or two when they wished they…
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A comment on healthcare reform…
Here are my comments on this Sunday’s editorial in the New York Times pitching apocalyptic woo about the Affordable Care Act, just the latest in a long line of such screeds: The difference between the two points of view (Democrat and Republican) can be summed up as either “we’re all in this together” or “all for…
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Change… Making it happen.
Over the past year or so, I have been focusing on inner change: envisioning what I want to be and making that reality. This has mostly been a subconscious process, and progress has been incremental but real. It’s important to elevate the subconscious to the conscious so we can understand what is working and possibly…
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Gutenberg the Geek by Jeff Jarvis–Thoughts
I just downloaded and read Jeff Jarvis‘s Kindle single, Gutenberg the Geek (free to Prime subscribers, 99 cents otherwise). It provides a short history of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, drawing parallels between his initial business and how the printing press revolutionized every area of human endeavor and Silicon Valley tech start-ups and how we…
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The opening line…
Stephen King shares his thoughts on why opening lines are so important and why he spends so much time crafting them in Why Stephen King Spends ‘Months and Even Years’ Writing Opening Sentences – Atlantic Mobile. As a reader, an opening line is a greeting from the author. Do I feel welcomed? Do I want to…
Shannon Turlington 