In 1970, the United States had the world’s highest rate of high school and college graduation. Today, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we’ve slipped to No. 21 in high school completion and No. 15 in college completion, as other countries surpassed us in the quality of their primary and secondary education.
thewordunheard:

Sitting in a Media Advocacy class—about 30 Ivy-educated adults—and the professor put up this photograph and asked us who knew what event this was. I was the only person who knew that it was the March for Women’s Lives in 2004, one of (if not the)  largest marches on Washington in our nation’s history.
I was there with my family and my closest friends, and I remember it pretty much changing my life, and I remember being horrified the next day when I saw how no one—no one!—covered it. And I remember that changing my life in a different way: the stark realization that the media have the ability to shape our understanding of history, and the responsibility is on each of us to get our message out, because we can’t trust anyone else to do it for us.
There’s a lot of eye-rolling about the capital-I Internet and the advent of Web 2.0, but I can tell you now that if blogging was then what it is now, you all would have known we were there.

thewordunheard:

Sitting in a Media Advocacy class—about 30 Ivy-educated adults—and the professor put up this photograph and asked us who knew what event this was. I was the only person who knew that it was the March for Women’s Lives in 2004, one of (if not the)  largest marches on Washington in our nation’s history.

I was there with my family and my closest friends, and I remember it pretty much changing my life, and I remember being horrified the next day when I saw how no one—no one!—covered it. And I remember that changing my life in a different way: the stark realization that the media have the ability to shape our understanding of history, and the responsibility is on each of us to get our message out, because we can’t trust anyone else to do it for us.

There’s a lot of eye-rolling about the capital-I Internet and the advent of Web 2.0, but I can tell you now that if blogging was then what it is now, you all would have known we were there.

I love my sister

her email to me:

ok so today is January 26th and yesterday was Helen’s birthday so…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HELEN. HAVE A GREAT TWELFTH BIRTHDAY!!!!

wait that doesnt sound very right now does it.

oh ok let me fix that.

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAAARRR!!!!! YAY YEAR OF THE DRAGON! Year of good luck and hope!

oh wow its year of the dragon.

YOU’RE TURNING TWENTY-FOUR TODAY!

as you would say,

“How depressing.”

But Chubby is there to spend it with you so why dont you two go for a long walk and go to that french bakery and eat lots of macarons… or macaroons…

Hope you and Chubby are having a fantastic time and you’re waking up on time and not letting him hold his potty! 

CHA CHING. 

did you just see the magic dollars i sent you in the magic red envelope? that’s your chinese new year magic money; spend it on all sorts of air! Clean air, dirty air you name it! these magic dollars will provide for you the air you need to breathe for the rest of your life.

Happy Birthday my dearr seastarrr11111!!!!!!!!!

my response: WRONG AGE MAN.

On goods and goods-characteristics
Student:In Menger's view, would love not be considered a real need?
Professor:You're asking me this on my wife's birthday?
The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.
Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, “bonus” relationships to the truly important ones. Women’s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes children.

I saw, on that afternoon, that it’s possible to transcend the limits of your skin in a friendship. That a friend can take you out of the boxes you’ve made for yourself and burn them up. This kind of friendship is not a frivolous connection, a supplementary relationship to the ones we’re taught and told are primary – spouses, children, parents. It is love.
I want to adopt this sweet boy so badly:
Speedy is approx 4 yrs old and was dumped at the shelter with a broken back by his loser owner that claimed the dog did not belong to him - microchip was registered to the dog dumper. Speedy comes with a wheelie cart, a smile, and a pretty big bark. He is 100% Corgi!

I want to adopt this sweet boy so badly:

Speedy is approx 4 yrs old and was dumped at the shelter with a broken back by his loser owner that claimed the dog did not belong to him - microchip was registered to the dog dumper. Speedy comes with a wheelie cart, a smile, and a pretty big bark. He is 100% Corgi!

twloha:

In 2006, actor Stephen Fry received a letter from a girl struggling with depression. This was his response.

A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. And the dominant form of snobbery that exists today is job snobbery — you encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked that famous, iconic question of the 21st century: ‘What do you do?’ The opposite of a snob is your mother.
Competition in the market puts people under great pressure to break the ordinary rules of decent conduct and then to produce good reasons for doing so. It is these rationalizations – the endless self-deception necessary to meet the bottom line and still feel okay about it – that corrode moral character.