For Rampaige who makes me feel okay about my boobs :D
Sexism in publishing? It exists; stop being in denial.
No seriously. I am tired of listening to people say how much things have improved when they really aren’t nearly as equal as they need to be. This beautiful piece of writing by Roxane Gay puts things in good perspective. Thanks to my friend PC for the link.
I will always reblog this one everytime I see it.
(Source: shad0wpuzzle, via afuzzyduck)
Twenty Eleven.
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Got this idea from other bloggers who compiled some of their work from the previous year. Here are some of the doodle gifs I drew in 2011 that many people liked.
Job interviews are still keeping me busy, and I’m still jobless so far, but I’m ready for 2012. I hope you guys are, too. :)
LOVE IS ALL AROUND US PEOPLE.
(Source: farfonhaindomita)
Everyone is talking about…
…Rahul Dravid. I’m going to do it too. Not for all the same reasons that the others are. And surely my post isn’t going to be read by a million other people. But I need to do this.
Unlike many others who are gushing about how Dravid crafted a legendary career, I am going to only write about what his resignation means to me. You see, I was never much of a cricket lover. I don’t know the statistics or the history in depth. My loyalties were always tied to Football. Almost ten years ago, on my birthday, I saw John Terry captain the Chelsea side in 2002. The team gained a captain and I gained the privilege of being a fan of the man and The Blues. However, a childhood in Bombay meant that wherever I went, I could never escape cricket. Coffee shops, restaurants, public spaces, malls… everywhere, cricket reigned. Sachin Tendulkar, to them, is god. Cricket is their religion. And they take these matters of faith very seriously. All the ballyhoo made me detached from the game — not because I had anything against the sport but because I have been witness to violence and tasteless discrimination with cricket as the basis.
I will not say that I didn’t enjoy the game on some occasions because that’s not true. I have. More than I’ve let on. I have never indicated or spoken about just how much because I had somehow feared that I’d become one of those people. I didn’t want to. That’s where Rahul Dravid comes in. I have fond memories of watching him play Test cricket, watching him speak and seeing him in a state brimmed with emotional turbulence. I liked my cricket through Dravid because he was exactly what all the Bombay madness of the game wasn’t. He devoted his time and effort to the sport but he never once stepped out of character. For 16 years, he has maintained a cordial relationship with fellow players, the bureaucrats, the ever-hungry media and just about anyone. He never blew anything out of its due proportions. That’s why I liked him.
As I moved from Bombay, I wasn’t subjected to as much cricket-mania. During the few matches that I saw, I remember smiling when Rahul Dravid came on and being more disappointed than I was willing to admit when he didn’t deliver. That feeling simply didn’t come to me with any other Indian player. It’s not like there aren’t cricketing legends - all of them his contemporaries. But Dravid was different. Different in a way that I yearned for. I wanted to appreciate the game but I couldn’t with the game being synonymous with hype. Dravid was an easy panacea. He was everything but hype. He made it easy. He made me like cricket. I just didn’t think I liked it as much as I know I do now, after seeing him go.
To watch Rahul Dravid call for a press conference and announce his retirement at a place where he laid the foundations for his future, made me go back to my childhood… to Bombay. I am grateful for how the city brought doses of cricket into my life and for how all the craze it generated steered me towards a force of inspiration in my young life.
Without Rahul Dravid, I’d probably never watch even the small number of matches that I did. Today, as a writer for a cricket news site, I’d probably feel the pinch of that a lot more than I already do. As I watched the man retire with panache and dignity, I don’t think I’ll be exaggerating when I say that I felt a lost, forgotten part of my heart ache. He deserves the tributes and odes that he’s getting from fans and my regret is that I haven’t known him or the game that he was an irreplaceable part of, well enough to write him some myself.
Maybe there is…
…hope.
When exactly do you know you hit the rock bottom? You don’t when you’re full of hope. You don’t see things realistically. I don’t know if that can always be a bad thing because it can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Sometimes, hope is better than nothing. If it lets you live on, if it lets you breathe for a few more days… maybe it isn’t all bad. Like all things, it needs to be measured and taken in small dosages but that isn’t possible at all times. On some days, you may need to go blind for a few seconds and take a giant leap and just pretend that everything will be okay. If it doesn’t pan out that way, maybe you’ll be in a better place by then.
These are horribly tricky things to think about. Ask a million people, get a million opinions. You can’t know what “works” for you because you can’t predict anything. The only way to go about this is to trust that gut feeling. Despite all the impossibilities surrounding it.
Sometimes, our gut knows us better than we do.
Bulletproof skin stops a speeding gunshot
What if your skin could resist a speeding bullet? Now a new futuristic tissue designed by artist Jalila Essaïdi, which reinforces human skin cells with spider silk, can stop a whizzing projectile without being pierced. Although its threads may look fragile, a spider-silk weave is four times stronger than Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests.
In the first clip, the bioengineered skin cushions a bullet fired at half speed. But its resistance has its limits: when shot at a full speed of 329 m/s, the bullet pierces the material and travels through it. The same tests were also performed with piglet skin, human skin and human skin fused with regular silkworm silk, which were all penetrated by bullets of both speeds.
An international team worked together to create the new material. First, transgenic goats and silkworms equipped to produce spider-silk proteins spun out the raw material in the synthetic biology lab at Utah State University. The cocoons were then shipped to South Korea, where they were reeled into thread, before being woven into fabric in Germany. The modified silk was then wedged between bioengineered skin cells developed by biochemist Abdoelwaheb El Ghalbzouri at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. After five weeks of incubation, the hybrid skin was ready for target practice.
In addition to exploring the material artistically, Essaïdi is also looking into practical uses, such as skin transplants. Spider silk is already being developed by other teams for high-tech applications, which range from artificial corneas to brain implants.
For more about spider silk spin-offs, check out our full-length feature: “Stretching spider silk to its high-tech limits”. Or you might also like to find out about the science behind a lavish golden spider-silk cape, currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
(via antistigma)
Got myself out…
…of Facebook today.
Anyway, I have work to do. Stuff to write. I have to get with it soon so that I can deal with everything else.
It feels strangely comforting to just be writing again. Even if it’s about mundane things that happen in my small, insignificant life. It’s balmy. Maybe this is where I find myself. Between words and cluttered thoughts expressed poorly. Maybe writing is a soothing pain, for me. Some people cut themselves for release through endorphins. I write because I’m much too cowardly to cut myself. I could never do it. I can write though. This is how I strip myself naked. This is how I deal with the truth. I can’t spare myself when I write. I’m the accused and I’m the jury. I face myself and I come undone.
It all feels strangely comforting.
