[ 張亨來 ]

odditiesoflife: The Amazing Underwater Forest of Lake...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:06:54 -0400

The Amazing Underwater Forest of Lake Kaindy

What makes Lake Kaindy truly remarkable is that it contains an underwater forest. Visible on the lakes surface are the tall, dried-out tops of submerged Spruce trees that rise above the water’s surface like the masts of sunken ships. They are the only sign of the amazing frozen forest below the water’s surface.

The water is so cold (even in summer the temperature does not exceed 6 degrees) that the pine needles remain on the trees, even after a hundred years of being submerged. During the winter, the lake freezes and becomes a popular spot for ice diving.

The lake is 400 meters long and is located in Kazakhstan’s portion of the Tian Shan Mountains, about 129 km from the city of Almaty. The lake was created after an earthquake in 1911 triggered a large landslide blocking the gorge and forming a natural dam.

CVS BANGERS IS THE AUDIOSCAPE FOR WHEN YOU’RE BUYING TAMPONS OR...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:42:00 -0400

CVS BANGERS IS THE AUDIOSCAPE FOR WHEN YOU’RE BUYING TAMPONS OR A 12 PACK OF CONDOMS, A SAMPLING OF THOSE MAGIC TUNES THAT PLAY WHEN YOU’RE CONTEMPLATING HOW RIDICULOUS YOU WOULD LOOK CARRYING 24 ROLLS OF TIOLET PAPER ON THE TRAIN, THOSE BITTERSWEET TUNES OF YESTERYEAR THAT SKIP THROUGH YOUR MIND AS YOU READ THE NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE BACK OF A BOX OF FROZEN PIZZA AND OPT FOR A PINT OF ICE CREAM INSTEAD, THOSE SPECIAL DITTIES THAT ACCOMPANY YOUR SMASHING THE BAR CODE OF A CAN OF RED BULL AGAINST THE SCANNER OF BROKEN SELF-CHECKOUT MACHINE. CVS BANGERS IS COMMERCE ITSELF, AND COMMERCE, MY FACELESS INTERNET FRIENDS, IS BEAUTIFUL.

Txchnologist: Power Walking, Literally

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:19:29 -0400

Txchnologist: Power Walking, Literally:

txchnologist:

by Txchnologist Staff

Rice University mechanical engineering students have built a prototype shoe fitting that generates enough energy to power portable electronics and recharge batteries.

The fitting, called PediPower, diverts the energy of heel strikes while walking, which would…

zillatamer: unimpressedcats: food? no… friend I like how the...

Sun, 12 May 2013 22:41:48 -0400

zillatamer:

unimpressedcats:

food? no… friend

I like how the hamster’s fear response is to just eat faster like

If I’m going to die, it should be with a full stomach.

Whoa, that hamster just shoved that entire thing into its cheek-pouches. Cute and disturbing.

"Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:10:25 -0400

“

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

”

- “You Should Date An Illiterate Girl” by Charles Warnke (via 33113)

Boston, from One Citizen of the World Who Calls Himself a Runner

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:12:58 -0400

newyorker:

Haruki Murakami shares his experience running the Boston Marathon and reflects on why the race is a meaningful race to runners around the globe: http://nyr.kr/12uvnks

Illustration by Ed Nacional.

In the past thirty years, I’ve run thirty-three full marathons. I’ve run marathons all over the world, but whenever someone asks me which is my favorite, I never hesitate to answer: the Boston Marathon, which I have run six times. What’s so wonderful about the Boston Marathon? It’s simple: it’s the oldest race of its kind; the course is beautiful; and—here’s the most important point—everything about the race is natural, free. The Boston Marathon is not a top-down but a bottom-up kind of event; it was steadily, thoughtfully crafted by the citizens of Boston themselves, over a considerable period of time. Every time I run the race, the feelings of the people who created it over the years are on display for all to appreciate, and I’m enveloped in a warm glow, a sense of being back in a place I missed. It’s magical. Other marathons are amazing, too—the New York City Marathon, the Honolulu Marathon, the Athens Marathon. Boston, however (my apologies to the organizers of those other races), is unique.

What’s great about marathons in general is the lack of competitiveness. For world-class runners, they can be an occasion of fierce rivalry, sure. But for a runner like me (and I imagine this is true for the vast majority of runners), an ordinary runner whose times are nothing special, a marathon is never a competition. You enter the race to enjoy the experience of running twenty-six miles, and you do enjoy it, as you go along. Then it starts to get a little painful, then it becomes seriously painful, and in the end it’s that pain that you start to enjoy. And part of the enjoyment is in sharing this tangled process with the runners around you. Try running twenty-six miles alone and you’ll have three, four, or five hours of sheer torture. I’ve done it before, and I hope never to repeat the experience. But running the same distance alongside other runners makes it feel less grueling. It’s tough physically, of course—how could it not be?—but there’s a feeling of solidarity and unity that carries you all the way to the finish line. If a marathon is a battle, it’s one you wage against yourself.

Running the Boston Marathon, when you turn the corner at Hereford Street onto Boylston, and see, at the end of that straight, broad road, the banner at Copley Square, the excitement and relief you experience are indescribable. You have made it on your own, but at the same time it was those around you who kept you going. The unpaid volunteers who took the day off to help out, the people lining the road to cheer you on, the runners in front of you, the runners behind. Without their encouragement and support, you might not have finished the race. As you take the final sprint down Boylston, all kinds of emotions rise up in your heart. You grimace with the strain, but you smile as well.

* * *

I lived for three years on the outskirts of Boston. I was a visiting scholar at Tufts for two years, and then, after a short break, I was at Harvard for a year. During that time, I jogged along the banks of the Charles River every morning. I understand how important the Boston Marathon is to the people of Boston, what a source of pride it is to the city and its citizens. Many of my friends regularly run the race and serve as volunteers. So, even from far away, I can imagine how devastated and discouraged the people of Boston feel about the tragedy of this year’s race. Many people were physically injured at the site of the explosions, but even more must have been wounded in other ways. Something that should have been pure has been sullied, and I, too—as a citizen of the world, who calls himself a runner—have been wounded.

This combination of sadness, disappointment, anger, and despair is not easy to dissipate. I understood this when I was researching my book “Underground,” about the 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and interviewing survivors of the attack and family members of those who died. You can overcome the hurt enough to live a “normal” life. But, internally, you’re still bleeding. Some of the pain goes away over time, but the passage of time also gives rise to new types of pain. You have to sort it all out, organize it, understand it, and accept it. You have to build a new life on top of the pain.

* * *

Surely the best-known section of the Boston Marathon is Heartbreak Hill, one in a series of slopes that lasts for four miles near the end of the race. It’s on Heartbreak Hill that runners ostensibly feel the most exhausted. In the hundred-and-seventeen-year history of the race, all sorts of legends have grown up around this hill. But, when you actually run it, you realize that it’s not as harsh and unforgiving as people have made it out to be. Most runners make it up Heartbreak Hill more easily than they expected to. “Hey,” they tell themselves, “that wasn’t so bad after all.” Mentally prepare yourself for the long slope that is waiting for you near the end, save up enough energy to tackle it, and somehow you’re able to get past it.

The real pain begins only after you’ve conquered Heartbreak Hill, run downhill, and arrived at the flat part of the course, in the city streets. You’re through the worst, and you can head straight for the finish line—and suddenly your body starts to scream. Your muscles cramp, and your legs feel like lead. At least that’s what I’ve experienced every time I’ve run the Boston Marathon.

Emotional scars may be similar. In a sense, the real pain begins only after some time has passed, after you’ve overcome the initial shock and things have begun to settle. Only once you’ve climbed the steep slope and emerged onto level ground do you begin to feel how much you’ve been hurting up till then. The bombing in Boston may very well have left this kind of long-term mental anguish behind.

Why? I can’t help asking. Why did a happy, peaceful occasion like the marathon have to be trampled on in such an awful, bloody way? Although the perpetrators have been identified, the answer to that question is still unclear. But their hatred and depravity have mangled our hearts and our minds. Even if we were to get an answer, it likely wouldn’t help.

To overcome this kind of trauma takes time, time during which we need to look ahead positively. Hiding the wounds, or searching for a dramatic cure, won’t lead to any real solution. Seeking revenge won’t bring relief, either. We need to remember the wounds, never turn our gaze away from the pain, and—honestly, conscientiously, quietly—accumulate our own histories. It may take time, but time is our ally.

For me, it’s through running, running every single day, that I grieve for those whose lives were lost and for those who were injured on Boylston Street. This is the only personal message I can send them. I know it’s not much, but I hope that my voice gets through. I hope, too, that the Boston Marathon will recover from its wounds, and that those twenty-six miles will again seem beautiful, natural, free.

Translated, from the Japanese, by Philip Gabriel.

Haruki Murakami’s most recent book to appear in English is “IQ84.” His latest novel has just been published in Japan.

Illustration by Ed Nacional.

“The World Outside” by Karen Mok, Relish (2009).

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:25:31 -0400

“The World Outside” by Karen Mok, Relish (2009).

Sign up before May 7th, and get Babblr (real-time chat client...

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:31:25 -0400

Chris Arnade Photography: Political Rant: Comparing Apples and Oranges

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:03:45 -0400

Chris Arnade Photography: Political Rant: Comparing Apples and Oranges :

arnade:

(Prince with “How to Spend it” from FT)

Before spending the last two years photographing and writing about Hunts Point, New York’s poorest neighborhood, I worked on Wall Street for twenty years.

I get asked often, “What have you learned from those two different experiences?”

My…

americasgreatoutdoors: At storms end. A double rainbow breaks...

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:01:19 -0400

americasgreatoutdoors:

At storms end. A double rainbow breaks through the clouds at the end of a thunderstorm filled with #lightning at Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Photo: Joan Wallner

guardian: Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s photograph reveals...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:20:43 -0400

guardian:

Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s photograph reveals Berlin’s ongoing struggle for reunification. The snap, taken from the International Space Station, shows a divide between the whiter lights of former west Berlin and the yellower lights of the east.

Photograph: Nasa

“The Cliffs at Étretat” (1885, oil on canvas) by...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:45:15 -0400

“The Cliffs at Étretat” (1885, oil on canvas) by Claude Monet, French Impressionist. Currently located at the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.

What You Should Know About Chechnya as the Boston Story Unfolds

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:38:00 -0400

What You Should Know About Chechnya as the Boston Story Unfolds:

Before the suspects of the Boston Marathon bombing were even identified, some of the least educated, least thinking among us were already Tweeting hatred toward Muslims. Since then, one of the terrorists has already been killed by the police in a firefight. The other one was recently captured. They are Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. As it turns out, these terrorists were, in fact, from a Muslim country.

The gears of public opinion are already turning. I can already imagine legions of Americans across the country shifting their focus from Boston to Chechnya. Their sadness, anger, and confusion are fermenting into hatred. If their Tweets and Facebook status updates could make sound, the call for vengeance would be deafening. Some of them might be my Facebook friends. Many of them won’t be able to point to Chechnya on a map. (Disclaimer: Neither can I.)

Before you jump to a conclusion, please read The Atlantic article below. “What You Should Know About Chechnya as the Boston Story Unfolds” is written by Thor Halvorssen, president of the New York based Human Rights Foundation.

Breaking reports indicate that the alleged perpetrators of the horrific Boston Marathon terrorist attack were born in Chechnya. This Russian-occupied, landlocked Muslim nation of 1.3 million is the center of a Russian war that has taken the lives of more than 200,000 people over the last two decades. It is also one of the world’s most poorly understood conflict zones.

On social networking profiles, the Boston bombers reveal themselves as supporters of “Chechen independence.” Given the media spotlight that will descend on the region in the next few days, it is absolutely essential to separate the country’s three major political groups: Russia’s puppet dictatorship, led by Ramzan Kadyrov; the radical Islamist rebellion led by Dokka Umarov; and the legitimate government of Chechnya, headed by the exiled Akhmed Zakayev.

Chechnya has been ripped apart by Russian aggression for centuries. Most notoriously, Stalin deported its entire population to Kazakhstan in 1944. One-fifth of them died in the forced relocation and were only allowed to return after the dictator’s death. In 1991, when Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and other former Soviet states proclaimed their independence, so did Chechnya. Russia launched two devastating separatist wars since, the first between 1994 and 1996 and the second since 1999. Several Chechen presidents have been murdered by the Russian government, and in 2007 Zakayev was forced into exile. Moscow installed its autocratic puppet Kadyrov in his place. At the same time, Umarov’s Islamist terrorist network proclaimed a “Caucasus Emirate” in Chechnya.

Umarov’s rebels claim responsibility for numerous bloody attacks in Moscow and elsewhere. Umarov provides Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, and the criminal gang that controls Russia’s vast energy resources with a scapegoat villain. Fear works, and in Russia the Chechen people are cast as the perfect enemy: Islamist radicals who celebrate the 9/11 attacks and pay homage to Al Qaeda. In the next few days, the Putin government will point to the Boston bombings as the result of any and all Chechen opposition to Russian rule.

This has been Putin’s game for the past 15 years. After rising to power in 1999 on a promise to crush Chechen separatists, he exploited a series of terrorist attacks known as the “apartment bombings” to bolster his electoral chances. Almost 300 people died in explosions across three Russian cities. The tumultuous attack was purportedly carried out by Chechen rebels. However, a recently published book about the events by a Stanford University academic indicates that the horrific attack was most likely organized and financed by Putin and his henchmen — to stir up nationalistic fervor, paving the way for the subsequent Russian invasion of Chechnya and cementing his reputation for being “tough on terror.”

In the 2000 elections, Putin ran on a successful platform of restoring national pride and identity, and taking back the former colony of Chechnya was a major talking point. Reopening the Chechen conflict gave him the opportunity to play tough, to show strength, and to exercise his military might while voters cheered for a post-Soviet champion. Even President Bush praised Putin’s “strong hand” against terrorists in Chechnya.

The result is that the world perceives Chechens as troublesome Islamist terrorists, and is willing to accept the thug-like Kadyrov as a bulwark against extremism.

Not everyone is fooled by Putin’s bloody opportunism, however, and a number of Russians knew the truth. Anna Politkovskaya, an internationally celebrated investigative journalist, was one of them. Natalya Estemirova, a human rights activist, was another. They were both assassinated with the preponderance of evidence pointing to the Kremlin. Alexander Litvinenko, a KGB colleague of Putin, also knew the truth, especially the details relating to the apartment bombings. Litvinenko defected to the West and settled in London where he was murdered after Putin apparatchiks poisoned him with Polonium 210, a radioactive chemical.

The goal of these executions? To silence those trying to expose Putin’s crimes in Chechnya. Until his dying breath Litvinenko kept warning anyone who would listen: Putin is a criminal and the key to his undoing is his abuses in Chechnya. Putin understands this very well, which is part of the reason why, in Chechnya, he rigs the votes with comedic results, recently winning 99.82 percent of the presidential vote. One Chechen precinct even registered a voter turnout of 107 percent.

Andrei Sakharov’s late widow, Elena Bonner, put it plainly: “Chechnya is one great concentration camp.” It is looted and occupied by Kadyrov, the warden of Putin’s choice, whose security forces operate with such medieval behavior as kidnapping women to rape at their convenience. And Kadyrov is kept in place partly by an international fear of Umarov’s terrorism. The majority of Chechens are trapped, prisoners in their own homeland.

The Chechen struggle epitomizes Putin’s violence and reflects poorly on Europe, which has not done enough to lend a helping hand. Chechnya may lie outside the political limits of the European family but it is an overwhelmingly European nation. Most Chechens, unlike the family that these two suspects come from (they reportedly took refuge in Kyrgyzstan, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born), seek refuge in democracies, not in Islamic dictatorships. The Arab League has not once expressed a single concern over Chechnya’s Muslim population and what the Russian regime has done to them. Most Chechen diasporans seek freedom, live in free countries, and understand the separation of mosque and state. Their qualities should be in demand, and their struggle is deserving of significant European assistance.

To allow the Boston attacks to cast all Chechens as violent religious zealots is exactly what Putin needs. That will allow him to keep his deadly arrangement going. The supreme irony of Putin’s PR strategy is that most Chechens share the democratic values of a Western civilization that completely disregards, and misunderstands, their struggle.

There is the temptation to “explain” the Boston Marathon bombing away by simply blaming it all on “those radical Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.” That’s called being intellectually lazy. There’s the temptation to support Russia as it continues to and escalates in cracking down on Chechen insurgents. That’s called fanning the flames. There’s the temptation to advocate for implementing more restrictive immigration policies to keep terrorists “out”. That’s called giving into fear and xenophobia. There’s the temptation to demand the blood of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for spilling American blood. That’s called being vindictive. And of course, there’s the temptation to simply reduce all Muslims - and anyone who might even appear to be Muslim, such as Indians - as anti-American and targets of harassment. That’s called being a motherfucking racist.

Above all, there is the temptation to frame this tragedy in terms of good and evil, and to subsequently condemn evil. This sets us comfortably upon the moral high ground. This rationalizes and vindicates whatever emotional responses - however misguided - we might’ve had. This gives us the opportunity for cathartic release. The New York Times article “2nd Bombing Suspect Caught After Frenzied Hunt Paralyzes Boston”, shows images of people waving American flags and cheering at the news of Dzhokhar’s capture. On Monday, April 15, a tragedy had occurred. On Friday, April 19, its perpetrators were brought to justice. America had won. Good had triumphed. The curtains fall.

I wish this had been the work of someone categorically “evil” - the bastard child of Adolf Hitler and Sauron who was adopted by the Koch brothers and schooled in the ways of the modern terrorist… or something. As “evil” as their actions might have been, I can’t seem to brand the Tsarnaev brothers as “evil”. I can’t gloat over (and people are wont to gloat), or even take comfort in, the demise of the older brother and the looming punishment of the younger brother. The conclusion to the manhunt in Watertown, MA brought me a slight sense of relief, but no sense of closure. It leaves me grasping and uncertain, maybe even more than before.

“Jahar”, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s classmates at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School called him. He was on the wrestling team, and a classmate wrote on Facebook: “I’m sure all the wrestlers looked at this dude as a brother”. A picture of the wrestlers - Dzhokhar’s face clearly visible - putting their hands together in a team huddle accompanies the comment. Dzhokhar is only 19 years old. The same age as a typical college sophomore grappling with which major to declare. Can you imagine, at 19 years old, getting into a firefight with dozens of police during which your brother is shot (and escaping by driving over his body)? Can you imagine, at 19 years old, alienating all of your friends (some of whom described you as “nothing but a kind, unassuming, gentle person”) and becoming the most reviled person in America? And of course, can you imagine, at 19 years old, bombing the Boston Marathon?

It’s pretty much impossible for anyone - including 19-year-old Dzhokhar (or 26-year-old Tamerlane) to imagine, let alone understand, and let alone embrace, these things that they had done. Their actions were incomprehensible, hence how could they have comprehended them? In social psychology, fundamental attribution error is “the tendency to overestimate the effect of disposition or personality and underestimate the effect of the situation in explaining social behavior. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain the behavior of others.” So as evil as their actions were, I don’t believe they themselves were (and, in the case of Dzhokhar, are) evil. Blind, yes. But not evil. I hope not.

Dzhokhar’s family members are no doubt distraught about what he has done and what has befallen him. They’ll certainly be harassed by strangers and ostracized in the community. Dzhokhar’s act of terrorism, probably born from the oppressive situation in Chechnya, will quite likely only result in even more suffering of his people. According to Halvorssen, “To allow the Boston attacks to cast all Chechens as violent religious zealots is exactly what Putin needs.” The vicious cycle of blame and violence continues. The bombing of the Boston Marathon, the murder of the MIT police, the paralysis of an American city - I wish this was a tragedy, in a dramatic sense, with three acts. But the the Boston Marathon bombing is also a tragedy in a historical sense - a culmination and continuation of decades of unending, senseless human suffering.

One of my favorite quotes is by Walter Benjamin from “Theses on the Philosophy of History”: A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth hangs open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage hurling it before his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

The more I think about the events of this past week, the more it seems to be increasingly and sweepingly tragic - for the victims of the bombing, for their families and friends, for the people of Boston, for Americans of the world, but also for American of Middle Eastern ethnicity, for the people in Chechnya, for the relatives of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and for 19-year-old “Jahar”. One of my students, whose classmate high school was seriously injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, said “now Chechnya got all the attention from the world and maybe will be able to get some help from other countries somehow.” Among the better angels of our nature, the angel of history has witnessed this disaster and others. But he has also witnesseed progress. While there is no closure and there is no catharsis here, I hope that there is at least room for hope.

—leyn: amandalynferri: How To Throw A Home Alone...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:30:42 -0400

—leyn:

amandalynferri:

How To Throw A Home Alone Party

-Home Alone

-A large cheese pizza arriving to your home via delivery

-A bottle of Pepsi

this is so perfect *_*

At least once a week.

“What About Livingstone” by ABBA, Waterloo...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:50:00 -0400

“What About Livingstone” by ABBA, Waterloo (1974)

David Livingstone was a missionary, explorer, abolitionist, and national hero of Victorian England. Although Livingstone failed to find the true source of the Nile, his expeditions expanded Europe’s geographic knowledge of Africa. His expeditions paradoxically facilitated British imperialism in the fifty years within his death and the decline of colonialism fifty years after his death. Africans educated by the mission schools founded by people inspired by Livingstone became leaders of national independence movements in Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa.

travelingcolors: London from the Shard | England (by Mariusz...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:14:34 -0400

travelingcolors:

London from the Shard | England (by Mariusz Kluzniak)

You May Leave Boston, But Boston Never Leaves You

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:49:00 -0400

You May Leave Boston, But Boston Never Leaves You:

I joined the cross-country team for a season in my sophomore year, running laps around the park behind the school in the brittle chill of the New Jersey autumn. As a freshman and as a senior at Columbia, I somehow managed to wake up early enough on a Friday for President Bollinger’s Annual 5K Fun Run in Riverside Park. The longest race I’ve run so far was the Montclair YMCA 10K. In the town where Stephen Colbert lives, people lined the streets and filled the park, standing and sitting in lawn chairs, holding posters and cheering for their family, friends, and complete strangers.

Although it is a race and there are winners, the marathon is not so much about competition as it is about community. It doesn’t matter if you’re the first person to cross the finish line or if you cross the finish line three hours later - people will cheer you on all the way from start to finish. It’s not a race where you run against others, but a race where you run for yourself. It raises money for charity. It brings folks together. It is a celebration of physical stamina and, more so, of the human spirit.

I have immense admiration for marathons and marathon runners. On my bucket list, running the New York marathon is up there with reaching the summit of Mount Everest and opening a mushroom-themed restaurant called Chanterelle. So when the explosions ripped through the innocent crowds at the Boston Marathon on Monday, it felt was if my personal dreams had been targeted as well. I felt angry - so angry - and shocked, confused, frustrated.

Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice of the New York University Law School. He spent seven years of his life in Boston, where he obtained his bachelor’s and graduate degrees from Boston University. In “You May Leave Boston, But Boston Never Leaves You”, Cohen reminded me about the strength of a community - a community that is more expansive, more powerful, and more enduring than any senseless destruction:

Each year, the city absorbs into its colleges and universities tens of thousands of teenagers, 18-year-olds, from every corner of the world, each of whom is seeking, in one way or another, to learn something and to become whatever it is they are destined to become. The boy from Arizona, there on a scholarship, who has never before seen snow. The girl from Montana, who’s never seen anything but Big Sky. The lucky son of diplomats. They all arrive in late summer to a city used to showing children what it means, and what it takes, to live in a great American metropolis. No other city in the nation does this as well.

And, every year, in a cycle renewed for hundreds of years, the city disgorges tens of thousands of college graduates into the world. This means that there are millions of men and women wandering around America today who spent some of the best years of their lives in and around Boston, walking some of the very streets splattered with blood yesterday in the wake of the Marathon bombings. Boston is where those students like me came of age. It’s where we met our spouses or significant others. It’s where we learned our craft. It’s where we connected with the friends and mentors we would have for the rest of our lives. Even if we can’t say we are “from” Boston we surely confirm when asked that we are “of” Boston. It remains in our blood.

Boston’s enormous extended family didn’t have to be on or near Boylston Street Monday to appreciate how glorious Patriots’ Day can be: the joy of springtime after the brutal New England winter; the early Sox game; the crowded Green Line; the early-opening bars; and the runners and their families, coming in toward the City, coming in toward the finish line. The parties on the balconies in the apartments along Beacon Street. The cheering for the men and women who had run so far for so long just for the privilege of running on this day. Indeed, even to those who never run, Marathon Day meant the end of our own personal marathons— the looming end of the school year, the looming end of our college careers, the end of our youth.

No bombing can ever take away what Boston means to the men and women whose lives have been shaped by it over the generations. No tragedy can ever take away Patriots’ Day, or the Marathon, or the city’s pride and relief in having made it to another spring. For now, for today, perhaps it is enough to merely remind our friends and family there in the Hub that we are with them, that we never really left no matter how far away we may be, and that we’ll be with them again next year, in sorrow and in joy.

Warning: This image contains graphic content.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:12:00 -0400

Warning: This image contains graphic content.:

Medical workers run a badly injured man past the finish line the 2013 Boston Marathon following an explosion in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. Two explosions shattered the euphoria of the Boston Marathon finish line on Monday, sending authorities out on the course to carry off the injured while the stragglers were rerouted away from the smoking site of the blasts. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

This is unspeakably horrible. So unspeakably horrible that - I’m sorry - it has to be seen and shared. In my heart, I feel, “This is too much. Just too much.” But in my mind, I know, “He’s not the only one. There are more still.” I’m enraged to the point of helplessness, saddened to the point of numbness, and drained to the point of sleeplessness.

theatlantic: BREAKING: Explosion at the Boston Marathon Finish...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:21:00 -0400

theatlantic:

BREAKING: Explosion at the Boston Marathon Finish Line

Reuters is reporting that the headquarters at the Boston Marathon have been locked down after two explosions were reported near the finish line Monday afternoon, near the Boston Library.

According The Boston Globe, there are dozens injured though there are varying reports on the number of injuries:

Follow our live blog for updates.

[Image: @Boston_to_a_T]

Just noticed that I’ve reached 1,000 posts on...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:23:00 -0400

Just noticed that I’ve reached 1,000 posts on Tumblr. (This is my one-thousand-and-first post.) On top of that, I have exactly 100 Tumblr followers and 10 drafts saved. A celebration of the descending powers of ten (10^3 = 1,000, 10^2 = 100, 10^1 = 10),