If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments. Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.
Great article in the New York Times, titled “Depression’s Upside”, on a developing theory that human depression may have evolved as a biological advantage.
Apparently in South Korea people have taken to using snack sausages as iPhone styluses in the cold weather when their hands are mittened. Funny thing, I recently ran into this issue when I was in Europe in below freezing weather. I took to using my nose to navigate Google maps.
From Fish to Infinity is a new series in the New York Times by Steven Strogatz exploring math. A math professor, he realized that many perfectly intelligent people are frightened or at least made uncomfortable by math.
I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he’s an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know how to pronounce them.
In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we can.
I will always be indebted to my 4th grade teacher Ms. Gellerman at Peralta Elementary school. She had no fear of math. Even though I make my living as a graphic artist today, I use math constantly in my work. Even my comfort with the computers I use as my tools probably results from my early exposure to the basic concepts of programming she taught us.
There are now updates to the Uganda gallery and a new Tanzania gallery including a few pictures from Zanzibar. (The half uploaded pictures in the Uganda gallery have been fixed, and many new images added.) I mean to add a final gallery of odds and ends from the trip that gathers together some of the stranger moments I was able to record. Don’t hold your breath.
The Uganda gallery has a few more pictures uploaded upon arrival in Arusha, Tanzania, including images from Masaka, Gulu, Apac and Mbale. The child above watched the photography lesson Moses gave to a group of young mothers in one of the IDP camps in Gulu. He improvised his own camera and mimed the taking of photographs throughout the afternoon, which reminded me of a story Eduardo Galeano told at book reading of a boy who proudly showed him the watch he’d drawn on his wrist.
We’ve just returned from Endulan Hospital which serves the 77,000 Masai who live in the nature reserve surrounding the Ngorongoro crater. Endulan Hospital itself is a small outpost with about 50 staff with about 72 beds. Much more on that later…
I took this photo of a woman we met in Apac who was on her way to fill her plastic jerry cans with water from a public pump from one of the town’s wells. One of the ongoing subjects Moses has been documenting during our trip is how water is used by people in East Africa. He’s gathering images for an organization called Clearwater Initiative which works on water issues here. Every town has at least one public well with a pump from which people collect water for drinking and often washing clothes as well. We didn’t have a way to test the quality of this water so we purified it with my Steripen or iodine before we drank it ourselves.
In addition to the public pumps, many buildings here include systems for catching and storing rainwater from their gutters on the roof. This water is usually only used for washing.
Finally I’ve successfully posted a batch of photos to my gallery documenting our first week in Uganda.
Sub-galleries include:
A couple of short videos I shot while riding on the back of one of the boda boda scooter taxis with Moses can be viewed over on http://djiboutiorbust.blogspot.com/
I’m in the airport in Amsterdam with my friend Moses Ceaser. We’re on our way to Uganda and beyond, where we plan to take photographs for a variety of NGOs. Moses telling the story of the trip at djiboutiorbust.blogspot.com.
NASA’s image of the day shows the first photograph of an earthrise. Did anyone ever imagine an earthrise before this picture illustrated it? Astronaut Bill Anders exposed this photo during the Apollo 8 mission 40 years ago today. From this photograph Oliver Morton begins a thoughtful contemplation of life and our planet:
That the Earth is small is undeniable. If the inner solar system were the size of the United States, the Earth would be the size of a football field; if the distance to the center of the galaxy were a mile, the Earth would be less than an atom. But if the “Earthrise” photo could have captured our planet in the dimension of time instead of space, things would look different. In its duration, as opposed to its diameter, the Earth demands to be measured on a cosmic scale. At more than four billion years old, it stretches a third of the way across the history of the universe, a third of the way back to the Big Bang itself. Many of the stars you can see on a clear winter’s night are younger than the planet beneath your feet.
Turns out Santa has few fewer things to worry about. Here are six common medical myths that surface during the holidays debunked in the New York Times health blog:
1. Sugar makes kids hyperactive.
2. Suicide increases over the holidays.
3. Poinsettias are toxic.
4. You lose most of your body heat through your head.
5. Night eating makes you fat.
6. Hangovers can be cured.