Language of the Soul

"There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (via to-love-ones-self)

(Source: winterkristall, via to-love-ones-self)

@1 month ago with 52905 notes

n-a-s-a:

B44, The Dark River

Credit:Jerry Lodriguss

@1 month ago with 516 notes

TEDx: 6 talks on the wonder of words

tedx:

Language is a strange thing. We use it every day, but we often forget it’s there; it’s easy to learn as a child, but fiendishly difficult as an adult; and, for reasons that are hard to define, certain words can evoke strong emotions or even downright offend.

Below, 5 TEDx Talks (and one TED…

(via jessehimself)

@1 month ago with 178 notes
#language #the importance of words

n-a-s-a:

NGC 3628 Edge On Galaxy

Credit: Matthew T. Russell

@1 month ago with 408 notes

jessehimself:

Golden Road: A glorious road of gold through the aspen woods of Snowmass, Colorado.(© Ron Azevedo/National Geographic Photo Contest) #

@2 months ago with 29 notes

"If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives."

Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator (via larmoyante)

(Source: larmoyante, via thinkersunite)

@2 months ago with 18766 notes

"
One way to read this is a book about a mother’s love. Some say Wise Brown was making an allegory to God. This week I used Runaway Bunny in my state-building lecture.

States for most of history have been unrelenting, coercive, and all-consuming. If you think of states as merely benign or civilizing, you will fail to understand the shape of society. You can try to run away, but you will come home. Here’s a carrot for your trouble.

If you do not agree with me, or have your doubts, your reading assignment is Jim Scott’s anarchist history of Southeast Asia. Or the runner up, Eugen Weber on turning peasants into Frenchman. From Scott’s book:

At a time when the state seems pervasive and inescapable, it is easy to forget that for much of history, living within or outside the state… was a choice…

Much, if not most, of the population of the early states was unfree; they were subjects under duress.

…it was very common for state subjects to run away. Living with the state meant, virtually by definition, taxes, conscription, corvee labor, and, for most, a condition of servitude

When these burdens because overwhelming, subjects moved with alacrity to the periphery or to another state.

…Note that this account of the periphery is sharply at odds with the official story most civilizations tell about themselves.

According to that tale, a backward, naïve, and perhaps barbaric people are gradually incorporated into an advanced, superior, and more prosperous society and culture.
"

Chris Blattman on Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny

@1 month ago

Omega: Messier 17 in Sagittarius
Distance: 5000 Light Years
M17 is one of the largest HII region-molecular cloud complexes in the inner part of our galaxy and one of the closest to our sun. Its location within the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy places it near another famous HII region, the eagle nebula (M16).
Color data Courtesy Wolfgang Promper
Image Assembly and Processing: Robert Gendler
M17 is considered a prototypical example of triggered star formation where an HII region expands into an adjacent molecular cloud, triggering fragmentation and core collapse within the cloud, and ultimately initiating the process of new star formation. Although M17 is known mostly for its bright HII region, it is situated at the edge of a massive and dense molecular cloud.
The visible nebula is illuminated by the massive stellar cluster NGC 6618. The core of the cluster is exceedingly rich in massive young stars and may contain up to 100 “O” and “B” type stars which illuminate the nebula although the stars are heavily obscured by dense and dusty foreground clouds. At the center of the cluster core and situated just west of the bright rim of the optical nebula is a ring of 7 hot O-type stars invisible at optical wavelengths due to obscuring foreground dust.
Within this ring is the major source of illumination for the optically bright nebula, a double O4V star system known as Kleinmann’s star which is so heavily obscured by intervening dust that it suffers nearly 9 magnitudes of extinction.

Omega: Messier 17 in Sagittarius

Distance: 5000 Light Years

M17 is one of the largest HII region-molecular cloud complexes in the inner part of our galaxy and one of the closest to our sun. Its location within the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy places it near another famous HII region, the eagle nebula (M16).

Color data Courtesy Wolfgang Promper

Image Assembly and Processing: Robert Gendler

M17 is considered a prototypical example of triggered star formation where an HII region expands into an adjacent molecular cloud, triggering fragmentation and core collapse within the cloud, and ultimately initiating the process of new star formation. Although M17 is known mostly for its bright HII region, it is situated at the edge of a massive and dense molecular cloud.

The visible nebula is illuminated by the massive stellar cluster NGC 6618. The core of the cluster is exceedingly rich in massive young stars and may contain up to 100 “O” and “B” type stars which illuminate the nebula although the stars are heavily obscured by dense and dusty foreground clouds. At the center of the cluster core and situated just west of the bright rim of the optical nebula is a ring of 7 hot O-type stars invisible at optical wavelengths due to obscuring foreground dust.

Within this ring is the major source of illumination for the optically bright nebula, a double O4V star system known as Kleinmann’s star which is so heavily obscured by intervening dust that it suffers nearly 9 magnitudes of extinction.

(Source: kenobi-wan-obi, via n-a-s-a)

@1 month ago with 1728 notes

n-a-s-a:

IC 342

Credit: Matthew T. Russell

@1 month ago with 645 notes

wonderous-world:

Through The Gate by Stephen Bures

Angkor Thom (literally: “Great City”), located in present day Cambodia was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer Empire.

(via thinkersunite)

@2 months ago with 1401 notes

thinkersunite:

Ella Fitzgerald - I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair

Story of my life.

@2 months ago with 4 notes