Now for the news

Time to clean out some of the news articles I’ve been looking at recently. This is your Sunday edition of the news.

In order to try to bolster interest in being a monk or a nun, several convents and monasteries are offering weekend trips. You can live the life of a monk or a nun for a weekend to see if you like it. The whole idea seemed real interesting to me. And it seems to be working.
A monk’s life… but just until Monday
Monasteries offer taster weekends

The New York Times is trying to report that it is possible that emoticons were invented in 1862. If they are going to follow the logic they use in their argument then they would have to say that emoticons were actually invented at the time of the translation of the King James bible because there are several examples of the same type of thing happening there. This is an example of incomplete research, but it was still interesting to read, and it is a good excuse to point out my favorite biblical emoticon again: John 2:9
Is that an emoticon in 1862?

My parents have a whole lot of bird feeders in their backyard and it is a lot of fun to sit near the windows and watch the birds eat at them. It’s also fun to watch the squirrels, raccoons, deer, and other animals that don’t realize they are bird feeders. So it was fun to read an NPR article about how birds are watching us too. I wonder what the birds in my parents’ yard think of my parents?
Peek-A-Boo! Birds see you, too

In an effort to be politically correct, there is a list of names that are inappropriate to call people who have lived a great number of years any more. Actually though, there are several on the list that I think it would be fun to be called when I do get old. I totally plane on being feisty and eccentric when I’m old.
Goodbye, spry codgers. So long, feisty crones.

An interview on NPR recently is validation for the fact that I haven’t had a full-time job since the summer of 1997, and even then I only had it for about four months. I’m all about the leisure time and enjoying life. All of my bills do get paid though. And I too believe our world could do with a little less running around and being busy and with more time to enjoy people and create relationships.
Professor champions free time

Part of the required general education classes at BYU is to take two semesters of what is called, “History of Civilization.” I did my semesters through the honors department with the curator of the special collections section of the library. We study history through the written word, what was written down, how it was written down, and who had access to it. And we were able to look at the examples the library had. I saw Sumarian clay tablets. I saw the drawings Napolean had done when he was in Egypt. I saw illuminated Bibles. I saw one of the copies of the Book of Commandments that the young girls saved by taking the pages into the corn fields when the mob came. It was an amazing class! So I was real interested to read two different articles. One they are doing a study to trace the evolution of words and think they have figured out what are the oldest words in the English language. They also think they can predict which words are most likely to die out. The other study is using DNA to determine the ages of books that were written on animal skins. Fascinating!
“Oldest English words” identified
How old is that book? DNA may hold the answer

This last article seemed interesting to me. Research seems to be showing that when you are depressed or sad that by simply speeding up the rate of your thoughts you can trigger the novelty-loving reward system in your brain. So fast thinking can make you happy.  It’s an interesting idea. Kind of reminds me of how mopey Eyore is and how slow he talks, and probably thinks, compared with how fast Tigger talks and thinks.
Rapid thinking makes people happy