As part of his studies, UC#2 was reading The Sacred Is the Profane: The Political Nature of “Religion” by William Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon “This hard-hitting collection overturns common ideas about religion. Arnal and McCutcheon argue that ‘religion’ has no independent existence but is rather the unstable creation of political and economic forces. These […]
Category: Destinations
Texas Slang for ENGin buddies ENGin is a wonderful program that connects English speakers with Ukrainians – sort of like pen-pals on Zoom. Conversation practice, cultural exchange, recipes, jokes, stories, friendships…. Very cool, innovative, and impactful non-profit started by Katerina Manoff. Katerina has 5+ years of experience teaching English and managing online language learning programs. […]
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A WLBOTT Caper
[thanks to UC#3 for today’s rabbit hole] Fellow travelers [of both time and space] – I really like capers – both the nonpareils and the large caper berries that are the size of blueberries. I think including the Italian island of Salina to look into caper farming will flange up well with our journey from […]
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Desert Rose
A desert rose is an intricate rose-like formation of crystal clusters of gypsum or baryte, which include abundant sand grains. The “petals” are crystals flattened on the c axis, fanning open in radiating clusters. The rosette crystal habit tends to occur when the crystals form in arid sandy conditions, such as the evaporation of a […]
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Fort McMurray Wildfire
[thanks to UC#1 and UC#1-SU for today’s topic] Between May and early August of 2016, a massive wildfire burned in the northeastern region of Alberta (the Fort McMurray area). The wildfire was the most expensive disaster in Canadian history. From Wikipedia: As a testament to the Canadian Government’s efficiency and readiness, there were no direct […]
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Ft. McMurray, AB
It began simple enough…. an email exchange between UC#3 and UC#1: Gents- I know I’ve been a bit offline for WLBOTT, but I have a friend who is traveling to northern Alberta next week and she and I were talking and I recommended she take her engineering team to this restaurant in Fort McMurray. Looks […]
Wildberries – the Amazon of Russia A fire has broken out at a warehouse in St. Petersburg, days after workers were involved in a brawl at the site, with arson a suspected cause. Despite the encroaching flames, a guard continued to inspect the workers to make sure they were not stealing anything, Baza added. Eventually, […]
[Thanks to Sally the Intern for her assistance in today’s BLOTT] A friend of WLBOTT recently experienced some burst pipes (big freeze in Central Texas last week). We asked our AI friends to help us understand this situation.
One of the scariest aspects of TrumpWorld (and there are many) is that he is encouraging his followers to consider him the anointed one, the chosen one, the persecuted Christ. Trump shares bizarre biblical video saying God made him to be America’s ‘caretaker’ Republican gives full vent to messiah complex on eve of Iowa caucuses […]
Russia is having trouble keeping the lights on. I remember the optimism of the late ’90s, when we naively thought that Russia would be a grown-up country, we would all work together to make the world a more stable place, we could turn our nuclear swords into nuclear plowshares[2]. But greed and lust for power […]