more from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:
...[H]e wondered what had lately become of his former . . . was friend the word? He seemed more like a succession of extraordinary events than a person. The idea of him actually having friends as such seemed not so much unlikely, more a sort of mismatching of concepts, like the idea of the Suez ( Read more... )

from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams:
Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology, or "Reg" as he insisted on being called, had a memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra Birdwing butterfly, in that it was colorful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost ( Read more... )

from dailydharma for Sept. 6, 2010 ( Read more... )

from the signature for the A.Word.A.Day for May 22, 2011 ("tyro"):

"Only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can't forgive themselves."
--Paul Auster, novelist and poet (b. 1947)from the sig for ( Read more... )

A teacher, out of compassion and love, seeing that somebody is suffering, gives a path. But each individual has to walk on the path. There is no magical miracle with the teacher. Totally out of the question. He only shows the path. That is the only role of the teacher, nothing else.
--S.N. Goenka

from part 3 of 3 of The Daily Show's extended interview with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about "Race to the Top" (Thu, Feb 16, 2012):

(starts around 2:15)
Jon: What would you say, then, to teachers that--and i, to be completely honest with you, even before the show, teachers were raising their hands and like, "Hey, i'm a teacher, man, and ( Read more... )

( Really long )

I'm playing Guild Wars a bit more lately. And i seem to be having a streak of good luck. A couple of days ago, i managed to replay (and win!) the Aurora Glade mission in order to add it to my storybook. (The storybook is an item that automatically records the storyline of the game as you win each mission. After accumulating a minimum number of ( Read more... )

In Guild Wars, every day there's a new Zaishen Mission, which is a quest that asks you to replay a given mission from Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, or Eye of the North in exchange for gold, experience, and trinkets called Zaishen Coins which you can use to purchase in-game perks and buffs. Yesterday the Zaishen Mission was Bloodstone Fen, which ( Read more... )

That's the best way i can describe the sensation i felt upon receiving confirmation from an authority figure that I was correct and the rest of the stinkin' world was wrong ( Read more... )