Two Cool Things

I get the New York Times' daily headlines via email each morning. I am not exactly consistent in my reading habits, but I usually at least glance at the headlines and the short summary sentence beneath those that interest me and peruse the topics of the op-eds and editorials. Sometimes I don't get that far.

One of my favorite features of the Times on line is the list of the top ten favorite articles and editorials that appears when you click through to read an article. The list is neatly arranged by categories: "emailed, blogged, searched." I usually look down the list of favorite emailed stories, and sometimes one story leads to another, and . . . well, you know how the internet is. What I like most about this is that it gives me a chance to catch a great story I might have missed because I was too busy, or because it was in a section of the paper I don't usually read.

This morning, for instance, I found two cool stories! One, from yesterday's paper, about the recent discovery in Germany of a "new" Venus figure sculpture that's about 35,000 years old (that's 11,ooo years older than the famous "Venus of Willdorf" figure). So . . . such sculptures of large breasted and large buttocked, (presumably) fertile women go back even earlier than thought. This new figure is only about 2.5 inches tall--good for holding in your hand!

The other story that really intrigued me was about a new movement (also in Germany, how funny!) to create car-free suburbs. Just imagine--no driveways and garages! A few, very few co-owned or rented cars for exceptional trips. Plenty of places to walk and play outside, and no worries about balls running under passing cars and kids following after. Things within walking distance. Public transportation. Lots and lots of bikes. Basically a whole new meaning to the word "suburb"! 

My world got bigger, more intriguing, and more hopeful in a fairly short amount of time. Of perhaps I should say with a bit of Times.