'morning, folks.

My headache would qualify as a weapon of mass destruction if some scientist only knew how to harness and then release its fury. In this brain-numbed state, I'll stick (mostly) with the words of other (at this time) more reliable writers.

More about Ralph Waldo Emerson
This link came via email from a reader who spotted it on another blog. I read five paragraphs and thought, "Hey! I should post this."

"Self-Reliance vs. Self-Esteem" by Michael Knox Beran; City Journal, Winter 2004.

From the introduction:

"Though his ghost is implicated in a mass of unintelligent policy, Emerson is at the same time necessary to any renovation we can conceive. America’s first great public intellectual, he breathed new life into methods of educating young people that have their origin in the earliest epochs of our national history and that, until not all that long ago, occupied a central place in the American classroom. More important, his vision of the goal of education—the nurturing of independent and sturdily self-reliant individuals—is a particularly American, and a particularly valuable, ideal."

This may interest the (classical) educators in our midst:

"At the heart of Emerson’s idea of self-reliance is the profoundly American idea that self-knowledge is the key to self-improvement and self-realization. Emerson argued that the object of education is to help a person find that in himself that is strong enough to be relied upon. This was not hokey ego-boostering; Emerson proposed quite specific methods of introspective learning, all of them aimed at discovering what is strong and valuable in one’s own mind.

"The challenge was to make these methods of self-betterment credible to Americans who were no longer immersed in the old Puritan traditions of self-examination and self-culture. Emerson turned to the ancient Greeks, whose philosophy was in vogue in the Boston intellectual circles in which he grew up. Today the Greek Revival in nineteenth-century America conjures up images of delicious buildings — the churches of Charleston or the porticoed mansions of New England — as well as some ludicrous art, as lapsed Puritans acted out their fantasies under austere Ionic porches. Lydia Maria Child's novel Philothea depicted a brilliant courtesan of Pericles, while Hiram Powers’s sculpture of the Greek Slave, naked and chained by her dainty wrists, made him a celebrity. Emerson, by contrast, a much more serious child of the Greek Revival, had as a student made himself 'acquainted with the Greek language and antiquities and history with long and serious attention and study,' and he used the Greek heritage in a profound and original way, mobilizing a vocabulary of self-help that derived from Plato to rephrase the Protestant idea of self-improvement in fresh and strikingly American terms."

More about Mars
"Mars rover Opportunity rolls off its lander"
"The Mars rover Opportunity rolled off its lander early Saturday, beginning the next phase of its mission to study the rocks and soil of the Martian surface for signs of water."

Set daily puzzle
We provided a link in our 1.21.2004 entry. So, what's your fastest time? (*grin*)

The recommended daily allowance

It's the weekend again. Many of M-mv's readers, thinkers, and autodidacts have children in their lives. Here's one for them to enjoy with the next generation:

Wolf Story by William McCleery. A superb read-aloud.

Happy three-month mark, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts!

We embarked on this virtual adventure three months ago today. As I wrote on Tuesday, "What began as one middle-aged autodidact's journey has become a sort of group endurance hike. Some folks have been with us from the onset; others have taken different paths or simply returned home; still others walked a mile or two with us and decided they didn't like the scenery on our trails (or the oldish gal out front). And a small group of readers pop in once in a while to check on our progress. "

On Wednesday, John S., author of the excellent "(Re)thinking" entry, replied, in part, "Just thought I'd drop a note ... to let you know that I'm still here, and that I like the scenery just fine and can't wait to see what's around the bend."

Many of the messages we received this week echoed this sentiment. Thank you for letting us know you're still with us.

(Pause for a collective contented sigh from the folks at M-mv.)

Okay. Enough of that. Time for more reading, thinking, and learning.

Wonderful news!
"The clamor over a plan to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope — and along with it, the most striking images of the universe the world has ever seen — has been so loud that NASA's chief says the decision will be reviewed.

"The pleas included letters from Sen. Barbara Mikulski and a joint letter from all members of Congress from Maryland, where the orbiting platform's operations are based.

"Hubble's fate has also become a cause for amateur and professional astronomers worldwide, and e-mails have poured in to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which coordinates the use of Hubble's instruments."

Woo-hoo!

Read the rest of the story here.

Worth reading
From "The Sage and the Magazine":
"This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, essayist, and poet who, along with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, founded The Atlantic Monthly. During his middle and mature years, Emerson was a frequent contributor to the magazine, and in recognition of this year's landmark, we have assembled a sampling of writings by and about him that have appeared in The Atlantic's pages."

Per the great Emerson: Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Snob-free
In our 1.11.2004 RDA, we unabashedly recommended Joseph Epstein's Snobbery: The American Version. If you haven't gotten around to buying or borrowing this gem but are still interested, "In a Snob-Free Zone," was adapted from the book for publication in Washington Monthly.

(Not necessarily) for women only
If you like your coffee strong and black and your Dew right out of the bottle, if at the doctor's office you'd read a prescription insert over and over before picking up People, if you boldly judge (and dismiss) paperback books with a pink covers and instinctively shy away from clubs, organizations, and events with "Mommy" in the title, then you probably demand a little more from your online reading time.

(Was that delicate enough for you? (*wink*))

Here are two decidedly "un-blahgs" that may entertain you: Apt. 11D and Mimi Smartypants.

Warning: Not for folks who are put off by frank (sometimes salty) talk and/or a sardonic, tell-it-like-it-is tone.

And another (seemingly unrelated) site (oh, and a book) that may interest some of you. (Same warning applies.) Why? Well, the folks at M-mv taught themselves a basic knitting stitch during a long winter illness this holiday season, so we're recent converts to the simple pleasure of having something to show for yourself (other than an elevated heart rate and a flat bum) after watching Law & Order. (*wink*)

Hey, and speaking of Law & Order, what is with all of the repeats? It's no secret that we tune our telly with rabbit ears (hence, no cable, no dish), so we rely on the network for our doses of L&O. While we know to expect repeats during the winter holidays and over the summer, we're a little weary of repeats in January. Ah, well. More time to read, right?

All right. Time for the PBS-like reminder.
So. If you enjoy M-mv and an Amazon.com purchase is in the cards for you, consider using one of the links on this site (like this one!) to get to theirs. Your support, although neither expected nor required, is greatly appreciated.

The recommended daily allowance

In our 12.6.2004 and 12.31.2003 entries, we recommended the new translation of Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes; Edith Grossman translator).

If you haven't surrendered yourself to this wonderful book yet, check out this review in The Atlantic.

An excerpt:

"I first read Cervantes's comic masterpiece in my early teens, in the classic Samuel Putnam translation from 1949. I've just now read it through again—in Edith Grossman's superb new English version—at the age of almost fifty. By any standard I'm way ahead of the game. For surely very few people nowadays read Don Quixote even once. So incessant are the demands of modern life—wading through the e-mail, fretting about shoulder-fired missiles, shopping till one drops—that one almost craves a masterpiece-free zone, a place in which one doesn't have to worry about the timeless (and guilt-inducing) monuments of human genius. Who's got time for timelessness?

"So the best thing to say up front, perhaps, is get hold of Don Quixote and make time for it. It will be worth the television sitcoms you skip, the thirty or so quiet evenings you spend on it. Edith Grossman actually makes it easy for you, O frazzled reader, because she has produced the most agreeable Don Quixote ever."

Yes. Yes, she has.

It's a matter of potential.

Have you been following this story?

From today's Chicago Tribune:

"By exposing a gas of 500,000 potassium atoms to temperatures a fraction of a degree above absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) and subjecting them to varying magnetic fields, the scientists were able to get atoms to pair up in a fashion that provides the basis for the mechanism of superconductivity... Because the experiment was conducted with loosely spaced atoms in a gas, it is fundamentally equivalent to conducting a similar experiment with a solid jam-packed with atoms at room temperature, Jin explained. The gas provides a way to see what is happening to atoms that would not be observable in a solid.

"Atoms are made of particles called fermions, such as neutrons, protons and electrons. Normally they can't stand being in the same quantum state together — meaning they have different fundamental qualities. That standoffishness is what gives structure to everything we see in the universe.

"But supercold temperatures do strange things with physics. One of them is to make fermions work together in a manner that generates superconducting properties.

"The paired-up atoms that result represent a state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. It is named after Albert Einstein and Indian theoretical physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, who predicted in the 1920s that certain particles called bosons could work in unison, forming up like a chorus line, when sufficiently chilled.

"Bosons are particles that carry the forces of nature, such as light and gravity."

If you still haven't registered with the Trib (quick, painless, worth the effort), here's a link to a related article.

Cool, cool stuff.

(Wo)man writer

"Since her debut in 1963, [Joyce Carol] Oates has written more than 40 novels, 26 story collections, eight poetry compilations, five drama collections, nine books of essays, a children's book, and an opera libretto (which works out to an average of more than two works per year). The Princeton writing professor picked up along the way a Rosenthal Award from the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the O. Henry Prize for Continued Achievement in the Short Story, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Lifetime Achievement Award in Fiction, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and in 1978, membership in the American Academy Institute. Arguably one of the most important living writers, Joyce Carol Oates recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about her new book, the craft of writing, the presidential election, boxing and John Updike."

"A (wo)man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity"

That's what my two youngest called me this morning. *

I think I'll renew their contract.

(*grin*)

Seriously, this is what I was talking about in our 1.21.2004 entry when I wrote, "If we readers, thinkers, and autodidacts beget one or two readers, thinkers, and autodidacts who beget one or two readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, and so on, why, 'this society' (you know, the one in which paper matters) begins to look different, no? Maybe, someday before we die, people and their potential will matter more than paper."

Kids who read, think, and learn generally grown into adults who continue to read, think, and learn. And most readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, well, they're (wo)men of if not infinite than great resource and sagacity.

_________________

* They're half a dozen years younger than the oldest. These days, then, I'm introducing them to books I met in my own childhood and with which I became reacquainted when the oldest met them. But one doesn't really get tired of Kipling, right? Not when there are kids to charm, anyway.

Nevertheless, when Flo Gibson's voice filled the van yesterday, I had to pinch myself at the stoplight, so overwhelming was the deja vu. Where and when am I? I wondered for a fast-fleeing moment. I experience the same sensation when rereading Middlemarch or The Age of Innocence, too. Who am I this time? Music and scents can undo me for a short while, as well.

Anyway... happy reading, Best Beloved.

The recommended daily allowance

Nothing like a little Rene Magritte to get you thinking outside the box.

Added later: Visit this page of the online lit site we referenced in today's resource-and-sagacity entry. Scroll down to subscribe to the Sonnet-a-Day newsletter. (Shakespeare wrote more than one hundred fifty.)

Everyone else is talking about New Hampshire...

but this is the story that most interests us this morning:

"Besides a serious malfunction that has idled the first rover, Spirit, since last Wednesday, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said they are now contending with a power drain on Spirit's newly arrived twin, Opportunity."

Maybe it was exposure to Captain Kirk and the rest of the original Star Trek crew during our so-called "formative years," but, yeah, we're a little fixated on the idea of space exploration and colonization.

The recommended daily allowance

Today the little page-a-day calendar on my desk admonishes, "If you want to be a writer, write." The quote is attributed to Epictetus, but it's boiler-plate material for published writers plied with questions from unpublished (and usually whiny) wannabes. "But how do I get started?"

Um. Write. Write. Then write some more.

Just take it bird by bird.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"

From Anne Lamott's treasure, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

A cautionary tale for readers, thinkers, and autodidacts

"A Bronx man was found barely alive in his own apartment, buried under a mountain of books and magazines, fire officials said.
Patrick Moore, of 1991 Morris Ave., was saved by neighbors who heard him screaming, authorities said.

"The neighbors, including landlord Benny Jones, 62, said Moore, described as in his early 40s, had been stuck under the literary pile for two days and appeared dehydrated when he was pulled out. 'I heard him moaning for a couple of days, but he talks to himself all the time, so I didn't pay him any mind,' Jones said."

You'll find the rest of the story here.

Heh, heh, heh. "Stuck under the literary pile for two days"? Folks, I haven't been able to get out from under the literary pile in my home for two decades! And talking to myself? Yeah, well, I do a fair share of that, too. Is anyone else seeing his or her future self in this short human interest story?

Look up!
Loved this quote from yesterday's New York Times:

"'This is exactly what it looked like in my wildest dreams,' said Dr. Squyres, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University who is principal investigator for the two NASA rovers currently on Mars."

For today's NYT Mars story, see "Eager NASA Is Bringing Mars Down to Earth." (Registration is required, but it's free, quick, painless.)

Look down!
Fresh snow! Today we'll trade some time on our home library slopes for some time on a deserted slope in one of the city parks. It's a wonderful world, isn't it?

Look.
It's been nearly three months to the day since we began this virtual adventure. What began as one middle-aged autodidact's journey has become a sort of group endurance hike.

Some folks have been with us from the onset; others have taken different paths or simply returned home; still others walked a mile or two with us and decided they didn't like the scenery on our trails (or the oldish gal out front). And a small group of readers pop in once in a while to check on our progress.

No matter which sort of reader (hiker) you are, thank you for walking a piece with us.

The recommended daily allowance

"So I decided to do it. More rashly, I announced my intention — told friends and neighbors, confidently informed my publisher, made it common knowledge among those who knew me. Then I bought some books and talked to people who had done the trail in whole or in part and came gradually to realize that this was way beyond — way beyond — anything I had attempted before."

Yeah.

That about sums it up.

The incomparable Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods.

Whoops!

We've been remiss in acknowledging the M-mv readers who visit by way of the blog listing at WTM. Making hasty amends, then:

Many thanks to the webmaster there for including "Mental multivitamin" on the list of blogs. And many thanks to the folks who click the link there and spend some time here.

We hope you decide to return, again and again.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

Regular M-mv readers may remember that in our 12.31.2003 entry (the first in our sidebar feature "On the nightstand"), we planned to provide updates once or twice a month.

Well, I just made a clean sweep through the joint and came up with this list of books that have recently kept us up late at night, gotten us up early in the morning, and/or offered us company throughout the day.

In no particular order, then:

The Doll People (Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin)
Not great children's lit but a solid, fun read-aloud for the five- to eight-year-old, toys-have-a-life set.

John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy (Evan Thomas)
Combination biography and great sea adventure.

Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery (Ivar Berg)
This has been set aside twice; life and other books intervened. It's back in circulation again, though, and worth the effort.

The River between Us (Richard Peck)
Peck is a favorite here. We press Long Way from Chicago and its sequel, A Year Down Yonder, on anyone who will suffer another of our book recommendations. This newest title is not Twain-ish, but it's "solid." It's also next month's teen book club selection.

Study Is Hard Work (William H. Armstrong)
Another book we press on anyone who will listen. It's making the rounds here again, for gems like this: "What is study? Study is, above everything else, hard work. It has always been hard work, and there are no indications at present which hint that science is going to accomplish a vitamin-capsule method of learning that will eliminate study. Study is the total of all the habits, determined purposes, and enforced practices that the individual uses in order to learn. People have objected to study for a long time."

The Toynbee Convector (Ray Bradbury)
I can't think of an experience analagous to reading Bradbury's creations.

A Mind at a Time (Mel Levine)
This is another one that was set aside, unfinished, and is being given another chance.

The Philosophical Strangler (Eric Flint)
Well, he says it's it great. (*grin*) The cover blurb from Booklist says, "Monty Python... let loose in Tolkien's Middle Earth couldn't be any funnier." Well, that's promising, anyway. (Speaking of Tolkien, apparently, The Return of the King captured some awards last night. Here's to the hobbits, elves, and men behind the film epic!)

Phule's Company (Robert Asprin)
Erm, can't personally vouch for this one, either, but the same he says, "Great! Just great!"

The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies (Heather Forest)
Wonderful retelling of an old Scottish tale. Beautiful illustrations. A read-aloud hit with girls who wouldn't be averse to the idea that fairies really did exist.

Brave Irene (William Steig)
No secrets here. We adore Steig, so one or another of his books is usually on hand. This one topped the pile today because we have another inch of the white stuff on the ground, with several more expected. "It really was cold outside, very cold. The wind whirled the falling snowflakes about, this way, that way, and into Irene's squinting face."

Hey, happy reading! And remember, if you're enjoying the un-blog, considering making your book purchases through one of our links, including this one. Thank you!

The recommended daily allowance

See above. Lots of good stuff from which to choose.

Hey! We're back.

And apparently a few of you missed us. (*grin*) Many thanks for the email messages, the links, and the heads-up on assorted "Ding-dong" (or "'Clickety-click-click") moments you observed during our absence.

So many observations, so little time.

All right.

Pushovers
Let's begin with "Mothers say they're pushovers" in today's Chicago Tribune. (Registration is free, easy, and worth your time. The Trib is good reading.) The story, based on a survey by Parents magazine, comprises less than two dozen sentences, but the last is the most memorable: "Almost 70 percent [of the mothers surveyed] say their own children behave better than most."

Really? Well. Moms. Big news! Most of you got this one WRONG. The sad fact is that less than 30 percent of your children behave moderately well for their age. The rest behave only slightly better than poorly trained one- or two-year-old dogs.

Reality check, women.

(*sigh*)

You know, I'll bet that nearly all of the mothers Parent surveyed believed their own children are brighter than most, too, if not gifted (or "scary gifted," as one mother described her child to me this week). I know, I know. Who are we to disabuse them of their foolish notions? Let them sip their Starbucks coffee and exchange "My-kid-is-an-honors-student-at-[insert school name here]" stories, right?

(*shudder*)

Going out on a limb: Let me hypothesize that nearly 80 percent of the mothers surveyed probably also read People regularly.

Ding-dong.

It's a mad, mad world, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Wield your Atlantic Monthly, your Science News, your Scientific American, your American Scholar, your New Yorker, or your Wall Street Journal proudly. Hey, and read the durned thing, too.

On to a less depressing subject...

Rovers
NASA's second Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, landed successfully last night and signaled its mission controllers back on Earth that it had survived a "bouncy" landing. And Spirit's condition has been upgraded from "critical" to "serious."

Good news!

For more information and current images, visit Mars Exploration Rover Mission. For a quick update, check out this story.

Funeral plans
But victories on Mars must be juxtaposed with news of Hubble's fate. In our 12.8.2003 entry, we linked stories about the Hubble's demise and noted, "Our eye into the heart of other galaxies, worlds and worlds beyond ours is no longer worth the investment."

Today, The Toronto Star reports, "No more shuttles will visit Hubble — ever."

But then...
Hubble's loss might be easier to bear, if we are headed back to the moon, then to Mars, and beyond.

Or not.

President George W. Bush's space plan met with enough derison that mention of it was noticeable by its absence from his State of the Union Address last Tuesday. (Yes, of course, we listened. Isn't it shocking, though, how many folks didn't? Shocking, sobering, ultimately, not just a little scary, you know? Anyway, for an interesting perspective, check out this annotated version of the Address.)

It's hard to predict what will happen. There are no political analysts or pundits preparing pithy commentary here at M-mv. Just a couple of "geek squad" types hopeful that someone (or a large, influential group of someones) will think beyond the rather simpleminded, knee-jerk, "But-we-have-so-many-here-on-Earth-who-need-our-resources" reaction and make space colonization a reality.

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
— Robert Heinlein

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
— Stephen Hawking, interview with the Daily Telegraph

A great mind
Speaking of Stephen Hawking, have you been following the news of the alleged attacks on the brilliant Professor Hawking?

Yesterday, the Telegraph reported:

"'My wife and I love each other very much and it is only because of her that I am alive today. I request that the media respect my privacy and allow me to focus on recovering from my illness.'

"[This] was the second statement that Prof Hawking, 62, who has been in hospital for the past month with a lung infection, had issued after police confirmed that they had opened an investigation into the alleged assaults.

"The current police inquiry will continue though it was conceded yesterday that it was being hampered by 'misplaced loyalty' to the scientist, who has motor neurone disease."

(Note: It is free, quick, and painless to register at the Telegraph site.)

Set daily game
"Mental multivitamin" earned a sidebar link and an entry on "Me and the Boys." Many thanks for the plug! (In fact, many thanks to all of the bloggers who have linked M-mv, either in a sidebar or in an entry. We appreciate the exposure.) As you'll read in this archived entry, Set daily game is how Beth jumpstarts her brain each morning. Give it a try.

Finally tonight...
In our 11.16.2003 entry, "About college," I noted, "The average (note the judicious and right use of the word "average") person of eighteen has not had enough life experiences to know how to chart his life's course. Leaping from one institutional setting to another, blindly and as expected, sets one up on a path of mediocrity, not discovery. It’s when we challenge the conventional wisdom (in this case, when we accurately assess the need for higher education) that we often discover the pools of talent, interest, and passion within us."

How wonderful to hear community colleges, a much derided but (for some (dare I say, many?) students) so smart alternative (particularly when coupled with an apprenticeship, part-time job, or military training) to traditional four-year college, given their "props" in the State of the Union Address and in follow-up news articles like this one.

Challenge the conventional wisdom, folks; I don't need a flurry of messages reminding me that "in this society, the paper matters."

First, bosh and rubbish on that (and I have a paper; two, in fact).

Second, for our part, let's consider that this society could use a little shaking up.

And third? Let's be optimists. If we readers, thinkers, and autodidacts beget one or two readers, thinkers, and autodidacts who beget one or two readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, and so on, why, "this society" (you know, the one in which paper matters) begins to look different, no? Maybe, someday before we die, people and their potential will matter more than paper.

In fact, in the company we keep (we readers, thinkers, and autodidacts), they already do, right?

The folks at M-mv are on holiday.

We'll see you either late Sunday or early Monday.

Until then... read, think, learn. Remember: We only get one brain.

The recommended daily allowance

"There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent."

W. Somerset Maugham in Of Human Bondage.

"Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy."

I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr., addresses the march on Washington (August 28, 1963).

Text.

Audio.

The recommended daily allowance

Hilary Hahn Plays Bach. It will make short work of the "diddits."

"Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda."

In another forum this weekend, I wondered, Am the only middle-aged person who has musically regressed (however temporarily) to his or her Yes days (thanks, in no small part, to the Big Fish trailer)?

Egads!

I simply cannot get that durned song out of my head.

"'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured for the queen to use."

I've been retro-ed most unwillingly. At this rate, the next thing you know, I'll be onto ELP's Brain Salad Surgery. You know, "Benny was the bouncer at the Palais de Danse." Or, "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend. Come inside! Come inside! There behind a glass is a real blade of grass; be careful as you pass. Move along! Move along!"

I fear that if I don't recover soon, I will end up inadvertently teaching the children in my life songs best left unsung. Example? "Black Betty," which, to my complete and utter chagrin, they know nearly as well as their Wee Sing America and Schoolhouse Rock tunes.

(*heavy sigh*)

Bam-a-lam-a-lam.

When I mentioned my most recent recent musical slip-slide, this shameful retro-ing, I was reminded that in our 12.30.2003 entry I had cautioned readers, thinkers, and autodidacts about the approaching new year:

"[A]void the dangerous slip-slide into self-pity and -recrimination that can be the thirty-six hours before January 1. (Hint: The slip-slide usually begins when you reluctantly switch from seasonal music, and in a desperate bid to find music to which you can relate, you put on a station or cd that violently jerks you back to your late teens and early twenties.) Folks, this is not where you want to be."

Nope. It's not.

But then... "Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda." And you're back in a dorm room, bobbing your head knowingly to "Your Move." And please. Don't make me tell you to which bad-hair, worse-clothes moment "Mr. Blue Sky" took me.

"Mister Blue Sky, please tell us why you had to hide away for so long. Where did we go wrong?"

(*shudder*)

Where did we go wrong, indeed.

This will pass. A little Bach here. A little jazz there. Ah, I'm nearly a grown-up again. And that's okay with me.

On that note... articles about music's effects on the brain:

"The Mystery of Music: How It Works in the Brain"

"How music affects your child's brain"

"Brain Music?"

The recommended daily allowance

It's the weekend. Many M-mv readers have children in their lives. Share the wonder of a book with them.

A Street through Time.

Brain research shows that diet and exercise are keys to living well

"As brain research advances, experts are finding that some of the physical and mental changes normally associated with aging may not actually be normal at all, but instead, the result of treatable and preventable health conditions. In fact, by some estimates, only 30 percent of physical aging can be traced to our genes. The rest is up to each individual."

More here, but the fact is, you already know what it says.

It bears repeating, though: To ensure our physical and mental health, we need to eat well, rest, and move our bodies. Sometimes we forget that. We think we can keep the hours we kept at university, even though university is buried two decades (or more!) in our past. We think we can bear the effects of our coffee-and-more-coffee-only breakfasts and whatever-is-available lunches because our dinners include a limp green salad. We think soft drinks slake thirst as well as water. We think walking to collect the day's post counts as exercise.

No. No. No. No.

All of the great books and crossword puzzles in all of the libraries of the world cannot save us once our bodies (and, by extension, our brains) begin to wear out from misuse.

This weekend, make one change that will, if it becomes habit, improve your health. Eight glasses of water. Early to bed. Even something as simple as ten sit-ups before or after each meal. One change. One improvement.

Because we only get one brain.

The recommended daily allowance

"... McDonald's has gone, all that's left is me and the words Mostly harmless. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly harmless. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well."

"... [H]e got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart-as*."

"Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did."

"Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was incredibly poor — at least no one worth speaking of."

"'The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything... Is... Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm."

Okay, so Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy isn't the usual brand of RDA, but we're fond of shaking things up a bit here, no? Besides, where else can The American Scholar (1.8.2004 RDA), The Metaphysical Club (1.10.2004 RDA), A Book of Days for the Literary Year (1.7.2004 RDA), Man's Search for Meaning (1.2.2004 RDA), and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy be such grand neighbors but on this virtual bookshelf? (*grin*)

Instructions to everything

1. Welcome!

2. Spell out your full name, surname first. Fill in the circles completely with a No. 2 pencil. Make sure your marks are heavy and dark.

3. Enter your five-digit pin number. If you do not own a touch-tone phone, hold for operator assistance. If you do not hear an alarm within sixty seconds, force the door open. If the door won’t open, try closing it first.

Read all twenty-five of Gabriel Kuris's instructions (including this: "24.b. Bathe, floss, and move your bowels daily. Do not fall in love this often.") in this week's "Shouts and Murmurs" column (The New Yorker).

And visit the magazine's main page for cartoon humor a cut above what usually passes for witty.

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Interactive English crosswords on the web. Free, fun, and good for your brain.

And now a word from our sponsor: If you enjoy "Mental multivitamin," consider making your Amazon.com purchases via a book or Amazon link on this site. Many thanks.

"[O]rdinary mortals can achieve many things by dint of hard work...

but the natural and effortless gifts of a true genius (like Shakespeare) will forever elude the diligent overachiever. By this logic genius, and geniuses, cannot be made, only born."

Indeed.

More from "Our Genius Problem" by Marjorie Garber (Atlantic Monthly, December 2002)

"The pursuit of genius is the pursuit of an illusion. As illusions go, it's among mankind's happier ones — the idea that an individual might have an exceptional and intrinsic talent for art, music, science, mathematics, or something else beneficial to civilization and culture. There's no doubt that such individuals have lived among us throughout history, and have bequeathed to us the legacy of their art and their ideas — but do they constitute an actual class called geniuses? And if so, how can we tell the real ones from the wannabes, the genuine articles from the poseurs?"

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Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

There are few things more uncomfortable than a packed movie theater in which moviegoer is wedged beside moviegoer such that each of us knows precisely which appetizer the other chose for his or her quick meal before the movie.

Bleah.

A month has passed since the release of The Return of the King, though, and the morning and twilight shows in particular generally leave plenty of room to cross and uncross your legs, to say nothing of give your popcorn its own seat.

Don't wait for the DVD. (Cliche alert, but...) This one really was meant to be seen on the big screen.

Hold your ground! Hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the strength of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of woe and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down. But it is not this day. This day we fight! For all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, men of the West!

Quotes to ponder

Talk among yourselves. (*grin*)

"The best things and people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."
— Robert Frost

"The pen is the tongue of the mind."
— Miguel de Cervantes

"Syntax must be bad, having both sin and tax in it."
— Will Rogers

"The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking."
— Christopher Morley

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men."
— Roald Dahl

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
— H.G. Wells

"Quot capita, tot sententia." (There are as many opinions as there are people.)
— Unknown

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
— Joseph Addison

"It is with books as with men: a very small number play a very large part."
— Voltaire

"We know what we are but know not what we may be."
— William Shakespeare

"Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
— Will Durant

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We've linked this before. One of the biggest stories of our time is quietly unfolding. Learn more.

"Hold on to a fast-fading formality"

A few of you dear readers, thinkers, and autodidacts have written to let me know — in civilized but certain tones — that my affection for Newsweek bespeaks a certain, shall we say, shortcoming. You were too kind to define precisely what that shortcoming might be (*grin*), but I suspect you were dancing perilously close to saying I should rely on better news sources.

And I do, which should be apparent in the variety of links we provide here.

But, yeah, I like Newsweek.

Let's all get past that now, shall we?

One of my favorite Newsweek features is the "My Turn" column, and "Leave Your Hat On, But Lose the Jeans" from the December 15 issue was memorable in that, a month later, I'm still musing on the idea that "we have lost the glamour of a not-so-distant time" by favoring our jeans (overalls) and Birks over pumps and basic black. My first thought? It's hard to keep up with sneakered set when you're wearing 2.5-inch heels. My second thought? That uniforms, not unlike those in Star Trek: The Next Generation, would end the small wars being waged in the names of style, fashion, and "making a personal statement."

I would like one that makes me look like Counselor Troy, please.

Another opinion piece that made me think, was "The Last Word" column entitled "Flown Away, Left Behind" (January 12), in which columnist Anna Quindlen noted:

We have professionalized [mothering], and in doing so made ourselves a tiny bit ridiculous and more than a little crazy... Women who eschewed the job market despite the gains of women within it sometimes wound up making mothering into a surrogate work world... [T]he unexamined child was not worth having: from late crawling to bad handwriting to mediocre SATs, all was grist for the worry mill. Motherhood changed from a role into a calling. Our poor kids.

Our poor kids, indeed.

Honestly, I’m not a Quindlen fan at all, but this insightful remark elicited a resounding, "Ayup!" from me. After all, I’m not so sure our own mothers were yanked awake at 3 a.m. by the sorts of worries that plague many of us today. (I’m practically certain that their mothers weren’t.)

Yet here we are, we women of this generation, being driven mad by the awesome responsibility of micromanaging our children’s lives, including ensuring that the next generation has all manner of wonderful and educational experiences and excitements in their lives. We seem to have far more concerns than our mothers had to jerk us out of technicolor dreams, don’t we?

Um, no. Not really. It's a misperception. And it's as Quindlen suggests, a direct result of this professionalization of mothering.

And folks wonder why I vehemently reject the "Mothering-is-hard" mindset. Man, I need my sleep, that's why! When we mothers spend too much time turning over and over the kernels of our days with the children, rubbing the less-than-perfect moments like ancient worry stones, well, let's just say it leads to a sort of self-absorption that rouses one from precious sleep far more often than, say, our former selves dare awaken us.

An aside: That last bit is vintage Joan Didion. From Slouching toward Bethlehem:

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

You may remember that a while back, we linked to an article in the Atlantic, "A Stepford for Our Times." Margaret Talbot noted, "To work as social satire today, a remake of The Stepford Wives should be as much about perfecting children as about perfecting wives."

And, by extension, as about perfecting mothers.

All right, I'm off to place my order for a Counselor Troy uniform.

Happy reading, thinking, and learning.

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The Shakespeare Sessions.

John Barton guiding Kevin Kline, Dustin Hoffman, Patrick Stewart, David Hyde Pierce, Cynthia Nixon, and others in their interpretations of Shakespeare's characters. Wonderfully down-to-earth commentary on the playwright and how his words can be given life and meaning in contemporary theater.

The one-hour documentary ran on one of the two PBS stations serving our area last night, so check your local listings.

"Mars's watery past"

"The Mars rover Spirit has not even left its landing platform yet, but mission managers say some of its major scientific goals are already well on the way to being realised. Most importantly, Spirit has detected tantalising signs of minerals that could provide the long-sought evidence of Mars's watery past.

"The first images taken by the craft's mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer — an infrared instrument capable of indicating the composition of nearby soils and rocks — show evidence of carbonates and hydrated minerals. Both of these are usually, though not exclusively, produced in long-standing bodies of water."

Cool article and image at New Scientist.

And in other space news: They've located the leak in the space station.

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Joseph Epstein is former editor of The American Scholar, which we recommended in the 1.9.2004 "RDA." His book Snobbery: The American Version spent time on the nightstand, under the pillow, and in the knapsack between enthusiastic readings when it was first published. "Why," Epstein laments, "cannot I, even so late in the day, grow into one of those admirable fellows — reasonable, tolerant, generous-spirited, honorable — that Jefferson called 'natural aristocrats' and that a liberal arts education is supposed to form but almost never does?"

Epstein wittily shivers and shimmies along compelling philosophical and psychological branches, finally wondering whether snobbery is simply part of human nature. He is emphatic about drawing distinctions between snobbery and elitism, though.

"High standards generally — about workmanship in the creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art, and much else — far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life. When the people who value these things are called snobs, the word is usually being used in a purely sour-grapes way. 'Elitist,' a politically super-charged word, is almost invariably another sour-grapes word, at least when used to denigrate people who insist on a high standard... Delight in excellence is easily confused with snobbery by the ignorant."

Ayup.

When does this kid sleep, eat, or play Clue with his family?

"When M. gets home from school, he immediately logs on to his computer. Then he stays there, touching base with the people he has seen all day long, floating in a kind of multitasking heaven of communication. First, he clicks on his Web log, or blog — an online diary he keeps on a Web site called LiveJournal — and checks for responses from his readers. Next he reads his friends' journals... Then he returns to his own journal to compose his entries... Finally, he spends a long time — sometimes hours — exchanging instant messages... [I]f he leaves the house to hang out in the real world, he'll come back and instant-message some more, and sometimes cut and paste transcripts of these conversations into his online journal. All this upkeep can get in the way of homework, he admitted."

Um, I guess he doesn't.

More from "My So-Called Blog," in today's New York Times Magazine (free, painless registration):

"Peer into an online journal, and you find the operatic texture of teenage life with its fits of romantic misery, quick-change moods and sardonic inside jokes. Gossip spreads like poison. Diary writers compete for attention, then fret when they get it. And everything parents fear is true. (For one thing, their children view them as stupid and insane, with terrible musical taste.) But the linked journals also form a community, an intriguing, unchecked experiment in silent group therapy — a hive mind in which everyone commiserates about how it feels to be an outsider, in perfect choral unison."

(*guffaw*)

This last sentence reminds me of the first time someone pointed out that non-conformists are the biggest conformists of all.

And to think, this generation of "Marcel Prousts gone wild" will lead us as we head into our "Veronica" years. A hive mind in which everyone commiserates about how it feels to be an outsider, in perfect choral unison.

Heh, heh, heh.

Can you say, "Dystopian novel"?

Seriously, yank the plug on these kids. Soon. Get them to the park. The library. The community center. The football field. Gather them around the family dining room table for a crash course in face-to-face communication with someone outside the hive. Please.

And thank you... to the reader with whom I swap crockpot recipes (as if!) for the link and for the kind remark.

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From The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America:

"If we strain out the differences, personal and philosophical, they had with one another, we can say that what these four thinkers [Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey] had in common was not a group of ideas, but a single idea — an idea about ideas. They all believed that ideas are not 'out there' waiting to be discovered, but are tools — like forks and knives and microchips — that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. They believed that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals — that ideas are social. They believed that ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own, but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and the environment. And they believed that since ideas are provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their survival depends not on their immutability but on their adaptability.

"The belief that ideas should never become ideologies — either justifying the status quo, or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it — was the essence of what they taught. In many ways this was a liberating attitude...."

Ayup.

Yes. I am aware that I have exhausted my supply of this particular affectation, but in the first ten days of this new year, it has been the equivalent of biting my tongue (hard!), lest by my commentary or (gasp!) opinion statements I cause offense. Then again...

Okay. Mincing out onto another philosophical limb:

Here's an idea. If you are challenged by someone's assertions or opinions, you could, of course, choose the offense-taking posture, as in, "How dare so-and-so besmirch [insert idea, activity, text, person, film, etc. here]! How he injures me when he derides [said idea, activity, text, person, film, etc.]." Huh? How can his opinion hurt you?

Think about that for second. How can an opinion hurt you? Quite simply, it can't. You can choose hurt as a response to an opinion, sure. But the opinion itself cannot hurt you. That bears repeating: An opinion cannot hurt you.

The psychic noise we hear after the collision of ideas (opinions) is a space-time in which we have a great opportunity for personal growth. I've posited elsewhere that what moves or shoves us from complacency into a place in which we can become more fully aware and alive is regular and rigorous self-scrutiny. What better time for rigorous self-scrutiny, then, than following the collision of our ideas with someone else's opinions? Yes, the process of reevaluation can hurt — a lot. But it's the process of measuring our ideas, choices, and opinions against those of others (or even against those of our younger selves or of our "ideal" selves — heavy stuff, that) that causes pain (of the philosophical variety); it is, most assuredly, not the ideas, choices, and opinions of others that hurts. So... Don't. Blame. Them.

Get it?

To blame others for holding certain views and/or stating them with confidence is foolish. Challenge their views? Absolutely. Engage others in vigorous discourse about worthwhile subjects? Yes! Attempt to get folks we regard (and even some we don't) to, if not change their opinions, than at least participate in the same sort of scrutiny in which we are engaged? You bet! Reevaluate our own beliefs in light of theirs? If we respect the source, yeah, of course. Choose to discard the new information in favor of our own? If on reinvestigating our own convictions we are confident of their value, yes, indeed. But berate others for expressing their opinion? Well, let's just say, that's not the best use of our time and energy.

An emotional response has its place, but a reader, a thinker, a learner must choose to push a little further than that initial what? anger? hurt? disgust? to understand his response to input, evaluate that input, and either maintain or realign his own view.

Enough said. I think. (*grin*)

See you tomorrow.

Can one be cautiously jubilant?

Because that is how we at M-mv feel as we await complete details of George W. Bush's plans for the reinvigoration of the space program (expected Wednesday). You may remember that in our 12.8.2003 entry we linked to an article that spoke of "building speculation in Washington that President Bush will soon announce a long-term space exploration program that could send Americans back to the moon to build a base as a first step to Mars."

Ah, yes. Visions of space colonization dance in our heads because, as Robert Heinlein asserted, "The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."

Some articles that address cautious jubilance about the space program's future:

"Not all share Bush's space optimism" in the Chicago Sun-Times

"Space Stocks Take Off on Bush Space Plan" at Reuters

"Missions to Mars, moon urged by White House" in the Boston Globe

"Space Plan Envisions Apollo As Model: Versatile Craft Is Key to Bush Program" in the Washington Post

And "Human Life on Mars" at The Sun

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According to Anne Fadiman, editor, "The American Scholar is a haven for people who love the English language and aren't ashamed to be intelligent."

Aren't ashamed to be intelligent. What a delicious phrase. To continue...

"The American Scholar is the Society's literary and intellectual quarterly, a journal whose primary agenda is to further the genre of the essay. Recent contributors include Nicholson Baker, Cynthia Ozick, Oliver Sacks, and John Updike. The journal has won three National Magazine Awards, one for Feature Writing, one for Essays, and one for General Excellence among magazines with circulations under 100,000. It is available to both members and nonmembers."

If you're hesitating over a subscription, pick up The Best American Essays 2001. This annual collection of the finest essays is always superb reading; I mention the 2001 edition specifically because it features five essays from The American Scholar, which should give you some sense of the treasures you would encounter in a subscription. Another option: Peruse back issues at the regional or university library.

Happy reading, thinking, and learning. See you tomorrow.

Tempest in a teapot

Definition: a fuss about nothing very much, or a dispute of only minor or local importance.

What are the origins of this delightfully descriptive phrase and its British cousins, storm in a teacup, storm in a cream bowl, and storm in a wash basin?

From Michael Quinion's World Wide Words:

All [of these phrases] have this idea of a violent disturbance in a small compass, by implication therefore one of little significance. The alliteration of tempest in a teapot must have helped its acceptance.

Of the two best-known versions tempest in a teapot seems to be the older, since I’ve found an example from a long-defunct journal called The United States Democratic Review of January 1838 about the Supreme Court: "This collegiate tempest in a teapot might serve for the lads of the University to moot; but, surely, was unworthy the solemn adjudication attempted for it."

World Wide Worlds is terrific fun for word lovers. Bookmark this one, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts.

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"Every one of the stories in this book is — or, at least, once was — good. I say this with confidence because no composer who ever lived would take the time and trouble to write a score for a story he knew to be bad. In fact, most opera composers, today as in the past, spend a large part of their time and care looking for a good story to set — and composers are men with outsize I.Q.'s. If they weren't, they could never master the intricacies of writing a score.

"Why, then, should there be so prevalent a conviction among our literate population that practically the lowest form of literature is the opera libretto and that there is nothing quite so ludicrous as an opera story?"

From the preface to 100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-by-Act Synopses by Henry W. Simon. (It is revised and abridged edition of the classic Festival of Opera.)

Big Bang, blogging, blah, blah

"An Australian-led team of scientists has discovered a new string of galaxies which they say challenges existing theories about the evolution of the universe.

"The team, using telescopes in Chile and in Australia, detected the galaxies about 10.8 billion light years away in a remote region of the universe, the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics said in a statement Thursday.

"With light traveling at 9.5 trillion kilometers in one light year, this means the galaxies are being observed as they appeared 10.8 billion years ago, the statement said.

"The universe was formed during the Big Bang about 3 billion years earlier — 13.7 billion years ago — so the find could give more clues about what went on in the universe when it was one-fifth of its present age."

Read more here.

All of the recent Mars, Hubble, and Big Bang news reminded me of this wonderful passage from Mark Salzman's Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Surburbia:

"All true scientists possess a childlike sense of wonder, but I think astronomers have to be the most childlike of all. Everything they study dwarfs them, in terms both of size and of longevity, and most of what they observe is hopelessly out of reach. No human being can visualize the distance that light travels in one year, much less the distance it travels in two million years, which is how far you would have to travel to reach the major galaxy nearest to our own.

"Children lie on their backs and see familiar objects in the shapes of clouds; astronomers look through gigantic lenses and see familiar objects in the shapes of galaxies, the vast, rarefied clouds of hydrogen that form the nurseries for new stars, and the expanding bubbles of heavy atons and radiation left behind when stars die in cataclysmic explosions...."

Speaking of cataclysmic explosions... or not (*wry grin*), "What We're Doing When We Blog" was a quick, interesting read. The author notes, in part, "Given the vast number of blogs, it can be very difficult to understand the breadth and scope of blogging when an editor wants 750 words in 48 hours. I've noticed this has resulted in a variety of ideas about and definitions of the weblogs — from statements that blogs are personal journals filled with the (often dull or trivial) minutiae of daily life to a belief that blogs are right-wing responses to the liberal media establishment."

Ayup.

Despite protestations to the contrary, I think the author was responding, in large part, to "Online Uprising," in American Journalism Review.

And while we're on the subject of blogs...

(*pause for effect*)

I have been unable to find news about BlogPatrol, which provided the free counter we use on this site. It's been down for more than a week now, so it's time to either remove the code and rely on the Amazon.com stats alone or remove the code and identify a new (free!) service. Input from help-desk/computer guru types is more than welcome.

And that brings us to, well, blah, blah. (You probably already figured out that I was just going for the alliterative effect there, anyway, right?) First blah: I found this link on the Kim Komando site. (Yes, I have "geek squad" tendencies. So what?)

Second blah: recent reading, writing, and thinking has reminded me of this bit of virtual wisdom (via Steven Almond) on why people are turning away from the great books:

"In my own view, it's NOT because Americans are dumb or lazy, but because they fear the chaos of their feelings. Our masters of commerce are quite happy with this arrangement. They want us in this state of terror, as it makes us more likely to obey their constant buy messages. The unexamined life, it might be said, offers an extraordinary profit margin."

Indeed.

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A Book of Days for the Literary Year (edited by Neal T. Jones).

I purchased my copy of this gem in October 1986 and treasure it still. Beautifully bound, packed with fascinating facts about writers and their work (arranged chronologically for each day of the year), and filled with photographs and paintings of authors. Worth the time and effort to track down your own copy.

"Left-haired"?

Did you see this funny little story?

"German scientists say whether the hair on your crown grows clockwise or anti-clockwise could affect the way their brains work.

"Neuroscientists at Bonn University are studying men's hair and say very few people have crowns that turn anti-clockwise.

"They believe being 'left-haired' could effect the way the brain functions in much the same way that being left-handed is believed to do."

And in literary history, on this day in 1903, Zora Neale Hurston was born. "... Hurston, novelist and folklorist, [wa]s born in Eatonville, Fla. Although at the time of her death in 1960, Hurston had published more books than any other black woman in America, she was unable to capture a mainstream audience in her lifetime, and she died poor and alone in a welfare hotel." Her body of work includes the remarkable Their Eyes Were Watching God.

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"The basis of most of the world's troubles are matters of grammar."

Heh, heh, heh.

The Complete Essays of Montaigne.

Are we alone in the universe?

"It's an age-old inquiry: Are we alone in the universe? In pondering it, scientists have scanned the sky for extraterrestrial signals and sent messages out into space. Taking a different approach, astronomers have now identified the most likely places in our galaxy for other inhabited solar systems to exist. The analysis suggests that up to 10 percent of the stars in the Milky Way could offer conditions necessary to support complex life."

More about this at Scientific American. Bookmark them for neat daily trivia, such as this:

Q. How old is our universe?

A. According to data collected by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, our universe is 13.7 billion years old.

Hey, and did you see this neat article?

"Government scientists are using special software, eyewear, projectors and mirrors to delve into a three-dimensional world filled with the tiny particles that make up our world.

"It's called immersive visualization. Instead of just seeing formulas on a page, it gives researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology a chance to take a look at their equations and theories, and virtually see if they will work."

Finally, some closure on the email messages and "blahg buzz" this site has generated since posting about rebuffed pragmatists, making time for literature, and developing worthwhile resolutions.

We — all of us — are on a collision course with who we are and who we think we wish we were; even the most confident of us are bound for a crack-up once in a while. My father was fond of saying that there is always someone better and worse than you: someone fatter, someone thinner; someone richer, someone poorer; someone brighter, someone dimmer. Problems arise when we perpetually find ourselves supreme (or lacking!). Those who are always convinced of their superiority? Insufferable snobs. Those who always find themselves measuring short? Worriers. There is some middle place, though, a mental space-time where we realize, Hey! I'm just right, aren't I? Room for improvements, sure! But lots of good stuff to build on.

We are rather hoping that "Mental multivitamin" is that space-time for our fellow readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. After all, you folks are just right.

As always, thank you for returning, for writing in with your comments and suggestions, and for clicking through to Amazon.com.

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Fun stuff: Merriam-Webster's Word Game of the Day.

"The growing field of luxe lit"

"Can the future of our planet be glimpsed in a line of overweight midwestern tourists in Nike caps in Las Vegas, gawking at a Harley-Davidson Café next to a fake Eiffel Tower next to a fake Egyptian pyramid, while all around Disneyesque jets of water sway to the croonings of Celine Dion? If you think the answer is yes, and this Oktoberfest of consumerism depresses you... look in the mirror!

"... Never mind how exquisitely discerning we think we are. In twenty-first-century America our stories have become one and the same: we work to consume, we live to consume, we are what we consume. And not just that; according to a recent spate of appalling—yet intriguing—new books in what one reviewer has called "the growing field of luxe lit," it seems we're all starting to consume the same things."

From Sandra Tsing Loh's article "Burgher Deluxe" in the December Atlantic.

And check out their "Books of the Year" suggestions here.

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Several M-mv readers, thinkers, and autodidacts have written to ask about Sophie's World, which showed up in our entry "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" As I mentioned, the novel in which this introduction to the history of philosophy is embedded is a little clunky, but Sophie's World is a terrific beginning for those new to and/or intimidated by the vast universe that is philosophy. Sophie and her mentor, Alberto Knox, are gentle but provocative guides.

And if you're among the crowd that yearns for more (apparently, you know who you are (*wry grin*)), then check out Dr. Raymond Nighan's "History of Philosophy" page. The site isn't pretty, but it's packed with resources. Scroll down to the chapter index hyperlinks: Each chapter includes questions to ponder and links and suggestions for further reading. As you follow one or another thought down circling and extraordinarily interesting paths, you begin to understand why the study of philosophy is a lifelong journey.

To begin, "What is the most important question that a philosopher can ask? What is mean by acquiring a philosophical disposition? Keep in mind as you read that Sophie's philosophical quest is dramatized by the puzzles she must solve in her own life."

Happy philosophizing.

Oh, and on an unrelated note: We at "Mental multivitamin" are simply staggered by both the volume and tone of email messages we receive daily. Thank you for your encouragement and virtual camaraderie. None of us realized (a) that we would have so many readers, (b) that they would return, and (c) that they would be so supportive. Honestly, wow. Thank you.

To address one question that has been asked several times now, we chose not to include a comments feature initially because it was a premium product when we began. Within two weeks of this project's inception, several free comment services were identified, but by then we were already receiving more email messages daily than we'd ever have time to address. Moreover, we had (and have) concerns about the (potential) content of a comments section, given that the site is public and that its traffic is greater than we had ever anticipated. (The number of click-throughs to Amazon.com from M-mv told an amazing story even before we added the counter. Again, wow. And thank you.) We haven't the time or inclination to police comments, yet we want to control all content presented to our readers, so... no comments feature. Please, though, feel free to continue sending us your comments and recommendations. (See the sidebar to email us.)

Again, thank you.

Photos from Mars

"The first images NASA's Spirit rover sent from Mars showed a landscape scattered with small rocks that brought cheers from scientists when they caught sight of the black-and-white photos."

Story here; images here.

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"There is a place for the philosophical investigation of language, as there is a place for the philosophical investigation of anything else — of mind, of logic, of science, of art, of morals, of politics, of sociology — but not more than that. To regard the philosophical investigation of lanaguage as more important even than, shall we say, the philosophical investigation of music seems to me a mistake. As for a linguisitic approach to philosophy as such (as distinct from the philosophical investigation of language) there is, in my view, no place for that as anything other than a mental exercise in preparation for other tasks.

"Anyone who truly believes that the real task of philosophy is to clarify utterance must believe that non-linguistic reality presents us with no philosophical challenges... In my heart I do not really understand how anyone can actually believe there are no non-linguistic philosophical problems about the nature of time, or space, or physical objects, or causal relationships, or the existence of free will...."

Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee. Cool stuff.

Well. It's not Shakespeare, but...

"It has been attacked for being blasphemous, previews have been cancelled and it has been an intellectual, technical and logistical nightmare to stage. But even before the critics are allowed in today, the National Theatre has found itself with another enormous hit on its boards.

"The bad news is that, unless you have already bought tickets, you won't see His Dark Materials, the two-part, six-hour theatre adaptation of Philip Pullman's bestselling fantasy trilogy of children's books of the same name.

"Every one of the 126 performances in the National's 1,110-seat Olivier auditorium, is sold out until the end of the run on March 20, apart from 30 tickets available each day on the day.

"The epic adaptation, which becomes 'event theatre' twice a week when the two three-hour parts are performed as a demanding double bill, is critic-proof whatever the professionals' verdict today."

The complete story, "Daemons leap into limelight as Pullman's dark fantasy takes life on stage," is at the Telegraph. Registration is free, easy, painless.

Lost? Ah, well. You have to have a special place in your reading life for edgy, cross-over young adult/adult fiction. If you do, click here.

Some time ago, I added the History Channel's "This Day in History" to my favorites, but for some reason, the site is not part of my regular rounds. I visited there today, though, and learned that on January 3, 1959, President Eisenhower signed a special proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the forty-ninth and largest state.

Like "A.Word.A.Day" (today's is cineaste, by the way), "This Day in History" is a neat mental warm-up.

By the way, happy birthday, Mr. Tolkien. Frodo lives.

The recommended daily allowance

"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

From Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

The sounds of silence

In the wake of the Beagle 2's silence, we will hear more about the rovers NASA hopes to land on Mars this month.

"NASA calls Spirit and Opportunity the most sophisticated robots ever sent to another planet. If successful, they should roam farther and accomplish more during their 90-day missions than Sojourner did during its own three months of activity."

...

"Spirit was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in June and Opportunity took off in July. During their flights, adjustments were made in their trajectories to ensure that the landers carrying the two rovers entered the Martian atmosphere on course."

All right, Beagle fans. Let's pin our Martian hopes onto another mission, shall we?

On an unrelated topic... help me identify this reasoning fallacy. A man confides a weakness in himself. Nothing big. Just something he'd like to address. He asks for advice about how others have coped with similar situations. Predictably, most folks offer pseudo-concern, sharing their stories (the ones that begin, "Oh! Well, when I..."). One or two listeners, however, are more pragmatic, offering concrete suggestions for change. The guy asked, after all. But the man doesn't like the challenge inherent in their matter-of-fact assessment of his concerns. So a friend draws him aside, comforts him by pointing to a flaw, affectation, or less-than-perfect trait in someone they both admire. "See?" reassures the friend. "So-and-so likes to [insert activity here]. So it's just fine if you do, too. In fact, it's practically desirable that you engage in said activity." The man feels better. The pragmatists are rebuffed.

Quick! Anyone? What's the fallacy?

The recommended daily allowance

Have you seen this week's issue of People?

Oh, for gosh sakes! I'm kidding, folks! Kidding. Sheesh. (And if it bothers you that much, consider why... then do something about it.)

Timeless advice from Marcus Aurelius:

"Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time — even when hard at work."

Meditations. Savor it.

Yeah, and a happy new year to you, too.

First of all, "Ding dong!" to all who write "explaination" for "explanation" and "loose" for "lose." These are not typos; these are careless errors. Don't you make them, dear readers, thinkers, and autodidacts.

Another careless error: paragraph clumping. Do not do this. Sentence on top of sentence with nary a break. Egads. If your last name is neither Joyce nor Faulkner, do not do this. Akin to using all lowercase letters when your last name is not cummings, paragraph clumping is an affectation, at best; an indication of muddled thinking, at worst. I entreat you: Don't do it.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm still under the weather, which makes me feel nearly as cranky as Harold Bloom and as curmudgeonly as The Underground Grammarian himself.

Argh.

And another thing.

I can't remember where I read this gem, but somewhere in my 'net travels last week, I read that bloggers can be defined loosely (note the correct use of this word) as either writers or linkers. This over-simplification made me wonder what kind of (un-)blog "Mental multivitamin" would be (to say nothing of fervently wish more bloggers who fancy themselves writers would stick with linking — or back out of the online journaling business altogether, but... some other time, some other place).

Anyway, several of the email messages we have received over the last two months have either begun or ended with this sentiment, "Thank you for making me think."

Ah. All right, then. "Mental multivitamin" is a third category of blog — writing, linking, and thinking.

Now. Setting sickly petulance aside, let me address this worst-excuse-of-a-holiday: New Year's Day.

In another forum I visit, I advised a poster that she might need more space and time in which to think, write, and read. My suggestion prompted one of those, "Oooooh! How do you do it?" replies (not from the original poster, by the way) that I receive often in both virtual and real life. I'm betting some of you fellow readers, thinkers, and autodidacts hear this a bit, too, especially after sharing the title of the book you're reading. I've revamped my response and reprinted here because I am growing weary of explaining my commitment to autodidacticism (which, in my world, is a fancy way of saying "quality me time," emphasis on quality).

Response:

By nature, I am inclined to shake my head and paste one of those "I-will-not-under-any-circumstances-take-this-bait" smiles on my face when one or another (wo)man I meet asks, "How do you do it?" To me, prudently used personal space and time are as important as air and food and a reasonably comfortable bed, so the person who can find the nearest Whole Foods, Gap, and Starbucks but seems unable to locate something as essential as the time to read quality literature is, well, to be kind, a, shall we say, mystery.

How, indeed.

Start here: If you want it, you will make time for it.

"How do you do it?"

Such inquiries usually come from folks who assure me that they just love to read. "Oh? What are you reading right now?" It's never good news.

Oprah picks. People magazine. The Left Behind series.

Argh!

Unlike feeding our bodies with junk food as a method of stress-rewarding (think ice cream, M&Ms, Starbucks confections, or Dew), feeding our minds with junk doesn't even have associated sensuality, not even the cheap, quick variety that a cold Dew can offer. Mental junk is as empty as empty gets.

"How do you do it?"

If you listen carefully, you'll usually hear the note of moral superiority and/or condescension in the question. After all, the inquiry often comes from someone whose schedule is so full, so busy, so important that all he or she has time for is People or a computer mag or headline news. "How can I do what you do when I'm so much busier than you?" What?!? In the sample of this un-blog's readers alone, we have folks who are working multiple jobs and/or jobs with excruciating schedules, parenting, home-educating, coping with illnesses great and small, caring for aging and sick parents, and juggling two or more of the above demands. All this and they're still reading, thinking, learning.

How?

Simple.

They want it more.

Happy New Year to all who want it more. You're my heroes.