Images that arrest. Mesmerizing.

"Measurements compiled by Lawson and her colleagues show that a D-cup in a low-support bra can travel as much as 35 inches up and down (35 inches!) during exercise..."

--Adrienne So

Salt of the Earth

"Nothing like a Polish-American event - accordions, drums, and communion wafers surrounded by an American flag, potted geraniums, and a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign hung high. I'd like to think that Jesus would have felt right at home. He hung out with crowds like these, real people who work hard and pray hard. People who know what it's like to sweat and get their hands dirty. Simple values, simple lives. I mean this in a good way. I came from people like these."

-- The Mater

Holy epistemological breakthrough, batman!

"The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference."

--Atul Gawande

On the health of your community

"Austin Fitts has developed her own model of community health. She calls it the Popsicle Index. The Popsicle Index is the percentage of people in a community who think that an elementary-school child can safely walk to the neighborhood grocery and come home with a Popsicle—alone. When she was a little girl, Austin Fitts thinks that everybody in her old Philadelphia neighborhood thought that she could do that. And she did. The Popsicle Index was near 100 percent. Now, in that same neighborhood, going alone to the grocery to buy a Popsicle isn’t something very many mothers would allow. Fifty years later, the index has dropped to 10 percent, maybe lower."

--Michael Linton

On patriotism and the people

Country is sittin' on the back porch, listen to the whippoorwills late in the day.

Country is mindin' your business; helpin' a stranger if he comes your way.

Country is livin' in the city; knowin' your people, knowin' your kind.

Country is what you make it, country is all in your mind.



Country is workin' for a living, thinkin' your own thoughts, lovin' your town.

Country is teachin' your children: find out what's right and stand your ground.

Country is a havin' a good time, listen to the music, singing your part

Country is walkin' in the moonlight, country is all in your heart.



--Tom T. Hall

On "Sex and the City" and 36%

"...a staggering one in four adults in New York has the virus that causes genital herpes, with the rate climbing to a colossal one in two for African-Americans.... Far more women carry the virus than men -- 36% vs. 19%. This makes New York the national capital for genital herpes..."

On the generations

"You know that on some level, at some moment, Dwight D. Eisenhower looked at John F. Kennedy and thought: Punk."

--Peggy Noonan

On Worry

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

~Matthew 6:34