Tom Soper gives some pause for thought. He writes about the “hooks” he uses to connect with the good that life dishes up. Get hooked here.

“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well” Pierre de Coubertin, Father of the Modern Olympic Games, speaking at the London 1908 Closing Ceremony.

Check out the funky and funny London Underdog web site dedicated to Olympic athletes who don’t stand much of a chance of winning.

How about this, from the Guardian: Belarus’s president sacks two generals after Swedish plane drops hundreds of teddy bears bearing human rights slogans. More

I tell my students, “When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” – Toni Morrison

Her father was murdered by gunmen, her mother starved to death and Michaela DePrince was branded a “devil child” at her orphanage because of a rare skin condition. Then, as civil war raged around her in Sierra Leone, a vision came as if from another world. Outside the orphanage gates was a magazine with a picture of a ballet dancer. “I’d never seen anything like it before,” Michaela, now 17, tells the Guardian.