Baz Luhrmann: Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Baz Luhrmann: Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 99.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. 

The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, 
whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. 

I will dispense this advice now. 

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. 
Oh, never mind. 
You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. 
But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. 

You are not as fat as you imagine. 

Don’t worry about the future. 
Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. 
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts.
Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. 
Sometimes you’re ahead, 
sometimes you’re behind. 
The race is long and, in the end, 
it’s only with yourself. 

Remember compliments you receive. 
Forget the insults. 
If you succeed in doing this, 
tell me how. 

Keep your old love letters. 
Throw away your old bank statements. 

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. 
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. 
Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t. 

Get plenty of calcium. 

Be kind to your knees. 
You’ll miss them when they’re gone. 

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. 
Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. 
Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. 
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. 
Your choices are half chance. 
So are everybody else’s. 

Enjoy your body. 
Use it every way you can. 
Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. 
It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own. 

Dance. 
Even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. 
Read the directions, 
even if you don’t follow them. 

Do not read beauty magazines. 
They will only make you feel ugly. 

Get to know your parents. 
You never know when they’ll be gone for good. 

Be nice to your siblings. 
They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. 

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. 
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. 

Live in New York City once,
but leave before it makes you hard. 
Live in Northern California once, 
but leave before it makes you soft. 

Travel. 

Accept certain inalienable truths:
Prices will rise. 
Politicians will philander. 
You, too, will get old. 
And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. 

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. 
Maybe you have a trust fund. 
Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. 
But you never know when either one might run out. 

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. 
Advice is a form of nostalgia. 
Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth. 

But trust me on the sunscreen…

via blog.benjamincano.com

Posted via email from Carissa's Scrapbook

Disturb us, Lord - Sir Francis Drake

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord,
when with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Sir Francis Drake

via blog.benjamincano.com

Posted via email from Carissa's Scrapbook

Picturing Winter, a Solstice Celebration

via tor.com

Great collection of 70+ winter images, including the above, East by Stephen T. Johnson. A lovely contrast to the expected 40°C day here.

Posted via email from Carissa's Scrapbook

common book of prayer by Chris Clardy

common book of prayer
by Chris Clardy

all the ways which women pray
have yet to be forgotten—
the way you fold the shirt (between your hands)
        is a folding of your hands,
the way you bow your head over the head of the person
lying fever-small in your bed
        is a bowing of the head,
the way when that is done you listen with your eyes closed, wait for dawn,
        lift the latch, raise the shade, pour the tea,
        and, turning toward the mirror,
        see all things coming
because you
are willing to say all things can come and are coming
        is a willing of all things—
and all these ways
are pages in your book (your body is the book)
with no words or words inside it
is praying is your body is a book
written
every time you move—
all the ways which women pray with their bodies
have yet to be recalled—
        forget words—
this will happen (any way)
and your book of prayer will be praying,
praying in the way
women always
have prayed

~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted with permission of the poet.

via tabathayeatts.blogspot.com

Posted via email from Carissa's Scrapbook

Continue to Share items from Google Reader in a way that bypasses Google+

A long time ago, I made a folder in my Google Reader called "Carissa Thorp - Scrapbook", added my Google Reader shared items feed and my Posterous blog feed to it, and made it public using Google Reader's Folders and Tags Settings tab. I used it to update a widget on my blog with items I shared in those places.

Then Google stopped the sharing features in Google Reader. Kind of. Because that "Carissa Thorp - Scrapbook" Public Page and RSS feed is still working. And there's the possibility that it might keep working.

See, I noticed that in their Google Reader Help documentation there's an entry under Organising called Tagging...

But first, an explanation of tagging in Google Reader. Using tagging you can add tags to individual items in a feed to "organise items of interest". Tag items with "favs" or "followup", as Google suggests, and you can revisit those items when you've finished ploughing through your feeds. Kind of like starring, but more customisable.

...So, it appears that Tagging is sticking around. My main evidence: it still has an entry in Google Reader Help, including a link to the now dead "Sharing" feature.

Now, Tagging and Folders are connected in some way I don't understand. So, I can tag an item with "Carissa Thorp - Scrapbook" and it will appear as an item on my "Carissa Thorp - Scrapbook" Public Page. It doesn't, however, appear in the "Carissa Thorp - Scrapbook" Folder in Google Reader. It seems that once you use a word or phrase to label a Folder, into which you've put feeds, you can no longer use that word or phrase as a tag to organise/revisit individual items within Google Reader*. You can, however, still tag items with that word or phrase, and they will appear on the Public Page and in its RSS feed.

Anyway, the point is that, on the proviso that Google doesn't pull these previously created Public Pages, you can still share items from Google Reader in a way that bypasses Google+...and here's the caveat...so long as you once-upon-a-time created a Public Folder in Google Reader.

See, they've pulled the ability to change a Folder's sharing settings; you can only rename or delete them now, no new Public Pages possible. Given this last point, it could be that Google will, in the future, shut down all current Public Pages, but they haven't yet. And as long as that's true, you can continue to use a Public Page to share items.

Hopefully, you bookmarked your Public Page, because that makes things a lot easier. Just let people know where to find it and you're done. They can visit the page and subscribe to your items using the RSS link.

If you didn't bookmark your Public Page, hopefully you remember which Folders you might have made public. Click on the small arrow that appears on the right when you hover over the folder name in Google Reader and choose "View details and statistics". A box will pop up with the Feed URL of that folder. Let people know that URL and they can subscribe directly with that link.

If you don't remember which folders you might have made public, you'll need to find out your Google User Number (hint: it's in that Feed URL mentioned above) and go through the following process to rediscover them:

• Log out of your Google Account or open another browser that isn't signed in to Google. This is because all Folder/Tags have their own page and RSS feed, but not all of them are public. You're looking for the public ones, but if you're logged into your own Google Account, all pages will be viewable, whether they're public or not.

• Update the following link to include your Google User Number where it says "yourusernumber".

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/yourusernumber/label/LabelName

• Copy the link and paste it into your browser address bar and then try out each Folder you think you might have made public by replacing "LabelName" in the link with the name of the Folder. If the page loads in the browser (you're logged out of your Google Account, right?) it's a Public Folder Page.

Why you might want to use this method rather than using another service like Tumblr or Posterous, I'll leave up to you to decide**. But the ability is there.

Note that this method doesn't bring back the ability to comment on items, something a lot of people miss. That's well and truly gone. (As is the feature I miss the most, the bookmarklet.)

Hope this helps someone with their Google Reader Sharing dilemma.

* If you subscribe to that Public Page in Google Reader, you can pull those items back in, even into the eponymous Folder itself.

** It's a slightly more private way to share items than a blog.

Posted via email from Carissa's Scrapbook