14 tidbits to stir in your coffee (or tea) when the sloth visits.

{Via MyCoffeeBreak on Pinterest & Vintage-Retro on Tumblr}

OCT 14, 2013VIA CAROLYN RIKER 17 COMMENTS

I am not depressed but more like selectively choosing not to engage in a dramatic affair with life.

I call it my inner sloth.

I am an artist because…

 

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Cristian Mihai

 

There’s a part of me that believes art to be a primordial aspect of the human condition. Art inspires, art is a way of achieving greatness, of building a better world. Art turns strangers into friends. Without art, without artists, we wouldn’t be ourselves anymore.

Χημικοί έχουν ανακαλύψει μια ευλογοφανή συνταγή για την πρώιμη ζωή στη Γη

Επιστήμη

11.1.2018

Χημικοί, στο Ερευνητικό Ινστιτούτο Scripps (TSRI) έχουν αναπτύξει μια συναρπαστική νέα θεωρία για το πώς πρέπει να έχει αρχίσει η ζωή στη Γη. Τα πειράματά τους, που περιγράφονται στο περιοδικό Nature Communications, δείχνουν ότι βασικές χημικές αντιδράσεις που υποστηρίζουν την ζωή σήμερα θα μπορούσαν να έχουν πραγματοποιηθεί με συστατικά που πιθανώς να ήταν παρόντα στον πλανήτη πριν από τέσσερα δισεκατομμύρια χρόνια.

What’s in a kiss? Nothing less than the very essence of what it is to be human

James Dean & Julie Harris – East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955)

As new anthropological research shows the different ways we express love, Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of The Science of Kissing, takes a romantic trip through history and around the world

Sheril Kirshenbaum

The Observer, Sunday 19 July 2015

Harvard Dean Lists the 5 Essential Questions to Ask In Life … Which Will Bring You Happiness & Success

 

The Moon, Tetsis Panagiotis, 1998, Greek, 1925-2016

in Graduation Speech, Life| June 13th, 2016 1 Comment

 

And now for a different kind of graduation speech.

Most commencement speeches provide answers of sorts–pieces of wisdom you can carry with you, life strategies you can use down the road. Above James Ryan, Dean of Harvard’s School of Education, offers something else–not answers, but questions, the five essential questions to ask as you move through life. He elaborates on each above:

Humankind’s Existentially Lucky Numbers

Waterloo Bridge, 1901 ~ Claude Monet

George Johnson

The Large Hadron Collider sprung back to life this month, smashing subatomic particles with nearly double the energy used to discover the Higgs boson, a landmark in understanding the makeup of the physical world. With the Higgs now in the bag, researchers are setting their sights on more exotic fare: signs of a new physics that not only describes the universe but explains why it is the way it is.

JUNE 22, 2015, The New York Times

Stephen Hawking Wonders Whether Capitalism or Artificial Intelligence Will Doom the Human Race

Creative Commons image via NASA

It shouldn’t be especially controversial to point out that we live in a pivotal time in human history—that the actions we collectively take (or that plutocrats and technocrats take) will determine the future of the human species—or whether we even have a future in the coming centuries. The threats posed by climate change and war are exacerbated and accelerated by rapidly worsening economic inequality. Exponential advances in technology threaten to eclipse our ability to control machines rather than be controlled, or stamped out, by them.

Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life?

Giorgione – Three Philosophers

Philosopher Julian Baggini fears that, as we learn more and more about the universe, scientists are becoming increasingly determined to stamp their mark on other disciplines. Here, he challenges theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss over ‘mission creep’ among his peers

Julian Baggini and Lawrence Krauss, The Observer, Sunday 9 September 2012

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Does philosophy or science have all the big answers?

Propose Earth’s ‘Anthropocene’ Age of Humans Began With Fallout and Plastics

https://graphicanthropology.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/how2catchanibex001.jpg

 

By ANDREW C. REVKIN JANUARY 15, 2015 7:11 AM January 15, 2015 7:11 am 98 Comments

A research team assessing when a new geological epoch shaped by humans began has settled on the mid 20th century. Two markers are carbon isotopes from nuclear explosions and plastics, here seen in the remains of a dead albatross.Credit Left, U.S. Air Force Photo; right, Chris Jordan, midwayfilm.com

 

What is the Human Genome Project?

Begun formally in 1990, the U.S. Human Genome Project was a 13-year effort coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. The project originally was planned to last 15 years, but rapid technological advances accelerated the completion date to 2003.

The Autonomy of Biology

 

Ernst Mayr

Walter Arndt Lecture: Ernst Mayr

Science as we know it is the product of developments in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. What was conceived as science is indicated by the names Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, and Leibniz. It was the glorious rise of the physical sciences advancing from triumph to triumph. It was physics what people meant when they talked about science, biology was never included. The science of biology was a creation of the l9^th century. Of course, there were branches of medicine such as anatomy, physiology, and embryology that we now include in biology but they were concerned with healing and were not considered to be the part of a separate science of biology. At the same time there was also a flourishing pursuit of natural history under the label of Natural Theology. A genuine biology remained dormant until the 19^th century.

Making Sense of the Chemistry That Led to Life on Earth

 

Gustave Caillebotte: Villers-sur-Mer – 1880

 

 

By NICHOLAS WADE, The New York Times, MAY 4, 2015

 

It was the actions of Jupiter and Saturn that quite inadvertently created life on Earth — not the gods of the Roman pantheon, but the giant planets, which once orbited much closer to the sun.