Tidbits

"He rarely had a good night's sleep because the yaks he used as pack animals were so inquisitive that they would stick their heads into Hoover's tent and snort on him until he woke up." -- Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

"A man's work is nothing but but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." --Paul Taylor, Wall Street Journal, March 7-9, 2008

Some web videos that also struck my fancy recently, courtesy of TED:

Hans Rosling demonstrates that statistics can tell a more nuanced story about income inequality, and be mighty pretty too, here. Rosling is the co-founder of a non-profit called Gapminder, a collection of their video casts is here. Rosling's 2007 talk is here.

More talks on poverty from TED, I found the Jacqueline Novogratz (on small business in Africa) and Emily Oster (on challenging conventions on HIV/AIDS, even the success of Uganda) talks to be the most interesting, but I haven't watched all the vidoes yet.

Also, I want to have this man's baby.