Purple Dawn

Leaf And Twig

it is the sky
that flowers
in winter

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HeroRATS

Giant Gambian Pouched Rats saving lives:






http://www.apopo.org/en/

How I see the world

Pierwiastek Zła

The difference in perspective.

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Atheist monument

Story:  Atheists unveil monument next to Ten Commandments at Florida courthouse

David Silverman, president of American Atheists, seated at a monument bench unveiled and dedicated on June 29, 2013, at Bradford County Courthouse, FL.

The monument’s quotations include:

“An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.” — Madalyn Murray O’Hair

“… the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” — Treaty of Tripoli

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” — Thomas Jefferson

“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [writing the Constitution] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.” — John Adams

“When religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” — Benjamin Franklin

Voting Rights Act Decision

The Best Lines From Ginsburg’s Dissent on the Voting Rights Act Decision

Impossible “Literacy” Test Louisiana Gave Black Voters in the 1960s

I accidentally the whole thing

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

From The Wind’s Twelve Quarters: Short Stories
by Ursula Le Guin

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.

Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?

(continued in full)

Women in Science

Rachel Carson, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Cecilia Payne

(image created by Raven Garfield)

Nine more historic female scientists you should know

The First Supper

Susan Dorothea White

The rights we want

Rebecca Lolosoli

A cat and her girl

Katherine and LiLu

Photographer: Andy Prokh

Capybara hot tub

The Belle Jar

If there is one thing that drives me absolutely bananas, it’s people spreading misinformation via social media under the guise of “educating”. I’ve seen this happen in several ways – through infographics that twist data in ways that support a conclusion that is ultimately false, or else through “meaningful” quotes falsely attributed to various celebrities, or by cobbling together a few actual facts with statements that are patently untrue to create something that seems plausible on the surface but is, in fact, full of crap.

Yesterday, the official Facebook page of (noted misogynistandeugenicsenthusiast) Richard Dawkins’ Foundation for Reason and Science shared the following image to their 637,000 fans:

Naturally, their fans lapped this shit up; after all, this is the kind of thing they absolutely live for. Religious people! Being hypocritical! And crazy! And wrong! The 2,000+ comments were chock-full of smug remarks…

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Duelity

Having God on both sides is a bit problematic, but it’s still an interesting thought experiment and certainly beautifully made.



“Duelity is a split-screen animation that tells both sides of the story of Earth’ s origins in a dizzying and provocative journey through the history and language that marks human thought. … To have the full experience, visit duelity.net“

Infidelworld

We now have proof. And, this is what we know now:

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Enso of life

“I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats.”

“I sometimes call animals – dogs and cats particularly – guardians of being. Dogs fill a vital function in the collective consciousness of humanity…they show us what we have lost and, once we realise that, they can help us in our shift into a deeper state of consciousness.”

― Eckhard Tolle, Guardians of Being

deGrasse Tyson veladora

Want, want, want.  The artist doesn’t currently have any available in her Etsy store, but I’m guessing that she’ll be thinking about making some more soon since it was recently posted on Boing Boing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson prayer candle on Etsy

Neil DeGrasse Tyson in votive candle form

Keep Calm and Smash Patriarchy

 

Feminism is the one F-word that makes eyes widen in polite company




Stepping Westward

What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.

If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to

ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now

is a time of ripening.
If her part

is to be true,
a north star,

good, I hold steady
in the black sky

and vanish by day,
yet burn there

in blue or above
quilts of cloud.

There is no savor
more sweet, more salt

than to be glad to be
what, woman,

and who, myself,
I am, a shadow

that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out

on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens

they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket

of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me

in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.



― Denise Levertov

 

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

I can never remember the name of this “frequency illusion” phenomenon.  Maybe this’ll do it. Or at least I know where I can find it quickly now.

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon • Damn Interesting.