* Peter Bostock of Winnipeg believes that he and his wife, Jo-Anne, were in love in a past life. In that life, he believes that he managed a large estate in Derbyshire, England, in the 1880s, and that his now-wife was a cook; he was unable to express his feelings for her because he was married to someone else back then. Bostock described the connection with his wife as an "attraction and recognition that a soul makes when it encounters the familiar." (From the New York Times) Last month the couple was among 200 other people who traveled to Rhinebeck, New York, and paid $355 to attend a weekend seminar run by Dr. Brian Weiss, a proselytizer of past lives.
* "In cities like Mumbai or remote villages in India with their sprawling inequality ..., Twitter and other social-networking sites, for all their drawbacks with regards to privacy..., have provided a platform of equal sharing and have been silently revolutionary from the bottom up. Social-networking sites have gone a step ahead in expanding the notion of the self and democratizing the essence of social consciousness. No doubt ruminations of the self and the complete attention to the joy of the moment are life's DNA of emotional existence, but the Internet and social-networking sites can be a ladder in reaching that level of awareness for the entirety of humanity." -- Chinmay Borkar, Mumbai; from a letter to the New York Times Magzine
* "Only one thing is impossible for God -- to find any sense in any copyright law on this planet." -- Mark Twain
* From the New York Times Magazine: "Insane Clown Posse mention Faygo [a soft drink made in Detroit, the rap duo's hometown] a lot and spray concertgoers with it during shows. This has resulted in one of the longest-running instances of an unsolicited celebrity endorsement. The strength of association between the rappers and the soda can be gauged by Wikipedia's entry on 'juggalos,' as I.C.P.'s intensely loyal fans are known: 'Common characteristics,' it notes, 'include drinking the inexpensive soft drink Faygo and wearing face paint.'" In declining to issue a limited-edition run with I.C.P., Faygo's head of marketing, Matthew Rosenthal, said: "We wish them the best, but they're not at all mainline kind of guys." Faygo's website features one of its commercials from the 1970s, which includes a nostalgic song with the lyrics: "Pony rides and Sunday nights/roller skates and yo-yos..."
* "In 1932, when the Great Depression was getting its second wind," Phil Stong wrote "State Fair," "a novel about the agricultural shows he remembered from his childhood in a middle-of-nowhere Iowa town that doesn't ... exist anymore." ... "Despite urbanization, suburban sprawl, the collapse of family farms and the rise of corporate agriculture, every year... the midways light up, Tilt-A-Whirls clang to life and the judges study the local livestock." (From the New York Times)