This Day in History
Around the globe, today most pertinently marks an International Day Against Police Brutality, while it also commemorates World Consumer Rights Day and a World Day of Muslim Culture, Dialog, Peace, and Film, at the same time that, more speculatively, it also delineates World Contact Day in which believers telepathically reach out to alien beings for connection; in the conspiratorial hallways of Rome’s imperial Senate more or less exactly two thousand sixty-one years ago, Julius Caesar met a bloody end at the hands of numerous upper crust Senatorial assassins, crossing a Rubicon from which no return was possible; three hundred twenty-four years after that, in 280, a different imperial imprimatur took hold when Sima Yan forced the surrender of a final Cao Wei, or Three Kingdoms, ruler so as to initiate the Jin Dynasty; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
The appearance in one’s ambit of amazing, serendipitous fortune can, a bit unexpectedly but nonetheless powerfully, discomfit and enervate even as the material beneficence itself provides a basis for growth and gain; perhaps a combination of factors—the sense of unworthiness that so many people carry as a burden throughout their lives, the fear of gaining what one has not earned, even the notion that great loss must as a balance inevitably follow great luck, and who knows what all else—helps to account for such superficially anomalous feelings and behaviors, yet the point is nearly impossible to overstate that, as a mudslide might impede travelers’ forward progress or even sweep them away in a avalanche of filth and mire, psychic or mental habituation of this sort stands squarely in the way of a sojourner’s manifestation of highest potential that would be available to a soul more accepting of the world and at peace with itself.
3. International Workers of the World, circa 2000; Stephen Sep, 2003.
art craft creativity development production culture economy OR finance OR GDP = 14,300,000
Nearly Naked Links
From Tuesday’s Files
VT on Panco Villa, Pot
Giap Perspectives on Dien Bien Phu & Much More – http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/guerrillawars/giaptranscript.html
History of Woman Suffrage, Volume Four – http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29870/29870-h/29870-h.htm
EVENTS
The 10th annual Dallas Fort-Worth Writers’ Workshop for fiction and nonfiction writers will be held from May 6 to May 7 at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas. The conference features workshops in fiction and creative nonfiction; panels with editors, publishers, and agents; craft lectures; and marketing presentations.
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
Washington College
Hodson Trust–John Carter Brown Library Fellowship
A fellowship, which includes a stipend of $20,000, is given annually to a writer of nonfiction (including creative nonfiction) working on a book relating to the literature, history, culture, or art of the Americas before 1830. The fellowship includes a two-month research period to be conducted at the John Carter Brown Library on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a two-month writing term at the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Submit a writing sample of any length, a project description, a curriculum vitae, and contact information for three references by March 15. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
JOBS
Digital Copy Chief – Leading website for K-12 teachers is seeking a Digital Copy Chief to join our creative team. Quick pace and heavy deadlines—but great rewards too like working from your home office, collaborating with an inspiring team across three time zones and above all, knowing that you are making a difference for teachers and kids.
The Digital Copy Chief will work with other members of the WeAreTeachers creative team to ensure that all content is accurate and of the highest editorial standards.
Entropic Versus Negentropic Devices+
An Edge look at all the use of data and closed loop systems to measure the world: “As we get better and better at measuring the world—wearables, Internet of Things, cars, satellites, drones, sensors—we are going to be able to close the loop in industry, agriculture, and the environment. We’re going to start to find out what the consequences of our actions are and, presumably, we’ll take smarter actions as a result. This journey with the Internet that we started more than twenty years ago is now extending to the physical world. Every industry is going to have to ask the same questions: What do we want to measure? What do we do with that data? How can we manage things differently once we have that data? This notion of closing the loop everywhere is perhaps the biggest endeavor of our age.”
A Counterpunch look at the media wasteland that predominates in America today: “Media malpractice has been so sustained and widespread that it’s hard to know where to start. Opinion pages and cable news panel shows where no one to the left of Hillary Clinton is allowed? The abandonment of local news coverage? Massive social and economic upheavals ignored because they only afflict the poor and the middle-class-en-route-to-poor: the rusting of the Rust Belt, the meth and opioid epidemics, the replacement of good jobs by bad ones, the faking of low unemployment and inflation rates?”
A 21st Century article that offers insights into the recent Wikileaks phenomenom: “WikiLeaks has released its largest ever publication of confidential documents on the Central Intelligence Agency. Entitled ‘Vault 7’ and containing a password that echoed the alleged JFK quote “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds,” this leak comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. “
A Newsweek look at how the now-ubiquitous rideshare company might end up being Silicon Valley’s most spectacular crash: “Just a year ago, Uber reigned as the tech industry’s awe-inspiring, all-powerful Wizard of Oz. But lately, the curtain is being pulled back to reveal a guy who’s more like an angry drunk frantically yanking levers while taking roundhouse swings at the Tin Man and propositioning Dorothy. “