joshersaurus

explore-blog: Some magnificent motion graphics in this lovely...

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:23:47 -0400

Some magnificent motion graphics in this lovely short portrait of typography powerhouse Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, winners of the 2013 AIGA medal, by Brooklyn-based studio dress code.

Also see Hoefler and Frere-Jones in this short and sweet PBS micro-documentary on typography, then pair with 10 essential books on typography.

2:25 – 2:55 is so beautiful

yeahwriters: “The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be...

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:47:32 -0400

yeahwriters:

“The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.”

—Aristotle (via writingquotes)

I had a high school teacher tell me this once too—that the most difficult thing to do in writing is to come up with good metaphors, and if you can, you’re a genius. I believe it.

By the way, we have a neat article called 5 Tips for ~~Becoming A Genius~~ Creating Great Metaphors & Similes. Check it.

ilovecharts: Carl Sagan passes on wisdom about the importance...

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:32:00 -0400

ilovecharts:

Carl Sagan passes on wisdom about the importance of understanding the origins of cosmic bodies before you begin baking for the afternoon.

“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”

MOOC Professors Claim No Responsibility for How Courses Are Used

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:29:33 -0400

MOOC Professors Claim No Responsibility for How Courses Are Used:

Are professors who develop and teach MOOCs [massive open online courses] responsible for how those MOOCs are used?

Mr. Ghrist specializes in applied topology, an abstract math field. In practice, topological math can help someone harness huge collections of sensory inputs—like those collected by cellphones, for example—to model large environments and solve problems.

The Department of Defense has enlisted Mr. Ghrist to do research along those lines. The Penn professor knows he has little power over how the Pentagon might use his insights. But he says that no longer bothers him.

“I have long ago dealt with the issue of: What if something I create is put to bad use?” the mathematician says. “And I have found that, throughout history, the benefit of building good things outweighed the hazards,” he says, citing lasers and the Internet as net-positive inventions despite ample opportunity for abuse. “That’s true in my research; it’s also true in my teaching.”

"I Watched a Snake'

Mon, 20 May 2013 02:43:01 -0400

by Jorie Graham

‘I Watched a Snake’

hard at work in the dry grass
behind the house
catching flies. It kept on
disappearing.
And though I know this has
something to do

with lust, today it seemed
to have to do
with work. It took it almost half
an hour to thread
roughly ten feet of lawn,
so slow

between the blades you couldn’t see
it move. I’d watch
its path of body in the grass go
suddenly invisible
only to reappear a little
further on

black knothead up, eyes on
a butterfly.
This must be perfect progress where
movement appears
to be a vanishing, a mending
of the visible

by the invisible—just as we
stitch the earth,
it seems to me, each time
we die, going
back under, coming back up.
It is the simplest

stitch, this going where we must,
leaving a not
unpretty pattern by default. But going
out of hunger
for small things—flies, words—going
because one’s body

goes. And in this disconcerting creature
a tiny hunger,
one that won’t even press
the dandelions down,
retrieves the necessary blue-
black dragonfly

that has just landed on a pod…
All this to say
I‘m not afraid of them
today, or anymore
I think. We are not, were not, ever
wrong. Desire

is the honest work of the body,
its engine, its wind.
It too must have its sails—wings
in this tiny mouth, valves
in the human heart, meanings like sailboats
setting out

over the mind. Passion is work
that retrieves us,
lost stitches. It makes a pattern of us,
it fastens us
to sturdier stuff
no doubt.

g4l4xxy: veganmovement2012: This is interesting. After reading...

Mon, 20 May 2013 01:27:46 -0400

g4l4xxy:

veganmovement2012:

This is interesting. After reading this, you’ll never look at a banana in the same way again.

Bananas contain three natural sugars -sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber. A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.

Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world’s leading athletes.

But energy isn’t the only way a banana can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.

DEPRESSION: According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.

PMS: Forget the pills - eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.

ANEMIA: High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.

BLOOD PRESSURE: This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit’s ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

BRAIN POWER: 200 students at a Twickenham school ( England ) were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packe d fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.

CONSTIPATION: High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.

HANGOVERS: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

HEARTBURN: Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.

MORNING SICKNESS: Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.

MOSQUITO BITES: Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

NERVES: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system..

Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and chips. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

ULCERS: The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

TEMPERATURE CONTROL: Many other cultures see bananas as a ‘cooling’ fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand , for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.

So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has FOUR TIMES the protein, TWICE the carbohydrate, THREE TIMES the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals.. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say, ‘A BANANA a day keeps the doctor away!’

The bananas on the right are the ones you should be eating. Brown spotted bananas are ripe bananas; When they are yellow the starches have yet turn to sugar. This causes your body to have a harder time digesting the fruit.

As a banana ripens and turns brown, its levels of antioxidants increases. The antioxidants in ripe bananas protect your body against cancer and heart diseases. The darker patches it has, the higher the immunity enhancement quality; Hence, the riper the banana the better the anti-cancer quality.

Happened to buy two bananas today—my ‘90-minute workout’ was studying for observational astronomy.

'Voyager'

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:36:30 -0400

by Mary Ruefle

I have become an orchid
washed in on the salt white beach.
Memory,
what can I make of it now
that might please you—
this life, already wasted
and still strewn with
miracles?

'OCD'

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:18:00 -0400

by Neil Hilborn

The first time I saw her… Everything in my head went quiet.

All the ticks, all the constantly refreshing images just disappeared.

When you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you don’t really get quiet moments.

Even in bed, I’m thinking:

Did I lock the doors? Yes.
Did I wash my hands? Yes.
Did I lock the doors? Yes.
Did I wash my hands? Yes.

But when I saw her, the only thing I could think about was the hairpin curve of her lips..
Or the eyelash on her cheek—
the eyelash on her cheek—
the eyelash on her cheek.

I knew I had to talk to her.

I asked her out six times in thirty seconds.

She said yes after the third one, but none of them felt right, so I had to keep going.

On our first date, I spent more time organizing my meal by color than I did eating it, or talking to her..
But she loved it.

She loved that I had to kiss her goodbye sixteen times or twenty-four times at different times of the day.

She loved that it took me forever to walk home because there are lots of cracks on our sidewalk.

When we moved in together, she said she felt safe, like no one would ever rob us because I definitely lock the door eighteen times.

I’d always watch her mouth when she talked—
when she talked—
when she talked—
when she talked;
when she said she loved me, her mouth would curl up at the edges.

At night, she’d lay in bed and watch me turn all the lights off.. And on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and off.
She’d close her eyes and imagine that the days and nights were passing in front of her.

But then.. She said I was taking up too much of her time.

That I couldn’t kiss her goodbye so much because I was making her late for work..

When she said she loved me, her mouth was a straight line..

When I stopped in front of a crack in the sidewalk, she just kept walking..

And last week she started sleeping at her mother’s place.

She told me that she shouldn’t have let me get so attached to her; that this whole thing was a mistake, but..

How can it be a mistake that I don’t have to wash my hands after I touch her?

Love is not a mistake, and it’s killing me that she can run away from this and I just can’t.

I can’t go out and find someone new because I always think of her.

Usually, when I obsess over things, I see germs sneaking into my skin.
I see myself crushed my an endless succession of cars..
And she was the first beautiful thing I ever got stuck on.

I want to wake up every morning thinking about the way she holds her steering wheel..
How she turns shower knobs like she opening a safe.

How she blows out candles—
blows out candles—
blows out candles—
blows out candles—
blows out—….

Now, I just think about who else is kissing her.

I can’t breathe because he only kisses her once—he doesn’t care if it’s perfect!

I want her back so bad..

I leave the door unlocked.

I leave the lights on.

Watch Neil Hilborn perform ‘OCD’ in the CUPSI 2011 finals, then scroll through his Tumblr: http://neilhilborn.tumblr.com.

'Song on the Subway'

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:03:10 -0400

by Ocean Vuong

Rush-hour on the A train. A blind man
staggers forth, his cane tapping lightly
down the aisle. He leans against the door,

raises a violin to chin, and says I’m sorry
to bother you, folks. But please. Just listen.
And it kills me, the word sorry. As if something like music

should be forgiven. He nuzzles into the wood like a lover,
inhales, and at the first slow stroke, the crescendo
   seeps through our skin like warm water, we

who have nothing but destinations, who dream of light
but descend into the mouths of tunnels, searching.
   Beads of sweat fall from his brow, making dark roses

on the instrument. His head swooning to each chord
exhaled through the hollow torso. The woman beside me
   has put down her book, closed her eyes, the baby

has stopped crying, the cop has sat down, and I know
this train is too fast for dreaming, that these iron jaws
   will always open to swallow a smile already lost.

How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
   how will hear these notes when the train slides
into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
    But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
   flowing from his hands. I want nothing

but to put my fingers inside his mouth,
let that prayer hum through my veins.
   I want crawl into the hole in his violin.

I want to sleep there
               until my flesh
                                            becomes music.

explore-blog: Artist Austin Kleon’s irreverent and...

Sun, 12 May 2013 18:28:20 -0400

explore-blog:

Artist Austin Kleon’s irreverent and heart-warming newspaper blackout poem for his mom. His Newspaper Blackout project is full of gems like this one.

Also see Kleon on how to steal like an artist

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 03:45:16 -0400

edwardspoonhands: Google Earth Engine is a joint project...

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:10:40 -0400

edwardspoonhands:

Google Earth Engine is a joint project between Google and NASA that allows anyone access to a 30 year time-lapse of the surface of the earth. I made a video about how amazing, terrifying, and important it is.

jensensations: Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal (x)

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:12:56 -0400

jensensations:

Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal (x)

nbcnews: World Trade Center becomes tallest US building at 1776...

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:11:17 -0400

nbcnews:

World Trade Center becomes tallest US building at 1776 feet

(Photos: NBC News)

A crane lifted the last of a 408-foot tall spire on top of One World Trade Center on Friday, a capstone to an emotional 12-year effort to replace the twin towers destroyed by terrorists.

See more photos and read the complete story.

West 10th: 2012-2013

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:07:38 -0400

West 10th: 2012-2013:

The 2012-2013 edition of West 10th is so beautiful, especially the prose pieces. I finally got my hands on one on Friday, at the Creative Writing House’s spring reading—my copy so far is furious with underlining; I can’t put it down. Stick around for when the editors put up a free flip-through on Issuu. For now, flip through their previous issues.

A Pure, High Note of Anguish

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 03:09:00 -0400

Published on Sunday, September 23, 2001 by the Los Angeles Times

A Pure, High Note of Anguish
by Barbara Kingsolver

TUCSON — I want to do something to help right now. But I can’t give blood (my hematocrit always runs too low), and I’m too far way to give anybody shelter or a drink of water. I can only give words. My verbal hemoglobin never seems to wane, so words are what I’ll offer up in this time that asks of us the best citizenship we’ve ever mustered. I don’t mean to say I have a cure. Answers to the main questions of the day—Where was that fourth plane headed? How did they get knives through security?—I don’t know any of that. I have some answers, but only to the questions nobody is asking right now but my 5-year old. Why did all those people die when they didn’t do anything wrong? Will it happen to me? Is this the worst thing that’s ever happened? Who were those children cheering that they showed for just a minute, and why were they glad? Please, will this ever, ever happen to me?

There are so many answers, and none: It is desperately painful to see people die without having done anything to deserve it, and yet this is how lives end nearly always. We get old or we don’t, we get cancer, we starve, we are battered, we get on a plane thinking we’re going home but never make it. There are blessings and wonders and horrific bad luck and no guarantees. We like to pretend life is different from that, more like a game we can actually win with the right strategy, but it isn’t. And, yes, it’s the worst thing that’s happened, but only this week. Two years ago, an earthquake in Turkey killed 17,000 people in a day, babies and mothers and businessmen, and not one of them did a thing to cause it. The November before that, a hurricane hit Honduras and Nicaragua and killed even more, buried whole villages and erased family lines and even now, people wake up there empty-handed. Which end of the world shall we talk about? Sixty years ago, Japanese airplanes bombed Navy boys who were sleeping on ships in gentle Pacific waters. Three and a half years later, American planes bombed a plaza in Japan where men and women were going to work, where schoolchildren were playing, and more humans died at once than anyone thought possible. Seventy thousand in a minute. Imagine. Then twice that many more, slowly, from the inside.

There are no worst days, it seems. Ten years ago, early on a January morning, bombs rained down from the sky and caused great buildings in the city of Baghdad to fall down—hotels, hospitals, palaces, buildings with mothers and soldiers inside—and here in the place I want to love best, I had to watch people cheering about it. In Baghdad, survivors shook their fists at the sky and said the word “evil.” When many lives are lost all at once, people gather together and say words like “heinous” and “honor” and “revenge,” presuming to make this awful moment stand apart somehow from the ways people die a little each day from sickness or hunger. They raise up their compatriots’ lives to a sacred place—we do this, all of us who are human—thinking our own citizens to be more worthy of grief and less willingly risked than lives on other soil. But broken hearts are not mended in this ceremony, because, really, every life that ends is utterly its own event—and also in some way it’s the same as all others, a light going out that ached to burn longer. Even if you never had the chance to love the light that’s gone, you miss it. You should. You bear this world and everything that’s wrong with it by holding life still precious, each time, and starting over.

And those children dancing in the street? That is the hardest question. We would rather discuss trails of evidence and whom to stamp out, even the size and shape of the cage we might put ourselves in to stay safe, than to mention the fact that our nation is not universally beloved; we are also despised. And not just by “The Terrorist,” that lone, deranged non-man in a bad photograph whose opinion we can clearly dismiss, but by ordinary people in many lands. Even by little boys—whole towns full of them it looked like—jumping for joy in school shoes and pilled woolen sweaters.

There are a hundred ways to be a good citizen, and one of them is to look finally at the things we don’t want to see. In a week of terrifying events, here is one awful, true thing that hasn’t much been mentioned: Some people believe our country needed to learn how to hurt in this new way. This is such a large lesson, so hatefully, wrongfully taught, but many people before us have learned honest truths from wrongful deaths. It still may be within our capacity of mercy to say this much is true: We didn’t really understand how it felt when citizens were buried alive in Turkey or Nicaragua or Hiroshima. Or that night in Baghdad. And we haven’t cared enough for the particular brothers and mothers taken down a limb or a life at a time, for such a span of years that those little, briefly jubilant boys have grown up with twisted hearts. How could we keep raining down bombs and selling weapons, if we had? How can our president still use that word “attack” so casually, like a move in a checker game, now that we have awakened to see that word in our own newspapers, used like this: Attack on America.

Surely, the whole world grieves for us right now. And surely it also hopes we might have learned, from the taste of our own blood, that every war is both won and lost, and that loss is a pure, high note of anguish like a mother singing to any empty bed. The mortal citizens of a planet are praying right now that we will bear in mind, better than ever before, that no kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.

“Will this happen to me?” is the wrong question, I’m sad to say. It always was.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine books including “Prodigal Summer.”and “The Poisonwood Bible”.

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

"I had a dream the other night, where it was like a nightmare, where I ran out of Zithromax. And then..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:51:27 -0400

“I had a dream the other night, where
it was like a nightmare, where I ran out of Zithromax.
And then I went to the dentist, and he didn’t have any Novocaine.
You see what I’m saying?
These people don’t have any antibiotics”

- Midnight in Paris, can’t imagine a better delivery than the one Owen Wilson gave

pigmenting: I’m thinking I watched a man and his son holding hands as they crossed a parking...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:37:21 -0400

pigmenting:

I’m thinking I watched a man and his son
holding hands as they crossed a parking lot
last night, thinking I was moved
by the root or lifeboat or ladder
of the father’s arm into the life of the son, the root
or labyrinth of his arm as they moved at the pace
of the child, whose walking still bore signs
of the womb, of being wobbly water and I wanted
to reverse my vasectomy on the spot
and have a child with the moon, I wish
there was a word that was the thing
it was the word of, that when I said sun
I could be sun, all of it
in my mouth, burning you might think
and be so marvelously right
about praise that you open your door
one day and the day walks in and stays for year

— Bob Hicok, “O”

pigmenting: Tiago Caetano

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:35:09 -0400

pigmenting:

Tiago Caetano

pigmenting: Anderson East - Fire Song

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:33:53 -0400

pigmenting:

Anderson East - Fire Song