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WITandWISDOM(tm) - March 15, 2007 ISSN 1538-8794 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not." - Samuel Johnson Source: Weekend Encounter, by Dick Innes, Copyright (c) ACTS International, 2004, http://www.actsweb.org/subscribe.php ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: Once while I was walking in a street in Calcutta in 1868, I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank, and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back, with interest. We are Indians, and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and our hearts feel good. By and by they return them when we are faced with a need. Our way of giving is our bank. Submitted by Malladi Murthy in India ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: LONDON (UPI 03-10-07) -- Britain's Bookseller magazine has released its shortlist for the Oddest Book Titles prize. The titles include "How Green Were the Nazis?" and "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America." The winner receives a bottle of champagne, the BBC reported. Last year's winner was Gary Leon Hill for "The People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It." "While rival literary awards like the Costas and the Orange Broadband Prize have sold out, The Bookseller/Diagram Prize has refused all offers of corporate sponsorship for 29 years," said Joel Rickett, the deputy editor of The Bookseller. "It continues to celebrate the bizarre, the strange, and the simply odd. This year's shortlist shows that despite publishers cutting back their lists, literary diversity continues to flourish," he added. The winner of the contest will be announced on April 13, just before the London Book Fair. Copyright 2007 by United Press International, http://upi.com/ Source: ArcaMax - Trivia, http://tinyurl.com/9kf44 Here is a list of the books being considered: Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan How Green Were the Nazis? D. Di Mascio’s Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry? An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence Vote for your favorite title at The Bookseller website: http://www.thebookseller.com/control/?p=2 ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: A Western Buddhist woman was in India, studying with her teacher. She was riding with another woman friend in a rickshaw-like carriage, when they were attacked by a man on the street. In the end, the attacker only succeeded in frightening the women, but the Buddhist woman was quite upset by the event and told her teacher so. She asked him what she should have done - what would have been the appropriate, Buddhist response. The teacher said very simply, "You should have very mindfully and with great compassion whacked the attacker over the head with your umbrella." Submitted by Malladi Murthy in India ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: A two-year-old girl managed to sneak onto a plane to Egypt after running off from her parents at a German airport. The parents of two-year-old Ana Miele raised the alarm as soon as they noticed she was missing as they were about to board their flight to Tunisia at Nuernberger airport. Air traffic control put out an alert to pilots after a search of the airport failed to locate the child, and a stewardess on the Egypt bound flight reported a short while later that the two year old had taken a seat on her plane. "She took a seat as good as gold and strapped herself in. No one had any idea that she was alone," the stewardess said. The plane that was about to take off had to abort its start and the girl was returned to her parents. Source: Ananova http://www.ananova.com