I cannot decide the length of life,

But I can decide the depth of it.

I cannot command the weather,

But I can handle my heart.

I cannot change my face,

But I can show my smile.

I cannot control others,

But I can dominate myself.

I cannot predict tomorrow,

But I can live today.

I cannot always be number one,

But I can do my best!

“The ability of writer to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.” —Toni Morrison

Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.

Toni Morrison was the second oldest of four children. Her father, George Wofford, worked primarily as a welder, but held several jobs at once to support the family. Her mother, Ramah, was a domestic worker. Morrison later credited her parents with instilling in her a love of reading, music, and folklore. At Howard University, Morrison continued to pursue her interest in literature. She majored in English, and chose the classics for her minor. After graduating from Howard in 1953, Morrison continued her education at Cornell University. She wrote her thesis on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, and completed her master’s degree in 1955. She then moved to Texas to teach English at Texas Southern University.

Morrison became a professor at Princeton University in 1989, and continued to produce great works. In recognition of her contributions to her field, she received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first African-American woman to be selected for the award. The following year, she published the novel Jazz, which explores marital love and betrayal.

At Princeton, Morrison established a special workshop for writers and performers known as the Princeton Atelier in 1994. The program was designed to help students create original works in a variety of artistic fields. Outside of her academic work, Morrison continued to write new works of fiction. Her next novel, Paradise (1998), which focused on a fictional African-American town called Ruby, earned mixed reviews.

(From www.biography.com)

 “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” –Mother Teresa

Mary Anne (alternatively Mary Ann or Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot’s life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years. Her 1872 work, Middlemarch, has been described as the greatest novel in the English language by Martin Amis and by Julian Barnes.

During 11 bruising years as prime minister, Thatcher found a fellow believer in former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, transformed her country by a ruthless dedication to free markets and infuriated European allies.

Thatcher public engagements in 2002 following a series of small strokes, and was only occasionally seen in public since then.

Researchers studied more than 58,000 people who had volunteered to participate in the “myPersonality” application on Facebook, in which subscribers allowed access to their list of ‘likes,’ as well as the results of online personality tests that the scientists asked the participants to take. The researchers wanted to see whether such information, which is publicly available on many Facebook pages, could predict a number of aspects about Facebook users’ lives that they presumably kept to themselves, such as sexual orientation, ethnic origin, political views, religion, personality traits, substance use (including cigarettes, alcohol and drugs), and intelligence level.

Feeding people’s “likes” into an algorithm, information hidden in the lists of favorites predicted whether someone was white or African American with 95% accuracy, whether they were a gay male with 88% accuracy, and even identified participants as a Democrat or Republican with 85% accuracy.  The ‘likes’ list predicted gender with 93% accuracy and age could be reliably determined 75% of the time. The pattern of online liking predicted drug use with 65% accuracy and whether someone was likely to drink alcohol with 70% accuracy.

“The most important thing that we found is that you can predict a very wide variety of individual traits and preferences based on seemingly simple and generic types of records of online behavior like Facebook ‘likes,’” says Michal Kosinski, director of operations of the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University in England, a consultant for Microsoft on machine learning and the lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some predictors were obvious: gay people were more likely to “like” anti-homophobia campaigns and Democrats liked Obama.  Others matched common stereotypes:  for example, gay men tended to like “Wicked The Musical” and Mac cosmetics and smart people were fans of “Science.”

Les Miserables (Trailer 2)

Les Misérables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original French title, which can be translated from the French as The Miserables, The Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, focusing on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.^[1]

Examining the nature of law and grace, the novel elaborates upon the history of France, the architecture and urban design of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love. Les Misérables has been popularized through numerous adaptations for the stage, television, and film, including a musical and a film adaptation of that musical.

The appearance of the novel was highly anticipated and advertised. Critical reactions were very diverse, but most of them were negative. Commercially, the work was a great success, not just in France, but also in the rest of Europe and the world.

The novel was generally well-received; reviewers noted that while the plot was sometimes chaotic, the novel’s imperfections meshed well with the flawed reality the book was trying to reflect. The Daily Telegraph commented that “Margaret Atwood is genuinely inventive, rather than merely clever”. In 2010, the novel was longlisted as a candidate for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)