“Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.”
Wislawa Szymborska
(Source: devilduck)
“You’ll definitely cry in space, but the big difference is, tears don’t fall. So grab a hanky.”
Chris Hadfield
(Source: ommegang)
“I spent the entire day the building collapsed on the scene, watching as injured garment workers were being rescued from the rubble. I remember the frightened eyes of relatives — I was exhausted both mentally and physically.
“Around 2 a.m., I found a couple embracing each other in the rubble. The lower parts of their bodies were buried under the concrete. The blood from the eyes of the man ran like a tear.
“When I saw the couple, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I knew them — they felt very close to me. I looked at who they were in their last moments as they stood together and tried to save each other — to save their beloved lives.
“…This photo is haunting me all the time. If the people responsible don’t receive the highest level of punishment, we will see this type of tragedy again. There will be no relief from these horrific feelings. I’ve felt a tremendous pressure and pain over the past two weeks surrounded by dead bodies. As a witness to this cruelty, I feel the urge to share this pain with everyone. That’s why I want this photo to be seen.”
— Photographer TASLIMA AKHTER, on his photo of man and a woman discovered in a final embrace amidst the rubble of a fatal building collapse in Savar, Bangladesh.
“I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe…
I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
- The (always wonderful) Richard Feynman
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
Thoreau
(Source: devilduck)
Cuil, a unit of measurement
19-year-old Boyan Slat has unveiled plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans. The device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.
(via crookedindifference)
A billboard that pulls drinkable water from the air. Brilliant.
UTEC - Potable Water Generator (by MAYOPERUDraftFCB)
(via crookedindifference)
“You ask a philosopher a question and after he or she has talked for a bit you don’t understand your question any more.”
Philippa Foot, to photographer Steve Pyke (via fuckyeahphilosophy)
M.I.T. Computer Program Reveals Invisible Motion in Video
A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an image-enhancing software program that can reveal subtle fluctuations in colors and motions once thought to be invisible to the naked eye. Head over to the New York Times for more details on this story.
(Source: meineigenesblog, via ommegang)
(Source: retrogasm, via thepumpkinpatch)
“If you want to deserve Hell, you need only stay in bed. The world is iniquity; if you accept it, you are an accomplice, if you change it you are an executioner.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
(Source: saloandseverine, via amodernmanifesto)
“I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativism is defensible and attractive. It’s also a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.”
Kurt Vonnegut
(Source: en.wikiquote.org, via stfuconservatives)
