These rape protesters in India might be our new favorite people. They’re reacting to widespread comments about skirts being the cause of rape, seriously.
Let’s get something straight, the only thing responsible for rape is a rapist, if you’re blaming a woman’s clothes for her rape you’re clueless.I also love that the one sign I can read says “Don’t skirt the issue”.
The rape protesters in India in general are fast becoming my favorite people.
(via jamiejedi)
(Source: mariannapaige, via gubroll)
A moss-covered table that harnesses electricity from photosynthesis to power small electronics (called “photovoltaics”) and a fiber-optic chandelier that shines through petri dishes of customizable bacterial cultures from this awesome New York Times article on science and design in the home. Don’t miss the slideshow.
Say WHAT?!
![theatlantic:
My Dream College Won’t Accept Me Because I’m a Woman
My initial reaction to finding out I couldn’t apply to Deep Springs was anger. These trustees nullified the application that I had spent hours crafting because of an archaic sentence which pertained to “the education of promising young men.” In the fall, I had been given the chance to apply to my dream school, and just a few months later, these trustees took that away from me suddenly, and in my opinion, unfairly. I was hurt.
Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/89be57a3e1cf59532f875fb8264c7332/tumblr_mgs8gncWtQ1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
My Dream College Won’t Accept Me Because I’m a Woman
My initial reaction to finding out I couldn’t apply to Deep Springs was anger. These trustees nullified the application that I had spent hours crafting because of an archaic sentence which pertained to “the education of promising young men.” In the fall, I had been given the chance to apply to my dream school, and just a few months later, these trustees took that away from me suddenly, and in my opinion, unfairly. I was hurt.
Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]
Why trees can’t grow taller than 100 metres
TYPICALLY, the taller the tree, the smaller its leaves. The mathematical explanation for this phenomenon, it turns out, also sets a limit on how tall trees can grow.
Kaare Jensen of Harvard University and Maciej Zwieniecki of the University of California, Davis, compared 1925 tree species, with leaves ranging from a few millimetres to over 1 metre long, and found that leaf size varied most in relatively short trees.
Jensen thinks the explanation lies in the plant’s circulatory system. Sugars produced in leaves diffuse through a network of tube-shaped cells called the phloem. Sugars accelerate as they move, so the bigger the leaves the faster they reach the rest of the plant. But the phloem in stems, branches and the trunk acts as a bottleneck. There comes a point when it becomes a waste of energy for leaves to grow any bigger. Tall trees hit this limit when their leaves are still small, because sugars have to move through so much trunk to get to the roots, creating a bigger bottleneck.
Jensen’s equations describing the relationship show that as trees get taller, unusually large or small leaves both cease to be viable (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/j6n). The range of leaf sizes narrows and at around 100 m tall, the upper limit matches the lower limit. Above that, it seems, trees can’t build a viable leaf. Which could explain why California’s tallest redwoods max out at 115.6 m.
Source: New Scientist.
Images: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4.
(via destinedreign)
It actually looks like a big mole, no?
“I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, ‘She must have provoked him,’ or, ‘Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.’ They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.” — Patrick Stewart
EPA Changed Course Under Oil Company Pressure
When a man in a Fort Worth suburb reported his family’s drinking water had begun “bubbling” like champagne, the federal government sounded an alarm: an oil company may have tainted their wells while drilling for natural gas.
At first, the Environmental Protection Agency believed the situation was so serious that it issued a rare emergency order in late 2010 that said at least two homeowners were in immediate danger from a well saturated with flammable methane. More than a year later, the agency rescinded its mandate and refused to explain why. Now, a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with company representatives show that the EPA had scientific evidence against the driller, Range Resources, but changed course after the company threatened not to cooperate with a national study into a common form of drilling called hydraulic fracturing. Regulators set aside an analysis that concluded the drilling could have been to blame for the contamination.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/epa-changed-course-under-oil-company-pressure
(Source: public-unpervert, via summer-well)
Tsuneaki Hiramatsu - Firefly Road (2012) - Slow-shutter photographs capturing fireflies in flight in a forest in Japan
(Source: likeafieldmouse, via jamiejedi)
