Category Archives: Voltaire

08/18/2012
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Dustin Glick, Edward R. Murrow, Grant Street Jazz festival, Ha-Joon Chang, Humanists, Isaac Asimov, LSD, Milan Kundera, Stephen Fry, Upworthy, Voltaire, Woodstock

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.” — Milan Kundera

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KICK UP YOUR SHOES

We need easy to digest aphorisms, quotes, comments, and charts today. Which is code for: I’m too lazy to come up with original stuff.

It’s a glorious Saturday morning, with the Grant Street Jazz festival set to begin in a couple of hours. See GO!, below, for the the lineup. Today’s GO! is chock-full of things to do — it’s the best events listing in Bloomington, kiddies.

Summer, at last, is enjoyable — as opposed to the earthly hell it’s been for a few months now.

BTW: Woodstock wound down 43 years ago yesterday. Today would have been the anniversary of the most miserable cleanup imaginable.

So let’s be thankful we don’t have to fish missing car keys out of LSD-tainted mud.

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Edward R. Murrow:

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Ha-Joon Chang:

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UPWORTHY:

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ISAAC ASIMOV:

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VOLTAIRE:

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STEPHEN FRY:

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Dustin Glick:

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

Indexed

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❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present & Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

Click For Full Article

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❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

◗ Frank Southern Ice Arena — Bloomington Community Yard Sale; 8am

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Basic Literacy Tutor Training, 1st of 4 sessions, call 812.349.3173 to register; 9:30am-1:30pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — One-Day Retreat: Introuduction to Buddhist Philosophy in Daily Life, led by Ani Choekye; 10am-4:30pm

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Community Volunteer Fair, +40 nonprofit organizations represented; 10am-1pm

◗ Monroe County Courthouse — Backstreet Missions Fundraiser: A Slice of Heaven, homemade pies; 11am-3pm

◗ First Church of God, Ellettsville — Classic Car Show; 1-4pm

◗ Grant Street between Kirkwood and 6th — Grant Street Jazz Festival, featuring:

  • Mayo Jazz

  • Paul Kirk & Dave Bruker Duo

  • Craig Brenner Duo

  • Monika Herzig Trio featuring Janiece Jaffe

  • Jazz Fables led by David Miller

  • Postmodern Jazz Quartet led by Jeff Isaac

  • Café Cubano

  • IU Jazz Faculty: Pat Harbison, Tom Walsh, Luke Gillespie, Jeremy Allen, Steve Houghton, Michael Spiro;

  • 1:30-11pm

◗ Trained Eye Arts — Writers Guild Social & open mic, potluck snacks & beverages, 3-minute readings of original writings; 3pm

◗ IU Cinema — Live action shorts from 2012 Seattle Children’s Film Festival; 3pm

◗ Housebar — End of Summer Gala, food, alcohol, live music:

  • Tim Baker

  • Deadghost

  • The Vorticists

  • Jerome and the Psychics

  • !mindparade

  • Elephant Quiz;

  • 5-11pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series, “The Well Digger’s Daughter”; 6:45pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Beasts of the Southern Wild”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Travis Creek; 7-9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Suzette Weakley, Broken Fences; 7-9pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — Drama, “Solana”; 7:30pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Dave England & the Haters, Forest Gras Experience; 7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series, “The Pigeoneers”; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Nick Griffin; 8pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Williams & Company; 8pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series, “Polisse”; 8:45pm

◗ Max’s Place — Honey Locusts; 9-11pm

◗ The Bluebird — Dot Dot Dot; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Bobby Bare Jr., Prayer Breakfast; 9:30pm\

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Cootie; 9:30-11:30pm

◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Oldies Night: Elvis, Beatles & Stones Dance Party; 10pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Nick Griffin; 10:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Carpenter & Clerk; 11pm

ONGOING:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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12/19/2011
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A Home of Her Own, Exotic Pets, Kim Jong-il, Maya, Meso-America, Mike Cagle, Nancy R. Hiller, North Korea, Pitz, Soma Coffee, Tyler Ferguson, Voltaire

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“Clever tyrants are never punished.” — Voltaire.

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WHIP ME, BEAT ME, TELL ME YOU LOVE ME

According to news reports, large groups of people in Pyongyang and other Democratic People’s Republic of Korea locales are stopping in the middle of their streets and spontaneously bursting into tears.

Their big boss, Kim Jong-il, has died.

Further proof that no matter how much a despot crushes them, too many people in this mad, mad, mad, mad world dig being under someone’s thumb

Kim And Some Other Bully

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CHIMPS IN THE HOUSE

The Herald Times reports that Indiana state law does not govern the keeping of primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees as pets. The deep-thinkers in the state legislature, though, have demonstrated enough foresight to draw up regulations covering lions and crocodiles in the home. Phew.

Do I need to say this? If you yield to your burning desire to keep a chimp as a pet, you deserve it if he tears your face off.

Trust Me — He Doesn’t Want To Live In Your House

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A GREAT BOOK MAKES A GREAT GIFT

Nancy Hiller

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Look, it’s the last week of the Christmas shopping orgy. If you don’t buy at least one copy of Nancy R. Hiller‘s gorgeous book, “A Home of Her Own,” as a gift, well, there’s nothing medical or psychiatric science can do for you.

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

A no spamily, no brattle zone.

◗ For years I’ve been saying I don’t trust people who don’t have books in their homes. My gang generally displays their books the way Ma & Pa Normal show off their wall-sized TVs or their new gas-guzzlers. But I had a nice conversation with Tyler Ferguson at Soma Coffee Saturday. We chatted of this and that and at one point she confided that she doesn’t read books, which surprised me because she’s a pretty smart cookie.

Tyler pointed out that she’s unable to sit still long enough to read. Can’t argue with that because she has the energy of the uranium atom. She’s involved with every single sport that has ever been concocted by the human mind. In fact, I hear she’s trying to start up a pitz league here in Bloomington. Pitz was a game played by pre-Columbian Meso-Americans starting around 1000 BCE. It was similar to volleyball, but was played with solid rubber balls. No word yet on whether Tyler’s new league will include the ritual human sacrifices of captives and slaves or the beheadings of the losing team’s captain that so thrilled the Maya and other crowds.

Anyway, how can I turn my back on Tyler Ferguson, one of our town’s true characters? I trust her with my life, or at least my laptop while I run to the restroom.

So I’ll amend my pronouncement: I don’t trust people who don’t have books in their homes — except for Tyler. Otherwise, I agree with the slogan in the Wall Photo shared by Mike Cagle and Craig L. Worrell: “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fk them.”

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