Category: Uncategorized
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“Most Of Our Music Teachers Incompetent” — Frank Damrosch
Frank Damrosch was a German-born American conductor, and director of the New York Institute of Musical Art. In this article, he bemoans the state of music education in America: “Ninety-nine per cent of the music teachers in the United States are totally incompetent to teach music… Thousands of so-called music teachers are not in any […]
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College Professor Suggests A Cure For Lying
Eh, I don’t know how much credit I give to this cure. His first proposed solution to cure lying is to simply stop lying. He’s talking specifically about lying in front of your kids. If they don’t see you lie, they will be less likely to lie themselves. So that’s more prevention than cure. But […]
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Who Was The First Man — Or Woman — To Make A Joke?
This article has some great 2500 year old jokes. Like this one: Archelaus, asked by a talkative barber how he would like to be shaved, replied: “In silence.” Oooh! Snap! Here’s another: One day Aristippus asked Dionysius for money. “But,” said Dionysius, “I’ve always heard it said that a philosopher never has need of anything.” […]
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Martians Build Two Immense Canals In Two Years
Percival Lowell was a smart astronomer. He was the first person to build his observatory in a remote location away from city lights, at the top of a high mountain. Lowell picked Flagstaff, Arizona as the location for his observatory. I lived in Flagstaff for four years in college and the observatory is one of […]
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Pasteur Expert Sounds Warning Against Pet Dogs
Well, that’s a pretty scary headline. Turns out that the expert is pretty much just concerned about rabies (referred to as “hydrophobia” because one symptom of rabies is a fear of water). He does mention those other diseases, but, well, just read it yourself: “Almost any of the contagious diseases may be conveyed by either […]
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Are We All Going Crazy Because Of The City’s Noises?
“In our railroad trains, for instance, we permit youths to pass backward and forward through the cars vociferously attracting attention to the wares they have for sale… Automobiles dash through our streets sounding their horns when there is no reason whatever for their doing so, while the machines are permitted to disturb the public through […]
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A Modern Skyscraper Romance
In New York, we see people live their lives through windows across streets or courtyards. A few weeks ago the magazine ran a heartwarming story about a couple whose lives were observed by a woman across the street. Here’s another tale of people interacting through windows across from each other, this time with a surprise […]
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Exporting An Imaginary America To Make Money
According to IMDB, the current record for foreign box office receipts of an American movie belongs to Avatar. But you don’t have to go too far down the list to find a cowboy movie. The tenth highest foreign box office record belongs to Toy Story 3. EXPORTING AN IMAGINARY AMERICA TO MAKE MONEY: Moving Picture […]
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Have You Ever Seen A Blue Rose? A Horticultural Problem
This article gives a nice background on the history of roses as a coveted flower, and then gets into the matter of a blue rose. A blue rose is held to be about the hardest thing in the flower-growing world to attain… It can’t be done by any chemical process, of course. Any one rose […]
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The Last Of The Shakers — A Community Awaiting Death
Shakers were an 18th Century offshoot of the Quakers. Somehow I thought there were more of them, but it turns out they really are an endangered religion. According to a PBS story from the Religion and Ethics Newsweekly program, there was still one Shaker community in September, 2010, and it had three members. THE LAST […]
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