On Projection — From the projectee’s perspective

“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.”

— Marilyn Monroe

Free MP3 from Amazon.com

Amazon.com is offering a free MP3 track of your choice by entering the code “FIRSTMIL”. It applies a credit to your Amazon.com account, which can be used to purchase any song of $1.29 or less in the Amazon MP3 Store. Enjoy.

People of Walmart

People of Walmart has photos of real WalMart customers. The site was just launched in August of 2009. The variety of human life is amazing. The founders explain that their site “is purely for entertainment purposes and strictly limited to the outrageously bad / ugly / creepy / crazy shoppers.” Enjoy.

Remembering Senator Ted Kennedy (1932-2009)

A great photo essay from “The Big Picture.”

On Unrequited Love

From a very thoughtful, compassionate and beautifully written essay by Professor Barry McCrae of Yale:

There is no logic in unrequited love any more than there is logic in a headache or a flu, and to try to make the lover submit his love to the conscious operation of reason is like trying to cure his migraine by taking his photo.

* * *

Only a combination of time and distance can cure unrequited love: the lover must be physically separated from the object of her affections for a significant period of time.

Facebook is Boring

I recently deactivated my Facebook account. I got tired of reading insignificant details about the lives of people I seldom see. Who cares if Bob ate a steak dinner tonight? And the quizzes were annoying. Folks must be really bored. Well, it seems I’m not alone. The New York Times published an article entitled “Facebook Exodus” which reports that “while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing — some of them ostentatiously.”

See also this Newsweek story: You Can’t Friend Me, I Quit! The author exclaims “When I think about all the hours I wasted this past year on Facebook, and imagine the good I could have done instead, it depresses me.”

A Nice New Forum Focusing on Electric Shaving

If you are interested in exploring shaving with an electric razor the place to go is Electric Shaver Forums, which includes Tell Mr. Steel Beard which is a question and answer forum managed by Gary Flinn who knows a lot about electric shaving.

Bob Edwards Interviews Elie Wiesel

In June of 2008 master interviewer Bob Edwards spends the hour with Nobel Peace Prize winner, author, activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. As a teenager Wiesel was separated from his mother and sisters and watched his father die in a concentration camp. Wiesel survived Auschwitz and was a prisoner at Buchenwald when Edward R. Murrow reported on its liberation. Now Wiesel is a professor and the chairman of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

This superb interview is available for free on iTunes.

“The Hebrew Mamita” – On Maintaining Self-Respect in the Face of Prejudice

I found this video by Ms. Vanessa Hidary especially uplifting.

Old Jews Telling Jokes

Old Jews Telling Jokes is a very funny web site. Here’s an example: