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Cosmic amnesia

A black hole rings like a struck bell, then settles into silence, forgetting almost everything about its history. Why? - by Richard Dyer Read on Aeon

A series of bad decisions

Sometimes we make poor choices. And, unrelated to that, sometimes bad luck happens. The real problem kicks in after that. One bad decision after another. Choices that compound the problem instead of solving it. Digging a deeper hole, amplifying the damage and spreading the

On Losing a Parent

We spend our lives mastering the art of losing. Our necessary losses shape us; the unnecessary, senseless, devastating losses bend our shape to test our breaking point. We can lose people to life — to conflict, to confusion, to the consequences of their trauma — losses painful

Nirvana On the Cusp

This is a video of Nirvana playing Smells Like Teen Spirit in a small club just two days after Nevermind came out in 1991. There’s a freight train bearing down on those boys and they don’t even know it. (via digg ) See also The Notorious B.I.G. freestyling on a Brooklyn corner

New book from Ed Yong! Life Beyond Measure:...

New book from Ed Yong! Life Beyond Measure: Nature’s Hidden Wonders at Every Scale . “A bristlecone pine rounds the corner of its fifth millennium; shorebirds fly without stopping across the world’s largest ocean…” Out in April, pre-order now .

Using a Railway as a Massive Flatbed Scanner

By taking a camera, pointing it out the window of a train, and keeping track of how fast the train is moving, you can create very wide panoramic scans of the scenery. It’s a little more complicated than that — all the details are here — but you’re essentially using the train

Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed a floating...

Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed a floating children’s library and donated it to Kagawa prefecture. “We created reading spaces throughout the ship. A large circular bench was placed on the rear deck, and children can even lie under the sun.”