Notable Artist // Kseniya Simonova

Kseniya Simonova took first place in Ukraine's Got Talent series with her breathtaking sand animation performance piece. After watching this in one of my classes tonight, I wanted to share it with anyone who hasn't seen it. See a video of one of Kseniya's past performance under the cut.

Student Debt Refusal Pledge

I've been having a semi-difficult time keeping up with this blog since schools been keeping me pretty busy. While on the topic of school, I found a recent article I'd like to share with you that I'm sure any college student or graduate would appreciate.

OWS Education Activists Launch Student Debt Refusal Pledge 

In the wake of massive walkouts at colleges in New York on November 17 and statewide protests in the University of California system, student debt has come to the fore as a major animating issue for the Occupy movement. Young people face record student debt at a time when the employment rate among those under 24 is at its lowest since the 1970s. 

Today, the Education and Empowerment working group at Occupy Wall Street announced their next step in the fight against the burden of student loans: a debt refusal pledge. 

Students and faculty, dressed in caps and gowns, performed a bit of street theater under the now-famous red sculpture at Liberty Plaza, handing out debt bills instead of diplomas and draping chains around their necks. Then, Professor Andrew Ross of NYU addressed the crowd through the People's Mic, saying "Since the first days of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the agony of student debt has been a constant refrain. We've heard truly harrowing personal testimony about the suffering and humiliation of people who believe that their debt will be unpayable in their lifetime." 

"Education is not like buying a car or a flatscreen TV," Ross continued, "Education is a right and a public good."  

Pick A Pie

Can't make up your mind as to which pie you want to make? Especially if you live with just one or two roommates, this pie pan can be a great baking option. Personally, I'm not too picky when it comes to pie, but I know there are many out there who can't say the same.

Which is your favorite? Pumpkin? Strawberry Rhubarb? Dutch Apple? Whatever it is, you and your partner can be equally as happy with this ingenious little split decision pie pan. How awesome is this idea! It would also make a perfect holiday gift for a couple.

Need some more great gift ideas? Check out some of my past gifting posts! :)

A Once in a Lifetime Shot

The MTA shut down Grand Central Termainal today ahead of Hurricane Irene, allowing Metro-North Railroad Press Secretary Marjorie Andres to snap this rare photo of the world's largest train station all-but-deserted in the middle of the day.

(source: thedailywh.at)

A Chopstick-Spoon Hybrid

For the sushi enthusiast, this simple and creative idea would make a great gift. Spoon Plus by designer Aïssa Logerot, is a chopstick/spoon hybrid which forms a pair of chopsticks and a soy sauce dish for your sauce.

(source)

A Quiet Place on the Internet

one | two

It exists. 
Visit the quiet place.

__________________
a few more quiet things:
-a digital magazine
-a quote
-a tumblr
-a silent film
-a typewriter note

Liking Is For Cowards

Liking Is For Cowards. Go For What Hurts.
By: Jonathan Franzen

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you're going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you'll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don't like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you're having an actual life. 

Suddenly there's a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me? 

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie. 

This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking.

And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill.  

A Lonely Whale's Sad Song

(By: Jesus Diaz)

Once upon a time, there was a whale called June. Or maybe her name is Margaret. Or Kate. We don't really know. A few nitrogen-hearted scientists call her 52 Hertz just because she sings at a 51.75Hz frequency, but I will call her Alice.

Alice isn't like any other baleen whale. Unlike all whales, Alice doesn't have friends. She doesn't have a family. She doesn't belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn't have a lover. She never had one.

In the immense solitude of the ocean, Alice is completely alone.

The only thing Alice does is sing. Like other whales, she has been singing for a very long time. The first time we heard her song was in 1989, when the hydrophone network of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded her voice for the first time. The researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have been tracking her using these hydrophones for the last two decades.

Her songs—in this recording accelerated by a factor of five—come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25Hz, Alice sings at 51.75Hz.

You see, my dear humans, that's precisely Alice's problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And with every lonely song, Alice becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.

Nobody knows why this is happening. Nobody knows why Alice is going through the wrong paths instead of following the usual baleen whale's migratory channels. Some think that she might be a weird hybrid, one of a kind. Maybe she—or he, as we don't really know the whale's sex—is the last member of her species. Perhaps there was a mutation. Who knows. Who cares—the explanation doesn't matter.

Whatever the reason is, the sad fact is that there’s no happy ending to this tale. Alice keeps roaming the big blue, eating krill, seeing other creatures around her but unable to communicate with any of them. And one day, the NOAA hydrophones will record Alice’s unique voice one last time. And again, that farewell cry will get no reply. But it will not matter this time because, at last, Alice would be sad no more.