beautiful
“synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning “Cleveland’s baseball team”).” —
oxford dictionary
i don’t know who was responsible for this definition and example, but i appreciate it, as i always appreciate a little love for cleveland
This Landsat image of 3 October 2011 shows the Mississippi River Delta, where the largest river in the United States empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
In this false-colour image, land vegetation appears pink, while the sediment in the surrounding waters are bright blue and green. The delta is known as the ‘bird-foot’ delta because of the shape created by the channels extending outward.The size of the Mississippi River Delta built over millions of years owing to sediment deposition. The tons of sediment carried by the river system created the wetlands in southern Louisiana, which are home to many endangered species and help to protect the mainland from hurricane winds by acting like speed bumps.
Over the last several decades, however, the delta’s sediment load has been drastically reduced by natural and man-made factors. Extensive oil and gas extraction causes the subsidence of the delta and wetlands, and rising sea levels increase erosion as the fresh water vegetation dies due to the influx of salt water.
Currently, a chunk of land the size of a football field is lost about every half an hour.
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“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” —
President Obama, on why he supports same-sex marriage. (via theatlantic)
and there we have it. at last.
(via theatlantic)
“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.” — Maurice Sendak on Fresh Air in 2011. [all interviews with Sendak here] (via nprfreshair)
(via nprfreshair)
“
It may not be out of place to note here the difference between gray as spelt with an a, and grey as spelt with an e, the two names being occasionally confounded.
GRAY is a semi-neutral, and denotes a class of cool cinereous colours, faint of hue; whence we have blue grays, olive grays, green grays, purple grays, and grays of all hues in which blue predominates; but no yellow or red grays, the predominance of such hues carrying the compounds into a the classes of brown and marone [maroon], of which gray is the natural opposite.
GREY is neutral, and composed of or can be resolved into black and white alone, from a mixture of which two colours it springs in an infinite series.
” —Field’s Chromatography (1856) is blowing my mind.
The fine language and discussion of color in this book is almost magical. It’s like a spell book for wielding hues and tints; something that must have been a magical talent in the mid 19th century. Field’s evokes a way of seeing the world and its color in a time before omnipresent photography, digital displays, and ink-jet printing. To communicate color you needed both spellings of grey and evokative words like “cinereous” (an ashy gray, similar Latin root to ‘cinders’).
At times Field’s discusses pigments like they’re new technology (which they essentially are at that time). Something that holds yellow in a fixed way allows new subjects to be communicated. Subjects which paintings could never previously present. Passages like these, for someone whom never imagines a hue out of reach, are spellbinding.
(via dbreunig)
oh goodness gracious. this is incredible.
very least importantly, the disagreement has been solved regarding color predominance in my wardrobe. people have consistently told me that i’m always wearing gray, while all along, i had disagreed under the perception that they were telling me i’m always wearing grey. i shall officially resign from the argument. i seem to have an absurdly strong predilection for gray. it is true.
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