melissa explains it all

"This is probably going to get quoted in every publication just because I said it. And I’m not even..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:49:58 -0700

“This is probably going to get quoted in every publication just because I said it. And I’m not even saying anything. I’m not talking about my films, I’m not talking about my life, and I’m not talking about the world. And yet, the media will print it simply because I said it. And at this moment in time, I bet there is an artist around the corner of this hotel, on the street, with a mind far beyond ours, but we will never listen to him simply because he has not appeared in a movie. And that is what is fucked up about our culture.”

- Robert Downey Jr. (via bluishtigers)

stuffmomnevertoldyou: stufftoblowyourmind: torteen: picadorboo...

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:30:40 -0700

stuffmomnevertoldyou:

stufftoblowyourmind:

torteen:

picadorbookroom:

In honor of Children’s Book Week, here’s a photo of an awesome kid.

Every kid should have this picture taken of them.

-

Go out of your way to read banned books. As if you could resist…

a) this is awesome.

b) Cristen wrote “How does banning a book work?” for HowStuffWorks in case you want to give your lit brain a present.

treehugger: “This building puts 4,450 households on two acres...

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:43:06 -0700

treehugger:

“This building puts 4,450 households on two acres and it is actually designed with energy conservation in mind. By going huge they are getting tremendous manufacturing efficiencies; by going vertical they get the kind of repetition that makes it affordable. By going half a mile high and 220 stories they are going to get noticed.”

That is Lloyd Alter describing the sustainable case for what will be the world’s tallest building. See more pictures and a video here: One Building, One City: World’s tallest prefab, Sky City, is breaking ground in June

neuromorphogenesis: Imagine A Flying Pig: How Words Take Shape...

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:40:36 -0700

neuromorphogenesis:

Imagine A Flying Pig: How Words Take Shape In The Brain

This is a story about a duck. More precisely, it’s a story about what your brain just did when you read the word “duck.”

Chances are, your brain created an image of a web-footed waterfowl. It also may have recalled the sound of quacking or the feel of feathers. And new research suggests that these mental simulations are essential to understanding language.

Just a few decades ago, many linguists thought the human brain had evolved a special module for language. It seemed plausible that our brains have some unique structure or system. After all, no animal can use language the way people can.

But in the 1990s, scientists began testing the language-module theory using “functional” MRI technology that let them watch the brain respond to words. And what they saw didn’t look like a module, says Benjamin Bergen, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, and author of the book Louder Than Words.

“They found something totally surprising,” Bergen says. “It’s not just certain specific little regions in the brain, regions dedicated to language, that were lighting up. It was kind of a whole-brain type of process.”

If someone read a sentence like, “the shortstop threw the ball to first base,” parts of the brain dedicated to vision and movement would light up, Bergen says. “The question was, why?” he says. “They’re just listening to language. Why would they be preparing to act? Why would they be thinking that they were seeing something?”

The answer that emerged from this research is that when you encounter words describing a particular action, your brain simulates the experience, Bergen says.

“The way that you understand an action is by recreating in your vision system what it would look like to perceive that event and recreating in your motor system what it would be like to be that shortstop, to have the ball in your hand and release it,” Bergen says.

The brain appears to be taking words, which are just arbitrary symbols, and translating them into things we can see or hear or do, Bergen says.

That’s not much of a stretch when it comes to words for things like throwing a baseball or seeing a duck. But what about words for things we’ve probably never seen? Like a flying pig.

“A flying pig isn’t something that actually exists in the real world,” Bergen says. Yet when we read those words we see one in our mind’s eye. Most people see a pig with wings above its shoulders, Bergen says. But some people imagine a pig with a cape, flying like Superman.

A flying pig has meaning to us because our brain is using things we have seen — pigs and birds — to create something we’ve never seen. And Bergen says we also draw on personal experience when we use language to convey abstract ideas — like truth, or justice, or even the word “meaning.”

“What we actually say when we talk about meaning is, do you see what I mean? Is my point crystal clear? Maybe, let’s shed a little light on the subject,” Bergen says. What we’re doing, he says, is extending our physical experiences — in this case things we’ve seen — by turning them into metaphors.

We use this sort of metaphor all the time in conversation, Bergen says. We “grasp” the truth. We “dodge” questions. We “fall” in love.

Philosophers have been debating the importance of metaphors like these since the time of Aristotle. But now, brain researchers like Krish Sathian at Emory University are getting involved.

Sathian has been studying an area of the brain that responds to the texture of an object — whether it feels smooth or rough. And he wondered whether the same area would respond when we use textures like smooth or rough as metaphors.

So he had people lie in an fMRI scanner while they listened to metaphors like, “he had a rough day,” as well as similar sentences with no metaphor like, “he had a bad day.”

The results suggest that, at least to the brain, a rough day has something in common with a sheet of sandpaper, Sathian says. “When listening to these sentences containing textural metaphors, we found activity in the part of the brain that’s involved when we feel surfaces,” he says

Research like this adds to the evidence that the human brain is not processing language in some special module, Sathian says. “The brain is really working as a very highly distributed system.”

What’s amazing is that people have been able to do so much with language using the same basic brain structures found in monkeys and apes, Bergen says.

“What evolution has done is to build a new machine, a capacity for language, something that nothing else in the known universe can do,” he says. “And it’s done so using the spare parts that it had lying around in the old primate brain.”

Image: Although a flying pig doesn’t exist in the real world, our brains use what we know about pigs and birds — and superheroes — to create one in our mind’s eye when we hear or read those words.

John Green's tumblr: The Commencement Address

Sun, 12 May 2013 15:07:28 -0700

John Green's tumblr: The Commencement Address:

fishingboatproceeds:

Some people have asked to read the commencement address I delivered this morning to the 2013 graduates of Butler University. So here it is.

My own commencement speaker, who shall remain nameless, began with a lame joke about how these speeches only come in two varieties: Short and bad. This…

onlyfoolsandvikings: Motivational Megafauna, they’re extinct...

Mon, 06 May 2013 19:14:20 -0700

onlyfoolsandvikings:

Motivational Megafauna, they’re extinct but they are proud of you.

nprfreshair: Was there ever a more charming letter writer than...

Sun, 05 May 2013 19:53:00 -0700

nprfreshair:

Was there ever a more charming letter writer than Vonnegut?

slatevault:

In which Kurt Vonnegut modestly offers his talents to the JFK campaign. Our favorite line? “On occasion, I write pretty well.” http://slate.me/11QNcwA

"Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:30:34 -0700

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

- Stephen Fry (via rbkh)

Photo

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:38:26 -0700

howstuffworks: stuffmomnevertoldyou: #FridayInspiration Everyd...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:20:09 -0700

howstuffworks:

stuffmomnevertoldyou:

#FridayInspiration

Everyday inspiration.

medieval: Curious Cat Walks Over Medieval Manuscript Inky paw...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:57:21 -0700

medieval:

Curious Cat Walks Over Medieval Manuscript

Inky paw prints have been discovered in a 15th century manuscript.

"A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are..."

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:13:46 -0800

“A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It’s also a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

(via vonnegutphile)

Photo

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:06:32 -0800

porcypine: Lots of villages in the UK have turned red...

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:39:00 -0800

porcypine:

Lots of villages in the UK have turned red telephone boxes into mini libraries, just take a book and leave one behind.

I wish canada had this

pink-mama: razorshapes: To Live On by Min Jeong Seo “The...

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:19:27 -0800

pink-mama:

razorshapes:

To Live On by Min Jeong Seo

“The stalks these flowers are already dried up but their blossoms are preserved and kept fresh by the medical infusion bags. The life-span of every living creature is limited.The infusion bags stand for the progress in medicine and the prolongation of human life.They somehow carry an ambivalent message as they refer to both death and life an the same time. Both states are immanent here. To preserve the beauty of the flowers artifically with the help of the infusion bags points out man’s inclination to repress the fact having to die and to postpone death.”

powerful

The four sweethearts at the end of that Jimmy Kimmel segment I...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:05:15 -0800

The four sweethearts at the end of that Jimmy Kimmel segment I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy.

tylerknott: Typewriter Series #231 by Tyler Knott...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:41:50 -0800

tylerknott:

Typewriter Series #231 by Tyler Knott Gregson

This.

Photo

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:55:01 -0800

discoverynews: remember to look at the date before you think...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:09:33 -0700

discoverynews:

remember to look at the date before you think typewriter = history

explore-blog:

Noted typewriter collector Tom Hanks responds to a Nerdist Podcast “bribe” with a charming letter typed on the 1934 Smith Corona they sent him. The resulting gem of a podcast can be heard here.

discoverynews: omgomgomgomgomgomg thebluthcompany: The Bluths...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:22:29 -0700

discoverynews:

omgomgomgomgomgomg

thebluthcompany:

The Bluths are back.

[via]

YES PLZ AND THANK YOU.