Lydia Schoch

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts, comics, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

If You Crave This. I don’t know how accurate this chart is but the next time I have an insatiable craving for chocolate or french fries I will give raw nuts and broccoli a try first.

Save the Words. A locupletative collection of words inches away from being taken out of the dictionary. Adopt one and save a word!

From Just How Hard Should We Try to Remove the “Ugly from Life?:

Separation and unity. Diversity and conformity. Conservatives and liberals. Religion and the absence of religion. Men, women, gays, heteros, children, sages, blacks and whites. Somehow, we need it all. And I think it would be a good idea to appreciate it all for its specific, individual value.

Toronto Scientist Determines that Fiction Can Change Personalities. Wow, what a fascinating study! I wonder if the same thing can be said about reading blogs?

No Problem. It’s so easy to forget that the cool, collected image others project is not necessarily how they feel inside. Everyone has his or her own struggles.

This is well worth the five minutes it takes to watch:

Earlier this summer a friend recommended Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes, a history of Hawaii from the arrival of the first Christian missionaries in 1819 to the fraudulent annexation of it by the U.S. in 1898.

This is a chilling reminder of what happens when religion, politics and profit crawl into bed together.

What have you been reading?

Drew and I recently had a conversation that went something like this:

“Why are those leaves so big?”

“I don’t know! They’re kind of creepy, though.”

Both of us grew up in climates where leaves tend to be about the same size as the hand of an adult. Our definition of the term doesn’t automatically include leaves large enough to wrap around a small child but a quick Internet search has turned up photos of even larger leaves.

This makes me wonder what people who grew up in tropical climates think of pine needles? It must be just as strange to them as extra-large leaves were to us!

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photos, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web. (Photo credit – 7thsens from FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Spice Market in Old Delhi. Incredible photographs of an open-air market. I love the bright colours! Do people bring their own containers to take purchases home in? How does one keep spices or other light/heat/moisture-sensitive items fresh?

Anger Makes You Forget Other People Are People. Sadly true.

Pour Some Sugar On Me. Not all vices are created equal. It would be better, I think, to eliminate our cultural tendency to label every less-than-perfect habit as a vice. It’s too harsh a term for many of the activities it commonly describes.

Gumption. What it takes to write a book.

Keiko Fuduka Earns 10th Degree Black Belt in Judo. She’s the first woman and only the fourth person to ever accomplish this. Oh, and she’s 98 years old.

Brad Warner’s Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between was an eye-opening read recently. I hadn’t know that Buddhism includes many, often conflicting, “denominations” (for lack of a better term)  or that it doesn’t teach the concept of sexual sin.

What have you been reading?

Thank you to everyone who filled out last week’s survey. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

If you missed the cut-off date use the comment section to tell us share your favourite aspects of this site and any advice you have for improving it.

Results

Participants were:

American or Canadian. This was exactly what I expected. Most of my visitors have always been from North America. Hopefully we will hear from people in other countries in future surveys, though.

40+. 75% of participants were 40 or older.  Now this was a surprise! I wonder if there is a correlation between age and willingness to fill out a survey?

Longtime Readers. Everyone who responded has been reading On the Other Hand for at least 7 months. I didn’t know what to expect when I included this question but does make sense that longtime readers would be more likely to participate.

You Wanted

 Pictures. Apparently I have not been including enough pictures in my posts. 😉

More posts about psychology, sociology, religion and philosophy. Done.

Humour. This one will take a little more work. Keep an eye out for lighthearted posts in the future.

A Dear Lydia column. What a fantastic idea! Those of you who receive my newsletter already know this but I’ve decided to give it a try. I’ll need your help, though.

Have you recently de-converted from Christianity and want advice from a fellow non-theist?

Do you want clarification on an old blog post?

Is there something you’ve always wanted to ask me?

Leave a comment on this post with your question or submit it through the contact form.

Questions on any topic other than medical or legal advice are welcome. If you wish to remain anonymous or use a  pseudonym include that information with your question.

Any questions not including these preferences will be published using only your first name.

I’ve been using an awesome WordPress theme called Headway for this blog. What I love most about this theme is that it has a drag and drop visual editor. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means – the first section of the video below shows someone using one.

In layman’s terms it’s a way to make your blog look exactly how you want it to without using any HTML, CSS or PHP. (And if you do know how to code you can always play around with your theme to make it look even better.)

Headway 3.0 is due to be released later on this summer. I’m excited to see what has been done to improve an already amazing product. Here’s a sneak peek of what is to come:

Why am I bringing this up now?

Those of us currently using Headway 2 have paid a one-time-fee and get lifetime support and  free updates to all future versions. When version 3.0 is released Headway is going to become subscription based. While I’m sure it will be fairly priced, if you purchase it now you’ll get version 3.0 (and all future versions) without ever having to pay for anything again.

Check out the features page for more information.

If you decide to sign up for Headway, please consider doing so through this affiliate link as it will help support my writing.

On an unrelated note, my next post is about the survey I posted last week. In response to it I will be announcing something exciting tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

Forgotten Heroes is a series of posts about extraordinary men and women who are (probably) not remembered by the average person.  Previous heroes include Josephine Butler. 

If you know of a forgotten hero who should be included in this series let me know about him or her in the comment section or via my contact form. 

Time: 1873.

Place: Toronto, Ontario.

John Howard had a plan.

He and his wife, Jemima, had been living on a 160-acre property they called High Park for about 35 years. It was located in the County of York, west of Toronto. In 1873 they decided to deed their land to the city of Toronto with a few stipulations: the Howards could continue to live at Colborne House for the rest of their lives, alcohol could never be sold on the property, the name High Park would be retained, and the property would remain free for public use.

Toronto’s city council agreed. After John and Jemima’s deaths their house was eventually turned into a small museum.

138 years later High Park is the largest park within the boundaries of Toronto. A third of the land remains in its natural state. Without this undisturbed land, air and water many species would probably die out in this area of Ontario.

High Park is also a heavily used recreation area for the millions of people who live in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). An individual or group could spend all day experiencing the free dog park, playgrounds, zoo, pond, ornamental gardens, hiking and bicycling trails, tobogganing hill, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, picnic areas, and occasional guided walking tours.

If they were interested and had a little extra cash they could also visit the Colborne house museum, a small restaurant, food stands, a day camp for children, ice rink, outdoor swimming pool, and annual summer performances of Shakespearian plays.

An act of generosity performed generations ago has improved the lives of millions of people. Since 1873 the city has grown around High Park. Had the land not been set aside it would probably look like any other area of Toronto – a mixture of condos, apartment buildings, businesses, houses for wealthier families, and the occasional small strip of grass or flowers.

This isn’t only John’s story, though. If you live in a country that has parks there are reasons why that land was set aside. At some point a man or woman deeded that land to your community or fought for the funding to keep it maintained.

Respond

Sometimes there are plaques or small monuments honouring these individuals. The next time you’re at a national or local park keep an eye out them and then come back here and tell us what they had to say.

Final reminder – tomorrow is the last day to take the survey on this blog I talked about earlier this week. 

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poetry, videos, photos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

No. Sometimes all it takes is one person to stand up and say, “No.” What happens next isn’t as important as letting those around you know that not everyone agrees with what is happening.

Horn of Africa: On the Brink of a Humanitarian Crisis. I wish this photo essay could have included examples of what life was like in this area of the world before the drought. There are powerful photographs in this collection but it’s odd that those of us in the west almost never see examples of happy people in Africa. Stories about this continent are virtually always about war, civil unrest or starvation. It’s still worth checking out, though. Sensitive readers take note: a few pictures are of dead children.

Updating High School English. Now this is a thought-provoking debate: should the books assigned to high school students be updated to include more modern selections? While there is definitely merit to exposing adolescents to stories that have stood the test of time even this avid, lifelong reader knows what it’s like to slog through a dreary book. (*cough* The Great Gatsby *cough*).

Flashed Faces Distortion Effects. One of the best optical illusions I’ve ever seen is in the video embedded in this link.

My Beliefs. I love this.

Finally, the most beautifully mouldy peach I’ve ever seen (Photo credit Luigi Chiesa):

This week I inhaled Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis. I hadn’t heard of the Athapascan Indians before but this was a fantastic legend about two elderly women who are abandoned by their tribe during a long winter of starvation. It’s so rare for any story to portray older women as heroes instead of as people who need to be saved!

What have you been reading?