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After 13 years of flying to the edge of our solar system, the American Voyager 1 space probe, reached the almost incomprehensible distance of 6.4 billion kilometres (nearly 4 billion miles) from Earth in 1990 and was turned around to take a picture of our home planet. Earth is no more than a pale blue dot, hardly to be seen against the cosmic background.

The insignificance of our planet in the truly fascinating happenings of the universe becomes more clear, when trying to comprehend, that the Milky Way, which can be seen on a clear night, is in fact what a spiral galaxy looks like from the inside! It may contain up to 400 billion stars – one of them, is our sun.

And then, on one of the sun’s planets, there are humans. When contemplating the irrelevance of every single being on earth against the immense numbers that the universe provides, our mind protests, that this can not be so. But with all the evidence we have from hundreds of years of exploring the night sky, we have to come to the conclusion, that it is.

Some people feel small because the universe is so big. But in our each and every life, there is no time to mourn our humble existence, nor to believe that of all possible life forms in the universe, just we are the selected species. Let us accept the fact, that we are a very small part of the universe and concentrate on our life and the lives of people we love and care for, making our home planet a more peaceful place to live.

After all, we are forced to get along together. There is no way of escaping our home planet and, as yet, there is nowhere else to reach besides our pale blue dot.

Philipp
ptn.planet@googlemail.com
Passau, Germany

05/30/2012

Vevo sux blah blah

yeah yeah, but Primus= rad dood

p.s. Christian Bale haha

05/29/2012

rainbows, flowers, hearts and unicorns

It’s a nice feeling to find that Josh and I are not constantly worrying about when the next payment for so and so bill is due, or wondering if and when I’m ever going to get that promotion and raise.

I’m so happy where Josh and I are at this point. I feel like I can finally breathe fully after a long time of feeling short of breath with anxiety.

I feel good like James Brown, man. Sugar and spice and all that nice shit.

05/29/2012 1 note

Pretentious

: characterized by pretension: as a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) <the pretentious fraud who assumes a love of culture that is alien to him — Richard Watts> b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature <pretentious language> <pretentious houses>

05/25/2012

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

download

The Knife A Lung

05/22/2012

Contronyms

tumbledore:

Contronyms are special cases of homographs (two words with the same spelling). Some examples:

anabasis - military advance, military retreat

apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do

aught - all, nothing

bolt - secure, run away

by - multiplication (e.g., a three by five matrix), division (e.g., dividing eight by four)

chuffed - pleased, annoyed

cleave - separate, adhere

clip - fasten, detach

consult - ask for advice, give advice

copemate - partner, antagonist

custom - usual, special

deceptively smart - smarter than one appears, dumber than one appears

dike - wall, ditch

discursive - proceeding coherently from topic to topic, moving aimlessly from topic to topic

dollop - a large amount, a small amount

dust - add fine particles, remove fine particles

enjoin - prescribe, prohibit

fast - quick, unmoving

first degree - most severe (e.g., murder), least severe (e.g., burn)

fix - restore, castrate

flog - criticize harshly, promote aggressively

garnish - enhance (e.g., food), curtail (e.g., wages)

give out - produce, stop production

grade - incline, level

handicap - advantage, disadvantage

help - assist, prevent (e.g., “I can’t help it if…”)

left - remaining, departed from

liege - sovereign lord, loyal subject

mean - average, excellent (e.g., “plays a mean game”)

off - off, on (e.g., “the alarm went off”)

out - visible (e.g., stars), invisible (e.g., lights)

out of - outside, inside (e.g., “work out of one’s home”)

oversight - error, care

pitted - with the pit in, with the pit removed

put out - extinguish, generate (e.g., something putting out light)

quiddity - essence, trifling point

quite - rather, completely

ravel - tangle, disentangle

rent - buy use of, sell use of

rinky-dink - insignificant, one who frequents RinkWorks

sanction - approve, boycott

sanguine - hopeful, murderous (obsolete synonym for “sanguinary”)

screen - show, hide

seed - add seeds (e.g., “to seed a field”), remove seeds (e.g., “to seed a tomato”)

skinned - with the skin on, with the skin removed

strike - hit, miss (in baseball)

table - propose (in the United Kingdom), set aside (in the United States)

transparent - invisible, obvious

unbending - rigid, relaxing

variety - one type (e.g., “this variety”), many types (e.g., “a variety”)

wear - endure through use, decay through use

weather - withstand, wear away

wind up - end, start up (e.g., a watch)

with - alongside, against

05/10/2012 101 notes

You would love me

05/07/2012

“I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.”

Albert Einstein

04/27/2012 1 note

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.”

Bill Hicks

04/22/2012 2 notes

Learn to swim

Listserve

rainbows, flowers, hearts and unicorns

Pretentious

Contronyms