The Peace Corps Act - September 22, 1961
On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy signed the executive order establishing the Peace Corps. On September 22, 1961, Congress approved the legislation that formally authorized the Peace Corps. Goals of the Peace Corps included: 1) helping the people of interested countries and areas meet their needs for trained workers; 2) helping promote a better understanding of Americans in countries where volunteers served; and 3) helping promote a better understanding of peoples of other nations on the part of Americans.
What Does Wikipedia Have Against Soap?
Image: Screenshot of Twitter reactions to Wikipedia blackout, via @herpderpedia
Exactly.
It’s nice to meet you.
There are lots of reasons we’re excited to be launching the Obama 2012 campaign’s new Tumblr today. But mostly it’s because we’re looking at this as an opportunity to create something that’s not just ours, but yours, too.
We’d like this Tumblr to be a huge…
Hope, Change, and Reblogs. Welcome POTUS!
PS. Isn’t it “whoa”?
R.I.P. Elvis Presley
This photograph of Richard Nixon shaking hands with Elvis Presley in the Oval Office was taken on December 21, 1970. Elvis died on August 16, 1977.
There is this thing currently going around tumblr about why dating a writer is good. I think it’s nice that this thing is going around, because I like writers, and lots of us could use more dates. As a writer who has dated people, though — including other writers — I would like to offer some…
The idea that the Pope would authorize the use of something as heinous as torture by priests or people working for priests is a pretty astonishing development. Ultimately, the justification that it invokes is the same one anyone uses when they’re using torture for reasons that are not sadistic and that is, in essence: ‘The moral cause that we’re engaged in is too important to settle for half-measures.’ … When you read accounts of torture, you get the unmistakable impression that the people doing the torture or conducting the torture — somewhere inside them, they think they are saving souls.
“
| — | Cullen Murphy, on accounts of torturers from the first Inquisition. (via nprfreshair) |
All the Books I Read in 2011
Here’s the big one. Here’s last year’s list. I did manage a few more this time, but didn’t hit 50. I blame…school? Asterisk means a reread, as with the movie list.
2011 BY THE NUMBERS
Fiction: 17
Nonfiction: 29
Poetry: 1
New Reads: 45
Rereads: 2
Comics: 6
Non-comics: 41
Read on -
Paper: 45
Screen: 2And here we go:
1 The City and the City; China Miéville - this is the first Miéville I’ve read, and it led indirectly to the Border Town project I worked on last summer. So it was hugely important for the tenor of my year. But as a book on its own merits, I found I enjoyed only the middle third of the book: after the setting was laboriously described, and before the plot got irritatingly ridiculous.
It is almost Christmas time! This is by far my favorite time of the year. I love being able to put up the tree, see all the lights, and to be able to play Christmas music. One of my favorite things to do when it comes around to Christmas is to decorate my tree! My family and I do it every year together. We usually put on a Christmas movie like “Elf” or “National Lampoons Christmas Vacation” and do it all in one night! It is a lot of fun being able to go through the boxes of ornaments and remembering where they all came from! When you pull one out you always know where it is from and when you got it! This year I am not asking for much…mainly a lot of iTunes gifts cards, being that my parents get very mad at all the money I spend on music, whoops(: Hope you all have a merry Christmas!!!
