marlins:

Max effort, Ichiro.

Ichiro! He is the same age as Bartolo Colon, playing for a terrible team that is actively trying to trade all its good players. He is a Japanese-American hero. 

(via simonbobx)

fangamerlive:

We’ve been working all night locking down pieces of Camp Fangamer, which is somehow A WEEK AWAY. Jack and Jenna spent today doing some special effects work. 

It just passed its first, most important test. - Dan

Camp Fangamer’s going to be really dumb and I hope you like it. 

"Sometimes [Father Urban] could be seen moving slowly about the grounds, under the great oaks, reading his office, and wearing his cassock—he had decided against slopping around in slacks while there. Once he saw Mrs Thwaites watching him from one of her windows, and tried to get a squirrel to take a green acorn out of his hand, but it wouldn’t, nor would a dove."

J.F. Powers, Morte D'Urban

"

In appearance and deportment, the President recalled to Washington an earlier federal period. His clean-shaven face, in a day of prevalent whiskers and mustaches, was an anachronism that matched the demeanor of an old-fashioned statesman. McKinley was gracious but not informal, colloquial without familiarity; and, so far as was compatible with the dignity of his office, he dispensed with ostentation and parade. Avoiding the lax and desultory protection offered by the Secret Service Bureau, he walked freely through the streets without a guard. Washington, recently unaccustomed to the sight of a President on foot, applauded the advent of a plain citizen to the White House.

McKinley’s personal habits were lightly touched by the transition to the Presidency. He did not smoke in public, or permit himself to be photographed with a cigar. He altered his signature, which had been “Wm. McKinley” since his father’s death, and wrote his Christian name in full. Though McKinley never changed his conventional style of dress, he had a larger and more expensive wardrobe than before. He ordered a number of snowy piqué waistcoasts, often sported a vivid pink carnation in his buttonhole, and took to wearing his reading glasses suspended on a neat black cord around his neck. He shone with Sinclair’s expert valeting and the ministrations of the barber who periodically visited the mansion to cut and treat his hair, and sometimes to shave him. The gloss of grooming befitted McKinley’s position, and also reflected the new ease of his circumstances. His financial worries were over. A salary of $50,000 a year was opulence which gave scope to his naturally openhanded disposition. The President was generous to his family dependents, and to charitable and patriotic causes. He lavished finery and jewels on his wife, celebrating her first birthday in the White House with the gift of a diamond brooch; an indulged in the purchase of a fine team of bays and a handsome carriage for their drives. The “cuisine á la Canton” was by no means frugal, and many guests were gathered around the bountifully laden table. Benjamin Harrison lamented that the expense of White House entertainment did not permit the President to save money; but, without stinting the official hospitality or his own liberal inclinations, McKinley was able every year to lay aside a comfortable sum, which was invested for him by Myron Herrick or [Vice President] Garret Hobart.

An exceptional confinement was required of the President, and McKinley started out with a resolution to keep himself fit by taking outdoor exercise. For a while, he had a saddle horse in the stable; but after a few attempts to renew his pleasure in riding, he gave it up for good. A schedule of constitutionals, though more persistently followed, was gradually curtailed in length and frequency. McKinley was finally reduced to snatching odd moments for a stroll in the grounds. On fine afternoons, he usually took a drive with his wife. He went to church on Sundays. McKinley had come to Washington with a Bible text shining in his mind: “…what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” He kept his faith alight by public worship. He attended the Metropolitan Methodist Church, joining unostentatiously in the service like any other devout parishioner.

The President spent most of his time within the four walls of the Executive Mansion, breathing the close air of rooms that were stifling in the summer, overheated in the cold. It was an existence of trying and unhealthful restriction, even for an elderly man of sedentary habit, but a strong constitution and a placid mind enabled McKinley to bear the imprisonment with equanimity. The isthmus of the second-floor corridor joined the twin continents of his world. Their atmosphere differed as the heavy redolence of cigar smoke differs from the sickroom staleness of eau de Cologne and flowers. In the east wing, the President entered the domain of public affairs and the exclusive society of men. He revived a hundred associations, and delighted in good friendships, old and new. He met the members of his Cabinet in genial sessions, lively with the chaff in which this “pleasant tease” delighted. McKinley had a constant affection for [Secretary of the Navy] John D. Long and he soon saw much of [Treasury Secretary Lyman J.] Gage and [Secretary of Agriculture James] Wilson. His Canton neighbor, Judge [William R.] Day, was drawn into daily consultations as Assistant Secretary of State. McKinley brought his sympathetic Vice President into an integral relation with the administration, depending on Garret Hobart’s sound advice on many questions of government policy.

"

Margaret Leech, on President William McKinely, in her Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, In the Days of McKinley (BOOK | KINDLE)

(Source: deadpresidents)

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To my surprise this is not only still in print, but available at our local Barnes & Noble in a handsome new edition. No sign of The 80s: Countdown to Armageddon.

trollttorney:

zharzi

"… the deep critique our civilization deserves will have to be advanced without the threat of imminent destruction. The arguments in “Laudato Si’ ” will still resonate, but they will have to be structured around a different peril: Not a fear that the particular evils of our age can’t last, but the fear that actually, they can."

“Pope Francis’ Call to Action Goes Beyond The Environment”

(Source: The New York Times)

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merlin:

Uhhhh…no, thanks.

I’m good.

(Source: merlin)

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satsycomics:

Got a chance to touch this image up further.

(and again, much nicer now)

(via kingdarian)

"Another fantasy of liberal education is that the student who advances to the university should take up the study that interests him most. For a small number of students this is in the main right. Even at a very early stage of school life, we can identify a few individuals with a definite inclination towards one group of studies or another. The danger for these unfortunate ones is that if left to themselves they will overspecialize, they will be wholly ignorant of the general interests of human beings. We are all in one way or another naturally lazy, and it is much easier to confine ourselves to the study of subjects in which we excel. But the great majority of the people who are to be educated have no very strong inclination to specialize, because they have no definite gifts or tastes. Those who have more lively and curious minds will tend to smatter. No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest – for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude."

T. S. Eliot (1932)

(Source: ayjay, via catherineaddington)

Keith Green - So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt

"Universal admission to the class of “creative” people would best meet Reich’s ideal of a democratic society, but since this goal is clearly unattainable, the next best thing, presumably, is a society composed of “symbolic analysts” and their hangers-on. The latter are themselves consumed with dreams of stardom but are content, in the meantime, to live in the shadow of the stars waiting to be discovered and are symbolically united with their betters in a continuous search for marketable talent that can be compared… only with the rites of courtship."

Christopher Lasch predicting thinkpiece culture

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ayjay:

One of a series of wonderful photos of people using the New York Public Library, here, via Slate Vault.

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allthingslincoln:

When even the tiniest, out of tourists way place that offers adult gambling remembers and puts up a picture and some bunting…

"Chief among my complaints is that online writing is a culture that thinks it isn’t one — that is, our class of online writing professionals think of themselves as representing a diverse range of opinions and ideologies, but subtle social and professional pressures among them tends to produce provincialism and conformity. The hardest thing is getting most people who write for a living online to acknowledge the ways in which advancement in that domain tends to require adhering to unspoken but powerful social codes."

Freddie deBoer

(Source: fredrikdeboer.com)