Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 66
February 6, 2011
cookies are the bottom line for girl scouts
Girl Scouts is about teaching leadership, confidence, and community. It's also about teaching salesmanship, bottom lines, and supply chains. Hawking deserts is a $700 million business, and cookies account for two-thirds of the organization's budget.
via theatlantic.com
In Canada (and the UK) we have Girl Guides, dating back to the turn of the century. I'll be reporting on my first ever involvement with cookie sales later in the year.
Girl Guides 1918
Filed under: Miscellany
February 5, 2011
anemic? don't assume it's your period, your gut needs a check up
Ladies, unless you are menorrhagic (bleeding more than 120 milliliters each cycle) your period is not doing you wrong. If you have iron-deficiency anemia and your doctor is insisting it's because you slough off your endometrium from time to time without doing a single test to confirm it, you may want to insist on an endoscopy. It could save your life.
via professorkateclancy.blogspot.com
Apparently the common wisdom that menstruation causes anemia is common nonsense. Kate Clancy dispels this myth in the link above. Shockingly in one study 86% of women diagnosed with anemia due to menstruation actually had a gastrointestinal bleed, the first line of investigation for men.
Filed under: Concerning, Interesting Tagged: iron deficiency in women
slang from Shakespeare to rap
And why, although most slang phrases sink fairly quickly, are there a few which survive, so that, for example, against the mass of underworld terms listed by B. E. and now forgotten, we find "fence" already in 1699 having its modern sense of "a receiver and securer of stolen-goods"?
via entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
Click on the link for an amusing and informative review of 2 new dictionaries of slang, with examples I shall not quote due to the underage household readership of my blog. (Note to blogging moms: your blog will change when your kids are old enough to read over your shoulder, and change again when they have their own computers.)
Filed under: Miscellany
kids spurning tv for ebooks
Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.
"Some weeks I completely forgot about TV," said Eliana, 11. "I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day."
via nytimes.com
Not only is there an upswing in ebook sales of kids' books like the Narnia series, but in downloading free classics like Little Women. I'm all for anything that gets kids (and adults) reading. I'll have more to say next week with my Kobo update.
Filed under: Miscellany
February 4, 2011
beauty in chaos: Christians protecting Muslims in Egypt
via good.is
A human shield of Christians holding hands to protect Muslim protesters praying. Okay folks, this hit the tear-o-metre.
h/t Bouphonia
Filed under: Uplifting Tagged: Egypt uprising
spirit of Egypt spreading to Yemen, Algeria and Syria
Reverberations from the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt continued to be felt around the Arab world as demonstrators gathered on the streets of Yemen for a "day of rage" and Algeria became the latest country to try to defuse tensions by lifting its 19-year state of emergency.
via guardian.co.uk
We are watching change. I don't know where it will end, but I want to pay attention, to remember this.
Filed under: Miscellany
the best German novelist of his time–new to me
The novels of Theodor Fontane (1819–1898) are so sparkling, tender, sympathetic, delicately ironic, and psychologically astute that it is a wonder they are not better known by American readers.
via nybooks.com
I haven't heard of him either, and I am fascinated, not least because he was a late bloomer, his first novel published when he was turning 60. Several of his books are available in English and in German at Gutenberg.
Theodor Fontane and his daughter Martha
Reference letter for Theodor Fontane from his father, 1845
Transliteration of the letter below:
Meinem Sohne Theodor, Heinrich Fontane, geboren in Neu-Ruppin, stelle ich hiermit gern und pflichtgemäß dies Zeugnis darüber aus: daß er während des Zeitraums vom 1ten Januar bis 1ten July 1845 – der Receptur in meiner Apotheke mit Eifer und Geschicklichkeit vorgestanden hat.
Mehr zu seinem Lobe zu sagen, was ich wohl könnte und möchte, verbietet mir meine Stellung als Vater dieses jungen Mannes.
Weshalb denn ich das unterlaße, und damit ende, ihm das beste Glück in seiner neuen Stellung recht aufrichtig zu wünschen.
Letschin den 2ten July 1845.
L. Fontane, Besitzer der hiesigen Apotheke.
Translation anyone?
Filed under: Literary Tagged: Theodor Fontane
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