Here is this week’s list of blog posts, quotes, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.
Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it. – Fred Rogers
On the Significance of Digitally Documenting Zoo Visits. What children really learn when they visit the zoo. This is the kind of stuff I love doing with my nephew and his parents when we’re in the same city. Kids see things with fresh eyes that adults have long since learned to explain away.
Does This Path Have Heart? This is my life philosophy as well.
To the Guys Who Threw Eggs at Me Tonight via Scalzi. I love this blogger’s sense of humour and no-nonsense approach to people who think they can bully her about her weight.
Wrench. An exquisitely detailed article about what it’s like to work in a bike shop.
Flip The News – NSFW Survey Results. A few weeks ago I retweeted a link to a sex survey the owners of this blog had compiled. The results, while not at all scientific, are fascinating. What modern society says about the sex drives and preferences of men and women, straight and LGBT, young and old is often the exact opposite of what these groups self-report.
(Untitled). When I look at this painting I see a darker, grown up version of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is seeking the wizard not to find her way home but to piece her life together again…starting with her own body. (No, this isn’t a gory piece). What do you see?
Safe Sex: Choose Your Own Adventure Style! Now this is a creative approach to safer sex. Our parents (probably) don’t know this, but I may or may not have given one of my siblings condoms when he was in high school. I was quite irritated with fear-mongering, abstinence-only sex ed in our community and wanted him to be safe when he decided to become sexually active.
Just Another Monday – Almost via Brudberg. How would you react if you found graffiti on your property?
I first read Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep? in high school. Every few years I return to it and am amazed by something new in it.
Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who slowly begins to question the morality of destroying the androids he is being paid to hunt down. This book is set in 2021, a time in which humanity has caused the extinction of a huge percentage of the animals that used to live beside us. There are android-ish versions of many of the creatures that used to really exist as well.
What I loved and love the most about this book is how blurry the lines become between “real” and “artificial” people. It would be difficult to name the philosophical questions this plot twist brings up without giving you spoilers, but sufficed to say this is one of those books that asks hard questions and doesn’t accept wishy-washy answers.
What have you been reading?