The Birthday of the World and Other Stories

First, with respect to other stories - the Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a report entitled Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers. See http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp for the details.

Second, the title of this post refers to the Ursula K. LeGuin book, from which I culled this delightful quote:
"On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situations call such a life 'simple.' I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit." (Solitude)

As if that weren't enough to captivate me, I tripped across Margaret Atwood's (another perennial favorite) review of LeGuin's book at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15677.

Ah what a wonderful dirtball this is!

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

Recorded books are my solution to freeway stress. Not only can the reader's voice be delightfully soothing, but my desire to know what happens next changes how I view any traffic delay!

I recently finished listening to Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. Book two in Alexander McCall Smith's Sunday Philosophy Club series features Isabel Dalhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. It is from Isabel that I learned of William James' notion of the one white crow--only one white crow is needed to challenge the generally accepted idea that all crows are black.

I like the philosophical implications ... I'm busy looking for a whole murder of white crows.