When was the last time you wrote a whole paragraph about how a piece of cheese tasted?
Here’s Michael Paterniti’s description after tasting an artisanal cheese in The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese:
Read MoreYes, folks, some people live in old, repurposed shipping containers—those huge, metal, rectangular boxes used for receiving goods from overseas.
You can read more about repurposing shipping containers and see some cool pictures here.
They are also being used for restaurants, art galleries, and more.
Other people choose to live in micro-units (tiny, tiny apartments) as small as 250 square feet. That’s 25′ x 10′. Measure that out in your house and see how much space that takes up.
If you were to live in a recycled shipping container or in a space as small as these micro-units, how would you arrange your living space?
Read MoreEveryone’s got them. No one is immune to problems.
Here’s Michael J. Fox, a famous actor, with his take on his debilitating and life-threatening medical condition:
Read MoreParkinson’s has made me a better person. . . . Life delivered me a catastrophe, but I found a richness of soul.
What does it take to have a happy family?
“Families that eat together, stay together. It’s that simple,” writes Denise Mann in “15 Secrets of Happy Families” on WebMD.com. Do you agree? Is it really that simple?
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the same article suggests this: “Have one or two unifying activities that the family does together on a nightly basis.” This could be reading a story or playing a game together.
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Have you read or viewed Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
You’ll find a wonderfully ironic scene in chapter XVIII. The setting is an elaborate ball. All are dressed beautifully and are on their best behavior. The dancing is organized in lines or circles, much like square dancing but much more sedate.
Against this metered backdrop we see the two main characters, Elizabeth and Darcy, dancing with each other—and arguing the whole time:
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Do you have an old spy drone or aerial photography drone lying around? You know, those unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be as tiny as a dragonfly or as large as small airplane.
The folks at Philadelphia’s Manayunk Cleaners have one. They’re using their pre-owned drone to deliver dry-cleaned clothes to their customers. Sure, they can only deliver one shirt at a time, but it’s the novelty that counts.
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The Mars One project isn’t a science-fiction story by Edgar Rice Burroughs or Ray Bradbury.
Mars One is a project that is making plans for taking scientists and colonists to Mars, scheduled for some time in 2024. You can read more about it here.
Are you in? In the United States, you could apply to Mars One for only $38 dollars. Applications are now closed. Out of the thousands who have applied so far, only 40 will be on the trip to put a human colony on Mars. But what’s the hitch?
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No, this isn’t a fun-loving film about Caribbean pirates and Johnny Depp. I’m talking about real pirates with lethal weapons who board your boat, take you captive, kill your crew, and hold you for ransom. That kind of pirate. They’re very real, and they’re very active off the shores of South America and Africa.
Being captured by real pirates is exactly what happened to Captain Richard Phillips in 2009. Captain Phillips is a movie of his harrowing experience, featuring Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips.
What did Phillips think of his experience? In a Parade interview, Phillips says this about fear
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. . . I didn’t want to add to my teacher’s already heavy workload.
. . . I put it in my pocket and my mom washed it.
. . . I visited my aunt who has this ancient fan, and my hair caught in it. I had to perform an emergency haircut with her fingernail clippers.
This prompt isn’t about homework, but it is about why things happened.
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