Tag: Maria Popova

From Brain Pickings – The Snail with the Right Heart: A True Story

The Snail with the Right Heart: A True Story

I expect that the viewpoint of this particular article could bother some folks – depending on how one sees the world. I found it thought-provoking.

This posting led me to do some investigating of my own. I was taken up by the science involved, and the apparent universality of some mathematical concepts in nature. I learnt about the concept of Chirality – about how chirality appears in nature, and how chirality extends even down to the genetic and atomic level. In general terms, left-handedness and right-handedness in nature can sometimes even lead to widely different properties of the objects in question. I also looked into how the Golden Mean, or the Golden Ratio, manifests itself in the world – even in the shapes of snail shells!

Go ahead and look it all up. The natural world is fascinating.

As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse: Comedian Chuck Nice Reads Billy Collins’s Ode to the Quiet Wellspring of Gratitude – Brain Pickings

As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse: Comedian Chuck Nice Reads Billy Collins’s Ode to the Quiet Wellspring of Gratitude

Big Wolf & Little Wolf: A Tender Tale of Loneliness, Belonging, and How Friendship Transforms Us | Brain Pickings

Very sweet!  I am going to have to find this book in the library.

via Big Wolf & Little Wolf: A Tender Tale of Loneliness, Belonging, and How Friendship Transforms Us | Brain Pickings

Against the Slippery Slope of Injustice: Amanda Palmer Reads Wendell Berry’s Stunningly Prescient Poem “Questionnaire” – Brain Pickings

“The road to moral hell is paved with gradual self-permission.”  …Maria Popova

via Against the Slippery Slope of Injustice: Amanda Palmer Reads Wendell Berry’s Stunningly Prescient Poem “Questionnaire” – Brain Pickings

I have maintained for a little while now that we will look back at some of the things that we ourselves did as a part of civilization today, things that we take for granted, and wonder how we ever thought that it was the right thing to do.  And sometimes we will even swallow our nagging sense of injustice so that it will not be disruptive to our own sense of well being. It is true that we can learn through history, but there is never an end to this process, it seems. When will true justice be really served?

The Universe in Verse: Astrophysicist Natalie Batalha reads “Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

via The Universe in Verse: Astrophysicist Natalie Batalha reads “Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Vimeo

Context and poem text: brainpickings.org/2018/08/03/the-universe-in-verse-natalie-batalha-edna-st-vincent-millay/