Latest Posts by thebryanscout - Page 2

The smell of potpourri overpowers the scent of coyote urine.

iDubbbzTV, 2017

That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ.

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (via teentaal)

In Defense of Holden Caulfield

I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever understand why exactly people hate Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye”.

I mean, sure, you could defend your dislike with a classic gem such as, “Oh, he’s just a whiny, pretentious f***boy! He’s so boring, all he does is complain!”

But at that I’m just like

okay, wow, I’m sorry the incredibly depressed mentally ill teenager who has no true friends and is constantly being ignored by the people he tries to reach out to and is constantly being told he’s useless and a bad influence by his peers and has alluded to being sexually molested by multiple people as a little kid and has to deal with the pain and hardship of growing up in a world he can’t help but see as superficial and hypocritical and WHOSE CLASSMATE FRICKIN’ COMMITTED SUICIDE IN FRONT OF HIM isn’t a conventionally cheerful or likeable protagonist????

I don’t understand why that’s so hard for people to grasp; it just straight up BAFFLES me. I mean, people eke out all sorts of ways to like downright villains like Alex (DeLarge) or Loki or Ramsay Snow/Bolton, or antiheros like Jaime/Cersei Lannister, Sherlock Holmes, etc.

Why is it so hard to dole out a little sympathy for Holden, who, ultimately, just wants to protect children from the evils of the world—arguably one of the noblest and most heartbreakingly tender aspirations of all?

Crying xD <3 

me: only deep and meaningful lyrics get to me

rammstein: you’ve got a pussy, i have a dick-ah, so what’s the problem, let’s do it quick

me:

I once discussed with some rightwinged people about ethnicity. And they said that blacks were a "subhuman" race because they are "obviously" less intelligent than other ethnic groups and that they never invented something or had a culture as Europeans or Persian cultures. But I honestly didn't have a good answer. Do you have some resources on why blacks haven't made such things in comparison to other ethnic groups?

I’m not going to pretend that I’m surprised or shocked to hear this because I, too, live in America, and have encountered this from Conservative Republicans aka Conservative Christians aka Evangelicals aka oblivious racists who claim they aren’t racist because they either have a black friend or have / “know” (talk to, from time to time) some black people in their lives (who have absolutely no idea how racist they are because the don’t actually “know” them, they simply hold basic, watered-down conversations with no substance that allows said white person to be chummy without actually divulging anything about themselves. That being said… 

Point any racist but “totally not racist” people to the ‘List of African-American inventors and scientists’ on Wikipedia; The Black inventor Online Museum because that’s a thing; and I also recommend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s beautiful and enlightening kid-friendly book ‘What Color Is My World? The Lost History of African-American Inventors’ (image below): 

Share with them the ‘History of science and technology in Africa’ on Wikipedia; and for those you encounter who know that there are such things as libraries and museums but can’t seem to you know, make an effort to actually visit them, there’s a resource for that provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services called, appropriately, ‘The Digital Public Library of America’ which permits you to look up local libraries nearest you via address or zip code.

Find Your Library (alternative sources here, here, and here)

Below are some recommended educational programs I highly recommend as well, for the “visual learner”….

FIRST PEOPLES (PBS)

See how the mixing of prehistoric human genes led the way for our species to survive and thrive around the globe. Archaeology, genetics and anthropology cast new light on 200,000 years of history, detailing how early humans became dominant. 

Review here.

BECOMING HUMAN (NOVA)

Nothing is more fascinating to us than, well, us. Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA’s comprehensive, three-part special, “Becoming Human,” examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives—putting together the pieces of our human past and transforming our understanding of our earliest ancestors.

Featuring interviews with world-renowned scientists, each hour unfolds with a CSI-like forensic investigation into the life and death of a specific hominid ancestor. The programs were shot “in the trenches” where discoveries were unearthed throughout Africa and Europe. Dry bones spring back to life with stunning computer-generated animation and prosthetics. Fossils not only give us clues to what early hominids looked like, but, with the aid of ingenious new lab techniques, how they lived and how we became the creative, thinking humans of today.

Review here.

THE INCREDIBLE HUMAN JOURNEY (BBC)

A five-episode, 300 minute, science documentary film presented by Alice Roberts, based on her related book. The film was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK. It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo. Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured.

Related review of Alice Roberts’ book by the same name of which this program was adapted, here.

ORIGINS OF US (BBC)

Science series telling the story of human evolution through changes in human anatomy, examining how the human body has adapted through seven million years of evolution.

PREHISTORIC AUTOPSY (BBC)

A journey into our evolutionary past, piecing together the bodies of our prehistoric family, discussing the remains of early hominins such as Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and Australopithecus afarensis.

‘CHILDREN OF AFRICA (THE STORY OF US)’ (melodysheep)

With referenced material from BBC Incredible Human Journey, BBC Ascent of Man, BBC Life of Mammals, BBC Human Planet, BBC Walking With Cavemen, and excerpts from various lectures, ‘Children of Africa’ is a musical celebration of humanity, its origins, and achievements, contrasted with a somber look at our environmentally destructive tendencies and deep similarities with other primates. Featuring Jacob Bronowski, Alice Roberts, Carolyn Porco, Jane Goodall, Robert Sapolsky, Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Attenborough.

ORIGINS: THE JOURNEY OF HUMANKIND (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC)

Hosted by Jason Silva, Origins: The Journey of Humankind rewinds all the way back to the beginning and traces the innovations that made us modern.

Related interview/reviews here, here, here, and here.

‘ORIGINS’ ANNOUNCEMENT TRAILER PRODUCED BY MELODYSHEEP

Of course, I could go on and on and on referencing various resources to provide people who have unintentionally “inherited” this perspective or who are stuck in a feedback loop within their echo chamber of ignorance, but let’s be honest, the only thing that can actually influence impactful change into a racist person’s mind is the will to self educate, and personal human experience obtained from intimate conversation with diverse ethnicities and cultures. I do hope this helps.

Where We Drill, We Spill: Commemorating Exxon Valdez

The Trump "starvation" budget would axe funding to the already beleaguered and under resourced agencies tasked with managing oil drilling safety risks, effectively taking what few cops are left off the beat.

As I write, crude oil is flowing into the Mississippi and a gas leak in Alaska’s Cook Inlet is ongoing, and has been for more than 3 months.

Sea ice is making repairs impossible, underscoring again the unique challenges of oil and gas exploration in Alaska’s frozen and tumultuous waters…

Happy birthday to Christopher Clavius (March 25, 1538-February 6, 1612), the German Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. And now, ladies and gents, here are some fun facts:

History doesn’t know his actual German name. It could be Christoph Clau or Klau. It might be Schlüssel, which is German for “key”, which in turn is “clavis” in Latin. But really, it’s all speculation.

At the age of 17, Clavius joined the Jesuit Order, which was founded when he was a child.

While studying at a Jesuit college in Portugal, he excelled in math. Upon observing a total solar eclipse in 1560, he decided that astronomy would be his life’s work.

As a professor at the Collegio Romano in (you guessed it!) Rome, Clavius taught mathematics and wrote textbooks, including works on algebra, the astrolabe, and practical arithmetic and geometry. He also did his own version of Euclid’s Elements; that probably contributed to him being called “the Euclid of the sixteenth century.”

Clavius was the senior math guy on the commission that reformed the calendar in 1582. This gave us the Gregorian calendar that most of the Western world uses to this day. Check out my previous post on this subject.

In his astronomical works, Clavius was geocentric in his opposition to the Copernican model of the universe for reasons both scientific and scriptural. He remained an everything-rotates-around-the-Earth guy until near the end of his life.

He budged on the matter. A little. Well, not quite, maybe. Clavius and Galileo had a mutually respectful relationship, and Clavius was rather thrilled (in his cautiously Jesuit way) with Galileo’s groundbreaking observations of Jupiter’s moons and other wonders. In 1610, during Galileo’s visit to Rome, Clavius and other scientists confirmed the existence of Jovian satellites and the phases of Venus, which contradicted the Ptolemaic view of the cosmos. But the geocentrism-vs-heliocentrism debate raged on.

Clavius also seemed to take this skeptical-but-delighted approach to Galileo’s telescopic observations of the Moon’s rough surface. He wrote that “when the Moon is a crescent or half full, it appears so remarkably fractured and rough that I cannot marvel enough that there is such unevenness in the lunar body.”

Speaking of the lunar body, Clavius was honored with his own crater formation on the Moon, as you can see above. Largest to smallest, the craters are designated Clavius D, C, N, J, and JA. Fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey might recognize this lunar location as the setting for Clavius Base, a human colony featured in both the film and book.

Feel free to contact me if I’m getting any of this wrong. I’m no Clavius.

(Rice University/Wikipedia)

This proposed budget isn’t extreme. Reagan’s proposed budget in 1981 was extreme. This budget is short-sighted, cruel to the point of being sadistic, stupid to the point of pure philistinism, and shot through with the absolute and fundamentalist religious conviction that the only true functions of government are the ones that involve guns, and that the only true purpose of government is to serve the rich.

Donald Trump’s Budget Is the Ending Conservatives Always Wanted (via azspot)

German Extr@

I started watching this educational sitcom in German a few months ago, and it’s really great. I mean, it’s no cult classic like Treffpunkt Berlin or anything, but it’s still pretty cool. It’s called “Extr@,” and it’s about this (secretly) wealthy American guy named Sam who moves in with his middle school pen pal Sascha in Berlin and her roommate, Anna. He also meets their aspiring actor neighbor Nic who despite acting all cool, turns out not to be. The language barrier is an important plot device. The romance is all wonky. Nic’s in love with Sascha, who’s in love with Sam, who’s in love with Anna, who’s in love with Nic. Yeah. Confusing. But nevertheless, it’s a pretty cool show.

Darrell Sweet cover art for a 1978 edition of Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein.

So we terraform the planet; but the planet areoforms us.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars 

I do believe – and I may still be in a minority on this – that Trump and the rise of an authoritarian government has changed the rules of engagement, and that journalists are going to need to figure out a more aggressive, albeit creative, response. I’m eager to work on new ways to fight back. But journalists aren’t going to save ourselves from the Trump onslaught. In launching this war, Trump and his right-wing allies know that the media can look embarrassingly defensive when we’re under attack. Indeed, they’re hoping to goad the media into the kind of responses they believe will whip up even more anger among their core supporters. If the 1st Amendment survives this threat, it will only be with support from everyday people. Journalists just aren’t going to march for our rights that way that women, immigrants, and even scientists have done or will do under Trump, but regular citizens can pick up the slack to remind the government – and their neighbors – that a free press is a fundamental American right and that regular people even support the 1st Amendment as enthusiastically as Elk County hunters back the 2nd. The president’s remarkable words of the last few days are essentially asking you, the American people, to choose a side. That doesn’t mean loving everything the media does; God knows I’ve used Attytood as a platform to criticize the New York Times, CNN and others – but only because I want a tough and fair-minded press to do better. That 1st Amendment ideal is tonight facing its gravest threat yet. The months ahead will determine whether an independent media will be the ones working, imperfectly, toward finding and sharing a real and objective truth, or whether the terms and conditions of reality will be set by an all-powerful Trump government.

Journalists can’t save a free press in Trump’s America. Only you can

(via  dendroica)

This is not hyperbole. Never in history has it been more clearer a time for collaboration and agreement on what kind of future we must commit to fight for.

(via sagansense)

The roughest week in space history. Saw this on a Facebook group I am a member of RIP Commander Scobee, and the rest of the crew.

His tragedy was one of increasing loneliness and impatience with those who could not understand. And if his desire to unite Greek and barbarian ended in failure... what failure! His failure towered over other men's successes. I've lived... I've lived a long life, Cadmos. But the glory and the memory of man will always belong to the ones who follow their great visions. And the greatest of these is the one they now... call "Megas Alexandros" - the greatest Alexander of them all.

Ptolemy I Soter, Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004)

Mankind is advanced technically. Man can build space stations, can assemble them in space, and ponders about landing on Mars, but the development of mankind itself seems to stagnate on stone age level.

Sigmund Jähn, the first German cosmonaut

The complete aesthetic of this blog.

Columbia, Houston. UHF Comm Check. Columbia, Houston. UHF Comm Check. Columbia, Houston. UHF Comm Check. Columbia, Houston. UHF Comm Check...?

Col. Charles O. Hobaugh, USMC, CapCom for the ill-fated STS-107 mission, February 1st, 2003

You love your wife! I love your wife! Aren't we both on the same side?

Giacomo Casnova (portrayed by David Tennant), BBC 3′s Casanova (2005)

Auferstanden aus Ruinen Glück für Menschen und Maschinen Eilt herbei von fern und nah Wir sind wieder da! Ja - Nein - RAMMSTEIN

Rammstein, Ramm4 (2016(live), studio verson TBA)

Ohne dich kann ich nicht sein, Ohne dich, Mit dir bin ich auch allein, Ohne dich, Ohne dich zähl ich die Stunden, Ohne dich, Mit dir stehen die Sekunden, Lohnen nicht

Rammstein, Ohne Dich (2004, Reise, Reise)

As our knowledge of the universe in which we live increases, may God grant us the wisdom and guidance to use it wisely.

John Glenn

(1921-2016)

This is how you religion.

(via sagansense)

Rockhound, with the Tampax in Taipei.

Me af

when the relatives are over

“so how are you going with your studies”

“have you found a job yet”

“got a special someone in your life? ;)”

I can’t wait till I have grandchildren. “When I was younger, I had to walk to the rim of a crater. Uphill! In an EVA suit! on Mars, ya little shit! You hear me? Mars!

Mark Watney (via themartianquotes)

astrophile

(noun) Astrophile is known as a person who loves the stars and everything to do with astronomy. Consider them amateur astronomists.  (via wordsnquotes)

The galaxy’s not saving itself, trooper!