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" We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts. "
― Anthony Bourdain , Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
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" As children', wrote Alice Raikes (Mrs. Wilson Fox) in The Times, January 22, 1932, 'we lived in Onslow Square and used to play in the garden behind the houses. Charles Dodgson used to stay with an old uncle there, and walk up and down, his hands behind him, on the strip of lawn. One day, hearing my name, he called me to him saying, " So you are another Alice. I'm very found of Alices. Would you like to come and see something which is rather puzzling?" We followed him into his house which opened, as ours did, upon the garden, into a room full of furniture with a tall mirror standing across one corner.' " Now" , he said giving me an orange, " first tell me which hand you have got that in." " The right" I said. " Now" , he said, " go and stand before that glass, and tell me which hand the little girl you see there has got it in." After some perplexed contemplation, I said, " The left hand." " Exactly," he said, " and how do you explain that?" I couldn't explain it, but seeing that some solution was expected, I ventured, " If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?" I can remember his laugh. " Well done, little Alice," he said. " The best answer I've heard yet." " I heard no more then, but in after years was told that he said that had given him his first idea for Through the Looking-Glass, a copy of which, together with each of his other books, he regularly sent me. "
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" In the Muslim world, much of the violence that takes place is due to clashes between Shiites and the other major sect, the Sunni. The differences go back to a dispute over who was in charge of the Muslim faith after Muhammad died 632 years after Jesus, God’s son, walked the earth. I’m oversimplifying, but the Sunnis thought the new leader should be elected, and Shiites thought the leadership should stay within the family of Muhammad. The Sunnis, a larger faction, won the day, and the Prophet Muhammad’s close friend and adviser, Abu Bakr, became the first HMIC, the Head-Muslim-in-Charge. Officially, they called him their caliph and he ruled as sort of a head of state over the caliphate, the name for a Muslim state run by one religious leader. Since then the Shiites have fought the Sunnis for control because they don’t recognize the authority of the elected Muslim leaders—who for the most part have been Sunnis. That explains why, in a very oversimplified way, religious violence erupts regularly around the world, as each group attempts to seize control from the other . . . in this peaceful religion. "
― Jamie Smith
