Stealing from The Princess Bride

"Pablo Picasso is widely quoted as having said that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Whether or not Picasso was truly the first person to voice this idea is in some dispute. One can find passages in T. S. Eliot’s critical works which discuss how artistic theft of others’ work contributes to the creation of new art. The idea itself is probably much older. Shakespeare routinely stole plotlines and even whole scenes from other writers for his own plays." (via) Even Steve Jobs believed this ideology allowed for the best of what humanity had to offer to emerge. 

Recently, while reading The Princess Bride with my kids, I read the following scene and chuckled. Because I know of another artist who stole it.

The scene reads:

She was outside his hovel before dawn. Inside, she could hear him already awake. She knocked. He appeared, stood in the doorway. Behind him she could see a tiny candle, open books. He waited. She looked at him. Then she looked away.

He was too beautiful.

"I love you," Buttercup said. "I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I've ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn't matter." Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. "I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love ou so much more now than when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing to quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, i will learn to do. I know I cannot complete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at her. But remember, please that she is old and has other interests, while I am seventeen and for me there is only you. Dearest Wesley - I've never called you that before, have I? - Westley, Westley,, Westley, Westley, Westley, - darling Westley, adored Westley, sweet perfect Westley, whisper that I have a chance to win your love." 

And with that, she dared the bravest thing she'd ever done; she looked right into his eyes.

He closed the door in her face.

Without a word. 

Without a word.

Buttercup ran. She whirled and burst away and the tears came bitterly; she could not see, she stumbled, she slammed into a tree trunk, fell, arose, ran on; her shoulder throbbed from where the tree trunk hit her, and the pain was strong, but not enough to ease her shattered heart. Back to her room she fled, back to her pillow. Safe behind the locked door, she drenched the world with tears. (pg 49-51).

Here is M. Night Shyamalan's "stolen" version:

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal," and perhaps the greatest artists of them all steal from great artists.

Well done M. Night Shyamalan. Well done.

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Commercialized: Why, not What

"Our judgement concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us." - Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed the World

Commercials embody this. They thrive off it. Facts and figures and defenses of why a certain product is better than another does not sell a product - emotionally connecting is what sells.

It's Simon Sinek's, "Start with Why" argument, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." Nietzsche agrees, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

And commercials pull at the emotional whys of living,, not the rational whats. 

Commercials like this:

How a gorilla playing along to Phil Collins relates to milk is beyond me. But I'm hooked and have watched this video literally hundreds of times. I've even used it in class and professional development meetings because it is fully entertaining and emotionally appealing. Facts about Cadbury are boring and useless and, really, is it any better than the other 100 Dairy Products in the world? Probably not. But none of them have a drumming gorilla. 

Some do have humor though:

During the Falcons vs Patriots Super Bowl, companies took to commercials to air their grievances (and probably hopefully boost their sales) and Trump didn't like it. Here are the Seven Super Bowl Commercials that were banned because they hoped to "increase awareness, not sales."

Solution: #EatTogether

Click here for more posts on Humanity, On Living or postsabout random things you might find interesting. 

10 Maps that will Challenge the Way you see the World

(via)

Matadornetwork.com published 57 MAPS THAT WILL CHALLENGE WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT THE WORLD and the results are pretty interesting, shocking, and insightful. But really, the underlining truth is this: Canada is the best place to live and a well constructed map is crazy fun to look at. And educational. 

And according to West Wing, maps have radically shaped the way we view the world - unfairly so.

Here are 9 of Matadornnetwork's 57 maps (1 from waitbutwhy) that can WoW us, challenge us, and reveal us:

1. There's an equal number of people in the blue and red areas

via waitbutwhy.com

 

2. Countries that don't use the metric system

 Those other countries are Liberia and Myanmar (Burma). (via)

 

3. World air travel routes

This map includes only the arcs made in air travel routes. (via)

 

4. Freedom of press map

From 2012, this map outlines the relative freedoms of press per country of the world.(via)

 

5. South-north world map

Breaking from the long-held convention of orienting north as “up” established by Ptolemy (90-168 AD), and resulting from the majority of cartography taking place in the Northern Hemisphere, this world map seems turned on its head (by orienting south as up). Fun fact: Evidently in the Middle Ages, cartographers routinely fixed east as up, “to orient.” (via)

6. Global internet usage based on time of day

With that orange upside-down “U” representing daylight hours, and a color spectrum spanning from red to blue (red indicating usage increase above average, blue indicating a usage decrease), this gif-map is visually stunning, but perhaps not terribly surprising. (via)

7. World map of countries England has not invaded

Of the 196 countries of the world today, there are only 22 of them that Britain has not invaded, though only 21 appear on this map (suspiciously absent is the island nation of Sao Tome and Principe). (via)

8. US auto-complete map

With the recent success of “crowdsourcing” for everything from ideas, to products, to scientific data, it would be difficult to deny there must be some horrifying truth to the information in this map. Populated by searching “State name is…” in Yahoo and allowing the “topmost satisfactory result” to represent each state, this map illustrates exactly what the internet seems to think about the states, and the US as a whole. (via)

9. US map of the highest-paid public employees by state

Clearly, America loves its football, to the tune of $5,545,852.00 (Head Coach Nick Saban of Alabama’s 2013 salary). (via)

10. US in seven deadly sins

While I don’t wholly agree with the criteria used to compose each sin-map, it was interesting to see the distribution of average income compared to the poverty line, total theft, number of violent crimes, entertainment expenditures, fast-food restaurants, number of STD cases, and an aggregate of the lot in a plain and clear representation. It would seem that Iowa is the most “saintly” by these standards. (via)

Click here for maps of our favorite fictional worlds, an infographic of how the world reads, or posts about random things you might find interesting. 

Thanks for reading!

Doubt and Gossip : Faith and Certainty, with Philip Seymour Hoffman

I can't stop thinking about this movie. Doubt, directed by John Patrick Shanley is a simple and chilling (literally) film that, unapologetically, exposes the hearts and minds of us all, warns us against pride and dogmatic practices, and pleads with us to be men and women defined by grace and kindness, not certainty. 

The story of Doubt is guided by a few choice sermons given by Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, Father Brendan Flynn. In or out of context, they are powerful and worth a watch.

His first is of the power and place of doubt within our lives:

Reminds me of the passage in Mark 9:24, "I believe; help my unbelief!" 

At the root of all humanity, doubt unites us all and should drive us toward a heart of compassion, not arrogance and piety. 

We all doubt. That's why faith is called, "faith," not certainty. 

The second sermon is on gossip:

"I know none of you have ever done this."

And may it never be. 

More posts on On Living / Humanity

Here’s How Fake News Works (and How the Internet Can Stop It)

Many fake news peddlers didn’t care if Trump won or lost the election. They only wanted to pocket money. But the consequences of what they did shook the world. This is how it happened.

From TheScene.com

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Chris Paul : How to Live, Forgive, and Love

I came across this article almost six years ago. It was before school started, but the second I finished, I printed several copies and read with my then 7th grade English class then shared it with everyone I taught or coached or spoke with. When life shifted to China, I forgot about it. This morning, my brother in-law referenced it and I had to find it again.

In all of sports, this might be my most favorite story.

The lessons of Nathaniel Jones

by Rick Reilly - espn.com

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 : 

On the moonless night of Nov. 15, 2002, five young boys ran across a park, jumped a 61-year-old man, bound his wrists, duct-taped his mouth, and beat him with pipes until his heart stopped. 

All for his wallet.

That man was Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of future NBA star Chris Paul.

Today, those boys are men, sitting in prisons across the state of North Carolina, some serving 14-year terms, some life. On the TV sets in their prison rec rooms this week, the Hornets point guard has been wrecking the Los Angeles Lakers, averaging nearly a triple-double, the shiniest star of these playoffs.

The five are all about the same age as Paul, same race, same height, and from the same hometown. 

They have one other thing in common with Chris Paul: All six wish they were free.

It's something Paul told me during a "Homecoming" episode once on ESPN, and every time I watch him play I can't get it out of my mind. Paul, now 25, said: "These guys were 14 and 15 years old [at the time], with a lot of life ahead of them. I wish I could talk to them and tell them, 'I forgive you. Honestly.' I hate to know that they're going to be in jail for such a long time. I hate it."

Whose heart has that much room? 

"Chris Paul hates it?" says Geneva Bryant, the mother of one of the five, Christopher Bryant. "Well, so do I. My boy is 23 now. He's been in since he was 15."

Chris Paul is overcome with emotion while talking about the death of his grandfather to students at West Forsyth High in Clemmons, N.C.

Her son has six years to go. Dorrell Brayboy, 23, has six years to go. Jermal Tolliver, 23, has seven. Two brothers -- Nathaniel Cauthen, 24, and Rayshawn Banner, 23 -- are in until they die.

Paul's attitude stuns one of the defense attorneys who appealed the verdict and lost.

"I've probably tried 30 homicide cases," says Paul Herzog, of Fayetteville. "It's very rare for a family survivor in a murder case to feel that way. You just don't see that ever. That's incredibly generous of Mr. Paul."

To understand how generous, you have to know how close Paul was to his granddad.

The man everybody called "PaPa Chili" was the first black man to open a service station in North Carolina and both Chris and his brother worked at it. PaPa Chili was known to let people run tabs when times got tough. Plenty of times, he'd hand people money out of the cash register to get by. Paul called him "my best friend."

The day Paul signed with nearby Wake Forest, the first person to put a Demon Deacons hat on him was his grandfather. 

The next day, he was dead. 

None of the five boys were particularly hardened criminals. Only Cauthen had been previously arrested -- twice for running away and once for stealing his mom's car. They decided they wanted to rob somebody. Around the corner, in his white van, came that somebody -- Jones. He'd closed the filling station and was now getting grocery bags out of his van. "Let's go get him," one of them said. They sprinted across Belview Park and jumped him. 

Using tape they'd bought that day at a drugstore, they bound his head, neck and hands and began a "relentless, remorseless, conscienceless" attack, according to the judge who sentenced them. Jones died in his carport. 

His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. And now he wants the murderers set free?

Paul, a high school senior, was so woebegone he was literally sick. Two days later, he scored 61 points for West Forsyth High School, one for every year of Papa Chili's life. He purposely missed a free throw at the end, then collapsed into the arms of his father in tears.

His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. 

And now he wants the murderers set free?

"Even though I miss my granddad," Paul told me, "I understand that he's not coming back. At the time, it made me feel good when I heard they went away for life. But now that I'm older, when I think of all the things I've seen in my life? No, I don't want it. I don't want it."

This is the kind of man Chris Paul is: He was president of his high school class all three years. When LeBron James' girlfriend had a baby, James made sure Paul was there. He's so humble that if you didn't know who he was, you'd swear he was the pool man.

So what can Paul do? 

He can appeal to the governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, and ask for their sentences to be commuted. North Carolina is not big on commuting murderers' sentences, but I'd put nothing past the powers of Paul.

This kid floors me. Not just with the way he can dominate an NBA playoff game at 6 feet tall in elevator sneakers. Not just for the way he can twist Kobe Bryant into a Crazy Straw. Not just for the way he'd rather pass through a doughnut hole than take the shot himself.

No, what floors me about Chris Paul is his humanity. If strangers had bound my weak-hearted grandfather, beat him for no reason and killed him for the cash in his wallet -- strangers who to this day have not shown a thimbleful of contrition -- I'd want them in prison 100 years after they were in the dirt.

Chris Paul once wrote that his grandfather "taught me more things than I could ever learn with a Ph.D."

One of them must've been love.

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INFOGRAPHIC: How the World Reads

From Electric Lit

Did you know that people in India read an average of 10.4 hours a week? Or that regular readers are 2.5 times less likely to develop Alzheimer’s Syndrome? This handy infographic from FeelGood puts a bunch of different interesting facts together in one infograhpic. Check it out… and then go read a book!

A Brief History of Red

ARTSY EDITORIAL

BY ABIGAIL CAIN

FEB 13TH, 2017 10:23 PM

“Red,” writes historian Michel Pastoureau in Red: The History of a Color, “is the archetypal color, the first color humans mastered, fabricated, reproduced, and broke down into different shades.” As such, it dominated visual culture for centuries. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, however, people began to view the shade as gaudy, even immoral, and its preeminence began to fade. Today, both blue and green surpass red as the West’s favorite colors. 

But the bold hue—whether crimson, vermilion, cardinal, or scarlet—still retains power. Red artworks fetch the highest prices at auction. Red is the color of revolution, of seduction. And its story is far from over. The scientists who last year announced the discovery of a new blue pigment are now hunting for a never-before-seen red. From some of humanity’s earliest cave paintings to Mark Rothko’s immersive abstract canvases, here is a brief history of red in art.

Red Ochre

Cave paintings at Cueva de los Manos, Argentina. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Cave paintings at Altamira, Spain. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Red has been part of our palette since the very beginning of human history. Ochre—a naturally occurring pigment that is the source of earthy shades of brown, orange, and yellow—is red when it is composed of hematite. Neanderthals were using red ochre as far back as 250,000 years ago, in a region that has since become the Netherlands. Some scientists believe that these early cultures applied the color to their bodies as decoration; others think it may have been used in more practical ways, perhaps as an adhesive or a method of softening animal hides. Later, during the Upper Paleolithic period, early artists began employing the pigment as paint. The dusky red bison dotting the cave walls of Altamira in Spain are some of the oldest, dated between 20,000 and 14,000 BC.

 

Cinnabar

Mural at Pompeii, Italy. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

“Box with Camellias,” China, 13th Century. Image via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By the time pharaohs ruled Egypt, the number of reds used in artmaking had multiplied to include cinnabar, a natural mercuric sulfide that was also incredibly toxic. (The mercury mine in Almadén, Spain, where Rome later extracted its cinnabar, was basically a death sentence for workers.) Ancient Romans loved the brilliant red pigment, a preference reflected in its high prices during that time. Pliny the Younger wrote that cinnabar cost 15 times more than red ochre from Africa and was equal in price to the precious Egyptian blue. Gladiators who emerged victorious from the Colosseum might be smeared with the shiny red mineral and then paraded through the streets of Rome. Cinnabar is also prominently featured in the murals that grace the walls of upper-class villas in Pompeii.

Cinnabar later became synonymous with the carved lacquer produced in China beginning in the 12th century. These elaborately patterned luxury items, which could be anything from vases to incense holders, were typically colored with the powdery red pigment that gave them its name.

Minium

Albrecht Dürer, Virgin and child with St Anna, 1519.

Like cinnabar, minium (also called “red lead”) is a highly poisonous material. Scholars consider it one of the first synthetic pigments, with Romans heating white lead to extreme temperatures to produce the paint. Its eye-popping orange shade showed up well against marble and gold, and it was often used for inscriptions. Later, medieval illustrators would employ the pigment in their illuminated manuscripts. But it was most popular with Mughal artists from India and Persia in the 17th and 18th centuries—so much so that their paintings became known as “miniatures,” after the minium that accented their works.

Vincent van Gogh was an avid user of red lead, a decision that has frustrated conservators centuries later. As it turns out, minium “whitens” under light, and many of the Dutch painter’s most famous works have seen their red accents fade over time.

Vermilion

Titian Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Dominic, and a Donor, About 1513 Denver Art Museum

This is where names start to get tricky. Ancient authors used the word “vermilion” to describe the pigment made from grinding up cinnabar. But vermilion also refers to the synthetic version of the color, invented in China thousands of years before it was brought to the West by Arab alchemists during the Middle Ages. This vermillion was used extensively by Renaissance painters, including Titian, who is renowned for his luxuriant reds. Although the pigment is normally an orangey-red, when exposed to sunlight it can darken to black.

Vermilion became increasingly popular beginning in the 16th century, and the industry for the pigment boomed—first in Venice, and later in the Netherlands and Germany. It appeared on shelves everywhere from hardware stores to apothecaries to paint shops. In the end, although it was pricier and less stable than minium, vermilion won out in a battle of the reds.

Carmine

Anthony van Dyck Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini, 1621 J. Paul Getty Museum

El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) Saint Jerome as a Scholar, ca. 1610 "El Greco in New York" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014-2015)

Cochineal bugs were the third most valuable export from the New World in the 16th century, right behind gold and silver. These white, pellet-shaped insects didn’t look like much when attached to the pads of Mexico’s prickly pear cacti, but when dried and crushed they produced a vivid red hue that would take Europe by storm. Although originally a dye, cochineal was soon transformed into a paint called “carmine,” which took up residence in 15th- and 16th-century painters’ palettes—Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck, Rubens, and Vermeer among them.

It persisted into later centuries, with artists including J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough incorporating the paint into their works. Although carmine produced a rich crimson glaze, often used on top of other reds like vermilion, it also had a tendency to fade in sunlight. The compositions of 18th-century portrait painter Joshua Reynolds fell victim to this phenomenon; his subjects look pale and ghostly today, more like marble sculptures than living beings.

Cadmium Red

Will Ryman The Classroom (Cadmium) (detail), 2015 Paul Kasmin Gallery

It would be several centuries before the next major innovation in red pigment came along. In 1817, a German chemist uncovered a new element, cadmium, which became the foundation for new shades of yellow and orange paint. But it wasn’t until 1910 that cadmium red was available as a commercial product, offering an alternative to the traditional vermilion. Henri Matisse was the first major champion of the new pigment, trying in vain to get his friend Renoir to make the switch. Like most Impressionist painters, Renoir was loyal to his original palette. (Since the plein air technique favored by Impressionists privileged speed, it was helpful to know exactly how paints would mix together.) When Matisse loaned him a tube of cadmium red, the older painter responded, “It is very irksome to change,” and promptly returned the paint.

Lithol

Mark Rothko’s Panel One, Panel Two, and Panel Three (Harvard Mural Triptych), with restored colors using light from digital projectors. © 2014 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Peter Vanderwarker, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Mark Rothko Untitled (Red, Orange), 1968 Fondation Beyeler

In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock started splattering commercial house paint across his canvases in huge, sweeping gestures. These iconic works offer a striking and high-profile example of artists’ increasing experimentation with materials throughout the mid-20th century. Rothko, too, dabbled with untested pigments in his work with various results. In 1962, he incorporated two brand-new organic reds into his palette for a series of murals at Harvard University. One of these pigments, Naphthol, had no ill effects. But Rothko’s other choice, Lithol, eventually doomed the works. Still in use today as a low-cost ink in the printing industry, Lithol red is highly sensitive to light. After several years hanging in the university’s penthouse dining room, Rothko’s deep reds and pinks had faded to light blue. By 1979, the paintings were so damaged that they had to be permanently removed.

—Abigail Cain

The Best That Ever Was . . . a waste.

"If you have dreams of being a rock-star public speaker, pumping up an audience as you stride the stage and proclaim your brilliance, I beg you to reconsider. Don’t dream of that. Dream of something much bigger than you are.”  (TED Talks: the official TED guide to public speaking)

Matt Damon agrees.

"Imagine chasing that, and not getting it, and getting it finally in your eighties or nineties  with all of life behind you" or broken relationships or abandoned friends or ruined lives "and realizing . . . what an unbelievable waste." 

Because

"It can't fill you up. If that's a whole that you have, that won't fill it."

It's the difference between eulogy virtues and resume virtues; the BIG ME and little me.

“THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS IS: FIND SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE, AND DEDICATE YOUR LIFE TO IT.” – DAN DENNETT

Or as Chris McCandless wrote during his last days, "Happiness is only realized when shared."

A grim yet poignant reminder for those of us pursuing dreams.

Indispensable Verse

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego 's in bloom;
Sometime when you take it for granted,
You're the best qualified in the room:

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Sometime when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions,
And see how they humble your soul.  

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,
Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you'll find that in no time,
It looks quite the same as before.  

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The moral of this quaint example,
Is to do just the best that you can,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

 Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

The Indispensable Man (by Saxon White Kessinger)

 O Me! O Life! (by Walt Whitman)

Oldest Living Veteran - 109 Years Old

Richard Overton fought in the South Pacific in World War II, is 109 years old, still drives, sometimes drinks whiskey with breakfast, smokes 12 cigars a day (but doesn’t inhale), and still lives in the house he built himself in 1945. In this video from National Geographic, Overton talks about his military service, his faith, his long life, and soup. Overton’s short summary of World War II:

"It wasn’t good, but we had to go."

I don’t really care to live to 100, but if I had Overton’s spirit and attitude, perhaps I’d consider it (via). 

For more on . . .

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37 Nonfiction Books Every Artist Should Read

Creativity

• Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking, David Bayles and Ted Orland
• Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert
• Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon
• What It Is, Lynda Barry
• In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, Grace Bonney
• The Cheese Monkeys, Chip Kidd

Drawing

• Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures, Walt Stanchfield
• Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, James Gurney
• Creative Illustration, Andrew Loomis
• Picture This: How Pictures Work, Molly Bang

Writing

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott
• The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
• Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution, by Derrick Jensen

Typography

• Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton
• Hand Job: A Catalog of Type, Michael Perry
• The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst

Picture Books

• Writing Picture Books, Ann Whitford Paul
• Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures, Maurice Sendak
• Writing with Pictures, Uri Shulevitz
• Words and Pictures, Quentin Blake
• Illustrating Children’s Books, Martin Salisbury

Comics

• Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
• Making Comics, Scott McCloud
• Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner
• Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Will Eisner
• Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden

Storytelling

• The New Kings of Nonfiction, Short stories collected and edited by Ira Glass
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

Business

• The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss (I don’t agree with everything he says, but there are some real gems here.)
• The Freelancer’s Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams — On Your Terms, Sara Horowitz
• My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire, Michelle Goodman

Psychology

• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chödrön
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” 

— W.B. Yeats

From Christine Nishiyama

Hong Kong in the 1950s

These stunning photographs of Hong Kong in the 1950s are captured beautifully by a teenager. Ho Fan who arrived from Shanghai in 1949. The streets, filled with vendors, coolies and rickshaw drivers, fascinated Ho. Taking pictures in a studio was the norm then, but the Ho was more interested in random, candid shots of strangers. His targets, however, did not always smile into the lens of his Rolleiflex. But it is great street photography that gives a peek into daily life in Hong Kong at that time. The photography is part of his book “A Hong Kong Memoir”

Tragic Hero, the place in-between

From literarydevices.net

Definition of Tragic Hero

The term hero is derived from a Greek word that means a person who faces adversity, or demonstrates courage in the face of danger. However, sometimes he faces downfall as well. When a hero confronts downfall, he is recognized as a tragic hero or protagonist. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, characterizes these plays or stories as tragedies in which the main character is a tragic hero, who confronts his downfall due to fate, his mistake or any other social reason.

Aristotle defines a tragic hero as “a person who must evoke a sense of pity and fear in the audience. He is considered a man of misfortune that comes to him through error of judgment” and brings his downfall to evoke the feelings of pity and fear among the audience.

Characteristics of the Tragic Hero

Here we have basic characteristics of a tragic hero explained by Aristotle, including:

• Hamartia – It is the tragic flaw that causes downfall of a hero.
• Hubris – It is excessive pride and disrespect of hero for natural order.
• Peripeteia – The reversal of fate that the hero experiences.
• Anagnorisis – This moment happens when hero makes an important discovery in the story.
• Nemesis – A fortune that protagonist cannot avoid, usually due to retribution of his hubris.
• Catharsis – These are the feelings of pity and fear that audience feels for the protagonist after his downfall.

Examples of Tragic Hero from Literature

Example #1

Oedipus from “Oedipus Rex”

Aristotle has used Oedipus as a perfect example of a tragic hero, as he has hubris that is his pride makes him blind to the truth. He refuses to listen to wise men like Tiresias, who predicts that Oedipus has killed his father, Laius. He is tragic because he struggles against the forces of his fate and pitiable due to his weakness, which arouses fear in the audience. Thus, he is an ideal example of the tragic hero for causing his own downfall, falling from his own estate and facing undeserved punishment.

Example #2

Prince Hamlet from “Hamlet”

He is the prince of Denmark, a man of high social status and noble by birth. He is almost driven to madness by his father’s tortured ghost, who convinces him that Claudius is responsible for his father’s death and that he has committed treachery. He then makes a plan to avenge upon his father’s killer, but he is blinded by his hamartia, neglecting his relations with other loved ones — Ophelia and his mother Gertrude. Hamlet’s hamartia is his constant contemplation and brooding, which causes his delay to ultimately result in his destruction. By the end, he also falls into his bloodbath, touching the hearts of the audience by highlighting the most primal fear, death.

Example #3

Romeo from “Romeo and Juliet”

Romeo is also a very good example of a tragic hero, who is a man of high social standing, falls in love easily with the girl whose family holds animosity with his family. His tragic flaw is start believing on his fate immediately. Juliet acts like a dead person, and Romeo thinks her actually dead. Therefore, he kills himself. When she wakes up and sees him dead, she also kills herself. Thus, it is not only fate, but also his actions and choices, which bring his downfall and eventually cause death.

Example #4

Davy Jones from “Pirates of the Caribbean”

Davy Jones is a modern example of a typical tragic hero. He is basically a sea captain, who falls in love with sea goddess, Calypso. However, Calypso breaks Jones’ heart, making him enraged, tragic and bitter. He grows into a mixture of a humanoid and octopus and leads his savage crew on raids in the entire sea on his ship, the Flying Dutchman. At first, he was not bad, but his beloved breaks his heart that turns him into bad man. Eventually, Will Sparrow kills him. Jones’ hamartia is that he is a broken-hearted hero, who suffers at the hands of his beloved, Calypso.

Function of Tragic Hero

The purpose of a tragic hero is to evoke sad emotions such a pity and fear, which makes the audience to experience catharsis and relieve them of their pent up emotions. The tragic flaw of the hero leads to his demise or downfall that in turn brings tragic end. This gives wisdom to the audience to avoid such things in their everyday lives. The sufferings and fall of a hero, arousing feelings of pity and fear through catharsis, purges the audiences of those emotions, to transform them into good human beings and good citizens.

Function of Tragic Flaw

Tragic flaw is used for moral purposes in order to encourage the audience to improve their characters and remove the flaws which could bring their downfall in life.The readers and the audience can identify themselves with the tragic hero, since it imparts feelings of pity and fear among them thereby completing their catharsis or in other words, they are purged of bad emotions. Therefore, they can learn a moral lesson so that they might not indulge in similar actions in future.

7 Best Books That Will Radically Shift The Way You See The World

by Mindvalley Authors

I’m often asked what my favorite books are — which ones impacted me the most and which ones I would recommend. And sure, I do have a list of personal growth books at the top of my head that shaped my view of the world.

But beyond the personal growth field, there are a several of books in science, sociology, and philosophy that have had an equally profound impact on me.

And today, I just wanted to share my top seven books in these fields that will help you better understand our role on this giant space-rock we call earth.

The books won’t just blow your mind — they will expand your mind to whole new levels and make you see the world in a very different way from politics, to ecology, to sex and religion.

Enjoy this list. I loved and enjoyed every single one of these books.

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything

By Bill Bryson

Do you recall your boring science textbooks in school?

Not likely. This book will change that for you. Bryson has taken his background in travelogue writing and merged it with science. His genuine curiosity for science includes an investigation of known and unknown scientific pioneers. And the best part: You’ll finally understand complex scientific subjects — from gravitational constants to the calculation of the Earth’s mass.

And you wouldn’t believe how brilliant minds across the ages came up with inventive ways to push science forward.

Key Insight: We are capable of doing and achieving many things, especially when we apply our minds to solve problems that are seemingly impossible.

Favorite Excerpt and “Why on Earth did I not learn this in School?” moment:

“Some scientists now think that there could be as much as 100 trillion tons of bacteria living beneath our feet in what are known as subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems — SLiME for short. Thomas Gold of Cornell has estimated that if you took all the bacteria out of the Earth’s interior and dumped it on the surface, it would cover the planet to a depth of five feet. If the estimates are correct, there could be more life under the Earth than on top of it.”

2. Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire

By Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa

How do you explain biology? Two words: Evolutionary Psychology.

This book presents disturbing, yet fascinating insights on how evolution ensures our survival. One example: Evolution has leveled the playing field for men and women when it comes to mating. As the title suggests if you’re a beautiful couple, you’ve been hard wired through evolution to have a greater chance of producing daughters than sons. As a result, as evolution marches on, women are evolving to be more and more beautiful. And men more and more ambitious. You’ll have to read the excerpt below from the book to understand why.

Key Insight: Some facts are debatable. But these hypotheses could help you understand your life choices so far.

Favorite Excerpt:

“So physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women’s reproductive success than to men’s. The new hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is indeed the case. Young Americans who are rated “very attractive” have a 44 percent chance of having a son for their first child (and thus a 56 percent chance of having a daughter). In contrast, everyone else has a 52 percent chance of having a son (and thus a 48 percent chance of having a daughter) for their first child. 21 Being “very attractive” increases the odds of having a daughter by 36 percent!”

3. Sapiens

By Yuval Noah Harari

This book is eye-opening and one of the singular best books I have ever read on ANY subject.

There was a time when at least six different species of humans co-existed on earth. Every other species, except Homo Sapiens (our species of humans) became extinct. Learn how our Savannah-dwelling primate ancestors dominated the planet and paved the way to who we are today.

Key Insight: Regardless of color, ethnicity, and background, we have more commonalities than differences. But sadly, we’re also predictable apes governed by certain laws.

Favorite Excerpt: On the Religion of Consumerism.

“The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect.”

“Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum.

In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we’ll really get paradise in return? We’ve seen it on television.”

4. The True Believer

By Eric Hoffer

Read this and you’ll understand how Brexit and Trumpism happened.

There are two historians to read to understand why Americans voted Trump. Plato and Eric Hoffer. Hoffer wrote this book in the early 1950s. He was a legend in his field and was even awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Hoffer’s writing style is daring and observant. He is straightforward even when discussing sensitive topics. His insights are scary but with Trump, they came true.

Key Insight: We often make fun of the common denominators of countries. While they don’t represent the whole, they do represent the future as the excerpt below reveals.

Favorite Excerpts:

“There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.”

“The inert mass of a nation, for instance, is in its middle section. The decent, average people who do the nation’s work in cities and on the land are worked upon and shaped by minorities at both ends — the best and the worst.”

“The superior individual, whether in politics, literature, science, commerce or industry, plays a large role in shaping a nation, but so do individuals at the other extreme — the failures, misfits, outcasts, criminals, and all those who have lost their footing, or never had one, in the ranks of respectable humanity. The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.”

“The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present.”

“They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy. They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking — hence their proclivity for united action. Thus they are among the early recruits of revolutions, mass migrations and of religious, racial and chauvinist movements, and they imprint their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a nation’s character and history.”

5. Abundance

By Peter Diamandis & Steven Kotler

The world is improving at an accelerated rate — and it’s getting better and better.

Look past the depressing world headlines, and focus more on the successful trend lines. It’ll remind you of the positive human potential we have going forward. The media is mostly negative because our reptilian brains evolved to pay more attention to danger than happiness. So if you only read the newspapers, you’re likely to be more afraid and make dumb choices based on fear (especially in voting for politicians). But in reality, the world is getting safer and better at an exponential rate.

Key Insight: We need to teach our young ones, and our pessimistic selves, to not give up on the future.

Favorite Excerpts:

“The twentieth century, for example, witnessed both incredible advancement and unspeakable tragedy. The 1918 influenza epidemic killed fifty million people, World War II killed another sixty million. There were tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, even plagues of locust. Despite such unrest, this period also saw infant mortality decrease by 90 percent, maternal mortality decreased by 99 percent, and, overall, human lifespan increase by more than 100 percent.”

“In the past two decades, the United States has experienced tremendous economic upheaval. Yet today, even the poorest Americans have access to a telephone, television, and a flush toiletthree luxuries that even the wealthiest couldn’t imagine at the turn of the last century. In fact, as will soon be clear, using almost any metric currently available, quality of life has improved more in the past century than ever before. So while there are likely to be plenty of rude, heartbreaking interruptions along the way, as this book will demonstrate, global living standards will continue to improve regardless of the horrors that dominate the headlines.”

6. The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

By Alan Watts

More philosophical than science, you’ll want to read this if you want to add a good dose of funny into your life.

The subject is almost unwritable but Watts successfully presents alternative views to the common problem of connecting to a personal identity. The book questions the hoax of the temporary roles we play in our lives and why we struggle to attain self-fulfillment.

Key Insight: We need new experiences instead of a new religion.

Favorite Excerpt:

“Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness — an act of trust in the unknown.”

“An ardent Jehovah’s Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.”

“Therefore The Book that I would like to slip to my children would itself be slippery. It would slip them into a new domain, not of ideas alone, but of experience and feeling. It would be a temporary medicine, not a diet; a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference. They would read it and be done with it, for if it were well and clearly written they would not have to go back to it again and again for hidden meanings or for clarification of obscure doctrines.

We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new experience — a new feeling of what it is to be ‘I.’”

7. Death By Black Hole

By Neil deGrasse Tyson

This book acts as a portal to everything that enlightens and terrifies us about the universe.

Try reading it in the great outdoors. You’ll be able to see that much clearly where your space is in the universe.

Key Insight: The journey of the mind teaches us how humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos.

Favorite Excerpts:

“We register the world’s stimuli in logarithmic rather than linear increments. For example, if you increase the energy of a sound’s volume by a factor of 10, your ears will judge this change to be rather small. Increase it by a factor of 2 and you will barely take notice.”

“The same holds for our capacity to measure light. If you have ever viewed a total solar eclipse you may have noticed that the Sun’s disk must be at least 90 percent covered by the Moon before anybody comments that the sky has darkened. The stellar magnitude scale of brightness, the well-known acoustic decibel scale and the seismic scale for earthquake severity are each logarithmic, in part because of our biological propensity to see, hear, and feel the world that way.”

Like little Leo

photo by Meg Loeks

It was when they all left the room, just after handing us bags full of personal hygiene items like toothpaste, deodorant, dry shampoo, socks, and other comfort gifts they give parents who find out their child has cancer, that we both broke down.

Meg Loeks, a photographer based in rural West Michigan, didn’t think much about the aches and pains her first-born son Leo was experiencing because they were so inconsistent- on one day, then off the next. She and her husband assumed they were growing pains. But the cycle seemed to linger, not abate. Meg reached out to a friend, who was also a nurse, and was told to bring little Leo in immediately.  They did. But after the nurse ran some blood tests, she sent them home thinking it might just be arthritis. It seemed like no big deal - Leo went to daycare and Dad went back to work. They carried on with the day as usual.

“The next morning around 10am” Meg recalls, “I received a phone call from our pediatrician saying we needed to pack our bags and head to our local children’s hospital immediately.” The blood results had come back. Leo didn’t have arthritis; he needed to be tested for leukemia.  “I don’t remember much else from the conversation. I called my husband, cried, and he left work to pick up Leo and come home so we could all go together.”

In the days that followed, before their first appointment with the oncologist, Meg and her family enjoyed the quiet days of summer – winter tucked away in boxes. “I remember the few days leading up to the first appointment because they were incredible. We didn’t do much at all. We just stayed home and played together. We played in our sprinkler and grilled out on our porch.”

By early June, they were meeting with Leo’s oncologist to discuss the results of his bone marrow test.

“I remember pacing in his hospital room,” Meg recalls, “Then a couple social workers walked in with toys for Leo to play with. My husband and I we were led to a conference room. I knew then that he had leukemia.”

“We sat down, and I remember the boxes of tissues in the middle of the conference table. There were no windows in the room. I looked over at my husband and asked, ‘So, is this good or bad news?’ He just shrugged, but we both knew. It wasn’t good.”

Leo’s oncologist didn’t waste any time. He told them Leo had leukemia. “All I remember was how grim he sounded. I know now he was just being sympathetic but at the time I thought that maybe Leo’s chances of survival were not very good. {The oncologist} had so many papers to give us and so much information. He told us we probably wouldn’t remember most of it and he was right. We don’t. Even though he was very kind I remember that I just wanted him to stop talking.”

photo by Meg Loeks

Looking back, what stands out the most about those first days?

“I remember feeling like I was suffocating. I remember thinking that there was a good possibility that my child might die. The one that made me a mother first. The one I had cloth diapered, made baby food for, and sent to the most expensive Montessori prep daycare since he was a baby. I remember trying to keep my composure and being surprised at myself that I didn’t really cry in front of the doctor. There were some tears but both my husband and I remained calm.

It was when they all left the room, just after handing us bags full of personal hygiene items like toothpaste, deodorant, dry shampoo, socks, and other comfort gifts they give parents who find out their child has cancer, that we both broke down. I honestly don’t think it was because they left the room that we both cried. It was those bags they gave us that made it seem real; that we had officially joined the parents we saw wandering the halls outside the conference room with their children who were fighting cancer.”

In the midst of this deep conflict, what truth(s) were revealed? About life?  About yourself? 

“Over the summer we stayed home a lot because the hospital visits exhausted all of us, and because Leo often didn't feel well. I think the greatest truth during this time was realizing the importance of childhood and the art of play. This is something that has always been a priority for my husband and I while raising our children. I know my parents influenced a lot of this because they always made time to play with my brother and I growing up. But it wasn't until a lot of that was taken away from my son that I realized how important it was. I realized that the best moments are often the ones created at home when we were doing absolutely nothing but being present and with each other. We didn't have to go off on some great adventure or hike to have a great time. The best memories from that summer involved us laying together in our hammock and playing with the boy’s bubble machine in our front yard.”

What role did your photography play in this process?  Was it a distraction from the worry?  A medium to explain the pain?  Or an aid in the healing? 

“I think photography was a little bit of all of that for me during the first few days. It was so easy to lose track of time in the hospital, and I constantly craved fresh air and to be outside. Whenever my husband and I would trade spots at the hospital, one of the first things I would do once I arrived home was head outside with my camera.”

“While at the hospital, I felt the need to document this moment in time for Leo. I wanted him to be able to look back and see all that he had accomplished. It was interesting for me too because I'm not a documentary photographer, but photographing my son at the hospital forced me to be one. I captured everything... the IV tower he was constantly hooked up to, the walks around the hospital he had daily, the train set he loved to play with in the playroom on his floor. I think it was therapeutic for me to capture these moments but then again photography always has been.”

Too often we try and protect ourselves from heartache and pain, and all too often, we fail, because heartache and pain and suffering are a part of life; they’re unavoidable. But they’re also essential. When life suddenly shifts, when it's giant cracks violently rip open, forcing us to our knees, we reach out and cling to what is important, what is true, and to what matters most. Like simple moments with family on a summer evening. And community.

According to Joseph Campbell, ancient civilizations used to hold tribe rites every year to prepare the community to endure the season of terrible cold that was to come. They did not try to keep it at bay but instead prepared to endure it – together.

Just days after Leo's diagnosis, Meg Loeks and her family were not alone. "I logged onto my social media accounts and saw several images of children dressed in superhero gear," Meg recalls. Click-in Moms, a community of photographers of which Meg is a member of, began to capture superhero-related images  to help the Loeks family endure the terrible season that was to come. They were tagged #strengthforleo, and they were, for Leo, his family, and the community. Because communities endure - together.

Tribulation, great and small, reminds us of what is truly valuable, that we are not alone, and that there is hope. Hope that we will be refined, that through the strength of community we can endure, and that, in the midst of the pain, there is purpose.

Like little Leo.

After months of uncertainty, of treatments and visits to the hospital, Leo is doing incredible. He's in remission and currently in the last phase of his leukemia treatment which will continue till August of 2019. He now receives monthly chemotherapy instead of weekly, and his hair is starting to grow back. He's attending school full time.

Meg and her husband have daily reminders of how they could have lost their first born and how their life could be very different. But they also have the memory of a kind oncologist who gave them hope, and it is something Meg will never forget. “He told us statistics show that children who have fought cancer often grow to be successful leaders later on in life. I remember being moved by this because he was being thoughtful and humanistic... something I think many doctors appear to lack. His kindness gave us hope that everything was going to be ok.”

Hope, like love, is strengthened when tested by deep adversity, and can only be fully realized when shared. Thank you, Meg Loeks (and family), for being vulnerable, for sharing your story, and reminding us of the importance of seeing the beauty in the everyday moments. Thank you for reminding us of hope.

See more of Meg Loeks's inspiring work at Megloeks.com or on Instagram @meg_nlo. 

If you have a story you'd like to share, please, let me know.

Click, for more on . . .

Photography  :  Real People  :  Humanity

Three Beautiful Human Minutes by Asger Leth

Asger Leth is a director and writer, known for Man on a Ledge (2012), The Five Obstructions (2003) and Ghosts of Cité Soleil (2006).

Mapping US Presidents

Wait But Why published this map in his two-part blog, "It's Going to be Okay." 

Dividing the two groups of men by political parties seemed too simple - almost unfair.

So I Googled "maps of US Presidents" and found this one:

The Washington Post printed this one:

Both were enlightening in terms of how closely most of our presidents were raised and educated and in which part of the country seems to raise up presidential leaders, but neither gave a deeper understanding in terms of specifics - did all republican presidents come from the south? Can a state produce a president from both parties? Is our country divided so simply?

This one gave a bit more clarity:

The Washington Post also added this, A few interesting observations:

* Ohio is the birthplace of seven presidents, second only to Virginia's eight. But, Ohio hasn't elected a president since Warren Harding in 1920. And Harding didn't even last a full term, dying in 1923. (Random Warren Harding factoid: His size 14 shoes were the largest of any president.)

* Texas' two native-born presidents aren't who you think they are.  Neither George H.W. Bush (Massachusetts) nor George W. Bush (Connecticut) were born in the Lone Star State. The two? Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower. (Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas.)

* Vermont is the smallest state with the biggest presidential punch as the birthplace of both Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge.

* California has produced only a single president -- and it was Republican Richard Nixon.

From these simple maps, I wonder if a few more observations, or perhaps reminders, can be made:

* Defining a man or woman based on their political party is too simple and unfair

* We may disagree on many things, but we are all united on at least on BIG thing - we're all Americans, and we all want what's best for our country.

* Although Hillary may not have been the best fit, it is time for a female president

* We've survived many presidents, good and bad, and have endured several hardships. There's no reason to think we won't continue to do so.

* Unless we fail to come together, when we forget that we're white and black and everything in between, We are protestant, Jew, gentile, Muslim, and atheist. We're Republicans. We're Democrats. And we're neither. But above all, we're Americans. And above even that, we're human.

* When we allow the smaller differences to define us, we lose sight of all that we have in common. And when we simplify the larger differences, we ignore the many small and beautiful ways that we are similar. 

The Process of Procrastination

Tim Urban has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. With wry stick-figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence, Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk (Ted.com).

According to Tim Urban, his responsibilities include:

• Writing posts every Tuesday every Wednesday about his psychological shortcomings
• Picking a topic for the week’s post before realizing it’s icky after diving in and thinking “if only I were doing that other topic it would be so much easier”; switching to that other topic and realizing it’s incredibly icky too
• Opening three Chrome windows with 42 research tabs in each, just short of getting to that stressful zone where you can’t see the icon on the tabs anymore
• Pacing around in his underwear hating himself
• Drawing stick figures at a 2nd 4th grade skill level
• Drawing head circles ten times before finally drawing one that looks normal
• Not being an expert on things he writes about
• Getting yelled at by people who think he thinks he’s an expert on things he writes about
• Getting scolded by people for using profanity in writing
• Passionately underestimating how long each post will take to do

You can read his full dramatic nightmare story of what it was like to do a TED Talk