“Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs in Portuguese I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with.” - David Bowie -
As nighttime settles down around me, I like giving you all some stuff to chill out with. I’m pretty sure anybody who watched The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou can agree with me that it was an awesome movie. Adding to the film’s greatness was it’s stellar soundtrack which featured the acoustic Portuguese recordings of David Bowie covers by Brazilian singer Seu Jorge alongside a killer score by Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO. This particular cover of Bowie’s “Starman” was, for me, the highlight of the whole soundtrack. The way that Seu was able to turn this epic rock ballad into this gorgeously delicate folk piece without hurting the integrity of the song is just incredible. I own the whole The Life Aquatic - Studio Sessions album and it’s fantastic, but this is the one song in particular is what I keep coming back for over and over. If you haven’t heard this record yet, it’s well worth your time to check out. And if you haven’t seen The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, you should probably get on that too as Bill Murray is hella rad.
More information on Seu Jorge can be found via his official site.
Dawn Suggests Special Delivery of Hydrated Material to Vesta |
The mechanism by which water is incorporated into the terrestrial planets is a matter of extensive debate for planetary scientists. Now, observations of Vesta by NASA’s Dawn mission suggest that hydrous materials were delivered to the giant asteroid mainly through a build-up of small particles during an epoch when the Solar System was rich in dust.
This is a radically different process from the way in which hydrous materials are deposited on the moon and may have implications for the formation of terrestrial planets, including the delivery of the water that forms Earth’s oceans. Maria Cristina De Sanctis and the Dawn team will present the scenarios at the European Planetary Science Congress in Madrid on Sept. 26.
De Sanctis, of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Planetology in Rome, said, “Vesta’s surface shows distinct areas enriched with hydrated materials. These regions are not dependent on solar illumination or temperature, as we find in the case of the Moon. The uneven distribution is unexpected and indicates ancient processes that differ from those believed to be responsible for delivering water to other airless bodies, like the Moon.”
A team led by De Sanctis studied data from Dawn’s visible and infrared (VIR) mapping spectrometer. Analysis showed large regional concentrations of hydroxyl — a hydrogen and an oxygen atom bound together — clearly associated with geological features including ancient, highly-cratered terrains and the Oppia crater. continue reading
I loved this exchange so much, I just spent a stupid amount of time turning it into a mediocre graphic. Neil, you complete me.
I love living in a world where I write something on Tumblr and the following day it’s an excellent graphic. Thank you!
Zhou Shuren, better known as Lu Xun, was one of the giants of contemporary Chinese literature, considered by many to be a leading figure in modern Chinese writing, who wrote in both vernacular and Classical Chinese. He was a novelist, a poet, an essayist, and a translator who is still revered in China today.
Born 1881 in Zhejiang Province to a well-educated, prominent family (who later lost their fortunes after his grandfather was found out for bribery), Lu Xun was brought up by a family servant named Ah Chang. Because of his father’s death (presumably of TB) sometime in his adolescence, Lu Xun grew up mistrustful of traditional Chinese medicine and decided to pursue a degree in Western medicine.
In 1904, after a marriage with Zhu An (it’s uncertain that he ever consummated the marriage, though he provided for her all his life), he left for the Sendai Medical Academy (Tohoku University) in Japan, where he met his mentor, Fujino Genkurou.
He left the college in 1906, when he decided to “cure his compatriot’s spiritual ills rather than their physical diseases” (Wiki).
In 1918, 9 years after his return to China, he wrote the novel “A Madman’s Diary” (Kuangren Riji), a condemnation of Chinese feudalism, and thus began a flourishing career. He gained influence after the May Fourth Movement (an anti-imperialist, anti-Western protest led by students at the Beijing University — Bei Da — after the Treaty of Versailles gave Shandong to Japan; the movement gave rise to the Chinese Communist Party, and Lao Mao was a lifelong fan of Lu Xun’s). His best known work is probably The True Story of Ah-Q (A Q Zhengzhuan).
From 1927 to his death in 1936, he lived in Shanghai, where he founded the League of Left-Wing Writers. He was also the Editor of Sprouts and New Youth, left-wing magazines, and because of the role his writing played in the history of the PRC, he was banned in the RoC until the 1980s.
He died October 19, 1936, ironically of tuberculosis.
(Source: , via asianhistory)
Bring your candle to glitter again by =Itti
“Found poetry” (or “blackout poetry”) is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions.
(From Wikipedia.)
Text reads:
unlock the moonlight,
forge a chain,
bring your candle to glitter again.
This one was a bit different. Once I’d thought of “unlock the moonlight, forge a chain”, for some reason the cadence of what I had so far made me want to look for a rhyme. And then I had to make it go round in a circle
I think this is my favourite so far. I like that it could be metaphorical or literal (obviously not real-world literal, but fantasy literal) and I like the way the rhythm (and rhyme) makes it sound like a spell or a chant of some kind.
(via wilwheaton)
(Source: crookedindifference, via itsfullofstars)
