luminescence--blog - Tumblr blog

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Videos of behavioural tests on primates and other mammals show how we all share many moral traits like empathy and cooperation.

gosh the cucumber-throwing capuchin is adorable :D

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We will come so close. We will curve, we will dance together and skirt each other like we’re afraid. But I’ve come so close to you, so close and yet— I cannot touch you. It’s a special kind of injustice, so unlike parallel lines, so unlike perpendicular lines, slopes. It is getting closer, and...

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wise men say only fools rush in but i constantly find myself unable to resist the temptation to derive you without l’hospital’s help

you are all sine curves and asymptotes, a useless limit definition but it’s damn beautiful the way that h disappears. there’s a hidden chain rule somewhere in...

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MINDBLOWN. :D

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(from a friend, shared on facebook) "Intense love story in the 70s- performing art out of their home/van. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again.

At her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, where she shared a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing and this is what happened. Love...so precious, so strong yet delicate..." ----------------------

can't imagine what it must be like - all those years without seeing each other, and yet when they meet, they've just got one single minute. and not just any minute, but a minute of silence. i feel the flood of words each must feel like letting loose, but they know they can't. all those words they want to speak, channelled instead through the limits of their expressions and gestures. and we can only guess what they truly wish to speak from them.

all those words, condensed into one steady gaze, one calm smile accompanied with a shake of the head, one lingering touch.

and a sprinkling of tears; whether of happiness or of heartbreak or of pure love or of a combination of emotions too complex to be named, we'll never fully understand. 

but we feel the beauty of such a moment.

such is love.

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Neuroscience Meets Magic

Neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde observe master gentleman magician/pickpocket Apollo Robbins and explain how he uses the human brain against itself. The direction, and misdirection, of our brain’s attention tendencies are at the core of every great illusion.

I’m not sure which is more amazing, the neuroscience at play here or the amazing magic.

“Did you just take his wallet? He just took that guy’s wallet!”

(Video by Scientific American)

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Don't give up.

“Here is a call for the endurance of the saints” (Revelation 14:12).

We all long for rest and refreshment. That’s a God-given longing that he promises to fulfill: “I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish” (Jeremiah 31:25).

And in a very real way Jesus gives rest to “all who labor and are heavy laden” and come to him (Matthew 11:28). But in this age, it is not the complete rest.

In this age, Jesus grants us the gospel rest of ceasing the impossible labor of self-atonement for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21). But in embracing the gospel we find ourselves also drafted into a war — a war to keep believing the gospel and a war to spread it to others. In this age we “strive to enter that [complete] rest” of the age to come (Hebrews 4:11).

And wars are exhausting — especially long ones. That’s why you are often tired. Most soldiers who experience the fierceness of combat want to get out of it. That’s why you feel urges to escape or surrender. That’s why there are times you’re tempted to give up.

But don’t give up. No, rather “take courage! Do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded” (2 Chronicles 15:7).

Don’t give up when that familiar sin, still crouching at your door after all these years, pounces again with temptation.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Don’t give up when you feel that deep soul weariness from long battles with persistent weaknesses.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Corinthians 12:8–9).

Don’t give up when your long prayed-for prayers have not yet been answered.

And he told them [the parable of the persistent widow] to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).

Don’t give up when the devil’s fiery darts of doubt land and make you reel.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day…in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Ephesians 6:13,16).

Do not give up when the fragmenting effect of multiple pressures seems relentless.

But as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger . . . (2 Corinthians 6:4–5).

Do not give up when the field the Lord has assigned you to is hard and the harvest does not look promising:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

Do not give up when you labor in obscurity and you wonder how much it even matters.

Your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:4).

Do not give up when your reputation is damaged because you are trying to be faithful to Jesus.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (Matthew 5:11).

Do not give up when waiting on God seems endless.

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:30–31)

Don’t give up when you have failed in sin. Don’t wallow. Repent (again), get your eyes off yourself and back on Jesus, get up and get back in the fight.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9); if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).

Jesus knows your works (Revelation 2:2) and he understands the war (Hebrews 12:3). “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Finish the race (2 Timothy 4:7). “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:19).

Don’t give up. (from desiringgod.org> 

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Scientists Report First Cure of HIV In A Child, Say It’s A Game-Changer

Scientists believe a little girl born with HIV has been cured of the infection.

She’s the first child and only the second person in the world known to have been cured since the virus touched off a global pandemic nearly 32 years ago.

Doctors aren’t releasing the child’s name, but we know she was born in Mississippi and is now 2 ½ years old – and healthy. Scientists presented details of the case on Sunday at a scientific conference in Atlanta.

The case has big implications. While fewer than 130 such children are born each year in the U.S., an estimated 330,000 children around the world get infected with HIV at or around birth every year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Until now, such children have been considered permanently infected. Specialists thought they needed lifelong antiviral drugs to prevent HIV from destroying their immune system and killing them of AIDS.

The Mississippi child’s surprising cure came about from happenstance – and the quick thinking of a University of Mississippi pediatric infectious disease specialist named Hannah Gay.

Read more.

Microscopy image of HIV infecting an immune cell from the NIAID Flickr stream.

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such beauty <3

Within Two Worlds

“Within Two Worlds depicts an alternate perspective by giving us the illusion of times movement, signifying a beginning and end within a world of constant contradiction. It appears you are traveling in the midst of a dream, half-sleeping, half-waking, and touching the arch connecting heaven and earth.”

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hahaha once again, why i'd like a nerd boyfriend. they're sweet in the most intellectual ways :D

When a physicist falls in love… A physicist recently proposed to his physicist girlfriend by writing a scientific paper.

(High-res)

Via Facebook (I fucking love science)

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The World's First 3D Printing Pen!

Guess what guys, we can now draw 3D sculptures! HOW AWESOME IS THAT. :D meanwhile, that Eiffel Tower looks absolutely amazing. /fangirlllll

read more: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/02/the-worlds-first-3d-printing-pen-that-lets-you-draw-sculptures-in-real-time/

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damn, physics actually looks cool when it's so pretty!

Artist Corrie White uses dyes and droplets to capture fantastical liquid sculptures at high-speed. The mushroom-like upper half of this photo is formed when the rebounding jet from one droplet’s impact on the water is hit by a well-timed second droplet, creating the splash’s umbrella. In the lower half of the picture, we see the remains of previous droplets, mixing and diffusing into the water via the Rayleigh-Taylor instability caused by their slight difference in density relative to the water. There’s also a hint of a vortex ring, likely from the droplet that caused the rebounding jet. (Photo credit: Corrie White)

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letting memories and regrets and what-ifs and should-have-dones from the past come back to haunt you (thanks RJ Confessions) while you're only halfway through an essay that's due tomorrow really isn't the smartest thing.

stop being so unproductively retarded, girl!

spamming chocolate hoping the endorphin high will fix something. sigh. 

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such beautiful detail<3

 色彩鹦鹉。color parrot

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Mathematical valentine using a Google search query!

5 + (-sqrt(1-x^2-(y-abs(x))^2))*cos(30*((1-x^2-(y-abs(x))^2))), x is from -1 to 1, y is from -1 to 1.5, z is from 1 to 6

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pancake day dinner! this girl is now one happy chef :3 for more detailed descriptions of each pancake AND more pictures of good food, please visit the foodblog that my housemates and i run here - http://crowndale.tumblr.com/ 

HAPPY PANCAKE DAY AND HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY EVERYONE!

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coolest way to ever demolish something - with the added bonus of effectively reducing the noise and annoying dust.  link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21406927