Linkkkkkks For Fun

Photos from a contest in which people were asked to create pictures showing what the world would be like if the internet disappeared. This is a real gem.

Insane weird cool video

Amazing set of pictures covering the world drug trade: from the dealers to the growers to the users.

Really awesome and inspired idea for a gift. Makes me wish I was much more creative.

Article on how England's swine flu cases have doubled in the last week...

Article on research that has found junk food to be as detrimental to rat brains as heroin. Clearly shows that junk food is not food for thought.

Crazy map showing the impact that a 4 degree Celsius rise in world temperature would have on the world environment.

Quote of the day: [Newton] invented calculus. Most of us sweat through it for multiple years in school just to learn it. He invented it--practically on a dare. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson

We Need to Get Out of Afghanistan Now

"According to reports, the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way."

Until I read this statistic I was semi-dedicated to the idea staying in Afganistan until we had finished what we set out. Now, I could not be farther from that. Right now, we are spending $320,000,000 PER DAY on the Marine's gasoline. Just the Marine's. WHHHHHHHHAAAT!?? How is that even possible? Really. How can we sustain that? I am speechless. To say the least, you should read the article that I got this from. It is all about how the US now fits the definition of a failed state.

What More Can I Say?

(click on it for the full experience)

This is probably my favorite Phillies picture taken during their many triumphs of the past three seasons. The raw emotion. The elation. Freaking Carlos Ruiz, the clutchest little panamanian this game has ever seen. This is the best team that I will ever root for. I can say that without any doubt and without any regret that I will never again get to see a group of players so good, so united by a common goal, so easy to love, and so exciting to watch. That is because these guys are that good. Go Phils. Finish up business tomorrow night and then sit back and wait around for those other teams to fight for the chance to be your next victim. Let's go.

Some Profound Quotes on Human Existence

It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here."

-Chaim Potok

the infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. the sheer number of experiences i could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live in trapped loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handfull of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation of the last, every moment smoothly following the the gentle curves of societal norms. we act like if we just get through today, tomorow our dreams will come back to us.

and no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to joly myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. it doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up.

This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: Fuck. That. Shit."

--xkcd

“In the midst of winter, I finally found that there was in me an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. ~Fr. Alfred D'Souza

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. - unknown

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here." - Richard Dawkins

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Robert Anson Heinlein

The people we judge and hate in life are in fact reflections of our disowned selves. (Dr Hal Stone)

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

• Quellcrist Falconer

High Quality Links

• This is really incredible. It is a recounting of the entirely odd balloon boy saga set to the tempo and rhyme scheme of the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
• Some awesome pics of frozen fruits and veggies getting shot at close range.
• A wikipedia entry on the peculiar phenomenon of sailing rocks, which are rocks that just move around, seemingly randomly. Freaking cool.
• A collection of the best of the best microscope images taken in the last 35 years. Truly stunning.
• A kick ass pic showing how big Antarctica really is. (clue: it's huge)
• A really complicated but enlightening and neat flow chart/illustration thing of the differences between dems and repubs.

Massive Berlin Marionette Show (and that's the marionettes that are massive)

There was a truly incredible marionette show in Berlin a few weeks ago. It was both absolutely beautiful and an staggeringly logistically complicated. Check it out if you want to be amazed and touched.

Jon Stewart Destroys CNN and Other Links

CNN spends time fact checking SNL skits. CNN does not spend time fact checking their guests. Jon Stewart has a few words to say on this matter. Check it out here.

Here's an article that expands on these thoughts: Why was Bush able to ram his agenda through so easily? Because his agenda was the agenda of the Ruling Class. Why can't Obama get his agenda through? Because his agenda directly attacks the Ruling Class.

Great reply to Fox's arrogance and overt collusion.

Strikingly beautiful map of pre-WWI Europe. If you look at anything here let it be this.

Nobel Prize winner

Did Obama deserve the nobel prize for peace efforts? It really depends on how you look at it. Has he really done enough yet to garner it? I would say no but I do think that he will in the next three, hopefully seven, years. Some obviously disagreed with me though.

I would have to assume that by giving Obama the prize the prize givers, whoever they are, were saying that by not being Bush, by repealing many of the acts that he had passed, by changing the tenor of the White House's words, by being in support of an ask questions first, and not later, strategy, by simply stepping down off the unreasonably high high-horse upon which the Bush administration had placed the White House and the USA, was enough to earn the nobel peace prize.

That is a powerful statement. It reminds me of when Time magazine made their 'person of the year' the public and put a mirror type thing on their cover. It was a surprising decision and one that a lot of people disagreed with but I loved it. It actually looked at what had happened in the world in the previous year, saw that things had changed, and that the causes of those changes had not been one person but the entire public. In the same light, the nobel prize givers saw that the world has changed in the last year, that many of the changes have been for the better, and that it was the work of one man, because really it is all about the way he carries himself and approaches his work that makes the difference, that had caused that change.

Quite honestly, it was not until a few days ago when someone pointed out that Obama probably won it for simply not being Bush, that I realized how great an impact Obama has had on the world already. No, he has not yet done a lot of the things that he promised but he really is doing an incredible amount of work and almost all of it is going towards returning the USA and the world to the stable ground that it was on before Bush took office.

In the process of writing this piece I have come to realize how brilliant a decision it was to give Obama the prize. I think it's because him receiving the prize made us all step back and think about whether or not he has done enough to earn it. On first look, it seems as though he has not really earned it yet, hell I wrote that at the beginning of this piece, but on second look you see that he really has brought the most peace to the world of any one person in the last year. This is by no means to say that he has come close to fulfilling the promises he made during his campaign or to fulfilling our hopes for what he is capable of but it is to say that he appears to be on the right path towards those goals. Here's to hoping he does enough in the coming years to win it again.