lovecraftie:

silvermoon424:

m0317k5:

kennbrix:

The cause of racism is often fear of the unknown - lack of knowledge about other cultures. Travel, explore and learn - open your mind.

I will ALWAYS, ALWAYS, reblog this every time it comes up on my blog. This is the BEST statement, I’ve ever seen. 

I really love this. So many are dead-set on the view that people cannot better themselves but that simply isn’t true. Everybody deserves a second chance and everybody has the ability to better themselves. 

This is perfect… I know a lot of people, even have some friends who are set in their beliefs, who don’t ever leave Kentucky. And I’d love to see them go out and experience and explore..

Because “how I was raised” isn’t an excuse.

Because “That’s just how I feel about it” isn’t a reason.

Because “God doesn’t want it that way” isn’t the truth.

One of the best things ive seen up here.

ironmegan:

If you are in NJ or NYC come get your makeup done by me for free!!
YES, FREE!
I’m working on part of my portfolio right now, so I just need some fresh faces and it would be cool if you would allow me to make ya over.
Get at me!

/shamelessselfpromotion

Getcha free face here!

ironmegan:

My boyfriend and I are thinking about moving in June when our lease is up. Not that this place is awful, we just need more space and an over all change for us. We’re looking for 1 bedroom places in Queens (Astoria, Flushing, Kew Gardens etc.) or certain parts of Brooklyn. We’re both in Manhattan…

AMNH

ecocides:

Greenpeace parodies Shell with ‘Arctic Ready’ adverts | via the guardian

Awesome.

smithsonianlibraries:

February 12, 1809 Charles Darwin was born. To commemorate this, and the impending Valentine’s day holiday, some musings on marriage from our beloved Chuck D. courtesy of Darwin online.

excerpts from Darwin, C. R. ‘This is the Question Marry Not Marry’ [Memorandum on marriage]. (7.1838) CUL-DAR210.8.2 (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

This is the question

Marry
Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — —better than a dog anyhow. — Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. — Forced to visit & receive relations but terrible loss of time. —
W My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St.
Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D.

Not Marry
No children, (no second life), no one to care for one in old age.— What is the use of working ‘in’ without sympathy from near & dear friends—who are near & dear friends to the old, except relatives
Freedom to go where one liked — choice of Society & little of it. — Conversation of clever men at clubs — Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. — to have the expense & anxiety of children — perhaps quarelling — Loss of time. — cannot read in the Evenings — fatness & idleness — Anxiety & responsibility — less money for books &c — if many children forced to gain one’s bread. — (But then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife wont like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool —

more Darwin:
Charles Darwin’s library on the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Our first edition of On the Origin of Species also on BHL.

Happy Birthday, Mr Darwin.

did-you-kno:

Source

scinerds:

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey is an upcoming American documentary television series. It is a follow-up to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was presented by Carl Sagan. The new series’ presenter will be Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The executive producers are Seth MacFarlane and Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow. It was originally announced that it would premiere in the 2012–13 United States network television schedule, but a Twitter update from Neil deGrasse Tyson in June 2012 indicates a Spring 2014 release. Episodes will premiere on Fox and also air on National Geographic Channel on the same night.

Development

The original 13-part Cosmos: A Personal Voyage first aired in 1980 on the Public Broadcasting System, and was hosted by Carl Sagan. The show was considered highly significant since its broadcast; Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times described it as “a watershed moment for science-themed television programming”. The show has been watched by at least 400 million people across 60 different countries.

Following Sagan’s death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series along with Steven Soter, a producer from the series, and astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, sought to create a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not just to those interested in the sciences. They had struggled for years with reluctant television networks that failed to see the broad appeal of the show.

Seth MacFarlane had met Druyan through Tyson at an event that connected Hollywood directors with scientists in 2009, and learned of their interest to recreate Cosmos. MacFarlane was influenced by Cosmos as a child, believing that Cosmos served to “[bridge] the gap between the academic community and the general public”. MacFarlane had considered that the reduction of effort for space travel in recent decades to be part of “our culture of lethargy”. MacFarlane, who at the time has several animated shows on the Fox Network, was able to bring Druyan to meet the heads of Fox programming, Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly, and helped to get the greenlighting of the show.

MacFarlane admits that he is “the least essential person in this equation” and the effort is a departure from work he’s done before, but considers this to be “very comfortable territory for [himself] personally”. He and Druyan have become close friends, and Druyan stated that she believed that Sagan and MacFarlane would have been “kindred spirits” with their respective “protean talents”. In June 2012, MacFarlane provided funding to allow about 800 boxes of Sagan’s personal notes and correspondences to be donated to the Library of Congress.

Yes.

sagansense:

“We evolved as human beings a few million years ago on the Savanna in Africa and we evolved to escape tigers, or lions, or predators. And so what makes common sense to us is the world on our scale. You know, how to throw a rock or a spear or how to find a cave and we didn’t evolve to understand quantum mechanics. And, therefore, it’s not too surprising that on scales vastly different than the kind of experience we had as we were evolving as a species, that nature seems strange and sometimes almost unfathomable, certainly violates our common sense. Our sense of what is common sense and what’s intuition. But as I like to say, the universe doesn’t care about our common sense. We have to force our ideas to conform to the evidence of reality rather than the other way around And if reality seems strange, that’s okay. In fact that’s what makes science so wonderful; it expands our minds because it forces us to accept possibilities, which, in advance, we may never of thought was possible.

I’ve said that scientists love mysteries, and we do. That’s the reason I’m a scientist. Because it’s the puzzles of the universe that make it so exciting. Now it is true that we want to solve, resolve those and solve those puzzles. That’s part of the fun of doing science is solving puzzles, basically. But each time we do, new questions arise. And I think for many of us, just as in our lives, the searching is often much more profound than the finding. It’s the searching for answers through life in some sense that make life worth living. If we had all the answers, we could just sit back and stare at out navels. And I think what makes the search so exciting is that the answers are so surprising. The universe continues to surprise us in ways we never would have imagined. Well beyond our own imagination in advance, and that’s all we have to keep exploring the universe. We can’t just sit in a room and think about it because every time we open a new window on the universe were surprised. And that makes the whole process incredibly exciting.”

Bitchin’