I am at Lake George visiting my Father.
Update: There is still more there.
Lake George is without comparison the most beautiful water I ever saw. Its water is limpid as crystal and the mountainsides are covered with rich groves of fir, pine, aspen, and birch down to the waters edge.
–Thomas Jefferson
But listening aloud, valuable as it is, isn’t the same as reading aloud. Both require a great deal of attention. Both are good ways to learn something important about the rhythms of language. But one of the most basic tests of comprehension is to ask someone to read aloud from a book. It reveals far more than whether the reader understands the words. It reveals how far into the words ”” and the pattern of the words ”” the reader really sees.
Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words. To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone. The language becomes a part of the body, which is why there is always a curious tenderness, almost an erotic quality, in those 18th- and 19th-century literary scenes where a book is being read aloud in mixed company. The words are not mere words. They are the breath and mind, perhaps even the soul, of the person who is reading.
Technology in all of its forms – social networks, smartphones, the Web, instant messaging, on-line gaming – is a net loss for today’s young people. At least according to one group of Silicon Valley 8th graders.
“It’s bad for us, but it sure is fun,” says Eric Bautista, 13, one of the students in Sister Jolene Schmitz’s junior high school class at Resurrection School in Sunnyvale, California.
Admittedly, this informal survey offers, at best, only anecdotal evidence. Still, it is pretty shocking that a group of young teenagers, all of them technologically very astute, and living in the very heart of Silicon Valley, would come to such a conclusion.
These kids, born about the time the Internet became widely adopted, live within blocks of where the Intel microprocessor, the Apple computer and the Atari video game were all invented. They spend their days (and nights) surfing the web, playing on-line games and instant messaging. Most have cell phones in their backpacks. And many have at least one parent who works in the electronics industry.
The golden rule of journalism decrees that reporters take nothing on faith, back up every story with hard evidence, and question everything. NPR’s religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty kept that rule in mind when she decided to explore the science of spirituality. She was searching for answers to the questions: Is spiritual experience real or a delusion? What happens when we pray? And does consciousness depend on the brain, or can it operate when the brain doesn’t.
Weekend Edition Sunday host Liane Hansen talks with Hagerty about her research and what she discovered while writing her new book, Fingerprints of God.
The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Friday lost its bid to recover attorneys fees and court costs from the church and some of its members who voted to break away from the Episcopal church in 2004.
The split led to a bitter legal battle over St. James’ Via Lido Campus.
“The local church is free of the specter of attorneys fees and the diocese suffered a significant defeat,” said attorney Daniel Lula, who represents St. James.
Pope Benedict XVI said that he wanted to walk in Jesus’ footsteps and experience the Holy Land first hand. So photographers waited eagerly by a turgid pool in the Jordan River for the pope to peer from a wooden promontory to a central spot in Christianity, where Christ is believed to have been baptized.
But Benedict declined to get out of the golf cart that brought him there.
Certainly an 82-year-old pope is entitled to remain seated if he likes. Yet the drive-by pilgrimage seemed to sum up his eight-day trip to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank ”” and indeed his entire papacy so far.
Astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis went on their third space walk Saturday to repair the Hubble space telescope’s camera and install new equipment. Guest host Rebecca Roberts talks about how the Hubble has impacted the world of astronomy with astronomer Dave Rodrigues, also known as the AstroWizard.
Once reserved for cases in which the life of the baby or mother was in danger, the cesarean is now routine. The most common operation in the U.S., it is performed in 31% of births, up from 4.5% in 1965.
With that surge has come an explosion in medical bills, an increase in complications — and a reconsideration of the cesarean as a sometimes unnecessary risk.
It is a big reason childbirth often is held up in healthcare reform debates as an example of how the intensive and expensive U.S. brand of medicine has failed to deliver better results and may, in fact, be doing more harm than good.
“We’re going in the wrong direction,” said Dr. Roger A. Rosenblatt, a University of Washington professor of family medicine who has written about what he calls the “perinatal paradox,” in which more intervention, such as cesareans, is linked with declining outcomes, such as neonatal intensive care admissions. Maternity care, he said, “is a microcosm of the entire medical enterprise.”
Two movements began that day. Northwestern began playing for Jaclyn, and soon after it started winning national championships, four in a row. The team is 20-0 this season and three victories from its fifth straight title. Northwestern will host Princeton in an N.C.A.A. quarterfinal game Saturday afternoon.
The players say they are just as excited about what they helped create off the field during their championship run. The team’s support of Jaclyn was a catalyst for her father, Denis, to start a charity that pairs pediatric brain tumor patients with college teams. Nearly 100 children have been “adopted” by teams like St. Bonaventure and Southern Mississippi. Three hundred teams are on a waiting list to adopt such children.
“Disney couldn’t make up some of the stuff that’s happened,” Denis Murphy said.
Jaclyn and Denis Murphy said the bond the Northwestern team formed with Jaclyn helped save her life. She is now a healthy 14-year-old freshman at Arlington High School in LaGrangeville, N.Y., where she plays junior varsity lacrosse.
I caught this one last night on the plane. Simply fabulous. Read it all.
Father THOMAS REESE (Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University): I don’t think it’s a scandal. Universities should be places where we have discussion, debate, where people of different views come together to argue, and when the bishops get involved in trying to censure people, ban speakers ”” I think it’s not helpful.
Archbishop BURKE: This is a Catholic institution which is bound by ”” its title is Catholic, its identity is Catholic ”” to uphold the moral law, and that’s the source of the scandal.
Of all the scientific mysteries, this is probably the greatest one of all ”“ how did life on Earth begin? We are not talking about how it evolved into the diversity of lifeforms we see today. We are talking about how it originated in the first place.
For all his immense insight into evolution, Charles Darwin himself was stumped. He suggested that whatever the mechanism was that had led to the first replicating lifeforms, it most probably arose in some “warm little pond”, a primordial soup of pre-biotic ingredients where the seed of life first germinated on the early Earth.
Now scientists have developed an experiment demonstrating how the very first self-replicating molecules may have formed about 4 billion years ago when the Earth was like any other lifeless planet that had yet to experience the radical transformation of living, breathing creatures.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be prepared to endorse a peace process leading to an independent Palestinian state, his defence minister has said.
Ehud Barak, a long-time rival now part of Israel’s governing coalition, spoke ahead of Mr Netanyahu’s first meeting with US President Obama in Washington.
He told Israeli TV a regional deal could be struck within three years.
The Rev. Duke Tufty, pastor, Unity Temple on the Plaza, Kansas City: I don’t believe the church or its clergy should dictate or even take a position on such a deeply personal matter as assisted suicide. Rabbis, ministers and priests aren’t qualified to determine when one should go on living and when one can be set free. That can be decided only by the person who possesses the life.
Personally, I believe if a person is facing psychological challenges that have left him or her in a deep state of despair and depression but are not life-threatening, assisted suicide should not be an available option. If a person is facing physical challenges that cannot be healed, has less than six months to live, and the illness is going to be a continual source of suffering, there should be a process where the person can meet with a panel of three physicians to decide if assisted suicide is the best option, taking all things into consideration.
In the serene hills of rural upstate New York, Kathie Breault is hunkering down for doomsday. It’s not an all-out Armageddon that the 51-year-old grandmother is convinced of, but an imminent economic apocalypse.
A few years ago, Breault began reading about what happens when the world surpasses “peak oil” — a point where we will use more oil than we can produce.
“I was afraid that any day that oil would disappear, that gas would start to disappear, that I wouldn’t be able to get to work, I wouldn’t have money, I wouldn’t have food that I needed,” she said. “It was frightening — the picture that was painted.”
Read it all or if you prefer watch the video report here.
Ten years ago, Facebook didn’t exist. Ten years before that, we didn’t have the Web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25”‘year high, work will eventually return. But it won’t look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up. We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values ”” and women will increasingly be at the controls. Here are 10 ways your job will change. In fact, it already has.
