Sharp as Teeth and Stars

"Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and..."

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:30:22 -0500

“Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not “discovered” in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us—questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain—her answers unframed in human terms—then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature’s independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms.”

- Stephen Jay Gould, I Have Landed, 2002

mcbrayers: yet another unrealistic expectation for women

Sat, 25 May 2013 01:11:55 -0500

mcbrayers:

yet another unrealistic expectation for women

langoaurelian: Allegory of Man’s Choice between Virtue and...

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:23:41 -0500

langoaurelian:

Allegory of Man’s Choice between Virtue and Vice, ca. 1635, lower center, showing Satan seated on a scaly dragon

~ Frans Francken

gdxphoto: Drag Becomes Her! Remember when I took behind the...

Fri, 24 May 2013 23:47:43 -0500

gdxphoto:

Drag Becomes Her!

Remember when I took behind the scenes pics for my friend Ricky while he photographed Jinkx Monsoon and Ivy Winters? Well, he finally released them! Inspired by Death Becomes Her.

[Click Here] to go check out his page and see the rest. They are incredible.

bandwagonpete: Bitch stole my look. Colby can steal whatever...

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:49:00 -0500

bandwagonpete:

Bitch stole my look.

Colby can steal whatever he wants and make it his. Sorry for the betrayal.

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:30:19 -0500

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm— but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

- T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, 1949

"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:30:16 -0500

“Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.”

- William Cowper, ”Winter Walk at Noon” The Task, Book VI, 1785

superhamish: catbountry: cumaeansibyl: Ruby Rhod is one of my...

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:36:51 -0500

superhamish:

catbountry:

cumaeansibyl:

Ruby Rhod is one of my favorite characters in sci-fi ever because he is Luc Besson’s vision of the hetero sex symbol of the future: a flamboyant, emotionally labile man who wears skin-tight leopard print or decks himself in roses, a man who accessorizes with big jewelry and dabbles in cosmetics. And the ladies love him. Everything about him screams “gay” according to our stereotypes, but he’s portrayed as a 100% straight sexual dynamo.

Besson is one of the few directors I’ve seen who actually recognizes that our ideas of sexuality and gender performance might have changed drastically in the future.

He also has one of the most jarring entrances in a movie. Like the entire movie screeches to a halt because he bursts onto the scene well into the second act and it’s so strange and arresting and Bruce Willis is just like “what the fuck is even going on anymore?”

It’s p. great.

Every time I see him on a list of “most annoying characters” i dispair. Do people seriously watch The Fifth Element for anything else?

I love Ruby Rhod for president. He’ll sign all legislation with a red paint using a house brush.

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:30:05 -0500

“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.”

- Paul Johnson, The Recovery of Freedom, 1980

lalouver: If you’re in or around the Chicago area, be sure to...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:24:06 -0500

lalouver:

If you’re in or around the Chicago area, be sure to catch this mural produced by Gajin Fujita along with nine members of Los Angeles’ K2S graffiti crew.

Titled CHI-TOWN, the 10 x 130 foot (3 x 39.6 m) mural was commissioned by curator Dave Hickey in fall 2012 for Chicago’s citywide public art exhibition Big Art. The mural will remain on view throughout spring 2013.

To see a concise video that follows the mural’s production, visit our vimeo page.

The NeighborsArne Svenson “New Yorkers are masters of being...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:06:56 -0500

The Neighbors
Arne Svenson

“New Yorkers are masters of being both the observer and the observed. We live so densely packed together that contact is inevitable—even our homes are stacked facing each other. I have found this symbiotic relationship between the looker and the observed only here—we understand that privacy is fluid and that glass truly is transparent.

Fox I by Brage Moreite Nørholm

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:16:13 -0500

Fox I by Brage Moreite Nørholm

archimaps: Design proposal for the Washington Monument,...

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:09:58 -0500

archimaps:

Design proposal for the Washington Monument, Washington D.C.

drawpaintprint: Lecture by writer and art critic Dave Hickey....

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:52:00 -0500

drawpaintprint:

Lecture by writer and art critic Dave Hickey. Recorded at the University of Memphis, 1997.

good lecture

I love the following definitions he gives for ‘the beautiful’ and ‘beauty:

‘The beautiful’ is created by communities as a mode of social control. The beautiful is a set of attributes of configurations that a particular culture creates and inculcates to control the behavior of the members of that culture.”

as opposed to:

‘Beauty’ is something you have never seen before that you have always wanted to see. It’s something that changes the structure of society. Beauty is created by individual people who don’t like the way it looks and want to propose an alternative system of value. Beauty rather than being created by communities creates communities, and I call these communities of desire. Groups of people brought together not because of who they are, but of what they’re not, what they want, and what they would rather see. This what works of art do, and is how nearly all art works in this culture.

"Her monotonous family life and the absence of adequate intellectual occupation left her with an..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:19 -0500

“Her monotonous family life and the absence of adequate intellectual occupation left her with an unemployed surplus of mental liveliness and energy, and this found an outlet in the constant activity of her imagination. This led to a habit of day-dreaming (her ‘private theatre’), which laid the foundations for a dissociation of her mental personality.”

- Josef Breuer, “Fräulein Anna O”, Studies on Hysteria, 1895

Anna O. and I have much in common.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:40:24 -0500

cruiseorbecruised: artqueer: David Wojnarowicz in front of his...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:42:08 -0500

cruiseorbecruised:

artqueer:

David Wojnarowicz in front of his artwork Fuck You Faggot Fucker

Today I’ve been sorting through my notebooks and papers...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:27:00 -0500

Today I’ve been sorting through my notebooks and papers from the last year. I often feel as though I never produce anything of academic, social, or cultural value, but this sorting has made me realize I do produce quite a bit of independent writing. It’s all very inconsistent and haphazardly organized though… much like my mind, and not worth publishing in total. I should work on editing and compiling some of the more insightful work, because not all of it is worth being tossed into my trunk of past writings to be forgotten until I die and the trunk is found or I am investigated for possible future crimes.

"Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:05:59 -0500

“Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.”

- Kurt Vonnegut (via lesilencieux)

"On its own, it is a wonder, but viewed in isolation its complexity and very existence is..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:23:35 -0500

“

On its own, it is a wonder, but viewed in isolation its complexity and very existence is inexplicable. Darwin’s genius was to see that the existence of something as magnificent as a blade of grass can be understood, but only in the context of its interaction with other living things and, crucially, its evolutionary history. A physicist might say it is a four-dimensional structure, with both spatial and temporal extent, and it is simply impossible to comprehend the existence of such a structure in a universe governed by the simple laws of physics if its history is ignored.

And whilst you are contemplating the humble majesty of a blade of grass, with a spatial extent of a few centimeters but stretching back in the temporal direction for almost a third of the age of the Universe, pause for a moment to consider the viewer, because what is true of the blade of grass is also true fro you. You share the same basic biochemistry, all the way down to the detail of proton waterfalls, and ATP, and much of the same genetic history, carefully documented in your DNA. This is because you share the same common ancestor. You are all related. You were once the same.

”

- Brian Cox channels Richard Feynman in this reminder that viewing science through any single lens is an incomplete view of its magnificence. In other words, physics is beautiful, but it’s a periscope view of life’s majesty.

From his new book to accompany the BBC series, Wonders of Life.

via Brain Pickings

(via jtotheizzoe)