Mind Matters One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern LifeBy Mitch HorowitzCrown Publishing, 2014352 pp.; $24 cloth George Orwell once wrote that you had to be a part of imperialism in order to hate it. A comparable sentiment drives author and editor Mitch Horowitz’s inquiry in One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. This temperament sets One Simple Idea apart from recent takedowns of the movement such as Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America, social critic Barbara Ehrenreich’s bald rejection of the cult-like mandate to treat her breast cancer with a positive attitude, and journalist Oliver Burkeman’s exploration of a “negative path” to happiness in The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. And so it is that Horowitz, sans rose-colored glasses, attempts to record the lineage of the American positive thinking movement. More useful as part of these works would have been testimonials.
A Bibliophile's Defense of Physical Books | The New Republic The committed bibliophile is cousin to the obsessive, an easily seduced accumulator frequently struck with frisson. Cram your home with books, and you’re lovingly called a collector; cram it with old newspapers, and you’re derisively called a hoarder. But be honest: The collector is a hoarder, too—a discriminating and noble-minded hoarder, perhaps, but a hoarder just the same. Not long into George Gissing’s 1903 novel The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, you find a scene that no self-respecting bibliophile can fail to forget. In a small bookshop in London, the eponymous narrator spots an eight-volume first edition of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. “To possess those clean-paged quartos,” Ryecroft says, “I would have sold my coat.” A pleasing vista onto the early twentieth-century life of one English writer, Gissing’s autobiographical novel is also an effusive homage to book love. What does it mean when what you own is essential to who you are?
The Short Story Podcasts Broadening the number of resources The Short Story brings its readers, we are extremely pleased to provide this set of podcasts, courtesy of the Florida Centre of Instructional Technologies (FCIT) from the University of South Florida (USF). In due time, we hope to provide a greater number and range of podcasts to TSS. If you would like to offer your own recordings, please contact us as at info@theshortstory.co.uk to discuss the details. This set of twenty five short story podcasts is from Sherwood Anderson’s influential short story collection Winesburg, Ohio (1919). Source: Anderson, S. (1919) Winesburg, Ohio. New York, NY: B.W. 1.The Book of the Grotesque An aging writer ponders the many people he has met and the stories he has heard in his lifetime. Audio Player 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.Death, concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard As her life comes to a close, Elizabeth Willard shares her life experiences with Doctor Reefy.
Omniscient Gentlemen of The Atlantic | | Notebook Maureen Tkacik [from The Baffler No. 19, 2012] Shepherd, show me how to go O’er the hillside steep, How to gather, how to sow,— How to feed Thy sheep. –Mary Baker Eddy Not long before The Atlantic’s parent company announced its swing into a profit-making business model despite operating in the most moribund corner of a publishing industry, I sat in a glass-paneled press room next to a small auditorium on the second floor of the Washington Newseum and took in the incipient profitability. The din of younger colleagues tapping keyboards is never soothing, but sitting in the press room of the Ideas Forum felt like a human rights violation. [New York Times financial correspondent] rankles [Treasury Secretary] with questions such as “What do you think is the most important thing the team has gotten right?” Omniscience is the operating principle by which everyone understands everyone else in Washington, D.C. Quinn wore a light beige pantsuit with a pink blouse that conjured the seventies.
6 Books to Kick Off Post-College Learning This piece was written by Noodle VP of Operations Adam Shapiro. You went to a good college. Learned a lot. (Certainly paid a lot.) But did you acquire the entirety of knowledge necessary to be a fully functioning contributor to the betterment of society? (Or at least someone who can contribute to the victory of your pub trivia team?) No? With your college education and these books, you'll know everything worth knowing. An Incomplete Education 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't An Incomplete Education answers thousands of questions with incomparable wit, style, and clarity. Mental Floss Presents: Condensed Knowledge A Deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again A great magazine cooked up this hearty helping of brain-food. The Lazy Intellectual Maximum Knowledge, Minimal Effort It's a small-attention-span world out there, and not everyone's interested in paging through lengthy tomes to deepen their intellect. The Philosophy BookBig Ideas Simply Explained
Free Music Downloads Online for Educational Use | Royalty Free Music Who says you can't get something for nothing? Royaltyfreemusic.com offers a variety of FREE high-quality royalty-free items, including royalty-free stock footage, royalty-free sound effects, royalty-free clip art, royalty-free images, royalty-free photos, and of course, royalty-free stock music. Our free Royalty Free Music section provides you with the resources you need to complete a variety of educational, personal, and non-profit projects. Need to put together a school presentation by tomorrow? Check out our collection of free royalty-free stock photos and free PowerPoint music for images and slideshow music that are certain to impress your teacher. If you are an educator who would like to use royalty-free music in your classroom, click the Free Music Programs link to submit an application to download stock music free of charge.
Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? | World news | The Observer Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. The sign outside her building says "Clinic". Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. The number of single people has reached a record high. Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. Official alarmism doesn't help. Japan's under-40s won't go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. They don't seem concerned.
Story Cartel Step 8: Cools tools to embed Welcome to the seventh step in our free professional learning series on class and student blogging! The aim of this step is to introduce you to a range of easy to use online tools that you can embed into posts and pages. We’ve embedded examples of each tool in this post to help you work out how the tool could be used with your students. Back to Top Why enhance posts with interactive tools If you look closely at class blogs you’ll notice many of have cool interactive tools embedded in posts and pages. There’s a gazillion online tools nowadays and most of them provide code that you can use to embed what you’ve found or created into your posts or pages. Below are popular tools used by educators by activity type to help get you started. Tools were chosen on the basis of their popularity, easy of use and being able to be embedded into posts/pages.Back to Top Audio Hosting Websites AudioBoo AudioBoo is a website, and a smartphone and tablet app, which allows users to post and share sound files. Voki