I’ve been grazing online, looking for a place to host my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. When I talk to event organizers at venues, you can hear them stop short, and take in their breath, in awe and admiration: “SIXTY years?!” they say.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Only dalits handle waste disposal in India. Their ostracization is harsh, but their hold on the housecleaning market is absolute... more
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Friday Fun: Let The Bullets Fly 2 via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you are a pistol carrying sharp-shooter with a mission to eliminate the legion of evil henchmen scattered across different locations. Do you have the skill and patience needed to defeat them?
Asian Angel’s walk-through is here or you can go straight to the game here
NB: I have not checked this as I do not like shooter games!
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Dirty Minds: The Neurobiology of Love via Big Think by Megan Erickson
There’s a revolution going on in neuroscience, says science writer Kayt Sukel, and it’s happening on two fronts. One way the science is changing: researchers are finally beginning to include both male and female subjects in their studies. Another is epigenetics, a new way of understanding the centuries-old nature versus nurture debate.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Should philosophy ask questions but not give answers? “No. It can't be!” says Alain de Botton. “Civilization should transmit the best ideas”... more
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Gene Sequencing: The New Blood Test? via Big Think by Orion Jones
Sequencing a patient’s genes may soon become as common as a blood test, say computer engineers working in the genetics industry. They cite several advances in computing such as industrial digital cameras which can capture fluorescent molecules used to “read” small small sequences of DNA.
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Beautiful Souls via 3quarksdaily by Morgan Meis
The horrors of the twentieth century left artists and thinkers preoccupied with the problem of evil. How could Germans herd Jewish families into the gas chambers? How could Serbs turn on their Bosnian neighbours, or Hutus pick up machetes and carry out the bloody work of genocidaires?
In Beautiful Souls, Eyal Press takes on a different challenge, more suited to the twenty-first century: He suggests that the true mystery is not what impels ordinary people into the moral abyss, but rather how some people manage to avoid the abyss altogether, by refusing to participate in atrocities. For every horror, there are courageous, conscientious resisters: Germans who hid Jews, Hutus who saved Tutsis, Serbs who saved Muslims. Even the more quotidian forms of evil always generate some resistance: Consider the Enron scandal's whistle-blowers. But what enables some to resist while most go along? Beautiful Souls, Press writes, is about “nonconformists, about the mystery of what impels people to do something risky … when thrust into a morally compromising situation: stop, say no, resist.”
more from Rosa Brooks at Bookforum here.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The accursed poets. Name the malady, Baudelaire, Verlaine, or Rimbaud suffered from it: arthritis, diabetes, alcoholism, syphilis. Each relished his own martyrdom, even flaunted it... more
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How Well Does Your Brain Know You? via Big Think by Orion Jones
Determining how well the brain can judge its own behaviour is a tricky matter because it requires thinking about thinking – in other words, introspection. Dr. Steve Fleming of New York University has been designing experiments to measure the difference between what we think we know about ourselves and who we really are.
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Massive Asteroid Strike in 2040? via Big Think by Orion Jones
An asteroid discovered in January 2011 is plotting a course too close for comfort, say astronomers. The space rock 2011 AG5 was recently discussed before a scientific subcommittee of the UN and some scientists are urging discussion of a plan to alter the object’s trajectory.
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