Fun Fact Of The Day

remus would have been so good at finding loopholes for the marauders to slip through like i mean as a prefect he would have had to know all of them to an extent and i can just see sirius hopping onto his bed like “hey moony can we do this thing without technically breaking any rules” and remus would be like well no but you could do this and then guess who doesnt have detention despite the fact that all anyone at the slytherin table has had for dinner the past four days is haggis

I just realized that the first antagonist Kit and Nita faced together was a helicopter parent.

Black hole consumes a star

Rónán (anglicized Ronan) is an Irish language male given namemeaning “little seal” (Rón meaning “seal”, and -án being a diminutive suffix). It may refer to: Legend tells of a seal who is warned never to stray too close to the land.

Powers help me I didn’t know his name meANT PRECIOUS BABBY SEAL

AAAAAAAHHHH

AAAAAHH

RONAN SO CUTE

AND THE WINGED DEFENDER WAS STUCK INTO BABY SEAL BOY

What is an Ocean but a Multitude of Drops?

I’ve been pondering the recurring notion in Young Wizards—introduced in the first book—that “even…unmagical-seeming actions” have importance in the fight against entropy. Whether it’s turning the lights off when one leaves a room, having a kind word for someone in need of encouragement, or just using the bus for transport to an alien mall crawl (“Wizards are supposed to use public transport—it’s ecologically sound!”), these little choices are no less important than galaxy-spanning fights with the Lone Power. And indeed, it’s often the little things—like Nita’s space pen or Ponch’s squirrels—that make the big victories possible.

It’s a concept that recurs in several of my other favorite works of fiction, as well. Rory’s father, Brian, from the most recent season of Doctor Who springs immediately to mind. A down-to-earth sort, Brian spends his screentime changing lightbulbs, carefully watching alien artifacts for days on end, and throwing golf balls for nearby dinosaurs to play fetch with. Unlike most of the Doctor’s associates, he doesn’t progress from these humble beginnings into something “remarkable”—he never becomes immortal or the Bad Wolf or anything like that. But instead, his very mundane habits are exactly what’s needed to save the world on multiple occasions. And when the Doctor offers to let him travel across time and space full-time, his response is simply, “Somebody’s got to water the plants.”

I bring this up because it’s a rather uncommon line of thought, on the whole. Far more common is the desire to change oneself, to journey forth from humble origins and grow into something great, to leave a mark on the world. But examples like the ones I mentioned above suggest that perhaps we’re not on the way to doing something remarkable—we already are, from one day to the next.

In the final lines of Cloud Atlas, both the book and the film (I heartily recommend either, incidentally), one of the protagonists ponders the notion that his efforts to change the world only amount to “a single drop in a limitless ocean.”

"But what is an ocean," he concludes, "but a multitude of drops?"

The same, I think, applies to all of us. We may not all be heroes or luminaries who command the destinies of millions, but within the smaller confines of our individual lives, every choice we embark upon makes a difference. And ultimately, the whole of human history is comprised of nothing else but people making decisions, many of them seemingly unimportant, one day at a time. Taken all together, though, it adds up to something remarkable. No man is an island, and every rock idly tossed into a pond produces ripples.

It’s both encouraging and terrifying to think about.

Thoughts that will change the way you think about the universe and your existence

Selections from Tallmadge Doyle’s ethereal Celestial Mapping Series

Sharks may not be as solitary as originally thought. Researchers have discovered the fish congregating and interacting with others of their own species in ways that suggest they have long-lasting friendships.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TANYA HOUPPERMANS

Vera Rubin (b. 1928)

When Vera Cooper Rubin told her high school physics teacher that she’d been accepted to Vassar, he said, “That’s great. As long as you stay away from science, it should be okay.”

Rubin graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1948, the only astronomy major in her class at Vassar, and went on to receive her master’s from Cornell in 1950 (after being turned away by Princeton because they did not allow women in their astronomy program) and her Ph.D. from Georgetown in 1954. Now a senior researcher at the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Rubin is credited with proving the existence of “dark matter,” or nonluminous mass, and forever altering our notions of the universe. She did so by gathering irrefutable evidence to persuade the astronomical community that galaxies spin at a faster speed than Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation allows. As a result of this finding, astronomers conceded that the universe must be filled with more material than they can see. 

Rubin made a name for herself not only as an astronomer but also as a woman pioneer; she fought through severe criticisms of her work to eventually be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (at the time, only three women astronomers were members) and to win the highest American award in science, the National Medal of Science. Her master’s thesis, presented to a 1950 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, met with severe criticism, and her doctoral thesis was essentially ignored, though her conclusions were later validated. “Fame is fleeting,” Rubin said when she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. “My numbers mean more to me than my name. If astronomers are still using my data years from now, that’s my greatest compliment.”

 Sources:

1. http://innovators.vassar.edu/innovator.html?id=68; http://science.vassar.edu/women/

2. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/45424