People who study children prone to flinging themselves on the floor at the mere mention of broccoli agree that calm, repeated exposure to new foods every day for between five days to two weeks is an effective way to overcome a child’s fears.

My wife and I are reading aloud Magic for Beginners, a short story collection by Kelly Link (featured on NPR's books not to miss). On the first page is a wonderful description of The Garment District, a wonderful thrift store in Boston:

We’d take the train into Boston, and go to The Garment District, which is this huge vintage clothing warehouse. Everything is arranged by color, and somehow that makes all of the clothes beautiful. It’s kind of like if you went through the wardrobe in the Narnia books, only instead of finding Aslan and the White Witch and horrible Eustace, you found this magic clothing world – instead of talking animals, there were feather boas and wedding dresses and bowling shoes, and paisley shirts and Doc Martens and everything hung up on racks so that first you have black dresses, all together, like the world’s largest indoor funeral, and then blue dresses – all the blues you can imagine – and then red dresses and so on. Pink-reds and orangey reds and purple-reds and exit-light reds and candy reds.

10. Whale-Feces Researcher - They scoop up whale dung, then dig through it for clues
9. Forensic Entomologist - Solving murders by studying maggots
8. Olympic Drug Tester - When your job is drug testing the world’s top athletes, there’s no way to win

7. Gravity Research Subject - They’re strapped down so astronauts can blast off
6. Microsoft Security Grunt - Like wearing a big sign that reads “Hack Me”
5. Coursework Carcass Preparer - They kill, pickle, and bottle the critters that schoolkids cut up
4. Garbologist - Think Indiana Jones— in a Dumpster

3. Elephant Vasectomist - When your patient is Earth’s largest land animal, sterilization is a big job
2. Oceanographer - Nothing but bad news, day in and day out

1. Hazmat Diver - They swim in sewage. Enough said.

Last week I mentioned I'd be flying China Eastern from Los Angeles to Beijing. The flight was 3.5 hours late because they couldn't get the lavatories to work (Take your time, make sure those babies are fully functional!), and when we got on board, we were informed that the in-flight entertainment system was broken (keep in mind the flight was over 12 hours long). Since then, I've flown within China three times (Shanghai to Beijing, Beijing to Xian, Xian to Beijing), and on two separate Chinese airlines I've encountered an awesome in-flight innovation. Soon after departing Shanghai, an enthusiastic Chinese narrator (with subtitles in English) begins describing the plot of Monster-in-Law (J-Lo and Jane Fonda): he explains, Jane Fonda thinks J-Lo is not good enough for her son, after which we see one scene of the film demonstrating this point. He continues moving the plot forward and showing us a representative scene until he asks, How will it end? And then we see the climactic wedding scene. We saw everything we needed to see of Monster-in-Law in ten minutes. AWESOME! On the trip to Xian (and the trip back, with identical entertainment), I got a summary of Notting Hill and of Elizabethtown. As the narrator said (per the English subtitles), "The perfect ending will satisfy audiences. They was together at last." as we watch Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts walk down the aisle. Golden.

Here now is a mere sampling of your antics from a single day, May 13, 2006, as recorded by your fellow residents.

7:30 a.m.

When Mr. Nichols was stretching
before his morning laps.

STATLER: Do you think it's right for a man of his age to be swimming?

WALDORF: Sure ... with the fishes!

9:42 a.m.

As Mrs. Needlemyer was floating in the pool.

STATLER: Waldorf, quick! Call Sea World! One of their whales is swimming in our pool!

WALDORF: That's not a whale! That's Mrs. Needlemyer. Can't you tell the difference?

STATLER: Of course. Silly me. Whales aren't nearly that big!

His core discovery, of how to get spatial information about atoms in a magnetic field, was scribbled on a paper napkin over dinner in a Big Boy restaurant in Pittsburgh, between two bites of a hamburger.

Visa thinks a contactless digital transaction takes less than half the time of a cash one and that people liberated from what happens to be in their wallets spend a fifth more.

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

 

We think that they are Nature’s poetry,

and the most egalitarian of her displays, since
everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

 

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it.
Life would be dull if we had to look up at

cloudless monotony day after day.

 

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the
atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of
a person’s countenance.

 

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save
on psychoanalysis bills.

 

And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!