RedSoxSooner Wrote:First off I remember we were discussing audio books and podcasts so I'd point you to The New Yorker's website where one author reads a favorite NY story by another author. http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction

I particularly recommend the ones titled 'Reunion, 'One With a Bullet,' 'This Is It,' 'Off Base,' 'The Living Dead,' and 'Knife In the Eye.' For some reason the podcast titles don't match the story titles. In any case, they're all good, easy to follow ways to dip your toe into the water. [links go to MP3s]

Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is one of the genre's classics and I've always found that students respond well to it.

Ditto this one by Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

And this one by John Updike: A&P

This is my favorite thing J.D. Salinger ever wrote: For Esmé - with Love and Squalor.


This is my favorite short story of recent years: The Smoker by David Schickler

I think you guys would both like this Kurt Vonnegut story: Welcome to the Monkey House.

Well this seems like plenty to start with. I hope you enjoy them. Or at least some of them.

Quote: The role of historical contingency in evolution has been much debated, but rarely tested. Twelve initially identical populations of Escherichia coli were founded in 1988 to investigate this issue. They have since evolved in a glucose-limited medium that also contains citrate, which E. coli cannot use as a carbon source under oxic conditions. No population evolved the capacity to exploit citrate for >30,000 generations, although each population tested billions of mutations. A citrate-using (Cit(+)) variant finally evolved in one population by 31,500 generations, causing an increase in population size and diversity. The long-delayed and unique evolution of this function might indicate the involvement of some extremely rare mutation. Alternately, it may involve an ordinary mutation, but one whose physical occurrence or phenotypic expression is contingent on prior mutations in that population. We tested these hypotheses in experiments that "replayed" evolution from different points in that population's history. We observed no Cit(+) mutants among 8.4 x 10^12 ancestral cells, nor among 9 x 10^12 cells from 60 clones sampled in the first 15,000 generations. However, we observed a significantly greater tendency for later clones to evolve Cit(+), indicating that some potentiating mutation arose by 20,000 generations. This potentiating change increased the mutation rate to Cit(+) but did not cause generalized hypermutability. Thus, the evolution of this phenotype was contingent on the particular history of that population. More generally, we suggest that historical contingency is especially important when it facilitates the evolution of key innovations that are not easily evolved by gradual, cumulative selection.

Quote: ...numerous scholars have found some evidence that, on aggregate, parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness (Alesina et al., 2004), life satisfaction (Di Tella et al., 2003), marital satisfaction (Twenge et al., 2003) and mental well-being (Clark & Oswald, 2002) compared with non-parents.

Quote:Getting in the groove goes deeper than just hitting the notes at the right time, it seems. Musicians playing the same tune together have brain patterns that are virtually identical, researchers find.

Quote:Bush did everything the right is screaming about, except he left guns alone. As Greenwald said:

The Bush admin. began "limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending."

And nobody on the right said jack shit about it. But Bush left guns alone. That was his genius. Savant retard genius, but genius nonetheless.