Happy New Year!

Have a great 2007!

Nice one for the holidays: The Pursuit of Happiness

"Take your dad to the Super Bowl. Buy a home near the office. Get married. Go out to dinner with the family. Take a memorable vacation, and be sure to buy souvenirs."

The Pursuit of Happiness: Six experts tell what they've done to achieve it

Barack Obama on Charlie Rose

The Charlie Rose interview with the future president of the US (with any luck)

Obama's inspiring speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

I found this wonderful gem today, which will be a perfect present for my sisters to celebrate 20 years in Australia since the family migrated from South East Asia.


The Arrival is a hauntingly beautiful book by Shaun Tan and is filled with stunning drawings.


"The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope."


The Arrival on Amazon.

So many things to do, so little time.

For the last 6 months or so of wedding planning shenanigans, I've been hopeless with keeping up to date with the news and I have barely read any books. Now that the Big Day is over (although the boy and I have yet to write our Thank You cards - yikes), I'm just starting to ease my way back into things.

However, I find myself wishing I had more time to do everything I want to do. So many newspapers, magazines and books to read, so little time.

I've got my stack of books ready to go. Currently reading Snow Crash and The Fingerprints of the Gods, both have my imagination running wild. Can't wait to dive into Heart of Fire , The God Delusion, The Naked Scientist, Who Invented What When, The Diamond Age, The Prize, All the Shah's Men, and A Little History of the World (an excellent book which I never got to finish on my first pass for various reasons).

I'm thinking I need to get rid of the idiot box with which I have waaaay too good a relationship.

Sniff your way to a diagnosis!

Nifty!

"Australian scientists are promising a new era in the detection of brain disorders like Alzheimer's, with diagnosis through smell tests.

The University of Melbourne team has discovered a link between an inability to identify odours and at least five diseases..."

Scientists use smell tests to detect brain disorders