On April 21, 1884, a 28-year-old researcher in the field now called neuroscience sat down at the cluttered desk of his cramped room in Vienna General Hospital and composed a letter to his fiancée, Martha Bernays, telling her of his recent studies: “I have been reading about cocaine, the effective ingredient of coca leaves,” Sigmund Freud wrote, “which some Indian tribes chew in order to make themselves resistant to privation and fatigue.” Less than a month later, Freud was writing to Bernays about the many self-experiments in which he had swallowed various quantities of the drug, finding it useful in relieving brief episodes of depression and anxiety. Later, he described how “a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now busy collecting the literature” — in German, French and English — “for a song of praise to this magical substance.”

That song of praise was “Über Coca,” a monograph published in July 1884...

via An Anatomy of Addiction - NYTimes.com.

When I tell people what we are doing, they want to hear about the room where you produce. I tell them that there is a lot of paperwork. That they take your picture and look at your license. Then they walk you back to the room. You are handed a list of instructions and some stickers and a plastic cup. The cup has a forest-green lid.

via The Morning News.

Extreme heat is scorching much of the eastern United States, and it's not expected to let up anytime soon. Experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center say much of the southern half of the country will be hotter than normal in August, with the worst conditions in Texas, Louisiana and parts of Mississippi and Arkansas.

"We have quite a few records being set," said Deke Arndt, chief of the climate modeling branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. "This is a very large heat wave."

via Scientific American.

The agency has placed large swaths of the Midwestern and mid-Atlantic regions, as well as the Ohio Valley, under "excessive heat warnings," which it issues when it expects a heat index of at least 105 degrees Fahrenheit for three hours a day, two days in a row, or a heat index of 115 degrees for any length of time.

In passing, @OsamaInHell tweets: "It's hot as New York."

faith took this photograph. it was quite a day!

in two weeks, hannah turns eight.

Timothy Dalrymple, via Scot McKnight:

What I mean is this: we sometimes find ourselves going about our lives and seeing the world through our own eyes, but simultaneously observing ourselves from the outside as it might be perceived or told by someone else.  So here I am feeding the homeless on Skid Row, but even while I’m working with the homeless I’m also observing myself, and approving of myself, working with the homeless.  A part of me is conscious of others and their needs, and a part of me is watching myself on video and admiring how I look.  I’m watching myself through a camera that hovers somewhere over my shoulder, and ultimately I’m hoping that others will, someday and somehow, see the instant replay.

via patheos.

not someday, not somehow... today, on twitter & facebook & google+ and through the weekend message I'm preparing, the church I'm planting, the class I'm teaching, the ministry I'm developing, the article I'm writing...

doesn't it seem like the spiritual practices that might best help us in our times involve submission, silence, unseen service, and so forth?