Fascinating . The road between the Indian city of Amritsar and the Pakistani city Lahore crosses the border through the village of Wahga (or Wagah, depending on which side of the border you’re on) ...grandstand for a lively and festive celebration of nationalism. From this video, it's hard to believe they do this every single day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeSX6AZ5xEI Humans are weird

My last 24 hours, in three acts. Act I Last night, I wanted a burger for dinner. So I drove to our nearby veggie-burger joint, had a yummy dinner, then discovered the car's battery was flat. Lights on...he didn't even bother writing it up, just said how about $20. And he could've said, no guarantee he'll even be able to look at it today, but he didn't. And that is, I hope, the end of this story

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Howard Thurman

An interesting History of Hallelujah from Leonard Cohen to the 100+ covers of the song. The author suggests it's been dumbed down- the first few covers changed words and tone; and subsequent covers were...depicted and reduce them to one: the cold and broken, which appears here twice. And that's the version that gets recycled for TV and movie, it becomes a placeholder for "people are being sad now.

Staples just redeemed themselves in my books. I decided I'd call them now and get it done with rather than brood. First thing, checked getsatisfaction.com and this comment was helpful toward how I... She said fine; I just have to bring the receipt in some time; doesn't matter how long, and talk to her. (!) I think that will work out, if I can get myself up to the wilds of Staples-land again

In Pinochet's Chile, a poet held and tortured in the dictator's jails named Raúl Zurita imagined "writing poems in the sky, on the faces of cliffs, in the desert." In 1993, this poem was etched into a...of this. (I originally saw this on Google Sightseeing; there was more info in their links, and more also in the translation translation of his wp page here .) Happy Inauguration Day, everyone

Во-первых, теперь стало ясно, почему футбол кое-где называют soccer. Это слово придумали не американцы, а сами англичане. В 1863 году Football Association зафиксировала правила футбола, и для того чтобы...пельмени, пироги, борщ и блины. Причем, как я понял, блины в английском называют blintzes, потому что так их название звучит на идише – блины были популяризированы в Америке еврейскими иммигрантами

I just went to the going-away reception for a colleague of dan's, a man of many talents who is moving west to become a CTO at another University. There were hors d'oeuvre , wine, cheese. And there were...as a stepping-off point to something even better than you'd ever imagine from here, the you-of-now who is getting older and paying attention and being open to the chance that the best is yet to come