The Sing-Off returns tonight! The first season aired in December of 2009. Our family watched it as we decorated our Christmas tree and, then, for the next two Christmasses after that. This year, my 6-year-old mentioned it in a school project in which he was to list family holiday season traditions:
“We drink hot chocolate and watch The Sing-Off.” Continue reading
I briefly attended a fitness class whose instructor would shout that out. She was a delightful instructor. Positive. Fun. Upbeat. Students loved her. Unfortunately, I took that class when I wasn’t yet ready to give myself a chance. See, I couldn’t get the routine down in 3 classes and I hadn’t lost any weight in that same week, so I gave up on myself and was no longer showing her my plank. Continue reading
This morning, I saw the following Facebook post from a relative whose worldview I admire:
“This day commemorates the day that everything changed in the world…the concept of putting others ahead of ourselves was born today, hope was born today.”
He was commenting on an article he’d read with which he said he wholeheartedly agrees. Continue reading
“We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because…he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
– Buckminster Fuller
What does a day in your dream life look like? How does it begin and end? What mark does it leave on the world?
The other day I had a debate with a math student. He defended the mathematical soundness of the Laffer Curve and, by extension, the efficiency of supply side economics. Maybe the Laffer Curve has theoretical soundness, but it’s never been shown to work at levels of taxation like ours. Furthermore, there’s a real human cost when attempts have been made to try to make it work here. That’s even provided that the people keeping so much money in lower taxation actually keep it in the same curve. If we’ve learned anything from Mitt Romney and his Cayman residing millions, it’s the one glaring human reason as to why the Laffer Curve will never work anywhere. As for “efficiency”; let’s just say that my friend had a limited understanding of what that word means in the field of economics. These points were all lost in the morass of my friend’s Math Chat. Continue reading
Auturo DiModica is an Italian born artist who sculpted Charging Bull (seen above) on his own initiative and at his own expense. In 1989, he just up and “gave” it to the people of the City of New York by having it transported to a spot in front of the New York Stock Exchange and just left it there. The NYPD impounded it. Public outcry saved the bull from oblivion and it was mounted in Bowling Green square, about 3 blocks south from where DiModica had left it. Continue reading
When I first drafted this article, the Mean Young Liberal, age 4, was busy constructing “Occupy Wall Street” out of Lego figures. I guess he was impressed with the display of Occupy Lego Land. As I finished it two days later, the NYPD had evicted Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park and were, at that moment, apparently being directed to defy a court order that had permitted the Occupiers back into the park with their equipment.
This past Sunday, I brought the MYL (my nickname for my four-and-a-half year old son) to visit Occupy Wall Street. You see, my husband and I had decided to raise our son in the Religious Society of Friends. (“Hicksite” version). Due to some logistic oddities, we travel from Westchester County to the East Village to attend Meeting and First Day (what Quakers call Sunday) School. Typically, I try to make those days into adventures for the MYL and that Sunday would not be an exception, at least I hadn’t planned it to be. It turned out to be a fairly exceptional day indeed. Continue reading
