Friday Odds & Sods Can Dance if it Wants Too

Hello once again, loyal readers.  Another week of hard labor and hot weather goes into the history book and an too brief weekend comes to separate off more of the same.  All too often, life seems sometimes like the wag's definition of insanity, that is, to repeat the same action over and over again and expect a different outcome.  Of course, one imagines similar complaints could be levelled after every point in man's history - no doubt the hunter-gathers of the Rift Valley were heartily sick of having to pick berries day in and day out.  If there is any grace to be found, then, it must be in the small moments of joy and wonder that populate our time on Earth, and such, I hope, you will find in this week's Odds & Sods. 

• As a proud student of the Humanities, I have of course spent a lot of time working in retail.  This has been a valuable experience for several reasons, not the least of with is the cultivation of a strong sense of humor to serve as a survival mechanism.  I offer this compendium as a secondary means of inoculation for those not so blessed to have worked in the field  
• Speaking of the the Humanities, two stories from the frontline of the modern liberal arts: The emptiness of the digital humanities and Aeschylus on stage at Syracuse
• The Greeks, of course, were the inventors and masters of political speechmaking, a natural outgrowth of democratic politics where a large number of people need to have their opinions swayed in a short amount of time to get anything done.  One can only imagine the bitter tears they would weep reading the memoirs of a modern-day speechwriter