A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
Ayn Rand via Letters of Note, where you can read the full letter with this quote in context.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIX3ntiTV-g?feature=oembed&w=250&h=140%5D
Jacob Sutton’s L.E.D. Snowboarder (by tb303meets606).
Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton swaps the studio for the slopes of Tignes in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, with a luminous after hours short starring Artec pro snowboarder William Hughes. The electrifying film sees Hughes light up the snow-covered French hills in a bespoke L.E.D.-enveloped suit courtesy of designer and electronics whizz John Spatcher.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
There’s a place to go if you’re paranoid
I’m not paranoid on the web (yet), but if I were I’m happy to know there’s a place to go. DuckDuckGo, the anonymous web browser, has an illustrated guide called Google tracks you. We don’t that explains their philosophy of the web.
DuckDuckGo has also published a guide to Escape your search engine Filter Bubble! which is helpful to understanding how your search history eventually filters web results to fit your world view.
If you’re curious to know what Google knows about you, you can view your Google web history.
Awesome. Flavorwire’s compilations of The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World makes me wonder at what I’m missing having switched most of my reading to a kindle and computer screen.
Breaking an addiction to Equasy or banning it entirely
Jeff Stier of Reason Magazine, in his essay Modern-Day Prohibition, shared the story of psychopharmacologist David Nutt, who didn’t think Ecstasy and LSD should be categorized among the most dangerous drugs. Instead of backing down to critics and detractors, he wrote a satirical article, analyzing another addiction.
He analyzed “an addiction called ‘Equasy’ that kills ten people a year, causes brain damage and has been linked to the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.” Nut added that Equasy “releases endorphins, can create dependence and is responsible for over 100 road traffic accidents every year.” Had Nutt not revealed that Equasy was simply the time-honored sport of horseback riding, activists certainly would have rushed to introduce a ban. Nutt pointed out that since Equasy causes acute harm to one out of 350 riders, it is far riskier than Ecstasy, for which the fraction is one out of 10,000.
The point in all of this is that prohibitions and bans are more based on the perception of risk, rather than statistics. Stier continues:
It is hard to miss the similarities between current prohibition campaigns and their historical predecessors. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s “stated desire was to ‘reform, so far as possible, by religious, ethical, and scientific means the drinking classes.’ ” Likewise today, says Snowdon, self-righteous activists and their allies in government do not seek to improve public health by following the dictates of science but rather use pseudoscientific arguments and “subtle deceit” to advance laws that dictate how we live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkPvSCq5ZXk
School Kills Creativity – Ken Robinson (by koekskesberg).
There’s also his TED Talk version.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
THE COMPOSITES
The Composites is a very strange website where Brian Joseph Davis inputs descriptions of literary characters into law enforcement composite sketch software.
Obviously, I’m not condoning piracy, but it’s clear from this image that it’s not just about saving money. People are willing to pay if you offer them what they want, but if there is a large burden or inconvenience in going through legitimate avenues, they will look elsewhere.
“Cigarettes are like squirrels. They’re not dangerous until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire.” [via celluloidblonde]