That’s what art does, that’s what it’s for — to show you that what you think can be erased, cancelled, turned on its head by something you weren’t prepared for — by a work, by a play, a song, a scene in a movie, a painting, a collage, a cartoon, an advertisement — something that has the power that reaches you far more strongly than it reaches the person standing next to you, or even anyone else on Earth — art that produces a revelation that you might not be able to explain or pass on to anyone else, a revolution that you desperately try to share in your own words, in your own work.
A fine addition to history’s finest definitions of art from Greil Marcus’s fantastic 2013 SVA commencement address on how the division of high vs. low robs art of its essence. (via explore-blog)(Source: , via explore-blog)
~ Hygiene for the Worker, by William H. Tolman, Ph.D. and Adelaide Wood Guthrie, 1912
Después de un tiempo, uno aprende la sutil diferencia entre sostener una mano y encadenar un alma, y uno aprende que el amor no significa acostarse y una compañía no significa seguridad, y uno empieza a aprender…Que los besos no son contratos y los regalos no son
Jorge Luis Borges
promesas (…)(Source: janale, via freelikeariverraging)
Worst Star Wars quotes to shout during sex:
1) “…I am your father!”
2)“You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought!”
3) “We’re starting for the target shaft now!”
4) “Into the garbage chute, flyboy!”
5) “No reward is worth this!”
6)“Ungh! And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!”
7) “Put that thing away, you’re gonna get us all killed!”
8 )“RRRWARRRRGH!”
9) “Laugh it up, fuzzball!”
10) “It’s no good! I can’t maneuver!”
11) “ARRWOOOGH!”
12) “Now, his failure is complete.”
13)“Get in there, you big furry oaf!”
14) “Would it help if I got out and pushed?!”
15) “Yesss… Your sister!”
16)“You have controlled your fear! Now, unleash your anger!”
17) “I have a bad feeling about this!”
18)“Size matters not! Look at me!”
19) “Stay on target!”
20) “What a piece of junk!”
21) “Now let’s blow this thing and go home!”
22) “Great, kid! …Don’t get cocky!”
23) “You came in here, didn’t you have a plan for getting out?”
24) “It came from… behind!”
25) “He made a fair move. Screaming about it can’t help you.”
26) “Control, control, you must learn control!”
27) “You don’t have to do this to impress me!”
28 ) “You’re lucky you don’t taste very good.”
29) “Boba Fett? …Boba Fett!!!!!”
30) “You’ll find I’m full of surprises!”
31) “Here goes nothing!”
32) “Bargon yanah coto da eethe!”*
33) “They’re coming in too fast!”
34) “Boy, it’s lucky you have these compartments.”
35) “What’re you lookin’ at? I know what I’m doing!”
36) “I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you’ll do as I tell you, okay?!”
37) “Your powers are weak, old man.”
38) “Copy, Gold Leader. I’m already on my way out!”
39) “In time, you will call me master.”
40) “Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side.”
- From the Desert Fathers
“I had tried years earlier to kill myself, and nearly died in the attempt, but did not consider it either a selfish or a not-selfish thing to have done. It was simply the end of what I could bear, the last afternoon of having to imagine waking up the next morning only to start all over again with a thick mind and black imaginings. It was the final outcome of a bad disease, a disease it seemed to me I would never get the better of. No amount of love from or for other people and there was a lot-could help. No advantage of a caring family and fabulous job was enough to overcome the pain and hopelessness I felt; no passionate or romantic love, however strong, could make a difference. Nothing alive and warm could make its way in through my carapace. I knew my life to be a shambles, and I believed-incontestably-that my family, friends, and patients would be better off without me. There wasn’t much of me left anymore, anyway, and I thought my death would free up the wasted energies and well-meant efforts that were being wasted on my behalf.”—Kay Redfield Jamison
She comes like fullest moon on happy night,
Taper of waist with shape of magic might.
She hath an eye whose glances quell mankind,
And ruby on her cheeks reflects his light.
Enveils her hips the blackness of her hair-
Beware of curls that bite with viper bite!
Her sides are silken-soft, that while the heart
Mere rock behind that surface ‘scapes our sight. From the fringed curtains of her eyne she shoots Shafts that at furthest range on mark alight.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume
Before he was famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most famous image of man, before he was all of these things, Leonardo da Vinci was an artificer, an armorer, a maker of things that go “boom”.
And, like you, he had to put together a resume to get his next gig. So in 1482, at the age of 30, he wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.
The translation of this letter:
“Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.
1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.
2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions.
3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.
4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion.
5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense; and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes.
6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.
7. I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance.
8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type.
9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.
10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another.
11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.
Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency – to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.”
(Source: cenedella.com, via crookedindifference)
Ever wondered what this Higgs Boson thing is that everyone you don’t know seems to be talking about? Well, here you go!! The Higgs Boson Explained.
(Source: teachinglearning)
“
Once upon a time in a far away land, there were two rival families: Fermions and Bosons. Fermions were famous for their peculiar half spin dance. Electrons, protons and quarks were all Fermions.
The Bosons however were into full spinning though and despised half spin. Photons and Gluons were Bosons. It was rumored that Bosons had a long lost elder brother called Higgs Boson who had been missing for a long long time.
One day a wise old man came to the land of the feuding families. He told them they should stop quaerlling over half spin and full spin, since they all used to be the same, and that they all used to be massless.
The old man said that, in the beginning of time when the universe was created, everyone was born the same, but then they were immersed in a mysterious field called the higgs field making each of them different except for Photons who remained the same.
He said this mysterious field was made up of the Higgs Boson - the long lost Boson brother.
The families of course refused to believe all this hogwash, and so the old man set about trying to prove his story and bring the Higgs Boson out of his hiding place.
To do this he asked for help from the scientists at CERN.
The family feud is coming to an end, at last.
”—Guardian commentator Egorulz explains the Higgs Boson as if to a 7 year old
Studying the reblogging
These graphs represent the network created by tumblr bloggers who reblogged a previous post of mine. The first graph corresponds to the network formed after 2 days, and the second one is the same network after 3 days. In both networks, there are some clusters, where a blogger reblogs my post and after that successive rebloggings are occuring from his/her followers. I created a little program in Mathematica, which can read the notes of the post and identify who reblogged from whom.
I have attributed a name to some of these clusters by the name of the blog located in the root of the cluster. For example, my cluster is the number 1. The biggest cluster though, for the first graph, is that of jtotheizzoe. For the second graph, the huge cluster is that of n-a-s-a, which has its origin from the jtotheizzoe’s cluster (number 2)… The seperated couples at the bottom are users that have reblogged my post by the ‘likes’ list’ of the other user, and then I couldn’t know where they came from…
I really enjoy that, and I’m curious how the structure of the network will look like eventually…
This a very cool analysis of Tumblr post spread. It’s very interesting to see how content spreads over days from the original poster, and how its life span and amplification change. It’s sharing, visualized.
I’m happy to be a node on this, as well.
(via jtotheizzoe)
“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)
Wright’s Celestial Map of the Universe, 1742
aka
A synopsis of the universe, or, the visible world epitomiz’d / by Thomas Wright of Durham.
(Source: memory.loc.gov, via scientificillustration)
I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant. I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child. My Guru told me that the child, which is you even now, is your real self (‘swarupa’). Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’ is still in its purity before it gets contaminated with ‘this I am’ or ‘that I am’. Your burden is of false self-identification – abandon them all. My Guru told me – ‘Trust me. I tell you, you are divine. Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine; your suffering is divine too. All comes from God. Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is done.’ I did believe him and soon realized how wonderfully true and accurate were his words. I did not condition my mind by thinking: ‘I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond.’ I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the mind on pure being, ‘I am’ and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared - myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
