The Writer's Poke

Cameron Russell is an underwear model, and after being an underwear model for ten years, she claims that she will always be perceived as being an underwear model. If she wanted to run for President of the United States, who would vote for her? After all, she is an underwear model, and that's all she can be. Her advice to young girls? Don’t become an underwear model. Instead, try to become the underwear model’s boss, or work hard and do something that takes education and skill. Being an underwear model, she claims, only requires knowing how to follow the posing directions of the photographer – something that apparently anyone can do.  Other than that, there’s not much to modeling other than being lucky. Russell claims to have won the “genetic lottery”; she is fortunate enough to have the right “look” at the right time. She’s skinny, she’s white (but properly tanned), and she’s young. These three characteristics are enough to make her attractive in our society, and ...

Newly-hatched green sea turtles immediately head toward the ocean. How do they know to do that? The answer is “instinct,” but then the question becomes, “Where does instinct come from?" Is instinct encoded in the green sea turtles’ DNA? Could scientists, for example, somehow manipulate the green sea turtles’ DNA so that it headed away from the ocean?  The green sea turtles aren’t the only animals born with an innate knowledge of what they need to do to survive. Another powerful example that comes to mind is the salmon, which may travel a thousand miles or more to spawn in the same location as it was born. First, how does it recall specifically where it was born, and what compels it to swim past a gauntlet of obstacles to reach its destination? Again, instinct, right? But again, where is instinct located?  Human beings are animals, too, of course, and we have instincts. But do we have anything like the instincts of green sea turtles and salmon? Unlike these and ...

So much of life is wasted, but does it make sense to argue that you should “make every moment count?” I’m not sure how a person could actually make more out of the time it takes to brush one’s teeth, or balance the checkbook, or mow the yard, or complete one’s taxes, etc. Next time you brush your teeth, tell yourself, "I'm really going to make this count!" and tell me how that works for you. The idea behind “Live your dash” isn't necessarily as silly as what I've described above. Instead, it is the inspirational idea of living a meaningful life. So, think about your tombstone. On your tombstone is the date you were born and the date you died. The dash in between the two dates is your life. What do you want that dash to signify? Would thinking about your mortality on a daily basis help you to live a better life? The question reminds me about the Misfit’s observation in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” “She would have...

The Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 words. Simply put, no other language comes close. Spanish, for example, only has 100,000 words. Here’s the sad news: The richness of the English language more or less goes to waste. The average English speaker recognizes somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words.  But guess how many words we actually use of a regular basis? According to Richard Lederer, 96% of average conversations conducted in English are comprised of the 737 most common words! Listen to a conversation the next time you’re in some public place, and you’ll probably be able to quickly confirm these findings.  Maybe we don’t need 500 words for “big” when “big” will do just fine, but if that’s true, isn’t it interesting that the English language keeps growing by 1,000 words each year? The language itself continues to grow larger, while the average English-speaker's vocabulary seems to shrink year after year. Who takes the time to study voc...

A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality concludes that the shoes you wear say a lot about you. Just by looking at your shoes, a complete stranger can apparently tell if you’re introverted or extroverted, if you have a difficult time forming long-lasting relationships, and so forth. Personally, I’ve been wearing Asics Gel Running Shoes for the past two years. I currently have three pairs in rotation, and although I own other shoes, I almost never wear them. What do other people think about my preference of footwear? I have no idea, but I doubt if anyone would reach the right conclusion, which is this: I have foot issues. Specifically, I have gout inflammations maybe once or twice a year, and so I wear comfortable shoes at all times to be nice to my feet. I do support the idea that what we wear or the products we prefer can tell others something about us. In The Art of Fiction , John Gardner quips that the details and preferences authors give t...