I got my earrings back.

But.

I lost one immediately.

But.

I got ice cream with Ms. Kasrin and Buttface.

But.

I haven't finished my lab yet.

But.

I'm an ecology genius.

Butt.

MY LOVE IS BIGGER THAN YOUR LOVE, SING IT!

It's a McLusky day.

"IS THAT GOD?"

[via APOD]

HOME PT. 5

My parents want me to go to France and Italy with them this summer and man oh man I want to go with them but how rude is it to ask for a week off from a 10-week internship?

One of the people who my parents will be visiting in Paris is a Sinhalese man who married an activist Tamil woman in the late '70s. He was jailed for three years for political reasons in the early '80s, his fingernails pulled out one by one. She was riding her bike home from teaching at the University of Sri Lanka one day when she was murdered by direct order from Prabhakaran himself. So. He took their two daughters and raised them by himself in France.

The '70s and '80s in Sri Lanka were, I believe, similar to the last couple Harry Potter books. Until recently, you couldn't say Prabhakaran's name without eliciting a shiver from the person you were speaking to.

THE UNIVERSE!

Robert Krulwich: We've only just sat down, and you've already told me that we're doppelgangered up the wazoo, we therefore seem to have no real identity, free will is an open question, and we're probably a fake....Do you actually...assuming these things to be true, doesn't it get you down?

Brian Greene: No, I think it's incredibly exciting. I mean, to me, the most wondrous thing about science--and physics in particular--is the fact that through the power of thought and calculation and observation you can be led to conclusions vastly at odds with what you would think based upon experience. I don't think there's anything more wondrous than that moment: when you think the world is one way and your equations, your math, your ideas, your theories, begin to convince you that it is another way.

--Radiolab, The (Multi) Universe(s)

Every 15 minutes, Sri Lankan state television halts its normal programming to broadcast patriotic images of women in lush tea fields at sunrise, workers building power lines and troops standing guard, all accompanied by a soaring anthem in which a young beauty calls for the country's president to be crowned king.

On the streets of the capital, billboards proclaim, "King Mahinda Rajapaksa: He saved us," beneath a photograph of the president hugging his brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's defense minister, and apparently glorying in the military victory that this week ended more than a quarter-century of war with the Tamil Tiger separatists.

"Everyone's heartbeat is just like my song and the billboards," said Saheli Rochana Gamage, 21, whose rendition of the anthem has made her a celebrity in this small Indian Ocean island nation. "He should be our president forever. We are happy with a king who can protect our country. Elections don't matter."

--Emily Wex, As Sri Lanka Savors Victory, Challenges Loom

Ohhhhh my country is so screwed.

Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new as long as it's new as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored.

--Naked