“Singularity (after Stephen Hawking)” By Marie Howe From Maria Popova On Vimeo.

'अमृत' काल में विष

‘अमृत’ काल में विष प्रसन्न कुमार चौधरी 1. हिसाब-किताब की हिंसा सभी समुदाय इतिहास में अपने ऊपर हुए कथित अन्याय-अत्याचार का हिसाब-किताब चुकता करने लगे तो उसका अन्त मानवजाति की सामूहिक तबाही में होगा । इतिहास के विभिन्न कालखण्डों में और अलग-अलग क्षेत्रों में हम इस सामूहिक तबाही का साक्षात् कर चुके हैं, और आज भी कर रहे हैं । हजारो वर्षों के मानवजाति के इतिहास में प्रत्येक मानव-समुदाय के पास अपनी…

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What I went looking for was an answer to a deeper question about the metaphoric holes left in a person, a family or a community by murderous acts, whether by guns, knives, or bare hands. If nothing else, talking about guns can serve as a beacon, starting me on the road toward answering the question: Why do Americans kill so much? […] There are two kinds of social capital—bonding and bridging—and each impact a society differently. Bonding capital is what you get within a given group. These tend to be closer and more reliable bonds that form the foundation of our social capital. Yet bonding social capital is not always positive: Tight-knit groups can turn insular, reaching their logical conclusion in gangs and militias but with negative effects found in everything from families to groups of friends to certain kinds of religious communities. In contrast, bridging social capital reaches across a societal divide such as race, region or religion and is by nature weak. But it also promotes empathy and tolerance and enlarges our radius of trust, allowing us to see other people as people, not as a faceless other. This sense of bridging a divide is especially important in the U.S. because, contrary to popular opinion, we regularly put the needs of the group ahead of the needs of the individual in a way Europeans don’t. In surveys, Western Europeans are more likely than Americans to say citizens should follow their conscience and break an unjust law or that citizens should defy their homeland if they believe their country is acting immorally. On the other hand, Americans are more likely to believe they control their own fate and to believe in a more laissez-faire relationship with the state. It’s a more complex mix than our myths allow for, and the end result is that it can be hard to fathom just how different Americans are from the rest of the world. […] Perhaps, like a true original sin, groups in power in the U.S. have systematically destroyed social capital in vulnerable communities and between groups of all kinds in order to gain wealth and power and deny it to others. And perhaps they have done this in more ruthless fashion than in other comparable cultures. This could explain why the murder rate in New York has been more than five times higher than London’s for 200 years, though the American propensity for violence reaches even farther back than that, going all the way back to frantic religious refugees with visions of the Apocalypse both at their back and before their eyes.

Bad Land – Nathan Hegendus explores the social psychology underpinning gun culture in America.

Also see Stephen King on gun control and violence.

(via explore-blog)

“Incantation. A prayer for apps and the latest whatever, sung by “the witch”. New things to try, a desperation, an automation to it. A heaviness, as if being joined by a yoke to our technology, it’s dragging us, making us pay per download. We’re it’s slave.”

Leah Kardos’s album “Machines”, a song cycle based on themes of technology, loneliness and the human condition, with lyrics derived from spam emails. (via Tom A.)

Best GIFs of 2012:

patakk

Egalite for All. Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution (PBS) PBS documentary on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution.  It was the only successful slave insurrection in history. It grasped the full meaning of French revolutionary ideas — liberté, eqalité, fraternité — and used them to create the world’s first Black republic. It changed the trajectory of colonial economics…and led to America’s acquisition of the Louisiana territory from France. “It” was the Haitian Revolution, a movement that’s been called the true birth moment of universal human rights. Vaguely remembered today, the Haitian Revolution was a hurricane at the turn of the nineteenth century — traumatizing Southern planters and inspiring slaves and abolitionists, worldwide.

Martin Luther Kings last day on earth.

"The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. .... The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away. ... Fear prophets, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. ... Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. ..."

Umberto Eco, 'The Name of the Rose', Vintage Books, London, 2004.

From Laughing Squid, 3D-Printed Paintings of Nanomolecular Structures by Shane Hope.

Shane has a pretty interesting website:

Q: Is your work deliberately trying to be opaque, and if so, what are the benefits of hyper-complexity (both conceptual and aesthetic)?

A: Many have been too hypnotized by technocratic solutionism to see that not all clarity is benevolently about accuracy and not all lack thereof should be immediately suspect. Getting obsessive-compulsive about the future can be counterproductive inasmuch as it often precludes a greater gamut of adaptability. Ambiguity, opacity, allusion, metaphor and semantic slippage can all serve as really important tools when making artwork, or realities for that matter. From the butterfly flap you choose, emerges the superstorm you deserve.

Hm.

The Eiffel Tower, winter of 1948 - Paris, France. (Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #prayersforparis