Tag: NPR

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Some mornings just shock you..

I’m driving home listening to NPR, a show called The Infinite Mind and today’s episode was part II about a disease called Aspberger’s Syndrome. Oh, my God, what an uncanny sense of “Whoa…” it was. The link to the audio program (part II) is Here

Without repeating my comments, this sure sounds like a really plausable explanation for all the hassles I’ve had. It just strikes me as a voice from my past.

Sorry for the lack of updates the past few days. 12 hour shifts with no blog connectivity really don’t make for happy blogging love.

Take the time to listen to the program.

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In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.

Driving home this morning, listening to NPR on WAMU, The Writer’s Almanac pointed out that on this day in 1937, JRR Tolkien first published “The Hobbit”, and the title of this post were the first words written on the story in 1928.

What a marvelous, marvelous creation. source

Literary and Historical Notes:

It was on this day in 1937 that J.R.R. Tolkien published his first novel, The Hobbit. He was a professor at Oxford, and in the summer of 1928, he was in the middle of grading a stack of student papers when he wrote the sentence, “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.” He had no idea where the word “hobbit” came from. It had just popped into his head. He later wrote: “[Hobbits] are (or were) a little people … inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow naturally leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).”

Thank you, Mr Tolkien, may you look down and smile. Thank you, NPR, for the reminder 🙂

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About time for an update…

Been a pretty fun couple of days, but now I’m back at work. Daily commutes, daily news. Some of it is boring and repetitive, some fresh and new.

I’ve been listening to NPR a lot more these days. Seems that the reporting is a lot more in depth, about a lot more intelligent topics as opposed the day’s body count in iraq and the 60 second sound bites on the local news radio. Hey, traffic and weather is great… but lets hear some details. And don’t get me started on Iraq, Bush, Islamic Fundamentalists, or any of a host of other topics. Lets just say that I feel a significant portion of the people involved in many of the newsmaking items need their heads surgically removed from their nether regions.

Could I do it better? Yep. No doubt about it.

Plus, the other nice thing about NPR? I haven’t heard a dang thing about Brittney Spears, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Vick, or any of the other notorious celebrity wankers that pollute the airwaves to the delight of lowbrow scumdwellers the world over.

That wasn’t very nice, was it?

We, as a culture seem so fully detached from the rules of objective reality under which this universe operates. Action creates Reaction. Violence creates violence. Fame breeds emulation. The only rule we seem to follow nowadays is entropy.

A man who admitted chopping off the head of his 3 kids gets his conviction overturned after he admitted it in court… because his wife/accomplice changed her testimony??? This is sane? How?

We’re finding all sorts of plane wrecks in the sierra’s that noone ever found, and finding them now because a millionaire gets lost for a few days?

Oil companies are now raising prices because of a cat 1 hurricane in the gulf of mexico? What, is any excuse to gouge the american public acceptable now? “Britney flashed skin on national TV, time for another nickel a gallon at the pump”

I could, and probably will go on, but this insanity is totally pointless.

On the plus side: Thank you, NPR, for talking about what matters.