I once met a Zen-trained painter in Japan, in his 90s, who told me that suffering is a privilege, it moves us toward thinking about essential things and shakes us out of shortsighted complacency; when he was a boy, he said, it was believed you should pay for suffering, it proves such a hidden blessing.

Yet none of that begins to apply to a child gassed to death (or born with AIDS or hit by a “limited strike”). Philosophy cannot cure a toothache, and the person who starts going on about its long-term benefits may induce a headache, too.

Pico Iyer in the New York Times on The Value of Suffering. Hat tip: Evelyn Rusli.

Jane Kim for School Board

Education, Travel

One of the people I had the pleasure of meeting while in San Francisco was Jane Kim, who’s running for school board there. If you’re voting in that area in this upcoming election I would highly recommend checking out where she stands on the issues and keep Jane Kim in mind when you visit the polls. If you get a chance to meet her before the election you’ll also get to see what a neat person she is, if not you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Image Title Plugin

Personal

Coldforged has an entry title image replacement plugin that lets you have titles like mine (done previously) that also has word-wrapping. I think I saw an approach somewhere (was it b2evo?) that actually broke each word into a separate image. For me the length limitation isn’t a limitation as much as a sanity check, if I’m writing titles so long it breaks my site I should probably shorten up a bit. I’ve also found caching isn’t worth it, every title here has been completely dynamic for about a year now.