Somehow I stumbled across an article on German humour...you're taking the piss, right?
As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,
---Denise.
With the arctic sea ice rapidly melting (the summer arctic is half what it was in 1979 in area terms...probably even less, volume-wise), the polar bears aren't going to be so leisurely any more. How serious is this? We don't know, but it does appear that temperatures in that region are increasing at twice the global rate and it's not clear what impact that will have on the release of 'sequestered methane' and sea levels.
The swami said that her father saved some saffron that someone brought from Kashmir for the wedding of his six daughters. Good saffron was, or so the saying went, as precious as gold. A small touch can transform the whole meal. You wonder about that: the idea of saving, of storing up, of not always expressing everything, savouring...the future moment as real and wonderful as anything else even if it never arrives, is only leisurely dreamed about.
~~~
Consumer culture has made us too accustomed to getting only what we want, no more and no less. Experiences are atomised into their component parts, the extraneous excised in an attempt to maximise the impact of the parts we prefer, with no thought to how their context changes them. But if you only ever get what you know you already want, serendipity is denied and the richness of experience is reduced to the button-pushing delivery of crude hits of fun, excitement, novelty or reassurance, often consumed in the private bubble of home or headphone.
---Julian Baggini.
As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,
---Denise.
With the arctic sea ice rapidly melting (the summer arctic is half what it was in 1979 in area terms...probably even less, volume-wise), the polar bears aren't going to be so leisurely any more. How serious is this? We don't know, but it does appear that temperatures in that region are increasing at twice the global rate and it's not clear what impact that will have on the release of 'sequestered methane' and sea levels.
The swami said that her father saved some saffron that someone brought from Kashmir for the wedding of his six daughters. Good saffron was, or so the saying went, as precious as gold. A small touch can transform the whole meal. You wonder about that: the idea of saving, of storing up, of not always expressing everything, savouring...the future moment as real and wonderful as anything else even if it never arrives, is only leisurely dreamed about.
~~~
Consumer culture has made us too accustomed to getting only what we want, no more and no less. Experiences are atomised into their component parts, the extraneous excised in an attempt to maximise the impact of the parts we prefer, with no thought to how their context changes them. But if you only ever get what you know you already want, serendipity is denied and the richness of experience is reduced to the button-pushing delivery of crude hits of fun, excitement, novelty or reassurance, often consumed in the private bubble of home or headphone.
---Julian Baggini.
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