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Friday, March 24, 2017

Green Thumbs Everywhere

From the LA Times -

Grow blueberries on your patio: They're perfect for small-space gardening.
By Jeanette Marantos

http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-how-to-grow-blueberries-on-your-patio-20170314-story.html


Noticeably Absent

From the list is Trump.

From the Washington Post -

Cubs mastermind Theo Epstein is No. 1 on Fortune’s ‘greatest leaders’ list. The pope is No. 3. 
By Marissa Payne

The Chicago Cubs winning the World Series was a big deal. Like, a really big deal, according to Fortune, which put the team’s president, Theo Epstein, on top of its “World’s Greatest Leaders” list on Thursday. The 43-year-old baseball mastermind beat out Chinese businessman Jack Ma, the executive chairman of the ever-growing Alibaba commerce empire, as well as No. 3 Pope Francis — you know, the head of the Catholic Church.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/23/cubs-mastermind-theo-epstein-is-no-1-on-fortunes-greatest-leaders-list-the-pope-is-no-3/?utm_term=.f24b2adf6504

PB&J to the Rescue!

From ESPN -

The NBA's Secret Addiction
ESPN exclusive! How one performance-enhancing sandwich has spread through the NBA.
by Baxter Holmes

The legend has been passed down by NBA generations, chronicled like a Homeric odyssey. The tale they tell is of Kevin Garnett and the 2007-08 Celtics, and the seminal moment of a revolution. Bryan Doo, Celtics strength and conditioning coach, recalls it as if it were yesterday, how before a game in December of that season, an unnamed Celtic -- his identity lost to history, like the other horsemen on Paul Revere's midnight ride -- complained to Doo of incipient hunger pangs.

"Man, I could go for a PB&J," the player said.

And then Garnett, in an act with historical reverberations, uttered the now-fabled words: "Yeah, let's get on that."

Garnett had not, to that point, made the PB&J a part of his pregame routine. But on that night in Boston, as Doo recalls, Garnett partook, then played ... and played well. Afterward, from his perch as the Celtics' fiery leader, Garnett issued the following commandment: "We're going to need PB&J in here every game now."

And so a sandwich revolution was born.

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/presents18931717/the-nba-secret-addiction

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Republicans Can't Get Their S**t Together on Health Care: The Daily Show

Dance Theatre of Harlem 2017 New York Season



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dance-theatre-harlem-short-film_us_58d3fa4fe4b0b22b0d1ab3a1?fbmv326p7mzir7ldi&

From spy to president: The rise of Vladimir Putin

Random Acts of Kindness

Here's a shout out to the blog "Inspiration Made Simple" for the "Random Acts of Kindness" ideas and cards.  Thank you!

http://www.inspirationmadesimple.com/2014/08/random-acts-of-kindness-ideas-and-free-printable/

http://www.inspirationmadesimple.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/raok.pdf

Why Design Matters

From OZY -

A DESIGN EXPERT ON MAXIMIZING CREATIVITY IN THE WORKPLACE
By Eugene S. Robinson



“My biggest insight was that you could look at a product as being the manifestation or outcome of a set of interpersonal and organizational ‘negotiations,’ or battles, over subjective decisions,” Owens says, looking much younger than his nearly 50 years. At Dell, “the operations people won most of the battles,” he says, leading to machines that were cheap, modular, efficiently produced and not much to look at. Contrast with Apple’s machines, “you could see that design and marketing had won quite a few more battles — their machines were expensive, hard to produce and beautiful.”

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/a-design-expert-on-maximizing-creativity-in-the-workplace/68436


Your Brain On Edible Marijuana

Lines in the Sand: When The Beach Becomes a Canvas

Hallelujah - Brooklyn Duo (Piano + Cello)

Elmo Gets FIRED (PARODY)

Profiting From Pain

From the Huffington Post -

When White People Profit Off Of Black Pain
The controversy surrounding a painting of Emmett Till by a white artist reveals the limits of white empathy.
By Zeba Blay

What exactly are the implications of white artists creating (and profiting) off of work that depicts black trauma and black pain?

~~~~~~~~~~

Schutz’s “Open Casket” is an oil on canvas recreation of those famous photos. “Open Casket” is a weak attempt at white solidarity with black folk.

The painting makes an attempt at forcing to viewer to meditate on loss and the “radical” visibility of the black body, but it fails. Why? Because there is nothing radical about a white artist misappropriating and profiting off of black trauma.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-white-people-profit-off-of-black-pain_us_58d2a435e4b0b22b0d18ee3d?9loywrk9

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Handcrafting Papal Bells with Italy's Oldest Family Business

China's panda diplomacy, explained

Costco Delivery Coming Soon

From Consumerist -

Some Costco Shoppers Can Now Get Groceries Delivered
By Mary Beth Quirk

Costco is partnering with a service called Shipt, one of many companies that caters to the online shopping set, to offer delivery to customers in the Tampa Bay area.

From there, the plan is to expand to 50 markets and more than 30 million households by the end of this year. Shipt already works with Whole Foods, Meijer, H-E-B, Harris Teeter, and other grocery chains to offer delivery service in some areas.

https://consumerist.com/2017/03/22/some-costco-shoppers-can-now-get-groceries-delivered/

Brain Work

From OZY -

THE BIOENGINEER TRYING TO PREDICT AND PREVENT CONCUSSIONS
By Melissa Pandika

The good news: Advances in brain imaging and other technology have yielded a slew of metrics for measuring head impacts. The Holy Grail is to translate these data into biomarkers for diagnosing and preventing concussions, says Gerald Grant, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Stanford. To that end, researchers are racing to develop sensor systems that measure the forces the head sustains during an impact — with Camarillo among those in the lead. “He’s definitely a rising star,” Smith says. “Something like his mouth guard sensor will have really, really broad applications.”

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/the-bioengineer-trying-to-predict-and-prevent-concussions/76239



Athletes & Politics

From the New Yorker -

THE POLITICAL ATHLETE: THEN AND NOW
By Hua Hsu

In January, Haymarket Books published “Long Shot,” the autobiography of the former N.B.A. player and “freedom fighter” Craig Hodges. Hodges was one of the finest three-point shooters of his era, playing in the N.B.A. for ten years and winning two titles with the Chicago Bulls. He was also one of the most politically outspoken players the league’s ever seen, a locker-room agitator, proselytizing to teammates and staff on behalf of grassroots political movements. And, at a time when off-court grievances were rarely aired in public, Hodges was unrelenting in his criticisms of millionaire athletes who didn’t give back to their communities. “How much money did we make here last night?” he wondered aloud to a reporter during the 1992 N.B.A. Finals. “How many lives will it change?” He went on to accuse his teammate, Michael Jordan, of “bailing out” when the superstar was asked his thoughts on the recent Los Angeles riots.

~~~~~~~~~~

Athletes have always been political. But until recently they rarely possessed the means to explain themselves. Where Hodges’s generation worked hard to ingratiate themselves with the American mainstream, today’s athletes possess a relative freedom when it comes to speaking their minds, taking risky political stands, or acting with a kind of blunt directness. It’s what makes today’s players seem so different: their capacity to share more in a late-night Instagram post than a decade of carefully stage-managed, Nike-approved Jordan documentaries. Maybe the difference between then and now is just an instinctive awareness that everything is political. The game resists our desire for it to be an escape from the rest of life, where the rules can seem arbitrary and unpredictable, and there can be one winner to every ninety-nine who have lost.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-political-athlete-then-and-now

Police Pup in Training


So Much News, So Little Time: The Daily Show