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“Peter Van Houten wore a white linen suit, tailored to account for his rotundity, a powder-blue dress shirt, and a green tie. He looked like he was dressed for a colonial occupation of Panama, not a funeral. The minster said, “Let us pray,” but as everyone else bowed their head, I could only stare slack-jawed at the sight of Peter Van Houten. After a moment, he whispered, “We gotta fake pray,” and bowed his head.” — John Green, The Fault In Our Stars
That time in *Manhattan* I felt empathy for every person on the sidewalk. Share a memory from a place you’ve been.
Wander is very … interesting.
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![prostheticknowledge:
Sloth photobombs holiday picture
[via The Telegraph UK]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1p3mxjjKy1qav3uso1_500.jpg)
Sloth photobombs holiday picture
[via The Telegraph UK]
(via npr)
Jupiter and Venus from Earth by Marek Nikodem
See more photos here.
Oh look, Ellen Page and Jesse Eisenberg, just chilling on the set of Nero Fiddled.
My excitement for this new Woody Allen film is immense. It also stars Alec Baldwin and Wooy Allen himself. Wow.
So Kony 2012 is the most brilliant/terrifying/closest-to-brainwashing use of social media I have ever seen, and you should all both watch the video and support the cause (though I would focus on raising awareness rather than donating money to Invisible Children, since the organization’s use of funds is somewhat dubious/not very transparent - e.g. see here - a little bit of skepticism is good, I think).
HOWEVER, I think it is always good to do some research before blindly committing to something. Is this campaign more feel-good or do-something? I think it has the potential to be both, but everyone should remember that the second part is the important one. The importance is to keep up the momentum of the issue, and not let it become a thing-that-people-talked-about-that-one-time. John and Hank Green both wrote really good analyses about the various facets of this campaign that are definitely worth reading.
I think it is also good to keep in mind that there are other terrible things going on in the world: Syrians are being slaughtered by their own government, millions of people lack access to clean water, and millions more who are enslaved, many as prostitutes.
I am not saying this to be obnoxious or dismal. I just want people to know that the energy your are bringing, rightfully, to Kony 2012 can be extended to further issues. There are many things to be solved, and many things we can help solve. But we have to persist.
John Green's tumblr: Kony 2012 -
Apologies for my stunned silence in the face of the Kony 2012 movement and the internet’s explosion of power. I’ve never felt like the whole internet has simultaneously pushed down the same keys at the same time. Not even the response to SOPA made me feel this level of…
I woke up from a dream this morning in hysterical tears.The dream had this effect because it involved the death of a loved one, but also emphasized the unpredictability and inevitability of such an occurrence. I don’t normally have vivid or emotional dreams, so this really shook me up.
The thing is, I have never experienced such great grief in my seventeen-plus-a-bit years. People I have known have died, but I have never reacted as emotionally as I did as I awoke from this dream. I remember screaming to myself in the dream, realizing for the first time how unfair death truly is and wishing for it all to go away. And because it was a dream, it did. The terrifying part was (and is) knowing that one day I would not (and will not) be able to wish the grief away.
I question humanity’s ability to remember this sort of pain. I am already forgetting the piercing emotion that gripped me this morning; this was one of those cases where I told myself, “You must not forget how this feels,” but, of course, to continue living, I have forgotten the core of it.
I had a discussion with a friend recently about how difficult it is to remember feelings. Nostalgia is a sprite that tells us things which may or may not be true. We will remember things to be better and worse than they were, and our memories will never match the vividness of the thing as it happened, the unbounded clarity of the glorious and terrible present. (Tangentially, I recommend Jonah Lehrer’s recent Wired article about the neurology of how remember.
I think if we all knew better the grief of losing those we care about most, there would be fewer wars and murders. But of course this is only conjecture. And if we all lived with untarnished memories of grief, we would live perpetually haunted, unable to move forward. (This is explored in depth in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which I am currently reading for class.)
I did realize this morning that humanity really does need art. I have heard many times from various people that art and the empathy it induces are keys to a better world. I suppose it is the ultimate challenge to make someone feel, via art, the grief of death experienced, or even procured by the subconscious. My favorite video blogger, Rosianna Halse Rojas, recently wrote a truly stunning piece of writing about her grieving after her father’s death (I highly recommend purchasing it; it only costs $3, and it is absolutely worth every cent and much more.) called “Abstract and Brief Chronicles of the Time,” in which she writes the following:
I have honestly never noticed it as much as I do now, for obvious reasons. But maybe contemporary American fiction is all about losing your father. Maybe that’s what postmodernism is. Maybe that’s what fiction is, and has been, now and always.
Perhaps I haven’t learned enough from Harry Potter, but I fear death. I fear losing those who have made me happy, and I fear my own death, beyond which I will most likely not be able to do things any more. But what if art can teach us the lessons of death, what ever those may be, before we must experience it? I don’t know if this is true, but what if what if what if. I’m not sure if it is possible to ever come to terms with death. But perhaps in attempting to understand it we can become better, if that means anything.
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Merope’s Reflection Nebula by Leonardo Orazi via APOD:
Reflection nebulas reflect light from a nearby star. Many small carbon grains in the nebula reflect the light. The blue color typical of reflection nebula is caused by blue light being more efficiently scattered by the carbon dust than red light. The brightness of the nebula is determined by the size and density of the reflecting grains, and by the color and brightness of the neighboring star(s). NGC 1435, pictured above, surrounds Merope (23 Tau), one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades (M45). The Pleiades nebulosity is caused by a chance encounter between an open cluster of stars and a dusty molecular cloud.
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How The New York Times Paywall Is Working -
Forgive me, for this is an old article. However, I love the extended metaphor Felix Salmon uses:
I’m in England right now, home to both of the sights above: the polite request to “please keep off the grass”, accompanied by tiny iron hoops; and the forbidding walls surrounding the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The former encapsulates everything which people like about England; the latter is the dark and regrettable side of things.
Now imagine that both of the gardens above were open to anybody paying an annual membership fee. The gardens on the left would have many more freeloaders — people who just saunter onto the grass and enjoy the sunshine without paying. The ones on the right would be much more effective in keeping such people out.
But here’s the thing about freeloaders: if they value what they’re getting, a lot of them will end up paying anyway. What happened when the Indianapolis Museum of Art moved to a free-admission policy? Its paid membership increased by 3%. When the Minneapolis Institute of Arts did the same thing, paid membership increased by 33%.
(by leslie kirchhoff)
(via photoholic)
