Separating the signal from the noise

Have you ever visited Brain Pickings? If not, get ready for a real treat.

It reeled me in with the pull-quote on the 'About' page, " Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are."

Make it so!

The Canuck 12 days of Christmas

Happy Holidays

DIY Snowman ornament

Here's a cute way to recycle old, used light bulbs.

Materials & tools needed:
- used light bulb
- plaster
- white craft paint
- red craft paint
- wire, cord or ribbon
- orange polymer clay
- hot glue gun
- black marker
- dark pink marker
- strip of fabric

Mix up some plaster and cover the glass of the light bulb. Dab it so you have some soft, plaster peaks on it.

Use a glue gun to place your wire, cord or ribbon at the top part of the screw top and then plaster over it to embed it. Set aside to dry.

Once the plaster is dry, paint the plastered areas white. Set aside to dry.

Once the white is dry, paint the screw part of the light bulb red. Set aside to dry.

Take the orange polymer clay and make a thin, cone with a flat bottom. Use the directions on the clay package to harden the orange clay cone. This will be used as the 'carrot' nose for your snowman.

Use the glue gun to glue the orange nose on to the plastered & painted light bulb.

Use your black marker to draw little dots on the plaster to make eyes and buttons.

Use your dark pink marker to lightly draw rosy cheeks.

Tie a strip of material around the snowman's 'neck'

Tie the wire, cord or ribbon at the top of your ornament on to the tree.

Ugly Christmas Sweater DIY

Technology invades craftdom.

Holiday countdown

Free ecard personalized with Smilebox

Can musicians pave a road to world peace?

Santur: Persian hammer dulcimer

Can musicians pave a road to world peace? This question was posed as promotion of the Silk Road Project television program Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, which I had the pleasure of viewing last evening on HIFI music & art, a Canadian HDTV channel.

The show was not so much a performance as a thorough exploration of ancient instruments, culture, technical execution, composition, individual learning curves, and dynamics of musical collaboration.

I was transfixed by the concentration, raw mastery, and technical problem solving culminating in an effective, polygamous marriage of musical thought. The joy of discovery marked each musician's foray into uncharted musical territory. Their mental and physical flexibility spawned pure beauty.

If every facet of mankind embraced unfamiliarity with such non-judgement, commitment and mindfulness, life would be luxe.

Niece officially launches Dermatillomania website

I posted a couple blog entries over the years when my niece's book came out and when the documentary was being filmed. Here are those links:

December 2009 - Forever Marked: A Dermatillomania Diary

February 2011 - Scars of Shame

Today, I received an email from my niece today that she has officially launched a Dermatillomania website. Here is her email:

Hey everyone!

Who sends out mass emails anymore when we have social media to satisfy our self-promoting needs? Well, I'm giving it a shot because this is the most important project I've taken part in that brings together all of the work I've done to spread awareness about Dermatillomania.

With the help of my better half, Jason, I have launched an official website to promote awareness about this disorder with the main goal of having it become a vital source of information about the disorder while having a platform to invite people to look at the work I've done for the cause.

Please visit www.skinpickingsupport.com to see the hard work Jay and I have put into this website! If there was ever a time I needed you to share a link, THIS is it! Please share this site through email, social media sites you are associated with, forums, blogs, anything! Any type of share means the world to me!

If you want to subscribe to my website blog to be updated about upcoming changes/ additions to the website, please click http://www.skinpickingsupport.com/

Thank you all so much!

Angie

Updated: March 9, 2013
20th Annual National Conference on Hair Pulling & Skin Picking Disorders - April 19-21, 2013 | Renaissance Newark Hotel, New Jersey

Worst holiday special ever

Here is a segment from the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special featuring Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia singing an ode to "Life Day" - the Star Wars Universe's answer to Christmas.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Friday, November 17th 1978.

Child labour?

I'm not sure what this says about the drywall trade, but our daughter reports that Moss actually did a pretty decent job mudding. Mina was a bit sloppy in the corners, but nothing some on-the-job training couldn't fix.

Use genetic research to improve help for mistreated children, study says | CTV News

Use genetic research to improve help for mistreated children, study says | CTV News

The researchers said abuse in the early years is tied to long-term changes in brain circuitry, problems in the nervous and hormonal systems and other changes that "influence health and quality of life across the lifespan."