Learning more about how our brain and eyes work together to create our vision, will provide us with an opportunity to utilize improvements in technology to bring, or restore, sight to those who have lost it. This connection also illustrates how deeply embedded our bodies are with our environment. For example, the mathematical order behind how our eyes sample large areas, follows a fractal pattern. Studies have shown that our eyes endure less stress when they look at fractal images. Such fractal patterns are found naturally in the structure and appearance of forests and clouds.
A list of 20 facts about fire – example: Fire is an event, not a thing. Heating wood or other fuel releases volatile vapors that can rapidly combust with oxygen in the air; the resulting incandescent bloom of gas further heats the fuel, releasing more vapors and perpetuating the cycle.
This is an interview with Randall Robinson on his newest book, Makeda. The book is set at the dawn of the civil rights era and follows a young man coming of age in segregated Richmond, Virginia. Through his blind grandmother, who remembers past lives from the 1300s and shares with him her visions on the workings of the interplanetary system, the protagonist discovers his roots in Africa and experiences personal transformation. The book follows the protagonist through this discovery, illustrating the complexity of his life, and the moment he lived through.
From the author: This novel is the story of an extraordinary woman who is a poor, blind waitress in Richmond, Virginia, who remembers past lives … and she tells it to her grandson, who wants to be a writer. And they have a special relationship. And she swears him to secrecy that he tell no one that she has these memories, or people will think she’s a bit fruity, as she says. But she remembers these lives in extraordinary detail. And he is inspired by it. He gains his confidence from it. And this is, of course, to symbolize the enormous consequence. Sometimes when we think of slavery, we calculate the economic consequence of it. But we have not calculated the psychosocial consequence of it, unless we factor in the loss of memory, which was occasioned by a deliberate and systematic program imposed from those—by those who controlled us.
Moody. Impulsive. Maddening. Why do teenagers act the way they do? Viewed through the eyes of evolution, their most exasperating traits may be the key to success as adults. Culture clearly shapes adolescence. It influences its expression and possibly its length. It can magnify its manifestations. Yet culture does not create adolescence. The period’s uniqueness rises from genes and developmental processes that have been selected for over thousands of generations because they play an amplified role during this key transitional period: producing a creature optimally primed to leave a safe home and move into unfamiliar territory.
This is an article written by Arley Johnson, the Executive Director of Advocates For The Other America. The article discusses the social context surrounding the Trayvon Martin killing, relating it to a similar event that happened earlier in Johnson’s life while growing up in Huntington, West Virginia.
The current state of technology, coupled with our enhanced access to knowledge, has provided new, unrestricted capabilities for people interested in particular fields of study, like biology. This access has resulted in the formation of a new group of do-it-yourself biologists, known as “BioHackers.” BioHackers conduct their research independently of universities and other scientific institutions, and have still been able to contribute significant findings to the world of science. As technology improves and becomes cheaper, it is likely the trend of BioHackers will only grow, signaling a new direction in scientific research, and opening the field to many others.
