"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." - Carl Sagan

The only aspect of outer space that strikes us with any sense of familiarity is our cosmic family unit, the solar system. "Our" solar system. We learn the order of the planets in grammar school, through various absurd mnemonics, and all know bits and pieces of scientific lore about each: Mercury oppressively small, Mars close, dusty and red, Saturn with its elegant rings, and Jupiter a giant of swirling red clouds. Some of us have affinities and distastes -- I, for example, find Venus horrible. We know "our" planets, see them as our fellows, as odd-coupled roommates in the neighborhood. We feel, au fond, territorial.

Which is why, perhaps, any changes in the established order can irk us fantastically. Take Pluto, for example. Long a beloved member of the solar system, its 2006 demotion from planet to dwarf planet ignited ire among thousands, who saw the move as needlessly draconian, as well as an affront to the harmony of our solar system. 54 members of the California state assembly proposed a resolution condemning the International Astronomical Union for "scientific heresy," and for inciting "psychological harm to some Californians who question their place in the universe." Of course, Pluto continued to exist, unconcerned.

UNIVERSE | There Goes the Solar System
Image from Sharp Bokeh.

I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist.

We believe the major causes of global environmental degradation are:

· Economic systems that exploit and misuse nature and people in the drive for short-term and short-sighted gains and profits.

· The rapid urbanization and poverty resulting from migration from rural areas and from inadequate planning and resource allocation in towns and cities.

· The displacement of small farmers and indigenous peoples by agribusiness, timber, mining, and energy corporations, often with encouragement and assistance from international financial institutions, and with the complicity of national governments.

· The disproportionate consumption patterns of the affluent the world over. Currently, the industrialized nations, with 22% of the world's population, consume 70% of the world's resources. Within the United States, deepening economic inequalities mean that the poor are consuming less, and the rich more.

· Technologies designed to exploit but not to restore natural resources.

· War making and arms production which divest resources from human needs, poison the natural environment and perpetuate the militarization of culture, encouraging violence against women.

Demographic variables can have an impact on the environment, but reducing population growth will not solve the above problems. In many countries, population growth rates have declined yet environmental conditions continue to deteriorate.

Moreover, blaming global environmental degradation on population growth helps to lay the groundwork for the re-emergence and intensification of top-down, demographically driven population policies and programs which are deeply disrespectful of women, particularly women of color and their children.

Women, Population & the Environment | Call For A New Approach

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

∆ difference ∆ change

Their theory is simple. Where diseases are common, individuals are mean to strangers. Strangers may carry new diseases and so one would do best to avoid them. When people avoid strangers—those outside the tribe—communication among tribes breaks down. That breakdown allows peoples, through time, to become more different.

Differences accumulate until in places with more diseases, for example Nigeria or Brazil, there are more cultures and languages. Sweden, for example, has few diseases and only 15 languages; Ghana, which is a similar size, has many diseases and 89 languages. Cultural diversity is, in this view, a consequence of disease. [...]

Fincher and colleagues tested their theories by simply looking at whether there were consistent patterns in how cultural practices vary among regions of the world, and whether the prevalence of disease varies in a similar way. Are the places with the most diseases also the most xenophobic? Yes, they found.

The Japanese dies if there is no rice

Tumblr | Hospital Food

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol

If the bondage business seems an unlikely pursuit for two button-down, slightly awkward, decidedly deadpan lower-class Pakistanis, it is. But then, discretion has been their byword. The brothers have taken extreme measures to conceal a business that in this deeply conservative Muslim country is as risky as it is risqué.

It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.

Today, they sell their products to online and brick-and-mortar shops, and to individuals via eBay. Their market research, they said, showed that 70 percent of their customers were middle- to upper-class Americans, and a majority of them Democrats. The Netherlands and Germany account for the bulk of their European sales.[...]

“I go to Sin City every year,” said Rizwan, referring to Las Vegas in a sheepish laugh. It’s all business, he said. “Clients know our country and culture, and they don’t invite us to participate. We’re a little bit shy.”

NYT | Lacy Threads and Leather Straps Bind a Business (With Video)

and the universe is shown

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
–Albert Einstein

"I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism."
–Albert Einstein

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
–Carl Sagan

New York Times, The God Delusion | Wikipedia, Pantheism
Image: Jacob Magraw-Mickelson

"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art." - Susan Sontag

Tumblr | David Horvitz

Davies: "So, swearing and nudity we can show them, but we can't show them how tough life can be?"

Title:Into The Wild (2007)
Rating: R
Rating Reason: Rated R for language and some nudity.
Distributor: Paramount Vantage

Title: Wendy And Lucy (2008)
Rating: R
Rating Reason: Rated R for language.
Distributor: Oscilloscope Pictures, Inc.

Title: Gran Torino (2008)
Rating: R
Rating Reason: Rated R for language throughout, and some violence.
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Title: Dark Knight, The (2008)
Rating: PG-13
Rating Reason: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace.
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Title: Max Payne (2008)
Rating: PG-13
Rating Reason: Rated PG-13 for violence including intense shooting sequences, drug content, some sexuality and brief strong language.
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

MPAA.org | Find a Rating
Title: From Kelly Reichardt NPR interview [Listen]
Image: Eric Yahnker, Chicken Fight, 2008, graphite on paper

yum for the tum ^_^

and i'm proud to be an...

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls. [...]

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema
image: Brian Viveros

...Miner describes the Nacirema, a little-known tribe living in North America between Canada and Mexico. The way in which he writes about the curious practices that this group performs distances readers from the fact that the North American group described actually corresponds to modern-day Americans of the mid-1950s.

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” – Alan Watts

KEO is a space time capsule which will be launched in 2010 or 2011[1] carrying messages from the citizens of present Earth to humanity 50,000 years from now, when it will reenter Earth's atmosphere. [...]
Every person is invited to write a message addressed to the future inhabitants—the deadline is December 31, 2009. Messages can be posted via the project's website, or sent by postal mail. The organizers encourage everybody to gather messages from children, senior citizens and the illiterate so that every culture and demographic on Earth is represented. The satellite has enough capacity to carry a four-page message from each of the more than six billion inhabitants on the planet. Once the satellite is launched, the messages (with personal names removed) will be made freely available on the web.

what's history is history

The Trap Pt. 1