the unreachable barrier between I and not-I

weirdnessloveandscifi: Photographs taken inside musical...

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:23:25 -0400

weirdnessloveandscifi:

Photographs taken inside musical instruments making them look like large and spacious rooms.

Oh that is the shit!

"To be or not to be; that’s not really a question."

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:46:24 -0400

“To be or not to be; that’s not really a question.”

- Jean Luc Godard (via fuckyeahexistentialism)

Paper Cave Installation

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:33:24 -0400

Paper Cave Installation

spaceplasma: X-ray vision tracks lightning bursts Blink and...

Wed, 15 May 2013 06:49:31 -0400

spaceplasma:

X-ray vision tracks lightning bursts

Blink and you’ve missed it. Researchers in the US have captured the world’s first X-ray images of lightning, by creating a special camera that can capture radiation at 10 million frames per second. They presented their new findings at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco and they say that this new view of lightning could help to solve some of the mysteries of this spectacular natural phenomenon.

The research was carried out at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing, located in Florida. It is one of the few sites in world where lightning is initiated and studied under controlled conditions. By firing rockets with trailing wires into thunder clouds, scientists are able to generate electric fields that are large enough to trigger bolts of lightning, which then propagate back down towards the rocket launch tower.

Joseph Dwyer and colleagues at the Florida Institute of Technology became interested in the fact that lightning emits X-rays as it propagates through the air, a phenomenon that was only noted in the past decade. But given that X-ray sources in lightning travel through the Earth’s atmosphere at velocities approaching the speed of light, it is difficult to catch them on camera before they disappear. In addition, they cannot be imaged with standard mirrors and lenses because huge amounts of material are required to prevent X-rays and gamma rays from entering through the sides of a camera.

Dwyer’s team has created a customized camera that has 30 detectors made from a combination of sodium iodide and photomultiplier tubes, each measuring 3 × 3 inch. The device, which is approximately the size of a standard refrigerator, is also equipped with a 3 inch pinhole aperture, and can record X-rays at 10 million frames per second. “This is actually a very old technique for making images, like that seen in a camera obscura,” Dwyer says.

During July and August this year, Dwyer’s team studied four rocket-triggered lightning flashes at the Florida test site. Each flash lasted for approximately two seconds and the resulting sequences of images revealed that X-rays emerged primarily from the vicinity of the lightning tip as it propagated towards the Earth. As the lightning crashed into the control tower it also triggered large bursts of gamma radiation, which were also captured by the camera.

“For the first time we’re catching a glimpse of lightning in the X-ray emission,” says Dwyer. “We’re seeing lightning as Superman would see it with his X-ray vision”.

Credit: James Dacey/physicsworld.com

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:52:05 -0400

“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you."

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:50:37 -0400

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Wendung” (Turning-Point)
(as translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:32:00 -0400

"The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem"

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:24:41 -0400

“The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem”

- Captain Jack Sparrow (via the100rabh)

ewok-gia: Anatomical ceramic sculptures by Maria Garcia-Ibáñez

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:20:02 -0400

ewok-gia:

Anatomical ceramic sculptures by Maria Garcia-Ibáñez

moleculess: sparkling chain link fence sculpture by soo sunny...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:17:59 -0400

moleculess:

sparkling chain link fence sculpture by soo sunny park

Disappointment is a much more fertile ground for spiritual practice than dreams.

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:02:32 -0400

fuckyeahyoga:

Loss, failure and disappointment can compel one to look deeper, to become a seeker.

As Paul Simon noted: “Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered, or driven to its knees.”

"In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling."

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:08:01 -0400

“In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.”

- Gertrude Stein (via violentwavesofemotion)

"The individual self is, in its innermost being, not a private sphere but a communicative agent."

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:03:20 -0400

“The individual self is, in its innermost being, not a private sphere but a communicative agent.”

- Vincent Colapietro, Peirce’s Approach to the Self (via thingsiveunderlined)

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart… Who looks outside, dreams. Who..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:18:35 -0400

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart… Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”

- Carl Jung (via julesofnature)

"Distorted realities have always been my cup of tea."

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:18:17 -0400

““Distorted realities have always been my cup of tea.””

- Virginia Woolf (via rabbitinthemoon)

artmastered: Edvard Munch, Jealousy, 1907

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:12:34 -0400

artmastered:

Edvard Munch, Jealousy, 1907

"Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant."

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:01:05 -0400

“Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant.”

- Martin Heidegger

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:11:00 -0400

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

Photo

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:05:40 -0400

"The idea that primitive societies have no history, that they are dominated by archetypes and their..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:56:22 -0400

“The idea that primitive societies have no history, that they are
dominated by archetypes and their repetition, is especially weak and inadequate. This idea was not conceived by ethnologists, but by ideologists in the service of a tragic Judaeo-Christian consciousness that they wished to credit with the “invention” of history. If what is called history is a dynamic and open social reality, in a state of functional disequilibrium, or an oscillating equilibrium, unstable and always compensated, comprising not only institutionlized conflicts but conflicts that generate changes, revolts, ruptures, and scissions, then primitive societies are fully inside history, and far distant from the stability, or even from the harmony, attributed to them in the name of a primacy of a unanimous group. The presence of history in every social machine plainly appears in the disharmonies that, as Levi-Strauss says, “bear the unmistakable stamp of time elapsed.” It is true that there are several ways to interpret such disharmonies: ideally,by the gap between the real institution and the assumed ideal model; morally, by invoking a structural bond between law and transgression; physically, as though it were a question of attrition that would cause the social machine to lose its capacity to wield its materials. But here too it seems that the correct interpretation would be, above all, actual and functional: it is in order to function that a social machine must not function well. This has been shown precisely with regard to the segmentary system, which is always destined to reconstitute itself on its own ruins; and likewise for the organization of the political function in these systems, which in effect is exercised only by indicating its own impotence. Ethnologists are constantly saying that kinship rules are neither applied nor applicable to real marriages: not because these rules are ideal but rather because they determine critical points where the apparatus starts up again—provided it is blocked, and where it necessarily places itself in a negative relation to the group. Here it becomes apparent that the social machine is identical with the desiring-machine. The social machine’s limit is not attrition, but rather its misfirings; it can operate only by fits and starts, by grinding and breaking down, in spasms of minor explosions. The dysfunctions are an essential element of its very ability to function, which is not the least important aspect of the system of cruelty. The death of a social machine has never been heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on the contrary, social machines make a habit of feeding on the contradictions they give rise to, on the crises they provoke, on the anxieties they engender, and on the infernal operations they regenerate. Capitalism has learned this, and has ceased doubting itself, while even socialists have abandoned belief in the possibility of capitalism’s natural death by attrition. No one has ever died from contradictions. And the more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way.”

- Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p.150-151 (via oedipalopus)